Now China Wants Law And Order

Sunset of the Forbidden City, Beijing (northwest cornor of the Forbidden City) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

June 11, 2012: Jianyu Huang, a Chinese scientist working in the United States, has been arrested and charged with passing stolen technology back to China. Huang was fired from his nanotechnology research job in April and has been charged with stealing and lying to security officials about these activities. Huang was born in China but moved to the U.S. and became an American citizen.

American intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies have increasingly been paying close attention to Chinese born American scientists, seeking out the minority that use their access to American technology secrets to either give or sell this valuable material to government or commercial organizations in China. This is all part of extensive Chinese intelligence efforts to steal American technology.

China sees this kind of broad-spectrum intelligence gathering as a major operation and one they intend to keep going as long as possible. Thus, during the last four years China has established eight National Intelligence Colleges in major universities. In effect, each school now has an “Espionage Department”. With this about 300 carefully selected applicants are accepted each year, to be trained as spies and intelligence operatives, and future commanders of these operations. The college trained operatives expect to make a career out of stealing Western technology. China has found that espionage is an enormously profitable way to steal military and commercial secrets. While Chinese Cyber War operations in this area get a lot of publicity, the more conventional spying brings in a lot of stuff that is not reachable on the Internet.

Iranian gov’t pays paramilitary hackers, bloggers to bring you Islamic Revolution 2.0

Iran battles “westoxification” using, well, westoxification.

by Cyrus Farivar – June 6 2012, 9:36pm E Cyberwar

Hundreds of Iranians gathered recently for a Hizbollah Cyber conference in Tehran

Hizbullah Cyber

TALLINN, ESTONIA—Iran has significantly stepped up its use of corporate acquisitions, online propaganda, and hacking capabilities in recent years, according to an open source intelligence expert.

Jeff Bardin, the chief intelligence officer at Treadstone 71—an American company that researches publicly available materials—told a packed session at the International Conference on Cyber Conflict on Wednesday that Iran has become much more sophisticated and pervasive in its use of online tools.

He outlined the major paramilitary organizations that operate within Iran, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij, and Ashiyane. The latter is a notorious hacker group that works in conjunction with the Iranian government. All of these groups, he said, share an overarching focus on an Iranian concept used to promote the movement that became the philosophic foundation of the Islamic Revolution: westoxification. It’s the loss of Persian language, culture, and influence to Western countries.

“[Iranians'] patience is, in my view, legendary,” he told Ars. “The United States is famous for underestimating the adversary.”

The IRGC, known in Persian as the “Pasdaran,” is a massive organization that touches nearly every part of the Iranian economy, including owning or controlling major corporations. Most notably, just months after the disputed presidential election of June 2009, the Iranian government sold a majority $7.8 billion stake in the Iran Telecommunications Company, a former monopoly.

“It smacks of a communist model,” Bardin said of the uncompetitive nature of awarding contracts to the IRGC. He added that by controlling the infrastructure itself, the Iranian government’s agencies could capture even tighter control over what was being said and done online.

Watching Over You

Allowing citizens access to the internet without ‘compromising’ the regime – it’s a balancing act that some states are finding difficult to achieve and others have no intention of fulfilling. Today’s maps show the countries where you need to take heed of what you do online.

Prepared by: ISN Staff

Amnesty International poster on Chinese internet censorship

Allowing citizens access to the internet without ‘compromising’ the regime – it’s a balancing act that some states are finding difficult to achieve and others have no intention of fulfilling. Today’s maps show the countries where you need to take heed of what you do online.

Yesterday we kludged together Gene Sharp’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance with Clay Shirky’s belief that social media is a revolutionary instrument of political change. Our intention was indeed to celebrate the potential empowerment this media can provide the average person in the street. But as we also mentioned yesterday, every positive has its negative. In the case of Sharp and Shirky, it is Evgeny Morozov’s belief that internet-based media can be used, and indeed is used, by repressive regimes to maintain their grip on power. (They do so by gathering open source intelligence, co-opting bloggers, planting legitimacy-enhancing narratives, etc.)

Salah Sultan Wants Young People To Prepare For Jihad Throught Weight Lifting And Karate

Salah Sultan

In a recent TV interview Salah Sultan, a prominent member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, called for young people to practice sports in order to prepare themselves for Jihad to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to a MEMRI translation:

January 17, 2012 Clip No. 3301 Egyptian Cleric Dr. Sallah Sultan, Founder of the Ohio-Based American Center for Islamic Research, Calls Upon Young People to Practice Sports in Preparation for Jihad to Liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Dr. Sallah Sultan, founder of the American Center for Islamic Research, based on Columbus, Ohio. The interview aired on Al-Nas TV on January 17, 2012.

Dr. Sallah Sultan: Allah mentions the Israelites in 50 out of the 114 suras of the Koran, even in very short suras. This means that enmity is first and foremost towards the Israelites.

[…]

I call upon young people to practice sports, and to strengthen their bodies in preparation for Jihad. Practice Karate, practice Taekwondo, practice all the sports that make your body extremely strong. Lift weights, and then dream, day and night.