Only Two?

2 Patriot Act provisions ruled unlawful

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."

"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised," she wrote.

SEE:

Sacco and Vanzetti

CIA Conspiracies Are Real

Back In the USSA

Big Brother Bush

NARUS is Big Brother

State Sponsored Terrorism

ECHELON Spies on Greenpeace

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

Paranoia and the Security State

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
CIA, USA, Spying, wire tap, domestic spying, White House, Terrorism, Terrorists, patriot act
Echelon, Spying, Government, national-security, NARUS, NSA, Bush, CIA

Lonely Spies

Can't wait to join this social network.

Spies will soon have own social networking site Experts say the service will only be as effective as those who use it. And with many older workers puzzled by their younger colleagues' obsessive use of Facebook and its ilk, full-blown use could take time.

On second thought maybe not.

Mark Lowenthal, president of The Intelligence & Security Academy and the government's former assistant director of central intelligence for analysis and production, admits he's baffled by social-networking sites and isn't sure if A-Space is the ultimate solution to fixing problems in the agencies.

"Clearly, we don't always behave like a community so anything you can do to help foster that to a degree is a good thing," he said. "We want to do better. Anybody who's dealt with adapting technology to the intelligence community will tell you that the intelligence community has not been brilliant in catching up."

A community of spies is a community spying on itself.



ind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Echelon, CSIS, Spying, Government, Conservatives, CSE, Canadian-Security-Establishment, DND, Air, India, terrorism, national-security, NARUS, NSA, Bush, CIA

CIA Spies In Canada

The Central Intelligence Agency spied on Canadians critical of the Vietnam War during the late 1960s and '70s in an operation code-named "MH Chaos," CBC News has learned. The declassified CIA documents did not show whether the Canadian government was aware the CIA was spying on Canadian campuses.

Well duh. Of course they were. As it was reported in the Ubyssey in 1967;

The Canadian Union of Students is among 25 organizations
identified as receiving contributions from foundations connected
with the U .S . Central Intelligence Agency.

Since the RCMP, and now CSIS ,to this day have a joint information sharing agreement with U.S. intelligence and police forces.. And the RCMP was doing the same thing.

Spying 101: The RCMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997. By Steve Hewitt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 295 pages.

If you were expecting a book about a course in basic espionage, look elsewhere. Spying 101 is predominantly a study of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s involvement on Canadian university campuses for eight decades monitoring radicals and subversive activities inspired by communists and Quebec separatists. Historian Steve Hewitt sees this period less as one of “monitoring,” than as one of infiltration, subversion, and spying. But, however one characterizes it, when the radical targets and their supporters found out that the government was watching and listening, they were furious and still are. Hewitt admits there was indeed plotting against the State, but suggests that it was, for the most part, nothing serious. He contends that the RCMP, with the concurrence of its political masters, intentionally exaggerated the threats to secure an inflated budget and arouse public antipathy.

The relationship between the CIA and the RCMP began back in WWII with its forerunner the SOE.

In the 1960's as the cold war raged, the CIA began to interfere in Canada's internal politics. Rumour has it that the CIA was only too happy to help defeat the Diefenbaker government.

CIA Fingerprints in Canada

  In 1962, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Livingston Merchant, and his Second
Secretary Charles Kisselyak, fuelled a plot among the Canadian Air Forces,
Canadian journalists and others to dispose of Prime Minister Diefenbaker.
Kennedy hated Dief largely for his anti-nuclear stance.  Merchant and
other U.S. embassy officers with espionage backgrounds, met at
Kisselyak's home in Ottawa to feed journalists with spaghetti, beer and
anti-Diefenbaker/pronuclear propaganda.

Among the many participants in these off-the-record briefings was Charles Lynch
of Southam News. Diefenbaker later denounced these reporters as "traitors" and
"foreign  agents."  He lashed out against Lynch on a TV program saying,
"You were given briefings as to how the Canadian government could be
attacked on the  subject of nuclear weapons and the failure of the
Canadian government to do that which the U.S. dictated."

The Liberals used information provided by the RCMP to bring down the Diefenbaker government.

The Munsinger Affair was Canada's first national political sex scandal. It focused on Gerda Munsinger, an East German prostitute and Soviet spy living in Ottawa who had slept with a number of cabinet ministers in John Diefenbaker's government.

Most noted amongst these was the Associate Minister of National Defence, Pierre Sévigny, who had seen her since 1958 and had even signed Munsinger's application for Canadian citizenship. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) discovered her background, however, and informed Justice Minister E. Davie Fulton of her activities. She was deported to East Germany in 1961. The matter was dealt with behind closed doors and Sévigny resigned in 1963.

Traditionally in Canada, the personal lives of politicians are not discussed in parliament or in the media, but in 1966 the Liberal government was under attack for an unrelated security breach. On March 4, an angry Justice Minister Lucien Cardin rebutted the Tories by bringing up the Munsinger Affair in the House of Commons. The story dominated the media for weeks and was followed with rapt attention across the country. It became a massive distraction and all but shut down all other parliamentary activity for some weeks.

And thus the long political relationship with the RCMP as 'their' secret police began.

Conventional wisdom holds that police forces in democratic societies face a dilemma whenever the use of unlawful methods appears warranted to enforce the law. This dilemma is of greatest concern in consensus theories. In conflict theories, an "ideological dilemma" emerges: police must maintain legitimacy by appearing to uphold the law equally for all, while acting preferentially to serve the powerful. A small sample of secret RCMP Security Service communications is examined as: (a) an indication of awareness of the ideological dilemma; (b) evidence of "editing processes" to produce "bureaucratic propaganda"; (c) examples of "official deviance." The ability of the RCMP to resist labelling for official deviance, and maintain legitimacy, is considered in terms of organizational advantages not common in similar security services.

But when one deals with an autonomous paramilitary organization like the RCMP one has to be careful as they have their own political agenda, which may not be the same as their Masters.

Plummer a secret Agent man

Set almost entirely in an interrogation suite in a Montreal hotel in 1964, Agent of Influence stars Plummer, 72, as John Watkins, the former Canadian ambassador to Moscow who died in 1964 in RCMP custody.

A close friend of former prime minister Lester B. Pearson, Watkins was suspected of being a communist spy by the CIA.

Days after the interrogation, he was found dead.

"The reality of the story is, did Watkins die in police custody? Yes. Did the RCMP cover it up? Yes," says Ian Adams, who authored the novel upon which the movie is based and co-wrote the screenplay.

"Has there been any evidence produced of Watkins' guilt? No."

'BLOODLESS COUP'

Instead, what Adams uncovered was evidence of an attempted "bloodless coup" by the CIA to depose Pearson in part by accusing the former ambassador of spying.

The Americans theorized the KGB had blackmailed Watkins over his homosexuality.

But Adams believes it was the RCMP buckling under the pressure of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA head of counter espionage, that doomed Watkins, along with his homosexuality -- which was illegal in Canada until 1968.
Two decades after Watkins' death, and only after an inquest and autopsy, did the RCMP admit the diplomat had never succumbed to Soviet blackmail, says Adams.

"There is not one shred of evidence he was guilty."

The author sees Agent of Influence as a cautionary tale following the events of Sept. 11.

"(Intelligence agencies) are now operating with enormous freedom which they have historically abused."

The CIA also attempted to destabilize the NDP Government in B.C. under David Barrett after its success in doing the same in Chile.

At the same time the CIA was using Cuban Mafia connections in Canada to attack the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa, a series of bombings. Which conveniently never resulted in any arrests by the RCMP. In a bombing in Cuba a Canadian was killed. The bombing was orchestrated by Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted by Venezuela as a terrorist and is being protected by the U.S. government.

As we mentioned earlier, Canada was not spared from the decades-long campaign of violence against Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In the 1960s and 70s anti-Castro groups targeted the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa and the Cuban Trade Commission office in Montreal. Sergio Perez Castillo, a Cuban security guard was killed in the second attack.

