British report reveals over 500,000 domestic spying requests in 2008

August 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

ICC report

ICC report

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An annual report published Monday by Britain’s Interception of Communications Commissioner has revealed that UK government agencies made 504,073 official requests for communications data of citizens in 2008. The report by Sir Paul Kennedy shows that UK authorities authorized every single one of the half a million requests for access to telephone and email traffic data, such as phone numbers dialed and the dates and times of email exchanges. The authorizations did not cover the content of communications. The total number of requests for 2008 amount to more than 1,400 a day and nearly 10,000 a week. Overall, around 1,2 million official government requests for access to communications data have been made in Britain from 2006 to 2008 –the equivalent of one request for every 21 adults living in Britain.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Dutch double agent called “modern-day Mata Hari” in prison

August 11, 2009 by 2 Comments

Malika Karoum

Malika Karoum

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Malika Karoum, the 33-year old intelligence operative who has been described as the “modern-day Mata Hari” is in prison in Egypt, a Dutch news magazine has revealed. Karoum, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent, joined Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) in 2004, and worked as an undercover agent investigating Islamist groups operating on Dutch soil. In 2006, AIVD sent Karoum to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to aid an international investigation into money laundering with possible Islamist links. But Dutch intelligence sources say that Karoum, whose apparent cover was working as a real-estate agent, began “subcontracting” herself to Egyptian and United Arab Emirates intelligence services, and eventually utilized her real-estate cover to enter the murky business world of property development in Dubai. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0064

August 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0063

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • UK government ministers, MI6 boss, reject torture accusations. Britain’s home secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary, David Miliband, have rejected claims that the UK operated a “policy to collude in, solicit, or directly participate in abuses of [war on terrorism] prisoners” or to cover up abuses. The outgoing director of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, has also said that there has been “no torture and there is no complicity with torture” by British agents.
  • Ex-spy may succeed Kazakh leader. An unnamed senior security official may eventually succeed Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan for 20 years.
  • Congressman tells Holder to widen torture probe. Several news outlets are verifying earlier rumors (reported on by intelNews on July 13) that the Obama Administration is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the use of torture by US intelligence agencies after September 11, 2001. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, has said he wants US Attorney General Eric Holder to extend the rumored investigation beyond CIA interrogators, and determine whether high-level officials of the Bush administration committed war crimes.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is Mehsud dead, and if so, who or what killed him?

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is confusion about the fate of Pakistan’s senior Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud. On August 7, the Pakistani military told the world’s media that an unmanned drone air strike (probably operated by the CIA) had killed Mehsud. The Associated Press reported that a Taliban commander in Pakistan, Kafayat Ullah, had confirmed that “Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan”. Pakistani military officials said they were “reasonably sure” of the accuracy of these reports, but that they did not possess irrefutable “forensic evidence” of Mehsud’s death. Over the weekend, however, other Taliban leaders came forward to contest Ullah’s account. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0062

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Hacking, Lock-Picking, Booze and Bacon. Excellent illustrated review of some of the highlights of DefCon 17, the world’s largest hacking convention, which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada.
  • Were NC terror suspect’s stories an exaggeration? There are more doubts over the genuineness of the Afghan exploits of Daniel Boyd, who was recently arrested along with seven others in North Carolina on domestic terrorism charges.
  • Ex-DHS boss comes out in support of controversial NSA project. Michael Chertoff, who directed the US Department of Homeland Security under the Bush Administration, has come out in support of EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites. Critics have condemned the project as “antithetical to basic civil liberties and privacy protections” in the United States.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

German provincial spy boss caused bomb scare

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Günter Heiss

Günter Heiss

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of German’s domestic intelligence organization in the state of Lower Saxony will receive a fine for instigating a bomb scare by leaving his briefcase unattended during a social gathering. Günter Heiss, who heads the northwester German state’s office of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), has admitted responsibility for the blunder. He was among 700 guests at a cocktail party hosted in the Hannover city hall by Lower Saxony’s Christian Democratic parliamentary group. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0061

August 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Finland police identify body of WWII Soviet spy. Police believe a body found near Kouvola, Finland, to be the World War II remnants of a Soviet spy. The man apparently parachuted to his death. The body will be offered to the Russian Embassy for repatriation –an offer that is expected to be refused.
  • Hacker conferences attract spies, thieves. Interesting account of Defcon conference anecdotes by CNET correspondent Elinor Mills, who has been attending Defcon since 1995.
  • Interesting interview with lawyer behind CIA lawsuit. McClatchy news agency has published a rare interview with Brian Leighton, the lawyer representing retired Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer Richard A. Horn, who in 1994 claimed that CIA agents illegally wiretapped his conversations while he was stationed in Burma.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

