Lawyers who are made privy to the identity of police phone bugging and surveillance targets will face up to two years’ jail if they disclose the information, the Victorian government says.
The minister responsible for the establishment of an anti-corruption commission, Andrew McIntosh, has released the legislation setting up public interest monitors (PIMs).
The PIM, and his or her deputies, will attend court and tribunal hearings where police or Office of Police Integrity (OPI) representatives apply for permission to tap someone’s phone or track them using surveillance devices.
They will also appear at warrant applications made by the yet to be established Independent Broadbased Anti-Corruption Commission.
The draft law follows Ombudsman George Brouwer’s finding earlier this month that there was an accountability gap regarding telephone intercepts in Victoria.
He recommended the government develop measures to allow the merit of telecommunication intercepts to be assessed.
Mr McIntosh told the parliament the PIMs would be lawyers who would have to act independently and not be employed by the commonwealth, the state or the Office of Public Prosecutions.
They would attend application hearings in the courts where they would have the right to question warrant applicants and have access to a copy of the application and any affidavit.
If a PIM disclosed the sensitive information to others they would face two years’ jail.
Mr McIntosh said last year alone Victoria Police and the OPI made 424 applications for telecommunications interception warrants and all had been granted.
It was a similar situation with surveillance device warrants.
“Covert investigation and coercive powers, such as surveillance devices (and) telecommunications interceptions … are among the most intrusive powers available to integrity and law enforcement bodies in Victoria,” he said.
“Strong accountability measures should exist for the use of such significant powers.”
The legislation will be debated in the lower house next month.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani officials on Monday rejected a German newspaper report that the country’s secret service spied on German security forces in Afghanistan.
Without citing its sources, mass-selling weekly Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday that Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency warned its interior ministry that Pakistan had spied on 180 German police officers deployed in Afghanistan to train locals.
A Pakistani foreign ministry official, who asked not to be identified, described the report as “ridiculous” and “useless”. Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said the report was not worth commenting on.
Bild am Sonntag said private telephone calls, messages to the German interior ministry, military mission orders and lists of police officer names had been intercepted, raising fears sensitive information could end up in the hands of the Taliban.
The United States has long suspected Pakistan, or elements within the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of supporting militant groups in order to increase its influence in Afghanistan, particularly after NATO troops leave in 2014.
Islamabad has come under particularly intense pressure to fight militancy since U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden in May in a Pakistani town, where he had apparently been living for years.
Admiral Mike Mullen said before retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month that a militant group that had attacked U.S. targets in Afghanistan was a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence.
The German interior ministry told Reuters the BND suspected a German email had been intercepted but could not give confirmation. The ministry added it was not aware of any comprehensive interception of German police data.
The BND declined to comment on the report.
Pakistan says it has sacrificed more than any other country that joined the U.S. war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
An Emory University law student who was arrested months ago at a demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, accused of being a spy and locked in an Egyptian jail for the summer returned home to New York City on Saturday as part of a prisoner swap that also freed 25 Egyptians held in Israel.
Ilan Grapel, 27, arrived at Kennedy Airport looking tired and thin, but wearing a huge smile.
He said that after spending more than four months behind bars in Egypt, he had a new appreciation for the American legal system.
“All of a sudden, the Bill of Rights is not something for the history books,” he told reporters gathered in the terminal.
Hackers reportedly used an off-the-shelf computer attack created in China to compromise the computers of at least 48 companies, including in the chemical and defense industries — an attack described as being similar to the notorious Stuxnet virus, if not as severe.
The goal of the attacks, reported Monday by security software company Symantec, “appears to be to collect intellectual property such as design documents, formulas, and manufacturing processes.”
The purpose: “industrial espionage, collecting intellectual property for competitive advantage.”
Symantec dubbed the attack “Nitro” and said a total of 29 companies in the chemical industry were targeted, in addition to 19 in other sectors, starting in late July. Among the companies were some that develop materials used primarily in military vehicles.
The infected computers spanned the globe, from the United States to Denmark to Saudi Arabia and Japan. Symantec didn’t identify the successfully attacked companies by name.
Emails carrying a rogue file were used to compromise the companies networks, Symantec said. The messages purported to contain a necessary security update, but instead, unsuspecting users were opening a self-extracting executable file containing PoisonIvy, which Symantec described as a “common backdoor Trojan developed by a Chinese speaker.”
From there, the attackers went to work finding out all they could about the computers in the workgroup or domain.
“Nitro wasn’t at the level of sophistication of a Stuxnet,” Jeff Wilhelm, a senior researcher with Symantec’s security response, told Computerworld. “But there are similarities with other advanced threats.” He gave the attack’s narrow focus as one example.
Symantec traced the attacks to a man in his 20s living in the Hebei region of China, though it is unclear how deeply he may have been involved in the cyberattack and whether anyone else was involved.
Geographic location of infected computers in the Symantec report.
(Credit: Symantec)
Hackers targeted about 50 organizations–including chemical and defense companies–in a global wave of cyber espionage attacks this summer, Symantec said in a report released today.
The goal apparently was to steal intellectual property such as design documents, formulas, and manufacturing processes. “The purpose of the attacks appears to be industrial espionage, collecting intellectual property for competitive advantage,” according to the report. (PDF)
Meanwhile, French nuclear power group Areva was reportedly targeted in a cyber attack in September.
