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.
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.”
The Canadian military has evacuated staff from the Halifax naval intelligence facility where a sailor accused of espionage was working before his arrest.
The Department of National Defence said authorities are conducting a security sweep of HMCS Trinity to see whether this confidential communication centre has been compromised.
Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle was charged Jan. 16 under Canada’s Security of Information Act and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Experts are scanning Trinity, a naval communications and surveillance centre, for evidence of espionage or mechanisms designed to leak information to outsiders.
“The place is being investigated …. [for] software, hardware, bugs, the works,” a military official said.
Trinity staff have been temporarily moved a few kilometres away.
“As part of a normal and prudent business contingency plan, personnel belonging to elements of HMCS Trinity have been relocated to 12 Wing Shearwater for an undetermined period of time as a security precaution,” said Captain Karina Holder, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, who commands the military police.
The military declined to say how many people work at Trinity, a unit that gathers and analyzes confidential and secret information for the Royal Canadian Navy. Perhaps most critically in the eyes of Canada’s international partners, it receives confidential defence information from allies.
Separately, Monday, the naval officer at the centre of sensational espionage charges lost his lawyer in a hastily scheduled courtroom appearance. Cameron MacKeen, who would not explain why he was quitting, pledged to assist his former client in finding new counsel.
In the meantime, SLt. Delisle will be represented by legal aid.
The case fell to Mr. MacKeen by chance. He was on duty at the courthouse when the matter arose and he was assigned.
A former reporter, Mr. MacKeen is active in the federal Conservative Party and, according to a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, on personal terms with the powerful Nova Scotia politician.
He would not comment when asked whether these ties were behind his decision to quit.
SLt. Delisle, an intelligence officer, was arrested and charged earlier this month. He stands accused of passing information to a “foreign entity” and is being held in custody locally.
The sailor did not appear in court Monday and was patched in from prison by telephone. He barely spoke, saying little more than “Yes Ma’am” in response to a series of procedural questions.
SLt Delisle’s next appearance, originally set for Jan. 25, has been postponed until Feb. 28. On that day a date for a bail hearing will be set. He will remain in custody until then.
The RCMP alleges that the sailor leaked confidential government information to a foreign entity over a four and a half year period – and as recently as January tried to do so again.
As the charges reverberate across the country, SLt. Delisle’s family and ex-wife are coping with the fallout.
Reached at her home in suburban Ottawa, the sailor’s former spouse said she was “overwhelmed” by the reports.
“Of course, I didn’t know. It was shocking and my head is just reeling with all this news,” Jennifer Lee Delisle said. “We’re just coping. The family … we’re just managing.”
The couple, married in 1997, had four children before separating in April of 2008, according to court documents that cite unspecified “certain differences.” As part of the agreement, the Canadian Forces member assumed the couple’s debts on three credit cards and a consolidated loan.
They divorced in 2010.
The charges surprised many who knew him.
In a brief message to The Globe and Mail, Angelica, the couple’s oldest child, wrote simply: “my father is an amazing dad.”
LONDON – In a rare acknowledgment of espionage reminiscent of the Cold War, a former British government official admitted that a fake rock discovered in 2006 by the Russian FSB secret service in a Moscow park concealed a listening device planted by British spies.
Speaking on a three-part BBC documentary starting Thursday – “Putin, Russia and the West” – Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at the time to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said, “The spy rock was embarrassing, they had us bang to rights. Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose.”
Hidden Russian TV cameras recorded video of the rock and of men handling it. The video was widely broadcast at the time along with footage showing the rock being taken apart to reveal the delicate listening mechanism inside.
The Russian regime waited for some time before claiming publicly that it was a British device. Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a crackdown on several foreign-funded organizations, claiming they were a front for Western intervention in Russia’s internal affairs. A Russian-British diplomatic row followed.
Tony Brenton, British ambassador to Moscow at the time, said in a BBC radio interview Thursday that the rock episode was “a considerable headache.”
“The Russians chose their time carefully and it was politically very damaging,” Brenton said. “It was unfortunate that one of the people involved was also dealing with our relations with
Russian nongovernmental organizations and therefore the Russians were able to use the rock incident to launch accusations against the support we were giving to Russian nongovernmental organizations.”
Brenton added that British-Russian relations were deteriorating at the time and the incident “led us down the route which led us to the Litvinenko murder…to attacks on me personally, to attacks on BP and Shell.”
In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security service officer turned investigative journalist, died in a London hospital of radiation poisoning. His reporting targeted corruption inside the Russian government. In a deathbed statement he accused Putin of being involved in his poisoning.
