EU-DIGEST

This week, the Associated Press published the findings of its investigation showing that Google tracks your locations even if you've shut off the Location History setting -- which is what the company says to do if you don't want Google tracking you. Google's Manage or delete your Location History page states, "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."

"That isn't true," writes the AP. "Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking. (It's possible, although laborious, to delete it.)" Basically, it's the location leakage from almost everything that isn't Location History. To anyone who knows their way around the inherent deceit and data thievery of apps, that isn't a huge surprise when you think about it. Anyway, the AP explained:

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude -- accurate to the square foot -- and save it to your Google account.

 The report also stated "Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP's request."

Not cool, Google. Not cool. When the AP's piece got traction, Google kind of scrambled to get its message together, giving different statements to different outlets. The AP got an old-school Facebook-style talking-around-the-issue, user-blaming statement about Google using location "to improve people's experience" and that people can use these "robust" settings to turn off tracking. Right.

Then The Verge got a statement with "we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions."

Well, at least that's more to the point. At least Google didn't say it cares about user safety while facilitating a literal genocide (Facebook) or get out a pair of InfoWars-branded kneepads for another mocking round of Trust and Safety theatre (Twitter). Small favors, we'll take you where we can get them.

Engadget contacted Google while preparing this article. We pointed out that there appear to be more ways that Google tracks user location, which indicates that the company's Location Pause is not sufficient to prevent a user's location from being tracked by the company. Because of this, we pointed out, the situation makes it impossible for a user to make an informed decision -- or give informed consent.

Our request to Google for comment or clarification was not responded to by publication time.

The thing is, this affects everyone using a Google service, no matter what kind of phone they have. If you're wondering how it could possibly impact you, look no further than this week's news that in March the FBI pestered Google with a warrant over this exact data "to find all users of [Google's] services who'd been within the vicinity" of a nine-robbery string in Portland, Oregon. The request appeared to include "anyone with an Android or iPhone using Google's tools, not just the suspect," writes Forbes.

That's because, as the AP found in its investigation, the location-tracking privacy leak affects people using Google stuff on iPhones and everyone on Android.

"The FBI then demanded a lot of personal information on affected users, including their full names and addresses, as well as their Google account activity. The feds also wanted all affected users' historical locations," the article explained.

So the federal government is well aware that the Location History toggle doesn't technically do what everyone thinks it's supposed to be doing -- preventing your location from ending up on your permanent Google record. It's scary to think about what ICE would like to do with this particular attack vector. We should probably assume the same goes for every app we have on our phones, by the way.

Google didn't respond to the FBI's repeated demands to turn over the data, which is a bright spot in all this. However, if there was ever a period in history in which we should be really scared about the federal government going after data we can't control, it's now.

Look no further than what the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions did to the 230 people arrested -- including journalists and medical personnel -- at the Trump inauguration protests. In that instance, Washington, DC, police and the Superior Court of DC went for Facebook data (and the arrestees' phones) to eventually have the majority of those people facing 60 years in jail for protesting Trump.

And then there's the issue with location-data stalking, something that's been a real issue at Google (and Facebook).

Of course, it's all much worse now, because people haven't been aware of what they're at risk for, thanks to the incomplete information they've had. It's a shame after Google's foray into making its privacy tools more concrete for users. I think that if people know how much they're being tracked, and by whom, they might make different choices about the real-life risks for themselves and the people they care about.

If you want to drill down and cut off as many ways as possible Google might be peeping your location, check out our step-by-step guide in this article.

Right now we live in a time when it's completely impossible to know how we're being tracked, and by whom, and what happens to that information. Aside from slippery company doublespeak, your phone is a tracking device no matter how you slice it: Cell towers triangulate your physical position, and using WiFi clocks your location.

Then there are the things we don't expect, like this Twitter user recently discovering that Google Photos will auto-tag location even when you have geotagging turned off

Note EU-Digest: In case you don't want to be traced check out this article .

Read more: How Google’s location-tracking issue affects you

Monday's April 9 FBI raids on Michael Cohen’s office, home and hotel room are the clearest sign yet that the president’s longtime attorney is in serious legal jeopardy. They also represent yet another threatening development facing Donald Trump after more than a year of investigations into his campaign and presidency—perhaps the most direct danger yet.

No wonder he’s lashing out wildly—calling the raids “a disgraceful situation” and, absurdly, “an attack on our country.”

The evidence sought by investigators reportedly relates to bank fraud and campaign finance violations, both of which primarily point to one thing. Cohen apparently used a home equity credit line to borrow the $130,000 he paid Stormy Daniels for her silence just weeks before the 2016 election.

