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BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government reacted sharply Friday to published allegations that the U.S. spied on Iraq's prime minister, warning that future ties with the United States could be in jeopardy if the report were true. The allegations appear in a new book, The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, by journalist Bob Woodward, who writes that the United States spied extensively on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and other government officials. The report emerged as the two governments are in delicate negotiations over the future of American troops in Iraq. Those talks have already extended past...

"THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time." So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people's text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism. Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act,...

CCTV monitors classrooms at one in 14 schools, according to a survey. The poll of teachers also found that almost a quarter feared there might be more cameras hidden around the campus that they did not know about. Most said their schools were fitted with surveillance cameras. Almost 80 per cent said there were cameras at the entrance and more than 7 per cent said there were some in classrooms. Nearly 10 per cent of teachers polled by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said there were cameras in the lavatories.  Big brother is watching you: One in 14 schools...

Beijing Olympics: the spying games There’s more to the imminent Olympic Games in Beijing than meets the eye. So what’s hidden behind the slogan of One World, One Dream? Isabel Oakeshott, Michael Sheridan and Flora Bagenal in Beijing Two weeks ago, the Whitehall mandarins, ministerial aides and officials who will be in Beijing when the Olympic Games open on Friday were summoned for what they thought would be a series of pro-forma chats with MI5. What they heard was hair-raising. “It was all very James Bond,” according to one of the 100 or more who were called in by the...

A bizarre series of incidents during last year's Women's World Cup in China is raising questions about the security of visiting delegations in China at the upcoming Olympics. In the days before their World Cup opener against host China last September, members of the Danish women's soccer team say they faced ongoing harassment that culminated in the discovery of two men attempting to secretly videotape a team meeting at their hotel through a two-way mirror. Breaking an 11-month silence about the incidents, Danish coach Kenneth Heiner-Möller told SI.com that he discovered the two intruders behind the mirror as he prepared...

Barry Goldwater famously said that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." But I suspect even the late Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate might be creeped out if he knew about the privatization of Big Brother. Is it OK for private groups to infiltrate domestic citizen's groups? Is spying in defense of liberty a virtue or a vice? A recent revelation is in a new story from Mother Jones that reveals that a leading gun control advocate, Mary McFate, is apparently the same person as Mary Lou Sapone, "a self-described 'research consultant,' who for decades has covertly...

British spying chief Alex Allan, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, has regained consciousness having been in a coma for 10 days. Mr Allan's committee collates information from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and briefs the prime minister, ministers and officials on intelligence assessments on issues such as security, defence and foreign affairs.

The head of the Government's top spy committee is in a coma in hospital after falling mysteriously ill, it emerged today. Alex Allan, who chairs the Joint Intelligence Committee, was found collapsed at home on Monday and his condition is said to be critical. Scotland Yard denied speculation that he may have been the victim of an assassination attempt aimed at the heart of Britain's intelligence community. -snip- Mr Allan, who is responsible for assessing material produced by the UK's three main spy agencies, is one of Whitehall's most senior civil servants. As a close adviser of the Prime Minister...

A Grand Jury to Unlock Rosenberg Records …The Rosenbergs are remembered for stealing what has been called "the secret of the atomic bomb." A wire from historian Ronald Radosh, ... reminds us that it is widely acknowledged that the atomic material given to the Soviets by Julius Rosenberg's brother-in-law, David Greenglass, served only as confirmation to the Russians of the much more accurate information they had received from atomic scientists Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall. The Rosenbergs are remembered for stealing what has been called "the secret of the atomic bomb." A wire from historian Ronald Radosh, ... reminds us...

Charter Communications is sending letters to its customers informing them of an "enhanced online experience" that involves Charter monitoring its users' searches and the websites they visit, and inserting targeted third-party ads based on their web activity. Charter, which serves nearly six million customers, is requiring users who want to keep their activity private to submit their personal information to Charter via an unencrypted form and download a privacy cookie that must be downloaded again each time a user clears his web cache or uses a different browser... Deep packet inspection allows an ISP to monitor not only its users...

From Times OnlineApril 23, 2008 Executives harpooned by online 'whalers' Spies and conmen target bosses in e-mail attacks to install malicious software with access to most privileged data Jonathan Richards Corporate bosses have become the latest target of cyber-criminals, after a string of attacks in which senior management have been singled out to receive fraudulent e-mails. Internet fraudsters have taken to sending personally addressed e-mails to chief executives and other high-level executives with a view to installing malicious software on computers that have access to the most privileged company information. In the latest e-mail scam, known as "whaling" because it...

