ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 3

March 2001
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest : e2k_news@hotmail.com

News items

Estonia expels two Russian Diplomats.

Estonia strengthened its apparent pro Western leanings by expelling two Russian Diplomats for spying.

The former Soviet republic provoked Russia to order two Estonian Diplomats out of Moscow within 48 hours of the order being given.

Estonia is a good candidate to join the EU and has made strong moves towards the next round of NATO enlargement. This 'Cold War' style spying row is further fuelled by Estonia's provision of a listening post for MI6 and the CIA.

It is reported that Latvia and Lithuania provide similar facilities.

GCHQ web challenge cracked in a week

A deliberately difficult teaser placed on the GCHQ web site was cracked by enthusiasts in just over a week.

The previous challenge took only 48 hours and consisted of clues hidden in the structure of a page or hidden by text needing only a click of a mouse button to reveal them.

This latest challenge involved binary coded letters and the burying of clues in colours used in the pages.

GCHQ hope that some of the successful enthusiasts will apply for a job.

[See 'Relevant Web Sites'].

Tracking phone users.

New technology and legal reforms (RIP Act) now allow Police and security services the freedom to spy on Britain's population more effectively.

Mobile phone manufacturers have been told that they must include a microchip with their product that will allow satellites to locate the user to an accuracy of five metres. The original proposal for this was for the location to be sent when the 999 facility is used but an electronic surveillance expert stated the RIP Act allowed GCHQ to intercept domestic telephone traffic. Although disputed by the Home Office who said that GCHQ only intercept external calls there are similar proposals in America.

The chip is produced in Dublin by Parthus Technologies. The chip takes information from a satellite and sends it to terrestrial base stations resulting in the callers location being transmitted every time the Emergency services are called.

All British Subscribers under threat of 'carte blanche' spying by the State.

A document that has been made available to a British Sunday Newspaper and entitled 'NCIS Submission on Communications Data Retention Law' has sparked fears that secret moves, costing millions of pounds will affect the privacy of every member of the population of Britain. The document, dated 21st August 2000, was written by Roger Gaspar,, the deputy director general of NCIS.

The document which has been reported as being 'Restricted' states that new laws are needed to allow the intelligence services, Customs and Excise and the Police access to telephone and computer records of every member of the public.

Politicians and campaigners see this move as 'Big Brother' powers and an attack on an individual's right to privacy.

It is envisaged that every telephone call, e-mail, fax, websites and pages looked at, by the subscriber, would be recorded and stored in a 'data-warehouse' for seven years.

The cost of setting up such a system would cost an estimated £3Million and a further £9Million to run, the data bank being compared to the national DNA database.

Obvious uses of such a monitoring system would be to tackle terrorism, paedophilia and drug trafficking as well as other organised crime.

Dame Stella Rimmington's Memoirs leaked but later approved for print..

Following the expose from 'The Sun' newspaper that received a leaked copy of the former head of MI5's manuscript a spelling error will help check the authenticity of the document.

Dame Stella's book 'A Life of Surprises' had a small part of the opening page printed in the newspaper.

The document handed to the Cabinet Offices, by 'The Sun' is being checked against a copy that Dame Stella had offered for vetting.

Officials checking the document expect that the two would match. A small mistake in the spelling of Forword, mis-spelled as Forewordis the indicator here.

It is not known where the manuscript had come from but suggestions, later discounted, have been made citing MI6 as the source.

A Home Office official praised the voluntary return of the document by 'The Sun'.

The go-ahead was later given for the manuscript to be published despite the thoughts of senior security and intelligence officers. The Ministry of Defence, which has mounted failed proceedings against others to try to stop the publication of memoirs of SAS soldiers and the like, fiercely opposed this decision.

Romanian ex head of Secret Police Charged.

During the communist era of Romania the editor of Radio Free Europe was murdered, in the Eighties.

The ex-head of the Securitate, Nicolae Plesita has been charged with this murder.

It is alleged that the contract against the editor was executed by "Carlos the Jackal", Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.

Credit for breaking Japanese Naval code challenged.

JN25, the Japanese naval code has long been claimed to have been broken by the Americans. Unfortunately this story has as much credence as the film U571 which showed the USN retrieving an Enigma machine from a damaged German Submarine, when in reality the act was one carried out by the Royal Navy.

A new book. 'The Emperor's Codes' by Michael Smith uses recently released documents to prove the Americans' claim to the decoding to be otherwise.

Bletchley Park, known for the breaking of the Enigma Codes and the design and use of the world's first electronic computer, was not the only cryptographic success of the British.

A Royal Australian Navy officer, Eric Nave, teamed up with a British cryptographer, John Tiltman to actively attack and penetrate the Japanese codes.

The task was an incredible one due to the complicated Japanese alphabet and the necessity of different morse characters from those used internationally. The code was broken in 1939, long before American forces were engaged by the Japanese.

This is not the first book to claim this fact. A book written by James Rusbridger and Eric Nave 'Betrayal at Pearl Harbor' adequately relates the story leaving the reader in no doubt who actually cracked what.

Naval Spy apprehended in Japan.

A senior Japanese naval officer, Lieutenant-Commander Shigehiro Hagisaki, 38, of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, was arrested and subsequently charged for passing classified information to a Russian Diplomat. Later the accused pleaded guilty to the passing of secrets.

Hagisaki, who has a posting to a Defence Research Institute, was arrested after enjoying a meal, in a Tokyo restaurant, with a Russian embassy official. A subsequent search of Hagisaki's home revealed a pile of sensitive military documents of which a percentage concerned US Far East operations.

The Russian official was Captain Viktor Bogatenkov, 44, a military attache and member of a Russian Intelligence organisation. As the arrest was made Captain Bogatenkov claimed diplomatic immunity and refused a request to go to the local Police Station for questioning. Bogatenkov left Tokyo by plane from Narita airport the next day after the Russian Embassy forbade questions being put to him.

Japanese officials have claimed that this matter, Japan's largest spy scandal in 20 years, would not threaten Russian-Japanese relations although Japan stated that a planned exchange of Military Delegations with the Russians would not now go ahead. Those guilty of leaking secrets face 1 year in gaol or fines up to £450. With the US, France, Russia and China having a maximum penalty of death for those who spy Japan's Defense Agency is asking for harsher penalties to be introduced.

US drops charges against 'Chinese' spy.

The US government has dropped charges against Wen Ho Lee the scientist it arrested, detained and charged with spying. The original 58 charges would have been sufficient to send sixty year old Dr Lee to gaol for the rest of his life. A plea bargain, struck with the prosecution, means that the 58 charges have been dropped in favour of a single charge of Improperly downloading classified material.

Dr Lee who apparently destroyed 806 Mbytes of information was officially freed in September 2000 receiving an apology from District James Parker for "the unfair manner in which you were held in custody."

Judge Parker went on to say that, "the authorities has embarrassed an entire nation" with the case of Dr Lee. Although freed Lee was found guilty of the offence specified in the plea bargain and sentenced to serve the time that he had been remanded.

Attempt to kill President Putin Foiled.

During a summit of former Soviet Republics attended by nine leaders Vladimir Putin was targetted for an attack against his life. It is thought that four persons from Chechnya and several others of Middle Eastern origins, now detained, were responsible for the attack.

Leonid Derkach, chief of the Ukranian Security Services said that several foreign secret services had information concerning the threat to Putin. The FSB confirmed that they had worked with their Ukranian colleagues to thwart the attempt but refused to make any further comment.

French Hacker in Court revealed secrets available in books.

Vincent Plousey, aged 28, who uses the nom de plume Larsen, served two months in gaol recently for disclosing national defence secrets.

In March 1998 Plousey published a list of Radio Frequencies used by the French Strategic Oceanic Force, Land Forces and the national police and Gendarmerie on his e-mail magazine.

Plousey was placed under covert surveillance, electronic interception of his personal communications was carried out and he was under covert physical observation at all times during the investigation. At the conclusion of the investigation, taking 7 months, Plousey was arrested by armed agents of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire - French Internal Security Service) in April.

Placed in detention Plousey was treated as a sensitive prisoner.

In court Plousey disclosed that the frequencies he had published in his email magazine were in fact freely available world wide in publications such as the American Monitoring Times and the German Klingenfuss Utility Frequency publication.

Should this defence fail under the new French penal code Plousey could well serve a gaol sentence of five years with a maximum fine of FF500,000.

Plousey's lawyer, Jean-Pierre Millet, himself a specialist of Civil Liberties on the Net says that there is a failing of some state agencies in protecting so-called secret data and the free circulation of data that may be classified in one state, but declassified in another.

Plousey states that the frequencies that he disclosed had never been used other than for testing and that he did what he did for fun and out of curiosity. He also feels that the threatened punishment is too strong.

Stasi files expose British Mole

Hidden in 120 miles of old Stasi files was a document that indicated a British mole within the establishment of the Royal Institute.

The mole, codenamed 'Eckart' is believed to have provided the Stasi with details of briefings on intelligence matters on Chatham house [the think-tank], Nato, the Royal Navy and other such matters.

Admiral Sir James Eberle, director of the think-tank 1983 - 1990 and one of the most decorated living seamen has denied that he was the mole. Suspicion on him may well be fired by the knowledge that in the days of the Cold War Sir James had contact with a number of East German diplomats.

The discovery was made after the decoding of Stasi indexes relating to the Cold War files in Berlin. Although most files were destroyed as the Berlin wall was breached the index and listings of titles of reports submitted by British moles were left intact. The information gleaned from the index showed that Eckart gave the Stasi a report, "Chatham House on armaments industry" and another file, "On a Chatham House Study", on 15^thOctober 1981.. His handler was given another report titled : "On the evaluation of the international position of Chatham House" on 27^th November 1981. Other reports entitled "Planned Manoeuvres of the British Navy" and "On Burden Sharing in Nato - Problems" illustrate the catholic range of reports passed by 'Eckart'.

MI5 are apparently investigating this and other disclosures of British moles from the former Stasi files.

Thanks to all those who sent in reports including C, J and P.

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