National Security Threat: China’s Eyes in America

Chinese intelligence gathering in the US takes many forms and has different purposes. Most Americans are familiar with some of their means and tactics, but not with how widespread and persistent they are.

Americans may know about the malware contained in that infernal TikTok app that their children use. They may know the Chinese military’s cyber-intelligence service was likely behind many of the largest hacks of Americans’ personal data that have ever occurred. They may know from the news how US defense and intelligence policy have sanctioned Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and counseled America’s allies to reject Chinese-architected implementations of 5G networking, due to evidence that China has planted backdoors in commercial networking equipment designed to allow the Communist regime in Beijing to conduct surveillance and cyber-espionage anywhere in the world.

Do they know it extends to consumer-level drones?

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Ortis Lawyer Conveniently Appointed Judge: Trial of alleged RCMP secret leaker delayed a year

OTTAWA – The trial of an RCMP employee accused of breaching Canada’s secrecy law has been delayed a year after a new defence lawyer took on his case.

An eight-week judge and jury trial for Cameron Jay Ortis had been slated to begin next week.

Ortis was taken into custody Sept. 12, 2019, for allegedly revealing secrets to an unnamed recipient and planning to give additional classified information to an unspecified foreign entity.

… Ortis, 50, had been represented by Ian Carter, but Carter was appointed as an Ontario Superior Court judge earlier this year.

I guess the cover up was taking longer than anticipated.

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Socialite who charmed Nato staff in Naples was Russian spy, say investigators

A team of investigators claim to have unmasked a deep-cover spy from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, who spent a decade posing as a Latin American jewellery designer and partied with Nato staff based in Naples.

The investigators say the woman went by the name of Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, and told people she met that she was the child of a German father and Peruvian mother, born in the city of Callao, Peru.

In fact, she was a career GRU officer from Russia, according to research by Bellingcat in partnership with a number of media outlets including La Repubblica in Italy and Der Spiegel in Germany, and shared with the Guardian before publication.

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CSIS warned space agency about ex-engineer now facing charges: court documents

Canada’s spy agency sent multiple warnings to the Canadian Space Agency about Wanping Zheng, a former engineer now accused of negotiating on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company — and even refused to give a presentation at the CSA because it knew Zheng would be there, according to new court documents.

The RCMP charged 61-year-old Zheng last December with breach of trust in a case police say is tied to foreign interference.

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Lawyer for RCMP official accused of leaking secrets seeks a stay of proceedings

The lawyer for an RCMP official accused of preparing to leak sensitive information is seeking to have at least part of the case against him stayed.

Cameron Ortis, who served as director general of the RCMP’s national intelligence co-ordination centre, is charged with violating the Security of Information Act. He was arrested in September 2019 and is accused of trying to share sensitive information with a foreign entity or terrorist organization. He’s also charged with sharing operational information in 2015.

We’re never going to know what happened here and no one aside from Ortis will lose their job.

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UK govt seeks to spike ‘highly sensitive’ BBC spy story – reports

The UK government is reportedly seeking a gagging order to prevent the BBC airing a news segment that apparently identifies a spy working overseas. A secret High Court hearing is expected to be convened next week to listen to arguments on the “highly sensitive case,” according to The Telegraph.

While the broadcaster insists the story is “overwhelmingly in the public interest,” Attorney General Suella Braverman is expected to claim that airing it would present a “risk to people’s lives” and would impact overseas British intelligence activities, the paper reported on Friday.

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Conservatives urged to reconsider compromise on documents about fired scientists

Government House leader Mark Holland is urging the Conservatives to reconsider their rejection of a compromise proposal that would allow MPs to finally see unredacted documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada’s highest-security laboratory.

In a letter Tuesday to his Conservative counterpart, Gerard Deltell, Holland reiterates his proposal to allow a special all-party, security-cleared committee to review all the documents, aided by three former senior judges who would decide whether or how any disputed material could be released publicly without jeopardizing national security.

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Unlikely Most ‘Havana Syndrome’ Cases Caused by Foreign Power, C.I.A. Says

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has found that most cases of the mysterious ailments known as Havana syndrome are unlikely to have been caused by Russia or another foreign adversary, agency officials said, a conclusion that angered victims.

A majority of the 1,000 cases reported to the government can be explained by environmental causes, undiagnosed medical conditions or stress, rather than a sustained global campaign by a foreign power, C.I.A. officials said, describing the interim findings of a comprehensive study.

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“I’m willing to be of paramount service to the Chinese government”

‘I’m ready to risk everything’: Documents from failed prosecution detail GTA engineer’s alleged offer to spy for China

“I’m willing to be of paramount service to the Chinese government,” disgruntled naval engineer Qing Quentin Huang said during one of two calls to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, unaware the line had been wiretapped by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Those phone calls in November 2013 led the RCMP to arrest Huang in Burlington, Ont., for allegedly attempting to spy for China. At the time, the Mounties told the public his actions were “a threat to Canada.”

Use HMA

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A Stealth Industry: The Quiet Expansion of Chinese Private Security Companies

While mercenaries have long played a role in warfare, the prevalence of private companies in modern combat has grown more pronounced than ever. Private military companies (PMCs) and private security companies (PSCs) provide policymakers with attractive ways to project power, including low-profile alternatives to uniformed military deployment and significant cost savings. Moreover, in the current era of strategic competition among the United States, China, and Russia, the struggle for influence is playing out deliberately at a level below the threshold of armed conflict, and such companies are a useful instrument to expand regional and global influence and to create new dilemmas for competitors.

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Stanford Professors Lobbied the DOJ To STOP Fighting Chinese Communist Party Infiltration.

Nearly 200 professors have signed a letter demanding Joe Biden’s Department of Justice terminate a Trump-era initiative targeting Chinese Communist Party-linked academics exploiting American universities for intellectual property theft and espionage.

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Did China Steal Its Way to Military Might?

As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged from war and revolution in 1949, it became apparent that the Chinese economy lacked the capacity to compete with the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. in the production of advanced military technology. Transfers from the Soviet Union helped remedy the gap in the 1950s, as did transfers from the United States and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Still, the Cultural Revolution stifled technology and scientific research, leaving the Chinese even farther behind.

Thus, China has long supplemented legitimate transfers and domestic innovation with industrial espionage. In short, the PRC has a well-established habit of pilfering weapons technology from Russia and the United States. As the years have gone by, Beijing’s spies have become ever more skillful and flexible in their approach.

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Harvard professor found guilty of hiding ties to Chinese-run recruitment program

A Harvard University professor charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program has been found guilty on all counts.

Charles Lieber, 62, the former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of failing to file reports for a foreign bank account in China.

The jury deliberated for about two hours and 45 minutes before announcing the verdict after five days of testimony in Boston federal court.

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Inside the CSIS probe that identified a Canadian mole who spied for Moscow

OTTAWA — An investigation by Canada’s spy service concluded that money, ego and career frustrations were the likely reasons a veteran RCMP officer passed highly sensitive secrets to Russian intelligence for years, newly disclosed records reveal.

Molehunters determined in the mid-1980s that Gilles Germain Brunet was an agent of the Soviet KGB from the late 1960s well into the 1970s, a Cold War spy saga detailed in documents released to The Canadian Press by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service through the Access to Information Act.

Brunet’s betrayal has long been the subject of whispers, chronicled in news articles and books since at least the early 1990s. But until now Canadian intelligence officials have not publicly confirmed his exploits, nor divulged details of the probe that left them convinced he was a mole.

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Order for government to release files on fired scientists ended with dissolution of Parliament: speaker

The Conservatives have lost their bid to resurrect a House of Commons order demanding the release of secret documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada’s highest security laboratory.

Commons Speaker Anthony Rota ruled Thursday that the order expired, along with all other business before the House, when Parliament was dissolved in August for a federal election.

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