If Cohen lied to obtain credit from a federally insured financial institution, that is a felony punishable by up to 30 years’ imprisonment. And because the payment was likely an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, it could constitute a willful violation of campaign contribution limits, a separate felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.

That the investigation of Cohen was apparently referred by special counsel Robert Mueller to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York—a Trump appointee—is an early indication that at this point, the matter is not directly related to the Russia investigation.

But that doesn’t mean Trump’s exposure is any less serious. Cohen knows where the LLCs are hidden. He’s been at the center of Trump’s financial universe for decades. If he is as exposed as he seems on the Daniels payment, one wonders what information he might be able to offer prosecutors—including Mueller—in exchange for a deal.

Read more: The FBI Raids on Trump’s Attorney Are Bad News for Trump - POLITICO Magazine

Dutch lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan, 33, admitted to the US District Court in Washington he misled US Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office about communications with political consultant and lobbyist Rick Gates.

Mr Gates was deputy to Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump in the run-up to the presidential election, who has also been indicted.

London-based Van Der Zwaan is married to the daughter of German Kahn, a Ukrainian-Russian billionaire who made his money in oil and is one of Russia's wealthiest men.

The lawyer admitted he lied to FBI investigators about conversations related to a report he helped prepare on the trial of a Ukrainian politician, Yulia Tymoshenko, as part of his work for Ukraine's justice ministry.

Read more: Russian tycoon's son-in-law Alex Van Der Zwaan admits lying to US election investigators

Trump's three GOP Stooges trying to stop Russian investigation

A GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI has been released, intensifying a fight between the White House and Republican lawmakers, on one side, and the nation’s top law enforcement agency over whether the origins of a probe into Russian interference in 2016 were tainted by political bias.

The four-page, newly declassified memo by Donald Trump and written by the Republican staffers for the House Intelligence Committee said the findings “raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain (Justice Department) and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),’’ calling it “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.’’

The memo accuses former officials who approved the surveillance applications — a group that includes former FBI Director James B. Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein — of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain.

The memo says Steele “was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.’’

It must be noted  that the memo is not an intelligence document and reflects information the committee has gathered, which Democrats, the FBI and Justice Department have criticized as incomplete and misleading. Current and former law enforcement officials said a major concern inside the FBI is that the rules governing classified information will impede their ability to respond to the memo’s accusations when it becomes public.

Several legal experts around the US are openly stating that this is a flagrant attempt by the GOP( (Republican Party) to get President Trump off the hook in relation to the Russian investigation, where the evidence is pointing more and more to President Trump and his election team's direct involvement in collaborating with the  Russians. 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) released a statement Friday slamming recent efforts to discredit the integrity of U.S. intelligence agencies. "The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party, no president's, only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's," McCain wrote.

"I fear [Russia] succeeded in fueling political discord and dividing us from one another," McCain wrote, referencing the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. "The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia's ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why [the FBI's Russia] investigation must proceed unimpeded." He continued: "If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him."

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller by President Donald Trump would likely result in the end of the billionaire’s run as the nation’s commander in chief, and oddsmakers appear to agree.

Graham, who said he would support legislation before Congress that would protect special counsels from firings with a review process, spoke Sunday about a report saying that Trump ordered Mueller’s dismissal in June but changed his mind after White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign.

“I’m sure that there will be an investigation around whether or not President Trump did try to fire Mr. Mueller. We know that he didn’t fire Mr. Mueller. We know that if he tried to, it would be the end of his presidency,” Graham told ABC News on Sunday. “It’s pretty clear to me that everybody in the
White House knows it would be the end of President Trump’s presidency if he fired Mr. Mueller.
Read more: How Close Is Trump’s Presidency to ‘The End’? Here’s What Bookmakers’ Odds Say About Impeachment

Thursday was Pearl Harbor Day, the anniversary of one of the deadliest attacks on American soil and perhaps the most unifying day in American history.

This year some of us marked Pearl Harbor Day by attacking America from within.

For five hours on Thursday, President Trump’s partisans delivered a reckless and sustained attack on the FBI and the special counsel. They amplified Trump’s claim that the FBI’s “reputation is in Tatters — worst in History” and that Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe, which has already secured guilty pleas from two Trump campaign officials and the indictments of two more, is part of a system that is “rigged,” “phony,” “dishonest” and using a “double standard.”

Shamefully, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee launched an all-out assault on the special counsel and the FBI — choosing to protect Trump at the cost of Americans’ faith in the justice system and the rule of law.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman, echoed Trump’s “tatters” claim and told FBI Director Christopher A. Wray that Mueller’s probe and the Clinton email probe have been tainted by “bias.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he has a “hunch” that “pro-Clinton, anti-Trump bias” at the FBI was behind a secret “warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called former FBI director James B. Comey an “egomaniac rogue” and speculated that the FBI paid for the “dossier” on Trump’s activities in Russia.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., speculated that anti-Trump bias led the FBI to conclude that Russia interfered in the U.S. election, and he threatened Wray: “I think you’re walking into a contempt of Congress.”

Trump routinely attacks institutions, including the courts, the media, the electoral process, the intelligence community, the IRS, the United Nations, foreign allies, the Justice Department and the pope. That’s the strategy of the autocrat: Don’t believe the courts or the justice system or the electoral process or the legislature or the media or my accusers. Believe me.

When lawmakers back up Trump, however, they give a cue to Republican voters that such out-of-bounds attacks on our system are legitimate. That’s how they normalized Trump. That’s how we’re getting Moore. That’s why Republicans are being convinced the FBI and federal prosecutors are corrupt.

The FBI is one government agency Republicans historically held in high regard (70?percent had a favorable view in a 2015 Pew Research Center poll), but a poll by the University of Texas in June — after Trump’s attacks began — found favorable views of the FBI among Texas Republicans at 43?percent.

Likewise, multiple polls found that Republicans are far more likely to believe sexual-harassment claims against Democrats than against Republicans; Democrats see the claims as credible regardless of the perpetrator’s party.

This tribalism is meant to help Trump, and Moore. It undermines America.

Read more: Trump partisans attack America from within – The Moderate Voice

President Trump issued a fresh denial Sunday that he asked then-FBI Director James B. Comey to halt an investigation into the conduct of his dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn,” Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter. “Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!”

The tweet was the latest in a running commentary on the case from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official.

In other tweets Sunday, Trump also seized on news that Peter Strzok — the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election — was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.

Trump fired Flynn 25 days into his administration for misrepresenting the nature of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in Washington at the time, to Vice President Pence and other administration officials.

Comey has alleged that the day after that, Trump urged him to be lenient with Flynn, producing notes in which he quoted Trump as saying, “I hope you can let this go.”

Trump stoked the controversy with one of his Saturday tweets, in which he said part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI.

“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump wrote in that tweet.

But critics pounced Saturday on Trump, arguing that if he knew at the time of his conversation with Comey that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, it may constitute an attempt to obstruct that investigation.http://www.eu-digest.blogspot.com


Read more: ‘I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn’: Trump goes on tweetstorm about the FBI - The Washington Post

George Papadopoulos admitted the talks happened while he worked for Mr Trump, not before, court papers show.

He said he had been told the Russians possessed "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Separately, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering unrelated to the 2016 election.

The charges against Mr Papadopoulos are the first to be brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Read more: Trump adviser George Papadopoulos lied about Russian links - BBC News

US President Donald Trump has nominated a new director of the FBI.

Christopher Wray was a former US attorney general under President George W.Bush. He served as assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2003 to 2005. working on corporate fraud scandals and cases involving US financial markets.

He currently works for King and Spalding’s Washington and Atlanta offices where he handles various white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement cases, according to the firm.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said Trump met last week with candidates for the FBI director post, including Wray.

The announcement comes the day before Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Moscow’s alleged interference and any potential ties to Trump’s campaign or associates.

Read more: FBI director nominated by Donald Trump | Euronews

FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that the bureau is investigating possible links and coordination between Russia and associates of President Donald Trump as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in last year's presidential election.

The extraordinary revelation came at the outset of Comey's opening statement in a congressional hearing examining Russian meddling and possible connections between Moscow and Trump's campaign. He acknowledged that the FBI does not ordinarily discuss ongoing investigations, but said he'd been authorized to do so given the extreme public interest in this case.

"This work is very complex, and there is no way for me to give you a timetable for when it will be done," Comey told the House Intelligence Committee.

Earlier in the hearing, the chairman of the committee contradicted an assertion from Trump by saying that there had been no wiretap of Trump Tower. But Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican whose committee is one of several investigating, said that other forms of surveillance of Trump and his associates have not been ruled out.

Comey was testifying at Monday's hearing along with National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers.

Trump, who recently accused President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper during the campaign, took to Twitter before the hearing began, accusing Democrats of making up allegations about his campaign associates' contact with Russia during the election. He said Congress and the FBI should be going after media leaks and maybe even Hillary Clinton instead.

