Slachtoffer van diefstal, gewapende overval of seksueel misbruik? Dikke kans dat de daders nooit worden gepakt. De opsporing van criminelen is de afgelopen jaren steeds verder verminderd. Vooral sinds de politie de beschikking heeft gekregen over een nieuw, centraal computersysteem stapelen ook de onopgeloste zwaardere delicten zich op. Korpschef van Hollands Midden J. Stikvoort zegt dat het systeem ‘als een ramp’ wordt ervaren.

Lees ook het nieuwsbericht: 40.000 VERDACHTEN NIET OPGEPAKT DOOR FALENDE COMPUTERS

Aangifte leidt niet altijd tot aanhouding

Veel burgers zijn ontevreden over de politie. Na het doen van aangifte van een misdrijf horen ze vaak niets meer, zelfs al kunnen ze de dader aanwijzen. Dat merkten de ouders van de 10-jarige Simone. Een vriend van de familie bleek hun dochter te hebben misbruikt. Ze deden onmiddellijk aangifte, maar de verdachte werd niet opgepakt. Hij werd pas aangehouden, nadat de ouders vertwijfeld de burgemeester inschakelden. ‘Als je zelf niet aan de bel trekt, gebeurt er helemaal niets’, zegt de moeder van Simone.

Bakker Van Hasselt uit Zundert kreeg tijdens een overval een pistool op zijn hoofd. Hij wees de politie op camerabeelden waar de daders mogelijk op staan. Maar de politie deed daar niets mee. De overval bij de bakker is al de tiende in anderhalf jaar tijd.

Ook de heer Osendarp heeft een dergelijke ervaring. Zijn huurder ging er met de inboedel vandoor. Osendarp spoorde de notoire oplichter op en gaf het adres van zijn ex-huurder door aan de politie. Tot zijn grote verbazing hield deze de man niet aan. Maar daar gaat Osendarp niet mee akkoord. Hij stapt naar de rechter om de politie te dwingen toch onderzoek te doen. Met succes, want de rechtbank beslist dat de politie de zaak alsnog moet behandelen.

Frustratie bij politie

Burgers voelen zich door de politie in de steek gelaten. Maar ook de politie zelf is zwaar gefrustreerd. Er zijn te weinig agenten en rechercheurs die criminelen op kunnen sporen. Volgens minister Opstelten van Veiligheid heeft Nederland op dit moment het sterkste politiekorps ooit. Op papier klopt dat.
In de werkelijkheid kwam al het extra blauw van de afgelopen jaren niet op straat terecht. ‘Van de 49.500 politiemensen zijn er slechts 31.500 operationeel werkzaam’, aldus Jan Willem van der Pol van de Nederlandse Politiebond in ZEMBLA.

Falende computersystemen

Niet alleen capaciteitsproblemen, maar ook de nieuwe falende computersystemen zorgen voor grote ergernis bij de politie. Rechercheurs werken zo min mogelijk met het nieuwe computerprogramma. Hierdoor gaat cruciale informatie verloren en blijven verdachten vrij rond lopen.

Quotum

De politie moet per jaar 250.000 verdachten aanleveren bij het Openbaar Ministerie. Doet zij dat niet, dan wordt ze financieel gekort. Makkelijke zaken gaan dan ook voor, ingewikkelde zaken blijven op de plank liggen. Anders haalt de politie haar quotum niet. Omdat de aard van het delict geen rol speelt, telt een zaak van een fietsendief net zo zwaar als een zedendelinquent.

INTERVIEWS met:
– G. en R. van Hassel, bakkers en slachtoffers van een gewelddadige overval in Zundert;
– S. Heijsman, korpschef Utrecht;
– J. van de Pol (Nederlandse Politiebond);
– P. Holkamp, hoofdagent;
– J. Terpstra, hoogleraar criminologie;
– J. Stikvoort, korpschef Hollands Midden;
– M. Beekwilder (politie Utrecht);
– B. Osendarp, slachtoffer oplichting, wiens zaak niet werd behandeld, waarna hij naar de rechter stapte;
– P. Tekstra (team plankzaken Utrecht);
– Marita en Peter, ouders van Simone, die op 10-jarige leeftijd seksueel werd misbruikt door een bekende van haar ouders – een half jaar na aangifte schrijven haar ouders de burgemeester om aandacht te vragen voor hun aangifte.

uitzending 19 februari 2012

Vanuit de samenleving komt er een steeds grotere roep om onze straten en wijken veiliger te krijgen, maar de politie kan het niet aan. Daarom surveilleren er steeds vaker particuliere beveiligers door woonwijken, ze houden toezicht in winkels en ze worden ingehuurd om grote evenementen te beveiligen.

Inmiddels is het aantal beveiligers uitgegroeid tot zo’n 30.000, evenveel als er politieagenten op straat lopen. Minister Opstelten en staatssecretaris Teeven van Veiligheid en Justitie, willen de samenwerking met de beveiligingsbedrijven verder uitbreiden.

Particuliere beveiligers nemen soms politietaken over, zonder dat ze bijzondere bevoegdheden, handboeien of wapens hebben. Wat betekent dit voor onze veiligheid? Wie controleert deze commerciële bedrijven? En waar ligt de grens van hun bevoegdheden?

Gemeenten

Particuliere beveiligingsbedrijven surveilleren op veel plaatsen in Nederland in het “publieke domein”. Doordat politietoezicht afneemt, huren gemeenten en bedrijven steeds vaker particuliere beveiligers in. Zo ook in de gemeente Katwijk, door een tekort aan politiecapaciteiten is burgemeester Jos Wienen genoodzaakt een beroep te doen op particuliere beveiligers. Hij zegt in deze aflevering dat de politiecapaciteit in Katwijk is teruggelopen en dat hij zich daarover zorgen maakt.

Convenant Samen Alert 24/7

Afgelopen maand is er een convenant getekend tussen de Politie Twente en drie beveiligingsbedrijven voor een nauwere samenwerking. Onder de naam Samen Alert 24/7 gaat de politie in Twente informatie uitwisselen met de samenwerkende beveiligingsbedrijven, zo zullen er foto’s van verdachte huizen en auto’s en mogelijk ook personen door worden gegeven. Jan Willem van der Pol van de Nederlandse Politiebond(NPB) vindt dit geen goede ontwikkeling: “ Dat hoort thuis bij de politie, informatie moet afgeschermd zijn. Dat moet je niet delen met burgers”, aldus Van Der Pol.

Incidenten

Particuliere beveiligers hebben niet dezelfde bevoegdheden als de politie, het blijven gewoon burgers. Dus mogen ze geen geweld gebruiken en hebben ze geen handboeien of wapens. Ook weten beveiligers vaak niet altijd hoe ze iemand moeten aanhouden, wat tot hele gevaarlijke situaties kan leiden, soms zelfs met dodelijke afloop.

Uitzending 9 december 2011

De droom van elke orde handhaver: cameratoezicht. Het bespaart een hoop geld en mankracht. Ruim 120 van de 431 Nederlandse gemeenten hebben al jarenlang cameratoezicht. In het regeerakkoord kondigde het kabinet Rutte aan dat er meer camera’s moeten komen. Ook moeten de camera’s intelligenter worden. Maar helpt het eigenlijk wel? Wat weten we over de effectiviteit van de camera’s? Ze worden gezien als oplossing van overlast en criminaliteit en als ze er eenmaal staan gaan ze nooit meer weg. Bovendien levert het zoveel beelden op dat we ze menselijkerwijs niet meer kunnen verwerken. En zijn intelligente camera’s al zo intelligent dat zij dat wel kunnen?
Argos over de zin van steeds meer beelden.

Uitzending 3 december 2011

Kerstavond 2010. De nationale recherche heeft een ambtsbericht van de inlichtingendienst AIVD gekregen waarin staat dat de Somalische terreurbeweging Al Shabaab van plan is met de kerst een aanslag te plegen in Nederland. De tijd dringt, want het bericht van de AIVD is pas op vrijdag 24 december ter beschikking gesteld aan de nationale recherche. Veel tijd voor nader onderzoek is er niet. Er moet snel worden gehandeld. Politie en justitie nemen geen risico en dus wordt er nog diezelfde avond op verschillende locaties in Rotterdam en Gilzen een inval gedaan. Er worden twaalf personen aangehouden.

Vijf dagen na hun aanhouding zijn alle twaalf Somaliërs vrijgelaten en twee maanden later geldt geen van hen nog langer als verdachte. Het Openbaar Ministerie komt met een schadevergoeding. De Somaliërs zelf zeggen dat ze er zijn ingeluisd. Ze spreken van een `valse tip’, afkomstig van een landgenoot die hen wilde afpersen. Hoe geloofwaardig is hun verhaal? Waar draaide het bij die afpersing om? En: Is het aannemelijk dat een simpele afpersingszaak binnen de Somalische gemeenschap tot zo’n ophef leidt in Nederland, waarbij driehonderd agenten worden ingeschakeld om een terreurdreiging af te wenden?
Argos over afpersing, illegale banken en een Somalische journalist met bijzondere praktijken.

Uitzending 24 december 2011

De Commissie van Toezicht op Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten (CTIVD) bestaat 10 jaar. Die commissie ziet erop toe dat de inlichtingendiensten geen wettelijke regels overtreden.
In Argos een terugblik op 10 jaar CTIVD aan de hand van spraakmakende zaken zoals de moord op Theo van Gogh en de zaak van de Marokkaanse jongen Sadik Sbaa. Met voorzitter van de CTIVD Bert van Delden, oud- hoofd van de AIVD, Sybrand van Hulst en emeritus hoogleraar Cyrille Fijnaut.
Hoe goed is de controle van de CTIVD? Wie controleert de diensten op effectiviteit, op de vraag of ze wel goed genoeg hun werk doen? En is de CTIVD wel in staat om de gevolgen van toenemende internationalisering in de inlichtingenwereld, die tot gevolg heeft dat de diensten nauwer samenwerken met diensten in allerlei landen waar mensenrechten niet zo serieus worden genomen, te onderzoeken?

Uitzending 5 mei 2012

De gemeente Amsterdam wil criminaliteit bestrijden op de Amsterdamse wallen door coffeeshops en prostitutieramen te sluiten.

Afl 1: Documentaire. De gemeente Amsterdam wil criminaliteit bestrijden op de Amsterdamse wallen door coffeeshops en prostitutieramen te sluiten. Frans Bromet volgt de bedreigde ondernemers, zoals raamexploitant Slim die trots is op zijn ‘vijfsterrenkamers’.

Afl 2: Frans Bromet volgt de bedreigde ondernemers, zoals raamprostituee Cindy die dagelijks met plezier naar haar werk gaat.

Afl 3: Bibob. Jan Otten is de ongekroonde koning van de Wallen: hij is eigenaar van het beroemde sekstheater Casa Rosso, de Bananenbar, een seksmuseum, verschillende sekswinkels en peepshows. Otten geeft Frans Bromet een rondleiding door zijn Wallenimperium, van het ‘ruikgedeelte’ vlak bij het podium van Casa Rosso tot de dildo’s in zijn sekswinkel. Elke avond staat Jan zelf nog aan de kassa van de Casa Rosso. Het landelijk bureau Bibob, dat op verzoek van de gemeente onderzoek doet naar de integriteit van Otten, concludeert dat de seksexploitant ‘mogelijk betrokken zou zijn bij criminele zaken als witwassen.’ De gemeente is van plan Otten daarom zijn vergunning af te nemen. Ook Marcel Kaatee staat op het punt zijn vergunningen voor zijn twee gokhallen te verliezen. Door zijn contacten met Willem Holleeder kan de gemeente hem via de Bibob-procedure uit de Molensteeg weren. Zijn vrouw Priscilla heeft net een kunstgalerietje geopend naast zijn gokhal. Ze hoopt dat de gemeente haar nieuwe initiatief zal steunen. Horecaondernemer Michiel Kleis is verre van ‘criminogeen’. Zijn plannen voor hoogwaardige horeca op het Oudekerksplein krijgen alle steun van de gemeente. Lodewijk Asscher opent staande op de bar zijn chique restaurant. Intussen wachten Joop en Ronnie, eigenaren van prostitutiepanden rondom het Oudekerskplein, nog steeds op een goed bod van de gemeente op hun panden. Maar door de economische crisis lijkt het erop dat het geld van de gemeente en woningcorporatie op is en komt er stilletjes een einde aan de plannen van de gemeente om de buurt op te schonen.

 deel 1 19 maart 2012

deel 2 26 maart 2012

deel 3 2 april 2012 

The Central Intelligence Agency is preparing to cut its presence in Iraq to less than half of wartime levels, according to U.S. officials familiar with the planning, a move that is largely a result of challenges the CIA faces operating in a country that no longer welcomes a major U.S. presence.

Under the plans being considered, the CIA’s presence in Iraq would be reduced to 40% of wartime levels, when Baghdad was the largest CIA station in the world with more than 700 agency personnel, officials said.

The CIA had already begun to pull back in Iraq since the height of the war, officials said. But the drawdown, coming six months after the departure of American military forces, would be significant. The officials declined to provide exact numbers, give a breakdown of levels of analysts versus covert operators or say where agency workers would be redeployed, all of which are classified.

Proponents of the change say the CIA can make better use of its personnel in other areas. Those could include emerging terrorist hot spots such as Yemen, home to the al Qaeda affiliate the U.S. considers to pose the greatest threat to the homeland, and Mali, where an unstable government has fanned concerns.

The move comes amid worries over possible gaps in U.S. intelligence about the threat posed by al Qaeda in Iraq. Administration officials, diplomats and intelligence analysts have in recent weeks debated whether the militant organization is a growing threat after an internal government report pointed to a rise in the number of attacks this year, officials said.

The plan would also reduce the U.S. intelligence presence in the region as neighboring Syria appears to be verging on civil war. Al Qaeda in Iraq is also sending fighters to Syria to battle the Assad regime, Pentagon officials say.

The spy drawdown is part of a broader shift in U.S.-Iraq relations, with Washington moving to scale back diplomatic and training missions in the country. But it illustrates the limits of the Obama administration’s national-security strategy, as it steers away from ground wars and toward smaller operations that combine intelligence and special-operations capabilities.

Such a strategy relies heavily on cooperation from host governments, and as the CIA’s Iraq experience shows, cooperation can wane even where the U.S. has invested billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives.

The Iraqi government, including Iraq’s intelligence service, has scaled back its counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S. as it asserts its sovereignty, U.S. officials say.

“If you don’t have that cooperation, you are probably wasting the resources you are allocating there and not accomplishing much,” said Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Near East analyst.

Backers of the drawdown say al Qaeda in Iraq doesn’t pose a direct threat to the U.S. “This is what success is supposed to be like,” said a senior U.S. official who has worked closely with the Iraqis. “Of course we don’t want to have the same number of people after all U.S. troops go home that we had at the height of the war.”

A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. is in the process of “right-sizing” its presence in Iraq. Both President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have “made very clear that we’re going to continue to have a close and strong security partnership,” this official said.

The planned reductions at the CIA represent a major shift from the approach under consideration just six months ago. Late last year, the CIA and Pentagon were considering several options for CIA and special-operations commandos to team up in Iraq, according to current and former officials. One option was to have special-operations forces operate under covert CIA authority, similar to the arrangement used in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

“There was a general consensus,” said a former intelligence official, “that there was a need for this in Iraq.”

But as it became clear that the U.S. would withdraw all troops and that the Iraqi government was less inclined to accept an expansive CIA-special operations role, those plans were tabled. “It’s not going to happen,” said a U.S. official.

Iraq requires CIA officers to make appointments to meet with officials who were previously easily accessible, one of several obstacles that add to a mood of growing distance between the sides. The result is a degraded U.S. awareness about the activities of al Qaeda in Iraq, particularly at a tactical level, officials said.

“Half of our situational awareness is gone,” said one U.S. official.

Iraqi officials said they continue to cooperate with the U.S. on counterterrorism. Hassan Kokaz, deputy head of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior’s intelligence service, said the U.S. may be adjusting to the new “state-to-state” relationship between the countries since the military withdrawal in December.

“We have asked them to wear civilian clothes and not military uniforms and to be searched when they visit Iraqi institutions,” he said. “Perhaps they are not used to this.”

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police are pursuing al Qaeda-linked militants without needing U.S. special-operations forces or the CIA, said Gen. Sarhad Qadir, a local police commander.

Another senior Iraqi security official, however, said Iraqis don’t have the necessary surveillance and other technical capabilities. Iraqi forces also are plagued by clashing sectarian and political loyalties, the official added. “We need the Americans because they were able to work with all the [Iraqi] forces without exception,” he said.

The CIA drawdown would recalibrate the agency’s responsibility in the country away from counterterrorism operations and back toward traditional intelligence collection, with a sharpened focus on neighboring Iran, officials say. Baghdad will remain one of the agency’s largest stations, they say; Kabul is currently the largest.

The plan comes with risks, however, because al Qaeda in Iraq still presents a threat to the region.

“A further diplomatic or intelligence drawdown in Iraq could jeopardize U.S. national security down the road if al Qaeda in Iraq is able to sustain—or increase—its activity,” said Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. counterterrorism specialist who has written extensively about al Qaeda. “The concern is that al Qaeda is able to use its Iraq branch to destabilize other countries in the region, and they are able to facilitate the movement of foreign fighters.”

Al Qaeda in Iraq’s activities against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also complicates the U.S. government’s ability to support the opposition, Pentagon officials say.

A recent assessment by the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. intelligence community’s central clearinghouse for counterterrorism analysis, pointed to an uptick in attacks by al Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate since the U.S. troop withdrawal in December, according to officials briefed on the document’s contents.

During high-level Obama administration discussions last month, some senior counterterrorism officials seized on the NCTC assessment as evidence of a growing threat from al Qaeda in Iraq, touching off a debate about the dangers posed by the group, officials said. A spokesman refused to comment on questions about the report.

…

Find this story at 5 june 2012

By SIOBHAN GORMAN And ADAM ENTOUS

—Ali A. Nabhan
contributed to this article.

Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared June 5, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: CIA Prepares Iraq Pullback.

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

“For four years now, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and intelligence services have been recording what they call a ‘spectrum of potentially violent left-wing extremism in Europe’. The police and intelligence services are applying the dubious term ‘Euroanarchy’ to their work in this area. Not only are they creating a secret political database, they are degrading the original meaning of the word ‘anarchy’,” said Member of the German Bundestag Andrej Hunko, expressing his criticism of the answer of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a minor interpellation.

At the end of April, members of the Dolphin database met for a two-day conference at Europol in The Hague. The database, known as an Analysis Work File, receives information from 20 EU Member States, as well as Switzerland, Australia and Norway. During the meeting in The Hague, speakers from Italy, Switzerland and Spain also gave talks on the opposition to high-speed trains and the activities of the No Border Network.

“Previously Europol only stored data on ‘terrorism’ in Dolphin. According to the answer of the German Federal Government, however, Dolphin’s members are also interested in left-wing opposition, which is categorised as ‘extremism’ in the database. The purpose of the file was therefore amended in 2010.

Similar to Germany’s Section 129, Dolphin is about snooping in political contexts. So it does not come as much of a surprise when the Federal Government itself has to admit that the database has played no ‘significant role’ in any criminal investigations to date.

Like Germany, Europol is chiefly interested in taking action against emancipatory movements. It was only after the attacks in Norway that Europol proposed setting up a task force to combat right-wing extremism.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office has been maintaining files on ‘Euroanarchy’ for four years now. During that time, the office has been actively exchanging information with political police departments in Switzerland, France, the UK, Italy and Greece. The German secret services are also involved and are sharing information on ‘Euroanarchy’ with services in other countries.

Last year saw official confirmation of reports that protests at the G8 summits in 2005 and 2007 were infiltrated by covert investigations. According to the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the German-British initiative was targeted at ‘Euroanarchists’. But in its answer, the Federal Government refuses to use the term ‘police spies’ to refer to the people involved in this attack on individual privacy.

At the same time, evidence is mounting that Simon Bromma, a police officer from Baden-Württemberg, was involved in spying on international activists in Brussels. The Federal Criminal Police Office also exchanged information on at least 88 protestors with the Belgian police and – despite the fact that no one was charged – stored the information in its own political databases.

Investigating cross-border left-wing activism is unacceptable. I call on the Federal Government to refrain from supplying this type of information to Europol. Above all, the government must dispense with the working groups and databases on ‘Euroanarchy’. I remain critical of the planned extensions to Europol’s competences.”

The Federal Government’s answer to the Minor Interpellation “Europol’s criminalisation of international left-wing activism and anarchy” can be downloaded at: http://www.andrej-hunko.de/start/download/doc_download/223-kriminalisierung-von-internationalem-linken-aktivismus-und-anarchismus-durch-europol (in German only)

5 june 2012

Andrej Hunko

Mitglied des Bundestages

Fraktion DIE LINKE

www.andrej-hunko.de

www.linksfraktion.de

A damaging cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program was the work of U.S. and Israeli experts and proceeded under the secret orders of President Obama, who was eager to slow that nation’s apparent progress toward building an atomic bomb without launching a traditional military attack, say current and former U.S. officials.

The origins of the cyberweapon, which outside analysts dubbed Stuxnet after it was inadvertently discovered in 2010, have long been debated, with most experts concluding that the United States and Israel probably collaborated on the effort. The current and former U.S. officials confirmed that long-standing suspicion Friday, after a New York Times report on the program.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the classified effort code-named Olympic Games, said it was first developed during the George W. Bush administration and was geared toward damaging Iran’s nuclear capability gradually while sowing confusion among Iranian scientists about the cause of mishaps at a nuclear plant.

The use of the cyberweapon — malware designed to infiltrate and damage systems run by computers — was supposed to make the Iranians think that their engineers were incapable of running an enrichment facility.

“The idea was to string it out as long as possible,” said one participant in the operation. “If you had wholesale destruction right away, then they generally can figure out what happened, and it doesn’t look like incompetence.”

Even after software security companies discovered Stuxnet loose on the Internet in 2010, causing concern among U.S. officials, Obama secretly ordered the operation continued and authorized the use of several variations of the computer virus.

Overall, the attack destroyed nearly 1,000 of Iran’s 6,000 centrifuges — fast-spinning machines that enrich uranium, an essential step toward building an atomic bomb. The National Security Agency developed the cyberweapon with help of Israel.

Several senior Iranian officials on Friday referred obliquely to the cyberattack in reaffirming Iran’s intention to expand its nuclear program.

“Despite all plots and mischievous behavior of the Western countries . . . Iran did not withdrawal one iota from its rights,” Kazem Seddiqi, a senior Iranian cleric, said during services at a Tehran University mosque, according to news reports from Iran.

Iran previously has blamed U.S. and Israeli officials and has said its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity.

White House officials declined to comment on the new details about Stuxnet, and an administration spokesman denied that the material had been leaked for political advantage.

“It’s our view, as it is the view of everybody who handles classified information, that information is classified for a reason: that it is kept secret,” deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “It is intended not to be publicized because publicizing it would pose a threat to our national security.”

The revelations come at a particularly sensitive time, as the United States and five other world powers are engaged in talks with Iran on proposed cuts to its nuclear program. Iran has refused to agree to concessions on what it says is its rightful pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy. The next round of negotiations is scheduled for this month in Moscow.

“Effectively the United States has gone to war with Iran and has chosen to do so in this manner because the effects can justify this means,” said Rafal Rohozinski, a cyber-expert and principal of the SecDev Group, referring to the slowing of Iran’s nuclear program.

“This officially signals the beginning of the cyber arms race in practice and not in theory,” Rohozinski said.

In 2006, senior Bush administration officials developed the idea of using a computer worm, with Israeli assistance, to damage Iranian centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. The concept originated with Gen. James E. Cartwright, who was then head of U.S. Strategic Command, which handles nuclear deterrence, and had a reputation as a cyber-strategist.

“Cartwright’s role was describing the art of the possible, having a view or vision,” said a former senior official familiar with the program. But “the heavy lifting” was done by NSA Director Keith Alexander, who had “the technical know-how and carried out the actual activity,” said the former official.

Olympic Games became a collaborative effort among NSA, the CIA and Israel, current and former officials said. The CIA, under then-Director Michael V. Hayden, lent its covert operation authority to the program.

The CIA and Israelis oversaw the development of plans to gain physical access to the plant. Installing the worm in plant equipment not connected to the Internet depended on spies and unwitting accomplices — engineers, plant technicians — who might connect an infected device to one of the systems, officials said.

The cyberweapon took months of testing and development. It began to show effects in 2008, when centrifuges began spinning at faster-than-normal speeds until sensitive components began to warp and break, participants said.

…

By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, Published: June 1 | Updated: Saturday, June 2, 12:03 PM

© The Washington Post Company

Find this story at 1 june 2012

A Russian court has convicted a reserve colonel of spying on behalf of the United States and sentenced him to 12 years in prison, the country’s intelligence agency said Thursday.

Vladimir Lazar would be sent to a high-security prison and stripped of his military rank, the Federal Security Service said in a statement.

Prosecutors alleged that Lazar purchased a disk with more than 7,000 images of classified topographical maps of Russia from a collector in 2008 and smuggled it to neighboring Belarus where he gave it to an American agent.

…

31 May 2012
The Associated Press

Find this story at 31 may 2012

US government withholding 250,000 pages of damage assessment reports relating to WikiLeaks transmission

Bradley Manning is charged with 22 counts connected to the largest leak of state secrets in US history. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The US government is in possession of 250,000 pages of documents relating to the transmission of state secrets to whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which it is refusing to disclose to defence lawyers representing the alleged source of the leaks, Bradley Manning.

Manning’s civilian lawyer, David Coombs, has lodged a motion with the military court that is hearing the court-martial of the US soldier. Coombs writes in the motion that the government has revealed to him in a throwaway footnote that there are 250,000 pages in its possession that relate to Manning, WikiLeaks and secret official assessments of the damage that the massive leak caused to US interests around the world.

Yet none of these pages have been made available to the defence. “If so, this is very disconcerting to the defence,” Coombs says.

Manning, an intelligence analyst who was working outside Baghdad when he was arrested two years ago, is charged with 22 counts connected to the largest leak of state secrets in US history.

In the motion, published in redacted form on his website, Coombs renews his long-standing efforts to compel the US government to hand over information that could prove crucial in preparing Manning’s defence.

He accuses the army of continuing to resist its legal obligations to disclose anything that could help Manning prove his innocence or achieve a lighter sentence.

The motion is one of several defence motions that have been submitted to the court and that will be the subject of a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland. Manning himself is likely to attend the hearing, which comes three months before a full trial, which is scheduled for 21 September.

The language of Coombs’s legal submission suggests that the lawyer, who himself has a military background, is growing increasingly frustrated by the obfuscations and alleged sleights of hand played by the prosecution.

In recent motions, the lawyer has accused the US government of preventing Manning from having a fair trial.

Coombs paints an almost Kafkaesque world in which the military authorities play word games in order to keep deflecting his requests for disclosure.

Sometimes the government says that the defense is being “too narrow” in its requests, at other times “too broad”.

Coombs comments sarcastically: “The defence believes that no defence discovery request would ever be ‘just right’ to satisfy Goldilocks.”

When the defence asked to see “damage assessments” or “investigations” that the government had carried out into the likely impact of WikiLeaks, he was told none existed.

After much effort was expended, Coombs managed to get the government to admit that what he should have asked for – according to its vocabulary – was “working papers”.

“By morphing, distorting and constantly changing definitions, the government is trying to ‘define’ itself out of producing relevant discovery,” Coombs complains. “It cannot be permitted to do this.”

…

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 June 2012 21.10 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

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Use of terrorism-related charges by police stem from infiltration, provocation according to defense attorneys

Chicago, IL – Three NATO protesters were brought before a bond judge today on charges of possession of explosives or incendiary devices, material support for terrorism, and conspiracy. For the first time since a Wednesday night raid on a Bridgeport home where activists were staying, the State’s Attorney’s Office read a laundry list of allegations and sought $5 million cash bonds for each of them. However, after hearing from National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attorneys defending the three Occupy activists, Cook County Judge Edward Harmening imposed a $1.5 million D-Bond.

During the Wednesday night house raid, police broke down the doors of multiple apartment units with guns drawn and searched residences without a warrant or consent. In addition to 9 arrests made that night, NLG attorneys believe that two undercover police or confidential informants were arrested with the others and were later released. Of the 9 activists arrested, 6 were released without any charges despite being shackled for at least 18 hours in solitary confinement and denied access to attorneys.

“These sensational accusations are unfounded and contradict the accounts of other detained witnesses and released arrestees,” said NLG attorney Michael Deutsch with the People’s Law Office. “This effort to vilify protesters smacks of entrapment based on manufactured crimes, and is a common tactic of law enforcement during National Special Security Events.” In the bond hearing, the State’s Attorney said that the defendants were self-described anarchists, yet no such political beliefs were expressed by any of them.

During the raid, police seized computers, cell phones and home brew-making equipment among other items. However, police have not yet disclosed the search warrant or the affidavit of probable cause. The 3 defendants, Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, and Brian Jacob Church, will appear again in Cook County Court, Branch 98 at 2600 South California on Tuesday at 11:30am to determine how the State’s Attorney will proceed with the criminal cases.

Just last week, all three defendants were surrounded by several police squad cars outside of a CVS, detained for no apparent reason and asked questions about why they were in Chicago and what they planned to do during the NATO summit. One of the defendants recorded the encounter and posted an edited version on YouTube. When Superintendent McCarthy questioned the validity of the footage in the media, the entire video was quickly posted.

More than two-dozen people have been arrested so far in the lead up to the NATO summit, which begins tomorrow. At least 7 arrestees in addition to the ones with terrorism-related charges are currently in custody. The NLG is staffing a 24-hour hotline, as well as dispatching dozens of Legal Observers to record police misconduct and representing anyone arrested during the demonstrations.

Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request
Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent

Revealing: A list of keywords used by government analysts to scour the internet for evidence of threats to the U.S. has been released under the Freedom of Information Act

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats

They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

…

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By Daniel Miller

PUBLISHED: 09:32 GMT, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 17:46 GMT, 26 May 2012

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

The Pentagon is expanding and making permanent a trial program that teams the government with Internet service providers to protect defense firms’ computer networks against data theft by foreign adversaries.

It is part of a larger effort to broaden the sharing of classified and unclassified cyberthreat data between the government and industry in what Defense Department officials say is a promising collaboration between the public and private sectors.

“The expansion of voluntary information sharing between the department and the defense industrial base represents an important step forward in our ability to stay current with emerging cyberthreats,” Ashton B. Carter, deputy secretary of defense, said in announcing the move Friday.

Carter said that industry’s increased reliance on the Internet for daily business has exposed large amounts of sensitive information held on network servers to the risk of digital theft. Corporate cyber-espionage has reached epidemic scale, experts and officials say, with much of the activity traced to China and Russia.

Begun a year ago, the Defense Industrial Base enhanced pilot program included 17 companies that volunteered to have commercial carriers such as Verizon and AT&T scan e-mail traffic entering their networks for malicious software. Outgoing traffic that shows signs of being redirected to illegitimate sites is blocked so that it does not fall into an adversary’s hands.

A study in November by Carnegie Mellon University said that the pilot program showed the public-private model could work but that initial results on the efficacy of the National Security Agency measures were mixed, with the most value going to companies with less mature network defenses.

The report also said companies reported large numbers of false positives in detecting traffic to illegitimate sites. That flaw largely has been fixed, officials said.

One telecom industry official familiar with the program said he thought the results were better than reflected in the report. “There are a lot of opportunities for improving,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. For instance, the official said, “the longer it takes NSA to provide the data” to the carriers, the less useful the program will be. Overall, the official said, “we think it was a successful model.”

U.S. officials said that after initial difficulties, the program has become more effective, so much so that senior officials agreed at a White House meeting Thursday to expand it and make it permanent.

“It’s the best example of information sharing that helps in an operational way,” said Eric Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber-policy. “We haven’t heard of any other country that’s doing anything like this — a really collaborative relationship between government and private sector.”

Rosenbach acknowledged that the program was not perfect. “We’re definitely not claiming this is the silver bullet when it comes to cybersecurity for the defense firms,” he said. “It is an additional tool they can use to mitigate some of the risk of attacks.”

The carriers are using classified threat data or indicators provided by the NSA to screen the traffic, as well as unclassified threat data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. DHS reviews all the screening data before it goes to the carriers.

The companies may turn over results of the screening to the government. The data would go to DHS and could be shared with agencies such as the NSA and FBI, but with strict privacy protections, officials said.

Rosenbach said that although the NSA should get feedback on how effective its measures are, the agency does not deal directly with the carriers or companies. And, he said, no information that can identify a person is shared with the government.

Still, privacy concerns are high, especially as Congress considers legislation to foster a broader exchange of cyberthreat data between the government and industry.

“Having the NSA provide classified cyberattack signatures to network operators to help them protect their networks . . . is far preferable to having the NSA scan private networks for those signatures,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “However, the flow of information back to the government raises significant privacy concerns in the program and in the pending cybersecurity legislation.”

The cybersecurity program will remain voluntary, officials said. As of December, companies have had to pay their Internet carrier for the service. It is unclear how many of the roughly 8,000 eligible defense contractors will sign up.

…

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By Ellen Nakashima, Published: May 11

© The Washington Post Company

For almost three decades after Fidel Castro took power, Cuba’s budding intelligence service fielded four dozen double agents in a world-class operation under the nose of the CIA, according to a new book by a veteran CIA analyst.

It was not until June 1987, when a Cuban spy defected to the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, blind-siding U.S. intelligence services, that the CIA learned how badly it had been duped, writes Brian Latell, a retired veteran CIA analyst and Cuba specialist.
‘Castro was a supreme, unchallenged spy master,’ Latell told an audience at a recent book reading.

The revelations in Latell’s book help explain how Castro survived several well-documented assassination attempts and the impoverished island of Cuba weathered the changes that toppled other communist regimes in the late 20th Century.

‘In the annals of modern spycraft it’s a pretty extraordinary accomplishment. It’s difficult to keep one double agent in play, and he managed them all … down to the minute details,’ added Latell, author of Castro’s Secrets, the CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine.

Latell began watching Cuba in the mid-1960s and served as U.S. National Intelligence Officer for Latin America before retiring from the CIA in 1998.

All four dozen double agents were recruited in Cuba and other parts of the world and personally run by Castro. He favored young, rough-hewn, impressionable teens without a university education.

‘Castro wanted them to be uncontaminated by the old Cuba. He wanted them to be malleable and enthusiastic,’ Latell says.

While Cuba has trumpeted its success with double agents in the past, Latell’s book shows the penetration was more extensive than previously known, and compromised U.S. intelligence sources and methods.

The defection in 1987 of Florentino Aspillaga finally alerted the CIA to the extent of Castro’s spy network. ‘They were in a state of shock. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before,’ said Latell.

Aspillaga was ‘the most informed and highly decorated officer ever to defect from Cuban intelligence’, Latell says, and his defection was a turning point in the CIA’s attitude toward Cuba.

‘Until that point we grossly underestimated the Cubans. We never imagined that little Cuba could run an intelligence service that was world class,’ he says.

Counter-intelligence operations were subsequently stepped up. After only four Cubans spies were arrested between 1959 and 1995, that number rose more than ten-fold between 1998 and 2011, Latell writes in his book.

Aspillaga was recruited as a spy at age 16 and spent 25 years in Cuban intelligence. His defection provided ‘some of the most precious secrets including the double agents,’ says Latell, who interviewed him over several days in 2007.

The interview was conducted at the request of Aspillaga, who said he simply wanted to tell his story.

Aspillaga also shared an unpublished memoir with Latell, asking for no payment or favor in return.

The former agent now lives with a new identity after surviving an assassination attempt in London in 1988.

Aspillaga is just one of a dozen defectors Latell interviewed in the book, which relies on thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents the author reviewed at the National Archives in Maryland, as well as interviews with several CIA officers.

In the book, Latell reveals that Cuban intelligence knew more about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy than they admitted at the time, including information about the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Aspillaga told the CIA that in his first year he was trained to do radio intercept work, listening for CIA transmissions to spies on the island and incursions by sea.

On November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, he was ordered to stop all CIA tracking efforts and redirect his antennas away from Miami and direct them toward Texas.

Castro knew Kennedy was to be fired upon, Latell says Aspillaga told him.

The Warren Commission never attributed a motive to Oswald but Latell argues Oswald was fascinated with Castro and ‘his motive was to protect Fidel’.

It is well known Oswald met Cuban officials during visits to Cuba’s Mexican consulate in the summer of 1963, but there is no evidence he ever worked directly for Cuban intelligence.

Latell says that while Cuban agents had kept track of Oswald, his research found no evidence linking Castro to the assassination. Instead, Latell has his own more nuanced theory.

Castro and his intelligence officers ‘were complicit in Kennedy’s death’, Latell writes, ‘but … their involvement fell short of an organized assassination plot’.

Cuban intelligence officers ‘exhorted Oswald’ and ‘encouraged his feral militance’, he writes, ‘but it was his Oswald’s plan and his rifle, not theirs’.

Castro had plenty of reason to want Kennedy out of the way. A Senate Committee found in 1975 that the CIA had pursued assassination as an instrument of foreign policy, with Fidel Castro as one of its prime targets.

The Committee’s first documented plots against Castro began in 1960, when the CIA contacted organized crime figures eager to return to the good old days of gambling, extortion and corruption in Cuba.

Subsequent plots involved poison, an exploding seashell and marksmen with high-powered rifles.

…

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Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd