MI6 spy who was found dead in locked bag had 'hacked secrets files about US president'

A British MI6 spy who was found dead inside a bag in 2010 had hacked into restricted information about the US president, it has been claimed. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old employee of GCHQ who was seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was found dead inside a padlocked bag at a safe house in London.

The Sun on Sunday newspaper quotes an intelligence source as saying Mr Williams had obtained sensitive documents regarding former US president Bill Clinton. “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature,” the source is reported to have told the newspaper.

“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.” A coroner had previously ruled that Mr Williams was probably unlawfully killed and that his death was likely to have been the result of criminal actions.

More at  The Independent

Bilderberg Nazi Chairman Prince Bernhard, Master Of Spies

Was ex-SS Bilderberg chairman Prince Bernhard a Nazi spy in Whitehall? Interview with Dutch journalist Philip Droge author of 'Master of Spies'. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands' Nazi SS past and marriage to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands -- comes to London when Holland is invaded by the Nazis in 1940 and shadowed by Ian Fleming of MI6 'M' section, Desmond Morton, Mountbatten, OpJB and James Bond fame.
Prince Bernhard sends double agent Christiaan Lindemans, known as agent 'King Kong', into Holland in early September 1944 just before crucial Operation Market Garden but instead of going to prepare the Dutch resistance he reports straight to the German Abwehr (military intelligence). After the war Lindemans was arrested and interrogated by the British military intelligence and set to stand trial. But taken by the Dutch government to Germany where he died in mysterious circumstances days before the trial was due to commence. Bernhard reappears in 1954 in the Oosterbeek 'witches cauldron', where thousands of British paratroopers were massacred, as Chairman of the Bilderberg meetings for two decades. Then the Lockheed scandal of 1975 where he is disgraced, almost causing the death of the Dutch monarchy.

There is something squalid and rancid about being spied on

Writer and comedian Stephen Fry discusses the dangers of mass surveillance, calling for a campaign to urge governments around the world to curtail their monitoring of private data.

Secrets of Mata Hari to be revealed as MI5 files on wartime spies go online

Top secret MI5 files on spies from the First World War – including the notorious exotic dancer Mata Hari – will go online today. The database will feature for the first time some of history’s most famous spies and the secrets in which they traded.

Among the names detailed in more than 150 digitised dossiers is Dutch-born Hari, tried for causing the deaths of 50,000 soldiers by spying for German intelligence. She was arrested in February 1917 in Paris before being executed in France aged 41. The files contain a detailed account of her interrogation by British police in the same year – in which she gives away nothing. Another MI5 memo, referring to the spy by her real name of Margreet Zelle MacLeod, says their contact in Paris warned the agency of his suspicions.

“He informs us that he has suspected her for some time and pretended to employ her in order, if possible, to obtain definite proof.” Evidence emerged decades later that she did compile reports for the Germans.

The files can be accessed at nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war

Daily Express

Glenn Greenwald: Obama NSA Speech A 'PR Gesture'

Glenn Greenwald dismissed President Obama's Friday speech outlining his reforms of the NSA as a "PR gesture," and mocked Obama's comments about the effect caused by Edward Snowden's leaks.

Obama announced a series of proposed changes to the way the NSA collects some data, though he emphasized that the data collection would continue. Speaking to Al Jazeera America before the speech, Greenwald did not appear to place much faith in Obama's intentions:

“It’s really just basically a PR gesture, a way to calm the public and to make them think there’s reform when in reality there really won’t be. And I think that if the public, at this point, has heard enough about what the NSA does and how invasive it is, that they’re going to need more than just a pretty speech from President Obama to feel as though their concerns have been addressed.”

Greenwald was just as critical during the speech itself. He noted that Obama was framing the debate around where citizens' data would be stored, rather than whether it needed to be collected in the first place:

"Store all citizens' communications records" is a radical policy. But it's been transformed to normal- only allowed debate is: who holds it?

