Letters to grieving parents

Two sets of parents, both desperate for answers about how their sons died. Their narrowing field of options have led them to one man, former Metropolitan Police Commander Ray Adams. Can he hep them?

Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in a racist attack in south London, April 22 1993. Boris F was a Berlin hacker who disappeared October 17 1998. His body was found on October 22 in a park adjoining the Britz Sud U-bahn station. Both sets of parents found themselves asking Adams for help. The circumstances are quite different, and so are the responses Adams writes. Yet there are some underlying similarities between the two letters he wrote to them, eight years apart. Why that should be isn’t clear.

Perhaps it’s his training as a policeman that produces the similarities. In each case he tells the parents little. His message was: ‘The police have the matter in hand. I’m not going to tell you anything. Leave it to the experts. It’s not appropriate to be asking questions.’

Writing the first letter, to Doreen and Neville Lawrence’s solicitor, J R Jones, Adams stressed that what they were asking was exceptional and that anything that was shared would be directly, not through their lawyer. It is an understanding letter, chiding them gently that really they should leave it to the professionals. They would handle it best.

Boris’s mother wrote to Adams in July 2001, nearly three years after the death of her son, in frustration with the progress of the Berlin homicide investigation, which would conclude that her son killed himself. She asked him to explain what references in Boris’s notes to Adams and $$$ referred to.

Adams would probably have been conscious of his Lawrence letter at the time of Boris F’s death, because he had been cross-examined at length about it just three months before, on June 4 then against on July 16. He tells Boris’s mother that her suspicions about $$$ are unfounded and she should not pursue them. He has spoken to Berlin police but he cannot give her his statement because he doesn’t have it. She should leave it to the police. If she looks anywhere, she should look at Boris’s friend. He does not mention that one of those frie$$$, Oliver Kömmerling, works for him.

The 1993 letter to Stephen Lawrence’s parents was the last official act Adams took before taking sick leave and resigning from the Metropolitan Police.  The background of Adams’ subsequent questioning is covered here:http://toldbyanidiot.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/panorama-ray-adams-and-lots-more/

     â€Dear Mr Jones

    RE MURDER OF STEPHEN LAWRENCE

    In response to your recent letters and in particular that of 29 April 1993.

    As you are aware Chief Superintendent Philpott is the officer responsible for policing activity within Plumstead Division. The murder of Stephen Lawrence is being conducted on his behalf by DS Weeden. The appointment of a senior detective from the AMIP team is normal practise in these circumstances.

    In the overwhelming majority of murder investigations liaison with the family of the victim is direct. It is most unusual for the appointment of solicitors to represent the family interest as there is no conflict of interest or purpose. Police are of course fully aware of the private and public concern and distress over the murder of Stephen. To address these concerns DS Weeden appointed liaison officers from within his team to deal with enquiries and concern from both Mr & Mrs Lawrence.

    You are no doubt aware of the conference at Eltham Police Station on 28 April 1993 when Deputy Assistant Commissioner Osland, the officer commanding 3 Area, met with members of the Commission for Racial Equality, Bexley and Greenwich Councils. At the meeting concern was expressed that the murder investigation team were being inundated with enquiries from the many parties interested in the progress of the enquiry. It was said that the level of inquiry was distracting the team from the task in hand. Appreciating the genuineness of most enquiries Chief Superintendent Philpott asked that all such inquiries be channelled to either Chief Inspector Whapham, Plumstead Police Station, or himself.

    On reading your particular correspondence it occurs to me that whilst many of your questions ask about the sort of information that is generally provided to families of victims some is not. In particular the information requested at 1. of your letter dated 26 April 1993 is not material that is normally released.

    I was concerned to read your comments in your letter of 29 April 1993 concerning the liaison arrangements with Mr & Mrs Lawrence. I have discussed this with Mr Weeden, the arrangements and briefing of the officers is being examined. We shall also be talking to both Mr & Mrs Lawrence to satisfy them of our earnest wish to do everything to keep them properly informed.

    I think you will agree with me that we must all do everything in our power to ensure that those responsible for the murder of Stephen are brought to justice I ask that you resist the temptation to enquire direct with the Senior Investigating Officer or his team. Chief Superintendent Philpott is available as well as I to assist you and other interested parties.

    I trust my comments assist you in your delicate task.

