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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is shuttering the department’s two-decades-old war crimes office, Foreign Policy reported Monday.
The Office of Global Criminal Justice advises the Secretary of State on issues surrounding war crimes and genocide and helps form policy to address those atrocities.
According to FP, Tillerson’s office has told Todd Buchwald, the special coordinator of the OGCJ, he is being reassigned to the State Department’s office of legal affairs.
Remaining staff might be shifted to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, FP reported.
According to FP, the closure decision comes at a time when Tillerson has been trying to reorganize the department to concentrate on pursuing economic opportunities for American businesses and strengthening U.S. military prowess.
“There’s no mistaking it — this move will be a huge loss for accountability,” Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program, told FP. A State Department spokesman told FP in a statement it is “currently undergoing an employee-led redesign initiative, and there are no predetermined outcomes. We are not going to get ahead of any outcomes.” More here.
*** Consider the murderers in countries such as North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and more….
Iraq: Execution Site Near Mosul’s Old City
Investigate, Punish Those Responsible for Any War Crimes
(Beirut) – International observers have discovered an execution site in west Mosul, Human Rights Watch said today. That report, combined with new statements about executions in and around Mosul’s Old City and persistent documentation about Iraqi forces extrajudicially killing men fleeing Mosul in the final phase of the battle against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), are an urgent call to action by the Iraqi government.
Despite repeated promises to investigate wrongdoing by security forces, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has yet to demonstrate that Iraqi authorities have held a single soldier accountable for murdering, torturing, and abusing Iraqis in this conflict.
“As Prime Minister Abadi enjoys victory in Mosul, he is ignoring the flood of evidence of his soldiers committing vicious war crimes in the very city he’s promised to liberate,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Abadi’s victory will collapse unless he takes concrete steps to end the grotesque abuses by his own security forces.”
International observers, whose evidence has proven reliable in the past, told Human Rights Watch that on July 17, 2017, at about 3:30 p.m., a shopkeeper in a neighborhood directly west of the Old City that was retaken in April from ISIS took them into an empty building and showed them a row of 17 male corpses, barefoot but in civilian dress, surrounded by pools of blood. They said many appeared to have been blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their back.
They said the shopkeeper told them that he had seen the Iraqi Security Forces’ 16th Division, identifiable by their badges and vehicles, in the neighborhood four nights earlier, and that night had heard multiple gunshots coming from the area of the empty building. The next morning, when armed forces had left the area, he told them, he went into the building and saw the bodies lying in positions that suggested they were shot there and had not been moved. He said he did not recognize any of those killed.
The international observers also saw soldiers from the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) in the area. They contacted Human Rights Watch by phone from the site and later shared five photos they took of the bodies.
On July 17, another international observer told Human Rights Watch they spoke to a senior government official in Mosul who told them he was comfortable with the execution of suspected ISIS-affiliates “as long as there was no torture.” The observer said a commander showed their group a video taken a few days earlier of a group of CTS soldiers holding two detainees in the Old City. They said the commander told them that the forces had executed the men right after the video was taken.
A third international observer told Human Rights Watch on July 18 that they witnessed CTS soldiers bring an ISIS suspect to their base in a neighborhood southwest of the Old City on July 11. The observer did not see what happened to the suspect next, but said that a soldier later showed them a video of himself and a group of other soldiers brutally beating the man, and a second video of the man dead, with a bullet to his head.
“Some Iraqi soldiers seem to have so little fear that they will face any consequence for murdering and torturing suspects in Mosul that they are freely sharing evidence of what look like very cruel exploits in videos and photographs,” Whitson said. “Excusing such celebratory revenge killings will haunt Iraq for generations to come.”
A fourth international observer told Human Rights Watch on July 11 that the day before they had witnessed a group of CTS soldiers push a man whose hands were tied behind his back into a destroyed shop near the main road in the west to the Old City. They said they heard several gunshots, went into the shop after the soldiers had left, and found the man’s body with several bullet holes in the back of his head. They shared the photo of the body.
On July 10, the same observer said they saw Iraqi Security Forces just outside the Old City holding about 12 men with their hands tied behind their backs. They said an officer told them that the military’s 9th Division had detained these men inside the Old City on suspicion of ISIS affiliation. They said they saw the soldiers lead the detained men just out of sight, then heard shots ring out from their direction. The observer was unable to verify what happened.
On July 7, two additional international observers told Human Rights Watch that on different occasions in late June, they witnessed soldiers bring at least five suspected ISIS affiliates out of the Old City to the west, strapped to the hoods of Humvees, when temperatures in the city often reached 48 degrees Celsius, or 118 degrees Fahrenheit.
The nongovernmental organization Mosul Eye has been documenting abuses by all sides in Mosul since 2014, and has posted numerous videos and witness statements about executions on its Twitter feed since July 14, with one reading: “Mass Executions ‘Speicher Style’ [a reference to an ISIS massacre in 2014] for the last survivors of the old city. ISF is killing and throwing bodies of everyone it finds to the river.”
As of July 10, the Iraqi military has prevented access to west Mosul for most journalists, limiting coverage of recent events inside the Old City. Iraqi forces should allow journalists access to west Mosul to report on the conflict and any alleged abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
Throughout the operation to retake Mosul, Human Rights Watch has documented Iraqi forces detaining and holding at least 1,200 men and boys in inhumane conditions without charge, and in some cases torturing and executing them, under the guise of screening them for ISIS-affiliation. In the final weeks of the Mosul operation, Human Rights Watch has reported on executions of suspected ISIS-affiliates in and around Mosul’s Old City.
An Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative told Human Rights Watch on July 19 that he would request a government investigation into the allegations. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised concerns about allegations of ill-treatment, torture, and executions in meetings with Iraqi officials in Baghdad as well as with representatives from United States-led coalition member countries. Human Rights Watch does not know of a single transparent investigation into abuses by Iraqi armed forces, any instances of commanders being held accountable for abuse, or any victims of abuse receiving compensation.
Iraqi criminal justice authorities should investigate all alleged crimes, including unlawful killings and mutilation of corpses, by any party in the conflict in a prompt, transparent, and effective manner, up to the highest levels of responsibility. Those found criminally responsible should be appropriately prosecuted. Extrajudicial executions and torture during an armed conflict are war crimes.
“Relentless reports, videos, and photographs of unlawful executions and beatings by Iraqi soldiers should be enough to raise serious concerns among the highest ranks in Baghdad and the international coalition combatting ISIS,” Whitson said. “As we well know in Iraq, if the government doesn’t provide an accounting for these murders, the Iraqi people may take matters into their own hands.”
Notice that for years, no terrorist has been captured on the battlefield, they have simply been killed per the edict of the Obama administration. It has made intelligence collection and cultivation almost impossible and in some cases under the previous administration has led to the deaths of innocent civilians due to collateral damage or bad ground control.
The most recent capture was in 2014 of Abu Khattalah of Benghazi, the only terrorist detained and he is presently being held in the Washington DC area.
The Trump administration appears to be making its first moves toward fulfilling a campaign promise to fill the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with “bad dudes.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the prison on Friday to get an update on current operations, the first concrete action the administration has taken on the facility since taking office.
Up until now, Guantanamo has been running on autopilot; the executive order from former President Obama calling for the facility to be shut down is still technically the law of the land. More here from The Hill.
ABC
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — In the highest-ranking known visit by a Trump administration official, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, were visiting this remote outpost Friday to get “an up-to-date understanding” of current war-on-terror operations.
Rod Rosenstein, Sessions’ deputy, was also on the tour. Its first stop was the war court compound, Camp Justice, where the Pentagon holds pretrial hearings in the death penalty case against five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and others accused of terrorism and war crimes.
They also toured the Detention Center Zone where, after an extensive Obama administration downsizing effort, the Pentagon holds 41 war prisoners, 10 charged with crimes and five cleared for release through Obama or Bush administration review boards.
“Keeping this country safe from terrorists is the highest priority of the Trump administration,” Justice Department spokesman Ian D. Prior said in a statement issued before the VIP party landed at the base and took a special boat rather than the large ferry across Guantanamo Bay.
A court hearing was postponed until afternoon to accommodate the visit. It comes as the chief war court judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, has been openly complaining about insufficient resources to mount a robust schedule of 2018 hearings in the 9/11 and USS Cole cases.
Other attorneys general have visited the site, including Michael Mukasey for the Bush administration in 2008 and Eric Holder for the Obama administration in 2009. This visit — coming more than five months into the Trump administration, even as the White House has yet to officially rescind Barack Obama’s 2009 closure order — may be seen as a signal of support for the detention operation and the war court where six men are in pretrial, death penalty proceedings for the Sept. 11 and USS Cole attacks.
The one-day visit was announced hours before a Saudi man was due at the war court for a pre-sentencing hearing. Ahmed al-Darbi pleaded guilty to war crimes in February 2014, in exchange for a commitment to let him serve out his sentence of up to 15 years in his homeland starting next year.
“Recent attacks in Europe and elsewhere confirm that the threat to our nation is immediate and real,” Prior said in his statement, “and it remains essential that we use every lawful tool available to prevent as many attacks as possible.”
He said the goal of the visit was for the officials to meet with “the people on the ground who are leading our government-wide efforts at GTMO,” using the Navy acronym from for the 45-square-mile base in southeast Cuba. “In addition to the Department of Justice’s role in handling detainee-related litigation,” he added, “it is important for the Department of Justice to have an up-to-date understanding of current operations.”
Coats’ spokesman, Timothy L. Barrett, issued an identical statement to the Department of Justice’s on the trip’s purpose: “To gain an understanding of current operations by meeting with the people on the ground who are leading our government-wide efforts at GTMO.”
Others on the tour included Adm. Kurt Tidd, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which has oversight of the prison; Navy Rear Adm. Edward Cashman, the detention center commander; and Col. Steve Gabavics, the head of the guard force, said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Maj. Ben Sakrisson.
He declined to say whether they visited the prison’s clandestine Camp 7, where former CIA captives are kept in military custody, in what he called a “standard tour of the camps.” The group had lunch in the Detention Center Zone at the Seaside Galley mess hall where guards and other prison staff eat.
Sessions first visited in late January 2002 as a U.S. senator and has long been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the prison and military commissions system, whose rules are a hybrid of U.S. military and federal legal systems.
The visit comes as the U.S. Southern Command, not so long ago run by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, is proposing an up to $100 million construction project to house 13,000 temporary migrants and 5,000 support staff on the base near the airstrip. The Navy, in announcing the proposal, called it a “contingency mass migration complex.”
The war court and Detention Center Zone staffed by 1,500 troops and civilians are on the opposite side of the base, requiring a ferry ride across Guantanamo Bay.
No such mass exodus is foreseen. First, the Obama administration canceled a decades-old “wet foot, dry foot” policy that let Cubans who reach U.S. shores gain legal entry. Now the Trump administration is pursuing deportations of undocumented immigrants, a program championed by Sessions.
“There are no detention facilities involved in this project,” Southcom spokesman Army Maj. Vance Trenkel said by email on Thursday. “This project is to assist with mass migration operations … caused by things such as a natural disaster.”
In the 1990s the base was used to shelter more than 50,000 Cubans and Haitians who were stopped at sea from reaching the United States.
Primer: Moscow hired thousands of North Koreans to build the infrastructure for the Sochi Olympics. Russia still uses North Korean slaves for mining and forestry. The North Koreans are hired slaves that have to send their pay checks back the the Kim regime. Not to be outdone, Qatar is doing the same with slaves from the DPRK, as they are hired to build the stadium for the FIFA World Cup Soccer games in 2020.
North Koreans are hired out to foreign corrupt governments to work 20 hours a day with a pay rate of $100 per month (US$) and 70% of that goes back to Pyongyang as a loyalty payment.
By the way, China, Kuwait, Libya, Africa, Oman and several other countries hire the slaves and their living conditions don’t even qualify as slums, they are much worse.
So, while there is much worry about the missile and nuclear program at the hands of North Korea, China is a major culprit in full assistance and cooperation in that regard. Further, China has aided North Korea and other terror regimes in skirting not only United States sanctions, but those from applied by other nations.
Over the last eight years, the Obama administration has hardly taken any aggressive stance with regard to North Korea and consequences except to shut off humanitarian exports to the country. President Trump meanwhile is trusting Russia and China to deal with North Korea? Worse mistake yet.
Deeper dive…
The Global Web That Keeps North Korea Running
Pyongyang’s ties with 164 countries help it amass money and know-how to develop nuclear weapons
By: Jonathan Cheng in Seoul, Jeremy Page in Beijing and Alastair Gale in Tokyo
WSJ: North Korea may be one of the world’s most isolated countries, but the tightening sanctions regime it has lived under for the past two decades is anything but impermeable.
An examination of North Korea’s global connections reveals that even as it becomes increasingly dependent on China, Pyongyang maintains economic and diplomatic ties with many nations. Those links—from commercial and banking relationships to scientific training, arms sales, monument-building and restaurants—have helped it amass the money and technical know-how to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.
The nature and extent of North Korea’s global ties comes from current and formal officials, researchers, North Korean defectors, U.N. decisions, NGO’s and an analysis of economic statistics.
