A political scandal is brewing in Germany over revelations that a state security agency has been spying on members of the Die Linke leftist party, which has roots in East German communism.
It has emerged that almost a third of its 76 MPs are being monitored legally for evidence of anti-democratic activities. Die Linke is crying foul, but the ruling CDU is less critical.
Senior party member Hans-Petr Uhl said: “The problem with the Left Party is they don’t clearly distance themselves from groups who are ready to resort to violence and who are against the constitution.”
The extent of the spying by the Constitutional Protection Office was revealed by Der Spiegal magazine. The body’s role is to uphold democratic institutions such as an independent judiciary and free elections. But Die Linke says it has gone too far.
Its parliamentary party leader, Gregor Gysi, said: “The Constitutional Protection Office hasn’t picked up on the fact the world has changed. They haven’t learned that there were eight murders by right-wing terrorists. They haven’t figured out that the Cold War is over.”
The affair has sparked a fierce debate on the Constitutional Protection Office’s role, legality and relevance in the modern Germany.
ANCHORAGE — U.S. Army officials could decide in February when to schedule a court hearing for an Alaska-based soldier charged with attempted espionage.
Army officials say 22-year-old Spc. William Colton Millay of Owensboro, Ky., transmitted national-defense information to someone he believed was a foreign-intelligence agent.
Officials have declined to say what country Millay believed the so-called agent represented. Millay, who faces life imprisonment, was observed during the espionage investigation and no damage occurred, officials said.
Millay, a military police officer, also is charged with communicating defense information, issuing false statements, failing to obey regulations and soliciting a fellow service member at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage to get classified material.
The Army’s equivalent of a preliminary hearing may be scheduled next month and could lead to a general court-martial, similar to a criminal trial in the civilian court system. But it’s too soon to know when the preliminary hearing actually will be held, Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll said.
Millay’s October arrest at the base stemmed from an investigation by the Army, FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He is being held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Tacoma.
When Millay was charged, Army officials said he “had access to the information through the course of his normal duties both stateside and on a previous deployment, and although the information was unclassified, Millay believed that it could be used to the advantage of a foreign nation.”
Officials are not saying what time period was involved, but Millay’s attorney, Steve Karns, of Dallas, said the allegations cover 2011.
Millay was assigned to a combat tour in Iraq from December 2009 to July 2010, and he served in Korea, according to information provided by the Army.
Millay has not entered a plea in the case but says he is innocent, Karns said. “He’s not depressed. He’s very cordial, polite and relaxed.” The upcoming preliminary proceeding is called an Article 32 hearing. An investigating officer then will recommend to the commander of Millay’s brigade any of several options, including to dismiss, alter or change the charges, or proceed with the original charges, likely through a general court martial.
The brigade commander then would make a recommendation to the commander of U.S. Army Alaska, who would have the final say in whether to prosecute or drop the charges.
If Millay is court-martialed, he would get to choose whether the case is handled by a military judge or a military panel.
Six former and current employees of the Food and Drug Administration say the federal agency spied on their private e-mail correspondence after they attempted to blow the whistle on agency practices of approving medical devices that posed a risk to patients.
The employees, all of them scientists or doctors, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking an injunction to halt the surveillance, according to the Washington Post.
The plaintiffs say the agency spied on correspondence they sent through personal Gmail accounts that they accessed from government computers and took screenshots of their computer desktops after they began corresponding with congressional staffers about their concerns.
Although employee computers displayed a warning at startup that they have “no reasonable expectation of privacy” over any data passing through or stored on the computer, and that the government can intercept data at any time for any lawful government purpose, the employees say the feds violated their constitutional rights by monitoring their personal accounts and that their correspondence with Congress was legally protected.
The plaintiffs were all working for the agency’s Office of Device Evaluation when they voiced concerns to Congress and the media about radiological devices the agency was about to approve, despite evidence that the devices had missed signs of breast cancer during testing. They also expressed concern about an ultrasound device that they said could malfunction while monitoring pregnant women in labor, risking harm to the fetus, and about several devices for colon cancer screening that they feared could give healthy patients cancer because they used excessive doses of radiation.
According to the Post, in the case of at least one device — a digital device for breast cancer screening — a team of experts had recommended against approving the device three times. Yet a senior manager approved it in 2008.
