Secret footage has revealed how a policeman tried to recruit an activist to feed him information about the political activities of students and other campaigners Police chiefs have received a hefty dose of criticism, and ridicule, since it was revealed that one of their officers attempted to persuade an activist to spy on Cambridge University […]

Dat studenten actie voeren tegen aangekondigde bezuinigingen op het onderwijs is van alle tijden. Daar is niets staatsondermijnend aan. Des te meer opmerkelijk dat diverse actieve studenten gedurende de acties en betogingen door de Regionale Inlichtingendienst en geheime dienst AIVD benaderd zijn met de vraag informant te worden. ‘Gaan jullie stenen gooien?’ Eind 2009 stak […]

Officer is filmed attempting to persuade activist in his 20s to become informant targeting ‘student-union type stuff’ Police sought to launch a secret operation to spy on the political activities of students at Cambridge University, a covertly recorded film reveals. An officer monitoring political campaigners attempted to persuade an activist in his 20s to become […]

Giant corporations are employing highly unethical or illegal tools of espionage against nonprofit organizations with near impunity, according to a new report by Essential Information. The report, titled Spooky Business, documents how corporations hire shady investigative firms staffed with former employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), US military, Federal Bureau […]

A new report details how corporations are increasingly spying on nonprofit groups they regard as potential threats. The corporate watchdog organization Essential Information found a diverse groups of nonprofits have been targeted with espionage, including environmental, antiwar, public interest, consumer safety, pesticide reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups. The corporations […]

Worden Greenpeace, Milieudefensie en andere milieuorganisaties in Nederland in de gaten gehouden door de bedrijven die zij kritisch volgen? Duidelijke aanwijzingen zijn er niet, maar de Amerikaanse praktijk van de jaren negentig die James Ridgeway in het maanblad Motherjones schetst, plaatst vraagtekens bij deze betrekkelijke rust. Het verhaal van Ridgeway is een moderne variant van […]

Greenpeace has filed a lawsuit against two major chemical companies and their PR firms for corporate espionage. The complaint alleges that Dow Chemical and Sasol — formerly CONDEA Vista — hired private investigators to spy on Greenpeace in the late 1990s. The charges of espionage center on surveillance of the Greenpeace office in Washington, D.C., […]

For those of us who know something about the National Security Agency (NSA) and who have at the same time been closely following the drip-drop page-at-a-time disclosures of NSA documents by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, this has been an enormously frustrating time. Many of the recent headlines in the newspapers, especially in Europe, promise […]

Een van de elementen op de kaart van de NRC van zaterdag zijn de rode stippen die de vestigingen van SCS aangeven. Dat bestand is hetzelfde als dat van de kaart in Spiegel, waarvan een ongecensureerde versie  beschikbaar is bij Cryptome. Die kaart is uit augustus 2010. Als je de kaarten naast elkaar legt kom […]

Millions of phone records at the center of a firestorm in Europe over spying by the National Security Agency were secretly supplied to the U.S. by European intelligence services—not collected by the NSA, upending a furor that cast a pall over trans-Atlantic relations. Widespread electronic spying that ignited a political firestorm in Europe was conducted […]

The NSA says European spy services shared phone data with it, and reports alleging otherwise are ‘false’. MILLIONS of phone records at the centre of a firestorm in Europe over spying by the National Security Agency were secretly supplied to the US by European intelligence services – not collected by the NSA, upending a furore […]

Spain and France’s intelligence agencies carried out collection of phone records and shared them with NSA, agency says European intelligence agencies and not American spies were responsible for the mass collection of phone records which sparked outrage in France and Spain, the US has claimed. General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, […]

Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency director, says foreign governments spied on their own people and shared data with the U.S. The NSA had been accused of snooping on 130.5 million phone calls in France and Spain, and keeping computerized records Sen. Dianne Feinstein said newspapers in Europe ‘got it all wrong’ Alexander’s denial […]

These 4 slides are from the powerpoint “BOUNDLESSINFORMANT: Describing Mission Capabilities from Metadata Records.” They include the cover page and pages 3, 5, and 6 of the presentation. The powerpoint, leaked to the Guardian newspaper’s Glenn Greenwald by Edward Snowden, was first released by the Guardian newspaper on June 8, 2013 at this web page: […]

The following page from an August 13, 2010 NSA powerpoint presentation on the joint CIA-NSA clandestine SIGINT unit known as the Special Collection Service (SCS) appeared on the Der Spiegel website last week. It has since be replaced by a heavily redacted version of the same page which deletes the locations of all SCS listening […]

During the Cold War there were hundreds of secret remote listening posts spread around the globe. From large stations in the moors of Scotland and mountains of Turkey that were complete with golf balllike structures called “radomes” to singly operated stations in the barren wilderness of Saint Lawrence Island between Alaska and Siberia that had […]

When Saddam Hussein raised the possibility of attacking U.S. planes in Turkey last week, his threats illustrated what many in diplomatic circles regard as an international disgrace the emasculation of the UN by the U.S. When UNSCOM, the UN’s arms-inspection group for Iraq, was created in 1991, it drew on personnel who, despite their respective […]

Soldiers from an undercover unit used by the British army in Northern Ireland killed unarmed civilians, former members have told BBC One’s Panorama. Speaking publicly for the first time, the ex-members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), which was disbanded in 1973, said they had been tasked with “hunting down” IRA members in Belfast. The […]

Former members of Military Reaction Force admit on BBC Panorama they did not always follow guidelines on lethal force Claims that members of an undercover army unit shot unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland during the 1970s have been referred to the police, according to the Ministry of Defence. The allegations against the Military Reaction Force […]

Britain’s secret listening service, GCHQ, uses a spying system codenamed “Royal Concierge” to carry out detailed surveillance on foreign diplomats and government delegations at more than 350 hotels across the world, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday. The disclosures, based on intelligence data leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, follow reports that British […]

Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service monitors diplomats’ travels using a sophisticated automated system that tracks hotel bookings. Once a room has been identified, it opens the door to a variety of spying options. When diplomats travel to international summits, consultations and negotiations on behalf of governments, they generally tend to spend the night at high-end hotels. […]

During a coffee break at an intelligence conference held in The Netherlands a few years back, a senior Scandinavian counterterrorism official regaled me with a story. One of his service’s surveillance teams was conducting routine monitoring of a senior militant leader when they suddenly noticed through their high-powered surveillance cameras two men breaking into the […]

“I’d come back from an op and couldn’t wait for what happens next,” says Douglas Groat (shown in a reenactment with tools of the trade). (James Quantz Jr. ) The six CIA officers were sweating. It was almost noon on a June day in the Middle Eastern capital, already in the 90s outside and even […]

Between 2006 and 2009, surveillance helicopters conducted daily flights over northwest Washington, D.C., taking high-resolution photographs of the new Chinese Embassy being constructed on Van Ness Street. The aircraft belonged to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which wanted to determine where the embassy’s communications center was being located. But the Chinese construction crews hid their […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation serves a crucial role in securing the United States from criminals, terrorists, and hostile foreign agents. Just as importantly, the FBI also protects civil rights and civil liberties, ensures honest government, and defends the rule of law. Its agents serve around the country and around the world with a high […]

Law-Enforcement Officials Expand Use of Tools Such as Spyware as People Under Investigation ‘Go Dark,’ Evading Wiretaps Law-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age. Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, […]

A shocking new study by the American Civil Liberties Union has found that more than 3,200 people nationwide are serving life terms without parole for nonviolent offenses. Of those prisoners, 80 percent are behind bars for drug-related convictions. Sixty-five percent are African-American, 18 percent are white, and 16 percent are Latino — evidence of what […]

Life in prison without a chance of parole is, short of execution, the harshest imaginable punishment.1 Life without parole (LWOP) is permanent removal from society with no chance of reentry, no hope of freedom. One should expect the American criminal justice system to condemn someone to die in prison only for the most serious offenses. […]

ACLU report chronicles thousands of lives ruined by life sentences for crimes such as shoplifting or possession of a crack pipe 65% of the prisoners identified nationwide by the ACLU are African American. In Louisiana, that proportion rises to 91%. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images At about 12.40pm on 2 January 1996, Timothy Jackson took a […]

Anonymous hacktivist told court FBI informant and fellow hacker Sabu supplied him with list of countries vulnerable to cyber-attack Hammond said: ‘I took responsibility by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?’ Photograph: Michael Gottschalk/AFP The Anonymous hacktivist sentenced on Friday to 10 years in federal prison for […]

On the day he learned he was to spend 10 years in federal prison for his involvement in an Anonymous hack, 28-year-old Jeremy Hammond read a statement to the Manhattan court. As well as framing his hacktivism as a public service, aimed at revealing the shadier operations of corporate intelligence firms, Hammond told the court […]

Hammond calls his 10-year sentence a ‘vengeful, spiteful act’ by US authorities eager to put a chill on political hacking ‘I knew when I started out with Anonymous that being put in jail and having a lengthy sentence was a possibility,’ Hammond said. Photo: AP Jeremy Hammond, the Anonymous hacktivist who released millions of emails […]

Jeremy Hammond, the Chicago activist and hacktivist (an activist who uses computer networks for political protests and other actions), was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release for hacking into the intelligence contractor Strategic Forcasting (or Stratfor) and other government, law enforcement and military suppliers’ websites. The Stratfor […]

Cyber-activist Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison this morning by Judge Loretta A. Preska in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan for hacking the private intelligence firm Stratfor. When released, Hammond will be placed under supervised control, the terms of which include a prohibition on encryption or attempting to anonymize his […]

A few months ago [1] I passed along the story of Barrett Brown, a young journalist/activist who relentlessly followed up on documents leaked by Anonymous, was targeted for this by the FBI, and who was eventually harassed enough that he cracked—which took the unfortunate form of recording a YouTube rant promising to “destroy” one of […]

The mother of Anonymous-affiliated activist Barrett Brown, Karen Lancaster McCutchin, will be sentenced today, November 8, the Associated Press reports. Back in May, she admitted to helping her son hide two laptops from federal agents that were investigating the activist. The laptops were hidden in a kitchen cabinet just as FBI agents were executing a […]

LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to […]

When a private company is granted a government contract, it’s a stamp of approval. What about the flipside? What does it say when the government—say, the German government—does business with companies involved in abduction and torture? What does it say when German ministries share IT servicers with the CIA and the NSA? And what does […]

Eigenrichting in de oorlog tegen de ‘terreur In de zogenaamde oorlog tegen het terrorisme zijn de missers allang geen uitzondering meer. Precisie bombardementen die burgers doden, willekeurige arrestaties, ‘verdwijningen’ en andere praktijken die doen denken aan de donkere dagen in Latijns Amerika maken stelselmatig deel uit van deze ‘oorlog’. Alles in dienst van het grotere […]

Banking group, which has £8.5m slice of CSC, is under pressure along with other City investors from human rights charity Computer Sciences Corporation, according to Reprieve, organised a flight that took Khaled al-Masri, a German mistakenly imprisoned by the CIA, from a secret detention centre in Afghanistan to Albania in 2004. Photograph: Thomas Kienzle/AP Lloyds […]