North Korea: What Comes After the ICBM Test?
In some cases, North Korea leans on old allies, particularly those like Cuba from the former Communist bloc, or those like Syria that are similarly hostile to the U.S. In others, notably in Africa, it has more transactional relationships to supply items such as cheap weaponry or military training. In the Middle East, it supplies laborers for construction work and pockets almost all their earnings.
Sanctions against North Korea haven’t been as broad as those applied to Iran over its nuclear program, nor as rigidly enforced.
David S. Cohen, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence during the Obama administration, wrote in an op-ed in April that “North Korea has gotten off relatively easy, especially as compared with Iran.”
Trying to crack down on North Korean business activities is like a game of Whac-A-Mole. North Korean defectors have detailed how the regime uses front companies to conceal its commercial activities in foreign countries, or adopts business names that obscure their identity by avoiding using North Korea’s full name, thereby benefiting from confusion over whether the entity is North or South Korean.
Pyongyang maintains diplomatic ties with 164 countries and has embassies in 47, according to the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization, and the Honolulu-based East-West Center.
Although it lags far behind China, India has been North Korea’s second biggest trade partner in the past couple of years, buying commodities including silver and selling it chemicals among other goods. Russia has exported petroleum products to North Korea and imported items such as garments and frozen fish. Last year, North Korea attempted to export military communications equipment to Eritrea via front companies in Malaysia, according to a recent U.N. report.
Most North Koreans abroad are involved in providing funds for the state, defectors say. One of the primary roles of North Korean diplomats is to help develop and maintain cash flows for the regime, according to former embassy officials. North Korea missions typically have to be self-financed to maximize revenue for the state, these people say.
In recent months, under pressure from the Trump administration, there are signs more countries have begun to clamp down on North Korea. In February, Bulgaria had Pyongyang send home two diplomats in its embassy in Sofia, in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions passed in September calling on countries to reduce the number of North Korean diplomats abroad.
Italy this year moved four North Koreans studying at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste to switch to less-sensitive majors in line with a Security Council resolution calling for member nations not to provide education that could aid Pyongyang’s weapons program.
In March, Senegal said it suspended issuing visas for artisans from North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio, a state-run organization that has erected monumental sculptures across Africa.
This image, from North Korea’s KRT, shows what it said was the launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile. Photo: /Associated Press
More than 50,000 North Korean workers are employed abroad, according to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, many in construction or factory jobs. For these workers, wages are paid directly to North Korean officials, raising hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the state, human-rights groups say.
These ties are under scrutiny as Pyongyang’s success at launching a missile that could reach Alaska is escalating the crisis over its weapons program. This week’s missile test took place on the back of a Chinese truck imported to North Korea for logging purposes, according to analysts.
U.N. sanctions are primarily intended to block North Korea’s illegitimate trade and revenue streams that have a suspected link to its weapons programs. The U.N. doesn’t target all of Pyongyang’s business activities abroad, such as the chain of restaurants it operates in Asia and the Middle East, or its dispatch of laborers.
U.S. sanctions go further in trying to disrupt North Korea’s trade and revenue, including a recent move to block access to the U.S. financial system for a bank in China on which Pyongyang relied. The U.S. has sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a move that would freeze any of his assets in America.
Video from a North Korean state news bulletin Tuesday was said to show leader Kim Jong Un applauding after the launch. Photo: Yonhap News/Zuma Press
This week, Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subpanel on East Asia, said he was drafting legislation that he says would create a “global embargo” on North Korea.
“We need to shut off North Korea’s access to oil, to trade, to currency, to financial institutions,” he said in an interview Thursday, calling for “Iran-style” sanctions. “They are far from being ‘sanctioned out.’ They are certainly isolated, but they have to recognize they ain’t seen nothing yet.”
China has had close ties to North Korea since the 1950s when it sent troops to fight U.S.-led forces backing the South in the Korean War.
In 2001, China accounted for around 18% of North Korea’s exports and 20% of its imports, ranking behind Japan on both measures, according to customs figures compiled by Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity.
Since U.N. sanctions on North Korea were tightened in 2009, Japan and other countries have curtailed commercial ties with Pyongyang, leaving China as by far its biggest trade partner.
For the past five years, China has accounted for more than 80% of North Korea’s imports and exports, providing an economic lifeline even as political relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated.
During that period, China has imported mostly industrial raw materials from North Korea, especially coal, but also seafood and clothing such as men’s suits and overcoats.
