#national intelligence agency

[saynaija]

President Tinubu Appoints New Director-General Of NIA, DSS

President Tinubu Appoints New Director-General Of NIA, DSS President Bola Tinubu has approved the appointment of new Directors-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Department of State Services (DSS). Ambassador Mohammed Mohammed is the new Director-General of the NIA. Mr. Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi is the new Director-General of the DSS. Ambassador Mohammed has had an…

[jayessentialsblog]

The NIA and SSS have new directors general appointed by President Tinubu

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has authorized the appointment of new directors general for the Department of State Services (DSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). The NIA has appointed Ambassador Mohammed Mohammed as its new Director-General, while Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi will become the DSS’s new director general. Mohammed has a distinguished career in the foreign service, having…

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Meta ordered to stop training its AI on Brazilian personal data

Following similar pushback in the EU, Meta now faces daily fines if it uses Brazilian Facebook and Instagram data for AI training.

Brazil’s data protection authority (ANPD) has banned Meta from training its artificial intelligence models on Brazilian personal data, citing the “risks of serious damage and difficulty to users.” The decision follows an update to Meta’s privacy policy in May in which the social media giant granted itself permission to use public Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram data from Brazil — including posts, images, and captions — for AI training.

The decision follows a report published by Human Rights Watch last month which found that LAION-5B — one of the largest image-caption datasets used to train AI models — contains personal, identifiable photos of Brazilian children, placing them at risk of deepfakes and other exploitation.

As reported by The Associated Press, ANPD told the country’s official gazette that the policy carries “imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights” of Brazilian users. The region is one of Meta’s largest markets, with 102 million Brazilian user accounts found on Facebook alone according to the ANPD. The notification published by the agency on Tuesday gives Meta five working days to comply with the order, or risk facing daily fines of 50,000 reais (around $8,808).

Continue reading.

[automaticclappingxboxterminator]

[mossadegh]

When ex-President Harry Truman said he was “disturbed” by the CIA’s illicit covert activities abroad, it set off a firestorm in the agency he founded in 1947...

The Mossadegh Project

[wojakgallery]

Title/Name: Edward Joseph Snowden, better known as ‘Edward Snowden’ or simply ‘Snowden’, born in (1983). Bio: American and naturalized Russian citizen who was a computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013 when he was an employee and subcontractor. Country: USA / Russia Wojak Series: Feels Guy (Variant) Image by: Wojak Gallery Admin Main Tag: Snowden Wojak

[womenusingwords]

Loyalty

The details… Title: Loyalty Author: E. J. Noyes Publisher: Bella Books Editor: Cath Walker Publication date: May 16, 2024 Available formats: ebook, paperback, audiobook (eventually)  Print length: 284 pages Genre: Romantic Action & Suspense  Themes: spies, foreign terrorists, government corruption, undercover intelligence agencies, national security, women loving women, sapphic…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Three years ago, Donald Trump tweeted an image that left intelligence experts gobsmacked.

The picture was of a rocket that had exploded on a launch pad deep inside of Iran. It was so crisp, that some initially thought it may not have been taken by a satellite.

"This picture is so exquisite, and you see so much detail," says Jeffrey Lewis, who studies satellite imagery at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. "At first, I thought it must have been taken by a drone or something."

But aerospace experts quickly determined it was photographed using one of America's most prized intelligence assets: a classified spacecraft called USA 224 that is widely believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.

Now, three years after Trump's tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public.

Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government's most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists.

"He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he says. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter."

The revelation comes just days after Trump announced his bid to run for president in 2024. It also follows the FBI's seizure in August of 33 boxes filled with over one hundred classified records, stored at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Some of those documents were reportedly related to Iran, according to the Washington Post.

The NGA, which produced the image Trump used in his 2019 tweet, is the government's clearing house for much of its intelligence. The agency collects images from drones, spy planes and satellites and turns them into information that can be used by decision-makers.

It's not uncommon for those people to want to declassify what they see, says Robert Cardillo, who served as director of the NGA from 2014 to 2019. Often, he says, he would suggest that the government release a lower-resolution image from a commercial satellite instead. "That was done from time-to-time as a way to protect that source, but then also get the information out," Cardillo says.

He says he cannot ever recall seeing the authorized release of an image such as the one tweeted by President Trump.

According to reports, Trump first saw the image as part of a daily intelligence briefing on the morning after the Iranian launch failure. In the most complete account of what happened next, published last year by Yahoo! News, President Trump asked to keep a copy of the photo, which was from a KH-11 series satellite. An hour later, he sent it out to more than 60 million followers on Twitter.

NPR has not independently verified that reporting, but what is clear is that the image in the tweet was a photograph of a sheet of physical paper, Lewis says. Visible at the center of Trump's tweet is the shine of overhead lights or a flash, and a shadow, possibly from Trump or an aid, photographing the image with a camera.

