Sweden engaged in industrial espionage against Russia

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Sweden’s intelligence agency has not only spied on Russian leadership, sharing intelligence with the NSA, but also apparently engaged in industrial espionage against business targets such as Russia’s energy companies, Sveriges Television reports.

As per the a wire, obtained by Swedish TV program ‘Mission: Investigate’, Sweden’s National Defense Radio Establishment (FRA) shared intelligence on Russia with Washington.

“Thank Sweden for its continued work on the Russian target, and underscore the primary role that FRA plays as a leading partner to work the Russian Target, including Russian leadership, ENERGY, … and … counterintelligence,” NSA wire said, as cited by SVT.

The earlier omitted part of the quote reveals that Sweden was tapping on civilian targets as well. One source told the documentary there was “a very obvious interest in looking at the Russian companies”confirming it was “a part of the mission.”

When asked if FRA spied on such companies as the Russian energy giant Gazprom, the source said“Gazprom is one possible” adding that there are “many other, smaller players.”

In an interview with SVT, journalist Glenn Greenwald said “the NSA seems impressed by how much money and how much technological sophistication the Swedish have been able to assemble when building their own surveillance system.”

Commenting for the documentary on the intelligence gathering cooperation between the US and Sweden, Greenwald said they “work together when they perceive that their interests are mutually aligned and share information readily about a whole variety of topics, again having nothing to do with national security, including the energy sector in Russia.”

The latest leak has nothing to do with national security and is “very conclusive about the fact that part of what they are doing is spying on energy companies, obviously for economic advantage,” Greenwald added.

The West is very hypocritical about industrial espionage, in particular constantly accusing China of breaking the international laws by spying on Western companies, Greenwald told SVT.

“And yet here you find the United States and its closest allies in the espionage world, including Sweden, doing exactly that which they have long vehemently accused China of doing and have rigorously condemned over and over,” Greenwald said.

So far there have been no further details on the spying apart from the documents provided by Edward Snowden, Nils Hanson, chief editor of “Mission: Investigate,” told RT.

“The documents mention ‘unique’ intelligence, ‘classic’ intelligence and cables,” Hanson said.

A spokesman for the FRA said, “We cannot comment on these kinds of allegations,” but he nevertheless confirmed that the FRA is a “leading partner” of the NSA, adding that this was a “flattering” characterization.

Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, who brought to light the close relationship between Sweden’s FRA and the NSA, told RT that with Sweden’s strategic location in the Baltic, the country has always been the envy of America’s intelligence services.

“Sweden always had a rather covert intelligence relationship with the west, during the years of the Cold War. They’ve been tempted secretly to the club of the ‘big spies,’ in which they offered goodies to the [Swedish] Prime Minister in return for betraying the privacy and security of all of their neighbors and many of their own citizens,” Campbell said.

“Sweden was their largest collaborator in Europe with the internet tapping program run by the Five Eyes group of English-speaking countries, and it does so because of the direct access to cables in the Baltic. It is no surprise that GCHQ and the NSA would want that, as well as everything else that they can take from Sweden,” he said.

Originally, the scandal hit the news on Thursday when Swedish television aired the program, revealing that Sweden spied on Russian officials, through the information obtained from Glenn Greenwald, the journalist responsible for Snowden’s leaks.

Last week, Sweden’s defense minister, Karin Enstrom, told TT news agency that Sweden needs to protect its national security.

“We need to conduct intelligence operations to protect Sweden against external threats,” said Enstrom, Sv riges Radio reported. “We have an operation that takes place within the framework of the FRA, with clear legislation, strict control and parliamentary oversight. But how it is done, and with whom Sweden cooperates, is not public information.”

In September, Metro’s daily investigative journalist Duncan Campbell disclosed information about Sweden’s ties to the NSA during a hearing of a committee in the European Parliament. Campbell revealed that the Swedish National Defence FRA provided the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) access to Baltic underwater cables. He added that Sweden was the third major partner in surveillance cooperation.

 Brazil and Germany introduced a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly calling for the creation of internationally recognized rights to privacy in the wake of the snowballing NSA spying scandal. Since Snowden’s leaks surfaced in June, protests demanding more privacy protection have engulfed countries around the globe. Media agencies 

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Next Big Congress canvasser Priyanka Gandhi

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Priyanka Gandhi

 

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Discover ‘accidental’ giant planet “HD 106906 b:

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This is an artist’s conception of a young planet in a distant orbit around its host star. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

 

Believe it or not . A giant planet that has been found orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance has stirred immense confusion in the minds of US astronomers, making them question planet formation theories.

The planet – currently known as HD 106906 b – weighs in at 11 times the mass of Jupiter and is orbiting its star at a massive distance of 60 billion miles – a much further distance than any planet has ever previously been seen orbiting its star.

The planet has been described as unlike anything astronomers have ever seen before.

“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” said Vanessa Bailey, the team’s lead researcher with the University of Arizona’s astronomy department in a news release.

Planets such as Earth, which are located closer to their stars, are believed to be the results of the amalgamation of smaller asteroid-type bodies. The bodies themselves were formed after the gases and heavier elements remaining after the formation of the sun began to flatten and fuse with the help of the sun’s gravity.

However, with planets such as HD 106906 b, the process becomes more puzzling. The process of formation is far too slow for planets of such large mass, which are so far away from their star. However, Baily offered up her suggestion.

“A binary star system can be formed when two adjacent clumps of gas collapse more or less independently to form stars, and these stars are close enough to each other to exert a mutual gravitation attraction and bind them together in an orbit,” Bailey said.

“It is possible that in the case of HD 106906 system the star and planet collapsed independently from clumps of gas, but for some reason the planet’s progenitor clump was starved for material and never grew large enough to ignite and become a star,” she stated.

However, should Baily’s theorizing be correct, it would also induce further questions. The mass ratio of two stars in a binary system, as described by Bailey, is usually no more than 10:1. However, in the case of this new discovery, the mass ratio is over 100:1 – a correlation which could be deemed almost impossible under current theories of planet formation.

The findings are to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters under the title “HD 106906 b: A Planetary-mass Companion Outside a Massive Debris Disk.” Media agencies 

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Criminal background, Financial, Gender and other details of elected MLAs in Delhi Assembly Elections 2013

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Press Conference Invitation

Criminal background, Financial, Gender and other details of elected MLAs in Delhi Assembly Elections 2013

Delhi Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms cordially invites you for a Press Conference to release the analysis of Criminal background, Financial, Gender and other details of elected MLAs in Delhi Assembly elections 2013. We will also be releasing analysis of re-elected MLAs. 

Date: 9th December, 2013

Time: 3 PM

Venue: Press Club of India

1, Raisina Road, New Delhi-110 001
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​Regards,

Media & Journalist Helpline +91 80103 94248 adr@adrindia.org

Mr. Anurag Mittal National Coordinator National Election Watch, Association for Democratic Reforms +91 9811108914 anurag@adrIndia.org

Prof Trilochan Sastry IIM Bangalore Founder Member, National Election Watch, Association for Democratic Reforms +91 9448353285, trilochans@iimb.ernet.in

Prof Jagdeep Chhokar IIM Ahmedabad (Retd.) Founder Member National Election Watch, Association for Democratic Reforms +91 9999620944 jchhokar@gmail.com

 

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