• Obama takes diplomatic tack on Chinese cyberespionage charges

    Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images

    President Barack Obama shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their meeting Friday, June 7, in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

    By M. Alex Johnson and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News

    President Barack Obama sidestepped questions about cyberespionage linked to China, telling reporters Friday after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that accusations against Beijing need further investigation.

    On a day when he had to defend his own government's collection of cyberdata, Obama said he and Xi had had a "very constructive conversation" on the first day of their weekend summit in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

    Earlier in the day, Obama defended the U.S. National Security Agency's collection of so-called metadata from telephone and Internet companies from strongly worded accusations that it amounted to unconstitutional secret spying on U.S. citizens.

    That made for a delicate situation Friday night as Obama spoke to reporters after an evening meeting with Xi.

    Obama said he and Xi agreed that it was important for China and the U.S. to come up with common rules on cybersecurity. But when asked about reports linking cyberattacks back to hackers associated with the government in Beijing, he said caution was needed because hacking often involved "non-state actors."

    Speaking through an interpreter, Xi said China also had major concerns over cybersecurity and had itself been the victim of hacking.

    President Xi Jinping is already being protested by demonstrators against China's crackdown on human rights, but the biggest issue dividing China and the U.S. may be cyber and intellectual property theft. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

    Before the meeting, Obama insisted that addressing difficult issues like cyberespionage wouldn't scuttle a "new model of cooperation" between Washington and Beijing.

    Obama cited human rights and cyberespionage as "inevitable" areas of tension, but he said he hoped the casual setting under the desert palo verde trees at Sunnylands — the 200-acre estate built by late billionaire Walter Annenberg in Rancho Mirage — would foster an informal and "extensive" dialogue.

    While it is the leaders' first big meet and greet, it won't be all desert strolls and pink sunsets. Plenty of weighty issues are to be addressed over the two-day summit. Here's a guide:

    Cyber warfare
    Neither China nor the United States wants to get entangled in a computer-powered showdown, and either world leader might want to bring up some strategies to civilize the online battlegrounds of the future. The two countries have gone back and forth, each accusing the other of being the worst offender when it comes to digital misdeeds, and media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, have run extensive reports on attacks against their publications that they say came from hackers in China.

    The head of China's Internet security agency said recently that he has "mountains of data" to demonstrate that hackers in the U.S. have targeted his country, Reuters reported. Blaming the government in Washington would not help resolve the issue, he said. The same week as Xi's visit, three members of Congress said they would introduce a bill to punish hackers who received support from the government of China or other foreign countries, like Russia.

    Any comparison made between activity by the U.S. and Chinese government in cyberspace is "nuts," said Tim Junio, a cybersecurity fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. "The main issue is China doesn't really acknowledge all the intellectual property theft as well as espionage that's happening from Chinese territory."

    North Korea
    Xi and Obama might be able to find some common ground on North Korea. Neither country has much to gain from rookie dictator Kim Jong Un's saber-rattling, like when he said he'd "settle accounts" with the U.S. and put rockets on standby in March.


    "For the first time, the areas of common interest between the U.S. and China are much more evident in China's declarations," said Orville Schell, director of the U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. "They're fed up. And they don't want some tin-pot dictator across their border messing life up for them, and they're now beginning to make utterances to that effect."

    North Korea has long depended on friendly relations with China, from whom it gets crucial food and other supplies. There may be limits to how far China will bend for its neighbor to the south, however.

    "We do not want to see chaos and conflict on China's doorstep," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in an April interview with NBC News.

    Trade
    The proposed $4.6 billion purchase of Smithfield Foods, a U.S. pork producer, by the Chinese company Shuanghui International raised some consumers' eyebrows recently, though officials from the company, which was founded in Virginia in 1936, said the acquisition won't affect the quality of the bacon on stateside breakfast tables.

    When it comes to trade and investment between the two countries, overreaction may be the worst possible response.

