Entries from December 2005.
These guys are writing their own GPL'd firmware for Prism54-based wireless cards. The crazy part is that these things have embedded ARM9 cores running at 30MHz...so not only does some of their reverse engineering look familiar to me (except that, you know, they're talented :-) but you have the prospect of a wireless USB card running Linux. Crazy.
(I know, there's probably a lot of good reasons why you couldn't actually run Linux on the thing. But still!)
Welp, I've got my module working...at least, in the sense that it makes Baby Linus cry. It's pretty ugly, but it loads and unloads and PEEKs and POKEs memory the way I want it to, which is all I need. (Used to have a VIC-20 when I was a kid, where you'd have to POKE different bits of memory to make it play a tune. Never thought I'd be duplicating that 20 -- no, closer to 30 -- years later.)
Of course, I'm still having no luck at all actually probing for flash. What I'm doing should match up with both the datasheets and what the firmware does, but it's just not working; instead of getting 0xAD back (the manufacturer code) I just see the bit of memory that's actually there.
I've come up with a few reasons this might be happening:
0x2000.0000 for those of you playing the home game) is firmware that does exactly what you'd expect booting firmware to do: set up memory, clear some registers, print a menu, and generally get the thing ready to go.For example: the flash datasheet says that one of the locations you POKE to is 0x555 -- yet both the firmware and the AMD-compatible flash driver in the kernel POKE to 0x554. Why? Obviously it's a 4-aligned (word-aligned?) address, but why does that still work? (For the firmware, I mean, which can obviously still write to flash.)
Or there's the whole question of bus or map width, which is important to the Linux drivers. Take this bit, again from the AMD-compatible driver:
static inline void send_unlock(struct map_info *map, unsigned long base)
{
wide_write(map, (CMD_UNLOCK_DATA_1 < < 16) | CMD_UNLOCK_DATA_1,
base + (map->buswidth * ADDR_UNLOCK_1));
wide_write(map, (CMD_UNLOCK_DATA_2 < < 16) | CMD_UNLOCK_DATA_2,
base + (map->buswidth * ADDR_UNLOCK_2));
}
Dead simple routine -- but why is ADDR_UNLOCK being multiplied by the buswidth? According to the (suspect) driver in Codeman's kernel for the CX84200 flash, the buswidth was 2 -- which means that instead of writing to (say) 0x554, it would write to 0xAA8. Wha'?
I may have to break down and set up a JTAG interface on this thing. I've been avoiding it 'til now out of stubbornness and lack of soldering skill, but it may be the only way to figure out what the hell is going on.
These guys have reverse-engineered the Broadcom 43xx wireless chipset and are writing a GPL'd replacement driver. Broadcom are the kind folks who won't release binary-only drivers, let alone datasheets, for their stuff, which means the only thing you can do is run NDISWrapper (Linux) or Project Evil (FreeBSD).
My wife and I share an Apple iBook with an Airport Extreme card that, natch, won't do passive mode. However, the reverse-engineered specs are available, which should help this guy in his efforts to write a new driver. I think I'll drop him (and the Kismac folks) a line and point it out.
A DHCP server at work is listening on multiple interfaces, some of which have multiple aliases, and so the reply appears to come from one of those aliases -- not the "main" one that I want. The solution is to use the option server-identifier.
Okay, so I've finally got the onboard flash chip detected on this thing. It took a few things to get this working:
Still can't actually erase the flash, even with the GPIO twiddle, without causing a kernel panic. And the code that does ttwiddle itself is ugly, and pretty much stuck in a random place. But progress!
Welp, six weeks after upgrading to 2.4.31-uc0, four months after the first release, and nearly a year after getting the goddamned thing in the first place, I'm finally releasing version 0.3 of Linux for the NWR04B. Share and enjoy!
The big change from 0.1 (version 0.2 was never released to my adoring public) is that I've upgraded to the 2.4.31 uClinux kernel, copying over the necessary bits from Codeman's original kernel. This was mainly done in hopes of getting access to the onboard flash memory through the more up-to-date MTD code tree. After a lot of work disassembling the factory firmware for this thing, I finally figured out that one of the GPIO lines? leads? values? needs to be twiddled in order to write to flash successfully. Thus, the onboard flash is being recognized as an AMD-compatable device, which should allow me to erase it and write my own FS there.
