Garda Ombudsman "under high-tech surveillance"

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:11AM

infacteh wrote: »

Not really, it would appear Mooney knows the mole, who could also be the hacker. If GSOC has been hacked, and you want to find out by who, Mooney is a good place to start.....

Hacker???

Are you mad?

Mooney got the report from someone in GSOC. No one "hacked" GSOC. And no one ANYWHERE except a few desperate, and politically motivated fools are claiming that someone in GSOC set up a spoof 3G network...

Don't be a fool...

Godge · 13-02-2014 11:12AM

Scofflaw wrote: »

Hmm. Examiner article:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/bugging-of-gsoc-office-may-have-been-authorised-258634.html

And the IT:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/gsoc-s-account-of-bugging-evidence-does-not-tally-with-that-of-minister-1.1689432

The attempts to downplay the matter from every angle possible are looking thinner and thinner, and may yet come back to bite the Minister and Taoiseach.

I'm not sure that a strategy of "blame the victim" and the immediate attack was the best way to handle this. I would have thought the traditional 'grave concern' approach - "of course, we take this matter very seriously, and any possible bugging will totally be investigated, de blah de blah anodyne report in about 9 months time" might have been a better choice.

cordially,
Scofflaw

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/senior-ombudsman-official-is-suspected-of-information-leaks-30005339.html

The Irish Independent article seems to give a better, more credible explanation of all that was going on as well as a full listening to the Oireachtas committee. The sequence of events seems to be that O'Brien suspected bugging because of leaks to newspapers. Initially the gardai, or more specifically, rogue elements of the gardai were suspected (This has now been definitively ruled out as O'Brien's evidence is that he no longer suspects the gardai). When the security sweep revealed concerns (one of which had to come from internal action - the first one) they were unsure what to do. However, it seems, particularly from the refusal of O'Brien to answer direct questions in relation to it, that the leaking of the Verrimus report points to an internal source within the GSOC as the leak.

Of course, it is still possible that the two events are unconnected but the preponderance of evidence is pointing towards an internal problem within the GSOC.

cruasder777 wrote: »

It was a 'false tower' that picks up the signal and mines it for information Orbit v2. It's 'GOVERNMENT LEVEL' surveillance technology. It is in effect a shadow mobile network designed to target phones within a certain small area.

It was most likely an official covert op. Either by Shatter or senior Garda. Hence the attempt at a cover up over defensive response.

Rogue Garda could not deploy such technology without others being aware.

cruasder777 wrote: »

The Ombudsmans office is playing it down to save their careers. Remember the govt is claiming its they who at fault.

You tell me what civilians have the ability to have this level of technology ? Shadow phone masts, networks etc.

The security company whos report is now being played down are world experts in this stuff. I think I will take their word over OGS and Shatter.

They said the chances of some of their findings being a coincidence are virtually zero.

Let us be clear on something. If it is Irish government-level surveillance technology, it would be available to many large companies around the world and probably to companies like Verrimus as well and therefore to well-resourced citizens. Ireland does not have that level of ability to develop its own surveillance capability, it is reliant on products built by private companies.

Now if it was the UK/US government, well then yes, you are talking about government-level surveillance capacity not available to citizens.

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Emm, have you being listening to government Ministers and TD's responding to this issue in recent days?

They have tried to pour cold water on this by claiming that there is no basis to say that bugging ever took place, which has now been contradicted by GSOC.

While they were putting forward that line they tried to put the blame on GSOC by questioning as to how the report ended up with the media. Then we had the leader of our country deliberately misinterpret legislation, on multiple occasions both in the Dáil and outside of it, to try and bring this story to an end. He didn't ask the question as to why GSOC might not have felt comfortable approaching one of his ministers to report the bugging incident.

It was O'Brien yesterday in the Dail Committee rooms who was pointing the finger at his own organisation and away from anyone else.

Godge · 13-02-2014 11:16AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Not paying attention are you?

They ONLY think a mole was behind leaking the report.

The report categorically stated that there was bugging, and the GSOC took the report at face value, except in one instance, where one person in GSOC decided to not trust that the evidence for bugging met his personal threshhold of 100% certainty.. his personal threshold... the security team however disagreed.

Saying that, GSOC took it seriously enough to stop using mobile phones and to stop holding important meetings in their building.. because they thought the chances of snooping was that great...

You obviously have some sort of bias that's causing you to deliberately mis-state the facts, but it's not helpful... sure if you're that worried about your political party, best to find out the truth about this...

To restate for absolute clarity:

No one is GSOC thinks someone IN GSOC was setting up a spoof 3g network...

Claiming that GSOC thinks that makes you look like some sort of propaganda machine..

Look at the journalist spying exercises that went on in the UK. What happened to all of the equipment that those journalists would have been using? Recycled and used in Ireland?

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Also, Mooney stated last night that he believes that he is under criminal investigation regarding his activities with this story.

This is deeply alarming in my mind, as it is clearly in the public interest that this story come into the public domain considering the circumstances.

Why does Mooney believe this? How did he get his information?

BaronVon · 13-02-2014 11:19AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Hacker???

Are you mad?

Mooney got the report from someone in GSOC. No one "hacked" GSOC. And no one ANYWHERE except a few desperate, and politically motivated fools are claiming that someone in GSOC set up a spoof 3G network...

Don't be a fool...

Sorry, should have used "hacked", I'm not satisfied that GSOC was hacked either, hence I used "if they were hacked"

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:20AM

Godge wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/senior-ombudsman-official-is-suspected-of-information-leaks-30005339.html

The Irish Independent article seems to give a better, more credible explanation of all that was going on as well as a full listening to the Oireachtas committee. The sequence of events seems to be that O'Brien suspected bugging because of leaks to newspapers. Initially the gardai, or more specifically, rogue elements of the gardai were suspected (This has now been definitively ruled out as O'Brien's evidence is that he no longer suspects the gardai). When the security sweep revealed concerns (one of which had to come from internal action - the first one) they were unsure what to do. However, it seems, particularly from the refusal of O'Brien to answer direct questions in relation to it, that the leaking of the Verrimus report points to an internal source within the GSOC as the leak.

Of course, it is still possible that the two events are unconnected but the preponderance of evidence is pointing towards an internal problem within the GSOC.

Let us be clear on something. If it is Irish government-level surveillance technology, it would be available to many large companies around the world and probably to companies like Verrimus as well and therefore to well-resourced citizens. Ireland does not have that level of ability to develop its own surveillance capability, it is reliant on products built by private companies.

Now if it was the UK/US government, well then yes, you are talking about government-level surveillance capacity not available to citizens.

It was O'Brien yesterday in the Dail Committee rooms who was pointing the finger at his own organisation and away from anyone else.

OK, some of this is wrong.

GSOC doesn't say the Gardai wasn't involved, they say the found no evidence to link them to it.

Those are different things.

Branding the affair a “crisis”, Mr O’Brien said he suspected the Garda Siochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) had been put under electronic surveillance and that he could not rule out gardaí being suspects.

This goes against Mr Shatter’s assertion to TDs that no bugging had taken place and the gardaí had been subjected to “baseless innuendo”.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/bugging-of-gsoc-office-may-have-been-authorised-258634.html

If you watched the four hours of questioning yesterday, you'd see this.

As for the next bizarre claim you've made, there's NO evidence anywhere that anyone in Ireland has this technology other than State agencies. This was not disputed by either AGS, TDs or GSOC. It was stated unequivocally by the security firm.

If you think you know better than all of those folks, well... people can decide who to trust in this situation... you or all of those folks...

Finally, O'Brien pointed his finger at GSOC in relation to ONE THING: leaking the security firms report.

Nothing else.

No one else seriously suggested anything other than that as well.

And CERTAINLY no one anywhere has suggested that GSOC has set up a spoof 3G network to snoop on GSOC.

Amazing how many people are desperate to make that assertion.

raymon · 13-02-2014 11:20AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Not paying attention are you?

They ONLY think a mole was behind leaking the report.

The report categorically stated that there was bugging, and the GSOC took the report at face value, except in one instance, where one person in GSOC decided to not trust that the evidence for bugging met his personal threshhold of 100% certainty.. his personal threshold... the security team however disagreed.

