World Spy News Roundup

The world is a busy place when it comes to spying.
Here is the action over the last few weeks...

Australia
• Government email spying plan under criticism.
• Government report... embrace "illegal", "deceptive" and "underhanded" espionage overseas.

Canada
• Was the bedroom of minister's ex really bugged?

China
• China calls computer spying claim ‘totally groundless’.
• Video surveillance equipment will be installed at Beijing schools.

European Union
• In-flight spycams - one in every seat; software analyzes you.

France
• Privy Privacy in Cannes - Madonna's unpaid $93,000 hotel bill over spying camera.

Germany
• Businesses across Germany spy on their workers.
• German spying scandals reawaken dark memories.
• Deutsche Telekom admits bugging phones of top management; then denies that it listened!
• The spying scandal affecting Deutsche Telecom continues to grow.
• Government gives police greater powers to monitor homes, phones and computers.
• Heinz Geyer, deputy head of former East German spy agency, dies.
• Lufthansa admits spying on journalist.

India
• Debate continues: Should Blackberry allow government security to spy on users.
• India practices unacceptably intrusive electronic surveillance.

Israel
• Israel frees Hezbollah spy for soldiers' remains.

Italy
• Ferrari spying may still be an issue.

The Netherlands
• Netherlands banned electronic voting machines; "eavesdropping risk".

Pakistan
• Dueling wiretaps. Battle of the political phone bugs.

Poland
• Lech Walesa angry with President Kaczynski about spying accusations.
• President Kaczynski denies ordering wiretaps on ex-prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.

Russia
• Russia to demand Georgia ends spy flights.

Saudi Arabia
• 6 caught selling eavesdropping devices.

Sweden
• Swedish government may soon get power to spy on its citizens.

Taiwan
• National Security Bureau denied wiretapping telephone calls of officials and president.

Turkey
• A possible Turkish Watergate scandal.
• “AK Party is eavesdropping” claims the opposition.
• Turkish opposition claims security forces bugged its headquarters.

Uganda
• MP accuses government of spying on committees.

United Kingdom
• Government refused to investigate BT's covert wiretapping of thousands of customers.
• Councils admit spying on residents.
• Councils admit phone, e-mail spying.
• Bugging epidemic spreads - Vodafone fingered in new spying row.
• Top gadgets for spying on fellow SEO’s.
• Redcar hotel owner set up video camera to spy on couple.
• Government considering interception and data-mining all electronic communications.

United States
• Former S. Korean spy granted asylum. Had divulged illicit wiretapping of mobile phones.
• Court upholds conviction of Cuban spies.
• Study secretly tracked cell phone users outside US.
• Chinese expelled from the US for suspected industrial spying.
• Sheriff's Office disbands tarnished spy squad.
• Gutierrez possible victim of Chinese cyber spying.
• Former police chief accused of illegally bugging his secretary's office has pleaded guilty.
• P.I.'s In HP spying scandal fined.
• Billboards look back. Tiny cameras gather and analyze viewer's faces.
• Woman pleads guilty to aiding Chinese spy.
• Rent-A-Spy - 3/4's of the U.S. intelligence budget now goes to outside contractors.
• Feds encrypt 800,000 laptops; 1.2 million to go.
• Ex-CIA official indicted over agency job for mistress.
• TJX staffer sacked; talked about lax information security.

Venezuela
• Hugo Chavez's move to boost internal spying in Venezuela.
• Chavez spy laws 'creating society of informers'.
• Update! Chavez changes his mind. No new spy law.

From Spy Novels to CIA Papers

Washington, DC - Georgetown University’s newest addition to its special collections delves deep into the world of spies, espionage and secret intelligence...

Most recently, the university acquired a special collection from the family of the late Richard Helms, director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1966 to 1973. Personal and professional papers and photographs paint a picture of a nation in turmoil from the Vietnam and Cold Wars – and how that turmoil forced U.S. intelligence gathering to adapt.

The library’s espionage and intelligence division stands as just one subset of an overall special collection that boasts 100,000 rare books and 7,000 linear feet of manuscripts in addition to art and other media. The division began in earnest 25 years ago with the Russell J. Bowen collection, comprising of thousands of nonfiction books on intelligence. Bowen had worked for the CIA as a senior foreign technology analyst in the areas of non-nuclear energy and illegal technology transfer.

