Israeli Data Spies Have Eyes Focused on U.S. Citizens
November
23, 2013 AFP
• Tentacles of Israeli “security” firms stretch
across U.S., globe
By Keith Johnson
While the
National Security Agency (NSA)
spying scandal continues to grab national headlines, the equally egregious
intelligence gathering on United States citizens by Israeli security firms has
virtually flown under the radar.
A recent article in Rolling
Stone magazine, entitled “Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on
Protesters,” comes close to scratching the surface by identifying the four
major security contractors that have been aggressively hawking their invasive
surveillance products at various trade shows and police conferences throughout
the nation. However, they fail to mention that at least two of those companies
are owned and operated by members of a foreign nation with a long and notorious
history of spying on the U.S. government and its citizens.
Among
them is NICE Systems,
Ltd., an Israel-based company founded in 1986 by seven “Israeli
ex-army colleagues.” NICE’s current CEO is Zeevi Bregman, who formerly helmed Comverse Technology, Inc., an
Israeli-run private telecommunications firm that provides wiretapping equipment
to U.S. law enforcement.
In 2001,
Comverse was the subject of a Fox News investigation into Israeli spying,
where it was alleged “that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have,
in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by
unauthorized parties. Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel,
Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs,
gets reimbursed for up to 50% of its research and development costs.”
More
recently, Comverse subsidiary Verint Systems, Inc. has been linked to the
current NSA spy scandal. AMERICAN FREE PRESS has previously reported on
how the company was hired by the feds to wiretap U.S. telecommunications
networks and even offered back-door access to major U.S. technology companies
like Facebook, Microsoft and Google.
Bregman
now oversees NICE Systems projects that are just as intrusive. One product
marketed to law enforcement is “NiceTrack Target 360°,” an intelligence
gathering tool that collects and monitors the activities of persons targeted in
surveillance operations. According to their brochure, “The solutions retrieve
target location, relations and conversation content from any type of
communication including telephony, IP and satellite, resulting in a
multi-dimensional intelligence picture.”
Nice
Systems also provides a suite of video surveillance products that monitors
street activity 24/7 and alerts law enforcement of potential disruptions. In a promotional
video for the “NICE Security Portfolio,” a group of protestors are
depicted as posing a “security risk” by demonstrating in a city center. The
fictitious activists are shown chanting slogans and hoisting signs that read
“No More” and “Stop It Now” as the narrator explains how a variety of NICE
Systems products can be used to help mitigate the “situation.” The narrator
concludes by saying, “The entire event is then reconstructed on a chronological
timeline, based on all multimedia sources,” to help “managers evaluate and
understand trends and prepare for, predict and even prevent the next event.”
According
to foreign trade portal Israel Gateway,
NICE Systems products are already being used at the Statue of Liberty and the
New Jersey Transit System.
A
spokeswoman for NICE declined to provide Rolling
Stone with specific clients, but said “Thousands of customers worldwide”
use their products, including “law enforcement and other government agencies.”
A quick
review of NICE’s website however, reveals some high-profile “leading
customers” the Jewish firm has accumulated, including:
- Air France
- Beijing Metro
- Bank of Tokyo
- American Airlines
- Dallas-Ft. Worth Int’l Airport
- Mitsubishi UFJ
- American Express
- Eiffel Tower
- India Parliament House
- HSBC
- T-Mobile
- Miami-Dade Police Department
- NJ Transit
- New York Police Department
- Port of Miami
- Belgian Railways
- UBS
- Shanghai Pudong Int’l Airport
- Washington Mutual
- Statue of Liberty
The other
Israeli-owned security firm referenced in Rolling
Stone is 3i-MIND, which is profiled in the below article. 3i-MIND’s founder
and CEO is Israeli-born billionaire Mati Kochavi, who also owns AGT International, a security firm managed by a team of retired Israeli generals and Mossad agents,
according to an article in Le Figaro.
Though
AGT has only been in business since 2007, it has already secured $8B in
contracts and has become a leading supplier of surveillance technologies to the
governments of India, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Singapore, the United
Arab Emirates and others.
In 2010,
AGT entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft as an initial foray
into the U.S. security market. According to a press
release, the two companies plan to “provide government homeland
security and corporate customers with complete solutions” in a shared “belief
that the benefits of globalization for the world economy need to be accompanied
by in-built sophisticated security technology.”
More
recently, AGT’s Kochavi has ventured into the realm of journalism by launching
a digital news website called Vocativ, which produces pro-Israel news content
targeted at the young adult demographic. According to a recent article in Forbes
magazine, Kochavi “has organized his newsroom along the lines of an intelligence
agency in the belief that journalism needs to undergo the same transformation
that’s already swept the field of spycraft.”
Although
Kochavi wants his staff and clients to enjoy full-spectrum intelligence
gathering capabilities, he doesn’t believe the general public should be
afforded the same. In 2011, Kochavi and former President Bill Clinton appeared
together in a CNBC interview to push for the creation of a regulatory
agency that would prevent “misinformation and rumors” from being spread over
the Internet.
“Why
can’t we have a credibility bar near every resultive search,” Kochavi asked.
“When we buy food we have ingredients on the food. When we go to see a movie we
have ratings.”
It’s certain
that if Kochavi had his way, real news organizations like AMERICAN FREE
PRESS would be given a “zero” credibility rating.
Israeli
security companies like AGT and NICE Systems can only survive if their sordid
pasts are concealed from public scrutiny. And that’s precisely why AFP will
continue to expose them at every opportunity.
• Former members of Israeli intelligence work to
help crush free speech
A
multinational security firm with ties to Israeli intelligence is providing U.S.
law enforcement with intrusive surveillance tools to spy on American citizens
and track the movements of political activists.
According
to the above-mentioned Rolling Stone article, for-hire intelligence group 3i-MIND has
been found peddling their highly advanced data-mining system at various
security trade shows and police conferences throughout the nation.
The
product, marketed to law enforcement as “OpenMIND,”
scours the so-called “deep web”—that 80% of the Internet inaccessible to other
search engines—for insights about upcoming demonstrations, identifies and
collects information on political activists and monitors their activities in
real-time.
“Your
insight is distributed to the local police force warning them that the
political rally may turn violent and potentially thwarting the violence before
it occurs,” says promotional material for the product on the 3i-MIND website.
Very
little is revealed about 3i-MIND in the Rolling
Stone article. They don’t mention that its founder and CEO is Israeli-born
billionaire Mati Kochavi, who made his fortune in real estate after serving as an intelligence operative for the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“Several
years ago he became involved in the homeland security field, and this
involvement increased after the September 11 attacks in 2001,” reads a 2008 article from Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “He forged contacts within
Israel’s military establishment and began hiring high-ranking former officials
in the field.”
Kochavi’s
companies reportedly employ dozens of former IDF, Mossad
and Shin Bet security service officials, including Major General Amos Malka, who
headed Israel’s Military Intelligence from 1998-2001.
This
isn’t the first time an Israeli-linked company has been implicated in spying on
American activists exercising their First Amendment rights. In 2010, public
outcry forced the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to end a contract with the Institute of
Terrorism Research and Response after it was discovered that the Jerusalem-based intelligence
group used the Internet to spy on peaceful protestors and then generated
misleading “terror bulletins” on their activities, which were in turn
distributed to Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies.
If
American citizens are upset that the federal government is eavesdropping on
their communications, they should be more than outraged that proxies of an
oppressive and untrustworthy foreign nation like Israel are helping their local
police departments do the exact same thing.
Keith Johnson in an investigative journalist and
creator of the Revolt of the Plebs.
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at: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=13798#sthash.M4sj9bX2.dpuf
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