Saying that, GSOC took it seriously enough to stop using mobile phones and to stop holding important meetings in their building.. because they thought the chances of snooping was that great...

You obviously have some sort of bias that's causing you to deliberately mis-state the facts, but it's not helpful... sure if you're that worried about your political party, best to find out the truth about this...

To restate for absolute clarity:

No one is GSOC thinks someone IN GSOC was setting up a spoof 3g network...

Claiming that GSOC thinks that makes you look like some sort of propaganda machine..

You are claiming that the report states that there was bugging - this is not the case at all . The report found three anomalies.

Regarding my bias - for the record I have no links to any party and I am not a supporter of any party. I don't work for any party . I usually vote for any good candidate in elections which is often an Independent , FG or Lab. I never vote Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein. I dislike some government ministers including Shatter & Hogan

My motivation here is that there are a lot of bogus claims and counter claims by journalists, politicians, and press officers that are just not correct.

hatrickpatrick · 13-02-2014 11:24AM

Kaizersoze81 wrote: »

It's looking more and more like this is an internal bugging, rather than an external one. GSOC are coming across as seriously unprofessional and incompetant in this. The head of GSOC should resign.

I think he made it pretty clear that he does not believe it to be internal bugging. Specifically the fake 3G network and the potential bug on the phone line (bolded to emphasize that the actual phone itself was not suspect, it was the line it was connected to) are things which can be done externally and which as has been repeated time and again, average joe wouldn't have access to the technology to pull off.

How exactly do you make out that GSOC are looking unprofessional and incompetent? The only thing that's happened which suggests problems on GSOC's part is the fact that the report was leaked to the media. What else about this is making them look unprofessional?

Sierra Oscar · 13-02-2014 11:25AM

Godge wrote: »

Why does Mooney believe this? How did he get his information?

Ill leave this here - “Black Ops Being Run Off The Books”

Mooney did not just show up out of the blue with this story. This latest incident has been linked to the Kieran Boylan case on a number of occasions this week, and also just now by a former GSOC Commissioner who is talking on RTÉ Radio 1.

hatrickpatrick · 13-02-2014 11:27AM

raymon wrote: »

You are claiming that the report states that there was bugging - this is not the case at all . The report found three anomalies.

The report found three anomalies, one of which had an almost zero possibility of being coincidental. Funny how people keep leaving that part out when discussing these anomalies.
The suggestion from John Mooney on Late Debate is that the reason the anomaly with the phone line couldn't be repeated when they tried it again was that the people doing the bugging had cleaned up their act by the time they got around to doing a further test. There's obviously no evidence of that, it's pure speculation, but the central point here is that, once again, the security rated the possibility of a false positive as next to nothing.

That, in my view, is the key aspect of this which simply can't be brushed aside. As Simon O'Brien said this afternoon, it is of course possible that somebody might want to phone the Ombudsman's office at 1 o clock in the morning, at exactly the time the security experts expected the phone to ring if the line was being bugged... :rolleyes:

Godge · 13-02-2014 11:29AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

How exactly do you make out that GSOC are looking unprofessional and incompetent? The only thing that's happened which suggests problems on GSOC's part is the fact that the report was leaked to the media. What else about this is making them look unprofessional?

Someone in the GSOC has leaked a top secret report to the media. You don't see a problem with this?

Well, what happens next week when I make a complaint and the details of that complaint are leaked the week after to the media? Leaks from the GSOC are an extremely serious matter as O'Brien made clear in his evidence yesterday.

From a GSOC perspective, they are more serious than any external surveillance as they point to an internal problem.

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:29AM

raymon wrote: »

You are claiming that the report states that there was bugging - this is not the case at all . The report found three anomalies.

Regarding my bias - for the record I have no links to any party and I am not a supporter of any party. I don't work for any party . I usually vote for any good candidate in elections which is often an Independent , FG or Lab. I never vote Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein. I dislike some government ministers including Shatter & Hogan

My motivation here is that there are a lot of bogus claims and counter claims by journalists, politicians, and press officers that are just not correct.

Actually that's not true.