A portion of the text tweeted by the president also used the exact wording of the then-classified caption to the image, indicating his tweet was based on the NGA briefing document released to NPR.

After he tweeted the image, Trump said that he did nothing wrong. "We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do," he told reporters at the time. The president has ultimate authority over what material is classified, and Aftergood says that he was probably within his legal rights to publicize the image.

Cardillo, who now works as a senior executive for the commercial satellite company Planet, says that imagery is no longer as secret as it once was. The proliferation of commercial imaging satellites means that the public now has regular access to overhead views that are comparable, if not quite as good, as U.S. government satellites. Over his career, he saw the levels of classification for spy satellite images loosen up.

"Because there is so much commercial imagery out there, I feel like there's less sensitivity," he says.

But this image was still classified, and Lewis says that seeing it released probably stung for the intelligence agencies involved.

"The entire US intelligence community is incredibly averse to letting this information out," Lewis says. "The idea that the president would just scream 'YOLO!', photograph it and tweet it--is really hard to take."

Cardillo says he is certain that other countries have used Trump's tweeted image to learn more about what U.S. spy satellites can do. If, for example, Putin had tweeted a photo from a Russian satellite, he says that the U.S. would have assembled a task force to learn everything they could from the image.

In the case of Trump's tweet: "my assumption is that Russia would have done the same thing and Iran would have done the same thing," he says.

Aftergood says the latest release "confirms a kind of recklessness on the part of former President Trump and also a disrespect for the rather astonishing intelligence that he was receiving."

For Lewis, the incident is telling about Trump's abilities to handle classified documents as he heads into the 2024 presidential race.

"I wouldn't tell this man any information that I wanted to remain private," Lewis says. "The idea that he could again have access to classified information is unnerving."

[masterdetectivexx]

What's your opinion on Kuroda Hyoue being the disguised Tsutomu Akai?

I think it would make his character even more interesting, but if he isn't I don't know where and who Tsutomu could be.

And if he is did he meet his kids? I think he met Sera but I am not sure.

"Kuroda Hyoue = Akai Tsutomu" Theory (Updated)

This is my current speculation on Kuroda Hyoue's identity, I will keep it updated as we get new developments.

I think that Kuroda Hyoue is indeed Akai Tsutomu's current identity. Kuroda shares many similarities with Akai Tsutomu and especially his son (Akai Shuuichi). They both have similar fashion sense, with a contrasting white-coloured tie to a dark shirt and a brown overlay, and when it comes to Shuuichi, we got visual cues where they not only stood the same way with hands in their pocket, but also demonstrated the same leg sweep technique (File 989 & 1016), which is most likely intended to indicate that they share the same martial arts (Jeet Kune Do) that Akai Tsutomu was revealed to have mastered (File 1099 & SDB 90+).

Kuroda was also especially interested in the Kohji case, to the point of seemingly noticing a dying message-like name in the news (File 980 & 987). This fits with Akai Tsutomu's interest, that started after Haneda Kohji's father (Haneda Yasuharu), who is Tsutomu's friend, requested that he solved his son's murder (File 1037).

Here is how I currently suspect he turned from a seemingly deceased MI6 agent from Britain to a member of the NPA's Public Security in Japan in the last 17 years.

We know from File 1048-1049 that Tsutomu had a confrontation with Vermouth 17 years ago after his investigation on the Kohji case, and that clash lead to him being presumed dead by the BO. We then learned in File 1099 that Wakasa and a "monster" (Rum) was involved in what potentially was that same incident that lead to his presumed death 17 years ago.

As I speculated before, I think that Tsutomu's investigation lead him to finding out that Kohji's dying message revealed "Karasuma" to be the culprit, and that the prime suspect Asaka is innocent. I think that Rum found out about Tsutomu's investigation and baited him to a location using Vermouth, who disguised as "the innocent bodyguard Asaka" and carried Kohji's shogi piece charm as proof to convince him. Before going to the meeting location, Tsutomu warned his family about making enemies with bad people and told them to move to Japan, so that his family's whereabouts aren't discovered (File 972), in case he doesn't survive the planned meeting with "Asaka" (similar to Mary's contingency plan of having Masumi contact MI6 about fake Tsutomu in case Mary didn't make it back in File 1049).

That lead to Tsutomu finger jabbing Rum's left eye (as hinted by Gosho in the OdaxAoyama interview and File 972) and ultimately getting defeated by Rum after letting his guard down around Vermouth (Fake Asaka/Wakasa).