Georgetown celebrated the new collection, which will be on display at Lauinger Library (Gunlocke Room) through May 31. (more)

Spycraft 101: CIA Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda

Tuesday, 3 June; 6:30 pm
Rubber airplanes, messages planted inside dead rats, and subminiature cameras hidden inside ballpoint pens…

Science fiction? Q’s imaginary tools? Think again. These are just a few of the real-life devices created by the ultra-ingenious CIA Office of Technical Services (OTS).

In support of their new book Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaedathe former director of OTS Bob Wallace teams up with internationally renowned espionage historian H. Keith Melton to reveal the amazing life and death operations of OTS, the CIA’s shadowy “wizards.”

Presented against a backdrop of some of America’s most critical periods of history—including the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the war on terror—this is a unique chance to go inside the hidden world of America’s “Q” and see many of the actual gadgets.

Rare devices including concealments, microdots, and disguises will be on display, and all attendees will have the opportunity to have their photos taken (bring your own camera please) with an authentic (and official) freeze-dried CIA rat designed for covert communications in Moscow. It will be a memento of the evening you’ll treasure forever!
Tickets: $20 • Members of The Spy Ring® (Join Today!): $16 (more)

Corporate Spies Killing The CIA

The CIA is having a growing problem with their analysts and spies being recruited away by corporations. One unpleasant, for government intelligence agencies, development of the last few decades has been the growing popularity of "competitive intelligence" (corporate espionage.) It's a really big business, with most large (over a billion dollars of annual sales) corporations having separate intelligence operations. Spending on corporate intel work is over $5 billion a year, and is expected to more than double in the next four years.

The corporate recruiters have a pretty easy time of it, as they can offer higher pay, better working conditions and bonuses. (more)

Are Your Floor Plans Serialized and Accounted For?

UK - Detailed top-secret plans of MI5's fortress HQ have been sensationally handed to News of the World.

The lost 66-page dossier of floor layouts—once used by trusted contractors at the high-security Central London base—would be gold dust to terrorists.

The plans were given to us by a worried member of the public, who got them from a friend who worked at the building and never handed them back.

Our source said: "It's shocking that such high-level paperwork is out of MI5's control. These are many possibilities once a terrorist has detailed information like this."

The drawings, which we have blurred to protect national security [and are no longer shown], detail 11 of the 13 floors at Thames House—the real-life HQ well-known on the outside to viewers of TV's Spooks.

They reveal lift shafts, ventilation pipes and other places perfect for hiding BOMBS and spy TRANSMITTERS. They also show where the fibre optic cables are that transfer electronic data— a godsend for COMPUTER HACKERS. (more)

Happyton the Unhappy - Spy Chief

The US Treasury said Wednesday it had blacklisted the chief of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organization and a nephew of Robert Mugabe, the African state's president.

The Treasury identified Zimbabwe's spy chief as Happyton Bonyongwe in a statement which also announced that Leo Mugabe, a nephew of the country's president, would also be subjected to targeted US financial sanctions.

"The US financial system is closed to Robert Mugabe, his cohorts and their businesses," said Treasury official Adam Szubin, who runs the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. (more)

Spy vs Spy - The DC Tunnel

March 5, 2001 - Russia's Foreign Ministry has demanded details of a secret tunnel allegedly built underneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington for eavesdropping.

Present and former U.S. officials told CNN the tunnel -- under what is now the Russian Embassy -- was built by American intelligence services and packed with millions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment. (more)

Spy vs. Spy - The East Berlin Tunnel

On a rainy day 52 years ago, the cover was blown on one of the biggest espionage plots of the Cold War. Soviet and East German forces announced that they had found a quarter-mile-long tunnel that the CIA had burrowed into East Berlin as part of a massive wiretapping operation.

Though the audacious project had come to a crashing end, news of the discovery generated unrestrained glee across the Atlantic at CIA headquarters. America's spymasters were thrilled by the world's response: admiration for the CIA's daring and technical prowess, and a general assumption that the agency had roundly snookered the Soviets.

