The British security service MI5 and the electronic interception center, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have been asked by the government to join the hunt for people who organized last week’s riots, the Guardian has learned.
The agencies, the bulk of whose work normally involves catching terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda, are helping the effort to catch people who used social messaging, especially BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), to mobilize looters.
A key difficulty for law enforcers last week was cracking the high level of encryption on the BBM system. BBM is a pin--protected instant message system that is only accessible to BlackBerry users.
MI5 and GCHQ will also help the effort to try to get ahead of any further organization of disturbances. They have a statutory right to target criminals or those suspected of being involved in crime, officials said yesterday.
Police struggled to access the BBM network last week, though some who received messages -planning violence were so outraged they passed them on to law enforcement agencies.
GCHQ’s computers and listening devices can pick up audio messages and BBM communications. MI5 and the police can identify the owners with the help of mobile companies and Internet service providers.
The agencies can intercept electronic and telephone messages, identify where they have been sent from and their destination. That allows other investigations to take place and other efforts to develop intelligence.
“The hope is this will boost the intelligence available. It’s always useful to get some boffins [researchers] in,” one source said.
In a speech on Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron made no mention of his threatened clampdown on social media.
Last week, in the House of Commons emergency debate, he said: “There was an awful lot of hoaxes and false trails made on Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger and the rest of it. We need a major piece of work to make sure that the police have all the -technological -capabilities they need to hunt down and beat the criminals.”
For law enforcement, the difficulty with BBM is that it boasts semi-private — and instant — -access to a network of like-minded users.
BlackBerry handsets are the smartphone of choice for 37 percent of British teenagers, according to Ofcom. BBM allows users to send the same message to a network of contacts connected by “BBM pins.” For many teenagers, BBM has replaced text messaging because it is free and instant.
Unlike Twitter or Facebook, many BBM messages are untraceable by the authorities. And unlike Facebook, friends are connected either by individual pin numbers or a registered e-mail address. In short, BlackBerry Messenger is more secure than almost all other social networks.
So-called “broadcasts” can be sent to hundreds of disparate users within minutes, away from the attention of law enforcement agencies.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS