US government urged to release data on social networking spying

December 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Facebook

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Internet watchdog has filed a court complaint to force the US government to disclose how its law enforcement and spy agencies monitor social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. IntelNews regulars have known since October that the CIA has invested in a private software company specializing in monitoring online social media, such as YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. Additionally, we have previously reported on persistent rumors that the National Security Agency, America’s communications spying outfit, is actively monitoring popular social networking sites in order to make links between individuals and construct maps of who associates with whom. Now the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants to find out the extent to which US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are secretly monitoring social networking sites on the Internet. Read more of this post

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Obama’s Afghan plan includes expanding CIA ops in Pakistan

December 4, 2009 by 2 Comments

Predator drone

Predator drone

By I. ALLEN & J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Obama Administration’s plan to increase US military presence in Afghanistan includes expanding the CIA’s work in neighboring Pakistan, a country with which the US is officially not at war. An article published yesterday in The New York Times notes that the President has authorized the CIA to expand its Predator drone assassination program to include strikes in places like Baluchistan, which are outside Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas and far from the Afghan-Pakistani border. This development represents a major policy victory for the hawkish wing in the Pentagon’s senior leadership, which has been pressing Obama’s advisors to expand CIA assassination operations deeper into Pakistan since November of 2008. It also further reveals the Obama Administration’s policy preference toward undercover operations with a strong deniability proponent. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0205

December 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Iran plans to charge five British yachtsmen as spies. Iran’s espionage trials against Westerners are becoming as predictable as the stupidity of said Westerners who keep entering Iranian territory without the necessary travel documentation.
  • CIA recruiting in Guam (of all places). The Agency tells University of Guam students that they should attend its recruitment information session if they are “interested in foreign affairs, […] enjoy foreign travel and have an aptitude to learn foreign languages”.

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Iraqi agents planned to bomb US radio station, claim Czech spies

December 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

RFE/RL old HQ

RFE old Prague HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Czech counterintelligence officials have alleged that Iraqi agents planned in 2000 to attack the Prague headquarters of US government-funded radio station broadcasting to Iraq, among other countries. Intelligence observers may remember that, in April of 2001, the Czech government expelled Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani Ibrahi, who was caught photographing the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). RFE/RL is a radio station established by the US government during the Cold War, to broadcast anti-communist messages to Eastern Europe. It began broadcasting to Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries in 1998. Now Jan Subert, a representative of the Czech Security Information Service (BIS), has alleged that Ibrahi’s expulsion was connected to a secret plan by Iraqi agents to silence RFE/RL’s Iraqi program by attacking the station with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and machine guns, from an apartment building across the street from RFE/RL’s downtown Prague headquarters. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0204

December 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Release of secret US reports to be postponed (again). Millions of secret US government documents are scheduled to be declassified at the end of the year, unless President Barack Obama extends the deadline, like his predecessors have done. The White House is reportedly preparing an executive order that will postpone the declassification, in order to assuage various US intelligence agencies “unwilling to part with their secrets”. Change, Mr. Obama?
  • Analysis: Why India needs an intelligence revamp. We have written before about the urgent need to restructure Indian intelligence agencies.

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Analysis: Is an obscure US military unit replacing the CIA?

December 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

Joint Special Operations Command logo

JSOC logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An obscure US military unit established in 1980 is gaining prominence in America’s “war on terrorism” and may be slowly replacing the CIA’s functions, according to a well-researched piece in The Atlantic magazine. The US Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was created soon after the fiasco of the attempted rescue of the hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran. Since 9/11, the unit has emerged from its relative obscurity to join the forefront of America’s so-called “global war on terrorism”. Gathering evidence from a variety of sources investigating the use of paramilitary operations in America’s post-9/11 wars, Max Fisher argues that, even under the Obama Administration, JSOC may in fact be “taking on greater responsibility, especially in areas traditionally covered by the CIA”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0203

December 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • N. Koreans arrested for revealing Kim Jong-Il’s whereabouts. A number of North Koreans have been arrested and could face execution for leaking to a South Korean Internet newspaper information on the movements of Kim Jong-Il’s February 24 trip to the city of Hoeryong.
  • Authority to spy on Americans unclear as PATRIOT Act expires. Controversial provisions in the Act, which grant US the government far-reaching domestic surveillance and seizure powers, are due to expire on December 31. These provisions will have to be discussed in Congress, “but only when the Senate isn’t backlogged by health care” according to insiders.