The truth was much more complicated. Unbeknownst to the CIA, the Soviets had known about the tunnel all along. (more)
Book: Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War

DUCK!

A disabled American spy satellite is rapidly descending and is likely to plunge to Earth by late February or early March, posing a potential danger from its debris, officials said Saturday.

Officials said that they had no control over the nonfunctioning satellite and that it was unknown where the debris might land. (more)

Spy History - OSS - A Living History Website

"The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created on June 13, 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who understood America's need for an intelligence service similar to Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Its director was Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, a World War I Medal of Honor winner, the only person to win our nation's four highest military honors, and the father of the CIA and US Special Forces." (more) (OSS wikipedia) (The OSS Society)

OSS Reborn is a website created by my good colleague Charles Pinck and his father Dan Pinck, who served in the OSS. The website tells the history of this exciting - and life saving - espionage organization. It also goes one step further - living history. OSSreborn.com solicits contributions! This will get very interesting.

In the meantime, pick up a copy of Dan Pinck's memoir, Journey to Peking: A Secret Agent in Wartime China.

Hack Attack Jacks. Black.

Cyber-security experts have long warned of the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power, transportation and water systems to malicious hackers. Friday, those warnings quietly became a reality: Tom Donahue, a CIA official, revealed at the SANS security trade conference in New Orleans that hackers have penetrated power systems in several regions outside the U.S., and "in at least one case, caused a power outage affecting multiple cities." (more)

"I said 'non-profit', not 'open a shop and don't let anyone in'."

Canada's official spy souvenir shop is the perfect complement to the country's official spy museum. They're both top-secret facilities that are strictly off limits to ordinary Canadians and tourists. But in a nod to the modern world, the agency has since posted a virtual tour on its website, highlighting items such as a toy truck that conceals a microdot reader and codebook.

Word of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's museum, featuring espionage cameras, micro-transmitters and other paraphernalia from the Cold War, leaked to the media years ago.
But a newly released document indicates CSIS also runs a non-profit "souvenir shop," available only to those with proper security clearance. (more)

The NSA has a great spy museum and souvenir shop which is open to the public. Free admission!

...and a spy agency somewhere smiles.

Greece - A judge formally ended an investigation into a wiretapping scandal that targeted Greece's prime minister and other top officials during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, judicial officials said Thursday.

Investigating magistrate Panagiotis Petropoulos found no evidence of who was behind the wiretaps that hacked into Greece's Vodafone network. (more)

Hollywood - Make this into a movie. It has all the elements of a great thriller; side stories about impossible "suicides", cover-ups and technical elegance which would bring tears to any hacker's eyes.

Spy Barred - Dead at 72

Cuban state media report that former CIA agent Philip Agee, who caused outrage by naming undercover former colleagues, has died in Cuba at the age of 72.

Agee quit the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s after 12 years of working mostly in Latin America. He later wrote the book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," which included the names of certain undercover agents.

The book infuriated U.S. officials who said it put those agents in danger, and the U.S. government revoked Agee's passport. (more)

...but, the silver space suit did cause a little envy.

Joseph Weisberg looks about how you would expect a Brooklyn dad and schoolteacher to look, with a bald head, white-flecked beard and baggy leather jacket. So on a recent frigid night, when he ambled down a Park Slope street and surreptitiously passed off a plastic container from a gumball machine to a reporter, nobody noticed.

It was one of many examples of spy trade craft that Weisberg, 42, learned while training to be a case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s. He no longer works there (or so he says), but he has used some of what he learned to write his latest novel, "An Ordinary Spy," which goes on sale today.

The novel, published by Bloomsbury USA, explores the moral complexity and psychological fallout of clandestine service, through a taut plot involving two case officers who meet after bungled foreign assignments a few years apart. Told in restrained prose that reflects the emotional reserve of the characters, the book is more than a thriller. It is also a chronicle of the mundanity of a spy's daily routine - not just the surveillance-detection routes and cryptic cables to headquarters, but also the staff meetings, petty rivalries between colleagues and idle chatter about pension plans. It's not quite "The Office" of espionage, but it's close. (more)

Spybuster's Movie of the Month

Charlie Wilson's War
Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman turn in their greatest performances in years in this historical thriller riddled with hilarious one-liners.

Hanks stars as Charlie Wilson, a congressman from Texas ... Upon returning to the States, Wilson immediately calls for a meeting with a U.S. security bigwig. CIA Agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman) ends up at his office door.

After a hysterical sequence of events during their brief meeting that includes a cocaine scandal, a bottle of wine and a bugging device, the two pair up to try to covertly help the Afghan war effort. (more) (trailer) (reality check)

Spies find higher-paying assignments in business

...from a Condé Nast Portfolio article...
They're leaving "the Company" to snoop on your company. How C.I.A. agents are pushing corporate espionage to ominous new extremes. ...corporate espionage is becoming almost as sophisticated as government spying... The best estimate is that several hundred former intelligence agents now work in corporate espionage... ...extreme methods of electronic monitoring... The influx of spies into the corporate sector isn't limited to Americans. ...confidential reports by outside private investigators tell a story of corporate espionage run amok. (more)

I beg your pardon, how about in your rose garden?

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is dropping his appeal in the CIA leak case, his attorney said Monday. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction for lying about his conversations with reporters about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. (more)

MI5 warns over China spy threat

Leading British firms and government agencies have been warned Chinese state organisations may be spying on them.

UK intelligence network MI5 has contacted 300 chief executives and security experts at banks and financial institutions to raise the concerns. (more)

Ex-CIA officer explores morality of spying, Dec. 6

Princeton University - "The Morality of Spying: How Dirty Are We Willing to Get Our Hands?" is the title of a lecture by former CIA official James Olson set for 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.

Olson served for more than 25 years in the CIA, mostly in clandestine operations overseas. He also was chief of counterintelligence at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. (more)

Meanwhile... 755,000 on Terrorist Watch List

A former FBI agent who pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and then improperly accessing sensitive computer information about Hizbollah was working until about a year ago as a CIA spy assigned to Middle East operations, Newsweek has learned.

The stunning case of Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese native who is related to a suspected Hizbollah money launderer, appears to raise a nightmarish question for U.S. intelligence agencies: Could one of the world's most notorious terrorist groups have infiltrated the U.S. government?

"I'm beginning to think it's possible that Hizbollah put a mole in our government," said Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and, until 2002, Bush. "It's mind-blowing."

(more) (755,000 Report)

"Do you have what it takes to be a spy?"

Now you can find out.

The International Spy Museum announces Operation Spy™, a new and groundbreaking immersive experience that takes the interactive concept to a higher level. In an action-packed hour, participants take on the role of U.S. intelligence officers on an international mission to locate a missing nuclear device on the verge of being sold to a rogue nation. This intense experience combines live-action, video characters, themed environments, special effects, and hands-on activities. Participants take part in an intrigue-filled adventure based on an actual case drawn from the files of U.S. intelligence. (more) (video)

CIA Venture Fund Focuses on Spy Gadgets

CA - Since In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999, the firm has reviewed more than 6,300 business plans for everything from identity recognition software to nano-sized electronic circuits. Many proposals come in via its Web site.

In-Q-Tel has put about $200 million into more than 100 companies, beating traditional VC investors to technologies such as the mapping software that's become Google Earth.

...In-Q-Tel is the Arlington, Virginia-based VC business of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. spying organization. (more)

Electronic Surveillance - "There’s money to be made..."

...And so a new industry was born, known in the trade as ‘Intelligence Support Systems’, complete with its own annual conference. If you’re in Dubai next February, drop by. Since there’s money to be made, panels cover such areas as ‘Electronic Surveillance Cost Recovery Solutions’ and – for the benefit of those who prefer to carry out the intercepts in-house before passing the data on ready-analysed to the relevant government agencies – the key topic of ‘how to transform packet intercept into intelligence’ (more)

Are bloggers part of the news media?

The U.S. government — led by two of its most secretive agencies — is increasingly saying, "Yes, they are."

Despite the rap that bloggers simply "bloviate" and "don't try to find things out," as conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak once sniffed, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) have altered policies to indicate they're taking blogs seriously, and a growing number of public offices are actively reaching out to the blogosphere.