The content of the report was stated in the ST. No one disputed that.

What's confusing you is that GSOC, one person in GSOC - O'Brien - decided that he disagreed with definitive nature of ONE conclusion drawn in the report. He said as much.

The security firm disagreed.

Which is PROBABLY what someone in GSOC decided to leak this... because the head of GSOC was ignoring the main claim in the report.

Go watch the four hours of testimony from yesterday and you'll see you're wrong about this. Seriously.

On top of that, GSOC said just yesterday that they DID believe they were bugged. O'Brien just didn't believe that the test was 100% proof that he could take to the DPP.

They believed it enough to:

- stop using mobile phones
- stop meeting in their own office

So no, there's no one in GSOC that thought they weren't being bugged, they believed they didn't have definitive enough proof to seek a prosecution.

And that actually wasn't even a "they" - that decision to reject the definitive nature of the report was made by one person, O'Brien, who admitted himself as much, repeatedly.

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:32AM

Godge wrote: »

Someone in the GSOC has leaked a top secret report to the media. You don't see a problem with this?

Well, what happens next week when I make a complaint and the details of that complaint are leaked the week after to the media? Leaks from the GSOC are an extremely serious matter as O'Brien made clear in his evidence yesterday.

From a GSOC perspective, they are more serious than any external surveillance as they point to an internal problem.

No.

Nice try, but no.

The leak in this case has NOTHING to do with a GSOC case. There's a pretty decent explanation to springs to mind as to why someone in GSOC leaked this report. A whistleblower perhaps.

However, if the Gardai or the State is spying on the state watchdog, it's MUCH bigger than one office of the government leaking one report.

raymon · 13-02-2014 11:39AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Actually that's not true.

The content of the report was stated in the ST. No one disputed that.

What's confusing you is that GSOC, one person in GSOC - O'Brien - decided that he disagreed with definitive nature of ONE conclusion drawn in the report. He said as much.

The security firm disagreed.

Which is PROBABLY what someone in GSOC decided to leak this... because the head of GSOC was ignoring the main claim in the report.

Go watch the four hours of testimony from yesterday and you'll see you're wrong about this. Seriously.

On top of that, GSOC said just yesterday that they DID believe they were bugged. O'Brien just didn't believe that the test was 100% proof that he could take to the DPP.

They believed it enough to:

- stop using mobile phones
- stop meeting in their own office

So no, there's no one in GSOC that thought they weren't being bugged, they believed they didn't have definitive enough proof to seek a prosecution.

And that actually wasn't even a "they" - that decision to reject the definitive nature of the report was made by one person, O'Brien, who admitted himself as much, repeatedly.

What conclusion did Obrien disagree with.?

On what point did the security firm disagree with o Brien? Did they issue a statement ?

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:41AM

raymon wrote: »

What conclusion did Obrien disagree with.?

On what point did the security firm disagree with o Brien? Did they issue a statement ?

They made their claims in the report. They said they thought their test was definitive. O'Brien said he thought it wasn't good enough to send to the DPP, but that is was enough to get them to stop using their mobile and stop meeting in their offices.

Again, I say to you, if you're not trolling, and REALLY want to know what happened, you should go watch that committee meeting.

You are either deliberately being dishonest or you're just ignorant.

raymon · 13-02-2014 11:49AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

They made their claims in the report. They said they thought their test was definitive. O'Brien said he thought it wasn't good enough to send to the DPP, but that is was enough to get them to stop using their mobile and stop meeting in their offices.

Again, I say to you, if you're not trolling, and REALLY want to know what happened, you should go watch that committee meeting.

You are either deliberately being dishonest or you're just ignorant.

I am not trolling , dishonest or ignorant .

You are making statements as if they were absolute fact and I disagree.

MilanPan!c · 13-02-2014 11:53AM

raymon wrote: »

I am not trolling , dishonest or ignorant .

You are making statements as if they were absolute fact and I disagree.

If you had watched that committee meeting and you disagree than you're ... who knows... I do know however that multiple newspapers are reporting the same thing I heard in the committee meeting.

If you want to know exactly how wrong you are, spend the effort on watching it.

It's clear as day that everyone thought they were being bugged... it's also clear as day that O'Brien acted on the report. That it scared the GSOC guys immensely.

So. Go watch it... no one that has would be disagreeing with anything I've said.

adrag · 13-02-2014 11:56AM

Godge wrote: »

Someone in the GSOC has leaked a top secret report to the media. You don't see a problem with this?

Well, what happens next week when I make a complaint and the details of that complaint are leaked the week after to the media? Leaks from the GSOC are an extremely serious matter as O'Brien made clear in his evidence yesterday.

From a GSOC perspective, they are more serious than any external surveillance as they point to an internal problem.

What will happen is the ags will know about it through their surveillance,and then you will in the ****.the gardai are dangerous people

raymon · 13-02-2014 11:57AM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

If you had watched that committee meeting and you disagree than you're ... who knows... I do know however that multiple newspapers are reporting the same thing I heard in the committee meeting.

If you want to know exactly how wrong you are, spend the effort on watching it.

It's clear as day that everyone thought they were being bugged... it's also clear as day that O'Brien acted on the report. That it scared the GSOC guys immensely.

So. Go watch it... no one that has would be disagreeing with anything I've said.

I watched it already - it reinforced my belief that the original newspaper article was bogus and that it is unlikely that bugging occurred at all.

Scofflaw · 13-02-2014 12:08PM

raymon wrote: »

I watched it already - it reinforced my belief that the original newspaper article was bogus and that it is unlikely that bugging occurred at all.

One sees what one wants to see, I suppose. If one's preference is that there be nothing to see that could embarrass the government or one's preferred political party, it's hard to see what others see in the same thing. That's a well-proven fact of human psychology.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw · 13-02-2014 12:09PM

Exchanges on a hot political topic like this can be expected to generate some emphatic positions. The rules remain to play the ball, not the man.

moderately,
Scofflaw

raymon · 13-02-2014 12:22PM

Scofflaw wrote: »

One sees what one wants to see, I suppose. If one's preference is that there be nothing to see that could embarrass the government or one's preferred political party, it's hard to see what others see in the same thing. That's a well-proven fact of human psychology.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Im definitely not trying to shield the government from embarrassment. I don't like Alan Shatter at all and would love for him to be demoted at some stage.

Im just surprised at the level of guessing and supposing being presented as fact .

Sierra Oscar · 13-02-2014 12:29PM

raymon wrote: »

Im just surprised at the level of guessing and supposing being presented as fact .

Why is the government afraid of allowing an independent inquiry from proceeding? Surely that would help clarify the facts? I think we have sufficent ground for an investigation to get underway considering what has been stated this week.

edanto · 13-02-2014 12:29PM

raymon, my earlier attempts to engage with you were frustrating to say the least. Your position is inconsistent. You say that you are a neutral observer, yet you ignore (i) the findings of a legitimate (recommended by the british police ombudsman equivalent) privacy consultant (ii) suspicions of the GSOC relayed clearly at the committee meeting last night and Prime Time earlier in the week.

By all means, call out guesswork and supposition, no-one wants that. But for the love of common sense, please stop ignoring valid claims since it damages the level of discourse here.

raymon · 13-02-2014 12:31PM

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Why is the government afraid of allowing an independent inquiry from proceeding? Surely that would help clarify the facts? I think we have sufficent ground for an investigation to get underway considering what has been stated this week.

I agree - lets find out what happened - rather than everyone guessing

Happyman42 · 13-02-2014 12:36PM

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Hacker???

Jim?

raymon · 13-02-2014 12:44PM

edanto wrote: »

raymon, my earlier attempts to engage with you were frustrating to say the least. Your position is inconsistent. You say that you are a neutral observer, yet you ignore (i) the findings of a legitimate (recommended by the british police ombudsman equivalent) privacy consultant (ii) suspicions of the GSOC relayed clearly at the committee meeting last night and Prime Time earlier in the week.

By all means, call out guesswork and supposition, no-one wants that. But for the love of common sense, please stop ignoring valid claims since it damages the level of discourse here.

My belief is that the findings of the consultant are not definitive .
However - I seem to be in the minority here.