In recent days, President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with China for expanding trade with North Korea despite U.S. appeals to exert more pressure.
China says it enforces U.N. sanctions and since February it has banned imports of North Korean coal—one of Pyongyang’s main sources of hard currency.
However, U.N. sanctions still allow trade that isn’t deemed to benefit North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and China’s customs figures show that its exports to North Korea have increased this year. Crucially, China continues to be North Korea’s biggest source of crude oil, according to diplomats and experts on the region.
Much of North Korea’s trade takes place over the 880-mile land border with China, which is porous and sparsely guarded. Small Chinese and North Korean companies quietly ferry coal, iron ore and other resources over the border, far from checkpoints.
U.N. sanctions introduced in March 2016 banned exports of North Korean iron ore unless they were exclusively for “livelihood purposes”—a loophole China continues to exploit.
While North Korea gained notoriety in the early 2000s for state-backed exports of illegal drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars, Pyongyang has mostly shifted its strategy to allow private North Korean enterprises to take the lead, with the regime collecting bribes from these enterprises in a primitive system of taxation, says Justin Hastings, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who has researched North Korea’s overseas smuggling networks.
The shift in strategy means that North Korea can outsource some of the risk involved in the trade while continuing to fill its coffers.
“North Korea is not infinitely adaptable, but it’s far more adaptable than people have thought and its ability to adapt to sanctions has not been reached yet,” Mr. Hastings said.
One informal Chinese trader that Mr. Hastings interviewed for a soon-to-be-published academic paper was importing truckloads and boatloads of North Korean iron ore and other minerals across the river into China for resale as recently as a year ago, when the interview took place.
Journalists and activists in Mexico accused the government of spying on them with the powerful surveillance software Pegasus developed by the NSO Group.
Journalists and activists in Mexico accused the government of spying on them with a powerful surveillance software. According to the journalists, the authorities used an Israeli spyware to hack their mobile devices. The surveillance software is the questionable Pegasus that is developed by the Israeli surveillance NSO Group and sold exclusively to the governments and law enforcement agencies.
NSO Group is owned by US private equity firm Francisco Partners Management. it made the headlines after the investigation conducted by The New York Times.
People familiar with the NSO Group confirmed that the company has an internal ethics committee that monitors the sales and potential customers verifying that the software will not be abused to violate human rights.
Officially the sale of surveillance software is limited to authorized governments to support investigation of agencies on criminal organizations and terrorist groups.
Unfortunately, its software is known to have been abused to spy on journalists and human rights activists.
“There’s no check on this,” said Bill Marczak, a senior fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “Once NSO’s systems are sold, governments can essentially use them however they want. NSO can say they’re trying to make the world a safer place, but they are also making the world a more surveilled place.”
The discovery is the result of an investigation conducted by Mexican NGOs and the CitizenLab organization.
R3D, SocialTic, Article 19 and CitizenLab published a report that details the surveillance illegally operated by the Mexican government through the spyware.
Authorities have been sending malicious links to individuals’ phones, in order to trick victims into opening the messages they were specifically crafted and in some cases, the attack involved also family members if the victims were not compromised.
“The targets received SMS messages that included links to NSO exploits paired with troubling personal and sexual taunts, messages impersonating official communications by the Embassy of the United States in Mexico, fake AMBER Alerts, warnings of kidnappings, and other threats.” states the report. “The operation also included more mundane tactics, such as messages sending fake bills for phone services and sex-lines. Some targets only received a handful of texts, while others were barraged with dozens of messages over more than one and a half years. A majority of the infection attempts, however, took place during two periods: August 2015 and April-July 2016″.
The Pegasus spyware leverages zero-day exploits to compromise both iOS and Android devices.
The government targeted individuals that exposed evidence on government corruption and activists who revealed human rights violations by the Mexican Government.
The researchers observed at least two periods of intense targeting:
Period 1 (August 2015) when the Mexican President was officially exonerated for his role in the “Casa Blanca” scandal on which Carmen Aristegui, a well-known reporter, had first reported, and Carlos Loret de Mola was questioning the government’s role in extrajudicial killings. Aristegui revealed that President Enrique Pena Nieto’s wife had bought a $7 million Mexico City mansion from a government contractor.
Period 2 (April- July 2016) when revelations of government involvement in human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings were made public.
According to the New York Times report, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased some $80 million of spyware from NSO Group since 2011.
