AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – About 300,000 Internet users in Iran have been spied on last month by one or several hackers who stole security certificates from a Dutch IT firm, a report presented by the Dutch government said on Monday.
By on 16/09/2011
7 September 2011
Last updated at 14:20 ET
Nozette was accused of seeking millions of dollars to sell classified information
A former government scientist charged with attempting to sell technology secrets to Israel has confessed to one count of attempted espionage.
Stewart Nozette is expected to serve a sentence of 13 years in prison after making a plea deal with prosecutors.
He has been in jail since his arrest in 2009 after a sting operation by an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.
By on 16/09/2011
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 (UPI) — U.S. supporters of Israel and at least one member of Congress were recorded on FBI wiretaps of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, a blogger reported.
In an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, Richard Silverstein provided a motive for the extraordinary secrecy surrounding the prosecution in a Maryland federal court of Shamai Leibowitz.
Leibowitz, an FBI translator, was sentenced to 20 months in prison last year for leaking classified information to Silverstein, who writes a blog called Tikum Olam, named after a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”
In his first interview about the case, Silverstein said he received some 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls and what seemed to be Israeli Embassy conversations.
In one of the conversations, Israeli officials discussed their concern that they were being monitored.
The U.S. government routinely eavesdrops on some embassies inside the United States but intelligence collection against allies, especially one as close as Israel, is a delicate matter.
Silverstein said Leibowitz gave him the documents because of concern about Israel’s aggressive efforts to influence Congress and fears that Israel might strike nuclear facilities in Iran.
By on 16/09/2011
It’s sure to be a proud day over at the Associated Press. The CIA has launched an internal investigation into whether it broke the law when spying on U.S. Muslims in its close collaboration with the New York City Police Department. The anti-terrorism program was the subject of an 8-month long investigation by the AP, which found that the NYPD “dispatched undercover officers into ethnic communities to monitor daily life and scrutinized more than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.” Today, the CIA’s new director David Petraeus said a CIA adviser at the NYPD wants “to make sure we are doing the right thing.”
Critics of the program, such as police reporter Len Levitt, accused the program of targeting “virtually every level of Muslim life in New York City, from cafes to grammar schools” without always having “specific tips about wrongdoing.” Still, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, says the privacy of Americans was not violated by the CIA-NYPD partnership. Whether the investigation will lead to anything more than an investigation is an open question. Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin, for one, isn’t optimistic. “Good to know that the CIA will let us know whether the CIA broke the law.”
By on 16/09/2011
London, Sept 2 (ANI): A UK body has warned employers that they could end up being sued for discrimination if they use websites like Facebook to spy on the private lives of their workers.
Acas, the body that helps improve relationships with workers, issued a new guide that urges employers not to be “heavy-handed” by penalising staff for unprofessional comments on websites.
It has also warned employers about the risks of “Googling” potential recruits and using any personal information gleaned from the Internet such as a person’s religious beliefs.
The guide, which took nine months to compile, has been written in response to what Acas describes as the “growing problem” posed by social networking websites.
John Taylor, Acas’ chief executive, advised bosses to be cautious about reprimanding employees for comments they make on social networking websites.
“If an employer is too tough, they need to consider the potential impact of any negative publicity. Heavy-handed monitoring can cause bad feeling and be time consuming,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
“A manager wouldn’t follow an employee down the pub to check on what he or she said to friends about their day at work. Just because they can do something like this online, doesn’t mean they should,” he stated.
Acas has advised bosses to draft their own social media policy in order to avoid staff confusion about what is and isn’t allowed online.
Taylor also said employees needed to be cautious about the information they publish online.
“Online conduct should not differ from offline conduct,” he added.
Employees should assume that everything they say on the Internet could be made public, and should think whether they want their colleagues or boss to read it.
“They might not mean it, but what they post could end up being seen by billions of people worldwide,” he added. (ANI)
By on 04/09/2011