"The real story that Congress, the FBI and others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!" Trump tweeted early Monday as news coverage on the Russia allegations dominated the morning's cable news.

Trump also suggested, without evidence, that Clinton's campaign was in contact with Russia and had possibly thwarted a federal investigation. U.S. intelligence officials have not publicly raised the possibility of contacts between the Clintons and Moscow. Officials investigating the matter have said they believe Moscow had hacked into Democrats' computers in a bid to help Trump's election bid.

Monday's hearing, one of several by congressional panels probing allegations of Russian meddling, could allow for the greatest public accounting to date of investigations that have shadowed the Trump administration in its first two months.

The top two lawmakers on the committee said Sunday that documents the Justice Department and FBI delivered late last week offered no evidence that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower, the president's New York City headquarters.

But the panel's ranking Democrat said the material offered circumstantial evidence that American citizens colluded with Russians in Moscow's efforts to interfere in the presidential election.

"There was circumstantial evidence of collusion; there is direct evidence, I think, of deception," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on NBC's "Meet the Press." ''There's certainly enough for us to conduct an investigation."

Nunes said: "For the first time the American people, and all the political parties now, are paying attention to the threat that Russia poses."

"We know that the Russians were trying to get involved in our campaign, like they have for many decades. They're also trying to get involved in campaigns around the globe and over in Europe," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a similar hearing for later in the month.

Read more: Comey: FBI probing links between Russia, Trump associates

The FBI has obtained a warrant to begin reviewing newly discovered e-mails that may be relevant to the Hillary Clinton e-mail server investigation, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Sunday.

FBI investigators want to review e-mails of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on a device seized during an unrelated sexting investigation of Anthony Weiner, a former New York congressman and Abedin’s estranged husband.

The official, who has knowledge of the examination, would not say when investigators might complete the review of Abedin’s e-mails but said they would move expeditiously.

The Clinton e-mail inquiry, which closed without charges in July, resurfaced on Friday when FBI Director James Comey alerted members of Congress to the existence of e-mails that he said could be pertinent to that investigation.

The FBI wants to review the e-mails to see if they contain classified information and were handled properly, the focus of the earlier Clinton inquiry.

Separately Sunday, another law enforcement official said FBI investigators in the Weiner sexting probe knew for weeks about the existence of the e-mails potentially related to the probe of Clinton’s server. A third law enforcement official also said the FBI was aware for a period of time about the e-mails before Comey was briefed, but wasn’t more specific.

In his letter that roiled the White House race, Comey said he’d been briefed on Thursday about the Abedin e-mails and had agreed that investigators should take steps to review them.

It was not immediately clear Sunday what steps investigators took once the e-mails were first found to fully advise FBI leaders that additional and potentially relevant messages had been discovered.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The timing of Comey’s letter less than two weeks before Election Day drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans who cast it as unprecedented and as potentially tipping the scales in the presidential race in favor of Republican Donald Trump.

Energized by the news, the GOP presidential nominee has rallied his supporters, calling the latest developments worse than Watergate and arguing that his candidacy has the momentum in the final days of the race.

Read more: FBI gets search warrant to review e-mails belonging to Hillary Clinton aide’s Huma Abedin - The Boston Globe

Many people have suspected there was a plan to topple countries, such as Iraq, that are also enemies of Israel, the US, and UK, security analyst and former UK army officer Charles Shoebridge told RT.

The Chilcot Report on the UK's involvement in the Iraq war was finally released, after seven years of investigation. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said he apologized for the mistakes made in planning and executing the intervention but he stood by the decision to go to war. He also dismissed accusations that his decision undermined the UN Security Council's authority.

RT: Blair says Russia and France would have vetoed Iraq intervention at the Security Council. So is that fair justification for his decision to invade Iraq?

Charles Shoebridge: No, if anything, it is saying publicly as indeed many of us were saying at the time that: “It has been ruled unlawful, but therefore I am going to go ahead anyway.”

After all, other than self-defense, which is clear and was clear at the time - notwithstanding how it was marketed at the time – that there was no imminent danger from Saddam Hussein; notwithstanding how much of the intelligent community, much of our politicians, and indeed much of the UK and US media tried to spin it into some kind of imminent threat.

Therefore, there was no imminent treat, so self-defense couldn’t be invoked. It would have to be by a UN resolution in the Security Council to allow that action to take place. Of course Blair knew that. But in some ways possibly France, particularly at the time and Russia even may perhaps unwittingly played into Tony Blair and George Bush’s hands by announcing that so publicly beforehand that they would veto it if it went to a UN Security Council resolution.

The reason they were going to veto, remember, is because the UN’s own arms inspectors hadn’t completed their work. They wanted to give a chance to Hans Blix and others to find those weapons that the US and the UK were claiming existed. Hans Blix and the inspectors were saying at the time to the US and the UK intelligence services: “Give us that information, give us that intelligence.

We will go and check this out!” That intelligence was never forthcoming. That in itself, along with all the other aspects that are contained in this report, many of which are still to emerge, because it is still going to have very close scrutiny. It is of course questionable as to the extent to which that intelligence was reliable, and whether people knew it was reliable at the time.

RT: Tony Blair also said he regretted that parliament had voted against intervention in Syria. What do you make of that?

CS: It is an interesting line in one of his memos from 2001 – as far back as that to Bush – saying that shortly after 9/11 seeing the opportunity to attack Saddam; saying in many ways it could be interpreted as: “Ok, we’re looking at toppling Saddam, we can move on to Syria and Iran at a later stage.”

Many people have suspected over the years that there was a plan, of which Iraq was just a part, to topple countries that by coincidence, some might say, are also enemies of Israel, of the US, and the UK, notwithstanding their own geopolitical situations.

But that aside, it is really clear that much of the intelligence we know from Chilcot, that it was badly assessed; it was ill-thought-out and ill-informed intelligence in the first place. It was rushed; it wasn’t correctly assessed and analyzed properly.

It will still leave many, including so many in the intelligence community, who will ask the question, which doesn’t seem to have been addressed, or at least the accusation has not been made by Chilcot, as far as I can see at this stage whether there was any deliberate  falsification of that intelligence; whether MI6 particularly and… other actors within the US and UK intelligence establishment deliberately falsified or exaggerated intelligence to support the government of the day and Tony Blair in a decision already made to go to war.

It seems that in many ways the security services have been let off lightly, because they have been condemned not for dishonesty, deceit, or perhaps even for illegal activity – which many suggest has taken place – but for gross incompetence, which at the end of the day that intelligence – some would argue and argued at the time, was intended to justify going to war.  Once that war decision was taken and war happened, of course it doesn’t matter if subsequently it was found that intelligence was faulty, or even didn’t exist, because some would argue that the whole purpose of it was to justify the war, not be the real reason behind it.

When US and UK forces invaded Iraq, the country had not one weapon with which to resist, and had been totally disarmed and starved down by the sanctions, said Sara Flounders the head of the International Action Center.

RT: Would do you expect to be Washington’s reaction to the inquiry? Do you expect anyone to be held accountable for what happened?'

Sara Flounders: Of course the US wants to bury this immediately and Pentagon officials refuse to study it. But the real question the people of the world should be asking is: “When do the war crimes trials start?”  Clearly this war by every count, and once again confirmed in this report, was a criminal violation of international law by every measure and by every standard.

Any discussion that doesn’t involve a war crimes trial against these criminals that destroyed Iraq and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, left a whole society in ruins, and has led to the terror that we face on a global scale today. Anyone who is isn’t asking that question and is going to push this off for further study or bury it – is not in any way serious, or really part of the cover-up.

This report which was to take a year, took seven years, 12 volumes. It is ridiculous and yet it must be used as a basis to demand accountability of these criminals in Britain and certainly here in the US.

RT: How likely is it that the US will hold a similar investigation?
SF: The US won’t discuss their criminal conduct in anyway whatsoever and they have refused to account for this war. I don’t expect them to respond to this, or to their use of torture; their use of tens of thousands of people detained in the war on terror; their massive destruction of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of Libya – on all of these they are silent. Yet, I think this is a time for the people of the world to demand that they be charged as criminals.

Read more: ‘US and British military interventions have been catastrophic for West’s true interests’ — RT Op-Edge

US officials on Wednesday said FIFA executives arrested earlier in Switzerland had corrupted global football as US and Swiss authorities launched separate and vast inquiries into the sport’s world governing body.

Seven of the most powerful figures in global football faced extradition to the United States on corruption charges after their arrest on Wednesday in Switzerland, where authorities also announced a criminal investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups, in Russia and Qatar respectively.

"The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States," Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a press conference in New York on Wednesday.
"It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks," she said, flanked by top FBI and US tax agency representatives.

Reacting to the move by US prosecutors, FIFA chief Sepp Blatter said he was determined to “root out any wrongdoing in football” and that the investigations would help reinforce measures that had already been taken internally. “We will ensure that those who engage in [misconduct] are put out of the game,” Blatter said in a statement.

Read more: france 24 - US officials blast FIFA 'World Cup of Fraud' - France 24