The Case of the Bumbling Spy: A Watchdog Group Gets Him on Camera

Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity watchdog organization at the University of Toronto, has published hard-hitting research on powerful targets in recent years: Chinese government censorship, Silicon Valley’s invasion of customers’ privacy, despotic regimes’ electronic surveillance of dissidents. It’s the kind of work that can make enemies. So when John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, got an odd request for a meeting last week from someone describing himself as a wealthy investor from Paris, he suspected a ruse and decided to set a trap.

Over lunch at New York’s five-star Peninsula Hotel, the white-bearded visitor, who said his name was Michel Lambert, praised Mr. Scott-Railton’s work and pried for details about Citizen Lab. Then — “as I was finishing my crème brûlée,” Mr. Scott-Railton said — a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press, alerted by Mr. Scott-Railton and lurking nearby, confronted the visitor, who bumped into chairs and circled the room while trying to flee. At least two other men nearby appeared to be operatives — one who stood at the door, another who seemed to be filming from a table, said Mr. Scott-Railton, who himself filmed his lunch companion. The case of the bumbling spy is the latest episode involving undercover agents, working for private intelligence firms or other clients, who adopt false identities to dig up compromising information about or elicit embarrassing statements from their targets.

“Michel Lambert” is a pseudonym and the Paris company he claimed to represent does not exist. The New York Times, in collaboration with Uvda, an investigative television show on Israel’s Channel 12, has confirmed that the mysterious visitor was Aharon Almog-Assoulin, a retired Israeli security official who until recently served on the town council in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Contacted by The Times on Sunday, he said, “I do not have any interest in continuing with this conversation” and hung up. Mr. Scott-Railton, shown a photograph of Mr. Almog-Assoulin, said he was certain it was the man he had met.

The phenomenon of private spies drew widespread attention in 2017, when Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm, was found to have used undercover agents to approach women who had accused Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct. Black Cube later was identified as having sent agents, again under false cover, to investigate Obama administration officials who had worked on the Iran nuclear deal. Black Cube denied that it had played any role in approaching Citizen Lab employees, but the same undercover agent turned up in an earlier case in Canada with a Black Cube connection. In October 2017, a man who resembles Mr. Almog-Assoulin appeared in Toronto, using another pseudonym, to meet someone involved in long-running litigation between Catalyst Capital Group and West Face Capital, two feuding private equity firms. The person, who asked not to be named to avoid further legal trouble, said that when he saw the photo of “Michel Lambert” in an A.P. story on Saturday, he immediately recognized him as the man who had approached him, given him a false business card and questioned him about the lawsuits. In court papers, Catalyst Capital has acknowledged that to provide support for its litigation, its law firm engaged a company that subsequently hired Black Cube as a subcontractor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citizen-lab-intelligence.html

>>5023340 This article had missing pieces when originally written we now know who the private investigators are

Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies

The film executive hired private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists.

In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women. He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives “highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,” according to its literature. Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details.

The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker. Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies “target,” or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories. Weinstein monitored the progress of the investigations personally. He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating. In some cases, the investigative effort was run through Weinstein’s lawyers, including David Boies, a celebrated attorney who represented Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential-election dispute and argued for marriage equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies personally signed the contract directing Black Cube to attempt to uncover information that would stop the publication of a Times story about Weinstein’s abuses, while his firm was also representing the Times, including in a libel case. Boies confirmed that his firm contracted with and paid two of the agencies and that investigators from one of them sent him reports, which were then passed on to Weinstein. He said that he did not select the firms or direct the investigators’ work. He also denied that the work regarding the Times story represented a conflict of interest. Boies said that his firm’s involvement with the investigators was a mistake. “We should not have been contracting with and paying investigators that we did not select and direct,” he told me. “At the time, it seemed a reasonable accommodation for a client, but it was not thought through, and that was my mistake. It was a mistake at the time.”

Techniques like the ones used by the agencies on Weinstein’s behalf are almost always kept secret, and, because such relationships are often run through law firms, the investigations are theoretically protected by attorney-client privilege, which could prevent them from being disclosed in court. The documents and sources reveal the tools and tactics available to powerful individuals to suppress negative stories and, in some cases, forestall criminal investigations. In a statement, Weinstein’s spokesperson, Sallie Hofmeister, said, “It is a fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies

The FBI Says Its Photo Analysis Is Scientific Evidence. Scientists Disagree (1 of 3)

The bureau’s image unit has linked defendants to crime photographs for decades using unproven techniques and baseless statistics. Studies have begun to raise doubts about the unit’s methods.

At the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, a team of about a half-dozen technicians analyzes pictures down to their pixels, trying to determine if the faces, hands, clothes or cars of suspects match images collected by investigators from cameras at crime scenes. The unit specializes in visual evidence and facial identification, and its examiners can aid investigations by making images sharper, revealing key details in a crime or ruling out potential suspects. But the work of image examiners has never had a strong scientific foundation, and the FBI’s endorsement of the unit’s findings as trial evidence troubles many experts and raises anew questions about the role of the FBI Laboratory as a standard-setter in forensic science.

FBI examiners have tied defendants to crime pictures in thousands of cases over the past half-century using unproven techniques, at times giving jurors baseless statistics to say the risk of error was vanishingly small. Much of the legal foundation for the unit’s work is rooted in a 22-year-old comparison of bluejeans. Studies on several photo comparison techniques, conducted over the last decade by the FBI and outside scientists, have found they are not reliable. Since those studies were published, there’s no indication that lab officials have checked past casework for errors or inaccurate testimony. Image examiners continue to use disputed methods in an array of cases to bolster prosecutions against people accused of robberies, murder, sex crimes and terrorism.

The work of image examiners is a type of pattern analysis, a category of forensic science that has repeatedly led to misidentifications at the FBI and other crime laboratories. Before the discovery of DNA identification methods in the 1980s, most of the bureau’s lab worked in pattern matching, which involves comparing features from items of evidence to the suspect’s body and belongings. Examiners had long testified in court that they could determine what fingertip left a print, what gun fired a bullet, which scalp grew a hair “to the exclusion of all others.” Research and exonerations by DNA analysis have repeatedly disproved these claims, and the U.S. Department of Justice no longer allows technicians and scientists from the FBI and other agencies to make such unequivocal statements, according to new testimony guidelines released last year.

Though image examiners rely on similarly flawed methods, they have continued to testify to and defend their exactitude, according to a review of court records and examiners’ written reports and published articles. ProPublica asked leading statisticians and forensic science experts to review methods image examiners have detailed in court transcripts, published articles and presentations. The experts identified numerous instances of examiners overstating the techniques’ scientific precision and said some of their assertions defy logic. The FBI declined repeated requests for interviews with members of the image group, which is formally known as the Forensic Audio, Video and Image Analysis Unit.

https://www.propublica.org/article/with-photo-analysis-fbi-lab-continues-shaky-forensic-science-practices

>>5023718 (2 of 2)

The FBI Says Its Photo Analysis Is Scientific Evidence. Scientists Disagree

https://www.propublica.org/article/with-photo-analysis-fbi-lab-continues-shaky-forensic-science-practices

Note: Just noticed my error.. post count s/b 2

>>5023779

I hadn't thought of that, it probably will.

Iraqi president says Trump did not ask permission to 'watch Iran'

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Barham Salih said on Monday that President Donald Trump did not ask Iraq’s permission for U.S. troops stationed there to “watch Iran.” Speaking at a forum in Baghdad, Salih was responding to a question about Trump’s comments to CBS about how he would ask troops stationed in Iraq to “watch” Iran. U.S. troops in Iraq are there as part of an agreement between the two countries with a specific mission of combating terrorism, Salih said, and that they should stick to that.

Trump said it was important to keep a U.S. military presence in Iraq so that Washington can keep a close eye on Iran “because Iran is a real problem,” according to a CBS interview broadcast on Sunday. “Don’t overburden Iraq with your own issues,” Salih said. “The U.S. is a major power … but do not pursue your own policy priorities, we live here.” Iraq is in a difficult position as tensions between its two biggest allies, the United States and Iran, increase. “It is of fundamental interest for Iraq to have good relations with Iran” and other neighboring countries, Salih said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-turkey/turkey-says-countries-supporting-guaido-fuel-venezuela-crisis-idUSKCN1PS09E

Outsider wins El Salvador presidency, breaking two-party system

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-elsalvador-election/outsider-wins-el-salvador-presidency-breaking-two-party-system-idUSKCN1PS03W