    "The biggest new challenge is Chinese investment in America. They have the money, and we need it," Schell said. "We are traditionally the most open economy in the world, and I think it's emphatically in our interest to welcome Chinese investment."

    Better trade relations between the two countries might also have positive effects for people of Chinese descent in the U.S. who may feel discriminated against because of China's growing influence in the global market.

    "A lot of people regard China as a threat or a potential competitor," Yong Chen, associate professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Irvine, told The Associated Press. "Many people want China and the United States to have good relations so that Chinese-Americans will not be treated in a hostile manner."

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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    This story was originally published on Fri Jun 7, 2013 3:42 AM EDT

  • Iran trade sanctions get personal in Apple stores

    By Kari Huus, NBC News

    Updated: 3 pm ET 

    An Apple store employee refused to sell an iPad to an Iranian American customer, citing company policy that aims to comply with U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, WSBTV in Atlanta reported this week. The customer left empty-handed, in tears, and complained of discrimination to the reporter.


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    The case is more complicated than that, legal experts say. The incident and others like it highlight a dilemma created by the U.S. trade embargo against Iran — and other sanctioned countries, including Cuba, Syria and North Korea — which makes even the humblest sales associate responsible for enforcing the embargo’s provisions. 

     

    Those employees — as well as the store and the company — could be hit with civil and criminal penalties if they sell products to customers who they have reason to believe will export them to Iran in violation of the embargo, legal experts say. But if the same clerk refuses service on the basis of the customer’s language or ethnic background, they may run afoul of civil rights laws.

    "If I walked in and told them I want to buy this and send it to a friend in Iran or Cuba, they can’t sell it to me," said Clif Burns, an export control attorney at Bryan Cave, a law firm in Washington, D.C. "If they had that information, they were absolutely within their rights" to refuse the sale.

    "The tricky question is if you hear someone speaking Farsi (also called Persian) … then the issue is: Should you be more alert to the possibility that they might export the item to Iran? And by being more alert in that situation are you in violation of civil rights statutes? It’s not any easy question."

    Under U.S. sanctions against Iran — dating to 1987 and expanded several times since — exports to the Islamic republic are illegal, with exceptions for items in a few limited categories, such as books, movies, agricultural goods, medicine and medical supplies. These sanctions are enforced by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. Sanctions are not intended to affect the sale of goods used in the United States.

    "There is absolutely no U.S. policy or law that would prohibit Apple or any other company from selling its products in the United States to anyone intending to use the product in the United States, including Iranians and Persian-speakers," said Pooja Jhunjhunwala, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.

    Click here for an overview of the sanctions from the Treasury Department

    But the government does not spell out how an individual working in a retail store should judge whether a customer intends to send or carry a product to a country under sanctions, and technically the onus could fall on store clerks. And Burns says anyone in the chain who touches a transaction that violates of the sanctions can be held liable if they knew or should have known that the item was being shipped to a sanctioned country.

    "The standard applies to the retail clerk, shipping manager, corporate headquarters," said Burns.

    Individuals can be fined up to $250,000 and up to five years in prison for export sanctions violations. Corporations can be hit with a $1 million criminal penalty, he said. "In theory there’s no intent (to commit a crime) requirement. They will look at whether you knew or should have known."

    In reality, there are only a few reported cases of retailers denying individual sales on this basis, all involving Iranian Americans and Apple stores.

    Apple: Silence
    Apple did not initially respond to requests for comment.

    After this report published, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling contacted msnbc.com with the following statement:

    "Our retail stores are proud to serve customers from around the world, of every ethnicity. Our store teams are multilingual and diversity is an important part of our culture. We don't discriminate against anyone."

    In the case of Sahar Sabet, from the WSBTV report, who was refused purchase of an iPad at an Apple store in Alpharetta, Ga., some of the facts are unclear. She said the clerk refused to sell her an iPad after hearing her speak Farsi with her uncle. The iPad was intended as a gift for her cousin in Iran, according to the report, but it was unclear how or if the clerk was aware of that.

