Counterintelligence

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.

...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 Zeitun...

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 member...

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

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!

(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 ...

In my text "The enemy within - Counter-intelligence use by non-state actors" from March 2013 ( http://www.janes.com/article/22707/the-enemy-within-counter-intelligence-use-by-non-state-actors ) I mentioned - beside others - the international influence and diffusion of South American drug cartels and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs like the Hells Angels or Bandidos. I showed the highly critical approach of their members, getting a) military expertise and b) connecting with international criminal chapters and networks during their military duty abroad. Related to this it was interesting for me to read this article:"Marines implicated in massive Camp Pendleton area organized crime ring. NCIS investigated 64 individuals, confiscated $1 million worth of contraband" ( http://www.military1.com/marines/article/403028-marines-implicated-in-massive-camp-pendleton-area-organized-crime-ring ). (The Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated 64 individuals including act...

Clear and brief: This is my new essay about Chinese intelligence, an analysis of today capacities and a forecasting, to read in Jane´s Intelligence Review. http://www.janes.com/article/23922/chinese-whispers-chinese-intelligence-capabilities Beside this I work - together with Jens Rosenke - on a longer paper about Chinese military espionage. This will take a time, but we come along a few interesting aspects, e.g. an assessment of Chinese real military requirements and a new calculation of the number of possible spies, controlled by Chinese institutes in Germany. Till then you can watch a video showing the way Chinese spies are relaxing after work, taken at the Chinese embassy in Berlin: (Unfortunately Blogger can´t spin the video. You see here a line of windows in the upper floor. In the middle there seems to be the gym > a guy is using the bycicle..)

Es ist vergebliche Liebesmüh, auf das "Erstaunen" und die "Überraschung" der deutschen Politik angesichts der "ungeheuerlichen" Spionagevorwürfe gegen die lieben Freunde einzugehen. Entweder sind die jetzt lautstark Jammernden schlichtweg nur strohdumm oder aber sie gehen ihrem Job nach und machen Politik wie gewohnt. Pragmatismus zeigen sie offensichtlich nur sporadisch - z. B. beim Asylgesuch von Snowden. Und beim Spionieren ertappte US-Diplomaten hatte schon unser aller Ex-Kanzler Kohl stillschweigend gen Heimat verabschieden lassen. Aber das weiß natürlich die jugendliche Online-Redaktion in unseren Leit- (oder sagt man Premium?) Medien nicht mehr... Wie auch: Bachelor-Studiengänge in Politikwissenschaft erklären einem so etwas nicht mehr. Tiefergehende Recherche wird wohl immer mehr ein Fremdwort und ich habe es nur meiner großen Geduld zu verdanken, daß ich Mitarbeiter der NSA beim abendlichen Verbuddeln von Unterlagen fotografieren konnte: Neb...

A few days ago I read an older essay (maybe from 2010), written by a North Korean and titled: „Attempts To Empowering Kim Jong-Un As Third Generation Successor Will Fail“. Bad luck, Kim Jon-Un became the new chief in place. More interesting is another headline of his essay, which claims, that „Elites Have Grabbed Economic Power and Are Fighting Among Themselves“. Beside others he mentioned „privileged agencies“ and their greed for power and private wealth. Looking at today developments in North Korea it seems to go like this: Privileged agencies and their members, influential groups with a common history or education, somehow Princelings in a North Korean manner, are fighting for their place. And maybe the report from Yonhapnews a few days ago about the sacking of Kim Kyok-sik, the minister of the People's Armed Forces, fits in this scenario: He was a hardliner and a hawk, in other words: a permanent harasser in a possible attempt to find a way of in- and outside harmo...

...lautet der Titel eines Textes im Economist. Dort wird u. a. geschrieben bzw. auch zitiert: "The rise of moderate Salafism has cut the number of young people becoming terrorists." Zu dieser Überlegung wird man m. E. zwangsläufig auch in Europa und Deutschland kommen müssen, um die Szene halbwegs im Griff behalten zu können.

Im Interview mit Spiegel Online wird Innenminister Friedrich gefragt: "Drohen in Deutschland Anschläge wie in Boston" Seine Antwort lautet: " Eine hundertprozentige Sicherheit gibt es nicht. Wir versuchen, mit einer taktischen Analyse möglichen Tätern immer ein Stück voraus zu sein" (Quelle:  http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/friedrich-plant-mehr-mittel-fuer-videoueberwachung-a-896273.html , abgerufen am 25.04.2013). Hm....*grübel*... Es stimmt natürlich: Eine hundertprozentige Sicherheit, vor was auch immer, kann es nie geben. Aber was soll eine "taktische Analyse" sein? Gibt man diesen Begriff bei Google ein, dann werden dort zig Resultate zur "taktischen Analyse" von Fussballspielen ausgespuckt. Und ich befürchte fast, dass dort dieser wohlklingende Begriff auch hingehört. Um überhaupt eine Analyse durchführen zu können, bedarf es mehr. Die deutschen Sicherheitsbehörden sind weiterhin - das vermitteln zumindest alle ihre ...

The current brinkmanship in East Asia - even if it is just diminishing due to special dates in the North Korean calendar - is a signal, how strong and urgent the domestic political struggle is going on: There are influential groups which are fighting for a place at the sun, at the Taedonggang Craft Brewery Bar in Pyongyang or in a VIP room in Macau. There are also informal networks which are helping to get a remittance inside and rocket engines outside - to name only a small part of the business. In other words: Society is changing - even in North Korea. The intelligence about it still seems to be poor, related to the stuff you can read or hear from Western intelligence agencies. I tried to describe a scenario where the old values of Juche are eroding and the new one change the system - hopefully: La voie nord-coréenne. Du Djoutché à la ploutocratie?, in: Courtois, Stéphane: Communisme 2013 - 1920-2012. Vietnam, de l'insurrection à la dictature, Paris 2013, pp. 411-420.

This is the title of a new paper I published in Jane´s Intelligence Review. For those who want to go deeper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane%27s_Intelligence_Review or http://www.janes.com/products/janes/security/news/intelligence-review.aspx Short: "Over the course of 2012, police raids were carried out throughout Germany that highlighted the growing problem of non-state actors acquiring sophisticated counter-intelligence (CI) capabilities. Formerly the preserve of the state, counter-intelligence - defined as the totality of measures deployed by an organisation to prevent hostile intelligence collection efforts against it - has increasingly become a tool and a function of a range of illegal groups." In other words: It´s about the subject I analysed in my dissertation "Private Intelligence. Geheimdienstliche Aktivitäten nicht-staatlicher Akteure", which was published in 2011: http://www.amazon.com/Private-Intelligence-Geheimdienstliche-nicht-staatlich...