Counterintelligence

I published a  new paper about the long lasting discussion about North Korea and its position in the international organised crime scene - as it seems to the outside analyst: Criminal connections. State links to organised crime in North Korea, in: Jane's Intelligence Review, April 2014, Vol. 26, Issue 04, pp. 34-37. The  picture above shows Russian-made aircraft technical stuff on the Chong Chon Gang. There are many aspects coming together, showing a dispersed society, looking for income and wealth. And it shows an influential network of younger North Koreans, trying to get more money, more power and more iPhones. In the near future I will publish a few more paper, going deeper into some special aspects of organised crime, the intelligence requirements in collecting data about it, processing it into information and  helping to crack down organised crime networks.

Interesting to read what People´s Daily from China is writing about Cyber Warfare  last time : Seems the Chinese want a Network Warfare Unit...but don´t they got it already? LOL Isn´t it some kind of ironic that Wu Jiangxing compares now the Chinese capabilities with the US or others? He is of course an expert and so it it somehow stupid that he acts like a prima donna. The Chinese are good and Wu as the chief of the Information Engineering University - People´s daily call him an "academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering" - will know this. Its just funny to know - and ironic as well - that the Information Engineering University had some kind of "contact" to the Nortel Network in Canada... Beside this and other interesting adventures he was a 17th Party Congress PLA delegate. And he is a obviously a nationalist. Chinamail titled already in 2007: "From Soldier to Chinese Engineering Institute Academic". He seems to be friendly, but for

After processing a few data about DPRK and trying to understand the dots I begin to understand (I try to!) more and more the reasons why Jang was executed. And it becomes clearer for me how to understand information in this grey zone of dynasties, elites, princelings, cliques, departments in special ministries...There are some parallels to the former Soviet bloc and Western analysts can expect of course more action of this kind. Maybe one can compare this to a mafia operation getting out of control. But disturbance is not good for business. And so one can read the Chinese media about the consequences. I can´t believe that a few Kiribati passports will be the end of the story: I guess that the guys from the North will be able to get some very other passports for doing business...

Anybody who is interested in information sharing inside intelligence organisations should listen to a very interesting speech by Sean Dennehy, who was involved in the development of Intellipedia. You can find it here. Well, instead of the boring national media coverage here in Germany there are many useful and valuable discussions and papers about this and similar projects on the international level.

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

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