“This is what we assess to be the most sophisticated malware deployed by the FSB when it comes to espionage campaigns,” the FBI official said.
Russian spies did not use Snake to stage physical attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Still, it represented something of a Swiss-army-knife of digital spying, giving Russian spies clandestine access to victim computers, allowing those devices to communicate covertly among each other and acting as a staging point for additional activity from Kremlin spooks.
For years, the Snake malware avoided detection from U.S. authorities through the use of two custom digital communication protocols — a “sophisticated” evasion technique that allowed Russians to send surreptitious communications with other compromised devices, according to the court documents unsealed Tuesday.
In another sign of how careful the Russian operation was, the indictment only identified eight U.S.-based victims of the Kremlin espionage operation.
But U.S. authorities, which have been investigating the malware for more than 10 years, ultimately identified a way to identify and decrypt those communications.
Over the years, that allowed U.S. authorities to alert targets of the advanced Russian spying tool. There has been “ongoing engagement with domestic victim organizations since the inception of this investigation,” the FBI official said.
On Monday, U.S. authorities used their own digital tool, dubbed Perseus, to cause Snake to disable itself from victim computers.
“Through a high-tech operation that turned Russian malware against itself, U.S. law enforcement has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyber-espionage tools, used for two decades to advance Russia’s authoritarian objectives,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
As it did in two prior cases, the Justice Department used a special seizure warrant, known as Rule 41, to remove the Russian malware from U.S. victim computers.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: After the nationwide success of ‘Karthikeya 2’, Tollywood star Nikhil Siddhartha is back in the news with the pan-India thriller, ‘Spy’. The makers unveiled a short video on Saturday to reveal Nikhil’s association with the movie and create a buzz about “India’s Best Kept Secret”.
So, what’s the best-kept secret of the country? It’s about the freedom fighter and founder of the Indian National Army (INA), Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who gave the nation the slogan: ‘Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhe azadi doonga’ (You give me blood, I will give you freedom).
Netaji’s death is still a mystery. A movie based on this hidden story is sure to amp up curiosity levels. So, ‘Spy’ clearly is not a regular movie in the espionage genre.
The film sees the editor, Garry BH, making his debut as director with the movie, which is being produced on a grand scale. The makers announced that ‘Spy’ will be released on June 29. The teaser will be out on May 12.
Iswarya Menon is the leading lady opposite Nikhil. Sanya Thakur will be seen as the second lead in the movie and Aryan Rajesh makes his comeback in a special role.
Producer K. Rajashekhar Reddy billed the film as “a complete action-packed spy thriller” that will be released in five languages — Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.
KYIV — From the glass cage in a Kyiv courtroom, Roman Dudin professed his innocence loudly.
And he fumed at the unusual decision to prevent a handful of journalists from asking him questions during a break in the hearing.
The former Kharkiv security chief is facing charges of treason and deserting his post, allegations he and his supporters deny vehemently.
“Why can’t I talk with the press?” he bellowed. As he shook his close-cropped head in frustration, his lawyers, a handful of local reporters and supporters chorused his question. At a previous hearing Dudin had been allowed during a break to answer questions from journalists, in keeping with general Ukrainian courtroom practice, but according to his lawyers and local reporters, the presence of POLITICO appeared to unnerve authorities.
Suspiciously, too, the judge returned and to the courtroom’s surprise announced an unexpected adjournment, offering no reason. A commotion ensued as she left and further recriminations followed when court guards again blocked journalists from talking with Dudin.
***
Ukraine’s hunt for traitors, double agents and collaborators is quickening.
Nearly every day another case is publicized by authorities of alleged treason by senior members of the security and law-enforcement agencies, prosecutors, state industry employees, mayors and other elected officials.
Few Ukrainians — nor Western intelligence officials, for that matter — doubt that large numbers of top-level double agents and sympathizers eased the way for Russia’s invasion, especially in southern Ukraine, where they were able to seize control of the city of Kherson with hardly any resistance.
And Ukrainian authorities say they’re only getting started in their spy hunt for individuals who betrayed the country and are still undermining Ukraine’s security and defense.
Because of historic ties with Russia, the Security Service of Ukraine and other security agencies, as well as the country’s arms and energy industries, are known to be rife with spies. Since the 2013-14 Maidan uprising, which saw the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow’s satrap in Ukraine, episodic sweeps and purges have been mounted.
