“US intelligence officials are investigating the presence of Chinese telecom firms in the country. It marks growing concern in the United States that the Chinese regime is carrying out cyber espionage through major Chinese firms.

US lawmakers are looking into the expansion of Chinese telecom firms. The House Intelligence Committee last week announced it will investigate if two major companies, Huawei and ZTE Corporation, pose a security threat to the United States through telecommunications infrastructures.

Huawei is China’s largest provider of telecom equipment, and has aggressively expanded overseas in recent years. Its operations in the United States have faced opposition from those concerned about its possible ties to the Chinese regime’s military. Huawei’s founder was an engineer in the army, but the private company says he left 25 years ago, and has no links with the Chinese regime.

Former Chinese intelligence officer Li Fengzhi says this does not rule out Huawei and other Chinese firms from engaging in intelligence work in the United States.

[Li Fengzhi, Former Chinese Intelligence Officer]:
“They will register a company in the target country, like the US by a private individual, or a branch of a large private enterprise, or something with government backing. They can then place intelligence workers here who look for opportunities to obtain important or sometimes trivial intelligence, including military intelligence.”

Earlier this month, US intelligence officials accused the Chinese regime of being the biggest perpetrator of economic espionage. Representative Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, echoed those claims last week. His committee launched an investigation to find out whether Chinese telecom firms in the US give the Chinese regime “an opportunity for greater foreign espionage.”

The Chinese regime denies being involved in cyber espionage, and says the US is politicizing trade issues. Both Huawei and ZTE Corporation, China’s second-largest mobile-equipment maker, maintain they pose no security threat to the United State”

[Via: http://english.ntdtv.com]

[Image Via: Source]

Backed by Google Ventures, IA Ventures, and In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. [Via: businessinsider.com]

“Mission: Record and analyze all that is known about the future, and make it available for analysis. Recorded Future is an early stage company headquartered in the Boston area. We have 20+ employees in various corners of the globe attacking a hard problem – organize the web in a radically new and useful way. The world’s 24×7 media flow is filled with temporal signals, including reports of what’s transpired or statements of what’s expected to come. Recorded Future’s linguistic and statistical algorithms extract time-related information and through temporal reasoning we structure the unstructured. We help users understand relationships between entities and events over time. In doing so, we’ve formed the world’s first temporal analytics engine. Our customers include some of the most advanced financial institutions and leading government agencies in the world. The Recorded Future team includes computer scientists, statisticians, linguists, technical business people with deep domain expertise in areas such as intelligence and quantitative finance. A high proportion of the team holds PhDs and other advanced degrees. Team members have received numerous accolades including the Fulbright scholarship, MIT’s TR100 award, and more. Our leadership has built multiple successful analytics businesses with aggregate annual revenues in the $100′s of millions. We have a great team, a solid track recorded of success, and a great culture.”
[Via: recordedfuture.com]

…

The White House Blog

Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator
Posted by Macon Phillips on December 22, 2009 at 07:30 AM EDT
Today the White House announced the President’s new White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, Howard Schmidt.

Cybersecurity matters to all of us – and it’s our shared responsibility to mitigate the threats in this space. You can take cybersecurity into your own hands with these tips for protecting yourself online:

Keep your security software and operating system up-to-date. At a minimum, your computer should have current anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a firewall to protect yourself from hackers and malicious software that can steal sensitive personal information. Hackers also take advantage of Web browsers and operating system software that do not have the latest security updates. Operating system companies issue security patches for flaws that they find in their systems, so it is important to set your operating system and web browser software to download and install security patches automatically.

Protect your personal information online. Millions of people become victims of identity theft each year. One way that cyber criminals convince computer users to divulge their confidential personal information is through fake “phishing” emails, which are often cleverly disguised to look like authentic emails. Be wary of clicking on links in emails that are unfamiliar and be very cautious about providing personal information online, such as your password, financial information, or social security number.

Know who you are dealing with. It is remarkably simple for online scammers to impersonate a legitimate business, so you need to know who you are dealing with. If you are thinking about shopping on an unfamiliar website, do some independent research before you buy. Similarly, before you download software, be sure that the software developer is trustworthy. Cyber criminals will often embed the capability to steal passwords and files into free software.

Learn what to do if something goes wrong. If your computer gets hacked, the effects may be obvious (e.g., deleted or corrupted files), or they may be subtle (e.g., slow computing performance). As a first step, you should scan your computer with updated anti-virus software. You may wish to get professional assistance through your computer’s manufacturer, computer retail store, or local computer technician. You can also alert the appropriate authorities by contacting your Internet Service Provider or the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can assist if you are subject to identity theft. You can also forward spam or phishing emails to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

Administration officials meet at the White House to introduce an international strategy for cyberspace that will help ensure an open and secure Internet. May 16, 2011.

Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan were joined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn in announcing this landmark document’s release, here at the White House.

Access the full report>>>

Access Global Internet Usage Charts and Statistics here>>>>>

Who’s mission is to organize the web in a radically new and useful way tracking the world’s 24×7 media flows reporting of what’s transpired and projecting out what’s expected to come. Google Teams Up With CIA to Fund “Recorded Future” Who’s Primary Objective is in Monitoring Public, Blogs, News Outlets, Social Media, and Much More…

[Source: tunisianquestfortruth.wordpress.com]

“U.S. spy agencies… have invested in a number of firms to help them better find that information. Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.” Read More>>>>

“Investors at the CIA and Google are backing a company called “Recorded Future” that monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events, and relationships that may predict the future. The news comes on amidst Google’s so-called “Wi-Spy” scandal, that refers to revelations that Google’s Street View cars operating in some 30 countries snooped on private WiFi networks over the last three years.”

“Bloggers, news outlets, social media, experts and analysts are constantly foretelling whats to come. Recorded Future offers unique analysis tools to aggregate and organize these events, and provides a comprehensive outlook of the future. Want to learn more?”Read More>>>>

About Recorded Future

“Recorded Future is an early stage company headquartered in the Boston area. We have 20+ employees in various corners of the globe attacking a hard problem – organize the web in a radically new and useful way. The world’s 24×7 media flow is filled with temporal signals, including reports of what’s transpired or statements of what’s expected to come. Recorded Future’s linguistic and statistical algorithms extract time-related information and through temporal reasoning we structure the unstructed. We help users understand relationships between entities and events over time. In doing so, we’ve formed the world’s first temporal analytics engine. Our customers include some of the most advanced financial institutions and leading government agencies in the world.

The Recorded Future team includes computer scientists, statisticians, linguists, technical business people with deep domain expertise in areas such as intelligence and quantitative finance. A high proportion of the team holds PhDs and other advanced degrees. Team members have received numerous accolades including the Fulbright scholarship, MIT’s TR100 award, and more. Our leadership has built multiple successful analytics businesses with aggregate annual revenues in the $100′s of millions. We have a great team, a solid track recorded of success, and a great culture.”

Read More>>>>