China accuses ‘foreign governments’ of installing fake weather stations to collect data
November 6, 2023 4 Comments
BEIJING HAS ACCUSED “FOREIGN governments” of collecting data on China through hundreds of fake meteorological stations that have been illegally installed throughout Chinese territory. The announcement appears to form part of a broader “people’s anti-espionage war” that the Communist Party of China launched in 2015 in order to create a “positive atmosphere of national security” across the nation.
On Tuesday of last week, China’s civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), shared information about the alleged fake meteorological stations on its WeChat social media account. The agency said it had discovered hundreds of fake stations in over 20 Chinese provinces. The discovery resulted from an investigation of 10 firms that specialize in installing meteorological stations, which was broadened to include a probe of over 3,000 “foreign-linked” meteorological stations across China.
The MSS claims that some of the foreign companies involved in installing meteorological stations had not obtained the required administrative licenses. Furthermore, some of the stations had been placed in the vicinity of food-production hubs or defense-related installations, allegedly in order to record geolocational data. The latter were transmitted abroad in real time, the MSS said.
According to the spy agency, some of the fake meteorological stations were “directly funded by foreign governments”. However, there was no mention in the statement of the specific governments that allegedly funded these stations. Instead, the statement noted that “the illegal collection and cross-border transmission of meteorological data endangers China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests”.
It is rare for the reclusive and secrecy-prone MSS to make any public announcements relating to counter-espionage. In the past year, however, it has announced the arrests of several Chinese officials who allegedly spied on China for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. There is no information about whether the alleged fake meteorological stations are connected to prior arrests of Chinese officials for espionage.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 November 2023 | Permalink
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Alleged Afghan-born Russian spy tries to regain revoked British citizenship
February 12, 2024 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
By 2000, when he entered the United Kingdom as an Afghan asylum seeker, he was in possession of Russian citizenship due to his marriage to a Russian citizen. He was eventually granted asylum in Britain and began to work as an interpreter for the Foreign Office and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s signals intelligence agency. His fluency in Russian, Dari, and Pashto, made him invaluable to British intelligence as the United States-led ‘war on terrorism’ escalated in Afghanistan. In the late 2000s, the British Foreign Office sent C2 to Afghanistan, where he worked to build ties between the nascent post-Taliban Afghan government and the British diplomatic corps stationed in the country.
It was in Afghanistan, according to Britain’s Security Service (MI5), that C2 began to develop contacts with Russian intelligence officials. The agency claims that two Russian military attaches stationed in the Afghan capital Kabul, identified in court documents as “Boris” and “Dimitri”, recruited C2 on behalf of the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known as GRU. The British government claims that, following his recruitment by GRU, C2 traveled to Russia at least six times and once to Cyprus, where he continued to hold regular meetings with his Russian handlers.
On 2019, after he had left government service, MI5 began to question C2 about his alleged connection to Russian military intelligence. He consistently denied that he was a Russian spy. Eventually, MI5 took him “to the roof of a hotel” in London, where he was administered a polygraph examination. A few weeks later, by which time he had returned to his base in Kabul, C2 was informed that his British citizenship would be revoked due to his espionage work for the Russians.
Ironically, the British government evacuated C2 from Afghanistan in 2021 as part of Operation PITTING, during which 15,000 Afghan nationals were transported to the United Kingdom as the Taliban descended on Kabul. Upon arriving in the United Kingdom, C2 was arrested and eventually released on bail. Last week he formally appealed against the British government’s decision to strip him of his citizenship. His case was heard in secrecy at a special hearing of the United Kingdom’s Special Immigration Appeal Commission (SIAC). The SIAC is expected to rule in March or April.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 February 2024 | Permalink
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