As conflict rages the purges have become more urgent. And possibly more political as government criticism mounts from opposition politicians and civil society leaders. They are becoming publicly more censorious, accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his tight-knit team of using the war to consolidate as much power as possible.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities were investigating more than 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting Russia by officials | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Last summer, Zelenskyy fired several high-level officials, including his top two law enforcement officials, prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova and security chief Ivan Bakanov, both old friends of his. In a national address, he said authorities were investigating more than 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting Russia by officials, including 60 who remained in territories seized by Russia and are “working against our state.”
“Such a great number of crimes against the foundations of national security and the connections established between Ukrainian law enforcement officials and Russian special services pose very serious questions,” he said.
***
But while there’s considerable evidence of treason and collaboration, there’s growing unease in Ukraine that not all the cases and accusations are legitimate.
Some suspect the spy hunt is now merging with a political witch hunt. They fear that the search may be increasingly linked to politicking or personal grudges or bids to conceal corruption and wrongdoing. But also to distract from mounting questions about government ineptitude in the run-up to the invasion by a revanchist and resentful Russia.
Among the cases prompting concern when it comes to possible concealment of corruption is the one against 40-year-old Roman Dudin. “There’s something wrong with this case,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a former Ukrainian deputy prime minister and now opposition lawmaker, told POLITICO.
And that’s the view of the handful of supporters who were present for last week’s hearing. “This is a political persecution, and he’s a very good officer, honest and dignified,” said 50-year-old Irina, whose son, now living in Florida, served with Dudin. “He’s a politically independent person and he was investigating corruption involving the Kharkiv mayor and some other powerful politicians, and this is a way of stopping those investigations,” she argued.
Zelenskyy relieved Dudin of his duties last May, saying he “did not work to defend the city from the first days of the full-scale war.” But Dudin curiously wasn’t detained and charged for a further four months and was only arrested in September last year. Dudin’s lead lawyer, Oleksandr Kozhevnikov, says neither Zelenskyy nor his SBU superiors voiced any complaints about his work before he was fired.
“To say the evidence is weak is an understatement — it just does not correspond to reality. He received some awards and recognition for his efforts before and during the war from the defense ministry,” says Kozhevnikov. “When I agreed to consider taking the case, I told Roman if there was any hint of treason, I would drop it immediately — but I’ve found none,” he added.
The State Bureau of Investigation says Dudin “instead of organizing work to counter the enemy … actually engaged in sabotage.” It claims he believed the Russian “offensive would be successful” and hoped Russian authorities would treat him favorably due to his subversion, including “deliberately creating conditions” enabling the invaders to seize weapons and equipment from the security service bases in Kharkiv. In addition, he’s alleged to have left his post without permission, illegally ordered his staff to quit the region and of wrecking a secure communication system for contact with Kyiv.
But documents obtained by POLITICO from relevant Ukrainian agencies seem to undermine the allegations. One testifies no damage was found to the secure communication system; and a document from the defense ministry says Dudin dispersed weapons from the local SBU arsenal to territorial defense forces. “Local battalions are grateful to him for handing out weapons,” says Kozhevnikov.
And his lawyer says Dudin only left Kharkiv because he was ordered to go to Kyiv by superiors to help defend the Ukrainian capital. A geolocated video of Dudin in uniform along with other SBU officers in the center of Kyiv, ironically a stone’s throw from the Pechersk District Court, has been ruled by the judge as inadmissible. The defense has asked the judge to recuse herself because of academic ties with Oleh Tatarov, a deputy head of the presidential administration, but the request has been denied.
According to a 29-page document compiled by the defense lawyers for the eventual trial, Dudin and his subordinates seem to have been frantically active to counter Russia forces as soon as the first shots were fired, capturing 24 saboteurs, identifying 556 collaborators and carrying out reconnaissance on Russian troop movements.
Roman Dudin is facing charges of treason and allegations that he eased the way for Russian invaders | Jamie Dettmer for POLITICO
Timely information transmitted by the SBU helped military and intelligence units to stop an armored Russian column entering the city of Kharkiv, according to defense lawyers.
“The only order he didn’t carry out was to transfer his 25-strong Alpha special forces team to the front lines because they were needed to catch saboteurs,” says Kozhevnikov. “The timing of his removal is suspicious — it was when he was investigating allegations of humanitarian aid being diverted by some powerful politicians.”