Most people believe that the office was bugged. I need to respect that view , but it is not based on fact at this point

I would completely support an independent investigation by an independent technical panel to assess the inconclusive findings.

bajer101 · 13-02-2014 01:03PM

raymon wrote: »

My belief is that the findings of the consultant are not definitive .
However - I seem to be in the minority here.

Most people believe that the office was bugged. I need to respect that view , but it is not based on fact at this point

I would completely support an independent investigation by an independent technical panel to assess the inconclusive findings.

You seriously don't believe that GSOC were surveilled? You must be the only person who genuinely believes that. Did you not understand the evidence that was given about the phone tap? The security consultants sent a signal down the phone line that mimics the phone line being disconnected. If the line is being surveilled, the automatic response of the listening equipment is to ring the phone. When Verrimus performed this test, guess what happened? The phone rang - at 1am in the morning! So either the phone was being tapped, or someone mistakenly rang the phone at that exact time (a phone that wasn't even used for incoming calls). Verrimus, the experts stated in their report that the chance of this being a coincidence was close to zero. Verrimus, the experts, believed that GSOC were being bugged.

Scofflaw · 13-02-2014 01:04PM

raymon wrote: »

Im definitely not trying to shield the government from embarrassment. I don't like Alan Shatter at all and would love for him to be demoted at some stage.

Im just surprised at the level of guessing and supposing being presented as fact .

I don't think people are using anything that hasn't been presented in public as facts. You, however, really are dismissing anything as fact that comes from some sources, and cherry-picking what you want from other sources. There is not "nothing to see here", or at least not provably so, and your claim that there is definitively no case to answer has absolutely nothing behind it but bluster. You're saying that we don't know, yet presenting your own belief that there's nothing to know as if it were fact.

Nor do I think you can really claim to be unbiased here, since you've been very clearly on one side since the get-go, and your position hasn't changed a bit as new information has come out.

There is a limit to the acceptability of that as a tactic, as I'm sure you've seen me say to other people.

cordially,
Scofflaw

raymon · 13-02-2014 01:14PM

Scofflaw wrote: »

I don't think people are using anything that hasn't been presented in public as facts. You, however, really are dismissing anything as fact that comes from some sources, and cherry-picking what you want from other sources. There is not "nothing to see here", or at least not provably so, and your claim that there is definitively no case to answer has absolutely nothing behind it but bluster. You're saying that we don't know, yet presenting your own belief that there's nothing to know as if it were fact.

Nor do I think you can really claim to be unbiased here, since you've been very clearly on one side since the get-go, and your position hasn't changed a bit as new information has come out.

There is a limit to the acceptability of that as a tactic, as I'm sure you've seen me say to other people.

cordially,
Scofflaw

You are correct - I didn't believe this story from the start and I haven't seen anything conclusive since.

At this point I am going to agree to disagree with everyone on this and respect everyone's viewpoint as being valid.

Just as a reminder of the OP

seems the surveillance was detected last year after the GSOC engaged security consultants in the UK to investigate whether its HQ was bugged.

The consultants allegedly discovered that a phone in the GSOC offices was bugged. The bugged room was "regularly used to hold case conferences on sensitive investigations".

"A test of the line confirmed the phone was being used to eavesdrop on meetings", according to the Sunday Times sources.

edanto · 13-02-2014 01:15PM

raymon wrote: »

My belief is that the findings of the consultant are not definitive .

I agree with you that the findings of the consultant are not definitive. But there is clear blue water between findings that raise suspicions (which is where I believe we are), and two other conclusions.

One of those conclusions - "there is nothing to investigate", seems to be the view of Shatter, and I believe that is wrongly held. I'm relieved to read that you agree with the need for an independent investigation. That horse has well and truly bolted and we can be reasonably sure that any independent investigation will be restricted to reviewing the Verrimus report, just with the advantage of some alternative InfoSec expertise.

It's also clear that there is not enough evidence to reach a conclusion of certain bugging/surveillance. But that is exactly what GSOC have been saying all along!

The political support for GSOC from FG/Irish "Independent" has been appalling.

Garda Ombudsman "under high-tech surveillance"

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