Two hundred thousand dollars—not a huge sum of money in return for betraying one’s country. But that’s exactly how much money Roy Lynn Oakley asked for when he attempted to sell stolen parts of uranium enrichment equipment to someone he thought was an agent of a foreign government.
Oakley’s contact was an “agent” all right, but not from a foreign country—it was an undercover agent from the FBI.
CanberraTimes
When the Bureau of State Security arrested Rio Tinto’s Shanghai executive Stern Hu, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pointed out that this was a ”complex consular case”, and this was time to be ”working calmly and methodically … on the basis of the advice as it unfolds”. In reality, the events represent the first, seismic, stirrings of the newly emergent economic Chinese dragon, a creature that will determine our future, in its own way.
China’s laws are not our laws; politics and business are intermingled in a way that we would find abhorrent. Ever since the First Opium War in 1839, the West has dictated terms of trade to China. At that time the Qing Dynasty was attempting to stop what had become a flourishing trade in the drug. British East India Company merchants were becoming wealthy, producing the drug cheaply in northern India and using it to get around the Chinese insistence that all trade be conducted in silver. A small, but technologically advanced British force quickly shattered opposition, wreaking havoc and capturing the empire’s tax revenue, forcing the Imperial Court to capitulate.
More…
gawker.com
A lawyer for Dolce & Gabbana flack Ali Wise—who was arrested last week on charges of eavesdropping and computer trespass—says it’s not illegal to hack into someone else’s voicemail without permission. Really?
Wise allegedly used a Spoofcard, which lets you send fake caller ID info with your calls, to gain access to the voicemails of interior designer Nina Freudenberger. According to the criminal complaint against her, she told the police, “I used the Spoofcard to get into Nina’s voicemails.”
Now Wise’s lawyer, Mark Jay Heller, is telling Women’s Wear Daily [sub. req'd] that there’s nothing illegal about that:
He said authorities had misapplied new laws governing technology. The eavesdropping charge should be dismissed because, among other reasons, Wise had not overheard or recorded a conversation, Heller said. Of the computer trespass charge, he said authorities had not alleged or proven, “that Ali engaged in any ‘unauthorized’ conduct in conjunction with a computer or computer service.”
ynetnews
Former Prime Minister Olmert’s confidante Shula Zaken summoned to official Justice Ministry hearing following allegations that she listened in on hundreds of his private conversations over three-year period.
Shula Zaken, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s bureau chief, was summoned to a formal Justice Ministry hearing Monday on suspicion of illegal wiretapping of Olmert’s phone conversation during his tenure as industry, trade and labor minister. Zaken is suspected of both listening in on Olmert’s conversations herself – unbeknown to him – as well as ordering other secretaries in the ministry to do so on her behalf.
“On the occasions when the ministry’s secretaries were told to eavesdrop on (Olmert’s) conversations, Zaken ordered them to report on their content, and in some cases, she had them transcribe the conversations,” said a State Prosecutor’s Office statement.
More…
GLILOT JUNCTION, Israel (AP) — Near a multiplex cinema and a nondescript highway junction outside Tel Aviv is the place where Israel’s secrets go when they get old.
The names and stories are carved into limestone walls and arranged in binders at a sleepy clump of buildings known by a misleadingly dull name — the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center. They offer a unique, if fragmentary, glimpse into the exploits of the Mossad agents and intelligence operatives who have waged this country’s shadow wars.
Here, on a memorial wall, you can encounter names like Shalom Dani, a Holocaust survivor who became the Mossad’s master forger. Dani honed his skills under cover in North Africa, taking part in the Mossad’s effort to spirit thousands of Moroccan Jews to Israel before being dispatched to Argentina in 1960. There, he counterfeited the documents that allowed a team of agents to smuggle Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Nazi genocide, to his trial and eventual hanging in Israel.
apnews.myway
Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.
It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker’s gold.
Zipping past Fisherman’s Wharf, his scanner downloaded to his laptop the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians’ electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he’d “skimmed” four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
More…
THE State Government has a secret plan to track the movement of staff around the new Royal Children’s Hospital using radio tags, which has outraged unions and raised fears of setting a precedent in employee surveillance.
Doctors say the plan smacks of Big Brother, and they will refuse to wear the tags when the hospital opens in 2011.
Documents obtained by The Age reveal that, in January last year the project control group for the $1 billion hospital discussed a “comprehensive patient and staff radio frequency identification tracking system”.
Despite the fact that the system was specified in the hospital’s design and contract more than a year ago, the Government played down the issue when asked about it last week by The Age. A spokesman for Health Minister Daniel Andrews said only that the idea was “still under consideration”.
abc
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is facing mounting calls to personally intervene in the case of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, amid reports the Chinese President authorised the investigation that led to his detention.
Chinese diplomats will meet with Australian officials later today as the Government continues to push for more information about the case against Mr Hu, who has been accused of commercial espionage in relation to iron ore agreements.
Today’s Fairfax newspapers are reporting that Chinese President Hu Jintao personally approved the Ministry of State Security investigation which led to Stern Hu’s detention.
The issue could become a diplomatic and political nightmare for Mr Rudd, with China insisting the evidence against Mr Hu is strong.
Neither Mr Rudd – who has today returned from a week-long overseas trip – nor Foreign Minister Steven Smith have spoken to their counterparts about Mr Hu, who has been accused of bribing Chinese steel companies during iron ore price negotiations this year.
AFP
CIA officials said much of the reporting received thanks to the program “was vague or without context.”
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US government probe has concluded that a secret wiretap program launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks had a “limited role” in preventing fresh strikes.
The report found that most intelligence officials “had difficulty citing specific instances” when the National Security Agency?s covert wiretapping in the country contributed to successes against terrorists.
Many senior intelligence community officials, the document said, believed that the program “filled a gap in intelligence collection” thought to exist.
The report was compiled by the inspectors general of five government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Departments of Defense and Justice.
It admitted that FBI agents, CIA analysts and officers and other officials “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution” of the program “to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools.”
. News of the World bugging led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor
• Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved
• News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case
Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.
The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures as well as gaining unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.
