Britain’s spy chief has thanked China’s state news agency for 'free publicity' after it posted a James Bond spoof that mocked the western intelligence community’s growing focus on threats posed by Beijing. The rare response by the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on Thursday comes as China and Britain clash over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority and creeping authoritarianism in the former British colony of Hong Kong
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MI6 chief thanks China for ‘free publicity’ after James Bond spoof
Rare response from Richard Moore comes after state news agency posted video mocking western intelligence
Britain’s spy chief has thanked China’s state news agency for “free publicity” after it posted a James Bond spoof that mocked the western intelligence community’s growing focus on threats posed by Beijing.
The rare response by the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on Thursday comes as China and Britain clash over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority and creeping authoritarianism in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
Continue reading...Glorification of Plymouth shooter by ‘incels’ prompts calls for action
Request for problem to be taken more seriously comes as data shows sixfold rise in visits to incel forums
The man who gunned down seven people, killing five, in a rampage in Plymouth is being lionised by an online “incel” community, with some ironically venerating him as a “saint” and celebrating the attack as an aid to their recruitment drive.
Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother, Maxine, 51, after a row before going on to fatally shoot four others and then himself in August last year. Before his death, he expressed misogynistic and homophobic tendencies, as well as angrily lamenting his failure to find a girlfriend.
Continue reading...UK spy chief suggests Beijing risks ‘miscalculation’ over west’s resolve
Island’s status and surveillance technology making China ‘single greatest priority’ for MI6
China is at risk of “miscalculating through over-confidence” over Taiwan, said the MI6 head, Richard Moore, in a statement clearly intended to warn Beijing to back off any attempt to seize control of the island.
Giving a rare speech, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief said in London that China was at risk of “believing its own propaganda” and that the country had become “the single greatest priority” for MI6 for the first time in its history.
Continue reading...MI6 needs tech sector’s help to win AI race with China and Russia – spy chief
New boss Richard Moore to say adversaries are ‘pouring money’ into technology and the agency needs outside funding to keep up
MI6 will have to become “more open to stay secret” and work with tech companies to counter threats posed by China and Russia who seek to gain advantage by mastering artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
In his first speech as the foreign spy agency’s head on Tuesday, Richard Moore is expected to admit that “unlike Q in the Bond movies”, MI6 cannot develop the tools it needs in-house to counter hybrid physical and virtual threats.
Continue reading...The spies who hated us: reporting on espionage and the secret state
Our security correspondent speaks to a predecessor about an era of spooks, leaks and open hostility from MI5
It is time for morning coffee and Richard Norton-Taylor and I are discussing secrecy, deception and brown envelopes, which comes naturally to the pair of us, as past and present defence and security correspondents of the Guardian.
Norton-Taylor joined the paper in January 1973 (when, incidentally, this writer was not yet two), starting in Brussels and switching to security a few years later. The first part of his career was dominated by a series of landmark official secrecy battles.
Continue reading...Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists
Newly declassified papers show shocking role played by Britain in slaughter
A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.
British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist cancer”.
Continue reading...UK ‘colluding in torture’ by leaving women and children in Syria camps
Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS
Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.
The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.
Continue reading...RAF intelligence base linked to US drone strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani
Research concludes it ‘was probable’ that Menwith Hill was used to assist in the controversial assassination
Campaigners have called on ministers to explain whether the secretive Menwith Hill intelligence base in Yorkshire is involved in recent drone strike assassinations, after the publication of a report that raises questions about UK involvement in US attacks.
The research concludes it “was probable” that Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was killed in January last year using information obtained from the British site, essentially an outpost of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
Continue reading...Covid and Afghanistan ‘reveal weakness of UK’s security policy’
Cross-party MPs and peers say the response to the two crises has exposed system as inadequate
The rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed “serious weaknesses” in the government’s approach to dealing with national security, according to a highly critical cross-party report.
MPs and peers found that the two critical events had highlighted the shortcomings of the national security council – a cabinet committee of senior ministers and officials designed to handle major security challenges. The Lords’ and Commons’ joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) said the system had been exposed as inadequate. It warned that national risk management across government is “loose, unstructured, and lacking in central oversight and accountability”.
Continue reading...Tech firms not doing enough to fight terrorism, says Met police chief
Cressida Dick calls for more action to stop online radicalisation and questions push towards end-to-end encryption
The UK most senior police officer has accused technology firms of failing to identify, monitor and report the activity of terrorists, in a plea for improved access to social media platforms.
Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, also questioned the push to expand end-to-end encryption in a speech to law enforcement officials on Monday.
Continue reading...Islamism remains first-order security threat to west, says Tony Blair
In speech marking 20 years since 9/11 attacks, former British PM warns that non-state actors may turn to bio-terrorism
The west still faces the threat of 9/11-style attacks by radical Islamist groups but this time using bio-terrorism, Tony Blair has warned.
Blair also challenges the US president, Joe Biden, by urging democratic governments not to lose confidence in using military force to defend and export their values.
Continue reading...UK wrestles with effects of Taliban rule on terror, drugs and aid
Analysis: whether Britain should recognise Afghanistan’s new regime, and how soon, is a fraught question for officials
With the Taliban now firmly in control of most of Afghanistan, British government figures have been wrestling with what that means for everything from counter-terrorism to the drugs trade and aid.
How soon should Britain’s battlefield foes be recognised as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan? What attitude should the UK take to the burgeoning resistance coalescing around former Afghan government figures as the threat of renewed civil war looms?
Continue reading...‘Old-style espionage’: Briton’s arrest feels like cold war throwback
Analysis: eastern bloc spy agencies historically would target western staff in junior roles
The arrest of a British citizen in Berlin for allegedly spying for the Russians has a distinctly cold war flavour.
In recent years the Kremlin has been accused of carrying out a number of spectacular cyber-operations. They include the hacking and dumping in 2016 of thousands of Democratic party emails. Moscow’s audacious goal, according to Washington: to help elect Donald Trump as US president.
Continue reading...German police arrest Briton on suspicion of spying for Russia
Employee at British embassy in Berlin suspected of passing on documents in exchange for cash
German police have arrested a British man who worked at the British embassy in Berlin on suspicion of spying for Russian intelligence in exchange for cash bribes, according to prosecutors.
Germany’s highest public prosecutor said the man, identified only as David S, was arrested at his Potsdam apartment at 2.20pm on Tuesday, and his home and embassy workplace were searched.
Continue reading...Omagh bombing could have been prevented, says high court judge
‘Real prospect’ 1998 attack by dissident republicans could have been thwarted, says Mr Justice Horner
Security forces had a “real prospect” of preventing the 1998 Omagh bombing – the deadliest atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles – a Belfast high court has ruled.
Mr Justice Horner recommended on Friday that the British and Irish governments each undertake human rights compliant investigations into the bombing, which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured 220 people.
Continue reading...‘While there’s British interference, there’s going to be action’: why a hardcore of dissident Irish republicans are not giving up
In the face of scorn and contempt from former IRA members, a small number of dissident groups remain committed to armed action. What do they think they can achieve?
In the early hours of 19 April 2019, Belfast-born Irish republican Anthony McIntyre was awakened by his wife, Carrie, in their home in Drogheda, just south of the border in Ireland. “It’s not true, it can’t be true,” she was saying. “Lyra has been shot dead.”
Drowsy, confused and not quite believing what he had just been told, McIntyre fell back asleep. He awoke the following morning thinking, “What did she tell me?” McIntyre looked online, and saw that it was true: their good friend, the 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee, had been observing a riot in Derry the previous night when she was shot by a republican gunman.
Continue reading...How women of Isis in Syrian camps are marrying their way to freedom
Exclusive: hundreds of al-Hawl camp detainees have been smuggled out using bribes gifted by husbands they met online
Hundreds of foreign women with links to Islamic State in Syria’s sprawling al-Hawl detention camp have “married” men they met online and several hundred have been smuggled out of the facility using cash bribes gifted by their new husbands.
The camp’s inhabitants have been sent wire payments totalling upwards of $500,000 (£360,000), according to testimony from 50 women inside and outside Hawl, local Kurdish officials, a former Isis member in eastern Europe with knowledge of the money transfer network and a foreign fighter in Idlib province involved in smuggling.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab’s mobile number freely available online for last decade
Exclusive: Finding raises questions for security services weeks after similar revelations about PM’s number
The private mobile number of Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, has been online for at least 11 years, raising questions for the security services weeks after the prime minister’s number was also revealed to be accessible to anyone.
Raab’s number was discovered by a Guardian reader using a Google search. It appears to have been online since before he became an MP in 2010, and remained after he became foreign secretary and first secretary of state – de facto deputy prime minister – in 2019.
Continue reading...Ransomware is biggest online threat to people in UK, spy agency chief to warn
GCHQ cybersecurity boss sounds alarm over extortion by hackers who are mostly based in former Soviet states
Ransomware represents the biggest threat to online security for most people and businesses in the UK, the head of GCHQ’s cybersecurity arm is to warn.
Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, will say in a speech that the phenomenon, where hackers encrypt data and demand payment for it to be restored, is escalating and becoming increasingly professionalised.
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