A Cuban Slap on the Wrist: The Alan Gross Case

The Obama Administration has in recent months made efforts to improve relations with Cuba contingent upon the release of Alan P. Gross. A subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Gross was arrested in December 2009 for making the Internet available to members of Cuba’s minuscule Jewish community. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2011. A couple of weeks ago, Cuba’s highest tribunal listened to an appeal of his conviction and a plea for release.

In Cuba, free circulation of ideas is forbidden. The State defines truth, not the individual. Free exchanges of information are viewed as subversive and undermining the authority of the State. A combination of siege mentality and decades-old thought control keep the island locked in the grip of the regime’s repressive informational stranglehold.

A window for potential clemency in the Gross case opened when Cuba’s highest court took up the Gross case. The court could have voided Gross’s 15-year sentence. Expectations were not high. Cuba is a country where justice is always political, and the judiciary looks over its shoulder for cues from the political hierarchy.

Fidel and Raul Castro could have used the moment to signal a modest change of heart. Or, as The Washington Post notes, they could have demonstrated that Cuba is “remotely interested in better relations with Washington.” They did not. Cuban paranoia prevailed. The court rejected Gross’ appeal. The Castro brothers opted to continue to punish Gross—now America’s most prominent political prisoner—throwing it in the face of the Obama Administration and the United States.

Cuba’s aging dictatorship, slumping economy, scattershot economic reforms and resort to acts of repression constitute a desperate spectacle. Cuba has put out the welcome mat for cancer-stricken Hugo Chávez. His health crisis looms large as Venezuela provides an indispensable lifeline of support to the regime. The role U.S. travel and remittances play in propping up the economy is taken as a given.

In the twilight of its tyranny, the Castro regime is determined to show it can still play hardball with the life and liberty of a single American citizen and show that the Obama Administration is unable to do little more than bluster.

Former diplomat and democracy expert Elliott Abrams is right: The next step for the Administration to take is to use diplomatic channels to inform the Castro brothers that unless their “clemency” is exercised, the relaxation of travel restrictions will be reversed and greater pressure will be brought on the government of Cuba.

Ray Walser

Source: The Foundry 

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A conversation with a Cuban telecommunication engineer

I asked for input and test runs from people in Cuba in a recent post, and I've had an interesting email conversation with a telecommunication engineer who says he has never worked in that field. He asked me not to share his name or email address.

We talked about Internet access. He says only foreign people with permanent resident visas, foreign students, and business with foreign capital can get Internet accounts, and that those dial up accounts have all ports open.

Enterprises throughout the country can get DSL connections, but they are limited to Web (HTTP) applications. He has also heard rumors that pro-government bloggers get DSL connections.

He told me that Cubans are not allowed to connect to the Internet from their homes so they pay an illegal fee of 1.50 to 2.00 CUC per hour to buy time from foreign students and others who have dial-up accounts. (One CUC = US$1.08 and the average wage is 20 CUC per month).

It is legal to buy a WiFi card (if you can find one in stock) and connect at one of a few hotels in Havana or Varadero with WiFi connectivity. They charge 8 CUC per hour for access to a 128 kb/s link that is shared by all of the hotel users at the time. The second legal option is to go to a Cyber-Café or hotel which charges 2 CUC for 15 minutes of access to PC with "veeery slow" connectivity.

Education centers like universities and medical schools are connected by fiber. Within the organizations they have 100 mb/s LANs behind NATs. He recalls a time when the university he attended (I won't say which one) had only 512 kb/s connectivity for approximately 1,000 PCs. That was eventually stepped up to 2 mb/s.

He is on point-to-point Ethernet connection to enet.cu, and is able to trace the route from his dial-up connection to Google via a Newcom International satellite link. Average ping time to Google was 683 ms. Ping times to other machines at enet.cu averaged 110 ms.

He did not want to run many tests, because he feared surveillance by CuCERT. Like their counterparts in other nations, CuCERT is charged with responding to network security incidents, but he characterizes them as being like "cyber-cops, who can enter your house, pick up your HDs and walk away without previous notification."

(I tried to reach cucert.cu, but could not from the US -- not sure if it is blocked or down or both).

