Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie
The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowdens revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.
1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.
2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.
3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our diplomats in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/five-reasons-the-mi6-story-is-a-lie/
MADem
(135,425 posts)http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33125068
Here's the TIMES article--copied to another site (they are behind a paywall): http://cryptome.org/2015/06/ru-cn-snowden-1m-docs.htm
Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history.
.....
It is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowdens data, or whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.
This blogger doesn't have the bubble, I don't think.
I think the agents they need to extract aren't MI6....they're of the "double" type, or simple "informants." Or something else, operating outside the normal bounds. They are people that the MI6 agents were RUNNING. "Assets," if you will. And now, those people and their families are running--away from Russia and China.
It's nice this guy thinks everyone operates under the Marquess of Queensberry rules, but that's just not real life.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Not.
I think the real problem is the employees become more blackmailable when the background check and personnel file info is out there too, but Murray thinks it's about the new legislation. He might be right, he is probably better informed than I am.
MADem
(135,425 posts)diplomatic immunity.
We'll find out one of these days if the people getting moved are Russian and Chinese. I don't think they'll keep that under wraps forever.
I mean, it's not like that hasn't happened before, and in reverse as well...Kim Philby died in Russia because he was one of those guys who had to be snatched up from UK and "rescued" after he was burned.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)It DOES make sense if they're moving agents they were running.
I can wait--I have no choice, really! Time will tell, but I suspect I'm correct--we're not talking Embassy or Consular Staff....we're talking local national assets.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Right now I think it's a lie.
MADem
(135,425 posts)disappeared into the Russian Embassy in Hong Kong, prior to making that Moscow dash, I figured he was bought and paid for.
He might have been bought and paid for from as far back as when he was living in Japan and vacationing in HK. That's when he may have been turned. Who knows?
Well, someone does--and his name might be Vladimir!
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Aren't all those employees exposed to identity theft now?
MADem
(135,425 posts)I don't think that's the kind of shit Snowden downloaded. I think he took source and method material, of a classified nature. Why would he be poking around in UK personnel files? That just doesn't make sense. Besides, that stuff would be the equivalent of FOUO and handled out of a personnel/disbursing office in London. Direct deposit is a dream.
I don't think this is about UK staffers.
We'll find out eventually.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)For the moment I'm assuming the UK story is bullshit.
Otherwise we'd have to know what Snowden stole to talk about identity theft, and AFAIK we don't, and the only version his stuff out there is the infobomb he distributed, and I will need proof to show any such hack has been done, and better yet something about methodology. You don't just put a bigger computer to work on strong encryption, you need massive parallelism or a quantum computer and even then ...
MADem
(135,425 posts)alarms, I should think. He'd be going off site to a centralized finance facility to get that material, I imagine. That's WAY out of his wheelhouse.
USG could easily hand out new SSANs like candy. and trash the old, if needs must--that would be a blip and nothing more.
Identity theft is the least of their worries--I think they had a network of assets blown. That's a tougher situation.
I wonder what Snowden's thinking, right about now. If they've cracked his goodies, he's got no bargaining chips. And if they've cracked his goodies, they've had copies of his stuff since Hong Kong. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all.
He's screwed.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)That has nothing to do with Snowden.
MADem
(135,425 posts)He stole material from HI, we know that. He may have duplicated material from Japan, as well--we really don't know if this was truly a spur of the moment thing, or if he'd been on the Russian payroll for awhile, had downloaded material from Japan, and then after he switched jobs and got caught up in that security clearance problem where his forged education credentials would have been eventually revealed, knew that his time was running out, so he did a grab-and-go.
We just don't know.
Thing is, maybe the Russians didn't want to tip us (or the UK) off. Maybe they didn't tip us off. Maybe, just maybe, we've got someone on the inside who is overseeing the cracking of that material--and they're the ones who tipped us off. That's a bit more of a stretch, but one never knows, do one?
It's starting to look like that is a possibility, though.
In any event, the reset button has been pressed. It's interesting times ahead....
bemildred
(90,061 posts)A former NSA official said that the latest data breaches on the Office of Personnel Management gave Chinese hackers the crown jewels of American intelligence.
Last week federal officials announced that Chinese hackers had gained access to over 4 million personal records for federal employees in December. A similar hack, exposing federal employees security background checks, was disclosed by the Obama administration on Friday.
This is crown jewels material
a gold mine for foreign intelligence service, said Joel Brenner, a former NSA senior counsel, Politico reported Friday.
The hackers are believed to have accessed data from Standard Form-86 documents, which include background details for federal employees like financial trouble, past convictions, drug use and close relationships with citizens of other countries.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/13/ex-nsa-official-cybersecurity-breach-gave-china-in/
MADem
(135,425 posts)information on people.
Of course, nowadays, with facebook, a lot of people put that shit out there anyway.
It's everyplace you've lived in the last decade, a full report on any crimes you've committed, jobs you've held--they're rather intrusive, but so's facebook! Probably the most useful material is the "foreign friends" list.
They'd do well to give all their diplomats fake identities before they send them off! Force the Chinese and Russians to have to resort to biometrics to figure out who's who in the zoo....
I have heard that US intends to transition to more biometric banking--perhaps the roll-out for that will be accelerated as a result of this.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Yes, I have filled out a couple of those forms over the years, I know what's in them. Not your bank & credit account numbers, but some very handy stuff for password cracking and security question hacking.
I am skeptical that they know who did it, I think the "Chinese" thing is a guess.
MADem
(135,425 posts)If not--hell, we may as well turn off our computers and get out the Trivial Pursuit board games!!!
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)But...
If Snowden voluntarily handed them over then they wouldn't have to be cracked but the article claims that the top-secret cache of files were cracked. On the other hand, it is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowdens data so it's just speculation. So, how can they claim to have cracked the top-secret cache of files if they don't know how they got them.
But the argument is going to be that they were stolen so that's the only way they were cracked, if that's the case, then they weren't handed over by Snowden. If they weren't handed over by Snowden why did they say it's unclear how they got them?
Lies and distortion is how this is presented.
A second point, The Sunday Times is the first to come out with this revelation, if you can call it that. The rest of the British press has followed suit. The Sunday Times is owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch. Enough said.
MADem
(135,425 posts)If you recall, Snowden had a ton of stuff, but it was all safe because it was "encrypted." Remember? Even if a "bad guy" copied the stuff, they couldn't do anything with it. Ostensibly....
Greenwald's partner schlepped through London with copies of a bunch of encrypted stuff--he didn't have the key.
Now, if we assume this story is "correct," then they've been digging around trying to crack their copies of the stuff and only recently have been successful.
OR...Snowden flat out gave them the key, or they found a way to steal it from him.
Rupert Murdoch retired. He's handed the game off to his kids. Ever since the bugging scandal, and the fact that his wife a) Was screwing Tony Blair, and b) Dumped him, he hasn't been on the game.
He's an elderly man--he's running out of gas.
Also, TIMES is just the vehicle for the story. The SOURCE of the story is the British government. I'm quite confident that BBC isn't reporting based solely on TIMES of London's word. Nor is GUARDIAN. They picked up the phone and made a few calls, make no mistake.
BeyondGeography
(39,379 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2015, 07:03 AM - Edit history (1)
1. Snowden pilfered 1.77 million documents, and had no idea what many of them revealed.
2. 58,000 of those documents related to UK intelligence.
3. Richard Clarke, before this latest development, says Snowden should go to prison for a very long time for compromising US national security. Now some very powerful people in the UK apparently feel the same way.
4. Putin doesn't give you something for nothing.
5. It really does suck to be Snowden.
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)marble falls
(57,204 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)Ole uncle Rupert is at it again
dotymed
(5,610 posts)is. to me, that Edward Snowden showed the America people that their lives are monitored by and controlled by, Big Brother. Oh and Big Brother was furious, yet the American people were mostly unfazed. Wow.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)JM
leveymg
(36,418 posts)It could be that there was more recent stuff in there that pertains to other agencies that hasn't been publicly released (or I haven't seen it), but all the NSA docs were dated 2009 or earlier.
Intelligence services very rarely keep officers in place in vulnerable places for more than a few years before rotating them out.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)because they couldn't stand it that her husband, Joseph Plame, pointed out publicly that they were lying about certain things, people did die.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Thanks for the post.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)The site is under a strong denial of service attack from a bot trying to crash it by overloading with millions of pings from multiple locations. I presume the objective is to take down the revelation of the fake MI6 Snowden story, which had been read by tens of thousands already and is now really taking off.
While the copyright in that article remains mine, I grant permission for it freely to be reproduced by anybody, anywhere. I shall be grateful for multiple copies to be posted around the web so it cant be taken down.
Some extremely brilliant people have put an awful lot of time and a bit of money on the defences of this blog, making it very hard to crash even by governments, through a cloud hosting system. (OK, you got me, I dont understand how they do it). With any luck we wont go down, but backups on that article very welcome.
This article will be deleted in an hour or so to put the MI6 lies back at top of the blog.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/cyber-attack-on-this-site-to-crash-mi6-post/