DNI responses to Senate questions declassified

August 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Don’t bother reading through the 40 pages (.pdf) of responses given last February by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to questions by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There’s not that much new information in it, and it turns out DNI Dennis C. Blair even resorted to plagiarizing part of an article on an alleged Russian attack on US satellites originally printed in Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, with no attribution. Instead, you can save time by taking a look at the observations made on the 40-page document by Steven Aftergood, editor of the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News bulletin. It was, in fact, a Freedom of Information Act request by Aftergood that prompted the release of the document in the first place. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0060

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-FBI translator tests US Justice Department again. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. This weekend she’s going to try again.
  • Bulgaria appoints new National Security Agency director. Tsvetelin Yovchev is the new head of the State National Security Agency (DANS). The Agency’s previous director, Petko Sertov, recently handed his resignation, allegedly after Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him. He will now serve as Bulgaria’s general consul in Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
  • US paper sees power struggle inside Iranian intelligence. The Washington Times claims the recent firing of intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, two other Ali Khamenei loyalists and nearly 20 other high-ranking officials, has weakened Khamenei’s hold over the Iranian intelligence ministry and has strengthened the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Analysis: How vital was spying during the Cold War?

August 6, 2009 by 1 Comment

Gordon Corera

Gordon Corera

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The BBC’s security correspondent, Gordon Corera, asks a very basic yet very intriguing question about the history of the Cold War: did espionage actually make a difference in ts outcome? This question stems out of BBC Radio 4’s three-part documentary series examining the 100-year history and operations of MI6, Britain’s foremost external intelligence agency. Corera’s article on the BBC website provides conflicting answers by intelligence defenders and intelligence skeptics, including Rodric Braithwaite, former British ambassador to the USSR, and David Owen, Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, who says that, barring a few important exceptions, UK policy makers “didn’t really […]  know exactly what was going on” in the Communist Bloc. Other commentators include former MI6 deputy director Sir Gerry Warner, and Sir David Omand, who argues that most of the intelligence collected during the Cold War was of a military or tactical nature and would therefore have proven effective only “if the Cold War had gone hot”.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0059

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Torture report says UK government ministers shielded MI5, MI6. A new report from Britain’s parliamentary human rights committee accuses senior cabinet ministers of “hiding behind a wall of secrecy” to avoid being held to account over allegations of British intelligence agents’ collusion in torture.
  • US cyber czar resigns. Senior intelligence official Melissa Hathaway, who was US President Barack Obama’s choice to monitor America’s online security, said in an interview that she is leaving “for personal reasons”.
  • South Korean opposition skeptical of request for new intelligence powers. Opposition parties in South Korea are critical of the National Intelligence Service’s (NIS) recent request to gain access to information on financial transactions amounting to 20 million won or more without a warrant.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CIA whistleblower’s memo on Peru declassified after eight years

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

V.L. Montesinos

V.L. Montesinos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A memorandum drafted in 2001 by a CIA officer, detailing assistance illegally provided by the CIA to the former chief of Peruvian intelligence, has been declassified following an eight-year court battle. In the memorandum, CIA employee Franz Boening argued that the Agency violated US law by providing material and political assistance to Vladimiro Ilich Montesinos Torres, a graduate of the US Army’s School of the Americas and longtime CIA operative, who headed Peru’s Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN) under the corrupt administration of President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori is now in prison, as is Montesinos himself. But in 2001, the CIA Inspector General, to whom Boening’s memorandum was addressed, took no action in response to the officer’s allegations. What is more, the CIA proceeded to classify Boening’s memorandum, claiming that its disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause damage to national security”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0058

August 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mysterious “CIA spy in Iran” calls for stronger US policy

August 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A mysterious CIA informant, who claims he worked for the CIA inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, has called for “a strong Western hand” against the Iranian government. In an article published earlier today in The Christian Science Monitor, the informant, who uses the pseudonym “Reza Kahlili”, says that defending “what remains of democracy and freedom in Iran” is one of the West’s “most important decisions of our era”. “Kahlili” makes vague mentions of working “for years alongside” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, “as a CIA spy working undercover […], starting in the 1980s”. In arguing for a stronger Western stance against Iran, “Kahlili” alleges that, in the 1980s, unnamed European governments made secret pacts with the Iranian government, allowing them “to assassinate opposition members abroad without interference, as long as European citizens were not at risk”, in exchange for steady supplies of Iranian oil. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →