Reading and thinking...

Obviously there is a lack of serious analysis of the current leaks from Edward Snowden and the so called “scandals” about hacked mobiles from governmental officials as the German chancellor or other more or less important persons around the globe. It is a real problem to let the media – despite their in parts brave role in the NSA-case – or the intelligence agencies themselves explain the How and Why of surveillance and monitoring communication. Terms from the intelligence sector are too often mixed with conspiracy theories. Technical definitions are described as if there would have never been any statement about them before.

E.g. “Spiegel Online” writes that the Merkel mobile would be on the NSA watch list since 2002. The article points to an ominous unit called "Special Collection Service" (SCS), almost as if the world would hear for the first time from SCS. But it was – beside many, many others – “The Spiegel”, who wrote 2001 about the KGB spy Robert Hanssen: “Für die Russen war er eine glänzende Investition, denn vermutlich hat Hanssen sogar die Kronjuwelen der US-Dienste ausgehändigt: Informationen über den "Special Collection Service", der, gesteuert von der CIA und der Abhörbehörde NSA, auf heimischem Boden ausländische Botschaften überwacht und im Ausland mit modernstem Hightech-Lauschgerät die elektronische Kommunikation von Regierungen, Behörden und Militär mitschneidet.“

And there are plenty of other articles to read, official or gray literature and leaked classified documents. For example one of the few very good reference books writes about the Central Security Service (CSS): "... CSS has within it - like a matryoshka nesting Doll - the quiet more elite and clandestine SCS. Primarily Composed of NSA Specialists, SCS operatives typically use diplomatic cover in order to put in place eavesdropping equipment in areas where access to U.S. intelligence by less laborious means would be considerably more difficult " (Lerner / Lerner ( Ed.): Encyclopedia Of Espionage , Intelligence And Security , Volume 3 , Farmington Hills 2004, p 103) .

What about a rereading of the reports of the European Parliament? Already in October 1999 Duncan Campbell has found clear words for the SCS and the technology they used. Yes, it is connected with archival research and has nothing to do with tabloid press nonsense. Go to the library and read PE 168 184 Volume 2/5: Read and think.

There is enough to study before start planning a counterintelligence operation, but it is necessary to look to similar aspects of intelligence covert work. For a current view on the developments of a few intelligence operational standards I recommend Mark Mazzetti and his last book “The Way Of The Knife. The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the End of the Earth”, published 2013 by Penguin Press. There you find many valuable references to present-day intelligence undercover work, outsourcing, assassination, drones etc. And of course one should read the publications of “them” to understand the special current approach. “No Data, No Analysis” was the meaningful title of an essay in “The Intelligencer. Journal Of U.S. Intelligence Studies” from Fall/Winter 2005. And already in 2000 one could read about “Covert Action and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century” (Chapter 19 in John Jacob Nutter´s book about “The CIA´s Black Ops”). Of course the work from the SCS and other units is highly connected to covert operations.

A few years earlier Charles D. Ameringer wrote his very readable book about “U.S. Foreign Inteligence: The secret Side Of American History” (1990), especially Chapter 18 about “The Clandestine CIA” is still somehow a modern analysis. But it seems that many of those naive politicians, responsible for intelligence work AND the counterintelligence failures, should read some more offensive, but quite good books like “How to Stage a Military Coup” form David Hebditch and Ken Connor. Maybe then they will understand how visible they can be and will be, if it is important. Not without a reason John Pike says: " It's a black -bag , breaking -and- entering , Mission Impossible -type agency ."

Jeff Stein wrote for the Washington Post in 2010: " ... a joint CIA -NSA surgery known as the Special Collection Service, conduct ultra-sensitive operations against foreign targets from U.S. and allied embassies abroad." Abroad is even Germany! Stone also quoted Matthew M. Aid , an author: "The targets of the special collection units include the cell phone communications of (foreign ) government ministers, police officials, military commanders (and) ... security teams that are following (our) intelligence agents around the city ..."

Beside nervous people from various ministries the intelligence services are targeted by the SCS. Proactive measures are necessary, if the operations of the SCS shall run again walls. To do this one must understand the historical development of the SCS. It has of course technical reasons why the SCS teams are being substantially increasing. The old structures - two to three people and corresponding shift work – are things of the past. Today they cooperate with other units, which are also essential for more black operations, observation etc. Even for this you can find relevant literature. I recommend to go through old FOIA documents. There one might come to code F6 . This would lead to the HQ (Beltsville, MD), possibly one would be able to piece together 600 employees ... looking for F7 would help to understand suspicious SIGINT operations in this country, and perhaps this would lead to SORC/FP. And then prepare the paralysing counter operation...

DPRK Drug Trade. Very first steps in an amazing case....Work in progress!

I was feeding the beast: Saved all contacts and pictures from social networks, stored them well :)
The first graph is only a snapshot of a few information, there is a lot more coming. Problems of connections, distributions or segmentation will be solved soon.
 
Maybe there are some dots to be connected right here:

I realise again: Checking Hong Kong Directories is difficult for an outsider, but using some kind of an investigative dashboard, tools, and talking to some people on the ground is useful.

Lustig...

...ist es, die Zugriffe auf den eigenen Blog zu verfolgen: Google machts möglich und mit ein wenig Gefrickl sieht man auch hablbwegs, wer sich welche Postings mit welchem Betrübssystem von wo aus ansieht. Ich grüsse also Dich, "unbekannter" Besucher und komme zu einem (ähnlichen?) Thema: Die privaten Geheimdienste.

In Deutschland dauern ja einige Dinge länger und so erstaunt es mich nicht, dass erst jetzt dieses Thema so ausgebreitet - und in Kürze auch wieder verschwunden sein wird. Die Süddeutsche Zeitung macht daraus einen "Geheimen Krieg" und stellt dazu witzige und interessante, kleine Reportagen ins Netz. Was mir aber auffällt: Das ist nichts besonders Neues und ich habe den leisen Verdacht, dass man sich auch mit der stolz präsentierten sogenannten Datenbank an einem Vorbild vergangener Jahre orientiert hat: "Top Secret America" der Washington Post ging bereits 2010 an den Start. Naja, möglicherweise gab es einen Verweis der Süddeutschen Zeitung auf dieses US-Projekt und ich habe es übersehen.

Und wenn nun hysterisch über Ex-Spione berichtet wird, die  im Auftrag von Unternehmen http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/40/40444/1.html überwachen, kann ich nur müde lächeln. Dazu hatte ich bereits 2009 etwas geschrieben.

Wie dem auch sei: Die "Top 3 der Mietspione" sind ein alter Hut, spätestens seit dem empfehlenswerten und schon 2008 publizierten Buch von Tim Shorrock. Und ich kann es mir nicht verkneifen, an dieser Stelle nochmals auf ein anderes Buch zu verweisen, was sich genau mit diesem Thema intensiv befasst und auch ein umfangreiches Quellenverzeichnis aufweist - für denjenigen, der sich ernsthaft damit befassen möchte: "Private Intelligence - Geheimdienstliche Aktivitäten nicht-staatlicher Akteure". Das ist meine 2011 bei Springer erschienene Dissertation.

Es ist hier wie bei ähnlichen Themen: Der Prophet im eigenen Lande interessiert eben nicht. Die Debatte, die längst auf europäischer Ebene geführt wird, scheint von Süddeutscher und Co. jedenfalls in Deutschland nicht angestossen zu werden: Die Risiken nämlich, die für eine Demokratie drohen, wenn bestimmte Kernaufgaben des Staates - die aus gutem Grunde bei diesem liegen - an Privatfirmen und Söldner abgegeben werden.

North Korean intelligence collection

Beside some interesting meetings and events in the past the North Korean intelligence agencies in Europe – sitting in their embassies or using front companies and international organisations as a cover – have to fight on different subjects: Not only looking for business, special materials and cash flow they have to deal with „imperialistic agents“ and „liars“ from human right groups. Refugees, which are of course „tricked“ into Western countries by the „satan“ in Washington, the media, the „gangster clique“ in Seoul and other bad boys, are travelling around and telling the people stories which are more or less untold inside North Korea. 

As every other country in the world the North Koreans are looking abroad for maybe problems, which can be dissidents, refugees or activists. While Russian intelligence tries to monitor e. g. Greenpeace in Europe (and elsewhere), North Korea looks for people in Europe (and elsewhere) which are interesting for them. This can be family members, which are falling from favour. Some of them suddenly committed suicide or had an accident… In this case there is a special unit inside the North Korean intelligence which is arriving immediately on the scene, recovering assets, cleaning the place and hampering police and intelligence from the guest country to dig deeper.

Additionally the North Korean intelligence agencies have their sympathisers. The intelligence agencies from Israel can rely on their followers all over the world, mostly jewish people, which are doing „research“ for the Mossad due to patriotic or religious or both reasons. Beside money North Korea can offer Juche, their ideology – and there are still enough members of their Friendship Associations which are willing to do the job, instructed by North Korean staff. Last time in Germany it was Hong Son Ok .

Something which makes the North Koreans very angry is the „North Korea Freedom Week in Europe 2013“, especially the demonstration yesterday, 12 October, in front of their embassy in Berlin. Watching the scene beside the small group of protesters it was interesting to observe the observers, which were able to take pictures from  every single person. I don´t say that they were working for the DPRK, but... they raised my suspicion. Aditionally a few CCTV were in action, recording the demonstration, presumably not only from the embassy itself. One can only speculate if the North Koreans are discussing the gathered pictures and information with their Chinese colleagues, not far away from the Glinka Street. And there maybe a few other embassies in Berlin, which are interested in profiling the activists…

North Korean Intelligence...

...has a lot to do these days in Europe and especially in Berlin... A few remarks and pictures come later.

Russian intelligence collection

Somewhere in the South, a friendly harbour... Unfortunately only a simple camera with me, a guarded area in front of me...

 Later: many sailors in the pubs, drinking and using their unlocked tablets and smartphones. Harvest time :)
I must think about this:

It´s from a Russian manual about Cyber warfare:

Hm... Next time read it with more passion!

China - The drone and the cyber space. A reading between the lines.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Harop)

Event

High-Tech Wars - 14th Annual Foreign Policy Conference

Challenges to peace and security in times of drones, robots and digital warfare

Berlin, 20. – 21.06.2013

Key Points

Member of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee (CCPS), Dr. Yabin Liang, emphasizes need for information collection abroad at international conference in Berlin.

China is using drones only for civil aspects and monitoring terrorists, mainly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Data protection must be partially sacrificed in order to protect citizens from attacks.

An open mind

Speakers from various countries talked in Berlin about the technological change in modern warfare and conflicts with non-state actors. In the foreground next to the use of drones – better known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) – were risks of cyber attacks and asymmetric conflicts. Since it is always difficult to hear official statements about security-sensitive issues it was even more remarkable to get that open notes of Dr. Liang. He is Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute For International Strategic Studies (IISS) at the Party School Of The Central Committee Of The Communist Party Of China (CCPS) in the Haidian District of Bejing, the premier institution for education and training of officials in China. Beside other Chinese think tanks the IISS is not so well known in the media, but nevertheless influential in the Chinese military and intelligence community, e.g. in the discussion about the North Korean nuclear program.

