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Congress Warns of China’s Cyber Pursuits

China has developed a sophisticated cyber warfare program and stepped up its capacity to penetrate US computer networks to extract sensitive information, a US congressional panel warned on Thursday.”China has an active cyber espionage program,” the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its annual report to the US Congress. “China is targeting US government and commercial computers.”

In its 393-page report, the panel also criticized Beijing for exercising “heavy-handed government control” over its economy and “continuing arms sales and military support to rogue regimes” such as Sudan, Myanmar and Iran.

The commission also issued a warning about China’s space program. “China continues to make significant progress in developing space capabilities, many of which easily translate to enhanced military capacity,” it said.

“Although some Chinese space programs have no explicit military intent, many space systems — such as communications, navigation, meteorological, and imagery systems — are dual use in nature,” the commission said.

The commission, which was established by Congress in 2000 to analyze the economic and national security relationship between the two nations, said China was investing heavily in cyber warfare.

“Since China’s current cyber operations capability is so advanced, it can engage in forms of cyber warfare so sophisticated that the United States may be unable to counteract or even detect the efforts,” the commission said.

It said Chinese hacker groups may be operating with government support.

“By some estimates, there are 250 hacker groups in China that are tolerated and may even be encouraged by the government to enter and disrupt computer networks,” the commission said.

It quoted Colonel Gary McAlum, chief of staff for the US Strategic Command’s Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations, as saying China has recognized the importance of cyber operations as a tool of warfare and “has the intent and capability to conduct cyber operations anywhere in the world at any time.”

“China is aggressively pursuing cyber warfare capabilities that may provide it with an asymmetric advantage against the United States,” the commission said. “In a conflict situation, this advantage would reduce current US conventional military dominance.”

The commission recalled that unclassified US military, government and government contractor websites and computer systems were the victims of cyber intrusions in 2002 codenamed “Titan Rain” and attributed to China.

And earlier this month The Financial Times, citing an unnamed senior US official, reported that Chinese hackers — possibly with backing by the Beijing government — had penetrated the White House computer network and obtained emails between government officials.

The commission made 45 recommendations to Congress including possible “additional funding for military, intelligence and homeland security programs that monitor and protect critical American computer networks.”

On the economic front, the commission said “China relies on heavy-handed government control over its economy to maintain an export advantage over other countries.”

“The result: China has amassed nearly two trillion dollars in foreign exchange and has increasingly used its hoard to manipulate currency trading and diplomatic relations with other nations,” it said.

“Rather than use this money for the benefit of its citizens — by funding pensions and erecting hospitals and schools, for example — China has been using the funds to seek political and economic influence over other nations,” said Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission.

Beijing’s “continuing arms sales and military support to rogue regimes, namely Sudan, Burma, and Iran, threaten the stability of fragile regions and hinder US and international efforts to address international crises, such as the genocide in Darfur,” the commission added.

The commission acknowledged some progress by China, specifically its adherence to non-proliferation agreements and involvement in the six-party talks to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons production capacity.

But it criticized China’s use of prison labor to produce goods for export and an “information control regime” that it said regulates the print and broadcast media, Internet, entertainment and education.

Full Report: 2008-annual-report-to-congress-concerning-china (PDF)

Tags: annual report, china, congress, cyber attack

A Look Back: Iraq Was Never a Threat

This Article details how the US came to the conclusion that Iraq was a threat concerning weapons of mass destruction and how and why an over zealous Bush administration led the US to this extremely expensive multi-year Occupation in Iraq.

To the surprise of few, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency-led survey group hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had admitted in one of his reports that none have yet been unearthed.

But the Iraq Survey Group’s leader, David Kay, did say that Saddam Hussein “remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons”. However, they have not found any, nor any evidence of any.

The report will come as more bad news for President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are under increasing pressure from their American and British constituencies for allegedly “cooking” or exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam as a pretext for going to war against him.

And now confirmed reports from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which says that information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) about Iraq’s weapon’s programs was exaggerated and false.

Two DIA agents currently serving in Iraq, who also voiced bitterness about other aspects of US Iraq policy, spoke on condition of anonymity to Asia Times Online. The first, a 30-year veteran of the agency, complained that “the fixation on weapons is alienating intelligence staff”, calling it an “obsession”.

Officials in Washington now confirm that former Iraqi officials who had defected and were handed over to the CIA by the INC, the exile opposition group led by Chalabi, provided them with information on Iraq’s WMD program, which the Bush administration relied on to press its case for war.

In Iraq, this was confirmed by the same DIA agent. “The statements on WMD that the INC guys brought in matched conclusions they [Bush cabinet members] already had. We looked at the info and said ‘you can’t be serious, you have got to be kidding’.”

There has been an increase in the willingness of intelligence officials from the CIA and DIA to speak out about their skepticism over Iraq WMD claims since the end of the war and the failure to discover any evidence of their existence. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix also recently asserted that Iraq had had no chemical or biological program since 1998, and no nuclear program since the first Gulf war of 1991.

The DIA agent went on to say, in Chalabi’s defense that “there were plenty of good reasons to attack Iraq, human rights, dictatorship, but the impetus to attack was the immediacy of a threat. Without Chalabi and his access to the Pentagon through [former CIA chief James] Woolsey and then [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, [Vice President Dick] Cheyney, [Pentagon head Donald] Rumsfeld and [Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J ] Feith the war wouldn’t have happened. The INC was very good at manipulating the press. They would say, ‘look at this, look at this’, and [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller would go to Baghdad and chase down a guy and her information provided the lever to go to war.”

This DIA agent, who has served as an interrogator at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the US holds alleged terrorists from Afghanistan called “illegal combatants”, also rejected claims still alleged by the vice president that there was a relationship between Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Saddam’s regime in Iraq. “There were four Iraqis in Guantanamo. More people had British passports than Iraqi ones.”

Now serving in Iraq as a security expert, the DIA agent criticized post-war policy as well, referring to what he described as “the coalition’s pursuit of a single point panacea with a semblance of political organization to hand over the country to them”, meaning the undue trust placed in Chalabi’s organization, as well as Iyad Alawi’s Iraqi National Accord. He also did not mince words with the staff of the office of the Coalition Provisional Administration (CPA), headed by L Paul Bremer. He viewed Bremer’s young staff as immature and inexperienced, citing the case where an aide to Bremer did not want to issue weapons licenses for a political organization to provide for its security,”she’s worried about issuing a few weapons licenses when they have whole armies”.

He added that Bremer’s predecessor Jay Garner was unfairly maligned due to inflated expectations. “Garner was friendly, approachable and personable. He got scapegoated by impatient people in DC. Now its DC politics and ‘what’s your stance on Israel’?” He also strongly criticized Bremer’s decision to dismiss all 400,000 members of the Iraqi army. “It was a dogmatic and ideological brain fart idea to dissolve the military. They should have used them for security. They should have issued an order mobilizing the regular army and put them on highways.” He ended his litany by adding that there was not even any cable television in the al-Rashid hotel where CPA staff were housed and they had to rely on short wave radio for news “they want to keep CPA staff as ignorant as possible”.

A lieutenant-colonel in the DIA who specialized in terrorism and the Muslim world also ridiculed the claims connecting Iraq and al-Qaeda, adding that administration officials relied on evidence provided by Laurie Mylroie in her book The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of Revenge. “From her book,” he said, “It was evident she hadn’t spent one day in the Middle East but she was close with Wolfowitz and as a result we had a guy on staff [at the DIA] whose job for two years was to debunk her allegations.”

The lieutenant-colonel maintained that the civilian staff of CPA, drawn from the State Department, were ineffective in Iraq. “The State Department just generates public policy papers,” he said, “they don’t do anything, they don’t run organizations.” He cited a recent CPA talking point that it would be run and structured like an embassy, “but embassies preserve the status quo, they don’t do anything, we are creating a revolution. Military officers are used to managing organizations and know they have to deal with everybody from top to bottom, but the State Department trains policy makers and they don’t want to hear stuff they disagree with.”

He added finally that Iraqis are ill informed about what the CPA does do because “CPA public affairs pay more attention to the foreign press then the local Iraqi press. English is a problem. Also they are used to a standard press conference and then send press releases that nobody reads. Even if Iraqi papers can find the numbers for CPA, nobody returns their calls.”

The 30-year veteran also confirms language difficulties in Iraq. “The entire government was unprepared for 9/11 [September 11] and for Iraq in terms of linguists and interrogators.”

Tags: CIA, defense intelligence agency, dia, iraq, nuclear, nuke, occupation, saddam hussein, weapons of mass destruction, wmd

British Intelligence Recruiting With Video Games

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the surveillance arm of the intelligence services, has become the first spy agency to embed advertisements for new recruits inside computer games.

The advertisements as depicted on the left, will appear as billboards in the fictional landscapes of games including Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. They will not be written into the games themselves but will be fed into games when they are played on personal computers and Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles that are connected to the internet.

Double Agent, published by the Paris-based Ubisoft, stars Sam Fisher, an American spy who has “little time for polite niceties and even less for lies”. Fisher works for Third Echelon, a fictional hush-hush unit of the US National Security Agency, described as “an elite team of strategists, hackers, and field operatives”.

A spokesperson for GCHQ described the potential recruits that it wanted to reach as “computer-savvy, technologically able, quick thinking.

“We find increasingly we have to use less conventional means of attracting people . . . to go beyond glossy brochures and milk-round stalls.”

Industry figures suggest that the adverts will reach a mostly male audience, aged from 8 to 34. GCHQ hopes to “plant the idea in the heads of younger players” of pursuing a career in the secret services.

“We will monitor the results from this campaign and are ready to change our recruitment methods,” the spokeswoman said. “We know we can’t stand still.”

The move into video games demonstrates how the intelligence agencies have moved away from old-boy networks. This summer MI5 advertised for staff on the sides of London buses.

But adrenaline-addicted video games junkies should beware. GCHQ, which works in signal intelligence (hi-tech eavesdropping) and information assurance (protecting government information from hackers and other threats), is concentrating on recruiting software experts. Most will work from the agency’s main listening post, in Cheltenham, and will be nowhere near any James Bond-style exploits.

GCHQ was consulted on where its adverts would appear but the main decisions were made by its advertising agency, TMP Worldwide. Kate Clemens, head of GCHQ’s digital strategy at TMP, said: Online gaming allows GCHQ to target a captive audience . . . Gamers are loyal and receptive to innovative forms of advertising.”

GCHQ was characteristically reticent on the cost of the one-month campaign, but industry sources suggested it was comparable to that of a large recruitment advert in a Sunday broadsheet, which can run into the low tens of thousands of dollars.

Tags: 9-11 insider, advertisements, games, gchq, recruitment, video games

U.K. Intelligence Wants to Censor Media

Britain’s security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.

The ISC holds huge clout within Whitehall. It receives secret briefings from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is highly influential in forming government policy. Kim Howells, a respected former Foreign Office minister, was recently appointed its chairman. Under the existing voluntary code of conduct, known as the DA-Notice system, the Government can request that the media does not report a story. However, the committee’s members are particularly worried about leaks, which, they believe, could derail investigations and the reporting of which needs to be banned by legislation.

Civil liberties groups say these restrictions would be “very dangerous” and “damaging for public accountability”. They also point out that censoring journalists when the leaks come from officials is unjustified.

But the committee, in its last annual report, has already signalled its intention to press for changes. It states: “The current system for handling national security information through DA-Notices and the [intelligence and security] Agencies’ relationship with the media more generally, is not working as effectively as it might and this is putting lives at risk.” According to senior Whitehall sources the ISC is likely to advocate tighter controls on the DA-Notice system – formerly known as D-Notice – which operates in co-operation and consultation between the Government and the media.

The committee has focused on one particular case to highlight its concern: an Islamist plot to kidnap and murder a British serviceman in 2007, during which reporters were tipped off about the imminent arrest of suspects in Birmingham, a security operation known as “Gamble”. The staff in the office of the then home secretary, John Reid, and the local police were among those accused of being responsible – charges they denied. An investigation by Scotland Yard failed to find the source of the leak.

The then director general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, was among those who complained to the ISC. “We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op Gamble were in the media very, very fast … So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed … that this has happened.”

The ISC report said the DA-Notice system “provides advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorism information, whilst the system is voluntary, has no legal authority, and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned. The system has been effective in the past. However, the Cabinet Secretary told us … this is no longer the case: ‘I think we have problems now.’”

The human rights lawyer Louise Christian said: “This would be a very dangerous development. We need media scrutiny for public accountability. We can see this from the example, for instance, of the PhD student in Nottingham who was banged up for six days without charge because he downloaded something from the internet for his thesis. The only reason this came to light was because of the media attention to the case.”

A spokesman for the human rights group Liberty said: “There is a difficult balance between protecting integrity and keeping the public properly informed. Any extension of the DA-Notice scheme requires a more open parliamentary debate.”

DA-Notice: a gagging by consent

The D-Notice system was set up in 1912 when the War Office (the Ministry of Defence in its previous incarnation) began issuing censorship orders to newspapers on stories involving national security.

In 1993 it became known as a DA-Notice with four senior civil servants, with an eminent military figure as secretary, and 13 members nominated by the media to form the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

Contrary to popular conception DA-Notices are a request and not legally enforceable. Civil servants fear making the agreement legally binding would lead to hostility from the media. There would be apprehension among journalists about new restrictions, as the committee has in recent times been robust in resisting pressure from the Government to send DA-Notices if it thinks the motives are political. At present most DA-Notices are issued regarding military missions, anti-terrorist operations at home and espionage.

Tags: britain, Intelligence, media, Military, U.K.

Secret Executive Order Gives U.S. Military Wide Latitude

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.
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Tags: CIA, executive order, secret, secret order, special operations, terrorism, terrorist, top secret