Tag: spying
Before Chinese Spy Balloon, Classified US Report Highlighted Foreign Aerial Spying
“The classified report to Congress last month discussed at least two incidents of a rival power conducting aerial surveillance with what appeared to be unknown cutting-edge technology, according to U.S. officials.”
While the report did not attribute the incidents to any country, two American officials familiar with the research said the surveillance probably was conducted by China.
The report on what the intelligence agencies call unidentified aerial phenomena focused on several incidents believed to be surveillance. Some of those incidents have involved balloons, while others have involved quadcopter drones…. U.S. defense officials believe China is conducting surveillance of military training grounds and exercises as part of an effort to better understand how America trains its pilots and undertakes complex military operations. The sites where unusual surveillance has occurred include a military base in the United States and a base overseas, officials said. The classified report mentioned Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan as sites where foreign surveillance was believed to have occurred, but did not explicitly say China had been behind the actions, a U.S. official said.
Since 2021, the Pentagon has examined 366 incidents that were initially unexplained and said 163 were balloons. A handful of those incidents involved advanced surveillance balloons, according to a U.S. official, but none of them were conducting persistent reconnaissance of the U.S. military bases. (However, spy balloons that the U.S. government immediately identifies are not included in the unidentified aerial phenomenon tracking, according to two U.S. officials.) Because spy balloons are relatively basic collection devices and other balloons have not lingered long over U.S. territory, they previously have not generated much concern with the Pentagon or intelligence agencies, according to two officials.
The surveillance incidents involving advanced technology and described in the classified report were potentially more troubling, involving behaviors and characteristics that could not be explained. Officials said that further investigation was needed but that the incidents could potentially indicate the use of technology that was not fully understood or publicly identified. Of the 171 reports that have not been attributed to balloons, drones or airborne trash, some “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TikTok admits to spying on U.S. users as effort to ban the app heats up
TikTok is entering a world of pain right now, having just released a damning report about its own employees obtaining the data of U.S. users. Since this report comes at a time when a key cohort of Americans wants to ban the app altogether, you should expect TikTok to become a major political talking point as the 2024 election cycle ramps up.
On Thursday, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, released the results of an internal investigation. Yes, ByteDance confirmed, four of its employees in China scooped up the data of two TikTok accounts belonging to U.S. journalists. And TikTok really, really wasn’t supposed to do that.
The report is emboldening high-profile enemies of TikTok like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, whose bill to ban TikTok on U.S. government devices passed in the Senate a little over a week ago. That bill still needs to pass in the House of Representatives to become law, but statewide bans of TikTok on government devices are already the law in Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Utah, West Virginia, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, Nebraska, and Montana.
Crucially, the report doesn’t contain similarly damning details about what was done with the data. It likely wasn’t printed out, clipped into a dossier, and handed to Xi Jinping himself, if that’s what you’re imagining. It seems instead, a handful of ByteDance employees who were on the lookout for internal leakers managed to find the user data and IP addresses of U.S. reporters in an ultimately thwarted — but demonically clever — effort to see if ByteDance employees suspected of leaking were ever physically near the journalists. That didn’t end up happening, and everyone involved in this effort was fired, supposedly.
But Hawley and his ilk have made it clear that they imagine TikTok is being used as something much scarier: a spying apparatus for the Chinese Communist Party, as spelled out in (to cite one random example) a tweet from Hawley’s fellow Republican Senator Ted Cruz, in which he notes that TikTok tends to “dodge” questions about the communists and says “it’s clear they’re spying on users.”
It may be a stretch at this point to say there’s any evidence TikTok is part of China’s master plan to, I guess, turn Americans communist. But is simply obtaining the data a legitimate scandal in its own right? Absolutely.
That’s because in 2019 — when TikTok was an emerging internet phenomenon, and news coverage about it consistently contained passages that raised concerns about its associations with the Chinese government — its U.S. team rolled out some sweeping claims about data security. The most important of those claims is that U.S. user data is kept in the United States and doesn’t go to ByteDance headquarters in China. The U.S. team may have thought that when they produced that statement, but with Thursday’s revelation, the company now admits it wasn’t true.
And prior reports have intimated that ByteDance cooperates with Chinese propaganda efforts. At least one of these reports — and for the record, ByteDance denies it — is by Emily Baker-White, one of the two journalists ByteDance now admits to having spied on.
Another luminary of the anti-TikTok crowd in the Senate is Marco Rubio, who has introduced a bill just before this latest report came out that would ban TikTok nationwide (something former president Donald Trump tried to do unilaterally in 2020, but was stopped by the courts). In his press release about the bill, Rubio is pretty over the top. “We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China. There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company.”
Rubio glancingly alludes in his tweet about TikTok to similar practices by U.S.-based platforms. Indeed, U.S.-based social media platforms do cooperate with U.S. intelligence and help spread positive U.S. messages abroad. Moreover, U.S. intelligence gatherers — in particular, FBI agents — have openly attempted to “instantly search and monitor” social media posts, and used elaborate data-mining schemes to gather intelligence about users. And at least one study of user behavior on Facebook in particular shows that knowledge of this spying affects users’ ability to feel like they can speak freely, a phenomenon called the “spiral of silence.” If this sounds familiar, that might be because of its similarity to the well-documented self-censorship practiced by members of the Chinese media.
“Banning” TikTok, by the way, is very unlikely to result in TikTok simply disappearing. Instead, it would most likely result in ByteDance recouping its loss by selling it to an American ally like Microsoft, as almost happened in 2020.
In other words, yes, TikTok is doing sketchy things with some U.S. user data, and it may have the power to do a lot more. But banning TikTok — or selling it to the likes of Microsoft, a company with a history of cooperating with spies — would not stop any social media user from being spied on, or influenced, by intelligence agencies.
Ex-Twitter employee sentenced over spying for Saudi Arabia
In a rare case of Twitter drama unrelated to its owner, a former employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia received a three-and-a-half-year sentence on Wednesday. Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty in August of taking bribes from an aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In return, he allegedly supplied sensitive account info that could help track and silence dissidents.
Abouammo, a US resident born in Egypt, received about half of the more than seven years prosecutors sought. The former Twitter media partnership manager said he was only doing his job, but evidence revealed that he received $300,000 and a $20,000 Hublot watch from bin Salman’s aide. A Twitter whistleblower suggested in late August that the scandal reflected a broader practice of lax data security at the company.
Two other men were charged in the scheme. Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, is another former Twitter employee who prosecutors say acquired personal info for over 6,000 accounts, including that of high-profile dissident (and Jamal Khashoggi ally) Omar Abdulaziz. A third man, Ahmed Almutairi, was also charged but didn’t work at Twitter. Instead, he allegedly served as a contact between Twitter staffers and the Saudi government. Of the three, only Abouammo was in the US to face charges.
Congress introduces bill to ban TikTok over spying fears
American politicians aren’t just restricting access to TikTok — they now hope to ban it outright. Members of the House and Senate have introduced matching bills that would block transactions from any social media company in or influenced by China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea or Venezuela. The ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act (Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party) is meant to shut down access to TikTok and other apps that could theoretically funnel American user data to oppressive governments, censor news or otherwise manipulate the public.
The rationale echoes what US political leaders have argued for years. While TikTok has taken efforts to distance its international operations from those in China, such as by storing US data domestically, critics have argued that parent company ByteDance is ultimately at the mercy of the Chinese government. TikTok could potentially profile government workers and otherwise surveil Americans, according to the often-repeated claims.
Republican bill co-sponsors Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Gallagher tried to draw links between some ByteDance leadership and the Chinese Communist Party in an opinion piece in The Washington Post this November. At the time, 23 directors had previously worked for state-backed media, and “at least” 15 employees still did. The bill is also sponsored by House Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi.
