Espionage
Espionage or spying is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information without the permission of the holder of the information. Spies help agencies uncover secret information. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company or independent operation, can commit espionage; the practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is a method of intelligence gathering which includes information gathering from public sources. Espionage is part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term tends to be associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage. One of the most effective ways to gather data and information about the enemy is by infiltrating the enemy's ranks; this is the job of the spy. Spies can return information concerning the strength of enemy forces, they can find dissidents within the enemy's forces and influence them to defect.
In times of crisis, spies sabotage the enemy in various ways. Counterintelligence is the practice of thwarting enemy intelligence-gathering. All nations have strict laws concerning espionage and the penalty for being caught is severe. However, the benefits gained through espionage are so great that most governments and many large corporations make use of it. Information collection techniques used in the conduct of clandestine human intelligence include operational techniques, asset recruiting, tradecraft. Today, espionage agencies target terrorists as well as state actors. Since 2008, the United States has charged at least 57 defendants for attempting to spy for China. Intelligence services value certain intelligence collection techniques over others; the former Soviet Union, for example, preferred human sources over research in open sources, while the United States has tended to emphasize technological methods such as SIGINT and IMINT. In the Soviet Union, both political and military intelligence officers were judged by the number of agents they recruited.
Espionage agents are trained experts in a targeted field so they can differentiate mundane information from targets of value to their own organizational development. Correct identification of the target at its execution is the sole purpose of the espionage operation. Broad areas of espionage targeting expertise include: Natural resources: strategic production identification and assessment. Agents are found among bureaucrats who administer these resources in their own countries Popular sentiment towards domestic and foreign policies. Agents recruited from field journalistic crews, exchange postgraduate students and sociology researchers Strategic economic strengths. Agents recruited from science and technology academia, commercial enterprises, more from among military technologists Military capability intelligence. Agents are trained by military espionage education facilities, posted to an area of operation with covert identities to minimize prosecution Counterintelligence operations targeting opponents' intelligence services themselves, such as breaching confidentiality of communications, recruiting defectors or moles Although the news media may speak of "spy satellites" and the like, espionage is not a synonym for all intelligence-gathering disciplines.
It is a specific form of human source intelligence. Codebreaking, aircraft or satellite photography, research in open publications are all intelligence gathering disciplines, but none of them is considered espionage. Many HUMINT activities, such as prisoner interrogation, reports from military reconnaissance patrols and from diplomats, etc. are not considered espionage. Espionage is the disclosure of sensitive information to people who are not cleared for that information or access to that sensitive information. Unlike other forms of intelligence collection disciplines, espionage involves accessing the place where the desired information is stored or accessing the people who know the information and will divulge it through some kind of subterfuge. There are exceptions to physical meetings, such as the Oslo Report, or the insistence of Robert Hanssen in never meeting the people who bought his information; the US defines espionage towards itself as "The act of obtaining, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation".
Black's Law Dictionary defines espionage as: "... gathering, transmitting, or losing... information related to the national defense". Espionage is a violation of United States law, 18 U. S. C. §§ 792–798 and Article 106a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice". The United States, like most nations, conducts espionage against other nations, under the control of the National Clandestine Service. Britain's espionage activities are controlled by the Secret Intelligence Service. A spy is a person employed to seek out top secret information from a source. Within the United States Intelligence Community, "asset" is a more common usage. A case officer or Special Agent, who may have diplomatic status and directs the human collector. Cutouts are couriers who do not know the case officer but transfer messages. A
Dead drop
A dead drop or dead letter box is a method of espionage tradecraft used to pass items or information between two individuals using a secret location, thus not requiring them to meet directly and thereby maintaining operational security. The method stands in contrast to the live drop, so-called because two persons meet to exchange items or information. Spies and their handlers have been known to perform dead drops using various techniques to hide items, to signal that the drop has been made. Although the signal and location by necessity must be agreed upon in advance, the signal may or may not be located close to the dead drop itself, the operatives may not know one another or meet; the location and nature of the dead drop must enable retrieval of the hidden item without the operatives being spotted by a member of the public, the police, or other security forces—therefore, common everyday items and behavior are used to avoid arousing suspicion. Any hidden location could serve, although a cut-out device is used, such as a loose brick in a wall, a library book, or a hole in a tree.
