A newly released State Department cable reveals Chinese intelligence-gathering efforts in Chile and U.S. concerns that Beijing’s growing ties to the Chilean military will compromise U.S. defense secrets shared with the South American nation’s armed forces.
“Sources have told the [U.S.] Embassy [in Santiago] that Chile’s close military ties with the United States are of great interest to the Chinese,” said the Aug. 29, 2005, cable, labeled “secret.”
“There is concern that the Chinese could be using Chilean officers and access to the Army training school to learn more about joint programs, priorities and techniques that the Chileans have developed with their U.S. counterparts.”
The cable said U.S. officials based in Chile worked with their Chilean counterparts to “sensitize them to the security and intelligence threats emanating from China.”
The cable, which was released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, is a rare disclosure of U.S. government concerns about Chinese intelligence-gathering, a problem highlighted by numerous U.S. espionage-related cases and technology-theft prosecutions over the past five years.
**FILE** President Obama walks with the Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Alfredo Moreno (center right) and Gen. Marcos Gonzalez (center left) upon his arrival in Santiago, Chile, on March 21. (Associated Press)
The cable said Chinese intelligence and security organizations will step up spying in the key South American state as its business interests grow.
A key worry is that as a result of closer U.S. military cooperation with the Chilean military, “Chinese interest in [U.S. government] activities in the Southern Cone will most assuredly increase,” said the cable.
“The Chinese will likely attempt to learn more about U.S. military strategies and techniques via Chilean participation in bilateral training programs and joint exercises.”
Emilia Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Chilean Embassy in Washington, had no immediate comment.
Jamie Smith, a spokeswoman for Director of National IntelligenceJames R. Clapper, declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment.
RENAULT says its number two executive will be demoted while three others will be sacked in the wake of an industrial espionage fiasco at the French car-maker’s electric vehicles program.
Patrick Pelata’s offer to resign as chief operating officer was accepted but he will stay within the company, the firm said in a statement, adding that three executives from the group’s security service will leave.
Three other top executives will be relieved of their duties while their fate is decided, it said.
The announcement came after an extraordinary board meeting at Renault to study an audit committee’s report on the scandal that saw three senior executives wrongfully accused of selling industrial secrets.
The meeting also agreed on a deal to compensate the executives falsely accused, Renault said.
The French Government, which owns 15 per cent of Renault, had said yesterday the executives responsible for the embarrassing debacle should be sacked.
Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said the audit report showed the company’s management style was “dysfunctional” and revealed the need for both a “revision of the governance rules and for sanctions”.
Chief executive Carlos Ghosn went on prime-time television last month to apologise “personally and in Renault’s name” for the affair, but said he had turned down an offer by Pelata to resign.
Mr Ghosn said he and Pelata would forgo their 2010 bonuses and Renault would review its security procedures and take disciplinary measures against three implicated security employees.
The French car giant in January sacked Michel Balthazard, Bertrand Rochette, and Matthieu Tenenbaum after accusing them of accepting bribes in return for leaking secrets about Renault’s electric vehicle program.
The Government branded the affair “economic warfare” and some pointed the finger at China, drawing an angry denial from Beijing.
But in March the firm apologised to the managers after it emerged police had found no trace of bank accounts the accused men were alleged to have held and that the source of the spying allegations may have been a fraudster.
Investigators later questioned three Renault security managers and one was placed under formal investigation on suspicion of organised fraud.
Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan have staked their future on electric vehicles and plan to launch several models by 2014 to meet rapidly rising demand for more environmentally friendly methods of transport.
They have invested €4 billion ($5.48 billion) in the program.
Nissan and Renault joined forces in 1999. Renault currently owns a 44.3 per cent stake in its Japanese partner, while Nissan holds 15 per cent of the French auto maker’s shares.
