US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7083

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Wednesday that they have been aware since the end of last year of a security breach at the CIA that led to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks publishing agency documents on its hacking tools.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that they believed that the documents published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday were authentic.

Investigators were focusing on CIA contractors as the likely source of passing materials to WikiLeaks, the officials said. The group published what it said were nearly 8,000 of pages of internal CIA discussions about hacking techniques used between 2013 and 2016.

In Germany on Wednesday, the chief federal prosecutor's office said that it would review the Wikileaks documents because some suggested that the CIA ran a hacking hub from the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt.

"We're looking at it very carefully," a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office told Reuters. "We will initiate an investigation if we see evidence of concrete criminal acts or specific perpetrators."

Reuters could not immediately verify the contents of the published documents, but several contractors and private cyber security experts said the materials appeared to be legitimate.

The latest revelations came days before Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to visit Washington for an initial meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sharply criticized Berlin for everything from its trade policy to what he considers inadequate levels of military spending.

The Wikileaks documents may also complicate bilateral intelligence ties that have just begun to recover after a series of scandals, including news in 2013 that the National Security Agency had bugged Merkel's cellphone. The consulate was already heavily investigated by German lawmakers after that incident.

Merkel last month told lawmakers she did not know how closely Germany's spies cooperated with their U.S. counterparts until 2015 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the BND spy agency had for years passed on information to the NSA about European companies and politicians.

Germany scaled back the level of cooperation with the NSA after those revelations.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that the consulate in Frankfurt is home to a CIA base. A facility adjacent to the city’s airport and the Rhein-Main Air Base has for many years been home to the CIA’s “Tefran” station, a U.S. center for collecting intelligence on Iranian activities in Europe, maintaining surveillance on Iranian officials and targeting potential defectors working in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

SERIOUS MATTER

Foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a regular government news conference that Germany took the issue seriously, but more work needed to be done to verify the authenticity of the documents. Berlin was in close touch with Washington about the case and such matters generally, he said.

Officials at the German government news conference declined to answer questions about any knowledge Berlin might have about CIA activities in Germany. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany's domestic intelligence agency was tasked with uncovering espionage activities in Germany, and carried out its work comprehensively.

Wikileaks reported CIA employees had been given diplomatic passports and State Department identities to carry out their work in Germany at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, focused on targets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The documents included advice for CIA experts about life in Germany, including the fact that shops are closed on Sundays, and to have "your cover-for-action story down pat" when they passed through German customs.

One European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Wikileaks material could in fact lead to closer cooperation between European spy agencies and U.S. counterparts, which share concerns about Russian intelligence operations.

The European official said there was suspicion, still unconfirmed, that Moscow could have had a hand in the latest leaks. U.S. spy agencies accuse Russia of meddling in the U.S. presidential election last year, which Russia denies.

“It’s interesting and maybe significant that this leak coincides with stepped-up Russian attempts to influence upcoming European elections, intimidate the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, and destabilize NATO and the European Union," said the European official.

When a reporter at the German government news conference asked whether it was a double standard that Berlin tolerated U.S. spying while trying to root out such activity by Russians, one of the government spokesmen said Berlin had good reason to suspect Moscow of seeking to influence Germany's election.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — If China was hoping for a concession from the U.S. after recently suspending coal imports from cash-poor North Korea, it got the opposite.

The U.S. is starting to deploy a missile defense system in South Korea which the allies say is needed to defend against North Korea. But China and North Korea view it as a threat.

That adds to strains in the high-stakes relationship between Washington and Beijing weeks into Donald Trump's presidency. And it could further complicate cooperation between the two world powers in combating something they both oppose — North Korea's nuclear program.

The U.S. military said Tuesday it has started bringing in equipment for the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD. It says the system is designed to intercept and destroy short and medium-range ballistic missiles during the last part of their flights.

The announcement came after North Korea on Monday launched four ballistic missiles into ocean off Japan — a show of force in response to annual U.S.-South Korean military drills. The allies say they are routine but Pyongyang views them as rehearsal for an invasion.

China is concerned that THAAD has powerful radar that could track Chinese missiles and weaken its deterrence against the United States. Beijing said Tuesday it will take "necessary measures" to protect itself and warning that the U.S. and South Korea should be prepared to bear the consequences.

China has already exerted pressure on some South Korean commercial interests, but it remains unclear how the deployment will impact ties with Washington, which insists China is not targeted by THAAD. U.S.-based experts say that Chinese concerns are exaggerated, if not entirely unwarranted.

"The question is whether China having expressed their grievances will be prepared to let this pass or will let it erode their relationship with South Korea and a meaningful capacity for cooperation with the United States on North Korea," said Jonathan Pollack of the Brookings Institution think tank.

China proposed Wednesday that North Korea could suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for a halt in joint military drills conducted by the U.S. and South Korea.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Beijing that the "suspension-for-suspension can help us break out of the security dilemma and bring the parties back to the negotiating table."

Both the U.S. and South Korea resisted the idea. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said: "We have to see some sort of positive action taken by North Korea before we can ever take them (North Korea) seriously."

North Korea is one of the main national security challenges facing the Trump administration. It may already have the capability to strike South Korea and Japan — and the tens of thousands of American forces there — with nuclear weapons, and could pose the same threat to the U.S. mainland within years.

For China, the North's nuclear program poses a less direct challenge, but it could destabilize Northeast Asia and incentivize Japan, a rival of China's to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. And it could encourage the U.S. to strengthen its military posture in the region with systems like THAAD.

In a sign of growing impatience with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, China announced last month it was suspending coal imports from North Korea for the rest of the year in adherence to U.N. sanctions passed in November after the isolated nation's most powerful nuclear test explosion to date.

But Beijing remains reluctant to exert too much pressure on its traditional ally, fearing that a regime collapse would lead to a unified Korea allied with Washington at its border.

Joel Wit, a former State Department official and specialist on North Korea, said that the main factor in the continuing disconnect between the U.S. and China on dealing with Pyongyang is rooted not in differences over missile defense, but in a stalemate over how to approach the problem.

"The U.S. is always talking about increasing pressure, and taking military steps to protect its allies and itself," he said. "But the Chinese are always talking about need to reach out and talk to the North Koreans."

State Department acting spokesman Mark Toner made clear Tuesday that the U.S. administration is not seeking direct engagement with a provocative Pyongyang. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes his first visit to the region next week, with stops in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, he'll be seeking a "strategic coordination" to address the escalating threat posed by North Korea.

"Right now we are focused on sanctions, and implementing those sanctions to the fullest extent possible, but we're looking at other possibilities as well," Toner said, without elaborating.

The THAAD deployment will hang over Tillerson's meetings with the Chinese.

Missile expert John Schilling said Beijing's concern is that the system's radar could provide detailed tracking of Chinese long-range missiles and that could be used to alert U.S. missile defenses.

"This is somewhat exaggerated as a threat, but the full capabilities of the THAAD system are classified so it can't be entirely discounted," he said, adding that China could counter that by modifying their missiles with multiple warheads or decoys, a process that it has likely begun already.

"We have to consider whether this leads in the direction of an arms race between United States and China," Schilling said, "which I don't think anybody wants."

SAN FRANCISCO — US intelligence officials were panicked that WikiLeaks released a trove of thousands of documents on Tuesday that claim to expose the tools the CIA uses to hack phones, computers, and other devices.

Intelligence officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the documents they reviewed appear legitimate, and that they not only put current US cyber operations in danger, but provide a road map for adversaries around the world who want to study US methods and, one day, deploy those methods themselves.

“We already have this deficit in our ability to defend ourselves and now in the release of the tools we use our ability to scoop up info, our ability to attack is compromised,” said Eric O’Neill a former counterintelligence officer for the FBI who now works for the cybersecurity firm Carbon Black. “When these tools get out it proliferates among those who want to attack. They will be taken and modified and used by others who want to attack.”

A CIA spokesman told BuzzFeed News they “do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

WikiLeaks claimed the 8,761 documents and files purportedly from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence are the “largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” The documents expose the malware and exploits the CIA uses to hack into devices ranging from phones and laptops to smart TVs. But unlike previous documents released by WikiLeaks, such as the well-known cache of documents made public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that detailed widespread US surveillance efforts, there is little in these documents which is likely to surprise the general public. That a US intelligence agency develops programs that allow it to hack into devices across the world is something any person who has ever watched a spy thriller should be able to guess. Rather, the documents’ importance comes from the detailed technical information they reveal about how the CIA conducts its cyber ops, throwing open the door on some of the intelligence community’s most closely guarded secrets.

“This is, if you look at the big picture, worse than Snowden. What he released led to big headlines and put a few lives in danger. What we have here could potentially put thousands of people in danger in countries around the world. It’s like handing our biggest cyber guns over to anyone with an internet connection,” said one US intelligence officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the documents. He did not want his place of work named, though he has direct knowledge of US cyber operations. “The documents WikiLeaks published today are extremely dangerous. Not only do they endanger current operations, they reveal details about our methodology and practices which we don’t want our adversaries knowing about, let alone mimicking!”

Imagine if you could print a gun off the internet, added the officer, then use it against anyone you choose.

“Every adversary we have will be studying our methods and learning from them. They will use them not just against us, but against anyone weaker, with less cyber abilities,” said the officer. “It’s a worst-case scenario.”