A dead drop spike is a concealment device similar to a microcache. It has been used since the late 1960s to hide money, documents and other items; the spike is water- and mildew-proof and can be pushed into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved at a time. Signaling devices can include a chalk mark on a wall, a piece of chewing-gum on a lamppost, or a newspaper left on a park bench. Alternatively, the signal can be made from inside the agent's own home, by, for example, hanging a distinctively-colored towel from a balcony, or placing a potted plant on a window sill where it is visible to anyone on the street. Convicted CIA mole and Soviet spy Aldrich Ames left chalk marks on a mail box in Washington, D. C. to signal his Soviet handlers. While the dead drop method is useful in preventing the instantaneous capture of either an operative/handler pair or an entire espionage network, it is not without disadvantages. If one of the operatives is compromised, they may reveal the location and signal for that specific dead drop.
Counterintelligence can use the dead drop as a double agent for a variety of purposes, such as to feed misinformation to the enemy or to identify other operatives using it or to booby trap it. On January 23, 2006, the Russian FSB accused Britain of using wireless dead drops concealed inside hollowed-out rocks to collect espionage information from agents in Russia. According to the Russian authorities, the agent delivering information would approach the rock and transmit data wirelessly into it from a hand-held device, his British handlers would pick up the stored data by similar means. Espionage Foldering PirateBox USB dead drop "Russians accuse 4 Britons of spying". International Herald Tribune. January 24, 2006. News report on Russian discovery of British "wireless dead drop". "Old spying lives on in new ways". BBC. 23 January 2006. Madrid suspects tied to e-mail ruse. International Herald Tribune. April 28, 2006. Military secrets missing on Ministry of Defence computer files Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry R. Schlesinger, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda, New York, Dutton, 2008.
ISBN 0-525-94980-1
Diplomatic immunity
Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity that ensures diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws, but they can still be expelled. Modern diplomatic immunity was codified as international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, ratified by all but a handful of nations; the concept and custom of diplomatic immunity dates back thousands of years. Many principles of diplomatic immunity are now considered to be customary law. Diplomatic immunity was developed to allow for the maintenance of government relations, including during periods of difficulties and armed conflict; when receiving diplomats, who formally represent the sovereign, the receiving head of state grants certain privileges and immunities to ensure they may carry out their duties, on the understanding that these are provided on a reciprocal basis. These privileges and immunities were granted on a bilateral, ad hoc basis, which led to misunderstandings and conflict, pressure on weaker states, an inability for other states to judge which party was at fault.
An international agreement known as the Vienna Convention codified the rules and agreements, providing standards and privileges to all states. It is possible for the official's home country to waive immunity. However, many countries refuse to waive immunity as a matter of course. Alternatively, the home country may prosecute the individual. If immunity is waived by a government so that a diplomat can be prosecuted, it must be because there is a case to answer and it is in the public interest to prosecute them. For instance, in 2002, a Colombian diplomat in London was prosecuted for manslaughter, once diplomatic immunity was waived by the Colombian government; the concept of diplomatic immunity can be found in ancient Indian epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, where messengers and diplomats were given immunity from capital punishment. In Ramayana, when the demon king Ravana ordered the killing of Hanuman, Ravana's younger brother Vibhishana pointed out that messengers or diplomats should not be killed, as per ancient practices.
During the evolution of international justice, many wars were considered rebellions or unlawful by one or more combatant sides. In such cases, the servants of the "criminal" sovereign were considered accomplices and their persons violated. In other circumstances, harbingers of inconsiderable demands were killed as a declaration of war. Herodotus records that when heralds of the Persian king Xerxes demanded "earth and water" of Greek cities, the Athenians threw them into a pit and the Spartans threw them down a well for the purpose of suggesting they would find both earth and water at the bottom, these being mentioned by the messenger as a threat of siege; however for Herodotus, this maltreatment of envoys is a crime. He recounts a story of divine vengeance befalling Sparta for this deed. A Roman envoy was urinated on; the oath of the envoy, "This stain will be washed away with blood!", was fulfilled during the Second Punic War. The arrest and ill-treatment of the envoy of Raja Raja Chola by the king of Kulasekhara dynasty, now part of modern India, led to the naval Kandalur War in AD 994.
The Islamic prophet Muhammad sent and received envoys and forbade harming them. This practice was continued by the Rashidun caliphs who exchanged diplomats with the Ethiopians and the Byzantines; this diplomatic exchange continued during the Arab–Byzantine wars. Classical Sharia called for hospitality to be shown towards anyone, granted amān. Amān was granted to any emissary bearing a letter or another sealed document; the duration of the amān was a year. Envoys with this right of passage were given immunity of property, they were exempt from taxation. As diplomats by definition enter the country under safe-conduct, violating them is viewed as a great breach of honor, although there have been numerous cases in which diplomats have been killed. Genghis Khan and the Mongols were well known for insisting on the rights of diplomats, they would take terrifying vengeance against any state that violated these rights; the Mongols would raze entire cities in retaliation for the execution of their ambassadors, invaded and destroyed the Khwarezmid Empire after their ambassadors had been mistreated.
The British Parliament first guaranteed diplomatic immunity to foreign ambassadors in 1709, after Count Andrey Matveyev, a Russian resident in London, had been subjected to verbal and physical abuse by British bailiffs. Modern diplomatic immunity evolved parallel to the development of modern diplomacy. In the 17th century, European diplomats realized that protection from prosecution was essential to doing their jobs, a set of rules evolved guaranteeing the rights of diplomats; these were still confined to Western Europe and were tied to the prerogatives of nobility. Thus, an emissary to the Ottoman Empire could expect to be arrested and imprisoned upon the outbreak of hostilities between his state and the empire; the French Revolution disrupted this system, as the revolutionary state and Napoleon imprisoned numerous dip
Steganography
Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, image, or video within another file, image, or video. The word steganography combines the Greek words steganos, meaning "covered, concealed, or protected", graphein meaning "writing"; the first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography, disguised as a book on magic. The hidden messages appear to be something else: images, shopping lists, or some other cover text. For example, the hidden message may be in invisible ink between the visible lines of a private letter; some implementations of steganography that lack a shared secret are forms of security through obscurity, key-dependent steganographic schemes adhere to Kerckhoffs's principle. The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that the intended secret message does not attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny. Plainly visible encrypted messages, no matter how unbreakable they are, arouse interest and may in themselves be incriminating in countries in which encryption is illegal.
Whereas cryptography is the practice of protecting the contents of a message alone, steganography is concerned both with concealing the fact that a secret message is being sent and its contents. Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size. For example, a sender might start with an innocuous image file and adjust the color of every hundredth pixel to correspond to a letter in the alphabet; the change is so subtle that someone, not looking for it is unlikely to notice the change. The first recorded uses of steganography can be traced back to 440 BC when Herodotus mentions two examples in his Histories. Histiaeus sent a message to his vassal, Aristagoras, by shaving the head of his most trusted servant, "marking" the message onto his scalp sending him on his way once his hair had regrown, with the instruction, "When thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, look thereon."
Additionally, Demaratus sent a warning about a forthcoming attack to Greece by writing it directly on the wooden backing of a wax tablet before applying its beeswax surface. Wax tablets were in common use as reusable writing surfaces, sometimes used for shorthand. In his work Polygraphiae, Johannes Trithemius developed his so-called "Ave-Maria-Cipher" that can hide information in a Latin praise of God. "Auctor Sapientissimus Conseruans Angelica Deferat Nobis Charitas Potentissimi Creatoris" for example contains the concealed word VICIPEDIA. Steganography has been used for centuries. Here are some examples: Hidden messages on paper written in secret inks. Hidden messages distributed, according to a certain rule or key, as smaller parts among other words of a less suspicious covertext; this particular form of steganography is called a null cipher. Messages written in Morse code on yarn and knitted into a piece of clothing worn by a courier. Messages written on envelopes in the area covered by postage stamps.
In the early days of the printing press, it was common to mix different typefaces on a printed page because the printer did not have enough copies of some letters in one typeface. Thus, a message could be hidden by using two or more different typefaces, such as italic. During and after World War II, espionage agents used photographically-produced microdots to send information back and forth. Microdots were minute. World War II microdots were embedded in the paper and covered with an adhesive, such as collodion, reflective and so was detectable by viewing against glancing light. Alternative techniques included inserting microdots into slits cut into the edge of postcards. During World War II, Velvalee Dickinson, a spy for Japan in New York City, sent information to accommodation addresses in neutral South America, she was a dealer in dolls, her letters discussed the quantity and type of doll to ship. The stegotext was the doll orders, the concealed "plaintext" was itself encoded and gave information about ship movements, etc.
Her case became somewhat famous and she became known as the Doll Woman. During World War II, photosensitive glass was declared secret, used for transmitting information to Allied armies. Jeremiah Denton blinked his eyes in Morse code during the 1966 televised press conference that he was forced into as an American prisoner-of-war by his North Vietnamese captors, spelling out "T-O-R-T-U-R-E"; that confirmed for the first time to the US Naval Intelligence and other Americans that the North Vietnamese were torturing American prisoners-of-war. In 1968, crew members of the USS Pueblo intelligence ship, held as prisoners by North Korea, communicated in sign language during staged photo opportunities, to inform the United States that they were not defectors but captives of the North Koreans. In other photos presented to the US, crew members gave "the finger" to the unsuspecting North Koreans, in an attempt to discredit photos that showed them smiling and comfortable. Modern steganography entered the world in 1985 with the advent of personal computers being applied to classical steganography problems.
Development following, slow, but has since taken off, going by the large number of steganography software available: Concealing messages within the lowest bits of noisy images or sound files. A survey and evaluation of re
Signals intelligence
Signals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people or from electronic signals not directly used in communication. Signals intelligence is a subset of intelligence collection management; as sensitive information is encrypted, signals intelligence in turn involves the use of cryptanalysis to decipher the messages. Traffic analysis—the study of, signaling whom and in what quantity—is used to derive information. Electronic interception appeared as early as 1900, during the Boer War of 1899-1902; the British Royal Navy had installed wireless sets produced by Marconi on board their ships in the late 1890s and the British Army used some limited wireless signalling. The Boers captured some wireless used them to make vital transmissions. Since the British were the only people transmitting at the time, no special interpretation of the signals that were intercepted by the British was necessary; the birth of signals intelligence in a modern sense dates from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
As the Russian fleet prepared for conflict with Japan in 1904, the British ship HMS Diana stationed in the Suez Canal intercepted Russian naval wireless signals being sent out for the mobilization of the fleet, for the first time in history. Over the course of the First World War, the new method of signals intelligence reached maturity. Failure to properly protect its communications fatally compromised the Russian Army in its advance early in World War I and led to their disastrous defeat by the Germans under Ludendorff and Hindenburg at the Battle of Tannenberg. In 1918, French intercept personnel captured a message written in the new ADFGVX cipher, cryptanalyzed by Georges Painvin; this gave the Allies advance warning of the German 1918 Spring offensive. The British in particular built up great expertise in the newly emerging field of signals intelligence and codebreaking. On the declaration of war, Britain cut all German undersea cables; this forced the Germans to use either a telegraph line that connected through the British network and could be tapped, or through radio which the British could intercept.
Rear-Admiral Henry Oliver appointed Sir Alfred Ewing to establish an interception and decryption service at the Admiralty. An interception service known as'Y' service, together with the post office and Marconi stations grew to the point where the British could intercept all official German messages; the German fleet was in the habit each day of wirelessing the exact position of each ship and giving regular position reports when at sea. It was possible to build up a precise picture of the normal operation of the High Seas Fleet, to infer from the routes they chose where defensive minefields had been placed and where it was safe for ships to operate. Whenever a change to the normal pattern was seen, it signalled that some operation was about to take place and a warning could be given. Detailed information about submarine movements was available; the use of radio receiving equipment to pinpoint the location of the transmitter was developed during the war. Captain H. J. Round working for Marconi, began carrying out experiments with direction finding radio equipment for the army in France in 1915.
By May 1915, the Admiralty was able to track German submarines crossing the North Sea. Some of these stations acted as'Y' stations to collect German messages, but a new section was created within Room 40 to plot the positions of ships from the directional reports. Room 40 played an important role in several naval engagements during the war, notably in detecting major German sorties into the North Sea; the battle of Dogger Bank was won in no small part due to the intercepts that allowed the Navy to position its ships in the right place. It played a vital role in subsequent naval clashes, including at the Battle of Jutland as the British fleet was sent out to intercept them; the direction-finding capability allowed for the tracking and location of German ships and Zeppelins. The system was so successful, that by the end of the war over 80 million words, comprising the totality of German wireless transmission over the course of the war had been intercepted by the operators of the Y-stations and decrypted.
However its most astonishing success was in decrypting the Zimmermann Telegram, a telegram from the German Foreign Office sent via Washington to its ambassador Heinrich von Eckardt in Mexico. With the importance of interception and decryption established by the wartime experience, countries established permanent agencies dedicated to this task in the interwar period. In 1919, the British Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by Lord Curzon, recommended that a peace-time codebreaking agency should be created; the Government Code and Cypher School was the first peace-time codebreaking agency, with a public function "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but with a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". GC&CS formed on 1 November 1919, produced its first decrypt on 19 October. By 1940, GC&CS was working on the diplomatic codes and ciphers of 26 countries, tackling over 150 diplomatic cryptosystems.
The US Cipher Bureau was established in 1919 and achieved some success at the Washington Naval Conference in 1921, through cryptanalysis by Herbert Yardley. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson closed the US Cipher Bureau in 1929 with the words "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." The use of SIGINT had greater implications during World War II. The combined effort of intercepts and cryp
Eavesdropping
Eavesdropping is the act of secretly or stealthily listening to the private conversation or communications of others without their consent. The practice is regarded as unethical, in many jurisdictions is illegal; the verb eavesdrop is a back-formation from the noun eavesdropper, formed from the related noun eavesdrop. An eavesdropper was someone who would hang from the eave of a building so as to hear what is said within; the PBS documentaries, Inside the Court of Henry VIII and Secrets of Henry VIII’s Palace include segments that display and discuss "eavedrops", carved wooden figures Henry VIII had built into the eaves of Hampton Court to discourage unwanted gossip or dissension from the King's wishes and rule, to foment paranoia and fear, demonstrate that everything said there was being overheard. Eavesdropping vectors include telephone lines, cellular networks and other methods of private instant messaging. VoIP communications software is vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping via infections such as trojans.
Network eavesdropping is a network layer attack that focuses on capturing small packets from the network transmitted by other computers and reading the data content in search of any type of information. This type of network attack is one of the most effective as a lack of encryption services are used, it is linked to the collection of metadata. Those who perform this type of attack are black-hat hackers; the dictionary definition of eavesdropping at Wiktionary Media related to Eavesdropping at Wikimedia Commons
Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While economic espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more national and occurs between companies or corporations. "Competitive intelligence" involves the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering and managing information on industrial competitors. It may include activities such as examining newspaper articles, corporate publications, patent filings, specialised databases, information at trade shows and the like to determine information on a corporation; the compilation of these crucial elements is sometimes termed CIS or CRS, a Competitive Intelligence Solution or Competitive Response Solution, with its roots in market research. Douglas Bernhardt has characterised "competitive intelligence" as involving "the application of principles and practices from military and national intelligence to the domain of global business".
The difference between competitive intelligence and economic or industrial espionage is not clear. Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage is to gather knowledge about organization, it may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, sales, marketing and development, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production, it may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can be targets — for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract. Economic and industrial espionage is most associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, aerospace, telecommunications and engine technology, machine tools, energy and coatings and so on.
Silicon Valley is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target. Information can make the difference between failure. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it. Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information. In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage; that espionage and sabotage have become more associated with each other is demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government has a polygraph examination entitled the "Test of Espionage and Sabotage", contributing to the notion of the interrelationship between espionage and sabotage countermeasures.
In practice by "trusted insiders", they are considered functionally identical for the purpose of informing countermeasures. Economic or industrial espionage occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest. "Moles", or trusted insiders, are considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage. Known as a "patsy", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, bribed into handing over more sensitive material. Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them; such apparent behavior has been the focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles. Some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than use of their own intelligence agencies.
Academics, business delegates, students are thought to be used by governments in gathering information. Some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students be debriefed on returning home. A spy may follow a guided tour of a factory and get "lost". A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises. A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as "dumpster diving". Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys or use of technical support or research or software facilities. Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside the agreed-upon contract. Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet. Computers have become key in exercising industrial
The dictionary definition of official cover at Wiktionary