|
ZunZuneo: The story is long and
continues…
Iroel Sánchez
The
scandal unleashed as a result of Associated Press
(AP) revelations regarding the undercover
construction of a mobile phone messaging system by
the United States, with the goal of overthrowing the
Cuban government, continues to develop, despite
White House and State Department efforts to contain
it. There are, however, details of the U.S. Aid for
International Development (USAID) Zunzuneo project
which have not been addressed, and questions which
have not been raised.
The
Nicaraguan daily La Prensa reported that the
messaging system’s programmer was a citizen of this
country, named Mario Bernheim, who works in the U.S.
embassy in Managua. While a Costa Rican newspaper,
La Nación, has revealed that the project was
launched in 2009 from a secret office in San José,
at a distance from the U.S. embassy, despite the
fact that USAID has not had an official presence in
Costa Rica since 1996. La Nación identified Joseph
(Joe) Duke McSpedon, a USAID employee who visited
the country on “42 occasions, between 2009 and 2011,
arriving on commercial and private flights,” and two
other persons, contracted to work on the project by
Creative Associates, a Washington consulting firm.
According to the Costa Rican paper, these
individuals were “Noy Villalobos Echeverría, who
remained in the country for periods of up to three
months, according to immigration records, and his
brother Mario Berheim Echeverría, a young programmer
who developed the system to send mass messages to
Cuba.”
Costa Rican Minister of Communication Carlos
Roverssi stated, “An investigation of the case must
be undertaken; it is very serious. If this is true,
it is a serious affront to Costa Rica. It is an
issue for the Foreign Ministry. But of course, an
explication must be requested.”
From
Spain, eldiario.es reported that the Spanish company
Lleida.net, identified by AP as responsible for
sending the Zunzuneo SMS, has ties to the right-wing
Guardia Civil. The company released a communiqué,
making an effort to avoid using the words Cuba or
Zunzuneo, saying “If, at any time, one of the users
of Lleida.net has committed any type of illegal act,
Lleida.net is, as it has always been, at the
disposal of competent authorities, to provide
necessary information through legally established
channels.”
Internet attorney Carlos Sánchez Almeida commented
to eldiario.es that Spain’s Data Protection Law (in
article 7, appendix 4) prohibits the use of
information to create lists based on political
affiliation – among Zunzuneo’s activities, according
to AP – since this is information which merits
special protection. He stated that the messaging
system’s actions were in violation of Spanish law,
since, “The Zunzuneo team, in an illegal fashion,
collected personal information from a list of
telephones and sent unsolicited messages via a
Spanish platform.” Sánchez Almeida was explicit on
his Twitter account, which has some 23,000
followers, saying, “If Cuban citizens’ data has been
handled illegally in Spain, the Spanish justice
system must intervene.”
In
the meantime, AP issued a new dispatch, adding to
previous revelations that persons very close to the
U.S. Interests Section in Havana were part of the
Zunzuneo plan developed by USAID. In the United
States, an influential publication, The New Yorker,
commented on White House assertions that the project
was not an undercover operation, “This kind of
bald-faced disingenuousness is risible. Whatever it
is labeled, there seems to be little doubt that
ZunZuneo functioned as a secret intelligence
operation aimed ultimately at subversion.” Politico
Magazine entitled an article about the mobile phone
social network fiasco ‘Bay of Tweets,’ in a clear
reference to the failed 1961 U.S. Bay of Pigs
invasion.
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who published
National Security Agency (NSA) information leaked by
Edward Snowden, described ZunZuneo as “another drop
in the bucket” of propaganda on the Internet, and
Tracey Eaton published documents on his Along the
malecon blog showing how Zunzuneo was financed, to
the tune of 1.6 million dollars, by diverting funds
destined for Pakistan.
Hilda Arias, director of mobile services for Cuba’s
national telephone company Etecsa, spoke with
Juventud Rebelde about the issue and has been quoted
widely describing the multiple spam attacks on Cuban
systems generated from U.S. platforms, run directly
by the government. She said, “The so-called CAN SPAM
Act, Public Law 108-187 approved by the U.S.
Congress in December, 2003, and signed immediately
by President George W. Bush himself, clearly
prohibits sending commercial, or other kinds of
messages, without the explicit permission of the
receiver.
“Nevertheless, the promoters of so-called
Martinoticias, which also involves other subversive
projects in Cuba such as Cubasincensura and Diario
de Cuba, appear to believe that when it comes to
Cuba, they are above the law.
“Through October, 2013, according to information
obtained by Etecsa, including an analysis of the
origin of the text messaging, they had sent 219 mass
spam messages, for a total of 1,055,746 SMS to Cuban
users.”
Juventud Rebelde also addressed a project called
Commotion, to which USAID has allotted 4.3 million
dollars for the period between September, 2012, and
September, 2015, to hire subcontractors to establish
clandestine wireless networks in Cuba, re-attempting
Zunzuneo via another SMS network named Piramideo,
launched by the Transmissions Office and directed
toward Cuba in 2013, along with other projects like
Hablalosinmiedo and Singularidad.
It
is no surprise that spammers who receive funds, for
the likes of Diario de Cuba and Martinoticias, are
among the few voices raised in support of such
illegal U.S. government activities. Diario de Cuba,
financed by the U.S. via the National Endowment for
Democracy, said in an editorial that Zunzuneo
revelations “had caused an unmerited international
stir.”
Martí Noticias issued a statement signed by director
Carlos García Pérez saying, “Piramideo is one more
communication tool, like radio, television, DVDs,
flash drives, e-mail and text messages, which Martí
media offers its audience.” According to documents
published by Tracey Eaton, Piramideo was developed
by Washington Software, in Germantown, Maryland, for
Martí Radio and TV, at a cost of 3.2 million
dollars. In April of 2013, he showed on his blog
that the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
had paid this company huge sums:
-
$531,576 to expand proxy Internet
-
$500,987 to develop an SMS social network
-
$451,796 to circumvent Cuban government efforts to
block their electronic messages
-
$173,074 to send messages to Cuba via SMS
-
$96,028 to program computers
-
$84,000 to design and operate a SMS system
-
$83,050 to run an unspecified operation related to
TI and architecture
-
$60,275 to send mass e-mails
-
$2,580 to pay for internet gateways
Total: $1,983,366.
Eaton clarified that the documents do not indicate
the total number of text messages sent, although one
does show that the BBG paid Washington Software
$14,474 for 361,873 messages sent in October of
2011.
Martinoticias’ penchant for spam is not limited to
SMS or Piramideo. In August of 2012, I, who am not a
subscriber, was obliged to denounce a spam attack
originating from their Twitter account. (La Pupila
Insomne)
|
