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The documents, according to the indictment, included details about U.S. nuclear weapons, spy satellites and the U.S. military. Here are some of the documents mentioned in the indictment:- A document marked TOP SECRET//[redacted]/[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN that the indictment says concerned "nuclear capabilities of a foreign country." - A document marked SECRET//FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA that the indictment says concerned "nuclear weaponry of the United States." - Six top-secret documents marked TK, standing for Talent Keyhole, a classification for materials related to U.S. spy satellites. The indictment says these documents concerned the military capabilities of foreign countries.

Persons: Donald Trump, Jonathan Landay, Daniel Wallis Organizations: U.S ., Pentagon, CIA, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, United States, Department of Energy, FISA, Foreign Intelligence, Thomson Locations: Florida, United States, U.S

☆ Norway police could have prevented last year's gay bar shooting, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] People embrace near the police line following a shooting at the London Pub, a popular gay bar and nightclub, in central Oslo, Norway June 25, 2022. PST also failed to share the intelligence it had about the shooter with police officers in charge of the surveillance of radicalised individuals. "This is a devastating report," Oslo's governing mayor, Raymond Johansen, told public broadcaster NRK. PST apologised to the victims, their relatives and the nation immediately after the report. The LGBTQ+ community is preparing for the one-year anniversary of the attack on June 25 and the annual Pride celebration on June 23-July 1.

Persons: Terje Pedersen, Raymond Johansen, Beate Gangaas, Marius Dietrichson, Gwladys Fouche, Hugh Lawson Organizations: NRK, Matapour, Thomson Locations: Oslo, Norway, OSLO

☆ Insider Interview: James Comey explains the rule-bending feds in his new and 'real' mystery novel
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Insider: Let's talk about Benny Dugan, the salty, streetwise investigator who works with prosecutors for the Southern District of New York. And I would say, "What makes you think I'm a good person?" Insider: Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all the good people get bought up by the end of the book? There are at least 57 FBIs — a New York FBI, a Saint Louis FBI, headquarters, the Washington Field Office. I don't think we've grappled with the implications of that, and whether it fits within our normal Fourth Amendment framework.

Persons: James Comey's, Benny Dugan, Dugan, Smith, —, — relents, Donald Trump, Trump, Comey, Hillary Clinton, Steele, wasn't Comey, Long, Kenneth McCabe, Benny, Kenny, Nora, I've, John le Carré, that's shortsighted, Matt Parker, James Comey, I'm, You've, Martin Scorsese, they've, Mattathias Schwartz Organizations: Wesson, Trump —, FBI, Southern, of, Justice Department, Twitter, US, CIA, New York FBI, Saint Louis FBI, Washington Field Office, State Department, Justice, New Yorker Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, Cosa Nostra, FISA Locations: of New York, Washington, Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan

☆ Tragedy Strikes a Boat Full of Spies, and Conspiracy Theories Mount
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Elisabetta Povoledo | Ronen Bergman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The black clouds appeared quickly, sneaking up on sun-seeking revelers on the lake in northern Italy, interrupting early-evening aperitivi and lakefront strolls. As news stories go, the incident on Lake Maggiore on Sunday was a freak tragedy that would usually have attracted fleeting attention. But in subsequent days, the story took off in the Italian media when it emerged that 21 people on the boat were spies, or former spies — including 13 from the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, and eight Italian ones. Two of those who died belonged to Italy’s intelligence service, according to a note issued by Italian intelligence, while Israel said that another victim had been a retired Mossad operative. The fourth victim, a Russian woman, had been married to the boat’s skipper.

Persons: —, Israel Locations: Italy, Lake Maggiore, Russian

☆ Prospective international spies are demanding to work from home and bring their cell phones to the office, spy chief says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-27 | by ( Nathan Rennolds | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

"We cannot offer certain things that are taken for granted today," Kahl said. "Remote work is barely possible here as we need to guarantee security. Not being able to take cell phones into the workplace is also not something you can expect from young people today," he added. According to the CIA's Ask Molly feature, "the CIA's public voice since 2002," prospective US agents will also be disappointed to hear that the service rarely allows for remote work. The website says that staff "primarily work in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) to protect our information, sources, and methods from prying eyes or those who may want to harm," meaning opportunities for remote work are scarce.

☆ Wanted spies: No remote work and must leave cell phone at home
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

BERLIN, May 22 (Reuters) - Calling wannabe James Bonds. Intelligence services are finding it harder to recruit staff since the pandemic as prospects want to work from home and would rather not part with their personal cell phones, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service BND said on Monday. "Remote work is barely possible at the BND for security reasons, and not being able to take your cell phone to work is asking much from young people looking for a job," he added. Some 6,500 people work for the BND, according to its homepage. Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Editing by Lisa ShumakerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

CNN —The FBI improperly searched an intelligence database for information on suspects in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and people arrested at 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd, according to a court opinion that was unsealed and released Friday. The new details about the database misuse are likely to complicate the Biden administration’s efforts to renew a key foreign surveillance program. The FBI searches were not “reasonably likely” to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, Justice Department officials who reviewed the searches concluded, according to the opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees US spy agencies. Analysts at the FBI and other agencies can then search the data gathered for leads related to foreign intelligence missions. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said Friday that congressional action was needed to curb the privacy violations of Americans revealed by the court opinion.

☆ Russia responds to CIA recruitment video for spies with a bizarre video of its own, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Tom Porter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A Russian video apparently seeking to recruit US spies is circulating on Telegram. The video was in response to the CIA's latest attempts to recruit Russian spies on Telegram. The Russian video seems to show members of the US military and contains a clip from "Jarhead," a 2005 film about a disillusioned US Marine. A still from a Russian propaganda video apparently aimed at recruiting spies show President Joe Biden in crosshairs. The US seems keen to recruit Russians opposed to the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, which has stalled amid steep casualties for the Russian military.

☆ FBI misused intelligence database in 278,000 searches, court says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Zeba Siddiqui | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 (Reuters) - A U.S. court found that the FBI improperly searched for information in a U.S. database of foreign intelligence 278,000 times over several years, including on Americans suspected of crimes, according to a ruling released on Friday. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The intelligence database stores digital and other information on individuals. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the FBI to search without a warrant communications of foreigners abroad including their conversations with Americans. The court ruling found the FBI violated rules around the use of the database, created under Section 702 of the FISA Act with its searches.

☆ FBI broke rules in scouring foreign intelligence on Jan. 6 riot, racial justice protests, court says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released Friday. The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government's spy powers. At issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the U.S. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. The order says the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence, though the reasons given for that assessment are mostly redacted.

☆ Trump is weaponizing the Russia report he demanded -- even though it lacks bombshells
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Stephen Collinson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Another Trump ally, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, argued the report showed the “rule of law in America is subservient to political outcomes. In another politically sensitive part of his report, Durham found that the FBI did not pursue allegations against Clinton with the same vigor with which they acted against Trump. He pointed out that the Trump investigation was launched at a time when Russia was attacking Democratic National Committee servers and had used stolen information to attack Clinton. The investigation was only launched after the bureau received evidence from a friendly foreign government that the Trump campaign had been offered help by the Russians. But all Trump needed from the report was a headline and a general narrative of suspicion against the FBI.

☆ US special counsel faults FBI's handling of 2016 Trump-Russia probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Sarah N. Lynch | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI lacked “actual evidence” to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and relied too heavily on tips provided by Trump’s political opponents to fuel the probe, U.S. Special Counsel John Durham concluded in a report released on Monday. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at his final campaign event at the Devos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S. November 8, 2016. That Crossfire Hurricane investigation would later be handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in March 2019 concluded there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. In his new 306-page report, Durham concluded that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement did not possess any “actual evidence” of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia prior to launching Crossfire Hurricane. He also accused the bureau of treating the 2016 Trump probe differently from other politically sensitive investigations, including several involving Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

☆ Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Zachary Cohen Devan Cole Tierney Sneed Evan Perez Hannah Rabinowitz Jeremy Herb Marshall Cohen | Zachary Cohen | Devan Cole | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +14 min

“Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump,” Durham wrote, while quoting in a footnote previously known texts between Strzok and Lisa Page, then an FBI attorney. Witness testimony exposed the FBI’s overreliance on the dossier as it sought court approval to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016. Mixed results over 3+ yearsBarr tapped Durham in 2019 to review the origins of the Russia probe, and the scope of Durham’s work grew over the years. Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which inherited the initial Russia probe, released a detailed accounting of Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but investigators documented numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

☆ Employee Monitoring and Surveillance
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +50 min

Ensuring Employee Safety and Systems SecurityEmployers may use electronic workplace monitoring and surveillance to protect their:Worksites. Potential Liability for Electronic Workplace Monitoring and SurveillanceEmployers that engage in electronic workplace monitoring and surveillance must comply with various federal and state laws, including:The Wiretap Act. Best Practices for Electronic Workplace Monitoring and SurveillanceTo avoid violating relevant state and federal laws, before conducting workplace monitoring and surveillance, employers should:Consider the purpose and appropriate scope of their monitoring and surveillance activities and what methods will help them achieve their objectives. Determine the Purpose of Workplace Monitoring and SurveillanceBefore conducting any workplace monitoring or surveillance, best practice is for employers to identify the purpose and goals of these activities to:Ensure that there is a legitimate business purpose for the planned monitoring and surveillance activities. Determine the scope of monitoring and surveillance necessary to accomplish the business purpose, and conduct only the minimum monitoring and surveillance necessary to meet that business need.

☆ Moscow's 'special' forces: An inside look at how Russia's famed Spetsnaz really operate
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Mark Galeotti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +24 min

Russia's Spetsnaz forces are often depicted as a kind of Russian super troops. Osprey PublishingMost countries' special forces emphasize physical fitness, determination and aggression. Special people, for special tasksMembers of the Russian military's 16th Separate Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in 2018. Even so, being better than most of the Soviet army's miserable and recalcitrant conscript forces did not make most of them truly special, special forces. The special operations commandMembers of Russian's 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in November 2017.

☆ Reversing Trend, 2022 Saw Small Uptick in National Security Surveillance in U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Charlie Savage | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

tightened various rules and modified its systems, leading to a significant drop in the number of queries for information about Americans. disclosed that there had been 204,090 queries for information about Americans in 2022, down 93 percent from about 3.4 million in 2021. is changing how it measures such queries and will screen out duplicates — the practice of recounting multiple queries using the same identifier. made 119,383 such queries for information about Americans in 2022, down from nearly three million in 2021. The government has never used that authority and again sought no such orders in 2021, the report said.

☆ Russian spies are using Tinder to ensnare German soldiers and politicians to get them to disclose Ukraine war secrets, counterintelligence warns
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Sinéad Baker | Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russian spies are using Tinder to pursue intelligence about the Ukraine war, Germany warned. Spies are targeting German soldiers and politicians, the country's counterintelligence service said. Intelligence services like Russia's appear to be using the dating app to seek intel and recruits. Other governments have previously warned that spies and foreign intelligence bodies could be using dating apps like Tinder to find sources and gather information. But the dating app has also been used by others in relation to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

SYDNEY, April 17 (Reuters) - The lawyer for an Australian charged with foreign interference said his client had become "very worried" about two alleged foreign intelligence agents while living in Shanghai and returned to Australia after a decade-long career in China. Csergo is alleged to have accepted cash for writing reports, which Australian federal police say contained information about Australian defence, economic and national security arrangements. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had searched Csergo's laptop and WeChat accounts upon his return from Shanghai, the court was told. "The Chinese did not want it to be known they were making these inquiries and receiving these reports," Barko commented. Csergo, 55, appeared in court via video link from Parklea Prison where he is being held as a high security prisoner.

☆ Discord users say Jack Teixeira only leaked documents to show off. That's a problem for the US military, which uses the app as a conduit for recruitment: reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old airman, was accused of leaking US intelligence documents on Discord. The US military uses Discord to recruit young people who are enthusiastic about video games. Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old junior-ranking US National Guard airman, was arrested on Thursday in connection to the leak of classified Pentagon documents. Some Republicans — most prominently Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — have hailed Teixeira as a national hero, but members of Thug Shaker Central said otherwise. A spokesperson for Discord and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SYDNEY, April 15 (Reuters) - The second person ever charged with violating Australia's foreign interference laws appeared in a local court on Saturday following his arrest a day earlier. Court documents reviewed by Reuters on Saturday listed a charge of reckless foreign interference against Csergo, with the offence occurring between February 2021 and April 2023 in the Australian state of New South Wales and Shanghai. Csergo had recently returned from China and was arrested on Friday at a residence in the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi, according to neighbours. The court document also named "Ken" and "Evelyn" as engaging with Csergo. The AFP will allege "Ken" and "Evelyn" work for a foreign intelligence service and are undertaking intelligence collection activities, the statement said.

SYDNEY, April 14 (Reuters) - An Australian man who had recently returned from China was arrested in Sydney on Friday and charged with a foreign interference offence, police, court officials and neighbours of the man said. The man, who the police statement did not name, operates a business overseas and had recently returned to Australia. Csergo was arrested at a residential address in the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi, a woman who lived at the same address told Reuters. In the statement, police allege the arrested man was contacted while overseas by an individual claiming to be from a think-tank. Csergo is the second person charged with an offence since Australia introduced foreign interference laws in 2018.

The chart showed that Serbia declined to provide training to Ukrainian forces, but had committed to sending lethal aid or had supplied it already. It also said Serbia had the political will and military ability to provide weapons to Ukraine in the future. The Pentagon also did not immediately respond to Reuters questions about the document's reference to Serbia and has previously declined to comment on any of the leaked documents. Vucic's government has professed neutrality in the Ukraine war, despite the country's deep historic, economic and cultural ties with Russia. "We didn't export any weapons or ammunition to Russia or Ukraine," he said during a March 5 visit to Qatar.

☆ Sky News Australia quits TikTok citing security risks posed by Chinese-owned app
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Hilary Whiteman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Brisbane, Australia CNN —Australian broadcaster Sky News has left TikTok because of security concerns that have led several Western governments to ban the video app on devices used by officials. “We urge [media organizations] to consider this dilemma and stop trading security and integrity for a few worthless views,” he added. There is still no public evidence the Chinese government has actually spied on people through TikTok. Sky News Australia is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA)oration, and is a separate entity to UK broadcaster Sky News, which is owned by Sky Group, a division of US conglomerate Comcast (CCZ). ByteDance said the relevant staff were investigating potential information leaks, and they were fired for misusing their authority to access TikTok user data.

☆ Factbox: What is known about latest leak of U.S. secrets
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Here is what we know and do not know about what appears to be the gravest leak of U.S. secrets in years:ARE THE DOCUMENTS REAL? Materials marked that way would have been seen by thousands of people with security clearances. But because not all of the documents are marked FVEY, U.S. officials believe whoever leaked them could be American. - China: Predictions about how China would respond to Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, along with details about British plans in the Indo-Pacific region. - South America: Information about Brazilian officials' plan to visit Moscow in April to discuss a Ukraine mediation scheme.

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