The deepening riddle over a break-in allegedly involving South Korean intelligence officials presents diplomatic embarrassment to the country and threatens to foil its attempt to seal an export deal.
It was reported earlier this week that three unidentified people who broke into a hotel room of visiting Indonesian presidential envoys last week were actually officials at South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
The intruders intruded into the hotel room in downtown Seoul in an apparent attempt to steal laptops and fled after being walked in on by a member of the Indonesian delegation.
The Indonesian delegation, led by Indonesia’s coordinating economic minister Hatta Rajasa, was visiting Seoul last week at the invitation of President Lee Myung-bak. The delegates, six of whom are ministerial-level officials, asked for support of the South Korean government and local firms for their major economic projects.
Lee pledged the country’s active participation in the Indonesia Economic Development Corridors (IEDCs), mostly focused on developing Indonesian industries and building infrastructure, saying he will seek a reciprocal, “win-win cooperation strategy.”
The attempted theft, however, presented an unexpected hurdle in the growing rapport between South Korea and Indonesia, with the NIS becoming a lightning rod for criticism for what appears to be its bungled intelligence project.
The agency also has become something of a laughing stock — the three intruders, if they were indeed NIS officials, were far from professionals. Police have said the suspects returned to the room to give back the laptops, and were filmed by a CCTV camera at the hotel.
The NIS has a history of causing a diplomatic row for its activities. Espionage attempts of a South Korean official based in Libya upset Libyan officials last year, leading Seoul to replace its top envoy to the country.
Despite the intelligence agency’s repeated denial, speculation runs high that the NIS head, Won Se-hoon, has already tendered resignation to the president for causing diplomatic embarrassment.
“This incident did an irreparable damage to South Korea’s international reputation. The country will be repeatedly embarrassed for this incident,” a senior official at the main opposition Democratic Party said Tuesday at a party meeting.
“The government should get to the bottom of the incident and immediately fire the head of the National Intelligence Service to restore its tainted reputation,” the official said.
Indonesia, on its part, has officially asked South Korea to look into the case. Nicolas T Dammen, Indonesian Ambassador to South Korea, visited the foreign ministry in Seoul Monday to ask for confirmation of the alleged involvement of NIS officials. The foreign ministry said it plans to notify Indonesia as soon as local reports are confirmed.
Dong-a Ilbo newspaper here reported the NIS will likely take disciplinary action against the three officials implicated in the incident and express regret to Indonesia to placate the country.
Local media also say the president’s efforts to clinch a major defense deal with Indonesia have met a challenge with the botched espionage attempt.
South Korea has been seeking to sell T-50 Golden Eagle trainers to Indonesia, after it failed to sell them to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, another leading daily here, quoted an unnamed senior official as saying that the export deal with Indonesia looked poised to be sealed before the incident took place.
Ashton Kutcher, who traveled to technology conference TED this week, has been punk’d. That’s what happens when you hang out on the same wireless network as a bunch of technology geeks — who probably don’t even need hacking-made-easy-tool Firesheep to eavesdrop on Internet sessions on unencrypted Web pages.
Kutcher’s over six million followers are now going to be aware of Twitter’s lack of security thanks to these two tweets Wednesday night:
The hacker who likely accessed Kutcher’s account through a shared wireless network at TED2011 in Long Beach, California, tweeted, “This account is not secure. Dude, where’s my SSL?” followed by “This is for those young protesters around the world who deserve not to have their Facebook Twitter accounts hacked like this.”
This security problem with Twitter got widespread attention last year, due to the release of Firesheep — a program that made hacking a fellow wireless network user’s account on non-encrypted sites easy. Pressure was put on companies like Facebook and Twitter to make their websites “https” (or encrypted) by default. Facebook has since made it an option for users to enable that feature (though it’s still not a default). Twitter also has a https option, though it’s also not the default.
Back in November 2010 during the Firesheep controversy, Twitter told me: “Protecting users and providing a safe Twitter experience is incredibly important to us. We’re actively exploring avenues for increasing user safety that would address this issue.”
We’ll see if the hacking of a high-profile user’s account makes Twitter explore those avenues more quickly.
Update (March 3): Twitter’s PR account tweeted late Wednesday night, “Users can use Twitter via HTTPS: http://t.co/q84H6K3. We’ve long been working on offering HTTPS as a user setting will share more soon.”
(To avoid @aplusk’s fate, make sure you do your tweeting at https://twitter.com/.)
Throughout the U.S. government’s ongoing insider trading investigation, much of the outrage has centered on rich and powerful investors using improperly-obtained information to gain an edge on the mom-and-pop investor. Tuesday’s SEC charges against former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta, which allege the director shared non-public information with hedge fund manager Raj Rajnaratnam, just adds to the perception that the financial markets are not a level playing field.
Mark Rifkin, a partner at law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman Herz specializing in securities and shareholder rights litigation, said Tuesday’s charges against Gupta “reinforced the suspicion that big-money guys are in better position to profit, but not because they are smarter or better investors.”
Gupta stepped down from the board at Goldman last spring, around the same time the Wall Street Journal reported the former McKinsey executive was linked to the insider trading investigation into Galleon.
Perhaps the worst part of the actions, which Gupta is denying through his lawyer, is the betrayal of trust that comes when an outside director – who is voted onto a board with the explicit mandate to protect shareholders and keep management accountable – uses his position to profiteer, or help his friends profiteer, says Rifkin.
SEC Division of Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said “Gupta was honored with the highest trust of leading public companies, and he betrayed that trust by disclosing their most sensitive and valuable secrets. Directors who violate the sanctity of board room confidences for private gain will be held to account for their illegal actions.”
“It’s a breakdown in the system, says Rifkin. And what happens, he wonders, the next time Blankfein has to share sensitive information with his board ahead of its public release?
“The bigger issue is whether it is one rogue director or if it represents something about the culture,” says Rifkin. “Gupta was on the governance committee! Talk about the fox in the henhouse.”
Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the charges against Gupta Wednesday. The director is also alleged to have passed Rajnaratnam pre-release earnings figures from Procter Gamble, where he was also on the board. The consumer products maker confirmed that Gupta stepped down from its board Tuesday. American Airlines parent AMR, where Gupta is also a director, declined to comment on the matter, as did Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
The SEC’s allegations are totally baseless. Mr. Gupta’s 40-year record of ethical conduct, integrity, and commitment to guarding his clients’ confidences is beyond reproach. Mr. Gupta has done nothing wrong and is confident that these unfounded allegations will be rejected by any fair and impartial fact finder. There is no allegation that Mr. Gupta traded in any of these securities or shared in any profits as part of any quid pro quo. In fact, Mr. Gupta had lost his entire $10 million investment in the GB Voyager Fund managed by Rajaratnam at the time of these events, negating any motive to deviate from a lifetime of honesty and integrity.
(CNN) — A Navy intelligence specialist was charged Thursday in an espionage sting in which he allegedly sold documents marked “Top Secret” and “Secret” to an undercover FBI agent, according to the Navy.
The charges against Spc. 2nd Class Bryan Minkyu Martinare are for attempting to forward classified information to a person not authorized to receive such information, according to the Navy statement.
A court-martial date has not been set.
Martin is charged with four specifications of attempted espionage and 11 specifications of mishandling classified information, the Navy said.
All charges stemmed from incidents that allegedly occurred while Martin was assigned to the Expeditionary Combat Readiness Center at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek – Fort Story in Virginia, the Navy said.
Martin was apprehended by special agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI on December 1, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, after he was suspected of attempting to sell classified information.
Martin is currently being held in Naval Brig Norfolk in Virginia.
According to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court last December, Martin, 22, met with an FBI undercover agent posing as an intelligence officer of an unnamed foreign country three times at a motel in Fayetteville, near the Fort Bragg Army base, where he had been working since September.
The court documents alleged he was paid a total of $3,500 in cash, and he handed over documents marked “Top Secret” and “Secret” and signed receipts for two of the payments.
“Investigators have a high level of confidence that no classified information was actually delivered to any unauthorized persons,” an NCIS statement last December said.
The Navy did not release details of how Martin came to the attention of the investigators or how he allegedly made contact with the agent posing as a spy.
PARIS – Renault will face consequences over a case of suspected industrial espionage in which the carmaker has said it may have been tricked, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said on Friday.
Renault admitted for the first time in an interview in Le Figaro’s Friday edition that it had reasons to doubt it had been a victim of industrial espionage.
The carmaker had fired three executives and lodged a legal complaint in January over suspicions of spying targeting its high-profile electric vehicle programme, amid fears that information had been passed to a foreign power.
“What counts today is getting to the truth and getting there quickly, and if the suspicions were unfounded that justice be done, confidence restored and compensation paid,” Lagarde said in an interview on RMC radio.
The minister added that “all the consequences” would have to be faced in terms of responsibility for the affair.
The case has strained relations between Renault — which is 15 per cent state-owned — and the government, as the carmaker came under fire for not informing authorities of its suspicions soon enough and carrying out its own investigation first.
The affair had also threatened to spark a diplomatic spat when news of the sackings broke in January, after a government source said investigators were following up a possible link with China in initial probes before a formal inquiry was launched.
“One shouldn’t shoot without a sight or accuse without proof,” Ms Lagarde told RMC.
Renault’s lawyer, Jean Reinhart, said on Thursday that French intelligence services were still probing the existence of bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein as part of the inquiry and dismissed reports the carmaker had been tricked.
The existence of the possible accounts is a key part of the case against the three fired executives.
But Renault chief operating officer Patrick Pelata told Le Figaro “a certain number of elements lead us to doubt”, adding that the company had arrived at two hypotheses.
“Either we are confronted with a case of espionage and a senior security executive is protecting his source despite everything,” he said. “Or Renault is the victim of a manipulation, which we don’t know the nature of but which could be a fraud.”
Mr Pelata said he would propose reinstating the three executives — all of whom have said they have done nothing wrong and are suing Renault — and making good any injustice if “all the doubts are lifted”.
“When the inquiry is finished, we will accept all the consequences up to the highest level of the company, that is to say up to myself,” Mr Pelata said, adding that in either case the company was a “victim”.