Note that I say should. Right now the necessary twiddling is only done at detection time in the kernel, and the code to do so has been rammed in with a crowbar; there is absolutely no grace to this at all. (cfi_probe_chip() in uClinux-2.4.31-uc0/drivers/mtd/chips/cfi_probe.c makes Baby Linus cry.) And when I try changing the necessary bits using devmem2 (included in the tarballs, which I forgot to document) and then erase, the kernel panics. But hey! It's all progress, far as I'm concerned. :-)
Up way too late for this sort of thing, but I can't sleep.
Managed to get rebooting working. I'd had a jerry-rigged workaround: use devmem2 to read the magic location, 0x88000004. The weird thing was, that was already in the kernel, at include/asm-armnommu/mach-cx84200/system.h:
extern inline void arch_reset(char mode)
{
/* REVISIT --gmcnutt */
#define CX84200_RESET 0x88000004
int data;
data = *(__u8 *)(CX84200_RESET);
}
So what the hell? Just for fun, I tried sticking this in at the end of the function:
printk (KERN_EMERG "Did that work? data = 0x%08x\n", data);
And sure enough, bam! There I am rebooting. I'm guessing the compiler was optimizing away the read, since it was never used or returned...but that seems like an obvious thing to overlook. Hm. Can't deny that it's working, though. Interestingly, a simple:
return data;
does not seem to work. The plot thickens.
Also managed to find another chip driver that has to twiddle GPIO in order to write to flash, and it looks like there's a standard place to put this: the set_vpp member (part?) of the map_info structure that is deep, deep at the heart of the MTD driver system. Along with the usual stuff you might expect to find there -- how to read 8 bytes, how to write 16 bytes, and so on -- there is this bit that the Dilnet PC board uses to twiddle GPIO in what looks like a most familiar way. I may manage to soothe baby Linus before long.
Update: Ashtead provided the answer: declare data as volatile, so GCC doesn't optimize away the read.
At work we use Amanda for backups, and it's pretty good -- but for various reasons we don't use the amanda server/client on every single machine. For these exceptions, we point amanda at the host it's running on, where we have copies of the important stuff kept by rsync. This usually works pretty well, and it also fits in well with our other backup mechanism: the copy of yesterday. This is a copy of home directoiries and some other things, updated with rsync every morning at 3am. This gives people an easy way to get something they had yesterday, which means less trips to the backup tapes. We also do a couple sets of backups with Amanda: daily, where we let Amanda juggle full vs. incremental in the usual way, and weekly/monthly, where we tell Amanda to just do full backups. For those, we just point Amanda at the copy of yesterday, rather than grab full backups over the network. I've run into problems over the last few weeks, though, where weekly backups have failed for a few home directories -- the fullest ones, natch. It's taken me a while to figure out what 's going on, but I think I've got a handle on it finally. Full weekly/monthly backups take a while to do -- typically two full days, because of non-automated tape changers. While this happens, I let regular backups pile up on the holding disk (close to half a terabyte available), then flush them when the weeklies are done. Here's the error that amstatus shows:
wait for dumping driver: (aborted:nak error: amandad busy)
Thanks to this post (Nabble? Never heard of 'em...) I finally clued in to the obvious: Amanda sometimes asks the local host for backups twice -- once as part of a daily backup, and once as part of a weekly backup. If this is right (why haven't I come across this more often?) it's going to cause pain. We don't have a tape changer, so backups just plain take a long time; there's no one here at 3am to switch a tape. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of turning off regular backups for two days a week. I really don't want to have to come in on weekends to switch tapes. Hm. Maybe I'll look at just letting weeklies dump to disk over the weekend, then flush 'em during the week. That might work pretty well, actually. In other news, got a bunch of HP workstations in from CDW, and I'm quite happy with them. At last count, the company has 879 people starting in January (no, not really) and the idea of setting up that many Shuttles (my usual workstation of choice), manually installing XP (no, no automated install yet) just filled me w/dread. The HPs are nice, very well put together (they're built like fucking tanks and weigh just as much), and they come with XP Pro installed. But hey, manager wanted 160GB drives and these came with 80GB drives. What to do? Turns out you can take out the old, put in the new (bigger) drive, and just use the restore disk. Boo hiss restore disks with no full copy of the OS, but damn it's nice: very few questions, and when you're done you're ready to go. And by "ready to go" I mean of course "ready to turn off all the crap, turn on other crap and install even more crap". I've either got to swallow my pride and get an AD controller in here (Noooooooo!) or else figure out some other way of automating all this.
Gaw'bless you, Matt Johnson.
A year ago today I mentioned, almost in passing, that I had picked up a cheap wireless router and hoped to get Linux running on it shortly. Since then, I've learned an incredible amount about electronics, reverse-engineering, assembly language, compilers, the Linux kernel, and programming as I moved further up the abstraction ladder. I'm still no expert at any of this, but it astounds me how far I've managed to get along.
Currently I'm stuck at getting flash memory to work -- specifically, being able to erase and then program a chunk of flash memory. The trouble is that the magic numbers that the Linux drivers and the datasheet say are needed don't seem to be working. Previously, I was having the same sort of problem getting the kernel to detect the flash in the first place; the trick was figuring out that GPIO was involved in all this. But I'm doing that same trick now, and it's still not working. As always, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Still, though, I think I'm going to keep poking at it -- for a while, anyway. My interest is beginning to wane a bit (I flit a lot; a year is a long time to me), plus I got a kid on the way (ack!). I may move on to trying to make all the ethernet interfaces work, not to mention the wireless card, as a way of taking a bit of a break. And of course, I'm still aiming at making the world's first Beowulf cluster of wireless routers.
On another note: today's entry is brought to you by the fine, fine folks at the Free Software Foundation, to whom I've just paid my membership dues for another year. I owe these people a huge amount: not only do I get to use a staggering amount of world-class software, written by their members and with their support, for free (I'm writing this on Emacs right now), not only have I been able to earn a fucking living from what I've taught myself using GPL'd and BSD'd software, RMS has also given us the language to, I dunno, frame the whole question of why this is important: by starting the FSF, by naming the Free Software movement, by giving us the GPL. There are those who disagree, while still cherishing the freedom the FSF seeks -- but I think you'd be hard-pressed to deny the power that one pissed-off geek gained when he got pissed off about some closed-source printer drivers.
(Yes, that may be a big myth -- but that is not the same as being a lie, and the providing^Hsynthesis of motivating myths is important too.)
From their website:
Please support the work of the FSF bymaking a donation,joiningas anassociate member,ordering books and merchandise, or signing your organization up as acorporate patron.
Hate RMS? Fine by me. Give to others:
Do it. We owe them.
+1 to HP for using Linux on their diagnostic CD. -1 to HP for suggesting that if poor performance is experienced, you should consider "upgrading the graphics solution". I swear to God, I'm starting to twitch whenever I hear that fucking word.
From CraigMurray.org.uk, via Ken MacLeod, come these letters. From his website:
The British Foreign Office is now seeking to block publication of Craig Murray's forthcoming book, which documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray remove all references to two especially damning British government documents, indicating that our government was knowingly receiving information extracted by the Uzbeks through torture, and return every copy that he has in his possession. Craig Murray is refusing to do this. Instead, the documents are today being published simultaneously on blogs all around the world. The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful". The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. Craig Murray says: In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers. After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.
These files are also available here.
Letter #1 Confidential FM Tashkent (Ambassador Craig Murray) TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts 16 September 02 SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism SUMMARY US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy. DETAIL The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree. Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism. Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim. Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services. Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements. The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners. But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here. Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion. This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years - but pressure is building and could ultimately explode. I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side. If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary - the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders. We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups. Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not
just pawns in the new Great Game. MURRAY
Letter #2 Confidential Fm Tashkent (Ambassador Craig Murray) To FCO 18 March 2003 SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY SUMMARY 1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth. DETAIL 2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom. 3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years. 4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid - more than US aid to all of West Africa - is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He - and they - are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West? 5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging). 6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terrorââ¬Â¦ removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes. 7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior
level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan. MURRAY
[Transcript of facsimile sent 25 March 2003 from the Foreign Office] From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor Date: 13 March 2003 CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD Linda Duffield UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE 1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention. 2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides: "Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made." 3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be
admissible as evidence. [signed] M C Wood Legal Adviser
Letter #3 CONFIDENTIAL FM TASHKENT (Ambassador Craig Murray) TO IMMEDIATE FCO TELNO 63 OF 220939 JULY 04 INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE SUMMARY 1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror. 2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results. 3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state. DETAIL 4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice. 5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture. 6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood. 7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department. 8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened. 9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true - the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured. 10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact 11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention; "The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also. 12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." 13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform. 14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment. 15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services. 16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material. 17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this. 18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit. 19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale. MURRAY