He gave me the IP address of a university server that was running network monitoring software. I could see graphs of traffic on the links to the university, the internal Ethernet LAN, temperature, and disk utilization on several servers. I could also reach the help desk, but resisted the urge to submit a help desk ticket request :-). You see a sample traffic graph above (click on it to enlarge it). The green line is incoming traffic and the blue outgoing. As you see, the 2 mb/s link is pretty well saturated -- surfing must be slow.

It feels cool to see the graphs, and I bet they would be upset to know that they were visible, but they are not of much practical value except to the network administrators at that university. If one could get similar statistics from all Cuban universities, one could begin to stitch together a picture of the backbone networks.

He also confirmed that bootleg satellite TV from the US is common and found in almost all parts of the country. People buy a satellite receiver from a local supplier who gets an account from the US. Some of those people sell service to their neighbors using coaxial cable, although he thinks that activity is decreasing after several antenna seizures. The service costs around 10 CUC per month, and the viewers cannot change channels themselves.

There are "muyyyy" few people with HughesNet Internet links, and they are heavily prosecuted and can go to jail if caught. He said WiFi is everywhere, and is mainly used to share music and videos and play games. He said the government is concerned about that, but I don't understand why since WiFi is local, and I doubt that they are concerned with copyright violation on the music and video :-).

We talked a bit about the Alan Gross case. He thinks the trial and sentence were for political reasons, and the government hopes to do a prisoner exchange. Gross got a long sentence, but a Cuban could get 3-5 years for having a satellite link to the Internet. He said there are some people with satellite connection who provide service to others using WiFi access points and repeaters and homemade antennae, but, as mentioned above, that is risky business.

If you are in Cuba, how does your experience compare to what I've just described?

Larry Press
 
From: The Internet in Cuba

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Mind control keeps Cubans in line

Cyber cafe in Havana, Cuba.

The 15-year verdict handed down by a Cuban "court" against U.S. citizen Alan Gross is the deeply unjust result of events that bear no relationship to due process in an impartial legal system. Let's call this cynical manoeuvre what it really is -- blackmail.

The 61-year-old Gross is not a criminal of any sort. He's a chess piece manipulated by the Cuban regime in the relentless war against its own people. The Castro brothers want to stop ordinary Cubans from obtaining the slightest bit of information from the outside world from any independent source. Punishing this envoy from a private U.S. company financed by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development is a convenient way to deter further efforts to circumvent Cuba's extensive system of communications surveillance.

Satellite phones are increasingly common instruments used to make calls around the world. But not in the Orwellian world run by Fidel and Raul Castro and their paranoid minions. In Cuba, a satellite phone such as the one Gross is accused of carrying for use by the island's tiny and impoverished Jewish community is deemed a dangerous weapon in an alleged "cyber war" being waged by the U.S. government to bolster a web of spies plotting to bring down the government.

In most countries, a violation of customs regulations might result in a stiff fine and possible expulsion from the country. In Cuba, where the state controls all information outlets, violations that threaten the state's hegemony are seen as crimes that endanger the security of the state.

The real target of this mock-judicial charade is the "pro-democracy" funding from USAID designed to promote Cuba's budding civil society movement. People who can think for themselves, talk to each other and learn from each other without government intrusion represent a danger to the state's tyrannical masters, which practice various forms of mind control designed to snuff out any kind of independent action.

At a minimum, the punitive actions against Gross should throw a splash of cold water on what some call the warming in relations between Washington and Havana. He should be released unconditionally and immediately. As long as Alan Gross remains in jail, there can be no improvement in U.S.-Cuba relations.

President Obama came to office saying his administration would respond positively to an unclenched fist from previously hostile governments. We doubt the mistreatment of Alan Gross by the Cuban government is what he had in mind as an appropriate response.

From: Winnipeg Free Press

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A year later, American consultant languishes in Cuban jail

Alan Gross

MIAMI -- Alan Gross has dropped 90 pounds from his 250-pound frame, is losing feeling in his right foot and spent most of his summer watching Cuban baseball on TV.

The American arrested a year ago for illegally bringing Internet to Jewish groups in Cuba kills time with musical jam sessions with his jailers and by mapping out an economic recovery plan for the country that has held him without charges.

Gross, 61, is an economic consultant and figures Cuba could use his help.

"He really means it - he would like to work on that," Gross' wife Judy told The Miami Herald. "I would describe him as an idealist, someone who has worked with kids, adolescents and the disadvantaged in developing countries and has never lost his excitement for that."