***
Even before Dudin’s case there were growing doubts about some of the treason accusations being leveled — including vague allegations against former prosecutor Venediktova and former security chief Bakanov. Both were accused of failing to prevent collaboration by some within their departments. But abruptly in November, Venediktova was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Switzerland. And two weeks ago, the State Bureau of Investigation said the agency had found no criminal wrongdoing by Bakanov.
The clearing of both with scant explanation, after their humiliating and highly public sackings, has prompted bemusement. Although some SBU insiders do blame Bakanov for indolence in sweeping for spies ahead of the Russian invasion.
Treason often seems the go-to charge — whether appropriate or not — and used reflexively.
Last month, several Ukrainian servicemen were accused of treason for having inadvertently revealed information during an unauthorized mission, which enabled Russia to target a military airfield.
The servicemen tried without permission to seize a Russian warplane in July after its pilot indicated he wanted to defect. Ham-fisted the mission might have been, but lawyers say it wasn’t treasonable.
Spy hunt or witch hunt? With the word treason easily slipping off tongues these days in Kyiv, defense lawyers at the Pechersk District Court worry the two are merging.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
With the arrival at last of high-octane, international spy actionfest Citadel after a troubled gestation (commissioned before the pandemic, rejected pilot episode, replacement of the original director, radical overhaul), Prime Video is now the producer of the two most expensive streamed series of all time. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cost $465m (and that’s clearly without spending a cent on the title) and the new six-episode drama on the block reportedly comes in at somewhere north of $250m. And that’s clearly without spending a cent on the script.
Is it worth it? You betcha. It’s Mission: Impossible meets The Bourne Identity meets James Bond while glancing off Indiana Jones a few times along its irresistible way.
It opens, rather like a Hollywood remake of Bodyguard, with Richard Madden having loo-based traumas on a train. This time he is more chiselled, because people from outside the UK are going to see him, and doesn’t quite save the day. This time he plays Mason Kane (actually, they might have spent 10 dollars on the name) an agent for Citadel, an independent global espionage network comprising people tired of political corruption and criminal infiltration screwing up ordinary espionage and leaving the little people unprotected.
His partner (and ex-wife) is the permanently pouting Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who looks like Jessica Rabbit but who is a very good agent, perhaps even better than Kane, and everybody respects her and takes her very seriously OK so the producers hope they’ve done their bit and got away with it overall, ’kay?
The train blows up because Citadel has been betrayed by one of its own to Manticore, a global crime syndicate fed up with the good guys cutting into their time and profits. We cut to eight years later and our agents are living normal lives in separate cities with absolutely no memory of their previous existence as a hot married agent couple being blown up on trains. But when Manticore steals a caseful of Citadel’s supertopsecret secrets that would enable them to establish a new world order, the remnants of Citadel gather for one last fight. And by “remnants” I mean Stanley Tucci as supertopCitadelagent Bernard Orlick, who tracks down Kane, kidnaps him and his family – but in a nice way, because good guys, remember – and launches him on a mission that will reunite him with Nadia, putting him very much in the way of Sinhing while he’s happily married to a normal woman called, I believe, Abby Wifewife (Ashleigh Cummings).
It is basically televisual crack. Twists, turns, explosions, old-fashioned fisticuffs, the deployment of outrageous gadgetry from Acme’s Deus Ex Machina range, torture scenes, new locations (the Alps, London, all over the States, Paris, Spain, Iran – I may have missed a few in my delirious, glassy-eyed state), are parcelled out in one long, glorious stream. And just when you’re thinking “I could do with a quiet moment right now”, up pops Lesley Manville having the time of her life as evil ambassador Dahlia Archer (a nickel for the name but they had to build the English Gloss generator from scratch for $17m) to deliver a precise, devastating speech, demolish a journalist or order someone’s brain stem severed while she clips roses or finishes a light breakfast.
This version of Citadel is the mothership – there are to be various spin-offs tailored to different countries, many of which have already started filming. I can only hope the addictive magic translates each time. Everyone deserves to have this much absurd fun.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Tel Aviv: Israel has successfully launched the “Ofek-13” spy satellite into space at dawn on Wednesday.
The Ofek-13 satellite, manufacutured by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). It is the latest in a series of domestically produced satellites that were first put into orbit in 1988.
