CYBER INSECURITY: Japan’s new cybersecurity minister is not going to let pre-conceived notions about high-tech matters get in the way of doing his job – since he apparently doesn’t have any. According to Kyodo News, Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, told lawmakers in Tokyo that he has “never used a computer in (his) life.” Sakurada says he hasn’t needed to learn computer stuff since he has had good secretaries. By the way, he is also in charge of Japan’s anti-hacking preparations for the 2020 Olympics.
AND DON’T COME BACK: Last week, North Korea released a U.S. citizen who had entered the country illegally from China – after saying that he had been sent by the CIA. Bruce Byron Lowrance had previously been thrown out of South Korea when he was caught wandering around near the DMZ claiming that he was there to facilitate talks between Pyongyang and Washington. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thanked the North Koreans, and the Swedes who look after U.S. diplomatic interests in North Korea, but did not mention Lowrance’s name in his statement. North Korean officials said that they did not believe Lowrance was “psychologically disturbed” but in fairness, their experience in dealing with Americans is somewhat limited – other than with Dennis Rodman, of course.
BAD PLACE TO LEAK FROM: Sure, there is no good place from which to leak highly classified information – but there are some spectacularly bad ones. According to court documents made public late last week, former CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte, who is in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) on charges of leaking highly sensitive documents to Wikileaks, was found to have several contraband cellphones “including one heavily encrypted device” in his cell. He allegedly used them to “communicate clandestinely with third parties outside the MCC.” Details are in this Courthouse News Service article.
SPIES WITHOUT BORDERS: The folks at Bellingcat are at it again – this time revealing how the Russian FSB outsmarted the United Kingdom’s visa system to land two GRU officers (with fake IDs) multiple entry visas. It is a long, involved story which includes hacking of the UK visa system, manipulating and threatening Russians with access to network systems and more. Some of it sounds like stuff Hollywood would make up – and the film industry has already taken notice. According to Variety, there is a ninety-minute documentary just out called “Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World.” We are not sure where it will be screened – but a pretty good guess is that it will not be featured on “RT.”
NEST OF SPIES: The BBC recently explained “Why Austria is still centre for espionage.” Vienna has been the site of spy swaps, double agents, and triple dealings going back to the start of the Cold War. The BEEB quotes the delightfully named “Siegfried Beer,” founder of the “Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies” as saying that neutral Austria was always a convenient listening post from which the various sides could keep an eye on central Europe and each other, and that "The Austrian government was eager to remain neutral. So, it developed an atmosphere in which everybody was pretty cozy and profited from each other” Adding: “Espionage was a business. It still is. It brings a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of support into the country."
THOSE ARE SOME REDACTIONS: The American people’s fascination with the assassination of President Kennedy and the ability of government agencies to make things murkier seems endless. The folks at Muckrock.com continue to plow through records using the Freedom of Information Act. Last week, they reported that the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 led to the CIA making available a copy of “the Hart report,” a 1978 document about the mysterious defection of Yuri Nosenko. Nosenko was a KGB officer who defected to the U.S. in 1964 and claimed that he had personally handled Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was living in the Soviet Union and that the Soviets eventually declined to recruit him because they deemed him mentally unstable. Great debate ensued within the U.S. government over whether Nosenko was a legitimate defector, or whether he was sent to the U.S. to mislead it about any Soviet role in JFK’s death. But Muckrock says they discovered that the version of the Hart Report the CIA shared with Congress in 1978 was re-written to omit details of how Nosenko was treated while in confinement in the U.S. for three years while his legitimacy as a source was debated – and it omitted “all references to JFK and Nosenko’s claim of having handled Lee Harvey Oswald’s KGB file.” Gosh, seems like they left out all the good stuff.
POCKET LITTER: Bits and pieces of interesting /weird stuff we discovered:
Nominally Nominees: Tuesday evening, shortly after the President got to Mar-a-Lago for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House press office announced his “intention to nominate” five individuals to be Members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). They were: former Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Safra Ada Catz, co-president and CFO at Oracle Corporation, two former CIA officers, Kevin Hulbert and David Robertson, and James Donovan, a former Goldman Sachs executive. Someone pointed out to us that “intention to nominate” is the language normally used when the president plans to send a name up to the Senate for confirmation. But in the case of the PIAB – no confirmation is needed. All the president has to do is “appoint” whomever he wants. Well, the White House may have noticed that — because on Wednesday afternoon they re-issued the announcement saying the President had "appointed" these individuals. But that is not the only odd thing. In Wednesday's announcement — Safra Ada Catz's name had disappeared. Her place was taken by Jeremy Katz, a former Trump economic adviser.
- Royal Watch: Given the public’s fascination with espionage – and royal families, the folks at British-based Atlantic Books may have a winner coming. They recently bought the rightsto a new book called “Spying on the Royals: Intelligence, Security and the Monarchy from Victoria to Diana” by Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac. No word yet on when the book will be published.
- Murderer Mystery:Someone in the U.K. has a strange sense of humor (or is it “humour”?) The BBC tells us that a commemorative brass plaque was secretly affixed to a park bench in East London with the inscription: “In Loving Memory of Saddam Hussein, 1937-2006.” It is unclear who put the plaque in place, but the local authorities quickly removed it. Social media lit up with speculation on whether it was a serious attempt to honor the dead dictator, homage to someone else with the same name and dates of birth and death or – as one person guessed: gallows humor.
- Every Seat Is a Window Seat:With winter fast approaching here on the east coast, we thought we would share with you some tourist video of folks dropping in on Hawaii. Army Times posted a 360-degree video of soldiers conducting “special patrol insertion/extraction” (or SPIE) training along the Hawaiian coast. It is worth the watch.
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Got any tips for your friendly neighborhood Dead Drop? Shoot us a note at TheDeadDrop@theCipherBrief.com.
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