A BusinessWeek probe of rising attacks on America's most sensitive computer networks uncovers startling security gaps The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane—a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4 billion consulting firm's computer network. The Pentagon hadn't sent the e-mail at all. Its origin is unknown, but the...

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps. Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said...

A former software engineer for a telecommunications company based near Chicago was indicted for allegedly stealing trade secrets worth an estimated $600 million and trying to take the documents to China. The FBI said Wednesday that Hanjuan Jin of Schaumburg, Ill., a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in China, was stopped at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 28, 2007, in a random search. According to an affidavit filed by FBI special agent Michael R. Diekmann, Jin was traveling on a one-way ticket to Beijing at the time. She declared that she had $10,000 in U.S. currency in her...

<p>Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.</p>

According to FBI director, Robert Mueller, the FBI collected personal data by improperly using national security letters in 2006. The widespread abuse program to gather confidential data on people in the United States continued into 2006. Mueller said Wednesday before an oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, that breaches of privacy in counter-terror investigations, which were known to have occurred from 2003 through 2005, also occurred in 2006. A pending report will detail the FBI's continued misuse of national security letters. The breach occurred in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal...

Insects become fly-on-the-wall spies with tiny cameras, radio controls and microphonesBy FIONA MACRAE - More by this author » Last updated at 01:06am on 6th March 2008   It sounds like the stuff of science fiction - beetles, rats and sharks turned into cunning spies courtesy of a brain implant or two.  But such scenarios are fast moving from fantasy to fact, with laboratories around the world hatching a new breed of spy. Moths, beetles, rats, pigeons and sharks have been installed with electrodes, batteries and even video cameras in an attempt to create the ultimate spook. Scroll down for...

Germany says cyber spying is a vital tool against terrorism Germany's highest court has restricted the right of the security services to spy on the computers of suspected criminals and terrorists.Under the technique, software sent in an email enables the authorities to spy on a suspect's computer hard drive. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe said cyber spying violated individuals' right to privacy and could be used only in exceptional cases. Civil liberties activists have warned of an unacceptable invasion of privacy. National precedent The case - which began last year - was brought after the western state of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bill Belichick has been illegally taping opponents' defensive signals since he became the New England Patriots' coach in 2000, according to Sen. Arlen Specter, who said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told him that during a meeting Wednesday. "There was confirmation that there has been taping since 2000, when Coach Belichick took over," Specter said. Specter said Goodell gave him that information during the 1-hour, 40-minute meeting, which was requested by Specter so the commissioner could explain his reasons for destroying the Spygate tapes and notes.

Federal agents today arrested four people on espionage charges, including a Defense Department employee from Alexandria, and accused them of passing classified information to China that included details about the Space Shuttle and U.S. military sales to Taiwan. The DOD employee, Gregg William Bergersen, 51, was charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with conspiracy to disclose national defense information

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials say a U.S. government official and up to four Chinese nationals are being charged with spying on the United States. The Associated Press has learned they are being accused of spying and giving U.S. military secrets to the Chinese government. Law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity say the charges are being unsealed later Monday by federal courts in California and Virginia. The officials asked for anonymity because the case has not yet been made public. It was not immediately clear where in the government the unnamed U.S. official worked.

Where The Spies Are by: Cliff Kincaid, February 01, 2008 How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies? The answer is that most of them will ignore it. This is the fate they’re giving to Comrade J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former Washington Post reporter and...

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and more than a dozen other current and former intelligence officials must testify about their conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists, a federal judge ruled Friday in an espionage case. Lawyers for two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists facing charges have subpoenaed Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and several others to testify at their trial next year. Prosecutors had challenged the subpoenas in federal court. Lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman maintain the Israeli interest group played an unofficial but sanctioned role in crafting foreign policy...

~snip~An early test of all these traits will come in the next few weeks, when the new attorney general is expected to review the Justice Department's flawed, embarrassing prosecution of two former lobbyists for AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen, and a junior associate, Keith Weissman, are charged under the 1917 Espionage Act with receiving classified information from Lawrence Franklin, then a top Defense Department official. The lobbyists allegedly passed on the information they had received to a reporter for the Washington Post and an Israeli embassy employee. Much of the information was about...

Wal-Mart is used to finding its name on the front page of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, but in March of 2007 it found itself making news under very different circumstances. Wal-Mart officially apologized to the Times and retail reporter Michael Barbaro after a member of its internal security organization was found to have secretly taped conversations between Wal-Mart employees and the Times reporter. Not only did Wal-Mart apologize to the reporter, chief executive H. Lee Scott phoned the chief executive of The New York Times to personally offer an explanation and convey the information that...