The Shavit launch vehicle launched the satellite into space from Palmachim Airbase spaceport at 2:10 am on Wednesday.
Immediately after launch, the satellite successfully entered orbit, started transmitting data and completed an initial series of tests according to the original launch plans.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated his country this evening, Wednesday, on the launch of the Ofek 13 satellite.
Netanyahu took to Twitter and wrote, “I congratulate the successful launch of the Israeli satellite Ofek 13 into space.”
“We have been working on this for a long time. We are upgrading the Israeli security system,” he added.
אני מברך על שיגור מוצלח של הלווין הישראלי ׳אופק 13׳ אל החלל. 🚀🇮🇱
אנחנו עובדים על זה הרבה זמן. זה משדרג את מערכת הבטחון הישראלית. כל הכבוד להם! pic.twitter.com/khELgenv5T
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 29, 2023
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was present in the control room at the launch of the satellite, said this was an “important achievement like no other”.
Israel launched its first satellite, Ofek-1, in 1988. It was seven years later in 1995 that Israel began launching a reconnaissance satellite into space capable of taking pictures of the Earth.
Ofek-16 was launched in July 2020 and won Israel’s first security award in 2022.
The debate hinges on when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought U.S. Northern Command head Gen. Glen VanHerck’s military advice on the best way to handle the balloon. VanHerck told lawmakers during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday that he did not speak to Austin about the situation until Feb. 1 — five days after the intelligence community made top officials aware of its presence.
But Austin’s spokesperson says VanHerck gave his “iterative recommendations” throughout the crisis, and the Pentagon chief was in “frequent communication” with top generals about military options.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and other Republican lawmakers have repeatedly demanded answers from the administration about what top decision-makers knew about the balloon incursion and when they knew it. On Monday, Wicker slammed “inconsistencies” between Austin’s timeline of events and VanHerck’s.
“Recent testimony from General VanHerck has revealed glaring inconsistencies between NORTHCOM’s understanding of the timeline as compared to what Secretary Austin and Undersecretary Kahl have told the public,” Wicker said in a statement, referring to Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl. “If the United States is going to learn from this national security event, then we have to have clear answers from the Biden administration.”
Republican senators also used Thursday’s hearing to blame the Biden administration for mishandling the crisis, with Wicker accusing Austin and President Joe Biden of delaying action.
“So on the fifth day, it is apparent that you took the right steps,” Wicker told VanHerck at the hearing. “But it’s also clear that you received no direction from the president of the United States or the secretary of Defense until the fifth day of this crisis, by which point the balloon had traversed Alaska and Canada and then reentered the United States.”
Republican lawmakers, and even some Democratic ones, have said the decision to allow the balloon to continue its trek showed weakness to China.
“I think it was a bad mistake to let a Chinese spy balloon float all across America,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “I think that is a dangerous precedent set not just with China, but with all of our adversaries.”
Cotton and Wicker will have a chance on Tuesday to press Austin himself on the timeline when he joins Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley for a Senate Armed Services hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request.
New details have emerged about the timeline.
While VanHerck told lawmakers he was first made aware of the balloon on Jan. 27, a DoD official said that intelligence officials did not immediately convey a sense of alarm, as they had briefed Northern Command on the Chinese surveillance balloon program a few months earlier. However, it was the first time they had detected such a craft in this location. It was heading toward Alaska; previous balloons had taken equatorial routes. The official was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
VanHerck told lawmakers on Thursday that he spoke with Milley on the evening of Jan. 27 about his plan to send armed fighter jets to intercept the object the next day. But given that it did not display “hostile intent,” he did not have the legal authority to shoot it down, he explained to senators; that rested with Biden or Austin.
Northern Command, working with the intelligence community, put together a prediction of the balloon’s route, but at the time they did not believe it would travel across the entirety of the continental United States, the DoD official said.
On Jan. 28, VanHerck officially notified Milley and Austin via classified email that the balloon had entered U.S. airspace, he told lawmakers. He also tasked his team with developing options to take out the balloon if the president or defense secretary chose to do so, he said.
Overnight into Jan. 29, the balloon left U.S. airspace and entered Canada. Northern Command continued monitoring the inflatable, in coordination with the Canadian government, and VanHerck provided updates via email to Austin and Milley every 12 hours, he said.
However, Austin did not ask the general for his recommendation until 7 a.m. on Feb. 1, the first time the two had spoken by phone directly since the incursion, the DoD official said. At that point, the general advised the secretary not to shoot it down because it was flying over land and there was a significant risk of damage to civilians in crashing the inflatable. Instead, VanHerck recommended waiting until the balloon was over water to take it out.
“He was prepared at every moment to provide a recommendation, and always provided as asked, the options and recommendations when asked,” the DoD official said. “They could have asked for it every hour.”
Austin’s office had a different narrative. A spokesperson said the secretary expected VanHerck and other military leaders to continuously provide recommendations, and the general did so throughout the crisis.
“As was the case here, the secretary expects and relies on his commanders to provide recommendations on a range of issues continuously,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh. “Gen. VanHerck provided his iterative recommendations and updates to the chairman and secretary throughout.”
Like VanHerck, Austin was notified about the presence of the balloon heading toward U.S. airspace by his senior military assistant on Jan. 27. Austin, who was set to leave for South Korea and the Philippines on a previously scheduled trip on Jan. 29, began receiving daily updates from Northern Command, which immediately began to develop options to “better characterize the incursion” in conjunction with the Canadian military, she said.
Singh added that the general did not tell Austin and Milley that he was looking at options to take down the balloon — should the president direct that course of action, or if the balloon became a threat to air traffic — until Jan. 29.
On Jan. 31, the balloon re-entered U.S. airspace over northern Idaho. Biden, through his national security adviser, then directed the military to develop options to shoot down the balloon. At that point, Austin, through Milley, asked for those options from the commanders, Singh said.
The next day, from the Philippines, Austin convened a meeting with Milley, VanHerck, Kahl and other senior military commanders to review the options to take down the balloon safely “while closely monitoring its path and intelligence collection activities,” Singh said.
After this point, Feb. 1, the timelines are consistent. That day, VanHerck scrambled F-22 fighter jets from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, to be in place should the president decide to order a shootdown of the balloon, which at that point was flying over Montana.
VanHerck and Milley recommended that if Biden were to direct a shootdown, it should happen over water to minimize the risk to civilians and infrastructure from falling debris. At that point, Biden gave the military the order to take out the balloon as soon as that risk could be mitigated.
Austin returned from his trip Feb. 2 and convened a meeting with senior military officials again on Feb. 3 as they developed a plan to shoot down the inflatable. Ultimately, the military took out the balloon with a Sidewinder missile shot from an F-22 off the East Coast.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) ripped Biden and Austin, accusing them of delaying action.
“So on the fifth day, it is apparent that you took the right steps,” Wicker told VanHerck. “But it’s also clear that you received no direction from the president of the United States or the secretary of Defense until the fifth day of this crisis, by which point the balloon had traversed Alaska and Canada and then reentered the United States.”
But Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh disputed the assertion, noting that Austin had been communicating with Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and VanHerck to develop options earlier than the discussion on Feb. 1. The Feb. 1 call was scheduled by the secretary’s team because Austin wanted to review those options, Singh said.
The comments on Thursday shed new light on the Biden administration’s handling of the incursion, from the balloon’s detection near a remote island chain off Alaska until it was shot down by an Air Force F-22 on Feb. 4. They reveal that the military was prepared to shoot down the balloon as soon as it was detected on radar as it flew over a remote island chain off Alaska, but did not have the legal authority to do so until days later.
A senior Defense Department official noted that VanHerck did not initially recommend shooting down the balloon, and that it was the general’s preference to observe it instead. Austin pushed the commander to consider “kinetic options,” said the person, who was granted anonymity in order to describe internal deliberations.
Critics have accused the administration of mishandling the incident, specifically faulting the decision to not eliminate the balloon as soon as it was spotted and instead wait until it was over water a week later. Lawmakers, especially Wicker, have also pressed the Pentagon to answer specific follow-up questions about the decision process and about previous balloon incursions over the past few years that have only recently come to light.
“So all that was needed on January 28 was to pull the proverbial trigger?” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked during the hearing.
“Yes,” VanHerck responded. “Had they had hostile intent or hostile act, I had the authority and I would have made that decision. So you’re exactly correct. [At] that point, it was not my decision to make to pull the trigger.” In the case of a direct threat to the homeland, VanHerck has the legal authority to take the shot, he explained. Without that determination, that authority resides with the Pentagon chief or the president.