And years later -- on September 4th, 1997 -- Fabio Di Celmo, a Montreal resident vacationing in Cuba, died in a bombing at the Copacabana Hotel in Havana. Luis Posada Carriles confessed to that attack, but later recanted.

And of course there was the Canadian governments complicity with CIA brainwashing experiments in Canada known as MKULTRA.

Early in 1957, Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, Director of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, formally applied for funding from the "Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology," a CIA front at Corn-ell University Medical School, New York City.

In the 1980s, the CIA and State Department launched a public counterattack on the Canadian government for questioning the propriety of CIA activities. The CIA effectively converted the Canadian government into an active and hostile opponent.

In press briefings, interviews and Court pleadings, the CIA hammered away at one theme - Canada funded Cameron too. Legally, this was irrelevant, but politically, it was devastating. As one U.S. Attorney said, "We're going to wrap the Canadian Government financing of Cameron right around their necks."

CIA brainwashing victims seek Canada court action

In a case that sounds like science fiction, a Montreal court is deciding whether a class action lawsuit can be brought against the Canadian government on behalf of more than 250 psychiatric patients who were unwittingly subjected to radical experiments in the 1950s.

The so-called MK-ULTRA tests were part of a secret mind-control programme funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Canadian government in the 1950s.

The Cold-War-era experiments, carried out by a Scottish doctor in Montreal, included forced isolation, induced-comas, electro-shock therapy and the use of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD and paralysis-inducing narcotics.

Lawyers for Janine Huard, a 78-year-old great-grandmother, told a Montreal court last week that their client suffered for years as a result of Dr. Ewan Cameron's experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric hospital based at Montreal's McGill University.

As to all those Fox News claims that Canada is harboring 'terrorists', they happen to be CIA trained, FBI informants and protected by the U.S. while using Canada as a safe haven.

In the al-Qaida camps, he was known as Abu Mohamed al Amriki -- "Father Mohamed the American." And, until he was finally arrested and convicted in 2000 -- after two decades of high profile terrorism, including helping to plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa -- Ali Mohamed roamed free and even protected.

He was so untouchable, he was taken from quick-thinking Canadian officials, who suspected he may have been a threat.

Mohamed was a U.S. Army sergeant, FBI operative and possible CIA asset, who, on the side, was a friend to Osama bin Laden, trained the leader's bodyguards, was instrumental in killing Americans and was the middle-man in an historic and vile union between bin Laden's forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah. His fingerprints can be traced to those who assassinated Jewish militant Meir Kahane and blew up the first truck bomb to hit the World Trade Centre.

Mohamed himself had come to the FBI's attention in 1989, when the agency's Special Operations Group photographed a cell of his trainees firing AK-47s at a Long Island shooting range. The bureau would drop that investigation -- as it would in many other cases involving the terror spy.

It would also keep him safe. Even in Canada. Lance connects all the dots, including how Mohamed came, in 1993, to be questioned by suspicious RCMP officers in Vancouver. Lance says he was set free after handing the RCMP a phone number that connected them with his FBI handler.

"The Canadians placed the call," Lance writes. "Whatever (the special FBI agent) said, caused the Mounties to let Mohamed go... . Al-Qaida's master spy was free."

Canada has been used by the CIA to dump off its undercover operatives, to keep them out of harms way.

Age of Secrets - The Conspiracy that Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes by Gerald Bellett

John Herbert Meier

• was responsible for Richard Nixon's downfall, which is always missing from books on the subject.
• was Howard Hughes' most trusted courtier from 1966 to 1970.
• was forced to flee the U.S.
• His many businesses & companies were stripped from him.
• Since 1972 was chased out of England, Japan, Australia, and Tonga by the CIA. Was helped by the British and Cuban intelligence sevices.
• has been falsely charged with tax evasion, fraud, obstruction of justice, forgery and murder. Life threatened, and family stalked for kidnapping.