No money for research

Asked about the use of UAVs Dr. Liang said that China would have no sophisticated UAVs. China as a developing country would learn from Russia and the USA, which research would be observed exactly. Due to limited money the development of high-tech UAVs would not be possible for China. For the rest it would be interested in a peaceful development and not in building a threatening weapon system. At least civil UAVs would be used for supervising harvest and disaster control. Finally he admitted that China could imagine using UAVs for monitoring terrorist activities in the northwest of the country. Furthermore he said that – in the long way – UAVs could be a military instrument for China in the future strategic environment.

Obviously this is an understatement, because it is clear that China is working intensively on the development of UAVs and might use them since a while. Already in 2011 the Chinese agencies thought about to use a UAV, equipped with 20 kilograms of TNT, to track and hunt down Naw Kham, chief of the Hawngleuk Militia and a notorious drug dealer in the Golden Triangle, who killed at large sixteen Chinese sailors in the Mekong river area. In the end Chinese security agencies didn´t carry out a UAV strike due to technical reasons and the lack of experience in this area – even though Liu Yujin, the director of the Narcotics Control Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), said the reason for that would have been the order to catch him alive. China is working intensively on BeiDou, a satellite based navigation system, which will be used in the future for the navigation of their UAVs.

Despite the statement of Dr. Liang it is worth to mention the efforts of the People´s Liberation Army (PLA) to develop UAVs not only for the ground forces, but for the Navy – e.g. for surveillance of the US fleet near to the Chinese shore – and the Air Force as well. Therefore China is building up a military-industrial complex, which includes intensive Research and Development (R&D). Due to US restrictions of weapons trade China depends on research to bridge the gap to Western design. The IAI Harpy model, produced by Israel Aerospace Industries and sold et al. to China, wasn´t upgraded in 2004 by Israel and so China shows interest in collecting intelligence about new developments and marketing own systems. In 2012 they presented the Yi Long, a tactical UAV. For long range missions they deleoped the Harbin BZK-005 model with a payload of more than 150 kg – which is definitely useless for monitoring agriculture.

As well as with the NATO forces or Russia UAVs are an instrument enhancing the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR)structure. But sudden accidents like the self-immolation of Tibet monks or the reported attacks on police stations in Xinjiang can hardly be monitored by UAVs: They are used in situations where evidence as terrorist camps in the outback already exist. Confronted with this Dr. Liang just said, there are different definitions of terrorism. Beside this he mentioned very clearly the problems with drug smuggling in the border region between China and North Korea – which could be a possible target of UAVs. It is not a farming office, but mainly the General Staff Department (GSD) Intelligence Department of the PLA (GSD Second Department), which is interested in collection of military and political intelligence and in the international developments of UAVs. It is hardly surprising that in March 2013 Dr. Liang attended a conference in Israel, sponsored by Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership (SIGNAL). According to a reports he was obviously looking there for intelligence related UAV technology.

Information is free

Even in another panel („Cyberwar and cyberspace – the fifth sphere of warfare?“)Dr. Liang spoke frankly about attacks on infrastructure in China, which are causing panic especially after parties, when people want to drive home – but can´t due to paralyzed public transport systems. China would be damaged by „unrealistic“ information, which could provoke social unrest. Surprisingly he mentioned as one positive example Wikileaks because this would have been the starting point for the Arab spring. In general most attacks would come from non-state actors, which could hardly be identified. The Chinese government would not conduct espionage, because today all information would be free and China would be interested in the free flow of them. States are – in his opinion – like companies and companies collecting information worldwide. Under this conditions one couldn´t speak anymore from data loss. There would be many terrorists in China, conducting attacks and threatening the public, so it would be necessary to restrict a few civil rights, just to protect them.

Forecast

Dr. Liang´s statement shows the growing self-confidence of officials, discussing at international conferences. On one hand it is a signal that China is willing to assume international responsibility: Beside international anti-terror operations it shows it´s capability to hunt down enemies of the state outside of it´s border. China recognized UAVs as  useful tools in military operations and their use is inevitable. The clear statement about cyber problems shows: Cases like Wikileaks or Snowden are boosting Chinas position in the discussion about hacking and cyber warfare.