Resurrecting a sleepy small-town newspaper is a tough job. But it’s even tougher when Fox News chairman Roger Ailes uses the News Corp. security detail to spy on you. According to Gawker’s John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, Ailes has been doing just that to his staffers at the Putnam County News and Recorder, one of two small Hudson Valley-area newspapers owned by Ailes and his wife Elizabeth, near where they planned to retire. Cook and Nolan write “more than 10 full-time and freelance staffers have left the Ailes’ Putnam County papers in the last 10 months,” including former News and Recorder staffer Joe Lindsey, a former Weekly Standard editorial assistant brought in personally by Ailes to turn the paper around. After Lindsey quit in January, he was driving to get lunch when he noticed a black Navigator following him. Suspicious, he eventually “got a look at the driver, who was a News Corporation security staffer that Lindsley happened to know socially. Lindsley continued on his way and later called the driver to ask if he was following him. The answer was yes, at Ailes’ direction.”
In addition to the car incident, there were other indications the Aileses were tracking the movements of their staffers. In March, Roger Ailes “confronted the three staffers and accused them of badmouthing him and Elizabeth during their lunch breaks” and multiple staffers told Gawker they had “reason to suspect that their e-mail was being read and that rooms in the News and Recorder offices were bugged.”
As if that wasn’t weird enough, try this on for size: per Cook and Nolan’s piece, the Aileses’ redesigned layout of the “single unisex bathroom in the papers’ headquarters features portraits of Elizabeth and Roger on the walls, watching you, while you poop.”
20 April 2011
Last updated at 01:50 ET
By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News
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Security researchers demonstrate the vulnerability of the GSM system. Mark Ward and his BBC colleagues agreed to have their calls monitored
Stroll around a park making or receiving mobile phone calls and it is hard to believe that anyone could be listening in.
Who could possibly eavesdrop on your modern, digitally encrypted handset?
It should take the kind of technology and resources only available to the security services.
Yet two men wearing hoodie tops have managed to crack the system.
Karsten Nohl and Sylvain Munaut don’t look like secret agents, sitting behind their fold-out table next to a pile of old Motorola phones.
But these two security researchers have discovered a cheap, relatively simple way of intercepting mobile calls.
“We have been looking at GSM technology for a while and we find it to be pretty much outdated in every aspect of security and privacy,” said Mr Nohl.
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the dominant cellular phone technology, used in billions of handsets around the world.
Large parts of it were developed in the 1980s and it is now vulnerable to 21st century hackers
Future attack
Mobile calls normally remain private thanks to digital encryption and because base stations rapidly change the way they identify a particular handset.
Karsten and Sylvain managed to reverse engineer the mathematical algorithm behind the encryption process, and use it decode voice calls.
Old mobile technology is proving vulnerable to powerful computers and cheap storage
The tools of their trade are a laptop and a particular model of Motorola phone whose base operating system, or “firmware” had previously been pulled apart and its details posted online.
Programmers used that information to create their own customised software, capable of displaying hidden technical information on mobile phone base stations.
The pair set up a demonstration for the BBC, in which they showed how to locate a handset, track its movements from a distance of more than 500m and steal copies of all the calls made on it.
Karsten and Sylvain say they do not plan to release their eavesdropping tools, but warned that it was only a matter of time before someone else re-created them.
That could lead to vandals, criminals and snoopers going on “war drives” – travelling around scooping up interesting conversations.
Such a situation is reminiscent of the early days of analogue mobile phones, when anyone with a radio scanner could listen in on calls.
“It’s a real concern,” said Oliver Crofton, director of Vigilante Bespoke which provides security services to high value individuals including sports stars, celebrities and chief executives.
“It will not take long for someone else to invest time and effort in this,” he said.
Vigilante Bespoke’s own experiences showed that there was already an interest in getting at the phones of the famous and powerful.
About 25% of the handsets analysed by the company are found to contain software or hardware modifications capable of reporting a phone’s location, texts and contacts, said Mr Crofton.
“We’re not talking about teenagers in a bedroom,” he said. “It’s organised crime, malicious journalists and blackmailers.”
Find and fix
The GSM Association (GSMA) said that the weaknesses found by Karsten and Sylvain related to older technologies. However, it conceded that those were still used in networks around the world.
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It will not take long for someone else to invest time and effort in this.”