“If the administration’s policymakers thought they had legal justification to shoot it down off the coast of Carolina, surely they have legal justification to shoot off the coast of Alaska,” Cotton followed up. VanHerck responded: “My assessment is the legal basis would have been the same for either place.”
VanHerck also used his appearance on Capitol Hill to fill in other details from the initial timeline. A senior Defense Department official told reporters in early February that the president asked for military options when he was notified on Jan. 31. VanHerck on Thursday said he did not present options to Austin until 7 a.m. on Feb. 1.
That same day, Feb. 1, Biden told the military to take out the balloon, which was flying over Montana after leaving Canadian airspace. The military scrambled F-22 fighter jets at the time in case the decision was made to shoot it down. But top generals ultimately advised the president to wait until the craft was over water because of the risk to people on the ground from falling debris.
VanHerck said that if he had been asked to provide options to Austin or the president earlier, while the balloon was still over Alaska, he would have been prepared to do so, he said.
VanHerck said the intelligence community first made him aware of the balloon on Friday, Jan. 27. He spoke with Milley that evening about his plan to send aircraft to intercept and assess the craft the next day.
The military’s North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the balloon on radar the next day, Jan. 28, VanHerck said. That same day, the general sent two F-35 and two F-16 fighter jets — all of them armed — to intercept the balloon, he said in response to questioning by Cotton.
Also on the 28th, VanHerck officially notified his chain of command, sending classified emails to Milley and Austin’s military assistant, he said. He did not have any direct communications with Austin at the time, and does not know when Biden was notified.
At the time, the military assessed that the balloon did not present a threat, VanHerck said, explaining that “hostile intent would be maneuvering to an offensive advantage on platform and airplane or shooting missiles or weapons would be a hostile act.”
The next day, on Jan. 29, VanHerck advised Austin and Milley “that he was looking at options to engage the balloon should that be directed or if the balloon became a threat to safety of flight,” according to Singh. After the balloon re-entered U.S. airspace on Jan. 31, the president, through national security adviser Jake Sullivan, directed the military to “refine and present options to shoot down the balloon,” she said.
The hearing comes almost two months after the Chinese surveillance balloon first emerged over the U.S. Since then, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have pressed Biden officials for more details on what led the administration to shoot down the inflatable, what it’s learned from its debris and what more it plans to do to track aerial objects floating in American airspace.
Both Republicans and Democrats have said they are still waiting for answers to their questions despite several rounds of briefings — some of them classified — with the administration.
The questions being raised on Capitol Hill are not solely focused on the surveillance balloon — they are also about the existence of hundreds of unidentified aerial phenomena, which are flying objects that have not been classified as balloons or other surveillance tools.
An office inside the Pentagon known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is conducting a review of those objects, some of which may be owned by foreign governments. Lawmakers want to know whether the U.S. has the capability to not only track those objects but to analyze them in near real-time.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The administration has been slow to respond in part because officials are still reviewing the historical data on the unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAPS, and are running into problems trying to retroactively determine whether past sightings were surveillance tools or other objects such as academic weather balloons, according to the official. The information officials are using for their analysis is at times dated and incomplete.
The delay by the administration on releasing information about the Chinese balloon and the other objects shot down last month raises questions about the extent to which the U.S. fully understands what intelligence foreign governments may be collecting without Washington’s knowledge.
“What is our capability to observe what’s in our airspace? There’s holes in it. We should understand what we can and cannot observe and understand what we need to do to be able to fill those gaps,” said Tim Gallaudet, the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The balloon surprising us — it was a big wake up call.”
Members of Congress say they are pushing the administration to improve the way it collects and analyzes UAP data.
“We can’t tell based on the data we have – based on the photographs or the video or the radar we have – whether it was a drone or a balloon, whether it was an aircraft,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) of difficulty in identifying some of the previously detected unidentified aerial objects. Gillibrand wrote legislation to help fund better investigations of these objects.
The National Security Council and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence declined to comment. A second senior U.S. official presented the administration’s stance, arguing that it has a good sense of how foreign governments are trying to surveil from the air but that it is still trying to determine whether hundreds of UAPs are spy tools or benign objects. The administration has shared with Congress in recent weeks a policy plan that will guide how it responds to aerial objects in the future, the official said.