Of the six plaintiffs, two were fired, two did not have their contracts renewed, and two suffered harassment and were passed over for promotions after they began warning Congress and the media about the agency’s approval process.
There have been so many examples of cyber espionage that it is now the norm to just accept that it is rampant. MI5 in the UK, the German Chancellery, Titan Rain, GhostNet, the Pentagon email hack, Google Aurora – all are examples of cyber espionage, most on the part of China. But to date no evidence has been put forth other than claims from the injured parties.
Thanks to reporting from Anthony Freed of InfoSecIsland we have learned over the past few days that a group of Indian hackers that align themselves with Anonymous (the catch all movement for hackers these days)  have breached several Indian government servers and uncovered gold. If taken at face value their hacking has revealed
1. The Indian government has source code for Symantec’s AV software, albeit of 2006 vintage.
2. The Indian government is strong arming cell phone manufacturers to provide back doors into their handsets.
3. The Indian government is in possession of confidential internal communications from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).
And now in a new development we learn from Freed:
“Now YamaTough has provided potentially damning evidence that the Indian government is actively engaged in espionage efforts targeting not only the USCC, but potentially thousands of US government networks, ranging from those of federal agencies to systems used by state and municipal entities.”
YamaTough is part of The Lords of Dharmaraja hacking group in India.
You can see the difference between these unfolding events and previous claims of cyber espionage. The exfiltration of terabytes of data on the US Joint Strike Fighter or last March’s theft of “24,000 documents” has never been proved. They are just claims from admittedly credible sources. Thanks to a hacker group in India, InfosecIsland has source material that demonstrates wide spread cyber espionage on the part of the Indian Government which the hackers may publish.
This is a historically significant development for those of us who track cyber espionage.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. intelligence agencies have unique capabilities that can help protect American companies from cyber espionage and attack, but it will probably take a crisis to change laws to allow that type of cooperation, a former spy chief said on Monday.
Intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency are authorized to operate abroad but generally are restricted from working within the United States,
“Until we have a banking collapse or electric power goes off in the middle of a snowstorm for eight weeks, or something of that magnitude, we’re likely just to talk about it and not do much,” Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate have separate efforts under way on legislation aimed at improving cybersecurity.
The House intelligence committee in December approved a bill that would allow U.S. spy agencies to share cyber-threat intelligence with private companies. Some critics worry that could lead to government surveillance of private data.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the Senate will take up “comprehensive” cybersecurity legislation this year.
“There are unique things that the government can do. For example code-breaking. The private sector out there does not do code-breaking,” McConnell, a former National Security Agency director, told Reuters in an interview.
“How would you harness that capability and then make it available to the private sector in a way that their infrastructure could be better protected?”
A U.S. intelligence report last year pointed the finger at China and Russia as using cyber espionage to steal U.S. trade and technology secrets.
McConnell gives an example that if NSA, which conducts electronic eavesdropping to detect foreign threats, observed a cyberthreat against the U.S. private sector, “NSA is powerless to do a thing other than issue a report.”
He said in the area of cyber exploitation, such as reading an adversary’s mail without leaving fingerprints, the United States, Britain and Russia are probably the best.
The United States also has the ability to conduct cyber attacks, which would be to degrade or destroy an adversary’s computerized system, and has used it.
Has the United States used its cyber attack capability? “Yes,” McConnell said. Did it work? “Yes.”
McConnell, now vice chairman at the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm in charge of cyber activities, did not elaborate on the use of a cyber attack capability.
“Do we have the ability to attack, degrade or destroy? Sure. If you do that, what are the consequences? That is the question,” he said.
McConnell said the priority is to protect the country’s critical infrastructure such as the financial sector, the electric power grid and transportation from cyber attack and stop the theft of intellectual property through cyber espionage.
“There will be a thousand voices on what is the right thing to do,” and it will probably require a crisis to reach consensus, he said.
“All I’m arguing is the government has unique capability, figure out a way to harness the capability in the defense of the nation.”
Six former and current employees of the Food and Drug Administration say the federal agency spied on their private e-mail correspondence after they attempted to blow the whistle on agency practices of approving medical devices that posed a risk to patients.