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said it was “troubling” that members of Congress were putting forward legislation to ban the app rather than waiting for a national security review to wind down. The bills will “do nothing to advance” national security, according to the company. The firm added that it would “continue to brief” Congress on plans developed under the watch of security officials. The social network has consistently denied plans to track American users or otherwise deliberately assist Chinese surveillance efforts in the country.
TikTok already faces some legal action. The states of Maryland and South Dakota have banned TikTok on government devices over security concerns. Indiana, meanwhile, sued TikTok for allegedly deceiving users about China’s data access and child safety violations. That lawsuit would fine TikTok and demand changes to the service’s info handling and marketing claims.
Whether or not the bills become legislation isn’t certain. President Biden revoked former President Trump’s orders to ban TikTok downloads, and instead required a fresh national security review. He’s not expected to override his own order. And while the bill sponsors characterize the measure as bipartisan, it’s not clear the call for a TikTok ban has enough support to clinch the necessary votes and reach Biden’s desk. To some degree, the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act is more a signal of intent than a practical attempt to block TikTok.
US bans Huawei and ZTE telecoms equipment over spying concerns
The FCC ban marks an escalation of US policy towards Chinese telecom manufacturers that pose a ‘national security threat’.
Read more: US bans Huawei and ZTE telecoms equipment over spying concerns
The US Bans Huawei, ZTE Telecommunications Equipment Sales Over Chinese Spying Fears
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it had adopted the final rules, which also bar the sale or import of equipment made by China’s surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology, video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and telecoms firm Hytera Communications.
The move represents Washington’s latest crackdown on the Chinese tech giants amid fears that Beijing could use Chinese tech companies to spy on Americans.
“These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
British embassy security guard David Smith admits spying for Russia
Many Military UFO Reports Are Just Foreign Spying or Airborne Trash – Yahoo! News
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Brit accused of spying for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and leaking information from embassy appears before judge
A BRITISH security guard accused of spying for the Russian state in Berlin has appeared in court.
David Ballantyne Smith, 57, allegedly collected and leaked information “deemed useful to the Russian state” over a period of ten months.
David Ballantyne Smith has appeared at the Old Bailey charged with nine offences[/caption]
The security guard was working at the British Embassy in Berlin when he was arrested by German cops on August 10 last year.
He was extradited back to the UK in April this year after being charged with nine offences under the Official Secrets Act.
He appeared at the Old Bailey on Wednesday and spoke only to confirm his name during the 10-minute-hearing.
Smith, wearing a light blue jacket over a red open-collared shirt, was remanded in custody and is due to appear at the same court next Thursday.
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The Brit denied all the charges when he appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in April.
Smith is accused of spying for the Russian state between October 2020 and August 2021.
He allegedly sent a letter to General Major Sergey Chukhurov, the Russian military attaché based at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, with confidential information about civil service members.
He is also accused of collecting details about the operations and layout of the British Embassy in Berlin, the British government’s activities and gathering information below the level of “secret”.
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On August 5 last year, Smith also allegedly made a photocopy of documents that could be useful to the Russians.
He is also accused of holding onto SIM card packaging he had been told to destroy and making recordings of someone on the CCTV system at the embassy.
The next day, the Brit allegedly made another recording of the same person.
He also shared information about building repairs at the embassy in Berlin which could be “directly or indirectly useful” to the Russian state.
Intelligence agencies in the UK and Germany are said to have trailed Smith for months before swooping on his address and detaining him last summer.
The CPS worked with the Metropolitan Police to build a prosecution case and authorised charges on November 15 last year.
Head of Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division at the CPS, Nick Price said: “David Smith has been charged with nine offences contrary to the Official Secrets Act.
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“He is accused of seven offences of collecting information with the intent of sending it to the Russian authorities, one of attempting communication and one of providing information to a person he believed was a member of the Russian authorities.
“After reviewing the case and authorising charges, we obtained an extradition warrant and worked closely with our German counterparts in order to bring Mr Smith back to the UK.”