Nuclear Secrets Allegedly Stolen From Tenn. Lab First On WNBC.com POSTED: 10:12 am EDT July 19, 2007 UPDATED: 10:50 am EDT July 19, 2007 NEW YORK -- WNBC.com's Jonathan Dienst has learned a contract worker is accused of stealing nuclear secrets from the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. Investigators said the worker wanted to sell the secrets to a "foreign country." Investigators are calling the theft a serious breach of security at one of the country's most important nuclear research labs. Officials said there was serious concern the documents could have fallen into the hands of enemy states or...

WASHINGTON -- The Senate appears poised to hand the White House another victory with a measure that would make permanent an expansion of government spy powers and shield phone companies from liability for assisting government eavesdropping. With floor consideration scheduled to start today, Democrats are split on how to cut back on the administration's surveillance powers. The only option that appears to have sufficient backing is a bipartisan measure the White House has blessed. Opponents of the White House-backed bill are increasingly predicting a White House win. If the White House prevails this week, it will be the latest example...

A "sophisticated cyberattack" has been detected at Oak Ridge National Laboratory over the last several weeks, and authorities suspect the hackers are based in China. The breach might have compromised the personal information of thousands of visitors to the lab, according to a communiqué sent to employees. The intrusion is under active investigation by multiple agencies. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials tell ABC News they believe the attacks originated in China with Chinese entities probing U.S. systems. Investigators have not been able to determine whether the attacks came from government or private entities in China. The statement, from...

LONDON (AFP) - Chinese-backed computer hackers attacked the internal computer network of British airplane engine maker Rolls-Royce, The Times said in its Monday edition. Citing unidentified security sources, the daily said that while the hackers did not manage to get through to the company's sensitive data, the attack earlier this year "nearly took them (Rolls-Royce) out". According to The Times, Anglo-Dutch energy company Royal Dutch Shell uncovered a spy ring made up of Chinese nationals at its facilities in Houston, in the United States, also earlier this year. The two companies declined to comment when contacted by The Times. "The...

EFF’s case includes undisputed evidence that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that made copies of all emails, web browsing and other internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provided those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T Worldnet customers. EFF is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for violating the law and the fundamental freedoms of the American public.

Seagate Technology LLC has shipped Maxtor disk drives that contain Trojan horses that upload data to a pair of Chinese Web sites, the Taiwanese government's security service warned this weekend. The Investigation Bureau, a part of the Ministry of Justice that's responsible for both internal security and foreign threats, said it suspected mainland China's authorities were responsible for planting the malware on the drives at the factory. "The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved," a story posted by the English-language Taipei Times reported Sunday. "Sensitive information may have already...

China spying 'biggest US threat' The US must boost its computer security, congressional advisers say Chinese espionage poses "the single greatest risk" to the security of US technology, a panel has told Congress. China is pursuing new technology "aggressively", it says, legitimately through research and business deals and illegally through industrial espionage. China has also "embraced destructive warfare techniques", the report says, enabling it to carry out cyber attacks on other countries' infrastructure. A foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing denied any spying activities by China. "China and the US have a fundamental common interest in promoting sound and rapid development,"...

A CIA operations officer and former FBI special agent pleaded guilty yesterday to fraudulently obtaining her U.S. citizenship and to using her access to FBI computers to check on investigations into her brother-in-law, a Hezbollah-linked businessman. Lebanese-born Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Detroit to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship by paying for a sham marriage; unlawfully accessing a federal computer system; and conspiracy to defraud the United States... As part of the plea agreement, Prouty faces less than a year in jail but will be stripped of her U.S. citizenship....

Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said. Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said. The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said. The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics...

Government insiders who engage in unauthorized leaks of classified information are violating their oaths, breaking the law, damaging national security and deserving of punishment. Sometimes those outside government who receive secrets and pass them to others are also breaking the law and deserve punishment. The latter category includes enemy spies. But what about American lobbyists -- and journalists -- who receive secrets and pass them along? In an important trial set to begin in January, the Justice Department has irresponsibly confused the distinction between spying and lobbying. Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen, two former employees of AIPAC, the pro-Israel...

HONOLULU — Senior military commanders at the U.S. Pacific Command here said China's recent test of an anti-satellite weapon and increased computer-hacking activities prompted increased defenses for U.S. forces in the region and in space. "U.S. space capabilities are an asymmetric advantage that we have to maintain," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel Leaf, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. "There has been significant discussion and activity to assess the impact of [the anti-satellite test] and other [Chinese] space developments, and how to protect our extraordinarily important space capability," he said in an interview at the command's headquarters at...

Anyone who spends as much time in bookstores as I do can smell an emerging literary fad. About 10 years ago, it was books about angels. Not to be undone, the rationalists and atheists have launched their own cottage industry of "God doesn't exist" and "He's mean" books — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, among them. We are witnessing the birth of another literary craze — the "Do we really need Israel, anyway?" book. (ENLARGE) Jeffrey K. Salkin of Atlanta is an ordained rabbi and director of Kol Echad, an adult Jewish learning center. He is the author of...

An anti-communist activist says he's absolutely appalled that a Communist Chinese-owned company wants to buy into an American firm that provides cyber security technology to the Pentagon. D.J. McGuire, president of the China e-Lobby, recently read a report in the Weekly Standard that said Huiwei Technologies wants to become a minority shareholder in 3Com Corporation -- the company that provides the technology the Pentagon relies on to prevent the sort of cyber attacks the Chinese themselves launched several weeks ago. "Basically [we would be] allowing them a stake in a company whose job it is to help prevent the hacking...

France has a new, $400 million, satellite tracking system, and is using it to blackmail the United States. Using special radar and telescopes, the Graves Radar System (GRS) seeks to keep track of satellites and space debris. Currently, the largest satellite tracking system, the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network (SSN), has been doing this for decades. But it has long been known that, while the SSN public catalog lists huge numbers of satellites and space debris, it leaves out many low flying American spy satellites. The new French system has discovered about two dozen of these, and has offered...

The FBI is investigating a major information technology firm with a $1.7 billion Department of Homeland Security contract after it allegedly failed to detect cyber break-ins traced to a Chinese-language Web site and then tried to cover up its deficiencies, according to congressional investigators. At the center of the probe is Unisys Corp., a company that in 2002 won a $1 billion deal to build, secure and manage the information technology networks for the Transportation Security Administration and DHS headquarters. In 2005, the company was awarded a $750 million follow-on contract.... As part of the contract, Unisys was to install...

The secret file that MI5 kept on the author from 1929 until his death in 1950 is being declassified Tuesday by the National Archives. It reveals that in contrast to the fictional "Big Brother," the cruel and all-seeing secret police of Orwell's classic "1984," MI5 took a surprisingly benign view of the writer. Orwell savaged the totalitarianism of Stalin's Russia in "Animal Farm" and "1984." But he was also a socialist who railed against inequality in earlier works such as "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "The Road to Wigan Pier." The documents show Orwell _ whose real...

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S. The decision, made three months ago by...

A federal appeals court panel in Cincinnati yesterday dismissed a lawsuit challenging President Bush's domestic terrorist surveillance program, ruling that those who brought the suit — led by the American Civil Liberties Union — did not have the legal authority to do so. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit panel did not rule on the legality of the surveillance program but vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit that found the post-September 11 program to be unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers....

Appeals Court Dismisses ACLU Lawsuit Challenging Bush's Eavesdropping Program

CINCINNATI: A U.S. appeals court on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel was not on the legality of the surveillance program, but it vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit. That court had found the post-911 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity to be unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers. The American Civil Liberties Union led the lawsuit on behalf...

Forget about the WGA! 20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft - From your machine! By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company. Microsoft makes no secret...

TEHRAN, Iran - Three Iranian-Americans, including U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari, have been charged with endangering national security and espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. The charges, which were denied by relatives and colleagues, were another example of Iran's stepped up accusations that the U.S. is trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government. "Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners. ... The complainant is the Intelligence Ministry," judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. "She has been informed of the charges against her," he said in response to...

May 22, 2007: Japan is having a problem convincing the United States that it is safe to sell Japan weapons containing highly secret technology. That's because of an ongoing incident, where details of the U.S. Aegis naval air defense system have been found copied and passed around a Japanese Navy school (the First Service School in Etajima.) Japan has always been strict about American military technology it has been entrusted with. But the current scandal apparently goes back nearly ten years. In 1998, an instructor at the First Service School prepared a CDROM disk of instructional material, and put a...

A senior US counterintelligence official said Thursday that Russia has fully restored its espionage capabilities against the United States after a period of decline following the Cold War. Joel Brenner, the head of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, said the US is concerned that Russia is continuing to ramp up its operations. "The Russians are now back at cold war levels in their efforts against the United States," he said at an event held by the American Bar Association, a lawyers' group. "They are sending over an increasing and troubling number of intelligence agents."

Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the project called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement -- was requested by Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The investigation focuses...