Intelligence and National Security Discussion

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Austin
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Austin »

Indira Gandhi almost gave the go-ahead to a covert RAW mission to kidnap Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale months before she sent the Army into the Golden Temple in 1984.

The untold story
wig
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by wig »

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/ ... 495593.ece
Chinese link established in fake Indian currency case, worry looms
In a worrying development for the country’s security establishment, a Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) case with a Chinese connection has been established by investigation agencies for the first time in Kerala.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) which interrogated the accused in the counterfeits seizure from Dharmadam, Kannur, recently found that FICN was sourced by a Pakistani national residing in China.

The inflow of counterfeits have increased double fold in the past few years as seizure of notes having face value of Rs 34.55 lakh were recovered in 2015 compared to Rs 7.51 lakh in 2014. In the first three months of 2016, there were 11 FICN seizure cases were registered in the state. NIA is currently probing eight fake currency seizure cases reported in Kerala. NIA has unravelled ISI and D-company link in some of the cases here earlier.

However, this is the first time a FICN case with Chinese connection is unearthed in Kerala though counterfeit cases involving the Middle Kingdom have been reported in other parts of the country dating back to 2009.
According to NIA officials, M K Fainaz of Saidarpally near Thalassery, C Rasaq of Chettamkunnu and his brother-in-law Rasheed were arrested in the last week of May.

One of the accused was attempting to exchange the fake note after recharging the mobile phone. In the investigation, fake currencies having face value of Rs 28,000 were recovered. NIA officials interrogated the accused and found that main supplier of the fake currency was a Pakistani citizen residing in China.

“In this case, the main supplier of the fake currency was a Pakistan national who married a Chinese citizen and residing at the bordering province of China. The fake currency came to India through Bangladesh border. The accused persons procured the fake notes by paying Rs 60,000. The fake notes had a value of Rs 1 lakh. Further investigation is required to unveil the entire nexus,” NIA officials said.

However, NIA officials are reluctant to take over the probe. Since the seized currencies were below one lakh, the scope of evoking Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the case is limited. If the UAPA is not evoked, the NIA would not get accused in their custody for detailed interrogation after taking over probe. NIA will have to interrogate accused at jail with the permission of the court. “There are some technical issues over taking over the case. The final decision in this regard will be taken soon,” NIA official said.

NIA is also monitoring two other fake currency seizure cases reported at Attingal and Chalakkudy. “Recently, there are several cases in which fake notes in mass number seized at different parts of the state. We had communicated with the former police chief of Kerala about taking over the probe. Since the new state police chief took charge, the decision will be taken by him,” NIA official said.
malushahi
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by malushahi »

^^^ has this not been going on for awhile?

from 2013:
Chinese THREAT to southern India is for real
...

Preliminary investigations have found that the smuggling of arms and ammunition is being carried out with the help of Chinese agents who facilitate the mafia and smugglers who are settled in Sri Lanka.

...

Central intelligence agencies tell rediff.com that over the past few years there has been a considerable increase in the number of Chinese settlements in southern India. Across Tamil Nadu, especially in the rural areas, there are approximately 170 Chinese who have taken up odd jobs.

An intelligence report states that the Chinese are trying to set up a base in southern India and would look to attack India through this part of the country. There are several elements in Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu who are more than willing to help stock these arms and ammunition and the agents either pay them in kind or cash.

...

They say that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, which guides the Lashkar, is operating in tandem with the Chinese agents and the Sri Lankan mafia controlled by a major political family to supply arms into India through Tamil Nadu.

...
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by sum »

Two men charged with hacking CIA director and other high-ranking officials
Federal authorities have arrested two men on charges they were part of a group that broke into the private e-mail accounts of high-ranking US government officials and a Justice Department computer system.

Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, were part of a group calling itself "Crackas with Attitude," federal prosecutors alleged. Although an FBI affidavit filed in the case didn't identify the targeted government officials by name, The Washington Post and other news organizations, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said they included CIA Director John Brennan, then-Deputy FBI Director Mark Giuliano, National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper, and other high-ranking officials. The group also used its unauthorized access to a Justice Department management system to obtain and later publish the names, phone numbers, and other personal details of more than 29,000 FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials.

According to the affidavit, the group didn't rely on computer hacking to break into restricted accounts. Instead, they used social engineering, in which they impersonated their targets and various IT support personnel purporting to help the victims. On October 11, 2015, one of the suspects allegedly accessed the account of one target, identified by the WaPo as Brennan, by posing as a technician from Verizon. The suspect then tricked another Verizon employee into resetting the password for Brennan's Internet service. Prosecutors said the suspects went on to take over a Brennan AOL account.

The group allegedly used similar techniques to access other accounts. The affidavit said another group member appeared to gain access to a law enforcement database by calling an FBI help desk and asking that Giuliano's password be resent.
I wonder how many of such novel attempts have already happened to our higher ups, most of whom are shockingly bad in general computer security matters.

I recall few IA men being arrested for leaking info to Pakistani impersonators over FB. This above stuff seems much more sophisticated than that!
krishna_krishna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by krishna_krishna »

Some modus operandi of ISI use shopkeepers(currently), egg suppliers etc to army on payroll(historically)s:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 454147.cms
krishna_krishna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by krishna_krishna »

This is the first time I ever heard of indian spy caught in Europe :
http://www.dw.com/en/german-immigration ... a-19564903
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by sum »

^^ Going by the news report,most probably a local source for our three letter agencies.
AdityaM
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

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Rahul M
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Rahul M »

why link to ndtv when other options are available ?
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by jagga »

Two school children Spot Men Carrying Guns In Uran Near Mumbai - Navy on high alert.
RoyG
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by RoyG »

Pakistan may be warning us which is why we haven't heard any firing yet. Could be a decoy tactic. Ties down our SF operators and they activate the main team somewhere else.

I wonder how India would respond to civilian/military infra being targeted in the cities. Also, I remember recently how they caught few jihadis who were going to use incendiary bombs in packed temples. That would be truly horrific.
Paul
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Paul »

Was normal in 80s. Babbar Khalsa terrorists caught in nick of time as they were going to bomb Birla temple in Delhi.
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by NRao »

krishna_krishna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by krishna_krishna »

The link states something else and contains something else .Do not belong to this thread
williams
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by williams »

http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/st ... ari/297263
Looks like a big find. No doubt people like Sanjay have their hand in major arms purchase decisions.
Kamran Husain
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Kamran Husain »

I have a question. I am currently writing a story about intelligence operatives. I need to know what happens when an intelligence operative dies in the field or undercover. Is his/ her body recovered?
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by dinesha »

Rishi Verma
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Rishi Verma »

Kamran Husain wrote:I have a question. I am currently writing a story about intelligence operatives. I need to know what happens when an intelligence operative dies in the field or undercover. Is his/ her body recovered?
Yes if he/she dies in a field then body is lifted by secret drones and recovered. If he/she dies under-cover then we don't know what's under the covers so covers need to be lifted first.

Now Pls continue with your story.
Khalsa
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Khalsa »

^^^^ if the question was...(fill in the blank) enough
the answer floored me

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by abhishek_sharma »

I have been reading Michael Hayden's (ex CIA chief) book.

He writes repeatedly that the best way to slow down Iranian nuclear program was to kill their scientists. And then he writes that Americans don't do that kind of stuff ...
GShankar
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by GShankar »

but they may train others who might do it. The some of the 'trained' seem to be practicing that skill in India.
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Yeah...no doubt that.

In any case, he is not going to write in a book that CIA is involved in killing scientists.
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by sum »

Was this posted?
Baloch specialist to Helm RAW
Special Director of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) A K Dhasmana is likely to be appointed as the next chief of the country’s external intelligence agency.

The 1981-batch Madhya Pradesh cadre IPS officer’s domain of expertise is considered to be Balochistan, counter-terrorism and Islamic affairs. He also has a vast experience on Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has served in key capitals, including London and Frankfurt and has also handled SAARC and Europe desks.
Dhasmana is also known to enjoy National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s confidence. He will replace present RAW chief Rajinder Khanna.

India has been pussyfooting on human rights violations in Balochistan though Pakistan has been exploiting the ‘K’ word to the hilt at different international fora.
Officials close to Dhasmana said he is a go-getter and has an extensive network in the region. Through his vast experience and elaborate asset base in the region, he was able to stall the construction of Gwadar port by about six years, a senior agency said.
Gagan
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Gagan »

Maybe the Pakis are killling the Iranians and Indian N scientist too
ramana
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by ramana »

I think so too. Contract killing for some other country. Plausible deniability.
Cosmo_R
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Cosmo_R »

"If we release data, it will create chaos in India: Legion"
"The hacker group Legion which broke into the Twitter accounts of the Congress Party, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya and TV journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar has finally come out in the open.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday -- through an encrypted instant-messaging software -- Legion said the group had access to servers like that of Apollo Hospitals and it was unsure about releasing data from those servers because it might cause “chaos” in India."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-new ... KXkHP.html

Love to know more from emails. Can we collect the revelations (if any) here?
Karthik S
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Karthik S »

ANI ‏@ANI_news
#FLASH Rajiv Jain appointed as the next IB Chief. Anil Dhasmana to be the new RAW chief.
Manish_P
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Manish_P »

Two detained after cops seize 9 kilos of depleted uranium :shock:
The Thane Crime Branch detained two people and seized around 9kg of depleted uranium. According to the police, two people, one of whom is the director of a private firm located at Reay Road, were looking to sell depleted uranium (DU) at Rs 3 crore per kg. Police said the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) confirmed that the substance was brought in from abroad. The metal is banned for sale in the open market as it is used in the atomic energy plants.
Police said they laid a trap after they received a tip-off that two men, Saifullah Khan and Kishor Prajapati, were attempting to sell a high-priced commodity in Thane. The police said they sent an undercover officer to set up a deal to buy the substance before seizing it. Police said that when the undercover officer was inspecting the uranium, he was shown a 2014 metallurgy report from a private lab in Ghatkopar that showed that the substance was a depleted form of uranium.
prahaar
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by prahaar »

Is something wrong with our MSM or is it purposefully restrained reporting on the above? 9 Kg of depleted uranium from abroad should have sent shivers to the security agencies.
Aditya_V
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Aditya_V »

Is there some more news, 9KG depleted Uranium, any idea what is the source country? Was a dirty bomb in the works? Is this Prajapati and other dude related to Shorabudin gang?
Manish_P
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Manish_P »

No further details available that i could find

An additional worry is that the stuff, well perhaps a sample of it, was checked and certified by a mumbai lab in 2014... and still no alarm bells anywhere
Paul
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Paul »

http://m.bdnews24.com/en/detail/bangladesh/955028

Kiwis are collaborating with Indian intelligence on penetrating BD DGFI per this article.

On this forum, we need to pay more attention to SDRE DGFI than spend reams of posts on Kim Phiby or KGB activities in Egypt.

East India is the trouble spot for India for the next 20 years and we have to understand what is going on there.....one reason why I spent time trying to understand Nepal happenings
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Paul »

Snowden files: GCSB’s secret Bangladesh spy mission
16th April 2015
By Nicky Hager, Ryan Gallagher, New Zealand Herald
Secret documents reveal New Zealand has shared intelligence collected through covert surveillance with Bangladesh despite that country’s security forces being implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture and other human rights abuses.

The documents shine light on the major role played by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in electronic spying operations conducted in the small South Asian nation.

The surveillance has been used to aid the United States as part of its global counter-terrorism campaign, launched after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The New Zealand Herald analysed the documents in collaboration with US news website The Intercept, which obtained them from the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The Bangladesh spying is revealed in an April 2013 US National Security Agency (NSA) report about its relationship with New Zealand. In a section called “What Partner Provides to NSA”, it says “GCSB has been the lead for the intelligence community on the Bangladesh CT [Counter-Terrorism] target since 2004.” The GCSB provides “one of the key SIGINT [signals intelligence] sources of [Bangladesh counter-terrorism] reporting to the US intelligence community.”

Read the full documents here:

The intelligence gathered by the GCSB staff was also being forwarded to foreign intelligence agencies, including Bangladesh’s state intelligence agency. In recent years, human rights groups have issued several reports documenting Bangladeshi intelligence and security agencies’ disregard for international prohibitions on torture and alleged involvement in politically motivated killings. In 2014, a case was filed in the International Criminal Court accusing the Bangladesh Government of committing crimes against humanity.

The GCSB’s surveillance operations in Bangladesh are among the most surprising and obscure yet revealed. Bangladesh barely registers in New Zealand foreign policy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website says: “Relations between New Zealand and Bangladesh remain friendly, although interaction is limited.”

Nonetheless, a New Zealand government source told the Herald that Bangladesh is the main focus of one of the GCSB’s four analysis sections, called ICT, and has been for over a decade. ICT, the Transnational Issues section, was set up in April 2002 in the wake of the September 11 attacks to focus on terrorism threats.

The Bangladesh project appears to have begun in 2003, under Prime Minister Helen Clark, at a time when her Government was receptive to US war-on-terror requests following refusal to join the invasion of Iraq.

The “NSA Relationship with New Zealand” document gives the starting date as 2004. But a NSA officer wrote a briefing paper about the GCSB in December 2003 that noted the GCSB was “contributing to the War on Terrorism by reporting on the activities of Islamic extremists in Asia and the Pacific region and specifically taking on Bangladesh and Burma.”

Another intelligence document from 2009 gives detail on how the Bangladesh spying occurs. The document states that staff within a GCSB unit named “OCR”, the Signals Intelligence Development Team, are involved in planning the surveillance. It appears the GCSB does not directly conduct the interception and instead uses surveillance equipment provided by an allied agency.

The 2009 document reveals that there is a special collection site in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, for eavesdropping on local communications. New Zealand does not have a high commission or any other official building in Bangladesh in which to hide a covert listening post. The Snowden documents suggest the Dhaka unit may be located inside a US-controlled building with operations overseen by the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The 2009 report said that “Internal GSM [mobile phone] collection is continuing with the extension of the Dhaka F6 environment survey.” F6 is a designator used to refer to a joint CIA/NSA unit known as the Special Collection Service, which eavesdrops on communications from US embassies and consulates.

The report said the covert listening post was mostly being used by the GCSB to intercept mobile phone calls – “site collection resources are in the main being used for the collection of productive GSM emitters”.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the spy agency was “dragging” New Zealand into human rights abuses, and the Government should stop providing intelligence assistance to Bangladesh.

“All three key anti-terrorism government agencies in Bangladesh have been implicated in horrendous human rights abuses, so it is impossible to guarantee that the information passed on did not lead to innocent people being killed or tortured,” Dr Norman said.

“John Key has always justified the GCSB on the basis that it is there to protect the good guys, but these documents reveal that it is helping the bad guys.

“Most New Zealanders would find this deplorable and agree that this is not within the mandate of the GCSB.”

The intelligence gathered by the GCSB staff was being forwarded to foreign intelligence agencies. The April 2013 NSA report said the “GCSB’s Bangladesh CT [counter terrorism] reporting provided unique intelligence leads that have enabled successful CT operations by Bangladesh State Intelligence Service, CIA and India over the past year”.

The specific Bangladesh “State Intelligence Service” referred to is not named in the document. Bangladesh has several agencies that focus on gathering intelligence, primarily including the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the National Security Intelligence agency (NSI), and the police Special Branch. The lead agency that executes the country’s counter-terrorism operations is the Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB.

Each of these agencies has been accused of involvement in severe human rights abuses over a sustained number of years.

In 2008, for instance, Human Rights Watch alleged that the Special Branch headquarters in Dhaka’s Maghbazar neighbourhood was used to torture detainees.

In 2010, a trade union activist accused the NSI of arresting, torturing, and threatening to kill him. The same activist was found dead in unexplained circumstances two years later, his toes and feet broken, legs and body battered and bruised, and his legs apparently pierced with a sharp object.

Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies and main police and security forces co-operate closely. Most notably, they work together as part of a notorious centre called the Taskforce for Interrogation Cell, located inside a compound in northern Dhaka that is controlled by the RAB unit.

In 2011, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported the interrogation cell was used as a place to extract information and confessions from “enemies of the state”.

It was described as a “torture centre” used for “deliberate and systematic” mistreatment of detainees. One British man detained there in 2009 on terrorism-related charges was allegedly hooded and strapped to a chair while a drill was driven into his right shoulder and hip.

Other torture methods used by Bangladeshi authorities, according to Human Rights Watch, have included “burning with acid, hammering of nails into toes … electric shocks, beatings on legs with iron rods, beating with batons on backs after sprinkling sand on them, ice torture, finger piercing, and mock executions”.

In February last year, the US Government suspended its own support for the RAB, citing “gross violation of human rights” committed by the force’s members. The same month, a case against the Bangladesh Government was lodged in the International Criminal Court, accusing the country’s officials of waging a brutal campaign of “widespread or systematic” torture, killings, and other human rights abuses that amounted to crimes against humanity.

It is unclear from any of the NSA documents whether New Zealand sought or received any assurances from Bangladesh over how intelligence it shared could be used for detentions and interrogations, or whether there was any effective oversight of how the country’s agencies ultimately used the information.

But the documents do reveal that the GCSB adopted a dual-edged approach, and while it was sharing the intelligence with Bangladesh’s security agencies, it was secretly monitoring the internal communications of the RAB force.

A 2009 GCSB report said the “F6″ eavesdropping unit was “able to place on collection dedicated RAB private voice communications to and from RAB HQ to various RAB units. Also seen in collection was … a test of the videoconferencing system from RAB HQ to RAB-3 HQ”.

The report contained an intercepted image of an RAB officer speaking on the force’s internal video conference system. It said that “RAB has been an active target for the GCSB in the past and this information could well be of high interest for future operations if the domestic security situation in Bangladesh were to deteriorate”.

Bangladesh has low levels of terrorist activity compared with many countries in that region, is remote from New Zealand and there is no suggestion that the GCSB work was in response to any direct threat to New Zealand.

• Nicky Hager is a New Zealand-based investigative journalist and an internationally recognised expert on surveillance since the publication of his ground-breaking book Secret Power in 1996.

• Ryan Gallagher is an award-winning Scottish journalist whose work at United States news organisation The Intercept is focused on government surveillance, technology and civil liberties.

Read the latest documents, and earlier stories in this series, at: tinyurl.com/nzhsnowdenfiles.
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

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http://www.nickyhager.info/snowden-reve ... oss-globe/

Snowden revelations: NZ’s spy reach stretches across globe
11th March 2015
New Zealand Herald, by Nicky Hager and Ryan Gallagher

New Zealand spies on Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan, South American nations and a range of other countries to help fill gaps in worldwide surveillance operations by the United States National Security Agency (NSA), documents show.
The documents, obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and shared with the Herald, highlight discrepancies between secret and official foreign policy adopted by New Zealand. They expose the extent of Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) contributions to the Five Eyes, a surveillance alliance New Zealand is part of alongside the US, Britain, Canada, and Australia.
In April 2013, weeks before Snowden finished gathering NSA documents and flew to Hong Kong, an NSA officer completed a top-secret review outlining what the GCSB contributes within the US-led alliance.
The Herald analysed this document and others in collaboration with US news website The Intercept, which obtained them from Snowden.
The NSA profile of the GCSB reveals the New Zealand organisation is running spying operations against 20 or more countries, including friendly nations and trading partners.
The eavesdropping stretches from India and Iran in Asia to isolated scientific bases in Antarctica. These countries are listed in the NSA report in a section headed “What Partner Provides to NSA”.
The NSA officer’s review said the GCSB “continues to be especially helpful in its ability to provide NSA ready access to areas and countries … difficult for the US to access”.
It said the “GCSB provides collection on China, Japanese/North Korean/Vietnamese/South American diplomatic communications, South Pacific island nations, Pakistan, India, Iran and Antarctica”.
Collection” means the GCSB conducts active surveillance on these countries and territories. The report also lists French South Pacific territories and Afghanistan as GCSB targets. The document, called “NSA Intelligence Relationship with New Zealand” and given a top-secret classification, was prepared by the NSA’s Country Desk Officer for New Zealand based in the agency’s headquarters in Maryland.
There are three main ways that the GCSB contributes to the NSA’s worldwide surveillance:
Targeting countries using the Waihopai satellite interception base.
Accessing nations’ internal communication networks from covert listening posts hidden in New Zealand embassy and high commission buildings.
By GCSB staff helping to translate and analyse communications intercepted by other Five Eyes agencies.
A typical example of GCSB operations is spying on Vietnamese diplomatic communications. Vietnam has friendly relations with New Zealand and is a growing trading partner. It poses no security or terrorist threat to New Zealand, the traditional explanation for the GCSB given to the public, but it is still on the GCSB spying list. The only conceivable explanation for New Zealand spying on Vietnam is as part of broader NSA-driven strategy.
The GCSB surveillance of an unnamed Asean country is described in an NSA document dated March 2013. The document, a monthly report written by the NSA liaison officer at the GCSB, said “GCSB has a Warriorpride capability that can collect against an Asean target”.
This means GCSB had been spying either on Vietnam, the only Asean nation named on the April 2013 target list, or some other member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. New Zealand professes to have close and friendly relations with all the Asean nations.
According to Snowden documents, the Warriorpride system uses malware to infect and spy on computers, and to monitor cellphones including iPhones and Androids. The NSA report said the GCSB’s “authorisation to use the NSA system had expired” – meaning the Warriorpride spying in the Asean country had been occurring previously but not at that time – and “GCSB is working to reestablish it”.
The NSA monthly report said the GCSB was “also working on the data transfer mechanism from GCSB to NSA” for the project. In other words, the operation against the Asean country was being conducted for the NSA, with the intercepted communications sent to the US agency for analysis. Asked why the NSA needed New Zealand to conduct Warriorpride operations, an NSA spokesperson told the Herald: “We do not ask foreign partners to undertake any intelligence activity that the US Government would be legally prohibited from undertaking itself … The National Security Agency will not comment on specific, alleged foreign intelligence activities.”
The April 2013 profile of the GCSB includes a passage on the US agency’s perception of its New Zealand ally. The NSA officer wrote: “The GCSB highly values its relationship with NSA” and the GCSB would “continue to seek and support mutually beneficial efforts that demonstrate its commitment to national and international security through its foreign partnership”. The NSA saw the GCSB as a reliable supporter, ready and willing to “demonstrate its commitment”.
Surprisingly, four of the countries listed as GCSB targets are US intelligence allies. Five Eyes is a highly structured alliance. The NSA is the First Party; Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are Second Parties; and, according to another Snowden document, 33 other countries are Third Parties. Of these, the GCSB spies on India, Pakistan, France (South Pacific territories) and Japan. The GCSB is following the US and British agencies’ policy of freely spying on the Third Party intelligence allies.
A more predictable-sounding target is Iran, a major target of US intelligence agencies for decades. But in public, New Zealand has had a distinctly different long-term foreign policy on Iran than the US and Britain. Iran is a valuable export market us and New Zealand has not joined in sanctions and confrontation with its Government. It appears a different policy has been applied in secret to intelligence operations, with the GCSB targeting Iran presumably on behalf of the allies.
The GCSB spies on other trading partners, such as unspecified Latin American countries and Japan. This similarly flies in the face of official foreign policies.
GCSB monitoring of nations working in Antarctica also sits uneasily with New Zealand’s official policy as an Antarctic Treaty nation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade says “involvement in Antarctica offers New Zealand the opportunity to play a constructive and influential role in a region … which is managed according to principles of international cooperation”.
The monitoring is done by intercepting Antarctic satellite links at the Waihopai base. About 20 nations have year-round bases in Antarctica, most of which use the same few satellite links.
The “South Pacific island nations” targeted, as an earlier Herald story showed, include Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Overall, the GCSB mainly targets foreign countries, leaving intelligence operations within New Zealand to the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (with occasional assistance from the GCSB).
The April 2013 report also lists “What NSA provides to the Partner”, showing what the GCSB gains from its Five Eyes membership. It says just: “NSA provides raw traffic, processing, and reporting on targets of mutual interest, in addition to technical advice and equipment loans.”
Surveillance and analysis are not the only GCSB commitments to the intelligence alliance. GCSB also contributes to alliance code-breaking projects and “network discovery”. The latter involves intelligence staff finding and profiling overseas communications networks to identify ones they may want to monitor.
The Snowden documents include a 2012 NSA slideshow on its “Auroragold” project with a world map recording the Five Eyes’ success at identifying communications networks in each country.
The map records 100 per cent success discovering networks in the Solomon Islands and Cook Islands, 57 per cent identifying networks in Fiji, 33 per cent in Samoa, 30 per cent in Tonga and so on. It is likely that this was GCSB work, fed into the NSA surveillance-planning system.
Auroragold is run by an NSA team of analysts and programmers who have assembled a database of mobile network operators and networks, and then worked on “target development” against the mobile networks.
The GCSB’s network discovery staff likewise study communications networks in the GCSB’s areas of responsibility. A July 2009 GCSB report declared: “Increased collaboration across GCSB Units and Directorates, and between Five Eyes partners, within a dynamic communications environment, is making a significant difference in the understanding of networks, and potentially our capability to exploit those networks.”
The minutes of a Five Eyes planning meeting in June 2009 said: “GCSB is establishing their first Network Analysis team in October 2009,” with an officer from the GCSB’s Australian sister agency posted to New Zealand to lead the new team.
“The new team will initially be focused on access development and is aimed at proving the utility of Network Analysis … which can then increase support to Stateroom [embassy-based listening posts] and CNE [Computer Network Exploitation] realms.”
Paul
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by Paul »

To defuse the BD time bomb, DGFI and Bangladesh Rifles has be reoriented with South Asia centric thinking. BDR is more anti India than even the army
rkhanna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by rkhanna »

This NZ spying stuff is Echelon legacy. Same Mission different name. Not like Regional Intellgence in these countries are unaware not to take counter measurs.

@Uranium. Uranium smugling from mines in Andhra, Jharkhad, etc is rampant with a deep Maoist- political nexus facilitating it. In 2008 4Kgs were intercepted on the nepal border and 2010 (i thnk) 1 kg was interceptd in shillong i think.
sum
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by sum »

Was this ever posted here?

A long read on actual capabilities of Chinese and Indian intel on each other:
Why India And China Must Strengthen Their Espionage Capabilities
China’s spy service network is widespread with hundreds of thousands of staff in several different agencies and more outside the intelligence services. The data provided is mostly useless, and if useful, often ignored. India’s spy services are smaller but it has some outstanding agents who carry out the bulk of the useful work. These exceptional agents have, by themselves, justified the budgets of the entire intelligence network by serving India’s national interests at critical moments. But India does not have an effective team focussed on China. Meanwhile, China has not devoted resources to India – its government accepts that it lacks detailed intelligence on India but believes there is no need to assign more resources.

China invests more in espionage than India, but its effectiveness is overstated in Western media and by foreign militaries. Much of the intelligence obtained by Chinese spying hits the pockets of foreign companies rather than directly helping China’s defence strategy, but some is of national security significance such as the collection of the US government personnel data in May 2015.
PLA Intelligence is expected to track the order of battle of the Indian Army, its strategies, location, and profiles of commanders. This is not difficult since much information is in public domain but the difficulty lies in getting “first and more” – getting the information before it becomes public, and getting more information than becomes public. However, PLA Intelligence is not bothering to achieve “first and more”, believing that the Indian military’s secrecy is so lax that little of importance could avoid becoming public knowledge.

The task of PLA Intelligence also covers terrain assessment, identification of command/control centres, plotting vulnerable areas and points, profiling equipment and counter-intelligence. This kind of information cannot only come from public sources, so the PLA has Military Reconnaissance Units (MRUs) in border areas. SIGINT is particularly important because HUMINT operations are so difficult against India.
Recent cases of Chinese espionage in India show just how difficult it is. Pema Tsering was arrested in 2013 in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s base. He was an ineffective agent. Tsering had been jailed while serving in the Chinese armed forces and was released by the Chinese when he agreed to spy on the Dalai Lama’s group, but he was then recruited and paid by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s main intelligence agency. Wang Qing was arrested in Dimapur in 2011. She flew to Kolkata from Kunming on a tourist visa as an executive of a Chinese timber company (she should have been on a business visa – even the cover was executed clumsily) and allegedly held a meeting with a Naga insurgent leader. She was deported from India.
The honey-trap technique is commonly used by Chinese intelligence, whether from the MSS or from the PLA. The encounter must be made to appear genuine, which increases in difficulty the more important the target. One method of reducing this difficulty is by turning a party to a genuine liaison into an amateur agent. This is easier than it sounds, since the purpose of honey-trapping is usually to provide a one-off opportunity to bug an apartment or to photograph documents. RAW has been the victim of such operations: its low point in China was in 2008 when its station chief, Uma Mishra, was recalled for a bungled investigation into a honey-trap case involving one of her staffers.