The CIA recently updated its policies on Freedom of Information Act requests to allow bloggers to qualify for special treatment once reserved for old-school reporters. And last August, the NSA issued a directive to its employees to report leaks of classified information to the media — "including blogs," the order said. (more)

Extra! Extra! Spies Gone Wild. Read All About It

CIA Secret Documents Released
The newly released documents known within the Central Intelligence Agency as the "Family Jewels" give a history of the agency's misdeeds covering several decades. (more)

Me too! Me too!
Russia’s FSB security service, successor to the KGB, has opened its archives on the mass persecution of political 'enemies' during the rule of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, but only relatives of victims will be allowed to see any information. (more)

Rocky & His Friends

Iran - According to IRNA, the official Islamic Republic news agency, the national Police chief has implicitly verified the news about the confiscation of a number of squirrels, equipped with eavesdropping devices, on the Iranian borders.

He has declined to give any more details, but, reportedly, when asked about the confiscation of 14 spy squirrels, he stated, “I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information”. IRNA adds, “These squirrels were equipped by foreign intelligence services, but were captured two weeks ago by the Police”.
---
"I tried searching the IRNA site (in English) and wasn’t able to find any articles on “spy squirrels.”

Kamangir: IRNA, and other news sources, do not translate all their news in English. I assure you that I have given a proper translation of the Persian source. Unfortunately, Google does not provide English-Persian translation, yet. (more)
---
& His Friends
Iran has arrested 20 people - including some foreigners - near the border with Iraq and accused them of belonging to a spy network, the state-run news agency reported Monday.

The IRNA news agency did not provide the nationalities of the foreigners. Iran last month claimed to have uncovered spy rings organized by the United States and its Western allies.

IRNA, quoting the head of the intelligence department in the Kerman Shah province, said the 20 were trained by intelligence services "of the enemy" for economic, military, political, cultural and social purposes. (more)

The Athens Cell Phone Eavesdropping Affair

On 9 March 2005, a 38-year-old Greek electrical engineer named Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged in his Athens loft apartment, an apparent suicide. It would prove to be merely the first public news of a scandal that would roil Greece for months.

The next day, the prime minister of Greece was told that his cellphone was being bugged, as were those of the mayor of Athens and at least 100 other high-ranking dignitaries, including an employee of the U.S. embassy.

Even before Tsalikidis's death, investigators had found rogue software installed on the Vodafone Greece phone network by parties unknown. ...the Athens affair stands out because it may have involved state secrets, and it targeted individuals—a combination that, if it had ever occurred before, was not disclosed publicly.

Given the ease with which the conversations could have been recorded, it is generally believed that they were. But no one has found any recordings, and we don't know how many of the calls were recorded, or even listened to, by the perpetrators. ... We still don't know who committed this crime. (much more)

Ron Rosenbaum - the man who jump-started my career with his Esquire article "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" - has an interesting observation...

"My fellow espionage obsessive Gil Roth sent me a link to the National Security Archive’s release on the CIA “Family Jewels” document dump which contained what has got to be the Greatest Euphemism ever coined...

What I found interesting and unremarked in the coverage of the memos was a remarkable passage in memo (#2 in the National Security Archive link) is that it’s very specific about many instances of illicit surveillance and telephone tapping, naming a handful of specific individuals as targets. And then there is one final paragraph that suddenly drops all pretense to transparency. Becomes astonishingly vague and opaque. Hence the potentially explosive euphemism.

According to this paragraph “the CIA occasionally tests experimental equipment on American telephone circuits. The CIA apparently has established guidelines for these tests which provide, among other things that no records may be kept, not tape and so forth.”

Tests experimental eavesdropping devices on American telephone equipment? And just how widespread are these tests” and how long to they go on. Do they test whether they can listen into to every conversation a given subject has. Wording like that would give them latitude. Wording like that seems designed to cover up more than it reveals.

There is a scandal here, I suspect, one that may turn out to have foreshadowed the NSA warrantless wireptapping scandal." (more)

CIA Documents Released

DC - Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretapping of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more. (more)