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
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS