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Posts Tagged ‘“Internet freedom”’

The top whistle-blower Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014: Mass collective surveillance and Internet freedom

Posted by: on: May 10, 2015

 

 

 

Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom.

The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it.

“Your rights matter,” he says, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.” Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee

Chris Anderson:

The rights of citizens, the future of the Internet. So I would like to welcome to the TED stage the man behind those revelations, Ed Snowden. (Applause)

Ed is in a remote location somewhere in Russia controlling this bot from his laptop, so he can see what the bot can see. Ed, welcome to the TED stage. What can you see, as a matter of fact?

0:44 Edward Snowden: Ha, I can see everyone. This is amazing. (Laughter)

0:52 CA: Ed, some questions for you. You’ve been called many things in the last few months. You’ve been called a whistleblower, a traitor, a hero. What words would you describe yourself with?

1:08 ES: You know, everybody who is involved with this debate has been struggling over me and my personality and how to describe me.

But when I think about it, this isn’t the question that we should be struggling with. Who I am really doesn’t matter at all.

If I’m the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues.

What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.

And that’s what I’m hoping the debate will move towards, and we’ve seen that increasing over time. If I had to describe myself, I wouldn’t use words like “hero.” I wouldn’t use “patriot,” and I wouldn’t use “traitor.” I’d say I’m an American and I’m a citizen, just like everyone else.

1:58 CA: So just to give some context for those who don’t know the whole story .

 This time a year ago 2013, you were stationed in Hawaii working as a consultant to the NSA.

As a sysadmin, you had access to their systems, and you began revealing certain classified documents to some handpicked journalists leading the way to June’s revelations. Now, what propelled you to do this?

ES: You know, when I was sitting in Hawaii, and the years before, when I was working in the intelligence community, I saw a lot of things that had disturbed me. We do a lot of good things in the intelligence community, things that need to be done, and things that help everyone.

But there are also things that go too far. There are things that shouldn’t be done, and decisions that were being made in secret without the public’s awareness, without the public’s consent, and without even our representatives in government having knowledge of these programs.

When I really came to struggle with these issues, I thought to myself, how can I do this in the most responsible way, that maximizes the public benefit while minimizing the risks?

And out of all the solutions that I could come up with, out of going to Congress, when there were no laws, there were no legal protections for a private employee, a contractor in intelligence like myself, there was a risk that I would be buried along with the information and the public would never find out.

But the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees us a free press for a reason, and that’s to enable an adversarial press, to challenge the government, but also to work together with the government, to have a dialogue and debate about how we can inform the public about matters of vital importance without putting our national security at risk.

And by working with journalists, by giving all of my information back to the American people, rather than trusting myself to make the decisions about publication, we’ve had a robust debate with a deep investment by the government that I think has resulted in a benefit for everyone.

And the risks that have been threatened, the risks that have been played up by the government have never materialized.

We’ve never seen any evidence of even a single instance of specific harm, and because of that, I’m comfortable with the decisions that I made.

4:45 CA: So let me show the audience a couple of examples of what you revealed. If we could have a slide up, and Ed, I don’t know whether you can see, the slides are here. This is a slide of the PRISM program, and maybe you could tell the audience what that was that was revealed.

5:02 ES: The best way to understand PRISM, because there’s been a little bit of controversy, is to first talk about what PRISM isn’t.

Much of the debate in the U.S. has been about metadata. They’ve said it’s just metadata, it’s just metadata, and they’re talking about a specific legal authority called Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the entire country’s phone records, things like that — who you’re talking to, when you’re talking to them, where you traveled.

These are all metadata events. PRISM is about content. It’s a program through which the government could compel corporate America, it could deputize corporate America to do its dirty work for the NSA.

And even though some of these companies did resist, even though some of them — I believe Yahoo was one of them — challenged them in court, they all lost, because it was never tried by an open court.

They were only tried by a secret court. And something that we’ve seen, something about the PRISM program that’s very concerning to me is, there’s been a talking point in the U.S. government where they’ve said 15 federal judges have reviewed these programs and found them to be lawful, but what they don’t tell you is those are secret judges in a secret court based on secret interpretations of law that’s considered 34,000 warrant requests over 33 years, and in 33 years only rejected 11 government requests.

These aren’t the people that we want deciding what the role of corporate America in a free and open Internet should be.

6:47 CA: Now, this slide that we’re showing here shows the dates in which different technology companies, Internet companies, are alleged to have joined the program, and where data collection began from them.

Now, they have denied collaborating with the NSA. How was that data collected by the NSA?

7:09 ES: Right. So the NSA’s own slides refer to it as direct access. What that means to an actual NSA analyst, someone like me who was working as an intelligence analyst targeting, Chinese cyber-hackers, things like that, in Hawaii, is the provenance of that data is directly from their servers.

It doesn’t mean that there’s a group of company representatives sitting in a smoky room with the NSA palling around and making back-room deals about how they’re going to give this stuff away.

Now each company handles it different ways. Some are responsible. Some are somewhat less responsible. But the bottom line is, when we talk about how this information is given, it’s coming from the companies themselves. It’s not stolen from the lines.

But there’s an important thing to remember here: even though companies pushed back, even though companies demanded, hey, let’s do this through a warrant process, let’s do this where we actually have some sort of legal review, some sort of basis for handing over these users’ data, we saw stories in the Washington Post last year that weren’t as well reported as the PRISM story that said the NSA broke in to the data center communications between Google to itself and Yahoo to itself.

So even these companies that are cooperating in at least a compelled but hopefully lawful manner with the NSA, the NSA isn’t satisfied with that, and because of that, we need our companies to work very hard to guarantee that they’re going to represent the interests of the user, and also advocate for the rights of the users.

And I think over the last year, we’ve seen the companies that are named on the PRISM slides take great strides to do that, and I encourage them to continue.

8:59 CA: What more should they do?

9:01 ES: The biggest thing that an Internet company in America can do today, right now, without consulting with lawyers, to protect the rights of users worldwide, is to enable SSL web encryption on every page you visit.

The reason this matters is today, if you go to look at a copy of “1984” on Amazon.com, the NSA can see a record of that, the Russian intelligence service can see a record of that, the Chinese service can see a record of that, the French service, the German service, the services of Andorra. They can all see it because it’s unencrypted.

The world’s library is Amazon.com, but not only do they not support encryption by default, you cannot choose to use encryption when browsing through books.

This is something that we need to change, not just for Amazon, I don’t mean to single them out, but they’re a great example. All companies need to move to an encrypted browsing habit by default for all users who haven’t taken any action or picked any special methods on their own. That’ll increase the privacy and the rights that people enjoy worldwide.

10:12 CA: Ed, come with me to this part of the stage. I want to show you the next slide here. (Applause) This is a program called Boundless Informant. What is that?

10:22 ES: So, I’ve got to give credit to the NSA for using appropriate names on this. This is one of my favorite NSA cryptonyms.

Boundless Informant is a program that the NSA hid from Congress. The NSA was previously asked by Congress, was there any ability that they had to even give a rough ballpark estimate of the amount of American communications that were being intercepted. They said no. They said, we don’t track those stats, and we can’t track those stats. We can’t tell you how many communications we’re intercepting around the world, because to tell you that would be to invade your privacy.

Now, I really appreciate that sentiment from them, but the reality, when you look at this slide is, not only do they have the capability, the capability already exists. It’s already in place.

The NSA has its own internal data format that tracks both ends of a communication, and if it says, this communication came from America, they can tell Congress how many of those communications they have today, right now. And what Boundless Informant tells us is more communications are being intercepted in America about Americans than there are in Russia about Russians. I’m not sure that’s what an intelligence agency should be aiming for.

11:43 CA: Ed, there was a story broken in the Washington Post, again from your data. The headline says, “NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year.” Tell us about that.

11:54 ES: We also heard in Congressional testimony last year, it was an amazing thing for someone like me who came from the NSA and who’s seen the actual internal documents, knows what’s in them, to see officials testifying under oath that there had been no abuses, that there had been no violations of the NSA’s rules, when we knew this story was coming.

But what’s especially interesting about this, about the fact that the NSA has violated their own rules, their own laws thousands of times in a single year, including one event by itself, one event out of those 2,776, that affected more than 3,000 people.

In another event, they intercepted all the calls in Washington, D.C., by accident. What’s amazing about this, this report, that didn’t get that much attention, is the fact that not only were there 2,776 abuses, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, had not seen this report until the Washington Post contacted her asking for comment on the report. And she then requested a copy from the NSA and received it, but had never seen this before that. What does that say about the state of oversight in American intelligence when the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has no idea that the rules are being broken thousands of times every year?

13:20 CA: Ed, one response to this whole debate is this: Why should we care about all this surveillance, honestly? I mean, look, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about. What’s wrong with that point of view?

ES: Well, so the first thing is, you’re giving up your rights. You’re saying hey, you know, I don’t think I’m going to need them, so I’m just going to trust that, you know, let’s get rid of them, it doesn’t really matter, these guys are going to do the right thing.

Your rights matter because you never know when you’re going to need them.

Beyond that, it’s a part of our cultural identity, not just in America, but in Western societies and in democratic societies around the world.

People should be able to pick up the phone and to call their family, people should be able to send a text message to their loved ones, people should be able to buy a book online, they should be able to travel by train, they should be able to buy an airline ticket without wondering about how these events are going to look to an agent of the government, possibly not even your government years in the future, how they’re going to be misinterpreted and what they’re going to think your intentions were.

We have a right to privacy. We require warrants to be based on probable cause or some kind of individualized suspicion because we recognize that trusting anybody, any government authority, with the entirety of human communications in secret and without oversight is simply too great a temptation to be ignored.

14:55 CA: Some people are furious at what you’ve done. I heard a quote recently from Dick Cheney who said that Julian Assange was a flea bite, Edward Snowden is the lion that bit the head off the dog. He thinks you’ve committed one of the worst acts of betrayal in American history. What would you say to people who think that?

15:21 ES: Dick Cheney’s really something else. (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you.

  I think it’s amazing, because at the time Julian Assange was doing some of his greatest work, Dick Cheney was saying he was going to end governments worldwide, the skies were going to ignite and the seas were going to boil off, and now he’s saying it’s a flea bite.

So we should be suspicious about the same sort of overblown claims of damage to national security from these kind of officials.

But let’s assume that these people really believe this. I would argue that they have kind of a narrow conception of national security. The prerogatives of people like Dick Cheney do not keep the nation safe.

The public interest is not always the same as the national interest. Going to war with people who are not our enemy in places that are not a threat doesn’t make us safe, and that applies whether it’s in Iraq or on the Internet.

The Internet is not the enemy. Our economy is not the enemy. American businesses, Chinese businesses, and any other company out there is a part of our society.

It’s a part of our interconnected world. There are ties of fraternity that bond us together, and if we destroy these bonds by undermining the standards, the security, the manner of behavior, that nations and citizens all around the world expect us to abide by.

17:13 CA: But it’s alleged that you’ve stolen 1.7 million documents. It seems only a few hundred of them have been shared with journalists so far. Are there more revelations to come?

17:27 ES: There are absolutely more revelations to come. I don’t think there’s any question that some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come.

17:41 CA: Come here, because I want to ask you about this particular revelation. Come and take a look at this. I mean, this is a story which I think for a lot of the techies in this room is the single most shocking thing that they have heard in the last few months. It’s about a program called “Bullrun.” Can you explain what that is?

18:01 ES: So Bullrun, and this is again where we’ve got to thank the NSA for their candor, this is a program named after a Civil War battle.

The British counterpart is called Edgehill, which is a U.K. civil war battle. And the reason that I believe they’re named this way is because they target our own infrastructure.

They’re programs through which the NSA intentionally misleads corporate partners. They tell corporate partners that these are safe standards. They say hey, we need to work with you to secure your systems, but in reality, they’re giving bad advice to these companies that makes them degrade the security of their services.

They’re building in backdoors that not only the NSA can exploit, but anyone else who has time and money to research and find it can then use to let themselves in to the world’s communications.

And this is really dangerous, because if we lose a single standard, if we lose the trust of something like SSL, which was specifically targeted by the Bullrun program, we will live a less safe world overall. We won’t be able to access our banks and we won’t be able to access commerce without worrying about people monitoring those communications or subverting them for their own ends.

19:27 CA: And do those same decisions also potentially open America up to cyberattacks from other sources?

19:38 ES: Absolutely. One of the problems, one of the dangerous legacies that we’ve seen in the post-9/11 era, is that the NSA has traditionally worn two hats. They’ve been in charge of offensive operations, that is hacking, but they’ve also been in charge of defensive operations, and traditionally they’ve always prioritized defense over offense based on the principle that American secrets are simply worth more.

If we hack a Chinese business and steal their secrets, if we hack a government office in Berlin and steal their secrets, that has less value to the American people than making sure that the Chinese can’t get access to our secrets. So by reducing the security of our communications, they’re not only putting the world at risk, they’re putting America at risk in a fundamental way, because intellectual property is the basis, the foundation of our economy, and if we put that at risk through weak security, we’re going to be paying for it for years.

20:40 CA: But they’ve made a calculation that it was worth doing this as part of America’s defense against terrorism. Surely that makes it a price worth paying.

20:50 ES: Well, when you look at the results of these programs in stopping terrorism, you will see that that’s unfounded, and you don’t have to take my word for it, because we’ve had the first open court, the first federal court that’s reviewed this, outside the secrecy arrangement, called these programs Orwellian and likely unconstitutional.

Congress, who has access to be briefed on these things, and now has the desire to be, has produced bills to reform it, and two independent White House panels who reviewed all of the classified evidence said these programs have never stopped a single terrorist attack that was imminent in the United States. So is it really terrorism that we’re stopping? Do these programs have any value at all? I say no, and all three branches of the American government say no as well.

21:48 CA: I mean, do you think there’s a deeper motivation for them than the war against terrorism?

21:53 ES: I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, say again?

21:55 CA: Sorry. Do you think there’s a deeper motivation for them other than the war against terrorism?

22:01 ES: Yeah. The bottom line is that terrorism has always been what we in the intelligence world would call a cover for action. Terrorism is something that provokes an emotional response that allows people to rationalize authorizing powers and programs that they wouldn’t give otherwise. The Bullrun and Edgehill-type programs, the NSA asked for these authorities back in the 1990s.

They asked the FBI to go to Congress and make the case. The FBI went to Congress and did make the case. But Congress and the American people said no. They said, it’s not worth the risk to our economy. They said it’s worth too much damage to our society to justify the gains. But what we saw is, in the post-9/11 era, they used secrecy and they used the justification of terrorism to start these programs in secret without asking Congress, without asking the American people, and it’s that kind of government behind closed doors that we need to guard ourselves against, because it makes us less safe, and it offers no value.

23:03 CA: Okay, come with me here for a sec, because I’ve got a more personal question for you. Speaking of terror, most people would find the situation you’re in right now in Russia pretty terrifying. You obviously heard what happened, what the treatment that Bradley Manning got, Chelsea Manning as now is, and there was a story in Buzzfeed saying that there are people in the intelligence community who want you dead. How are you coping with this? How are you coping with the fear?

23:36 ES: It’s no mystery that there are governments out there that want to see me dead. I’ve made clear again and again and again that I go to sleep every morning thinking about what I can do for the American people. I don’t want to harm my government. I want to help my government, but the fact that they are willing to completely ignore due process, they’re willing to declare guilt without ever seeing a trial, these are things that we need to work against as a society, and say hey, this is not appropriate. We shouldn’t be threatening dissidents. We shouldn’t be criminalizing journalism. And whatever part I can do to see that end, I’m happy to do despite the risks.

24:32 CA: So I’d actually like to get some feedback from the audience here, because I know there’s widely differing reactions to Edward Snowden. Suppose you had the following two choices, right? You could view what he did as fundamentally a reckless act that has endangered America or you could view it as fundamentally a heroic act that will work towards America and the world’s long-term good? Those are the two choices I’ll give you. I’m curious to see who’s willing to vote with the first of those, that this was a reckless act? There are some hands going up. Some hands going up. It’s hard to put your hand up when the man is standing right here, but I see them.

25:15 ES: I can see you. (Laughter)

25:18 CA: And who goes with the second choice, the fundamentally heroic act?

25:22 (Applause) (Cheers)

25:25 And I think it’s true to say that there are a lot of people who didn’t show a hand and I think are still thinking this through, because it seems to me that the debate around you doesn’t split along traditional political lines. It’s not left or right, it’s not really about pro-government, libertarian, or not just that. Part of it is almost a generational issue. You’re part of a generation that grew up with the Internet, and it seems as if you become offended at almost a visceral level when you see something done that you think will harm the Internet. Is there some truth to that?

26:02 ES: It is. I think it’s very true. This is not a left or right issue. Our basic freedoms, and when I say our, I don’t just mean Americans, I mean people around the world, it’s not a partisan issue.

These are things that all people believe, and it’s up to all of us to protect them, and to people who have seen and enjoyed a free and open Internet, it’s up to us to preserve that liberty for the next generation to enjoy, and if we don’t change things, if we don’t stand up to make the changes we need to do to keep the Internet safe, not just for us but for everyone, we’re going to lose that, and that would be a tremendous loss, not just for us, but for the world.

26:49 CA: Well, I have heard similar language recently from the founder of the world wide web, who I actually think is with us, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Tim, actually, would you like to come up and say, do we have a microphone for Tim?

27:04 Tim, good to see you. Come up there. Which camp are you in, by the way, traitor, hero? I have a theory on this, but —

27:17 Tim Berners-Lee: I’ve given much longer answers to that question, but hero, if I have to make the choice between the two.

27:26 CA: And Ed, I think you’ve read the proposal that Sir Tim has talked about about a new Magna Carta to take back the Internet. Is that something that makes sense?

ES: Absolutely. I mean, my generation, I grew up not just thinking about the Internet, but I grew up in the Internet, and although I never expected to have the chance to defend it in such a direct and practical manner and to embody it in this unusual, almost avatar manner, I think there’s something poetic about the fact that one of the sons of the Internet has actually become close to the Internet as a result of their political expression.

And I believe that a Magna Carta for the Internet is exactly what we need. We need to encode our values not just in writing but in the structure of the Internet, and it’s something that I hope, I invite everyone in the audience, not just here in Vancouver but around the world, to join and participate in.

28:34 CA: Do you have a question for Ed?

28:36 TBL: Well, two questions, a general question —

28:39 CA: Ed, can you still hear us?

28:41 ES: Yes, I can hear you. CA: Oh, he’s back.

28:45 TBL: The wiretap on your line got a little interfered with for a moment. (Laughter)

28:50 ES: It’s a little bit of an NSA problem.

28:52 TBL: So, from the 25 years, stepping back and thinking, what would you think would be the best that we could achieve from all the discussions that we have about the web we want?

29:08 ES: When we think about in terms of how far we can go, I think that’s a question that’s really only limited by what we’re willing to put into it. I think the Internet that we’ve enjoyed in the past has been exactly what we as not just a nation but as a people around the world need, and by cooperating, by engaging not just the technical parts of society, but as you said, the users, the people around the world who contribute through the Internet, through social media, who just check the weather, who rely on it every day as a part of their life, to champion that.

We’ll get not just the Internet we’ve had, but a better Internet, a better now, something that we can use to build a future that’ll be better not just than what we hoped for but anything that we could have imagined.

30:06 CA: It’s 30 years ago that TED was founded, 1984. A lot of the conversation since then has been along the lines that actually George Orwell got it wrong. It’s not Big Brother watching us. We, through the power of the web, and transparency, are now watching Big Brother. Your revelations kind of drove a stake through the heart of that rather optimistic view, but you still believe there’s a way of doing something about that. And you do too.

30:36 ES: Right, so there is an argument to be made that the powers of Big Brother have increased enormously. There was a recent legal article at Yale that established something called the Bankston-Soltani Principle, which is that our expectation of privacy is violated when the capabilities of government surveillance have become cheaper by an order of magnitude, and each time that occurs, we need to revisit and rebalance our privacy rights.

Now, that hasn’t happened since the government’s surveillance powers have increased by several orders of magnitude, and that’s why we’re in the problem that we’re in today, but there is still hope, because the power of individuals have also been increased by technology.

I am living proof that an individual can go head to head against the most powerful adversaries and the most powerful intelligence agencies around the world and win, and I think that’s something that we need to take hope from, and we need to build on to make it accessible not just to technical experts but to ordinary citizens around the world. Journalism is not a crime, communication is not a crime, and we should not be monitored in our everyday activities.

31:58 CA: I’m not quite sure how you shake the hand of a bot, but I imagine it’s, this is the hand right here.

TBL: That’ll come very soon.

ES: Nice to meet you, and I hope my beam looks as nice as my view of you guys does.

32:12 CA: Thank you, Tim.

 

32:20 I mean, The New York Times recently called for an amnesty for you. Would you welcome the chance to come back to America?

32:29 ES: Absolutely. There’s really no question, the principles that have been the foundation of this project have been the public interest and the principles that underly the journalistic establishment in the United States and around the world, and I think if the press is now saying, we support this, this is something that needed to happen, that’s a powerful argument, but it’s not the final argument, and I think that’s something that public should decide.

But at the same time, the government has hinted that they want some kind of deal, that they want me to compromise the journalists with which I’ve been working, to come back, and I want to make it very clear that I did not do this to be safe. I did this to do what was right, and I’m not going to stop my work in the public interest just to benefit myself. (Applause)

33:35 CA: In the meantime, courtesy of the Internet and this technology, you’re here, back in North America, not quite the U.S., Canada, in this form. I’m curious, how does that feel?

33:51 ES: Canada is different than what I expected. It’s a lot warmer. (Laughter)

34:01 CA: At TED, the mission is “ideas worth spreading.” If you could encapsulate it in a single idea, what is your idea worth spreading right now at this moment?

ES: I would say the last year has been a reminder that democracy may die behind closed doors, but we as individuals are born behind those same closed doors, and we don’t have to give up our privacy to have good government. We don’t have to give up our liberty to have security.

And I think by working together we can have both open government and private lives, and I look forward to working with everyone around the world to see that happen.

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China published a report: “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011”

Posted by: on: June 8, 2012

China published a report: “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011”

Apparently, China got enough of the exclusive US reports on human rights violations “outside of the US” and produced its own counter attack report.

The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published a report titled

“The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011” on Friday.

Human Rights Record of United States in 2011

Occupy Seattle protesters, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, scuffle with police officers 

during a May Day rally and anti-capitalist march in Seattle. Stuart Isett / Bloomberg

“The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices for 2011 on May 24, 2012.
As in previous years, the reports are full of over critical  remarks on the human rights situation
in nearly 200 countries and regions as well as distortions and accusations
concerning the human rights cause in China.
However, the United Statesturned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and kept
silent about it. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 is hereby prepared
to reveal the true human rights situation of the United States to people across the world
and urge the United States to face upto its own doings.
I.On life, property and personal security
The United States has mighty strength in human, financial and material resources
to exert effective control over violent crimes.
However, its society is chronically suffering from violent crimes, and its citizens’ lives,
properties and personal security are in lack of proper protection.
A report published by the US Department of Justice on Sept 15,2011, revealed that in 2010, the US residents aged 12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations, 1.4 million serious violent victimizations,14.8 million property victimizations and 138,000 personal thefts.
The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents (www.bjs.gov).
The crimerate surged in many cities and regions in the United States.
In the southern region of the United States, there were 452 violent crimes and 3,439
property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants (in 2010) on average
(The Wall Street Journal, Sept 20, 2011).
Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw 8 homicides -compared with five during
the same time of the previous year, with Oakland racking up 11, when the previous year
in the same period it had four (The SanFrancisco Chronicle, Jan 29, 2011).
Grand larcenies in the subway in New York City increased from 852 in 2010
to 1,075 cases in the first nine months of 2011, a 25 % jump (The ChinaPress, Sept 24, 2011).
Homicide cases in Detroit in 2011 saw a 13.5%  rise over 2010 (www.buzzle.com).
Between January and October 2011, a total of 123,924 serious crime casestook place in Chicago
(portal.chicagopolice.org).
An antibullying public service announcement declared in January 2011 that more than
6 million school children experienced bullying in theprevious six months (CNN, Mar 10, 2011).
According to statistics from the Family First Aid, almost 30% of teenagers in the United States
are estimated to be involved in schoolbullying (www.familyfirstaid.org).
The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens’ lives
and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant
gun ownership.
The US people hold between 35 percent and 50 % of the world’ s civilian owned guns,
with every 100 people having 90 guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan 9, 2011).
According to a Gallup poll in October 2011, 47% of American adults reported
that they had a gun. That was an increase of 6 percentage points from a year ago
and the highest Gallup had recorded since 1993.
About 52%  of middleaged adults, aged between 35 and 54, reported to own guns,
and the adults’ gun ownership in the south region was 54% (The China Press, Oct 28, 2011).
The New York Times reported on Nov 14,2011, that since 1995, more than 3,300 felons
and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors had regained their gun rights
in the state of Washington and of that number, more than 400 had subsequently committed
new crimes, including shooting and other felonies (The New YorkTimes, Nov 14, 2011).
The United States is the leader among the world’s developed countries in gun violence
and gundeaths. According to a report of the Foreign Policy on Jan 9, 2011,
over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence and another 200,000 
Americans are estimated to be injured eachyear due to guns
(Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan 9, 2011).
According to statistics released by the US Department of Justice, among the 480,760 
robbery cases and 188,380 rape and sexual assault cases in 2010, the rates of victimization
involving firearms were 29% and 7 percent, respectively (www.bjs.gov).
On Jun 2, 2011, a shooting rampage in Arizona left six people dead and one injured
(The China Press, Jun 3, 2011).
In Chicago, more than 10 overnight shooting incidents took place just between the evening
of June 3 and the morning of June 4 (Chicago Tribune, Jun 4, 2011).
Another five overnight shootings occurred between Aug 12 evening and Aug 13
morning in Chicago.
These incidents have caused anumber of deaths and injuries (Chicago Tribune, Aug 13, 2011).
Shooting spree cases involving one gunman shooting dead over five people also happened
in the states of Michigan,Texas, Ohio, Nevada and Southern California
(The New York Times, Oct 13, 2011; CNN, Jul 8, 2011; CBS, Jul 23, 2011;USA Today, Aug 9, 2011).
High incidence of gun related crimes haslong ignited complaints of the US people and
they stage multiple protests every year,demanding the government strictly control
the private possession of arms.
The US government, however, fails to pay due attention to this issue.

II. On civil and political rights

In the United States, the violation of citizens’ civil and political rights is severe.

It is lying to itsel fwhen the United States calls itself the land of the free (The Washington Post,

Jan 14, 2012).

Claiming to defend 99 percent of the US population against the wealthiest,

the Occupy Wall Street protest movement tested the US political, economic and social systems.

Ignited by severe social and economic inequality, uneven distribution of wealth and

high unemployment,the movement expanded to sweep the United States after its inception

in September 2011.

Whatever the deep reasons for the movement are, the single fact that thousands of protesters

were treated in a rude and violent way, with many of them being arrested – the act of willfully trampling on people’ s freedom of assembly, demonstration

and speech – could provide a glimpse to the truth of the so-called US freedom and democracy.

Almost 1,000 people were reportedly arrested in first two weeks of the movement,

according to British and Australian media (The Guardian, Oct 2, 2011).

The New York police arrested more than 700 protesters for alleged blocking traffic

over Brooklyn Bridge on Oct 1, and some ofthem were handcuffed to the bridge

before being shipped by police vehicles(uschinapress.com, Oct 3, 2011).

On Oct 9,92 people were arrested in New York (The NewYork Times, Oct 15, 2011).

The Occupy Wall Street movement was forced out of its encampment at Zuccotti Park

and more than 200 people were arrested on Nov 15 (TheGuardian, Nov 25, 2011).

Chicago police arrested around 300 members of the Occupy Chicago protest in two weeks

(The Herald Sun, Oct 24, 2011).

At least 85 people were arrestedwhen police used teargas and baton rounds to break up

an Occupy Wall Street camp in Oakland, California on Oct 25.

An Iraq war veteran had a fractured skull and brain swellingafter being allegedly hit in the head

by a police projectile (The Guardian, Oct 26, 2011).

Acouple of hundred people were arrested when demonstrations were staged in different

US cities to mark the Occupy Wall Street movement’ s two-month anniversary on Nov 17 (USAToday, Nov 18, 2011).

Among them, at least 276 were arrested in New York only.

A few protesters were bloodied as they were hauled away.

Many protesters accused the police oftreating them in a brutal way (The Wall Street Journal,

Nov 18, 2011).

As a US opinion article put it, the United States could be considered, at least in part,

authoritarian. (The WashingtonPost, Jan 14, 2012).

While advocating press freedom, the United States in fact imposes fairly strict censoring

and control over the press and “press freedom” is just a political tool used to beautify

itself and attack other nations.

The US Congress failed to pass laws on protecting rights of reporters’news sources,

according to media reports. An increasing number of American reporters lost jobs for

“improper remarks on politics.”

US reporter Helen Thomas resigned for critical remarks about Israel in June 2010

“Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states,

“the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28, 2011).

While forcibly evacuating the Zuccotti Park, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment,

the New York police blocked journalists from covering the police actions.

They set cordon lines to prevent reporters fromgetting close to the park and closed

airspace to make aerial photography impossible.

In addition to using pepper spray against reporters, the police also arrested around

200 journalists, including reporters from NPR and the New York Times

(uschinapress.com, Nov 15, 2011).

By trampling on press freedom and public interests, these actions by the US authorities

caused a global uproar.

US mainstream media’ s response to the Occupy Wall Street movement revealed the hypocrisy

in handling issues of freedom and democracy.

Poll by Pew Research Center indicated that in the second week of the movement,

reports on the movement only accounted for 1.68 percent of the total media reports

by nationwide media organizations.

On Oct 15, 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement evolved to be a global action,

CNN and Fox News gave no live reports on it, in a sharp contrast to the square protest

in Cairo, for which both CNN and Fox News broadcast live 24 hours.

The US imposes fairly strict restriction on the Internet, and its approach “remains

full of problems and contradictions.”

(The website of the Foreign Policy magazine, Feb 17, 2011)

“Internet freedom” is just an excuse for the United States to impose diplomatic pressure

andseek hegemony.

The US Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring

the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor

and block anyInternet content “harmful to national security.”

Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 stipulates that the federal

government has “absolute power” to shut down the Internetunder a declared national emergency.

According to a report by British newspaper the Guardian dated Mar 17, 2011,

the US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites

by using fake online personas, and will allow the US military to create a false consensus

in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries

or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The project aims to control and restrict free speech on the Internet (The Guardian, Mar 17, 2011).

According to a commentaryby the Voice of Russia on Feb 2,2012, a subsidiary under

the US government’ s security agency employed several hundred analysts, who were

tasked with monitoring private archivesof foreign Internet users in a secret way,

and were able to censor as many as 5 million microblogging posts.

The US Department of Homeland Security routinely searched key words like “illegal immigrants,”

“virus,””death,” and “burst out” on Twitter with fake accounts and then secretly traced

the Internet users who forwarded related content.

According to a report by the Globe and Mail on Jan 30,2012, Leigh Van Bryan, a British,

prior to his flight to the US, wrotein a Twitter post, “Free this week,

for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?”

As aresult, Bryan along with a friend were handcuffed and put in lockdown with

suspected drug smugglers for 12 hours by armed guards after landing in Los Angeles

International Airport, justlike “terrorists”.

Among many angered by the incident in Britain, an Internet user posted a comment, “What’s worse, being arrested for an innocent tweet, or the fact that the American

Secret Service monitors every electronic message in the world?”

The US democracy is increasingly being influenced by capitalization and becoming

a system for”master of money.” Data issued by the US Center for Responsive Politics

in November 2011 show that 46 % of the US federal senators and members

of the House of Representatives have personal assets of more than a million dollars.

That well explains why US administration’ splans to impose higher tax on the rich

who earn more than one million dollars annually have been

blocked in the Congress (www.financeol.com).

As a commentary put it, money hasemerged as the electoral trump card in the US

political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court recognized right to use their

considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their

business operations and to resist policies and shutout candidates deemed inimical

to their business interests (Online edition of Time, Jan 20, 2011).

According to a media report, nearly two thirds of all the contributions that the chairman

of the House Financial Services Committee received during the 2010 election cycle

came from industries regulated by his committee.

A ranking Democrat Representative on the Agriculture Committee, who served as chairman

between 2007 and 2010, saw a 711% increase in contributions from groups regulated

by his committee and a 274% increase in contributions over all, in the same period

(The New York Times, Nov 16, 2011).

According to aWashington Post report on Aug 10,2011, nearly 8 in 10 of Americans

polled were dissatisfied with the way the political system is working, with 45 %

saying they are very dissatisfied (The Washington Post, Aug 10, 2011).

The US continued to violate the freedom of its citizens in the name of boosting security levels(The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2011 released areport,”Patterns of Misconduct:

FBI intelligence violations from 2001 to2008,” which reveals that domestic political

intelligence apparatus, spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,continues

to systematically violate the rights of American citizens and legal residents.

The report shows that the actual number of violations that may have occurred

from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law,

Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.

The FBI issued some 200,000 requests and that almost 60% were for investigations of

US citizens and legal residents(www.pacificfreepress.com).

The New York Times reported on Oct 20,2011, that the FBI has collected information

about religious, ethnic and national-origin characteristics of American communities

(The New York Times, Oct 20, 2011).

According to a Washington Post commentary dated Jan 14,2012, the US government

can use “national security letters” todemand, without probable cause,

that organizations turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and

associations, and order searches of everything from business documentsto library records.

The US government can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted

citizens without securing any court order or review (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

Abuse of power, brutal enforcement of law and overuse of force by US police have resulted

in harassment and hurt to a large number of innocent citizens and have caused

loss of freedom of some people or even deaths.

According to a report carried by the World Journal on Jun 10, 2011, the past decade

saw increasing stop and frisks by the New York police, which recorded an annual of

600,000 cases in 2010, almost double of that in 2004.

In the first three months of 2011, some 180,000 people experienced stop-and-frisks, 88 % of whom were innocent people (World Journal, Jun 10, 2011).

In early July of 2011, two police officers beat a mentally ill homeless man to death

in Orange County, Southern California (FoxNews.com, Sept 21, 2011).

In August 2011, North Miami police shot and killed a man carrying realistic toy gun

(TheNY Daily News, Sept 1, 2011).

On Jan 8,2011, a Central California man was shot and killed bythe police, who thought

of him as a gang member only because the jacket he was wearing wasred, “the chosen color of a local street gang.” (www.kolotv.com, Jan 19, 2011)

In May 2011, Arizona’ s police officers raided the home of Jose Guerena and shot

him dead in what was described as an investigation into alleged marijuana trafficking.

However, the police later found nothing illegal in his home (The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011).

Misjudged and wrongly handled cases continued to occur.

According to media reports, Anthony Graves, a Texas man,was imprisoned for 18 years

for crimes he did not commit (CBS News, Jun 22, 2011).

46 year old Thomas Haynesworth spent 27 years in prison after being arrested

at the age of 18 for crimes he didn’t commit (Union Press International, Dec 7, 2011).

Eric Caine, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment after being tortured

by police into confessing totwo murders, spent nearly 25 years behind bars.(Chicago Tribune, Jun 13, 2011).

The US lacks basic due lawsuit process protections, and its government continues

to claim theright to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion

(The Washington Post, Jan14, 2012).

The National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec 31,2011, allows for the indefinite detention of citizens (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

The Act will place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands

of the military and which wouldopen the door for trial free, indefinite detention of anyone,

including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists

(www.forbes.com, Dec 5, 2011).

The US remains the country with the largest “prison population” and the highest

per capita level of imprisonment in the world, and the detention centers’ conditions

are terrible.

According tothe US Department of Justice, the number of prisoners amounted to 2.3 million

in 2009 and one in every 132 American citizens is behind bars.

Meanwhile, more than 140,000 are serving life sentences 

(Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states, the website of

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28, 2011).

According to a Los Angeles Times reporton May 24,2011, in a California prison,

as many as 54 inmates may share a single toilet and as many as 200 prisoners

may live in a gymnasium (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011).

According to data issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the estimated number

of prisonand jail inmates experiencing sexual victimization totaled 88,500 

in the US between October 2008 and December 2009 (www.bjs.gov).

Since April 2011, officials stopped serving lunch on the weekend in some US prisons

as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in36 prisons are eating

two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three (The NewYork Times, Oct 20, 2011).

Harsh conditions and treatment in prisons have caused recurring protests

and suicides of inmates.

There were two major hunger strikes in California prisons staged by a total of more

than 6,000 and 12,000 prisoners in July and October 2011, respectively,

to protest against what they call harsh treatment and detention conditions (CNN,Oct 4, 2011; The New York Times, July 7, 2011).

According to a Chicago Tribune report on July20,2011, since 2000,

at least 175 youths have attempted to kill themselves inside Departmentof Juvenile Justice

lockup facilities in Chicago and seven youths committed suicide.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in a 2011 report noted that in the US,

an estimated 20,000 to25,000 individuals are being held in isolation,

and the US government in 2011 for twice turned down the Special Rapporteur’s 

request for a private and unmonitored meeting with detainees held in isolation.

Human Rights Record of United States in 2011

Demonstrators call for justice in the murder of Trayvon Martin atLeimert Park 

in Los Angeles on March 22, 2012. Florida Governor Rick Scott appointed a task force 

to investigate the shooting death ofunarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin 

as calls grew for charges tobe filed against the neighborhood watch volunteer 

who killed him. Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

III. On economic, social and cultural rights

The United States is the world’s richest country, but quite a lot of Americans still lack

guarantee for their economic, social and cultural rights, which are necessary

for personal dignity and self-development.

The United States has not done enough to protect its citizens from unemployment.

At no time in the last 60 years had the country’s long term unemployment

been so high for so long as it was in 2011.

It has been one of the Western developed countries that provide the poorest

protection of laborer’s rights.

It has not approved any international labor organizationconvention in the last 10 years.

Moreover, the US lacks an effective arbitration system to deal with enterprises

that refuse to compromise with employees.

The New York Times reported on Dec 12, 2011, that at last count,13.3 million people

were officially unemployed and that 5.7 million of them

had been out of work for more than six months (The New York Times, Dec 12, 2011).

The unemployment rate was 8.9 percent for 2011 (www.bls.gov), and the unemployment rate

for American youths between 25 and 34 stood at 26 % in October of that year

(TheWorld Journal, Nov 18, 2011), with more underemployed.

A total of 84 metropolitan areasreported jobless rates of at least 10.0%,

and El Centro, California, recorded the highest unemployment rate of 29.6 %

in September of 2011 (www.bls.gov).

The unemployed people suffered from not only financial pressures but also mental pressures

including anxiety and depression.

There is a widening of the gap between the extreme top and bottom (The USA Today, Sept 13, 2011), showing apparent unfair wealth distribution.

The United States claims to have a large population of middle class,

making up 80% of its total population, while there is only very few impoverished

and extremely rich people (The China Press, Oct 13, 2011).

This is not the truth. According to the report issued by the US Congressional Budget Office

(CBO) on Oct 25, 2011, the richest 1% of American families have the fastest growth of family revenue from 1979 to 2007 with an increase of 275 % for after-tax income,

while the after-tax income of the poorest 20 % grew by only 18 % (The World Journal, Oct 26, 2011).

Cable News Network reported on Feb 16,2011, that in the last 20 years, incomes for 90%

of Americans have been stuck in neutral, while the richest 1% of Americans have seen

their incomes grow by 33 %.

Economic Policy Institute published a paper on Oct 26,2011, saying that in 2009

the ratio of wealth owned by the wealthiest 1% to the wealth owned by median households

was 225 to 1 (www.epi.org).

In the United States, thebestoff 10 % made on average 15 times the incomes of

the poorest 10 percent (Reuters,Dec 9, 2011).

The wealthiest 400 Americans have $1.5 trillion in assets (The China Press, Oct13, 2011), or the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans – more than 150 million people (www.currydemocrats.org).

The annual incomes of the richest 10 chief executive officers (CEO) were enough

to pay the salary of 18,330 employees (The World Journal, Oct 16, 2011).

Roughly 11% of Congress members had net worth of more than $9 million, 

and 249 members were millionaires.

The median net worth:$891,506, was almost nine times the typical household

(The USA Today, Nov 16, 2011).

A commentary by the Spiegel said that theUS has developed into

an economic entity of “winners take all”. American politician Larry Bartels said

that fundamental shifts in wealth allocation was caused by political decisions

rather than the consequences of market forces or financial crisis (The Spiegel, Oct 24, 2011).

Contrary to the wealthiest 10 percent, the number of Americans living in poverty

and the poverty rate continued to hit record highs, which is a great irony in affluent America.

A report published by the Census Bureau on Sept 13, 2011, showed that 46.2 million people

lived belowthe official poverty line in 2010, 2.6 million more than 2009,

hitting the highest record since 1959.

The report also said that the percentage of American who lived below the poverty line

in 2010 was 15.1 percent, the highest level since 1993.

An analysis done by the BrookingsInstitution estimated that at the current rate,

the recession would have added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor

by the middle of the decade. According to the analysis, 22% of children 

were in poverty (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2011).

Another survey showed that 12 states of the US had poverty rates above 17 percent,

with Mississippi’s poverty rate standing at 22.4 percent (The Huffington Post, Oct 21, 2011).

The US has grown into acountry dependent on food stamps (Reuters, Aug 22, 2011).

The percentage of Americans who did not have enough money to buy food grew

from 9 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2011 (The World Journal, Oct 15, 2011).

In 2010,17.2 million households, or 14.5 percent, werefood insecure (www. Worldhunger. org).

In 2011, 46 million Americans lived on food stamps, about 15 percent

of the total population, up 74 % from 2007 (Reuters, Aug 22, 2011).

Millions of homeless people wandered around streets.

Reports said that about 2.3 million to 3.5 million Americans did not have a place

that they call home to sleep in the night(www.homelessnessinamerica.com).

Between 2007 and 2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent

(The Huffington Post, Aug 26, 2011).

Over the past five years, thepercentage of singles arriving at shelters

after living with family or elsewhere in the community has jumped

from 39 percent to 66 percent (The USA Today, Dec 9, 2011).

There was an all time record of more than 41,000 homeless people in New York City,

including 17,000 homeless children (www.coalitionforthehomeless.org).

On any given night in Santa Clara County,California, 7,045 people were homeless

according to a 2011 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey (www.santaclaraweekly.com).

And advocates estimated that Chicago hadup to 3,000 homeless youths

in need of shelter on any given night(www.chicagonewscoop.org).

The US declared it has the best healthcare service in the world, but quite a lot of

Americans could not enjoy due medication and healthcare.

The Cable News Network reported on Sept 13,2011, that the number of people

who lacked health insurance in 2010 climbed to 49.9 million (Cable News Network, Sept 13, 2011).

Bloomberg reported on March 16,2011, that 9 million Americans have lost

health insurance during the past two years.

An additional 73 million adults had difficulties paying for healthcare and 75 million

deferred treatment because they could not afford it (Bloomberg, March 16, 2011).

Death and infection risks caused by AIDS grew.

Since the first American patient was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981,600,000 people

have died from the disease in the US By the end of 2008, 1,178,350 Americans had been infected with AIDS (The China Press, June 3, 2011).

AFP reported that nearly three quarters of Americans with HIV do not have

their infection undercontrol and one in five people with human immuno-deficiency virus

are unaware that they havethe disease.

Among people who know their HIV status is positive, only 51 percent get ongoing

medical treatment (AFP, Nov 29, 2011).

Statistics given by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that,

in the last 10 years, death caused by prescription drugs in America had doubled

and that one would die from taking prescription drug every 14 minutes.

Prescription drug overdose caused 37,485 deaths in 2009, exceeding traffic fatalities

(TheChina Press, Sept 19, 2011).

The US government has significantly cut the expense on education, reduced teaching staff,

and shortened school hours with tuition fees soaring.

The guarantee for teenagers’ rights to education is weakening.

The New York Times reported on Oct 3,2011, that since 2007, school budgets in

New York city have been cut by 13.7% every year on average.

Since 2008, 294,000 posts in the American education industry, including schools

of higher education, have been cut (The China Press, Oct 25, 2011).

Four day per week classes have been practiced in 292 school districts,

which was only put into use during the financial crisis in the 1930s and

the oil crisis in the 1970s (The World Journal, Oct 30, 2011).

A report by College Board showedthat the average tuition fee of American

four year public universities in the school year of 2011through 2012 was $8,244, $631 more than the last school year, up 8.3 percent (The ChinaPress, Oct 27, 2011).

About 3,000 people gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increasesat Berkeley on Nov 9, 2011 (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011).

Reuters reported that twothirds of undergraduate students would graduate

with student loans about $25,000 on average owing to expensive college tuition

(Reuters, Feb 1, 2011).

Native American culture in the United States has long been suppressed.

The country assimilated the Native American culture through legislation

and mainstream culture.

At the endof the 19th century, the United States carried out “white man’s education”

and implemented compulsory English-only education.

Most of the people who now speak Native American languages are the seniors living

in reservations. It is estimated that only 5% of Native Americans 

will speak their own languages 50 years later if there are no measures

from the US government.

The financial crisis was far from being the sole reason for the inadequate guarantee

of Americans’ economic, social and cultural rights. So far, the US has not approved

the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 

The above problems concerning human rights are the reflection of the US ideology

and political system that ignore people’s economic, social and cultural rights.

IV. On racial discrimination

Ethnic minorities in the United States have long been suffering systemic,

widespread and institutional discrimination. And racial discrimination has become

an indelible characteristic and symbol of American values.

Ethnic minorities have low political, economic and social positions due to discrimination.

The number of ethnic people in civil service is not proportional to their population.

New York Times reported on June 23,2011, that the number of Asian Americans 

in New York City has topped one million, nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers,

but only one Asian-American serves in the State Legislature, two on the City Council

and one in a citywide post of the New York City.

Accordingto the annual report released by the National Urban League of the US,

African-Americans’ 2011 Equality Index is currently 71.5 %, compared to 2010’s 72.1%,

among which thee conomic equality index declined from 57.9 percent to 56.9%,

and the health index, from 76.6 percent to 75 %, and the index in the area of social justice,

from 57.9 % to 56.9 %.

Ethnic Americans are badly discriminated against when it comes to employment.

It was reported that the unemployment rate of Hispanics rose to 11 percent in 2010

from 5.7 % in 2007 (The New York Times, Sept 28, 2011).

The unemployment rate of African Americans was 16.2%.

For black males, it’s at 17.5 percent; and for black youth, it’s nearly 41 %,

4.5 times the national average unemployment rate (CBS News, June 19, 2011).

Nationally, black joblessness stands at 21%, rising to as high as 40% in major urban centers

such as Detroit (The Wall Street Journal, Aug 31, 2011).

In Ziebach County of South Dakota, acommunity mainly composed of Native Americans,

more than 60% of the residents live at or below the poverty line,

and unemployment rate hits 90% in the winter (The Daily Mail,Feb 15, 2011).

A study shows that of the seven occupations with the highest salaries,

six are over represented by whites (Washington Post, Oct 21, 2011).

The poverty rate of African Americans doubles that of whites, and the ethnic minority

groups suffer severe social inequalities. According to a report by the Pew Research Center

released inJune 2011, the median wealth of white households is 20 times

that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households (pewresearch.org).

In 2010, poverty among blacks rose to 27.4 percent, and poverty among Hispanics increased

to 26.6 percent, much higher than the9.9% poverty rate among whites (www.census.gov).

A Pew Research Center report says the lopsided wealth ratios among whites,

Hispanics and AfricanAmericans in 2009 were thelargest in the past 25 years (pewresearch.org).

According to an investigation done by the Washington-based Bread for the World, “black children are suffering from poverty at a rate ofnearly 40 %, and

over a quarter of Blacks reported going hungry in 2010”. “The figures are both startling and very telling,” said Rev Derrick Boykin (www.amsterdam.com).

Ethnic minorities are denied equal education opportunities, and ethnic minority kids

are discriminated against and bullied in schools.

According to a report by the US Census Bureauon June 8, 2011, in 2008, among 18-to 24-year-olds, 22 % were not enrolled in highschools for Hispanics, 13 % for African Americans, whereas only 6 percent for whites(www.census.gov).

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on Oct 28,2011, one third of American students

are bullied at schools, and Asian-American children bear the brunt.

The teases and insults they get in cyber space are three times more compared

with kids from other ethnic groups.

A research finds 54 percent of Asian-American students have been bullied in schools, 38.4 % for African-Americans and 34.3% for Hispanics (World Journal Oct29, 2011).

Ethnic minorities and nonChristians are also badly discriminated against in fields

such as law enforcement, justice and religion, rendering the so claimed ethnic equality

and religious freedom nothing but self-glorifying forged labels.

A New York Times story (Dec 17,2011) saysthe New York Police Department

recorded more than 600,000 stops in 2010 and 84 percent of those stopped

were blacks or Latinos. It was reported that black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated

at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males

(World Report2011: United States, www.hrw.org).

On Dec 1,2011, the American Civil Liberties Union said that”the FBI is using

its extensive community outreach to Muslims and other groups to secretly

gather intelligence in violation of federal law”. (Washington Post, Dec 2, 2011)

A survey by Pew Research Center finds that 52 percent of Muslim Americans surveyed

said their group is undergovernment’s surveillance, about 28 %said they had been treated

or viewed withsuspicion and 21 % said they were singled out by airport security

(articles.boston.com).

More than half of Muslim-Americans in another poll said government anti-terrorism policies singled them out for increased surveillance and monitoring, and many reported

increased cases of name-calling, threats and harassment by airport security,

law enforcement officers and others (Washington Times, Aug 30, 2011).

Illegal immigrants also live under legal and systematic discrimination.

It was reported that afterArizona passed its anti illegal immigration bill, Alabama began

implementing its immigration law on Sept 28, 2011.

The Alabama immigration law provides differentiated treatments to illegal immigrants

in each of its term, rendering their daily lives rather difficult.

Critics argued that thelaw runs counter to the US Constitution and to certain terms

in relevant international human rights law regarding granting equal protections

to illegal immigrants (www.hrw.org).

The NewYork Times reported on May 13, 2011, that Georgia passed an anti-illegal immigration law which outlaws illegal immigrants working in the state

and empowers local police officers to question certain suspects about their immigration status.

Illegal immigrants suffer ferocious mistreatments.

Internal reports from the Office of Detention Oversight of the Immigration and

Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed grave problems in many US detention facilities

for immigrants, including lack of medical care, the use of excessive force and

“abusive treatment”of detainees (The Houston Chronicle, Oct 10, 2011).

A report released on Sept 21, 2011, by an Arizona-based nonprofit organization

revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants detained across the border between

Mexico and Arizona are generally mistreated by US borderpolice, being denied enough food,

water, medical care and sleep, even beaten up and confined in extreme coldness or heat,

suffering both psychological abuse and threats of death

(TheWorld Journal, Sept 24, 2011).

Native Americans are denied their due rights.

From January to February 2011, UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya

lodged two accusations against the United States, including accusing

the Arizona State government of approving the use of recycled wastewater

for commercial ski operations on the San Francisco Peaks, a site considered sacred

by several Native American tribes (www.forgottennavajopeople.org),

as well as the case of imprisoned indigenous activist Leonard Peltier.

Peltier was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for the alleged murder of two FBIagents.

However, Peltier has been claiming he is innocent and persecuted by the USgovernment

for participating in the American Indian Movement (www.ohchr.org).

On April 26, 2011, Farida Shaheed, independent expert in the field of cultural rights,

Heiner Bielefeldt, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief,

and James Anaya, special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples,

of the UN Human Rights Council, jointly lodged accusations against the US,

claiming that the city of Vallejo, California, is planning to level and pave

over the Sogorea Te, held sacred to indigenous people in northern California,

in order to construct a parking lot and public restrooms (www.treatycouncil.org).

Race-motivated hate crimes occur frequently. According to an FBI report, 6,628 hate crime incidents were reported in 2010, 2,201 of which were against African-Americans

and 534 against Hispanics and 575 against whites.

About 47.3 % of all were motivated by racial bias, 20% by religion and 12.8 % by

an ethnicity/national origin bias (ww.fbi.gov).

Accordingto a report released by the Center for American Progress in August 2011,

seven American charitable groups, over the past decade, had spent 42.6 million US dollars 

on inciting hatred against Muslim communities (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011).

There are three active white supremacy groups in the city of San Francisco,

which focus on attacking ethnic minorities andimmigrants (www.abclocal.go.com).

On Nov 10,2010, two Mexican nationals were beaten by agroup of whites

who were members of these organizations (www.sfappeal.com).

According to aninvestigation, black men aged 15 to 29 years old were most likely

to be victims of murders.

In New York City, they make up less than 3 percent of the city’s population but in 2010

represented 33 percent of all homicide victims (The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2011).

The sufferings of civil rights activists who oppose racial discriminations arouse attention.

The Huffington Post reported on May 31,2011, Catrina Wallace,

a civil rights activist in Jena, Louisiana, was sentenced to 15 years in prison

by authorities only based on a drug dealer’saccusation.

Previously, Wallace had taken part in organizing a 50,000-people protest against racial discrimination that won freedom for six black high school students.

The article deemed the sentence was revenge taken by authorities

on Wallace’s human rights activism. “I am a freedom fighter. I fight for people’s rights.”

Human Rights Record of United States in 2011

Yang Ting Lye (left) and Amy Huang hug at an impromptu memorial oncampus for the two graduate students from China, Qu Ming of Jilin andWu Ying of Hunan, who were shot dead near the University ofSouthern California in Los Angeles on April 11, 2012. Jonathan Alcorn /Reuters

V. On the rights of women and children

To date, the US has ratified neither the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women, nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

As the USneglects the rights of women and children, their situation deteriorates.

Gender discrimination against women widely exists in the US. According to statistics,

women arenot fully represented in governments at all levels in the US, as women hold

only 17 % ofthe seats in Congress (www.wcffoundation.org).

Women doing the same work as men often getless payment in the US, and the wage gap has

narrowed by only 18 cents in the past halfcentury (www.thedailybeast.com).

According to a report released by the American Civil LibertiesUnion, in 2009,

women working full-time, year-round were paid 77 cents on average for

everydollar paid to men (www.aclu.org).

Women in the US widely suffer discrimination in terms ofemployment, promotion and work.

A new study confirms that American tech companies arewoefully behind in including women

among their board members and highest-paid executives.

On average, fewer than one in 28 of the highestpaid tech executives is a woman.

AtCalifornia’s biggest public companies, only about 10% of the board members and

top executives are women (The New York Times, Dec 9, 2011).

The poverty rate among American women reached a record high.

According to data from theUS Census Bureau, over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010,

including more than 7.5million in extreme poverty and 4.7 million single mothers in poverty.

The poverty rate amongwomen climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009,

the highest in 17 years.

Theextreme poverty rate among women climbed to 6.3 % in 2010 from 5.9% in 2009,

the highest rate ever recorded (www.merchantcircle.com).

According to a report of theAssociated Press on April 12,2011, a single mother named

Lashanda Armstrong drove herfour kids in a minivan into the Hudson river in Newburgh,

New York, due to the unbearableburden of raising the kids. Only her 10-year-old boy survived.

Women in the US often experience discrimination, violence and sexual assault.

Ethnic minoritywomen face discrimination during pregnancy.

According to a report provided by the LAMB (TheLos Angeles Mommy and Baby Project), 32.4 percent of Asian-American mothers feltdiscriminated against during pregnancy, second only to African-American mothers amongwhom the ratio amounts to 47.9%, while the ratio

among Latin American mothers is 31.1% (The China Press, June 1, 2011).

According to statistics from the website of the LosAngeles Police Department,

more than 2 million American women are victims of domesticviolence annually.

The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey shows nearly one in 5 women

has been raped in her lifetime, and one in four has experienced serious physical violence

from an intimate partner at some point in her life (Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2011).

Throughout the military, sexual assault affects about 19 percent of female troops

but most of them choose to keep silent, according to a survey of sexual assault

conducted by theUS military (www.csmonitor.com).

From March to October in 2011, a string of 20 sexual assaultshappened in Bay Ridge,

Sunset Park and Park Slope and the victims were all young women

(The New York Times, Oct 19, 2011).

Reports say many of the 1 million women in prison in theUS experienced harsh treatment

and even had their arms and legs chained when they weregiving birth (www.globalissues.org).

The poverty rate for children in the US reached a record high.

According to the report releasedby the US Census Bureau, more than 1 million children

were added to the poverty populationbetween 2009 and 2010, making the total number

of children living below the poverty line reachmore than 15 million, the greatest since 2001.

The poverty rate for children in 2010 climbed to21.6 percent in 2010 from 20 percent in 2009,

with 653 counties seeing a significant increasein poverty rate for children aged 5 to 17

and about one-third of counties having school age poverty rates

above the national poverty rate (www.census.gov).

The Daily Mail reported onAug 17, 2011, that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009 and Mississippi is

the state with the highest level of 31 percent.

The US Census Bureau said that children living inpoverty, especially small children,

are more likely to develop cognitive and behavioraldifficulties and may have

a shorter education time and a longer time being unemployed whenthey grow up

(The China Press, Nov 21, 2011).

The number of homeless children has surged.

In 2010,1.6 million children in the US were livingon the street, in homeless shelters

or motels, up 33 percent from that in 2007, according to the National Center on Family

Homelessness (USA Today, Dec 15, 2011).

According to theEducation Department of New York, there are 53,503 homeless students

and children of 3 to21 years old in New York, and the Homeless Service Department’s

count also shows anaverage of 6,902 children of 6 to 17 years old a month are homeless

in the city (The New YorkTimes, Nov 14, 2011).

Nearly 17,000 children slept in the municipal shelters in New York onHalloween night in 2011.

From May 2011 to November 2011, children in shelters rose 10 percent

(The Wall Street Journal, Nov 9, 2011).

Children are severely exposed to violence and pornography.

BBC reported on Oct 17,2011,that over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children

were believed to have beenkilled by their family members.

More than 1 million children are confirmed each year as victimsof child abuse

(www.preventchildabuse.org), and one in every two families in the US is involved in domestic violence at some time (www. reverepolice.org).

The Wall Street Journal reported onNov 14, 2011, that roughly 120,000 calls

were made to the state hotline for child abuse callsadministrated by the state

Department of Public Welfare in Pennsylvania, but only about24,000 cases were investigated.

A 13-year-old boy named Christian Choate was allegedlybeaten to death in 2009 by his father.

The report said prosecutors had alleged that the boyendured beating daily and was kept locked

in a 3-foot-high dog cage, where he had little to eat and often soiled himself

(Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2011).

Campus violence and cyberbullying are growing more malicious in the US.

According to a report of the US News & WorldReport on June 3, 2011, at least 40% 

of high school students have been bullied by cyberbullies (www.usnews.com).

The Women’s eNews reported on May 23 last year, the sex-trafficking problem is acute

in the state of Georgia, with an estimated 250 to 300 underageteens and girls being sexually

exploited each month there (womensenews. org).

According to areport published by Stanford University, the number of reports of sexual assaults

received in itscampus in 2010 rose by 75 percent over that in 2009 (CBS, Sept 30, 2011).

Infant mortality rate remains high in the US.

According to a report of The New York Times onOct 15, 2011, the infant mortality rate in the US is 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.

The rate among AfricanAmericans is 13.3 deaths per thousand, while the rates among whites,

Hispanics and Asian-Americans are respectively 5.6, 5.5 and 4.8 per thousand.

In Pittsburgh, the infant mortality rate for black residents of Allegheny County

was 20.7 per thousand in 2009, while therate among whites in the county was only

4 per thousand in the same period.

Nationally, blackbabies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die before the age of 1.

VI. On US violations of human rights against other nations

The US has been pursuing hegemony in the world, grossly trampling upon the sovereignty

of other countries and capriciously violating human rights against other nations.

It “appears moreand more to be contributing to international disorder”

(After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, by Emmanuel Todd).

The revelation of the history of human experiments conducted in the US is yet another

scandal sparking public outcry around the world after the prisoner abuse scandal.

The Britishnewspaper The Telegraph reported on Aug 30, 2011, that from 1946 1948, a US government-paid medical experiment program had made

nearly 5,500 people in Guatemala subjected todiagnostic testing, and the researchers

deliberately exposed more than 1,300 people, includingsoldiers, prostitutes, prisoners

and mental patients, to syphilis and other venereal diseases.

Seven women with epilepsy were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull,

and a femalesyphilis patient with a terminal illness was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes

and elsewhere.

These experiments had caused over 80 deaths.

An article on a USbased journalistic websitesaid that “these revelations are only the latest

in an ongoing series of scandals regardinggovernment illegal and unethical experimentation”

and that “there are plenty of other underreported and important stories out there on the

terrible scandal that has been US illegal experimentation. “The article said that the list of such illegal experiments is quite long, including

government radiation experiments, human mind control (also known as MKULTRA)

experiments and the CIA and DoD (Department of Defense) experiments on

“enemy combatants” in the “waron terror” (Pubrecord.org).

Newspaper The Hindu reported on Aug 30,2011, that in 1932, the US public health

service agency started a study of untreated syphilis in the human body inAlabama.

The researchers told the subjects that they were being treated for some ailments,

and nearly 400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without informed consent.

Infact, the men infected did not receive proper treatment needed.

The study lasted until 1972after media disclosures.

Austrian national TV commented that this was a disgraceful event inthe US history

and a dark period in US medical ethics.

The US-led wars, albeit alleged to be “humanitarian intervention” efforts and for “the rise of a

new democratic nation”, created humanitarian disasters instead.

For Iraqis, the death toll in theUS-initiated Iraq war stands at 655,000 (Tribune Business News, Dec 15, 2011).

According to figures released by the Iraq Body Count, at least 103,536 civilians were killed 

in the Iraq war(Reuters, Dec 18, 2011).

In 2011, there were an average of 6.5 deaths per day from suicide attacks and

vehicle bombs (www.iraqbodycount.org).

It is estimated that civilian casualties inthe military campaign in Afghanistan could

exceed 31,000 (Tribune Business News, Oct 17, 2011).

According to a news report, on May 28, 2011, a US-led NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians

and wounded six others in the southern region of Afghanistan (The New York Times, May 29, 2011).

Separately, on May 25, a total of 18 Afghan civilians and 20 police were killed

in a NATO airstrike in the province of Nuristan (BBC News, May 29, 2011).

The British newspaper TheGuardian reported on March 11, 2012, that an American soldier

stationed in Afghanistan burst into three civilian homes in two villages in the small

hours of March 11, shot dead 16 sleeping Afghan villagers, injured five others and

burned the dead bodies.

The victims included ninechildren and three women.

According to a Reuters report, witness accounts said there wereseveral US soldiers

involved (Reuters, March 11, 2012).

Another Deutsche Presse Agent report quoted a member of the Afghan parliamentary

investigative team as saying that therewere 15 to 20 soldiers who had conducted

the night raid operation in several areas in thevillage.

The source also told DPA that some of the Afghan women who were killed were

sexually assaulted, according to the findings (DPA, March 18, 2012).

Such “American style massacre” against innocent civilians has once again pierced

the veil of the US proclaiming itself “a country under the rule of law” and

“a human rights defender.”

Incomplete statistics revealed that the US has launched more than 60 drone attacks

in Pakistan in 2011, killing at least 378 people (USAToday, Jan 11, 2012; Newamerica.net).

The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased15 percent in the first half

of 2011 over the same period of 2010 (The New York Times, Aug 6, 2011).

According to media reports, on the night of Feb 20,2012, some American soldiers

of the NATO troops at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan transported copies of Koran

and other religious books to a rubbish pit and burned them (BBC News, Feb 23, 2012).

The acts ofdesecration of the Quran have sparked strong protests and large-scale demonstration

activities among the people across Afghanistan as well as in the countries of Pakistan

and Bengal (www.pakistantoday.com.pk; www.firstpost.com).

The US does not support the right to development, which is a concern of most of the

developing countries. In September 2011, the 18th session of the United Nations Human Rights

Council adopted a resolution on “the right to development.”

Except for an abstention vote fromthe US, all the HRC members voted for the resolution.

The US continues its conduct that seriously violates the right of subsistence and right

of development of Cuban people. On Oct 26, 2011, the 66th session of the UN General Assembly

overwhelmingly adopted a resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic,

commercial andfinancial embargo imposed by the United States of America

against Cuba,” the 20th suchresolution in a row.

A total of 186 countries voted in favor of the resolution, three countries abstained,

and only the US and Israel voted against the resolution.

The resolution urged theUS to repeal or invalidate the almost 50-year-long economic,

commercial and financial embargoagainst Cuba as soon as possible (www.un.org).

The US, however, continues to defy theresolution.

The blockade imposed by the US against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide under

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,

which was adopted in 1948.

The above mentioned facts are but a small yet illustrative enough fraction of the

US’ dismal record on its human rights situation.

The US’ own tarnished human rights record has made it inno condition, on a moral,

political or legal basis, to act as the world’s “human rights justice,”

to place itself above other countries and release the Country Reports on Human Rights

Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries.

We hereby advise the US government once again to look squarely at its own grave

human rights problems, to stop the unpopular practices of taking

human rights as a political instrument for interference in other countries

‘internal affairs, smearing other nations’ images and seeking its own strategic interests,

and to cease using double standards on human rights and pursuing hegemony under

the pretext of human rights.” End of Report

It would be great for a researcher comparing the Human Rights violations between the two reports (USA and China) to divide by the rate of the populations in the two countries. There are the other two difficulties, the kinds of sources that the US relied upon, and that China got out of the wilderness in 1980…

Note: The text published by China Daily 05/26/2012 was not amenable to editing. I did my best at several cuts.  If you can adequately edit this article, please send me a link and will post your version instead.

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