I suspect that Tsutomu's confrontation with them lead to him surviving (like Mary) and changing his identity and appearance (likely through plastic surgery). Afterwards, to pursue the organization further, it makes sense that he would have moved to Japan, where the culprit(s) "Karasuma" originate from, just like the other overseas agents (i.e Hondou Ethan from the CIA). Just like Mary, who got ahold of a fake pass to fly to Japan (revealed by Gosho in SDB 100+), Tsutomu had also gotten ahold of a fake pass with the alias "Kuroda Hyoue".

I think that he then decided to investigate the Karasuma Group/Black Organization, by becoming a public security officer of the Japanese police (in order to extract information easier, as referenced in File 1033).

In order to get a pass into the police academy in Japan (disregarding of his blank background), I suspect that Kuroda/Tsutomu secretly relied on his relationship with the head of the Ōoka Group (who is currently retired) that was revealed in File 1088, similar to how his friend Haneda Yasuharu did in File 1039-1042.

The Ōoka family has been shown and hinted to have great influence and connections with people in high positions, like the Tokyo governor (File 992), making them more than capable of helping Kuroda/Tsutomu join the japanese police.

In other words, the same time as his eldest son started to work towards becoming an FBI agent 17 years ago (File 972), Kuroda started to work towards getting accepted by the National Police Agency (File 913). He then built himself up and became what I think is the backstage administrator of the NPA's security planning division (who recieves all the classified reports of their NOC:s), all within 7 years.

Seven years later (since his disappearance), Kuroda/Tsutomu has made a name for himself within the NPA and has diligently kept his safe distance from his family, but before the status quo with his family could change, an incident took place around 10 years ago, that lead to his 10-year-long coma (File 914). We recently learned that Iori Muga, the current butler of the Ōoka family, was a former coworker of Kuroda within the Public Security, who went with the alias "Sakakibara" while undercover, which was likely before Kuroda's 10-year coma (File 1090).

I think that what lead to Kuroda's burn-scar-causing and right-eye-losing incident 10 years ago was that Iori Muga (who is actually Rum's true appearance) deemed Kuroda as a threatening and formidable enemy to the black organization. He therefore secretly orchestrated the incident that made Kuroda fall into a coma. Kuroda's hair colour changed due to the stress of the incident (his hair was perhaps shaved off for surgery purposes and white hair grew instead) and he didn't wake up until 10 years later (File 914).

I suspect that when Kuroda/Tsutomu woke up from his coma, he suffered actual memory loss to an extent, which is why he was perceived to have become a different person (As Yui mentioned). This concept was already foreshadowed as a possibility through Vermouth's disguise cover story when she faced Mary as Tsutomu (File 1048).

This would also explain why Kuroda immediately reacted to Wakasa Rumi in the news in File 980, while also still acting unaware of her identity as if he is trying to confirm suspicions of her being a criminal tied to the Kohji case in File 987-989, despite potentially having met her 17 years ago as Tsutomu. The amnesia could have made him forget her potential role in his demise 17 years ago, but he still found her familiar enough to the point of investigating her and making the connection between her name and Kohji's dying message.

While he may have forgotten significant things from his life as Tsutomu, his goal to take down the BO and find out who Kohji's killer is hasn't changed. Although the NPA had him move to Nagano to ease back into his work (before he moved to Tokyo MPD as the new superintendent), I think they gave Kuroda permission to still keep his Backstage administrator role active and stay in contact with their NOC ("Bourbon"/Furuya Rei) by Kuroda's request (File 1017).

[daisychainsandbowties]

okay naturally my so-called ‘ficlet’ (the sheer hubris of thinking i could go sub-1k words) has turned into something that will likely sit around the 6k mark instead

[thecharters]

Codes, cyphers, and the National Cryptologic Museum

Codes, cyphers, and the National Cryptologic Museum

Located at the edge of Fort Meade, Maryland, in an old, nondescript motel, is the National Cryptologic Museum. Admission is free, and with that admission you can explore how the worlds of communications, mathematics, and security intersect in cryptology. Photos from the National Cryptologic Museum Hebern Electric Code machine, built around 1918, was one of the first U.S. developed modern coding…

[joepageii]

History of the IRON HORSE system

History of the IRON HORSE system

In 1967 the United States SIGINT system (USSS) improved the speed of its support to air operations over Vietnam by a quantum leap. The older manual system, HAMMOCK, was replaced by IRON HORSE, a flashy new automated system which could deliver information in seconds rather than minutes. Designed by the National Security Agency, IRON HORSE simply linked the electronic output of an AG-22 intercept…

[azeutreciathewicked]

Related and supporting information: NPR interview with a journalist who has been covering the work of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

[trendynewsnow]

US Citizen Arrested in Germany for Alleged Espionage Activities

US National Arrested in Germany for Alleged Espionage Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office has announced the arrest of a United States citizen, identified as Martin D., on suspicions of espionage related to sensitive military information. This incident took place in the western city of Frankfurt, where authorities apprehended the individual who is said to have worked for the US armed…