PI Newswire

China is dumping counterfeit electronic parts into the Pentagon’s supply chain, two senior lawmakers alleged on Monday.

Two Senators, John McCain, Republican-Arizona, and Carl Levin, Democrat-Michigan, said the counterfeits are putting U.S. troops at risk and undercutting the American economy.

One day before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the issue, the Senators offered details of the panel’s ongoing investigation.

They described a deceptive process in which parts are burned off old circuit boards, washed in rivers, dried on streets and sanded down to remove identifying marks.

The salvaged parts, which can look brand new, are sold on the Internet or openly in the markets, the Associated Press reports.

The panel’s investigators reviewed more than 100,000 pages of Defense Department documents and material from more than 70 companies.

They found about 1,800 cases of suspect counterfeit electronics being sold to the Pentagon.

The total number of parts in these cases topped one million.

The committee hearing will examine three cases in which suspect counterfeit parts from China were installed in military systems made by Raytheon, L-3 Communications and Boeing.

Levin, the committee chairman, told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference: ‘Now, a million parts is surely a huge number.

‘But I want to just repeat this: We’ve only looked at a portion of the defense supply chain. So those 1,800 cases are just the tip of the iceberg.’

The investigators found that counterfeit or suspect electronic parts were installed or delivered to the military for several weapons systems.

They include military aircraft such as the Air Force’s C-17 and the Marine Corps’ CH-46 helicopter, as well as the Army’s Theatre High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defense system.

The lawmakers indicated they would push for amendments to the defense bill to limit counterfeit electronics in the supply chain.

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We’re all raised on the idea that curiosity killed the cat.

Yet a natural inclination toward nosiness can be a fantastic asset for certain jobs.

SnIf you’re intrigued by the prospect of digging for dirt — or just fascinated by other people’s business — here are six jobs that will keep you snooping to your heart’s content.

Online Reputation Manager
Anyone who’s ever Googled themselves – and let’s be honest, who hasn’t? – will appreciate the work of an Online Reputation Manager.

Whether responding to complaints about a company’s product or scrounging up Facebook photos of a celebrity inhaling something strange, online rep managers strive to create a spotless online image for their clients. And that means you spend lots of time playing online detective to proactively scour, downplay, or explain away any scandal, slander or simple misinformation.

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The CIA takes such a dim view of people peeking at computer displays while someone is working that the agency is investing in Oculis Labs, a company that makes software to prevent prying eyes from gleaning any information from computer screens.

The spy agency is investing in Oculis through a nonprofit investment company called In-Q-Tel that was chartered in 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the director of the CIA and with the support of Congress. It was launched in response to the agency’s desire to increase its access to private sector innovation.

In a statement announcing its partnership in Oculis, In-Q-Tel said it was making a “strategic investment” in the software maker. The amount of that investment wasn’t revealed.

According to In-Q-Tel, peering over someone’s shoulder to read information on their computer screen is one of the easiest ways to steal sensitive information and one widely available to spies. Some 75 percent of all workers in the United States are mobile and work in environments — public or shared places — where their computer screens could be targeted by prying eyes.

What’s more, even if a snoop is caught in the act by a user, they can easily plead innocence since eavesdropping on a neighbor’s computer display is so common. Some 89 percent of people admit to reading over someone’s shoulder in a public place, according to In-Q-Tel.

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There may be high fences and security cameras around the building site in Berlin, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the blueprints for one of the city’s biggest construction projects from going missing.

The site is for the headquarters of Germany’s answer to M16, making the loss all the more embarrassing.

The spy agency is facing difficult questions after it emerged that it could not even keep the plans for its new hi-tech offices from going astray. According to a report in Focus magazine, the blueprints contained sensitive information relating to the security of the Berlin headquarters.

The government has set up an investigation and requested a revision of security measures at the site. “It’s a serious issue and the government is interested in clearing up this case as quickly as possible,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert. The blueprints showed highly sensitive areas of the headquarters, including its logistical nerve centre, anti-terror installations, emergency exits and alarm systems.

The data, most likely stored on a USB stick, was stolen a year ago, public broadcaster ARD reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed government official. The core of the building may now have to be redesigned, the TV station reported. The security leak is a huge embarrassment to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. It is based in Pullach, a Bavarian village near Munich, but the government decided to move the agency to the capital following the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.

The cost of the project had been estimated at €500m (£440m) but had risen to around €1.5bn. The headquarters, which will be located right next to where the wall once stood in the former east Berlin, are expected to be completed by 2014 and will house some 4,000 agency staff.Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and chairman of the parliamentary domestic affairs committee, expressed deep concern about the vanished blueprints.

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There are not many sane people who can say with confidence that, had a president of America only listened to them, they could have saved $1.3 trillion and many hundreds of thousands of lives. Michael Scheuer can.

During his 22 years in the CIA – three and a half as head of a 18-man Osama bin Laden unit – he told his bosses at Langley on 10 occasions that he had a clear opportunity to kill or capture the terrorist chief. On all 10 he was told to hold his fire.

To look at Scheuer, 59, bespectacled, bearded and apparently every inch the academic and author he has become, you would not guess at his espionage past. The unit he led between 1995 and 1999 was codenamed Alec station, after his son, but it was nicknamed the “Manson family”, after the criminal Charles Manson, for the zeal with which it approached its task.

That we know anything at all about Scheuer’s past as a terrorist hunter is down to him. Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, which was published anonymously in 2004, the same year as he left the CIA, had the dubious honour of being praised for its insight in a speech by bin Laden. He was later unmasked as the author and has written three further books under his own name, the latest a biography of the man he spent much of his life trying to capture.

At a time when half the world has become an armchair expert on the world’s previously most wanted man, Scheuer is very much the real deal.

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President Obama’s plan to keep FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in office beyond his 10-year term has triggered an angry reaction among some agents, who say Muel­ler imposed term limits on hundreds of supervisors in the agency but is failing to abide by legal limits set on his own tenure.

The accusations of hypocrisy come as Congress is considering whether to grant Obama’s request to allow Mueller two more years in office — an extension the president said would provide stability as other national security agencies undergo major transitions in leadership.

“We understand the desire for stability,’’ said Konrad Motyka, president of the FBI Agents Association, which is renewing its call for an end to the term-limit policy. “But people are saying, ‘What about my stability?’ It’s ironic that this desire for stability did not apply to supervisors within the FBI.’’

The FBI’s policy, which is unusual among law enforcement agencies, was adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Known as “up or out,’’ it requires FBI supervisors to leave their posts after seven years and compete for other managerial jobs, retire or accept a demotion in the same field office with lower pay.

FBI officials say the term limits have brought strong managers into hundreds of positions created in the years after Sept. 11. But the plan to retain Mueller has revived long-simmering tensions over the policy, which some say has robbed the bureau of veteran supervisors who retired because they did not get promoted.

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Britain’s domestic secret service, MI5, has launched a cunning online recruitment game to get a gauge on the skills of potential spies as they embark on the rigorous recruitment process.

The new game – the details of which are, unsurprisingly, being kept quite secret – is part of a new recruitment drive to enlist and train the best possible operatives to cope with modern security and surveillance needs.

Addressing the matter in the House of Lords, the security minister, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, said that the new recruits needed to be taken on and trained up before the government could consider relaxing the control order regime for people suspected of terrorist offences.

She said that the surveillance capabilities needed to be established “to give the necessary security to the public”, before the control order system is replaced in 2012. She added, “That surveillance doesn’t exist at the moment. Individuals have to be recruited. People have to be trained. We need extra capacity and capability.”

Control orders will be replaced with Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM), which will be less restrictive means of allowing suspects to have increased freedom of movement and access to the internet and mobile phones.

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The U.S. government lacks “big ideas” to handle serious threats in cyberspace, a former director of the National Security Agency said this week.

Despite the creation of U.S. Cyber Command, there are still unanswered questions about who is responsible for protecting the United States from cyberattacks, said several experts who spoke at the Air Force Association’s annual conference.

“When we hit specific problems — technical or operational, offense or defense, we’re a bit adrift because we’re doing it in a policy context that right now is fairly vacant,” said retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who also most recently served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

U.S. government officials often have been handcuffed when operating in cyberspace because it is unclear whether their actions will set a precedent and have unknown lasting consequences, Hayden said. Another obstacle is the absence of a definition of privacy for the Internet age, he added.

Cybersecurity begins with a simple question, said retired Air Force Gen. Ronald E. Keys, a senior advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “What’s going on?” To find out “you have to know who or what’s on your net, are they authorized to be there and are they authorized to do what they’re doing,” Keys said. “And then the question is ‘Now what do we do?’”

An exercise earlier this year showed that the United States doesn’t know, he said.

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On the eve of Sept. 11, Fox News has learned the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has attempted to block a book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called “Able Danger.”

In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if “Operation Dark Heart” is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim “Able Danger” successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In a highly unusual move, the Department of Defense is now negotiating with the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, to buy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of the book to keep it off shelves — even after the U.S. Army had cleared the book for release.

Specifically, the DIA wanted references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book’s author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Shaffer alleges the commission was told about “Able Danger” and the identification of Atta before the attacks. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 report.

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London, England (CNN) — Metropolitan police in London, England, appealed Monday for further information about last month’s death of a man who worked for a British intelligence agency and whose naked body was found in a padlocked duffel bag in his bathroom.

Police also released surveillance camera images of Gareth Williams taken August 15, about a week before officials discovered his body on August 23.

In addition, police said they would like help identifying “a man and a woman, both of Mediterranean appearance,” between the ages of 20 and 30 and who were seen entering Wiliams’ apartment building late one evening in June or July.

“This remains a complex unexplained death enquiry,” Det. Chief Inspector Jacqueline Sebire said in a statement Monday.

Williams worked at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s intelligence agency for monitoring communication and keeping government data secret, the agency told CNN. He was widely reported to have been on loan to MI6, the foreign intelligence service, in London.

The crime scene did not seem to reveal much information.

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LONDON — Two men were being questioned Sunday after one parcel bomb was sent to the MI6 foreign intelligence agency and another was intercepted.

The two suspects, aged 52 and 21, were arrested on suspicion of explosives offences on Friday at separate addresses in Caernarfon, northwest Wales.

Detectives were searching two addresses in the royal seaside town.

Police were called on Wednesday after a suspicious package was found at the Secret Intelligence Service building in Vauxhall.

A second suspected parcel bomb was discovered at a south London postal sorting office on Thursday.

“The Metropolitan Police Service is investigating two suspect packages addressed to premises in central London,” said a spokesman for the city’s police force.

“Both packages have been recovered by police.”

The agency is still commonly known by its old MI6 name. Its riverside headquarters is the home base for the fictional British spy James Bond and the building has featured in several 007 films.

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In June, a stone carver chiseled another star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the Sept. 11 attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers. They were private contractors.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do all the time, in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal work force includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta last week said they agreed with such concerns.

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