Judy Gross has other plans for her husband of four decades - like getting him home. Her husband's detention and the loss of 70 percent of her household income forced the psychotherapist to sell her home of 22 years. She now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., where she spends her evenings writing letters to the likes of Cuban leader Raul Castro and worrying about her 26-year-old daughter, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Despite the public appeals for his freedom and letters to Castro - Gross and his mother wrote him, too - Friday will mark exactly a year since the world-traveling development worker found himself trapped in a diplomatic conflict between two nations.

The Cuban government recently rejected the Gross family's plea for a humanitarian release, and insisted that the case is moving forward like any other.

"It remains in the same situation. It still hasn't concluded. It's still being worked and when it finishes, the answer will be given," Maj. Gen. Dario Delgado Cura said at a news conference in Cuba. "This adheres to Cuban law. There's no problem. Everything moves ahead as was foreseen.

"It's a normal case."

Some have suggested that the Cuban government is holding out to pressure the United States to release five intelligence agents jailed in federal prison, a swap Judy Gross considers "apples and oranges."

"They were arrested and convicted for spying," she said. "Alan is a hostage."

Gross has emerged as a pawn between two nations that severed diplomatic ties decades ago. His arrest appears to have stalled any momentum that may have existed for Havana and Washington to begin building bridges. Experts say Gross now serves as a symbol of both a nation that lacks the rule of law, and another's misguided efforts at promoting democracy.

Gross was arrested Dec. 3 at his Havana hotel on the tail end of a weeklong trip. A consultant, he had been hired by Bethesda-based Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) to help bring the Internet to Jewish organizations. But Gross' five trips to Cuba were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Cuba program, whose mission is to help foster democracy on an island ruled by the same pair of communist brothers since 1959.

Or as Cuba sees it: counter-revolutionary regime change.

"I find it frustrating that Cuba has not charged Alan Gross but even more frustrating that the U.S. has not taken the steps which could have led to his release," said John McAuliff, who runs a foundation that helped normalize relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. "The fundamental problem is mutual respect and sovereignty."

McAuliff is also an anti-embargo activist in New York who follows the case closely. "The U.S. politically and culturally presumes it has the right to intervene in other countries for their own good," he said, "and to support our values whenever we can get away with it."

The Cuban government has accused Gross of smuggling illegal satellite equipment and being a spy. Whatever gear he was caught with - U.S. officials have said it was satellite gear - was cleared by Cuban customs.

Gross was interrogated daily, sometimes twice, for the first six months of his detention, Judy Gross said.

"He did nothing wrong," she said. "He is a great person who may have been a bit naive. He loves the Cuban people and does not want to hurt the Cuban people."

Gross has been assigned a Cuban attorney in Havana who visits him weekly and brings him candy or cake. She said that while the U.S. State Department has been supportive, the White House has yet to reach out to her.

The Cubans are trying to use Gross as a "pawn" in bilateral relations, said a U.S. official who discussed the case on the condition of anonymity, citing government policy.

"We are not going to play that game."

In September, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela met with Cuban officials during the opening of United Nations General Assembly to push for Gross' release, said Philip Crowley, State Department spokesman.

"Unfortunately, that has not yet happened," Crowley told reporters, later adding that "we would hope that it would happen today, but that's up to the Cuban government."

DAI officials declined to speak about Gross' arrest.
"DAI is profoundly disappointed by Alan's continued detention," DAI's President and CEO James Boomgard said in a statement. "As the anniversary of his detention approaches, our thoughts are with Alan, his wife Judy, and their two daughters, and our hope is that this loving husband and father may be swiftly reunited with his family."

Gross had worked in at least 50 different countries, largely in the Middle East and Africa, on projects such as working with Palestinian dairy farmers and West Bank cross-border issues. He began traveling for work 25 years ago and fell in love with the work, Judy Gross said.

Gross was allowed to visit her husband for three days in July. She saw him at the military hospital where he is now being held.

"I prepared myself for the worst, but I still wasn't prepared," she said. "He looked like a 70-year-old man all hunched over. He looked pale, his cheeks were sunken in; his posture was humped over. He was dragging one of his feet. That was pretty shocking."

While he has generally been treated "fairly," Judy Gross said her husband developed a disk problem that is causing paralysis in one leg. He had ulcers, gout and lost 90 pounds. When he was held in a cell, he stayed in shape by walking around and around and around in circles.