Companies like the NSO Group operate in the dark, in a sort of “legal gray area,” despite the Israeli government exercises strict control of the export of such kind of software, surveillance applications could be abused by threat actors and authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Let me close with Key Findings of the report
Over 76 messages with links to NSO Group’s exploit framework were sent to Mexican journalists, lawyers, and a minor child (NSO Group is a self-described “cyber warfare” company that sells government-exclusive spyware).
The targets were working on a range of issues that include investigations of corruption by the Mexican President, and the participation of Mexico’s Federal authorities in human rights abuses.
Some of the messages impersonated the Embassy of the United States of America to Mexico, others masqueraded as emergency AMBER Alerts about abducted children.
At least one target, the minor child of a target, was sent infection attempts, including a communication impersonating the United States Government, while physically located in the United States.
***
Then comes former National Security Council advisor for President Trump Michael Flynn.
He earned nearly $1.5 million last year as a consultant, adviser, board member, or speaker for more than three dozen companies and individuals, according to financial disclosure forms released earlierthis year.
Two of those entities are directly linked to NSO Group, a secretive Israeli cyberweapons dealer founded by Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio, who are rumored to have served in Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the National Security Agency.
Flynn received $40,280 last year as an advisory board member for OSY Technologies, an NSO Group offshoot based in Luxembourg, a favorite tax haven for major corporations. OSY Technologies is part of a corporate structure that runs from Israel, where NSO Group is located, through Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S.
Flynn also worked as a consultant last year for Francisco Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm that owns NSO Group, but he did not disclose how much he was paid. At least two Francisco Partners executives have sat on OSY’s board.
Flynn’s financial disclosure forms do not specify the work he did for companies linked to NSO Group, and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Former colleagues at Flynn’s consulting firm declined to discuss Flynn’s work with NSO Group. Executives at Francisco Partners who also sit on the OSY Technologies board did not respond to emails. Lavie, the NSO Group co-founder, told HuffPost he is “not interested in speaking to the press” and referred questions to a spokesman, who did not respond to queries.
Many government and military officials have moved through the revolving door between government agencies and private cybersecurity companies. The major players in the cybersecurity contracting world ― SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI Federal and KeyW Corporation ― all have former top government officials in leadership roles or on their boards, or have former top executives working in government.
But it’s less common for former U.S. intelligence officials to work with foreign cybersecurity outfits. “There is a lot of opportunity in the U.S. to do this kind of work,” said Ben Johnson, a former NSA employee and the co-founder of Obsidian Security. “It’s a little bit unexpected going overseas, especially when you combine that with the fact that they’re doing things that might end up in hands of enemies of the U.S. government. It does seem questionable.”
What is clear is that during the time Flynn was working for NSO’s Luxembourg affiliate, one of the company’s main products — a spy software sold exclusively to governments and marketed as a tool for law enforcement officials to monitor suspected criminals and terrorists — was being used to surveil political dissidents, reporters, activists, and government officials. The software, called Pegasus, allowed users to remotely break into a target’s cellular phone if the target responded to a text message.
Last year, several people targeted by the spyware contacted Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research team based out of the University of Toronto. With the help of experts at the computer security firm Lookout, Citizen Lab researchers were able to trace the spyware hidden in the texts back to NSO Group spyware. After Citizen Lab publicized its findings, Apple introduced patches to fix the vulnerability. It is not known how many activists in other countries were targeted and failed to report it to experts.
NSO Group told Forbes in a statement last year that it complies with strict export control laws and only sells to authorized government agencies. “The company does NOT operate any of its systems; it is strictly a technology company,” NSO Group told Forbes.
But once a sale is complete, foreign governments are free to do what they like with the technology. Read more here.
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) issued a technical alert about the activity of the North Korea’s ‘Hidden Cobra’ APT group.
The joint Technical Alert (TA) report is the result of the efforts between of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The US Government has tracked the hacker group as Hidden Cobra, but the APT is most popular as the Lazarus APT Group.
The activity of the Lazarus Group surged in 2014 and 2015, its members used mostly custom-tailored malware in their attacks and experts that investigated on the crew consider it highly sophisticated.
This threat actor has been active since at least 2009, possibly as early as 2007, and it was involved in both cyber espionage campaigns and sabotage activities aimed to destroy data and disrupt systems. Security researchers discovered that North Korean Lazarus APT group was behind recent attacks on banks, including the Bangladesh cyber heist.
According to security experts, the group was behind, other large-scale cyber espionage campaigns against targets worldwide, including the Troy Operation, the DarkSeoul Operation, and the Sony Picture hack.