Meier was still under CIA surveillance. The RCMP Security Service gave Meier a cover: they pretended Meier was working with CLEU (British Columbia's Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit).

From a CIA contact, Meier obtained documents that he gave to Canada's Security and Intelligence Branch, and later to Canada's Liberal politicians. Contained info on:

• Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and members of his cabinet.
• the Canadian military, and defense systems and defense industries.
• leading CIA agents in Canada, Cleveland Cram and Stacey Husle

Of course once exposed for using Canada as a fly over/stop over location for its illegal rendition operations, the CIA gets an endorsement from our own PM.

"Twenty different planes for the CIA have arrived in Canada over the last four years," said Serge Ménard, a member of Parliament from Quebec. "Italy is prosecuting people from the CIA" allegedly involved in renditions. "Why doesn't the prime minister do likewise?"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded in the House of Commons on Wednesday, saying that an investigation into the CIA plane landings revealed "no indication there were any illegal activities."

Good old Stevie boy, he took the word of the CIA that they were not doing anything illegal. LOL.

In the panic after 9/11, Canada enacted anti-terrorism legislation that curtailed civil liberties in favour of national security. Faced with American pressure, is the Harper government poised to go even further?

h/t to buckdog.

See

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
US, envoy, Divid Wilkins, Wilkins, US Ambassador to Canada, Arar, Marher Arar, Canada, US, terrorist, terrorism, RCMP, CSIS, CIA, Homeland Security, Syria, torture, CIA, rendition,
Stephen Haprer, Harper,, Stockwell Day, Day,, Public Security Minister, Secrurity, Minister,, Canada,, Parliament,, O'Connor, Report,, Conservatives, Tommy Douglas,CCF,NDP,paranoia,espionage,FLQ,

ECHELON Spies on Greenpeace

The super secret joint US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand military intelligence monitoring operation known as ECHELON, which I wrote about previously, is used to spy on commercial transactions as well as on Greenpeace and other Canadian based environmentalists!

This is from an official EU background report on ECHELON published in 2001.

A note CSE stands for Communications Security Establishment and is the intelligence and encryption section of the Department of Defense.

5.7.3. Mike Frost (former Canadian secret service officer)
Mike Frost worked for more than 20 years for the CSE, the Canadian secret service1. The
listening post in Ottawa was just one part of a worldwide network of spy stations.2 In an
interview with CBS, he said that all over the world, every day, telephone conversations, emails
and faxes are monitored by ECHELON, a secret government surveillance network.3
This also included civilian communications. In an interview he gave for an Australian TV
channel, he said by way of example that the CSE actually had entered the name and telephone
number of a woman in a database of possible terrorists because she had used an ambiguous
phrase in a harmless telephone conversation with a friend. When searching through
intercepted communications, the computer had found the keyword and reproduced the
conversation. The analyst was unsure and therefore recorded her personal details.4
The intelligence services of the ECHELON community also helped each other by spying on
each other's behalf so that at least local intelligence services could not be accused of anything.
For instance, GCHQ asked the CSE to spy on two British government ministers when Prime
Minister Thatcher wanted it to tell her if they were on her side.5

5.7.4. Fred Stock (former Canadian secret service employee)
Fred Stock says he was expelled from CSE, the Canadian secret service, in 1993 because he
had criticised the new emphasis on economic intelligence and civil targets. The
communications intercepted contained information on trade with other countries, including
negotiations on NAFTA, Chinese purchases of cereals and French arms sales. Stock says the
service also routinely received communications concerning environmental protests by
Greenpeace vessels on the high seas.6



1 Communication Security Establishment, subordinate to the Canadian Ministry of Defense, engaged in SIGINT
2 NBC TV interview '60 Minutes', 27.2.2000; http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
3 Rötzer, Die NSA geht wegen ECHELON an die Öffentlichkeit;
http://www.heise.de/bin/tp/issue/download.cgi?artikelnr=6633&rub_ordner=special
4 NBC TV interview '60 Minutes', 27.2.2000; http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
5 Interview on the Australian Channel 9 on 23..3.1999;
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/8789/sunday1.htm
6 Bronskill, Canada a key snooper in huge spy network, Ottawa Citizen, 24.10.2000,
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/990522/2630510.html

In fact the startling conclusion they come to is that ECHELON is NOT used for military spying, security or anti-terrorism but is solely interested in intercepting private and commercial communications, in other words corporate secrets and corporate spying.

13.2. Conclusions
The existence of a global system for intercepting private and commercial communications
(the ECHELON interception system)

That a system for intercepting communications exists, operating by means of cooperation
proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, is no longer in doubt. It has been established that this system is operated on the basis
of the UKUSA Agreement. That its name is in fact ECHELON seems likely in view of the
evidence, but this is a relatively minor detail. What is important is that its purpose is to
intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications.

Which really should not surprise anyone, since President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared fifty years ago that America was run by the Military Industrial Complex,in this historic epoch of state capitalism.

All intelligence is corporate intelligence in search of advantages for a national capital against its competitors. War is military expansion of that capital in search of markets and resources.

This then is the real Anglo-American Imperium protecting its capital interests against the rest of the world. Three of the allies went to war in Iraq, and the other two abetted it.


H/T to Skillluminati Research a fun little conspiracy theory blog in the tradition of Robert Anton Wilson.

And a further H/T to Dream's End another fun little conspiracy theory blog

All courtesy of UFO Review and their news aggregator.

Which I would not have found it they had not picked up The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

See

Spying

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Echelon, CSIS, Spying, Canada, Day, Government, Conservatives, CSE, Canadian-Security-Establishment, DND, Air, India, terrorism, national-security, NARUS, NSA, Bush, CIA

Israel Hacker Heaven

Israel a Hotbed of Internet Attacks, Report Says

Because Israel is a hotbed of corporate malfeasance, spying and corruption.

24 December 2001

Fox News, beginning mid-December, reported a four-part series on alleged Israeli spying on the US telecommunication systems through firms which provide telephone billing and assist FBI wiretaps. Recently the series was withdrawn by Fox News without explanation. The series has been recovered from private archives for publication here.

It is also the source for software tied to the American corporate, military and intelligence establishment.

For the past five years, there have been growing fears that somehow, outsiders have been able to penetrate into the confidential computer files of government agencies, business entities such as banks and defense contractors and individuals.

Some of this appeared to be an attempt to obtain highly classified information that could be of use to others and in other instances, attempts to get into the personal, and corporate, bank accounts of individuals and corporations.

This is a brief study of some of the salient aspects of this problem of computer theft and espionage and we will start with the discovery of massive computer penetration in Israel. We will then consider further penetrations of American business and intelligence computer systems by agents of a foreign government as opposed to confidence men and then conclude with the use of the same methods to commit frauds on the gullible in the United States and elsewhere.

Some of the first public notice of this problem surfaced first in Israel in 2004 when Israeli law enforcement cyber crime experts discovered that what is known as a Trojan Horse (illicit spyware planted on an unsuspecting computer) had been inserted into about 60 major Israeli businesses. Isreali law enforcement subsequently indicted various members of three of Israel’s largest private investigative agencies on charges of criminal fraud. These spyware plants were in various commercial areas such as : Israeli military contracting, telephone systems, cable television, finance, automobile and cigarette importing, journalism and high technology. These intrusive spyware plants were nearly identical with ones developed by the American NSA and widely used inside the United States to glean political, economic and counter-intelligence information from a huge number of American businesses and agencies. Israeli investigators believed that there was illicit cooperation between the American agency and a counterpart in Israel.

These Trojan horses that penetrated the Israeli computers came packaged inside a compact disc or were sent as an e-mail message that appeared to be from an institution or a person that the victims thought they knew very well. Once the program was installed, it functioned every time the victim’s computer system was in use, logging keystrokes or collecting sensitive documents and passwords before transmitting the information elsewhere.

This clandestine theft of valuable commercial, military and political secrets is certainly not limited to Israel and many important agencies and individuals have become increasingly concerned about what is called “phishing” in which both con men and foreign (and domestic) intelligence agencies can locate, capture and use valuable personal, political and financial information. In September of 2005, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an ad hoc group of corporate and law enforcement groups that track identity theft and other online crimes, said it had received more than 13,000 unique reports of phishing schemes in that month alone, up from nearly 7,000 in the month of October, 2004..

In late 2005, a new form of phishing, called “spear-phishing” emerged.

.So-called spear-phishing is a highly concentrated and far more effectove version of phishing. That's because those behind the schemes bait their hooks for specific victims instead of casting a broad, ill-defined net across cyberspace hoping to catch throngs of unknown victims.

Spear-phishing, say security specialists, is much harder to detect than phishing. Bogus e-mail messages and Web sites not only look like near perfect replicas of communiqués from e-commerce companies like eBay or its PayPal service, banks or even a victim's employer, but are also targeted at people known to have an established relationship with the sender being mimicked. American banks such as Chase and Bank of America are among those whose names are faked and also the online auction house of Ebay and the international money transfer firm of PayPal receive considerable attention from the international conmen and credit thieves. These thieves are not necessarily gangs operating for financial gain but also include theft of trade secrets, private corporate banking and highly sensitive military and political information.

Court remands top Israeli execs in industrial espionage affair
The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court Monday remanded several people from some of Israel's leading commercial companies and private investigators suspected of commissioning and carrying out industrial espionage against their competitors, which was carried out by planting Trojan horse software in their competitors' computers.

Others said the combination of Israel's high-tech culture, fine-tuned in secretive military units, and a penchant for independent thinking made the scandal inevitable. Some of the world's top computer security companies, including Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., are Israeli.
The list of clients implicated in the affair reads like a Who's Who of Israeli blue chips: Amdocs Ltd., a business-software maker that trades on the New York Stock Exchange; the Cellcom phone carrier and three subsidiaries of the Bezeq phone monopoly, a long-distance carrier, cell phone provider and satellite TV firm.

At least one veteran fraud investigator in Israel said he wasn't shocked by revelations of widespread spear-phishing and the corporate espionage scandal last spring. "This case is not unconventional," said Boaz Guttman, a lawyer and former head of the cybercrimes unit for the Israeli national police. "Most of the crimes are not reported. The police here and in the United States only know about 5 percent of the cases. Hackers don't take a break, not one minute.

"Everybody is spying against everybody in Israel," added Mr. Guttman, who said he was representing one of the suspects in the Trojan horse investigation but was not authorized to reveal his client's identity. "You cannot be surprised by this because this is the way of life for companies today."

The Chalabi files recovered by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement provided enough information for the FBI to begin a criminal investigation of a Baghdad-Jerusalem-Washington syndicate that is profiteering from America's misguided invasion and occupation of Iraq. The investigation led to shadowy Israeli-owned firms registered in Delaware and Panama that were fraudulently obtaining contracts and sub-contracts to provide everything from cellular phones and VIP security to the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners using seconded members of Israel's feared Unit 1391 "special techniques" interrogation center. Not only were these firms operating in Iraq with the concurrence of the neo-cons in the Pentagon but some U.S. government officials were personally benefiting from the contracts.


The Economic Espionage law authorizes the FBI to act against foreign intelligence gathering agencies toiling on US soil with the aim of garnering proprietary economic information. During the Congressional hearings that preceded the law, the FBI estimated that no less that 23 governments, including the Israeli, French, Japanese, German, British, Swiss, Swedish, and Russian, were busy doing exactly that. Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, put it succinctly: "Economic Espionage is the greatest threat to our national security since the Cold War."



Joining scandal-hit NETeller and Torex Retail, Israeli mobile software group Adamind became the latest firm on the junior market to stand accused of nefarious behaviour. The revelation last Monday that it was being investigated by the Financial Services Authority on suspicion of insider dealing caused some critics again to question the efficacy of Aim's regulatory system, which is often blamed for letting inferior companies loose on investors.

Quick: What do Hamas terrorists have in common with Martha Stewart? No, we're not talking about their public-approval ratings. Rather, both may have drawn unwanted scrutiny in part because of the same piece of software.

The data-mining algorithms of ClearForest, based in New York City, are at work within both Israeli security agencies and NASDAQ. Israel uses them to drill for hidden connections among suspected terrorists: say, a pattern of phone calls shortly before each of several suicide bombings. NASDAQ uses the same software to detect block trades of stock quietly placed just before the release of company news — including sales by relatives of ImClone's founder, Sam Waksal, who this fall pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges, and his friend Martha Stewart, who remains under investigation (and has denied any wrongdoing).

Both NASDAQ and Israel's security services are sprawling organizations, bombarded daily with terabytes of information, any bit of which may prevent a catastrophe, whether measured in lives or in retirement savings lost to fraud. And these days, data-mining software, combined with technologies that connect disparate computer systems and databases, is making it possible for everyone from police departments to clothing merchants to global manufacturers to search through ever expanding data warehouses and draw valuable connections that would otherwise be lost to human eyes.

Israeli Citizenship has been linked to U.S. trading scandals and accusations of money laundering against Michael Zwebner. Mr. Zwebner is a good pal of PM Ehud Olmert and the disgraced rapist; Israeli President Moshe Katsav


Dear Jerusalem Post,
In searching for any mention of a Michael Zwebner and his company's business dealings (Universal Communications Systems Inc.) in Israel I came across a series of articles by a person of that name writing on commodities or metals for the 'Jerusalem Post' as late as 1997.They then seem to have come to a halt,for whatever reason,as a search of his name on your internet sight will show.

I was most surprised that mention of his most recent project,an 'AirWater machine', supposedly to provide water for the Israeli military, did not appear in your reputable newspaper.Also no mention was made of a demonstration that supposedly took place at the 'AQUA Israel 2004' exhibition.Nor was there any mention of his company's meeting with Israeli President Moshe Katzov, who was quite flattering of Mr.Zwebner's product, according to a BUSINESS WIRE PR put out by Mr.Zwebner's company, located in Florida and incorporated in Nevada,I believe.

Another of Mr.Zwebner's BUSINESSWIRE press releases further claims the U.S.army in Iraq has made 'an order to supply and ship a number of AirWater machines to the Gulf for immediate delivery to the US Army/Coalition Forces.'Another article from Australia interviewing Mr.Zwebner claimed the order was completed and the AirWater machines of the company are now operating in Iraq.

There are some posting messages on www.ragingbull.com's 'ucsy',or Universal Communication System Inc., message board that are less than flattering.Some people believe the sole purpose of the press releases has been what is termed a 'pump and dump' of a penny stock. Further another website that is a host of consumer complaints hints that President Moshe Katzov actually received remuneration for helping Mr.Zwebner tout or promote this stock whose shares were then dumped on U.S. or other investors as it was touted in fraudulent prs by the company.

http://www.fundstreet.org/...
December 13, 2005

Cerberus-Gabriel hedge fund buys stake in Leumi Bank
Israel is on its way to privatization. The banking sector is amongst the first ones to take a step in this direction. Bank Leumi was in the market recently and attracted bids from several players. Bidder names include strategic investors like Lev Leviev, IDB and Bill Davidson and also financial contenders like UBS, Deutsche Bank and Citibank. However the winner was an American Hedge fund, Cerberus-Gabriel.

Cerberus-Gabriel has purchased 9.9% of the shares of the bank. The purchase of this stake was for approximately $500 million. The fund also has the option of buying an additional 10.01% in the bank. This will bring the total shares quantum to 20% and is roughly valued at $1 billion. This option of additional purchase has to be utilized with in the next one and a half years.