Glenn Greenwald: Obama NSA Speech A 'PR Gesture'

Google Wants Microphones In Your Ceiling & Microchips In Your Head

Google engineering director Scott Huffman says that within five years people will have microphones attached to their ceilings and microchips embedded in their brains in order to perform quicker internet searches. In an interview with the London Independent, Huffman said that Google was working towards a concept based around microphones hanging from the ceiling that would respond to verbal queries.

“Like a great personal assistant, it will interrupt you and say ‘ you’ve got to leave now’. It will bring you the information you want,” said Huffman, adding that “five years from now….Google will answer you the same way a person would answer.” When challenged on the likelihood of such a system being vulnerable to NSA wiretapping, Huffman glibly responded that people should just trust Google (a company that allowed the NSA to mine data from its cloud network “at will”) to safeguard their information.

“I could ask my Google ‘assistant’ where we should have lunch, that serves French food and isn’t too expensive? Google will go ‘Ok, we’ll go to that place’ and when I get in my car it should already be navigating to that restaurant. We’re really excited by the idea of multiple devices being able to talk to each other,” said Huffman. “Google believes it can ultimately fulfil people’s data needs by sending results directly to microchips implanted into its user’s brains,” states the report, a concept which Huffman welcomes.

Infowars

The Goal Of The U.S. Government Is To Eliminate ALL Privacy Globally!

Extensive interview with Glenn Greenwald who leaked the Edward Snowden NSA documents.

British intelligence agencies intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

More on The Guardian

The Spies Who Fooled the World

BBC Panorama: On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, Panorama reveals how key aspects of the secret intelligence used to justify the invasion were based on fabrication and lies.

Alan Turing's Death Shows 'Cost Of Intolerance Is A Loss To The Nation'

The head of intelligence agency GCHQ has paid tribute to World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, saying that the "cost of intolerance was a loss to the nation" during centenary celebrations of the mathematician's birth.

Spy chief Iain Lobban described Turing as "one of the great minds of the 20th century" whose breakthroughs have laid the foundations of the modern information age". Turing worked at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park - the forerunner of GCHQ - where he devised the techniques which cracked the German Enigma code.

But despite his achievements he was found guilty of "gross indecency" in 1952, a conviction for the-then illegal act of homosexual sex. Turing chose to be chemically castrated by being injected with female hormones rather than go to prison. Two years after his conviction he died of cyanide poisoning, a verdict recorded as suicide at his inquest. Although his mother and other academics have maintained his death was accidental, many have argued he took the poison deliberately to end the persecution he was suffering for being homosexual.

Further reading at Huff Post

Australian Now Spies on Its Citizens More than the US Does

The Australian Government has now been labelled as the most intrusive government in the Western world.
It has been revealed that on a per-capita basis, the Australian government spies on its citizens more than any other Western government.

In 2010-2011, more than 3,400 Australians had been spied on by more than 17 government law enforcement agencies. This includes state and federal police agencies, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and Medicare.
The shocking truth is that these government agencies can access telephone and Internet data records without a warrant from a judge.
On a per capita basis, the Australian government is 18 times more likely to intercept telephone calls than the United States government (Source: Sydney Morning Herald).
Even more disturbing, these government agencies accessed telephone and Internet data records an astonishingly 250,000 times without even recording why and when these intercepts had taken place.

Activist Post

The Murder of Gareth Williams

Experts who tried and failed to lock themselves into a sports bag identical to that in which UK MI6 officer Gareth Williams was found believed it likely a third party was involved, his inquest heard, as it emerged he browsed self-bondage websites and videoed himself naked in boots.

The Guardian - Gareth Williams on WikiSpooks – Mail Online

New snooping law to allow UK Government access to everybody's emails, texts, and internet browsing

Major changes to surveillance laws are to give the Government the power to monitor email exchanges and website visits of every person in the UK. The new legislation is expected to be announced in the Queen's Speech next month, despite similar 'Big Brother'-style laws being rejected six years ago.

Internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ - the Government's electronic 'listening' agency - to examine 'on demand' any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed in 'real time'.

Civil liberties campaigners expressed fears that this 'unprecedented' move will intrude on the lives of British citizens, with the measures being compared to strict controls currently exercised in China and Iran. In 2006, Labour was forced to abandon similar plans in the face of fierce opposition from Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and privacy groups.

But now, the Sunday Times reports, the Home Office has confirmed coalition ministers intend to revive the move towards greater surveillance 'as soon as parliamentary time allows'.

Mail Online

Government corruption Mass surveillance and control

Stop Online Spying on Your Private Life

The Open media

Coco Chanel: Nazi agent?

She was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th Century, but Coco Chanel's reputation is again under scrutiny over allegations that she was a Nazi agent in WWII France. To millions of people around the globe Chanel stands for style, opulence and understated elegance, from haute couture worn by the few to ready-to-wear treasured by the masses.

Her achievements are undeniable. Chanel's instantly recognisable suits have been sported by stylistas from the Duchess of Windsor to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink version when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

Like many luminaries, including the singers Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, the writer Jean Cocteau and the late president Francois Mitterrand, Chanel remained in her native country following its occupation by German forces in the summer of 1940.

And since the war's end, rumours have abounded about the real nature of her association with the Nazis. Now according to Hal Vaughan, author of the new book, Sleeping with the Enemy, Chanel is revealed as having actually worked for German military intelligence during the war.

Being a Nazi agent was "part of her daily life" in Paris during the occupation, he says. "Chanel was a consummate opportunist. The Nazis were in power, and Chanel gravitated to power. It was the story of her life.

More on BBC News

Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses

hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday.

The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science.

"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."

The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.

Breitbart

Wikileaks Founder: Facebook is the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented

Despite awaiting extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is still the subject of much media interest.

Russia Today (RT) interviewed Assange, getting his viewpoint on political unrest in Egypt and Libya, particularly probing what the Wikileaks founder makes of social media’s roles in the recent revolutions in both countries. In his interview, Assange focuses particularly on Facebook calling it the “most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented”.

Explaining in more detail, Assange affirms:

Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US Intelligence.”

According to Assange, it doesn’t stop with Facebook. He believes the social network is joined by Google, Yahoo and other major US organisations that have “built in interfaces for US Intelligence”:

It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface they have developed for US Intelligence to use. Now, is the case that Facebook is run by US Intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US Intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them.

It’s costly for them to hand out individual records, one by one, so they have automated the process.

The Wikileaks founder then warns Facebook users, stating that if a user adds their friend to Facebook, they are “doing free work for US Intelligence agencies, in building this electronic database for them”.

thenextweb.com

The Secret World of Toenail Messages

A formula for invisible ink used by spies during the First World War and espionage techniques involving messages etched on toenails are among classified documents released by the CIA.

Six of the oldest files held by the agency, which predate it by several decades, were made public this week.

One paper from 1918 lists the chemicals and techniques used to create "secret writing". Another from 1914 and written in French gives the formula the Germans were believed to have used for their invisible ink.

"When historical information is no longer sensitive, we take seriously our responsibility to share it with the American people," said Leon Panetta, the CIA director.

The Montreal Gazette

Chinese cyber-spies penetrate UK Foreign Office computers

China has penetrated the Foreign Office's internal communications in the most audacious example yet of the growing threat posed by state-sponsored cyber-attacks, it emerged tonight.

William Hague told a security conference in Munich that the FO repelled the attack last month from "a hostile state intelligence agency". Although the foreign secretary did not name the country behind the attacks, intelligence sources familiar with the incidents made it clear he was referring to China. The sources did not want to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

In his speech Hague was reflecting growing anger and concern within the government about the increasing threat posed by cyber-espionage – states, as well as individuals, using cyberspace to steal defence, diplomatic and commercial secrets. "It is a new development. The UK is prepared to admit the attacks were state-backed," said Alexander Neill, head of the Asia programme at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.

From The Guardian