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Oliver Crofton
Vigilante Bespoke
Charles Brookson, chair of the GSMA’s security group for the past two decades, explained that when the first and second generation mobile standards were created, no-one expected them to be in use 20 years later.
“We knew that as the technology aged there was going to be more loopholes in it,” he said.
Those pioneering designers, of which he was one, also had to respect strict controls on the type and strength of encryption they could use.
“It was as strong as we could make it,” said Mr Brookson.
The GSMA was advising its 750 operator members to improve security on networks as they were upgraded, he explained.
It had also added functions that let people spot if they are connecting to a fake base station.
Despite the remaining weaknesses, Mr Brookson said he doubted that others could easily copy Karsten and Sylvain’s hack.
“Yes, the attacks are feasible but they are not exactly the sort of thing that the average person will be doing,” he said.
His view is shared by telecoms analyst Nigel Stanley who has been carrying out his own tests on mobile security.
The handsets of celebrities and sports stars are already being targeted by phone hackers
“It is relatively easy to set this up in a laboratory environment where you have controlled access to the technology,” he said.
“The issue might be if people are out and about driving in the street maybe hoping to intercept people in a real-time live environment,” he added. “I think it might be just a bit more difficult.”
He pointed out that the growing focus on mobile security by researchers and criminals was leading mobile providers to take action.
“Operators have reputational risks and they do not want to be associated with running an insecure network,” he said.
Those worried about mobile security can, if they have the right phone, force it to only use third-generation networks that use much stronger encryption.
Mobile owners can also opt for add-on software that encrypts calls to prevent eavesdropping.
Such applications are widely available for smartphones and include Redphone and Kryptos.
“The work that’s been undertaken out there in the community looking at security algorithms and technologies is actually very good,” said Mr Stanley.
“It does inform the network operators and the associations and helps them put in place a more secure infrastructure.”
The letter accompanied a subpoena delivered this week to an individual in Boston — one of a number of individuals whom investigators have pressed or tried to press for information on WikiLeaks and who have been served with subpoenas this week. A copy of the subpoena was provided to The Washington Post with the name redacted.
Though the letter does not name WikiLeaks or Assange, sources said the subpoena was issued in relation to the probe.
The letter makes clear that an array of charges are being considered, in part, experts said, to avoid First Amendment challenges that would arise with a prosecution of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act. That 1917 law makes it a crime to “communicate or transmit” sensitive information to an unauthorized party, and using it would probably set up a battle over an individual’s right to speak freely.
“If the Justice Department concludes that a crime has been committed, it will twist itself like a pretzel to avoid using the Espionage Act, not only because it is old and vague but because it raises a number of First Amendment problems for prosecutors,” said Abbe D. Lowell, a Washington defense attorney who has handled leak cases.
U.S. officials would not comment on any subpoenas but indicated that prosecutors are likely to carefully weigh any decision to file charges under the Espionage Act, in part because of First Amendment concerns.
“The Justice Department has decided to attack on many fronts at once,” said Assange, in a phone interview from London. One reason, he alleged, “is because it is difficult to extradite someone for espionage, espionage being a classic political offense, and most extradition treaties have exemptions” for political acts.
He blasted the investigation, saying, “It is quite wrong to go after publishers and journalists for performing their work.”
Any prosecution of Assange or WikiLeaks would be separate from a possible court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old soldier jailed on accusations he leaked the material.
In the WikiLeaks investigation, prosecutors have sought personal Twitter account information from Assange, Manning and several others linked to WikiLeaks.
The recipients are not the targets of the probe, sources said.
The April 21 letter, first reported by Salon.com, indicated that the individual served with the subpoena was to appear next month before a grand jury to answer questions concerning “possible violations of criminal law.” Possible violations include conspiracy to “knowingly [access] a computer without authorization” and to “knowingly [steal] any record or thing of value” belonging to the government.
“What they are trying to do is find proof that the WikiLeaks people were in a conspiracy with the leaker to get the information,” Lowell said. “If WikiLeaks is involved in the theft or improper access to the information, that’s not protected under the First Amendment.”
Staff writer Dana Hedgpeth and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.