Ehud Olmert, Finance Minister of Israel, is reportedly quite satisfied with the outcome. He feels that this is a positive development and will help the over all Israeli economy. He is amongst the top promoters of privatization move. In his statement he also mentioned that the purchase will ensure healthy competition between the banks and will definitely contribute a lot to the local market.

Another person quite happy with the development is Yaron Zelekha, the treasury's accountant-general, who led the tender. He sees it as fulfillment of the promise made to the people of Israel about privatization of the entire banking system in 2005.

Isreali Citizenship is good for avoiding prosecution in the U.S. as well.

The fugitive former chief executive of leading voice-mail-software maker Comverse Technology (CMVT) has been captured in Africa after a two-month international manhunt, U.S. officials announced Wednesday.

Details of the arrest of Jacob "Kobi" Alexander in the Republic of Namibia were not immediately available. But in a statement, U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf credited local officials in the southwest African nation for assisting the FBI in the capture.

Mauskopf said she would seek Alexander's swift extradition to face charges in federal court in Brooklyn. A call to his defense attorney in New York was not immediately returned.

The manhunt began in late July shortly before authorities unsealed a criminal complaint accusing Alexander and two other former top executives of secretly manipulating stock options for personal profit.

Before he disappeared, Alexander, 54, an Israeli citizen and a permanent U.S. resident, allegedly transferred $57 million to Israel, fueling speculation he may have fled there.

Two other defendants, former finance chief David Kreinberg and former senior general counsel William Sorin, surrendered in August and were released on $1 million bond each.

The complaint unsealed in federal court accuses the three men of making stock options more lucrative by backdating their exercise price to a low point in the stock's value. Usually, a stock option's exercise price coincides with the market value at the time of a grant, to give the recipient an incentive to drive the price higher.

Today fighting corruption and scandal in Israel is the political fallout as a result of the failed Lebanese war last summer.

Zamir served on the Supreme Court from 1994 until 2001, during which he was on the panel that considered the Ganot case. Since his retirement (Supreme Court justices take mandatory retirement at the age of 70) he has spoken out with growing harshness against corruption in Israeli public life and in particular against political appointments in the civil service. In recent years he has been chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Ethics, and two months ago he submitted to the Knesset the report of a public committee he headed following an episode in which an MK cast a double vote in a Knesset motion. The committee recommended adding new rules of ethics and toughening the sanctions that the Knesset can impose on its members.

Zamir is convinced that if Israel does not take urgent steps, it is liable to deteriorate within a few years to the place now occupied by some countries in Africa and Latin America. "We have to shout and say, 'Listen, we are sick,'" he warns. "Corruption really is a kind of chronic disease, which can be terminal." He goes to his study and returns with surveys showing that the Israeli public believes that the government is corrupt. "If the public thinks, even mistakenly, that the entire government is corrupt, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It leads naturally, and almost necessarily, to the loss of trust in the regime. And then what can replace it: the strong, clean leader. We know from the world's experience that the strong leader, even if he is at first clean, quickly becomes very dirty." Zamir quotes with unconcealed emotion what "the country's No. 1 security person," former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon, told Ari Shavit in an interview in Haaretz, that corruption is more dangerous than the Iranian threat. "I agree with that. The security threat - missiles from Lebanon and Syria, or an Iranian nuclear threat - is viewed as concrete. We understand it, and we know the damage it will do. So people can become fearful and demand action, and these issues occupy a very high place on the public agenda. When it comes to corruption, though - in part because it operates in the dark and you don?t see it - people are not sufficiently aware of the danger. The result is that there is great indifference among the public, which was given expression, for example, in the last Knesset elections. Like cancer, you don't see corruption at its inception, you don't feel it spreading; you feel it at a certain stage, when it breaks out, and then in very many cases, it's already too late."

And it's revealing that the corruption is just business as usual thanks to the politics of privatization conducted by Olmert. Chickens, home, roost.



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Israel, hackers, internet, virus, phishing, spam, hacking, computers, security,