    Calls to Sabet were not returned. A call to the Apple store at North Pointe Mall in Alpharetta was referred to corporate headquarters.

    A second Iranian American interviewed in the report also said he was barred from purchasing something at an Apple store in the Atlanta area when he was helping an Iranian student buy an iPhone. Zack Jafarzadeh said he and the friend were speaking Farsi when the sales rep denied their purchase. "We never talked about him going back to Iran or anything like that," Jafarzadeh said, according to the report.

    The Council on American Islamic Relations, a non-profit rights group, says it was in discussions with Apple to revise its policy even before this week's news story, because of a complaint from an Iranian American who was refused a purchase in an Apple store in northern California in March.

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    In that case, a sales associate refused to sell him anything — even things he was buying for his own use — after he mentioned that he intended to send an iPod Nano to Iran as a gift for a relative, Rachel Roberts, civil rights coordinator for CAIR, told msnbc.com.

    "He claims that when he asked the associate how he could get the items he needed, she told him to go to a different Apple store if he wanted service and to not reveal that he is Iranian," Roberts said — adding that he found that answer to be degrading and inconsistent. Ultimately the store made an informal apology and sold him items for his personal use, Roberts said.

    "The concern … is how store employees balance their obligations under embargo law and civil rights laws," said Zahra Billoo, an attorney for CAIR in San Francisco, adding that the U.S. government should clarify how retail stores should comply. The other concern, she said, is "how employees are being trained to implement this."

    Apple's policy regarding sanctions, published on its website, is closely tailored to the language of the U.S. trade law itself.

    The National Iranian American Council, a nonprofit organization, said the Apple stores were "overzealously enforcing the sanctions." "In singling out Persian-speakers for interrogation about how they intend to use Apple products, these Apple employees are clearly engaging in racial profiling," the group said in a statement.

    But the group provided a fact sheet on sanctions and conceded that "it also appears to be the case that many Iranian Americans do not understand the implications of how U.S. sanctions on Iran affect them."

    The very notion that sales clerks could have to make decisions on purchases under the sanctions raised red flags for some observers.

    "The responsibility for enforcement should fall on border patrol, law enforcement, the U.S. post office, customs -- government agencies," said Nahal Iravani-Sani, president of the Iranian American Bar Association. As it is, the law "promotes dishonesty and invites profiling. When you come down to it, it's absurd."

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  • Police push to find woman whose case led them to Long Island bodies

    By NBC News and msnbc.com staff

    Police on Long Island are resuming their search for a New Jersey sex worker whose disappearance led to the eventual discovery of 10 bodies along a remote barrier beach.   

    A police spokesman says investigators will reopen their search for Shannan Gilbert based on new information received Wednesday. He did not say when the search would begin.

    Read more coverage at NBCNewYork.com 

    Gilbert, then 23, disappeared in the area in May 2010 after apparently meeting a client she had booked through Craigslist. She was seen frantically running from a house in Oak Beach; her body has not been found.

    The decision comes as Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer revealed that detectives now think that one person is behind the deaths of the human remains found on Gilgo Beach, most of them in the last year.

    Most were young women, but one body was a child and another was a man.

    "The common denominators that we have now indicate that it's possibly one killer," Dormer said in a phone interview with NBC New York. "We've had the same dumping ground, sex workers, young women -- even though there were the Asian male and the toddler -- but we think they were connected to the sex trade in some way. And these common denominators indicate we have the one person committing these crimes."

    He previously said as many as three killers may have been responsible. 

    Police also theorize that Gilbert’s disappearance may not be linked to those of the other women.

    Dormer declined to detail reasons for the change in theory, but noted all victims appeared connected to the sex trade.

    Police said they have received more than 1,200 tips in the case.

    This article includes reporting from NBCNewYork.com and msnbc.com staff.

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