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NEWS IN BRIEF – USA

December 20, 2014 by

19 Dec 14. Obama says Sony ‘made mistake’ in pulling film. Barack Obama has rebuked Sony Pictures for withdrawing a satirical movie that prompted a cyber attack that US investigators on Friday blamed on North Korea, setting the stage for fresh confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang. “I think they made a mistake,” the US president told a year-end news conference in Washington. While he said he was sympathetic to the company, which had suffered “significant damage” and threats, he added: “I wish they’d spoken to me first. I would have told them: Do not get into the pattern in which you are intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.” The president’s direct, public reprimand will fuel criticism that Sony acted rashly in scrapping plans to release The Interview, a Seth Rogen comedy about a farcical assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, after hackers warned of attacks at cinemas if it was screened. “We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” Mr Obama said. “Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like, or news reports that they don’t like.” Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures chief executive, shot back in a Friday evening interview with CNN, his first since the hacking attack. “The president, the press, and the public are mistaken as to what actually happened,” he said. “We have not given in. And we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie.” He said the studio did not own cinemas and therefore could not determine what they showed. In a statement, Sony Pictures also pointed at cinema owners, saying: “This was their decision.” Sony said it had been looking for other ways to release the film, but Mr Lynton said no major video on demand or e-commerce distributor had been willing to distribute it. “We don’t have that direct interface with the American public, so we need to go through an intermediary to do that,” he told CNN. In a separate interview with NPR, he added: “People have been generally fearful about their systems being corrupted.” The FBI announced earlier on Friday that it believed North Korea was behind the attack, and warned that it would impose “costs and consequences” on those responsible. The statement marked the first time that the US has directly accused another country of a cyber attack on a US-based company. The agency said that it had found similarities between the Sony hack and a previous cyber attack against South Korean banks and media outlets. Investigators found links between the malware used in the Sony incident and that previously used by Pyongyang. (Source: FT.com)

19 Dec 14. As the United States considers its options to respond to North Korea’s cyber attack against Sony Pictures, the Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (missiledefenseadvocacy.org) suggested in a Thursday statement that the U.S. President could respond to the attack by following through on the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Battery to South Korea. “North Korea cannot be given the message that they can use cyber-attacks to achieve its goals with impunity,” said Ellison, adding that the deployment of the advanced missile defense system “would send a strong message to North Korea that the United States will respond strategically to cyber-attacks against its citizens.” The United States has already been considering deploying THAAD to South Korea since at least June, according to press reports. The Administration has used the deployment of additional missile defenses in the past as a tool to strategically respond to North Korean provocations. Ellison pointed out that “this same strategic tool was used successfully in 2013 with the deployment of a U.S. THAAD Battery to Guam in response to the direct threats and rhetoric made

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