The joint alert from the FBI and the DHS further details on the group, including indicators of compromise (IoC) for its DeltaCharlie botnet involved in the “Operation Blockbuster” to power DDoS attacks. More here.
*** Most of North Korea’s cyber operations are located in China hosted on Chinese communications internet/communications platforms. It is espionage of an epic standard. But let us go deeper.
Currently North Korea is alarming neighbors with its frequent missile tests, and the US with its attempts to field long-range nuclear missiles that can hit American cities. A sixth nuclear test could be imminent. An attack on the US or its allies would be suicidal, so Pyongyang probably aims to extract “aid” from the international community in exchange for dismantling some of its weaponry—rewind about 10 years to see the last time it pulled off the old “nuclear blackmail” trick.
AP
But however much North Korea could extract from other nations that way, the result would pale in comparison to the value of its largely untapped underground resources.
Below the nation’s mostly mountainous surface are vast mineral reserves, including iron, gold, magnesite, zinc, copper, limestone, molybdenum, graphite, and more—all told about 200 kinds of minerals. Also present are large amounts of rare earth metals, which factories in nearby countries need to make smartphones and other high-tech products.
NKNews
Estimates as to the value of the nation’s mineral resources have varied greatly over the years, made difficult by secrecy and lack of access. North Korea itself has made what are likely exaggerated claims about them. According to one estimate from a South Korean state-owned mining company, they’re worth over $6 trillion. Another from a South Korean research institute puts the amount closer to $10 trillion.
State of neglect
North Korea has prioritized its mining sector since the 1970s (pdf, p. 31). But while mining production increased until about 1990—iron ore production peaked in 1985—after that it started to decline. A count in 2012 put the number of mines in the country at about 700 (pdf, p. 2). Many, though, have been poorly run and are in a state of neglect. The nation lacks the equipment, expertise, and even basic infrastructure to properly tap into the jackpot that waits in the ground.
In April, Lloyd R. Vasey, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that:
North Korean mining production has decreased significantly since the early 1990s. It is likely that the average operational rate of existing mine facilities is below 30 per cent of capacity. There is a shortage of mining equipment and North Korea is unable to purchase new equipment due to its dire economic situation, the energy shortage and the age and generally poor condition of the power grid.
It doesn’t help that private mining is illegal in communist North Korea, as are private enterprises in general (at least technically). Or that the ruling regime, now led by third-generation dictator Kim Jong-un, has been known to, seemingly on a whim, kick out foreign mining companies it’s allowed in, or suddenly change the terms of agreements.
Despite all this, the nation is so blessed with underground resources that mining makes up roughly 14% of the economy.
A “cash cow”
China is the sector’s main customer. Last September, South Korea’s state-run Korea Development Institute said that the mineral trade between North Korea and China remains a “cash cow” for Pyongyang despite UN sanctions, and that it accounted for 54% (paywall) of the North’s total trade volume to China in the first half of 2016. In 2015 China imported $73 million in iron ore from North Korea, and $680,000 worth of zincin the first quarter of this year.
North Korea has been particularly active in coal mining in recent years. In 2015 China imported about $1 billion worth of coal from North Korea. Coal is especially appealing because it can be mined with relatively simple equipment. Large deposits of the stuff are located near major ports and the border with China, making the nation’s bad transportation infrastructure less of an issue.
For years Chinese buyers have purchased coal from North Korea at far below the market rate. As of last summer, coal shipments to China accounted for about 40% (paywall) of all North Korean exports. But global demand for coal is declining as alternatives like natural gas and renewables gain momentum, and earlier this year Beijing, in line with UN sanctions, began restricting coal imports from its neighbor.
The sanctions game
After North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, the UN began imposing ever stronger sanctions against it. Last year the nation’s underground resources became a focus. In November 2016, the UN passed a resolution capping North Korea’s coal exports and banning shipments of nickel, copper, zinc, and silver. That followed a resolution in March 2016 banning the export (pdf) of gold, vanadium, titanium, and rare earth metals.
The resolutions targeting the mining sector could hurt the Kim regime. Before they were issued, a 2014 report on the country’s mining sector by the United States Geological Survey noted that (pdf, p. 3), “The mining sector in North Korea is not directly subject to international economic sanctions and is, therefore, the only legal, lucrative source of investment trade available to the country.”
That is no longer the case.
Of course, Pyongyang has grown adept at evading such sanctions, especially through shipping. Glimpses of its covert activities come from occasional interceptions of vessels. Last August Egyptian authorities boarded a ship laden with 2,300 tons (2,087 metric tons) of iron ore heading from North Korea to the Suez Canal (they also found 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades below the ore).
Earlier this year a group of UN experts concluded that North Korea, despite sanctions, continues to export banned minerals. They determined, as well, that North Korea uses another mineral—gold—along with cash to “entirely circumvent the formal financial sector.”
Interested neighbors
Meanwhile China’s overall trade with North Korea actually increased 37.4% (paywall) in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. Its imports of iron ore from North Korea shot up 270% in January and February from a year ago. Coal dropped 51.6%.
North Korea’s neighbors have long had their eyes on its bonanza of mineral wealth. About five years ago China spent some $10 billion on an infrastructure project near the border with North Korea, primarily to give it easier access to the mineral resources. Conveniently North Korea’s largest iron ore deposits, in Musan County, are right by the border. An analysis of satellite images published last October by 38 North, a website affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, showed mining activity was alive and well in the area.
China particularly covets North Korea’s rare earth minerals. Pyongyang knows this. It punished Beijing in March by suspending exports of the metals to China in retaliation for the coal trade restrictions.
Meanwhile Russia, which also shares a (smaller) border with North Korea, in 2014 developed plans to overhaul North Korea’s rail network in exchange for access to the country’s mineral resources. That particular plan lost steam (pdf, p. 8), but the general sentiment is still alive.
But South Korea has its own plans for the mineral resources. It sees them as a way to help pay for reunification (should it finally come to pass), which is expected to take decades and cost hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars. (Germany knows a few things about that.) Overhauling the North’s decrepit infrastructure, including the aging railway line, will be part of the enormous bill.
In May, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport invited companies to submit bids on possible infrastructure projects in North Korea, especially ones regarding the mining sector. It argued that (paywall) the underground resources could “cover the expense of repairing the North’s poor infrastructure.”
It was, of course, jumping the gun a bit. For now South Korea—and the world—is stuck with a bully in the mineral-blessed North.
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China is undergoing a major military build up around the world and has even included collaboration with Pakistan.
The new assessment focuses instead on the buildup on Spratly Islands, noting that previous year the Mischief, Subi and Fiery Cross Reefs, three of the largest outposts, saw the construction of 24 administration buildings, barracks, fixed weapons positions, communication facilities and fighter-sized hangars by China, each of them with runways 8,800 feet long.
While the report notes that China has not undertaken any new land reclamation projects on disputed features in the South China Sea during 2016, it did accuse China of further militarizing the contested Spratly Islands via the construction of 24 hangars capable of housing fighter aircraft, fixed weapons positions, barracks and communication facilities.
Beijing has opposed the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in South Korea to defend against attacks from North Korea, in part because it says it could be used to counter China’s capabilities.
Meanwhile Pakistan itself has not made any comments about this statement.
Published Tuesday, the Pentagon report estimated that China spent US$180 billion previous year on its military – the world’s largest – a figure well over the country’s official US$140 billion defence budget.
The report made “irresponsible remarks on China’s national defense development and reasonable actions in defending our territorial sovereignty and security interests in disregard of the facts“, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters yesterday.
“China likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has longstanding, friendly relationships“, the report predicts.
China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics center in Djibouti.
“China’s expanding global economic interests are increasing demands for the [Chinese Navy] to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments, and critical sea lines of communication”, the report reads.
The defence ministry in a statement refuted the U.S. assessment, saying “China is not doing any military expansion and does not seek a sphere of influence”. Pakistan has also emerged as the biggest market for Chinese arms exports, a focus area in Beijing’s expansion plans, the report titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2017″, said. He harshly criticized China’s construction in the South China Sea and became the first member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet to lay out a comprehensive strategy on Asia. That region accounted for almost half of China’s over $20 billion in arms exports from 2011 to 2015.
Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. “To support this modernisation, China uses a variety of methods to acquire foreign military and dual-use technologies, including cyber theft, targeted foreign direct investment and exploitation of the access of private Chinese nationals to such technologies”, the report said.
Regarding the Senkaku Islands, a group of East China Sea islets controlled by Japan but claimed by the mainland and Taiwan, the Pentagon said that previous year Beijing continued to use law-enforcement ships and aircraft to “patrol” near the islands in an attempt to undermine Japan’s administration of them.
China has also always been a strong military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of Pakistan and is considered Islamabad’s largest trade and defense partner.
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