The Embassy reported that the staffer had been marked by two different Chinese agents and had his apartment bugged. These Chinese HUMINT projects have yielded little and are difficult to arrange. Cyber-espionage is easier. China is indulging in large scale cyber espionage using an army of hackers, drawn from military, intelligence and business. The PLA’s organisation is usually considered stove-piped, but in cyber-warfare it is not. It now links all service branches via a common ICT platform capable of being accessed at many command levels and has created new departments to service its cyber warfare agenda.
RAW does not have the adequate number of agents who are not of Indian ethnicity (just as China has few non-Han agents). It has scant cover for operations in China since so few Indian companies are active in China. The exception is the Tibetan ethnic group. According to the Indian press, China press-gangs Tibetan refugees in Nepal to spy on India, and it is true that a few ethnic Tibetans have been caught spying for China (such as Pema Tsering). But there are far more engaged in spying on China. There are over 100,000 Tibetans in India; they are politically motivated, and ethnically and linguistically they blend in with Chinese Tibetans. They are rarely caught.

One agent gave an account of his activities to Indian media. His ethnicity is unknown –a Sikh-sounding name ‘Raghav Singh’ was given but this is not his real name – and he described observing Chinese military activity in October 2012. He and his colleague claimed to have been shot at by the PLA and described escaping through a pine forest, where they were lost for three days before reaching base camp “with a great piece of intelligence”. Ethnic Tibetans from the region close to the Chinese border are employed by Indian intelligence.
Apart from the lack of detailed intelligence on China’s political attitudes and scant ground intelligence, there are gaps in India’s knowledge of China’s capability in the border areas. For example, India is unsure of the locations of DF-21 missiles. The Indian government also often exaggerates the threat from China. In 2005, the Indian government conceded that its own reports of China turning the Coco Islands in Burma into a naval base were incorrect. And China’s huge construction projects in Gilgit-Baltistan (a region of Kashmir) need to be watched in greater details.
Yet China is a long way from having this capability. One India expert in China pointed out that Chinese intelligence has very few India specialists. They focus on Japan and the US, and then Europe. He himself does not speak Hindi, and yet is one of China’s premier experts on India – making him a living example of the lack of specialism. Relying on military intelligence alone is no substitute for a functional and effective civilian intelligence networks.

The two countries are thus in a difficult situation; their size and proximity make it inevitable and necessary that they compete, cooperate, and share, but their ignorance has led them to miss opportunities to profit from each other’s experience, wealth and talents.
rkhanna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by rkhanna »

^^ the above article misses the biggest asset of China. Pakistan. ISI/MI agent penetration in India is fairly deep and sophisticated and Politically they will bend over backwards to please the chinese. So why should China cultivate costly resources of its own?

Secondly. India has a pretty decent sized ethinc chinese population in India (Cal,Mum) who can be leveraged into working for the security services. Not to mention A large part of our population while cannot pass for ethnic chinese can easily pass for nationals other south east asian countries and utilized as such inside CHinese borders.
sum
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by sum »

rkhanna wrote:^^ the above article misses the biggest asset of China. Pakistan. ISI/MI agent penetration in India is fairly deep and sophisticated and Politically they will bend over backwards to please the chinese. So why should China cultivate costly resources of its own?

Secondly. India has a pretty decent sized ethinc chinese population in India (Cal,Mum) who can be leveraged into working for the security services. Not to mention A large part of our population while cannot pass for ethnic chinese can easily pass for nationals other south east asian countries and utilized as such inside CHinese borders.
Actually, the article mentions the same and how Chinese feel that the info gathered via TSP suffices for their needs but somehow, they werent satisfied with the results:
Third, while Pakistan and India’s spy war is facilitated because their most popular languages, Hindi and Urdu, are very similar, and their majority ethnicities are similar in appearance, the Chinese generally look unlike Indians and speak a language which is unlike Hindi. For this reason, China’s Ministry of State Security asks Pakistan’s ISI to share its Human-gathered Intelligence (“HUMINT”) in exchange for other information gathered by China. This has not proved very successful for China, although Pakistan has benefitted from Chinese financial support and for information gathered by China’s hackers.
rkhanna
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Re: Intelligence and National Security Discussion

Post by rkhanna »

ahh. thanks.. Thats what i get for skimming quickly
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