April 10, 2014 -- Updated 0949 GMT (1749 HKT)
Cuban officials said text messaging platforms run by the U.S. government threatened to overwhelm Cuba's communications system. FULL STORY
April 10, 2014 -- Updated 0128 GMT (0928 HKT)
Cuba double agent speaks
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Cuba accuses the United States of overloading communications networks
- The accusation comes after a report revealed details of a U.S.-funded "Cuban Twitter"
- U.S. officials defend the program, saying it aimed to foster free speech in Cuba
"It's overloading the
networks, which creates bad service and affects our customers," said
Daniel Ramos Fernandez, chief of security operations at the Cuban
government-run telecommunications company ETECSA.
At a news conference
Wednesday, Cuban officials said text messaging platforms run by the U.S.
government threatened to overwhelm Cuba's creaky communications system
and violated international conventions against junk messages.
The spam, officials claim, comes in the form of a barrage of unwanted text messages, some political in nature.
Ramos said that during a
2009 concert in Havana performed by the Colombian pop-star Juanes, a
U.S. government program blanketed Cuban cell phone networks with around
300,000 text messages over about five hours.
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"It was a platform created to attack Cuban networks," Ramos said.
As first reported by the Associated Press last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development created a cell-phone-based "Cuban Twitter" program, known as ZunZuneo.
It allowed U.S. government officials to send blast texts to Cubans and allowed people on the island to message each other independent of Cuban government restrictions on communications.
Under Cuban law, all Internet and communications services on the island are controlled by government-run entities.
USAID officials
envisioned the program being used to organize "smart mobs" that could
challenge the Cuban government's control on power, according to
documents obtained by the AP.
U.S. defends 'discreet' program
Just this month, Cuba started a government e-mail service that allows people to receive e-mails on their phones.
In the country, which
has the lowest rate of Internet access in the Western Hemisphere, the
vast majority of people communicate via text message rather than using
e-mail.
ZunZuneo -- Cuban slang
for erratic, zigzag movements -- counted around 68,000 users at the
height of the program's popularity, USAID said. The program ended in
2012 after U.S. government funds for it dried up.
Cuban officials have
blasted the program as part of a long-running campaign by Washington to
destabilize the island's single-party communist government and said
other similar mass-messaging programs still exist.
U.S. government officials have defended the program, saying they were trying to foster free expression in Cuba.
Last week State
Department spokeswoman Marie Harf denied accusations that the program
aimed to push a particular political agenda.
"We believe that the
Cuban people need platforms like this to use themselves to decide what
their future will look like, and that's certainly what we did here," she
told reporters. "We were trying to expand the space for Cubans to
express themselves. They could've expressed ... anti-American views on
it. We didn't monitor or ... choose what they say on these platforms.
That's up to them."
But other U.S. officials have been less positive about the program's value.
During a USAID budget
hearing on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, called ZunZuneo
"a cockamamie idea" that the Cuban government had little difficulty
tracing back to the United States.
USAID administrator
Rajiv Shah said that ZunZuneo had been carried out "discreetly" to avoid
Cuban government detection, but it wasn't a covert program that would
have required Congressional approval.
"Creating platforms to
improve communication in Cuba and in many parts of the world is a core
part of what USAID has done for some time and continues to do," Shah
said. "Our administration's policy is to continue to support efforts to
allow for open communications."
Shah said that USAID "continues to support platforms" like ZunZuneo, but he didn't go into details.
Alan Gross' attorney: Program is 'shocking'
Attempts by USAID
employees and contractors to get U.S. government technology into the
hands of Cubans has been at the heart of a high-profile case that's been
a flashpoint in Cuba-U.S. relations in recent years.
Former USAID
subcontractor Alan Gross is serving a 15-year sentence in prison on the
island after his 2009 arrest for importing banned communications as part
of a USAID program to connect Cubans to the Internet.
He was charged by a
Cuban court in 2011 of being an American spy. USAID has said he was in
the country working on a U.S. government project setting up satellite
Internet connections.
Shah said the U.S. government continues to push Cuban officials to release Gross.
But Gross, 65, announced Tuesday that he had begun a hunger strike on April 3 from his cell at a Cuban military hospital to protest the way both countries' governments are treating him.
His lawyer said he was shocked to learn about the ZunZuneo program.
"Once Alan was arrested,
it is shocking that USAID would imperil his safety even further by
running a covert operation in Cuba," attorney Scott Gilbert said in a
statement.
Gross has lost 10 pounds since beginning the hunger strike, a spokeswoman for his attorney said Tuesday.
A statement issued
Wednesday by Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "concern" over
news of Gross' hunger strike, but said he "was in good physical
condition and his health was normal and stable."
Cuban government
officials have offered to discuss trading Gross for three Cuban
intelligence operatives serving lengthy prison in the United States. But
U.S. officials have said that there will be no swap, saying Gross was
not spying in Cuba.
Former Cuban counterintelligence official weighs in
A former member of
Cuba's secretive State Security unit, which hunts what Cuban officials
perceive to be internal threats, said he wasn't surprised to hear about
the U.S.-funded ZunZuneo program.
It's just the sort of
thing that Jose Manuel Collera Vento says he was tasked with stamping
out when he worked as a counterintelligence official.
"My job was to discover
and neutralize these plans against my country," said Collera, who's also
a cardiologist and a top official in Cuba's masonic community.
In 2004, Collera says he came face to face with Gross.
"It's impossible that he didn't know he was carrying out clandestine and illegal activity," Collera said.
Gross, Collera said,
visited him to deliver camera equipment and money. At the time, USAID
officials and representatives from other U.S. agencies proposed setting
up satellite, Internet-based centers at the masonic temples that Collera
oversaw.
"Alan Gross as a person
was nice, very friendly," Collera said. "He communicated by making
gestures because his Spanish was very limited."
What Gross did not realize, according to Collera,
was that Collera was a 30-year veteran of Cuba's State Security and was
informing his superiors of the USAID contractor's activities in Cuba.
After Gross was
arrested, Collera testified against him at his trial, where in 2011 he
was convicted of threatening Cuba's national security.
Collera has since
retired but said Cuba's domestic intelligence capabilities make any
United States-directed program, from the CIA's alleged exploding cigars
to USAID's "Cuban Twitter," nearly impossible to keep secret.
"There are 11 million Cubans," Collera said. "That means there are 11 million people who could be State Security."
CNN's Kevin Liptak and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.
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