India's Espionage Leaks

You may find this brief overview of Indian security's leaky past cases informative :

- "Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) hard drive theft. The hard drives were stolen from the offices of the Scientific Analyses Group (SAG) and the Institute for System Studies and Analyses (ISSA) inside the DRDO complex. The SAG is responsible for cryptography. In other words, all codes and cyphers to ensure communication security for the defence forces have an SAG stamp. The ISSA, on the other hand, analyses competing weapons systems for induction into the armed forces."

- "Rabinder Singh. It is said there was a question mark over his reliability since the early 1990s when he began an operation for the collection of intelligence about US government activities in South Asia through a sister of his, who was employed in a sensitive US agency with links to the CIA."

- "Rattan Sehgal. The IB's counter-intelligence division reportedly found that a woman CIA officer posted in the US embassy was in contact with government servants and others on a mobile telephone, allegedly registered in the name of their boss, the suspect IB officer."

- "KV Unnikrishnan. During those jaunts in Singapore, compromising photographs of the stewardess and her lover were taken. These photographs and other documents were recovered by mid ’86 and it was learnt that Unnikrishnan was working for the CIA."

- "Larkins Brothers. The Larkins’ interrogations led to the arrest of Singh and it was found that Jockey and Bud were CIA operatives."

- "Samba Spy Case. By 1974, he began working for its army's Field Intelligence Unit at Sialkot on a regular basis. In the June of 1975, Dass was arrested on suspicion of espionage but by then he had persuaded some of his colleagues (including a certain Aya Singh) to become accomplices."

Understanding the past means predicting or at least constructively speculating on the future. Insider leaks due to HUMINT recruitment activities may seem to have vanished given the increasing number of IT-dependent infrastructures and the insecurities their connectivity brings -- SIGINT taking over HUMINT espionage. While modern spy gadgets remain trendy, this very same connectivity has resulted in various hacktivism tensions in the past, namely the India vs Pakistan cyberwar, and, of course, MilW0rm's infamous speculation on breaching India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center through the use of U.S military servers as island-hopping points.

Office surveillance graph courtesy of BugSweeps.

South Korea's View on China's Media Control and Censorship

Got bored of China's Internet censorship efforts, and its interest to control mobile communications as well? I haven't, and I doubt I ever will given China is among the many other countries on the world's map actively restricting access to information, and, of course, controlling the way it reaches the final audience -- if it does.

A recent article at The Korean Times, makes some very good points on the cons of censoring the reporting of "sudden events", and the typical for a (modern) communist type of government, total centralization. It emphasises on how :

"Beijing's approach is fundamentally flawed. The news media is a positive force in society. A free press is necessary to keep the government on its toes, especially when the government itself is not accountable to the public. Restricting the press will result in a public that is kept in the dark and in local governments whose excesses will no longer be subject to scrutiny.

Beijing should understand that many of today's problems today stem from abusive local officials. Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged at a press conference in March that some local governments have infringed upon the legitimate rights and interests of the people, and social conflicts have subsequently occurred.

In this struggle between victimized farmers and avaricious officials, the press—and the central government—are on the same side. Muzzling the press will only deprive the victims of a powerful champion while enabling grasping officials to line their pockets without fear of being exposed. Surely, this cannot be what the Chinese government wants."

In case of a "sudden event" I feel they'd rather be winning time compared to keeping it quiet, then again I guess ruling one of the largest nation in the world while trying to maintain stability -- FDI matters folks -- is a dauting task, but one not necessarily having to do with ignoring the situation. Government accountability and possible changes in voting attitudes in China don't exist, mainly because there isn't any other party, but THE party, therefore historical (under)performance doesn't count at all.

In comparison, whereas Chinese citizens suffer from the lack of information or the blocked access to it, in the U.S there's a controversial debate going on regarding over-performing investigative journalists revealing details thought to be sensitive to national security, and the overall availability of potentially sensitive information to the general public. The problem isn't the "leak" as it's a common sense practice, but the publicity it got in the post 9/11, privacy-preserving society -- or at least one trying to. Doesn't really matter if the FOIA turned forty, "redacting" is often misspelled for censorship, in between the lines of personal and sensitive information.

At the bottom line, government practices' transparency with the help of the media watchdogs, a government incapable of knowing the exact state of a situation by itself, or the notion of too much publicly available information in today's OSINT world, up to you to decide, just don't rule, run business, or blog, by excluding the middle, or you'll sooner or later face with it in one way or another.