Israel’s feared Shin Bet security service has launched English and Arabic Web sites, the agency’s latest move to lift its traditional shroud of secrecy and improve its sinister image.
The slick new Web sites, which debuted on Monday, include video footage of airstrikes, arrest raids, VIP security squads and live-fire training, complete with action-movie music pulsing in the background.
Tired of being associated with dark cellars, covert operations and torture of Palestinian suspects, Shin Bet is seeking to open up and emphasize its technological and research advances and wrap the agency in a kinder, softer exterior, as evidenced by the new Internet sites.
The agency even provides data it gathered on Palestinian militant activity in Arabic — candor unheard of only a few years ago at an organization that runs informants and agents, carrying out surveillance and interrogations.
The content of the English and Arabic Web sites are nearly identical to that of the Hebrew one, which was launched in December and has since had thousands of visitors, officials said. The site followed a highly publicized recruiting drive aimed at attracting topflight computer programmers to its tech division.
In another move toward openness, the Shin Bet recently allowed four employees to blog about their life and work at the agency.
Also, for several years the government has preferred to call it the Israel Security Agency (ISA), instead of the better-known Shin Bet, two Hebrew letters standing for “security service.”
“We understand we work for the public and we believe that we should expose anything we can that doesn’t harm the organization,” said a Shin Bet official, who under Israeli law cannot be identified by name. “The organization is not secret, its operations are. We call it ‘controlled openness.’”
The agency still refrains from discussing its methods and intelligence, as well as the location of its headquarters. But since Yuval Diskin was appointed director in 2005, he has pushed for disclosing information that does not endanger Israel’s security or Shin Bet personnel.
“Understandably, extensive areas of ISA activity are confidential,” Diskin wrote in an introduction to the site, using the agency’s English acronym.
“Nonetheless, we would like to give you some insight into the ISA, its values and elements of its heritage and missions. Enjoy the site!” it said.
Diskin is only the third chief of the agency to step out of the shadows while in office. In the past, Shin Bet chiefs were identified in print only by the first initial of their first name, and their faces were blurred on TV and in news photos. Those rules still apply to most other agents.
The site has biographical information on all of the former chiefs AND a behind-the-scenes look at ITS labs and computer systems.
Esther Levanon, a former top official who helped computerize the Shin Bet, said the Hebrew site was primarily aimed at drawing top talent to the spy agency.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka has spent decades uncovering Russian spy networks, sabotage attempts and disinformation campaigns against Europe. Speaking in an interview from a high-security compound on the outskirts of Prague, he is now warning allies that pushing Kyiv to accept significant concessions to end the war in Ukraine would only embolden the Kremlin. “Russia would spend perhaps the next 10 to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is central and eastern Europe,” said Koudelka, a major general who heads the country’s Security Information Service. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced
THIRD IN A ROW? An expert said if the report of a probe into the defense official is true, people would naturally ask if it would erode morale in the military Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said yesterday, the latest official implicated in a crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said that the investigation into Dong was part of a broader probe into military corruption. Neither the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese embassy in Washington replied to a request for confirmation yesterday. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defense minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. A former navy
RSS