CAIRO – A state security court on Thursday sentenced an Egyptian businessman to 25 years in prison for spying for Israel, court officials said.
The sentencing of Tareq Hassan, who owns an export-import firm, followed last week’s arrest in Cairo of a dual Israeli-U.S. national for allegedly spying for Israel. Ilan Grapel was arrested on suspicion of sedition and inciting Egyptians to clash with the country’s military leadership.
Egyptian prosecutors said he was a Mossad agent. His family, however, maintains he was spending the summer in Cairo as an intern at a legal aid group. Israel also denies the 27-year-old Grapel is a spy.
On Thursday, presiding judge Gamaleddin Rushdy also sentenced two Israeli citizens in absentia to 25 years in jail. The two were said by Egyptian prosecutors to be Mossad agents.
Hassan was arrested in August and charged four months later, along with the two Israelis, for attempting to identify telecommunications workers in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who would be willing to spy for Israel. He was also alleged to have passed intelligence gathered by an Israeli agent in Syria to the Israelis.
The prosecutors said he provided intelligence to Israel in exchange for cash.
The court officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said he “preferred not to make comments as long as American-Israeli backpacker Ilan Grapel is still under detention in Cairo.”
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979 but their relationship has been cool. Often, relations between the two Middle Eastern neighbors has become tense over what Cairo sees as Israel’s unwillingness to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians and over similar spy cases.
Cuyahoga County prosecutors charge that a man who’s known in the local entertainment world was entertaining himself in illegal ways that included child pornography.
Steven Barrett has entered a not guilty plea to the charges. Prosecutors say he faces 16 counts related to child pornography and more charges that he spied on two women on different occasions in the shower of his Euclid home.
Hidden Camera Exposed at YMCA
“He had put together a platform behind the shower,” says Colleen Reali, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor. “And he had drilled a peep hole in the bathtub and was watching them and videotaping them while they showered.”
The women found each other through a mutual friend, and went to police together. Authorities executed a search warrant and say they found images of child porn on Barrett’s computer.
Barrett is well-known in the local music and film community. His work reportedly includes helping to book bands and photograph shows.
Prosecutors say Barrett was only viewing images of child porn, and did not create any of the images.
When asked by Fox 8 News if he would like to say anything in his own defense, Barrett said, “I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.”
Barrett referred Fox 8 News to his attorney, whose office says he is out of town on vacation.
Barrett is due in court next week. If convicted on all counts, he could face over a 100 years in prison.
BANGALORE, INDIA: The recent spate of cyber attacks have raised questions about the security of government and corporate computer systems, and the ability of law enforcement to track down hackers.
Here’s a breakdown of the different types of cyber assaults, from “hactivists” to serious criminals.
DISSIDENT HACKERS SEEKING MAXIMUM PUBLICITY
The Lulz Security and Anonymous groups have broken into computer servers to steal data that they publish on the Internet to embarrass their targets. Examples of this include LulzSec hacking into Fox TV’s “X Factor” contestant database, or breaking into FBI affiliate Infraguard and publishing its user base.
So-called hactivists also use distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, in which they get supporters to crash the websites of their targets by overwhelming the servers with traffic. The Anonymous group launched DOS attacks against Visa and MasterCard because the group thought the companies were hostile to Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.
CYBER ATTACKS FOR FINANCIAL GAIN
Primarily based on getting financial information, such as payment card data or bank account details, perpetrators tend to keep their attacks secret because the data is more valuable if victims do not know it has been stolen.
Citigroup disclosed that unknown hackers in May had stolen information from 360,083 credit card accounts in North America, in what was the most significant known direct assault on a financial institution.
These attacks can come from just about anywhere, although Western security experts have said that Russia and China deliberately turn a blind eye to this kind of activity from within their borders, provided it is not targeted domestically.
GOVERNMENT OR STATE-BACKED ATTACKS
Hacking by governments or state-sponsored groups is usually aimed at stealing classified information, such as military secrets or other prized data. Security experts have cited attacks on the International Monetary Fund and Google Inc’s email service as recent examples.
There is often finger-pointing at Russia and China after such attacks, although experts suspect other nations including the United States of using this technique more quietly.
There are also occasional suspected state-backed DDOS attacks, such as on Estonia and Georgia in 2007.
FROM VIRTUAL NETWORKS TO THE REAL WORLD
These are cyber attacks aimed at causing actual physical damage, such as by hacking into industrial computer controls to destroy military assets or public infrastructure.
The Stuxnet virus, which Iran has said was used to attack computers at its Bushehr nuclear reactor, is the only case so far that security experts widely agree fits into this category.
How serendipitous_ Weeks after Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion, Microsoft has also received a patent for technology that lets it eavesdrop on VoIP calls.
Microsoft applied for the patent back in 2009, so it’s unlikely it was already preparing for a Skype acquisition two years later, but perhaps it had in mind similar voice messaging software such as Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications.
The patent, titled “Legal Intercept,” is for an interception software that lets someone surreptitiously record a call on a VoIP network. Microsoft rationalized the patent as a way to answer to government requests for surveillance and wiretapping.
“Sometimes, a government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications between telephone users,” the patent reads.
“Traditional techniques for silently recording telephone communication may not work correctly with VoIP and other network-based communication technology,” it reads. “For example, VoIP may include audio messages transmitted via gaming systems, instant messaging protocols that transmit audio, Skype and Skype-like applications, meeting software, video conferencing software, and the like.”
Sophos security advisor Chester Wisniewski said the patent would help Skype overcome resistance from foreign governments insisting on the backdoor. Skype itself is no stranger to this. For instance, last year the Indian government has threatened to ban Skype, Google, and Blackberry for not complying to stringent surveillance laws. In 2008, Skype’s reputation in China took a dive after it admitted to monitoring calls on behalf of the government. The Austrian police has also claimed it can bug Skype calls, though Skype has never commented on the matter.
Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, told Computerworld that the patent could be a step back for anti-government efforts, “First, making a communication technology FBI-friendly means also making it dictator-friendly, and in the long run this is not good for movements like the Arab Spring,” he said. “Second, experience shows that building in back doors invites exploits.”
Last fall, reports surfaced that the Obama administration was working on regulations that would make it easier for law enforcers to wiretap communications, which would probably require companies to create backdoors for the government to listen in.
NEW DELHI: In his first remarks on the issue of bugging of Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s North Block office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram did not know about it.
During his interaction with five senior editors, Dr. Singh replied in the negative when asked if the complaint of bugging went through the Home Minister.
“No. This was on a need-to-know principle,” Dr. Singh said. He admitted that there was a complaint that the office of the Finance Minister was bugged. “I asked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to do a thorough check. The IB reported back to me that there was nothing of the sort,” Dr. Singh said.
The Prime Minister’s reply comes as a surprise because the Home Ministry which exercises control over IB had been completely kept out of the loop. Though both Mr. Mukherjee and Mr. Chidambaram have dismissed insinuations about any mistrust between them, it is surprising why Mr. Mukherjee, number two in the UPA government, chose to keep the Home Minister in the dark and went straight to the Prime Minister last year.
As part of the routine exercise also, the Home Minister was entitled to know about the sensitive issue rather than being kept out.
Mr. Chidambaram, in a recent interview to NDTV, had said that he came to know about the bugging incident from newspaper reports.