When the Chinese balloon appeared over the U.S. in late January, officials described it as a surveillance device and said it had lingered over sensitive military sites, forcing the administration to shoot it down a week later. Officials also said that Chinese surveillance balloons had transited the U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration.
In the days that followed, three other aerial objects appeared over North America and the administration shot those down, too, even though officials said they posed no security threats.
Lawmakers say the administration has not made clear to Congress why it decided to start downing the UAPs.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said he was not surprised that China used a balloon to spy on America. What was frustrating, he said, was that when it came to the Chinese spy balloon, it appeared “we didn’t have, at that point, a clear policy on what to do.”
Journalists and lawmakers pressed the administration for answers: Why did this particular Chinese balloon require a public response? And if the U.S. was worried about this one balloon, how many others have potentially already obtained imagery and other sensitive details about American military installations?
Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon, have said that there was a “domain awareness gap” when it came to the office’s detection of balloons during the Trump administration and the early days of the Biden administration.
And in a congressional hearing March 8, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of NORAD, said the three objects shot down in the days following the emergence of the Chinese spy balloon “clearly demonstrated the challenges associated with detecting and identifying unmanned objects in U.S. airspace.”
“I commit to you that this event has already generated critical lessons learned for my commands and our mission partners,” he said.
But officials have so far not provided details about current U.S. gaps in detection. Lawmakers want to know, for example, whether the radar and sensors the U.S. had in place prior to the shooting down of the Chinese surveillance balloon allowed for officials to see the full-range of objects floating above commercial airspace.
Susan Gough, a spokesperson for the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office — the team that investigates unidentified flying objects and other phenomena in the air — said the office is “reviewing the associated data of all past cases” in a “newly developed analytic framework.” Gough declined to provide details on the specifications of that framework but said AARO is working to “fill existing gaps.”
“UAP are objects that cannot be immediately identified and may exhibit anomalous behavior. Anomalous behavior means that DoD operators or sensors cannot make immediate sense of collected data, actions or activities,” Gough said.
An unclassified report from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence from last year said that there are at least 171 “uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports.”
Many of the UAP reports came from Navy and the Air Force pilots who witnessed the aerial objects while flying, the report said. The U.S. also uses radar to detect the objects, but that often doesn’t provide enough detail to identify clearly what type of object it is.
It’s not clear whether the problem is simply about the limits of technology, or also about how the Pentagon and other agencies have decided to prioritize and parse data.
Gillibrand said there is a push among some officials and lawmakers to have “longer-term, more persistent awareness” of the area above commercial airspace to better track drone and balloon technology.
However, the administration has yet to decide how and whether to rejigger its approach to tracking and shooting down the objects, including whether it wants to set new thresholds in its systems that would allow for officials to more easily detect a larger number of UAPs at any given time. Those discussions have been viewed internally as slowing down the analysis of historical UAP data, the official said.
Lawmakers are actively pushing for more information from the administration. The Senate plans to hold a public hearing on the topic in April.
It’s unclear how forthright the administration will be in its conversations with Congress about its investigative work. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on March 7 that “there might be very little at all” that the administration can reveal about the Chinese balloon debris collection efforts. “I’ve set no expectation that there’s going to be some big public rollout of what we’ve learned,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Paradip: A pigeon fitted with devices, which appear to be a camera and a microchip, was caught from a fishing boat off the Paradip coast of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district, with the police suspecting that the bird was being used for spying.
Some fishermen found the pigeon perched on their trawler a few days ago. The bird was captured and handed over to the marine police here on Wednesday.
“Our veterinarians will examine the bird. We will seek help of the State Forensic Science Laboratory for examining the devices attached to its legs. It appears that the devices are a camera and a microchip,” Jagatsinghpur Superintendent of Police Rahul PR told PTI.
It also seems like something has been scribbled on the wings of the bird in a language unknown to the local police.
“Experts’ help will also be sought to find out what is written,” the SP said.
Pitambar Behera, an employee of the fishing trawler ‘Sarathi’, said he saw the pigeon perched on the boat.
“Suddenly I noticed that some instruments were attached to the bird’s legs. I also found that something is written on its wings. I could not understand it as it was not in Odia,” Behera said.
He caught the bird as it came closer.
The pigeon was found on the trawler when it was anchored around 35 kilometres off the coast of Konark around 10 days back.
Behera said he fed the bird broken rice for the past several days.
