Russia and Estonia conduct Cold-War-style spy swap
September 28, 2015 Leave a comment
The Russian and Estonian intelligence services have exchanged two men accused by each country of spying for the other, in a rare public example of what is commonly referred to as a ‘spy-swap’. The exchange took place on Saturday on a bridge over the Piusa River, which forms part of the Russian-Estonian border, separating Estonia’s Polva County from Russia’s Pskov Oblast.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that it had handed to the Estonian government a man going by the name of Eston Kohver. Last year, Estonian officials accused Moscow of abducting Kohver, an employee of the Internal Security Service of Estonia, known as KaPo, from the vicinity of Luhamaa, a border-crossing facility in southeastern Estonia. But the Russian government said that Kohver had been captured by the FSB on Russian soil and was found to be carrying a firearm, cash and spy equipment “relating to the gathering of intelligence”.
Kohver was exchanged for Aleksei Dressen, a former Estonian KaPo officer who was arrested in February 2012 along with his wife, Viktoria Dressen, for allegedly spying for Russia. The Dressens were caught carrying classified Estonian government documents as Viktoria was attempting to board a flight to Moscow. Aleksei Dressen was sentenced to 16 years in prison, while Viktoria Dressen to six, for divulging state secrets. Russian media have since reported that Dressen had been secretly working for Russian counterintelligence since the early 1990s.
Soon after the spy- swap, KaPo Director Arnold Sinisalu told a press conference that the exchange had been agreed with the FSB following “long-term negotiations”, during which it became clear that “both sides were willing to find a suitable solution”. Kohver, sitting alongside Sinisalu, told reporters that it felt “good to be back in my homeland”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 September 2015 | Permalink
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Hackers stole 5.6 million US government employee fingerprints
September 29, 2015 by Ian Allen Leave a comment
Back in July, OPM officials told reporters that just over 1 million fingerprint records had been compromised by the cyber hack. However, a new statement issued by the White House last week said that the actual number of stolen fingerprints from the OPM database was closer to 5.6 million. In a subsequent statement, the OPM said there was little that the hackers could do with the fingerprint records, and that the potential for exploitation was “currently limited”. But it added that, as technology continued to be developed, the risk of abuse of the stolen fingerprint records could increase. Therefore, an interagency working group would be put together to “review the potential ways adversaries could misuse fingerprint data now and in the future”, the OPM statement said. It added that the group would be staffed with fingerprint specialists for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.
External American intelligence agencies, which typically send their officers abroad posing as diplomats, and sometimes under cover identities, are reportedly concerned that certain foreign counterintelligence agencies will be able to use the stolen fingerprints to identify the true identities or professional background of US government employees stationed abroad.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 29 September 2015 | Permalink
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