"His letters vary from sounding hopeless, anxious and depressed to very humorous," she said. "I'm not sure what changes his mood."

He has nicknamed two of his guards "Cheech and Chong."

In his last correspondence, he said he had just seen the moon for the second time in a year.

"My plan is to see him again," Judy Gross said, "when I go there to bring him home."

By FRANCES ROBLES

From:  Kentucky.com

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American held in Cuba expresses regret to Raul Castro

Alan Gross with his wife Judy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The wife of a U.S. aid contractor jailed in Cuba has written to President Raul Castro expressing her husband's regret for his work there and told Reuters the White House has done little to gain his release.

Judy Gross said that in the letter, which Castro read but did not respond to, she pleaded with him to free her husband Alan because their daughter has been diagnosed with breast cancer and he is needed at home.

Alan Gross, 61, who worked for a Washington-area company contracted under a U.S. Agency for International Development program to promote democracy in Cuba, was arrested at the Havana airport on December 3 and has been held on suspicion of espionage and subversion.

In an interview this weekend, his wife denied he was a spy and said he went to Cuba five times last year to help Havana's Jewish community gain Internet access to Jews worldwide.

Cuban officials say Gross committed "serious crimes" by giving restricted satellite communications equipment to local dissidents, but no legal charges have been filed.

His detention has stalled efforts by Washington to improve ties with the communist-led island.

Judy Gross criticized the White House for not doing enough to seek release of her husband, whom she called a "pawn" caught up in a decades-old ideological feud between the United States and Cuba. She said she has heard nothing from President Barack Obama.

The White House said on Sunday it shared her "concern and frustration with the continued unwarranted detention of her husband."

"Administration officials have repeatedly made clear to Cuban authorities that Alan Gross should be released immediately to be able to rejoin his wife and family -- and we will continue to do so," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

In an August 4 letter to Castro, she wrote, "I recognize today that the Cuban government may not like the type of work that Alan was doing in Cuba."

"But I want you to know that Alan loves the people of Cuba, and he only wanted to help them. He never intended them, or your government, any harm," she said.

"To the extent his work may have offended you or your government, he and I are genuinely remorseful," she wrote.

She told Castro her family needed Gross home since his 26-year-old daughter, whose name she asked not be used, was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.

The only response came at a meeting this month with Jorge Alberto Bolanos, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, who offered mother and daughter visas to visit Gross in Cuba. He said President Castro had read her letter.

'CAGED LION'
Cuba allowed Judy Gross to visit her husband in late July at Havana's Finlay Military Hospital where he shares a cell with two Cubans. They met during the day for three days in an improvised visiting room.

"He looked like walking death," she said of her first sight of her burly 6-foot husband, who in almost 11 months of detention has lost 86 pounds.

"His pants and shirt were too big. It was a shock."

Gross was dragging his right foot due to a disk problem that will need surgery, suffers from arthritis, has gout and developed an ulcer from the stress and diet, she said.

"For a long time they kept the lights on all night. The heat was unbearable," she said. Following complaints by U.S. diplomats, his cell now has air conditioning and a television set on which he watches lots of baseball.

But she returned home to news of her daughter's illness and when it was passed on to her husband, he was devastated.

"He felt totally impotent, unable to do anything for a daughter in need. He feels like a caged lion. He cannot relax. He feels he has to get out of there," said his wife.

WHITE HOUSE ABSENT
She has met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and praised U.S. State Department efforts on her husband's behalf.

But Judy Gross expressed disappointment with Obama for failing to weigh in, even though her husband spent five weeks campaigning in rural Virginia for Obama's election.

"Not a call, not even an email," she said. Alan Gross's 88-year-old mother Evelyn wrote to Obama and got no response.

While the Cuban government has not stated its conditions for releasing Gross, a source close to the case said it likely wants Washington to end its Cuba aid programs, which Cuban leaders view as attempts to subvert the communist government.

"I think they want a recognition that their sovereignty was violated. They see USAID's 'Cuban Democratization Program' as intended to undermine their authority, and one would expect they want that policy changed," the source said.

Meanwhile, the Cubans are holding Gross hostage as an example of a foreigner who broke their laws, his wife said.

"If Alan thought something was going to happen to him in Cuba, he would not have done this. I feel he was not clearly told the risks," she said.

By Anthony Boadle

From: BestGrowthStock

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