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FBI in hot seat over controversial use of informants

December 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

Craig Monteilh

Craig Monteilh

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, America’s primary domestic counterintelligence agency, is facing a storm of criticism over allegedly using informants to spy on Muslim and ultra right-wing groups. The most controversial of the two cases is arguably that of New Jersey talk radio host and blogger Harold “Hal” Turner, who has been described as a vocal supporter of white supremacist groups. Turner was charged last June for arguing on his blog that three Chicago federal appeals court judges “deserve to be killed”, and for posting photographs of the judges along with their work addresses and an area map of the Chicago federal courthouse. If convicted, Turner faces a $250,000 restitution fine and up to 10 years in prison. What is interesting, however, is that Turner told a judge that he was a paid FBI informant, code-named “Valhalla”, and was trained by the Bureau to infiltrate and monitor white supremacist groups. The FBI denied any connection to Turner, but The Bergen Record newspaper in New Jersey gained access to court records and verified the truth in Turner’s claims. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0202

December 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Israeli listening bugs found in UN meeting room: Swiss paper

December 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

The UN in Geneva

The UN in Geneva

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Switzerland’s most esteemed newspaper has revealed that a number of listening devices, most likely of Israeli origin, were discovered in a room designated for sensitive meetings on disarmament issues, at the United Nations building in Geneva. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), quoted “a senior official” of the Service for Analysis and Prevention (Dienst für Analyse und Prävention), Switzerland’s domestic intelligence agency, who said the bugs were among several discovered throughout the building during regular maintenance work in 2006. The anonymous official said counterintelligence experts drew on “technical and geopolitical criteria” to create a shortlist of the possible culprits. Israel topped the list, which also included North Korea, Britain, China, Russia, France and the United States. Read more of this post

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Analysis: The role of spies in Latin America

December 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

Latin America

Latin America

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
These days it’s a full-time job keeping up with intelligence news coming out of Latin America. In recent weeks alone, there were major spy scandals involving the busting of an alleged Colombian espionage ring in Venezuela, the acknowledgment by Bogotá that it spied on Ecuador, and the ongoing high-level intelligence scandal that some say may cause recalls of diplomats between Chile and Peru. So what is going on in Latin America? How widespread is espionage in the continent and is it on the rise? The BBC’s Juan Paullier has consulted several regional and international experts for his well-written analysis on the subject. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0201

December 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New book claims historic IRA commander was British spy. John Turi has authored England’s Greatest Spy, a new book, which claims that Éamon de Valera, who founded Irish republican party Fianna Fáil and later became the first President of the Irish Republic, secretly became a British intelligence officer in 1916. Tim Pat Coogan, one of de Valera’s most prominent biographers, reviews the book.
  • Japan launches spy satellite targetting North Korea. Japan’s H-2A No. 16 rocket, which was launched on Saturday, carries an advanced space satellite that will spy on North Korean military and other sites. The satellite is said to carry the most advanced high-resolution imaging equipment of all of Japan’s intelligence-gathering satellites.
  • US Secret Service 9/11 text messages disclosed. Hundreds of thousands of lines of transcribed pager messages exchanged between US civilian and military users on 9/11 were anonymously published on the Internet on Wednesday. They include messages exchanged between US Secret Service agents.

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London ex-official admits falling for Chinese honey trap

December 1, 2009 by 2 Comments

Ian Clement

Ian Clement

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
London’s former deputy mayor, Ian Clement, has admitted he was lured by a female Chinese secret agent, who drugged him and ransacked his Beijing hotel room after having sex with him. Clement said he fell for “the oldest trick in the book”, euphemistically known as ‘honey trap’ in intelligence circles, while accompanying UK Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell to Beijing to “build contacts with potential investors” for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He said he became acquainted with an attractive Chinese woman at the exclusive official party on the opening night of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and had a few drinks with her. He then invited her to his hotel room, where he eventually became unconscious. Upon waking up, several hours later, he found that “the woman had rifled through confidential documents and downloaded details about how the capital is run from his BlackBerry Smartphone”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0200

November 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New N. Ireland justice minister wants MI5 to share data. David Ford, who appears to be the preferred choice for Northern Ireland’s justice minister, says he will “insist that MI5 share all intelligence on republican dissidents with the Police Service of Northern Ireland”.
  • Prisoners remain in CIA black site. A US military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time and without access to the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at Bagram Air Base.

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Is Pakistani-American insurgent a rogue CIA agent?

November 30, 2009 by 2 Comments

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Earlier this month US authorities said they wouldn’t let an Indian intelligence team question Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The Indians said they wanted to talk to Headley, born Daood Gillani, about his reported association with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group responsible for several high-profile attacks inside India. But US officials blamed “bureaucratic” and “procedural” hurdles for denying Indian investigators access to Headley. Considering the close security ties between Washington and New Delhi, intelligence observers were surprised by the US move. Why did the FBI bar Indian intelligence from questioning Headley? Some Indian commentators suggest an intriguing theory: that Headley may be “an undercover agent whom the [US] authorities are shielding from the media and the hapless Indian investigators who were told to take a hike when they came to [Washington to] interview [him]”. Read more of this post

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