    Yours sincerely

    R Adams

    Commander (Support)”

Adams’ letter to Boris’s mother sent on July 20 2001

    Dear H—-

    I believe that someone is advising you and distracting you by talking about $$$ and my meetings..

    We could talk endlessly about my meetings with Boris.   Nothing would be produced that would in any way assist with the investigation into his death.   We have an expression in English that this is a ‘Red herring’.   That is something that is a false trail being created by someone to hide the truth.

    My meetings with Boris were innocent.   My meetings genuinely were to see if he would consider working for us when he had finished at University.

    I mostly met Boris alone.  On one occasion I took an engineer with me.   The engineer has left the team and I am no longer in contact.

    I never met any of the frie$$$ of Boris and he never mentioned any names to me.

    I cannot understand why my meetings with Boris are so important.   They were innocent and ended some months before Boris died.

    I went to the Berlin Police very soon after the death of Boris was announced.    I met with the investigator in Berlin.   My statement was translated into German and was never recorded in English.   I do not have a copy.   I have no objections to you receiving a copy of my statement from the Police.   At the time of making the statement I gave the Police the best guess as to the dates of my meetings with Boris.   As more time has since passed I cannot recall the dates.

    I believe that the frie$$$ of Boris know about his death.   I was told by the Private Investigator that one of them visited Boris on the morning that he disappeared and was later found dead in the park.   That friend apparently walked with Boris to a cash point and Boris took out money for his grandmother.   He then walked to the Underground Railway and disappeared.   The investigator told me that Boris still had the money for his grandmother in his pocket.  If this is true then I think this strange and I would have thought that Boris would have given the money to his mother.   Equally it could be that when he took the money from the cashpoint that he did not intend killing himself.   That is why I think the friend that was with him is very important.   It is also why I do not trust the frie$$$ of Boris and that could include e

For some reasons the copy of the email that was on Ray Adams’ hard drive e$$$ there, mid-word.

It’s the last of a series of letters he writes to Boris’s mother through an intermediary, and his tone is understanding but troubled. He has previously pointed inquiries to the police. He said $$$ had hoped to hire Boris after his university degree, though he did not mention that this would be as a hacker/informant. He said a packet of microchips that $$$ had sent to Boris from Israel were for his university project, and entirely innocuous.

Adams finished the letter and emailed it. The time stamps on the email show that it was only then that he wrote to the $$$ exec who had posted the chips to Boris:

    From:    Adams, Ray

    Sent:       Tue, July 24, 2001 5:34 PM

    To:          Shen-Orr, Chaim

    Subject:

    Hi Pal

    Can you remember the type of chips that you sent to Boris Floricic in Germany and what he needed them for.   If you can remember can you remember how many were sent.

    Ray

This is how another security professional, though one apparently with no prior police experience, reacted.

Adventures in America: ‘All we had to do was stick to our story and deny’
Posted on October 25, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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Abbreviations

JN John Norris, US head $$$ Operational Security

LR Larry Rissler security chief for $$$ client DirecTV

Alex $$$ code name for Oliver Koemmerling

PC Canadian pirate, informant for Rissler

NDC News Datacom, renamed $$$

BILL $$$ code name for Canadian pirate Marty Mullen

Jellyfish $$$ code name for associate of Koemmerling

POMELLA $$$ code name ofr European hacker

BELLA $$$ code name for an associate of Koemmerling

Exhibit 2009 Case No. SA CV03-950 DOC (JTL)

FAX

Reuven.

As I discussed with you the announcement by John that Larry R had been told about Alex was something of a major surprise. I know that you know the story from JN. What I am doing here is putting my perspective so that you have a record of how I see things. I have not discussed this with JN and will not mention it to him. This is a communication between myself and you alone.

Until the moment that JN dropped the bombshell I was very happy that the bonding between JN and Alex was going extremely well. If I had known about this matter in advance I would have instructed JN not to tell Alex.

I will not go over the old ground again. Just accept it from me that I was content that despite whatever table thumping LR may indulge in I knew that there was absolutely nothing that LR could do about Alex. I say this for the following reasons.

1. Alex did not personally programme the card.

2. Alex did not touch the card. His fingerprints would not be on it.

3. Alex did not supply the card.

4. The card sent by PC to LR by Fed Ex could have come from any source and there is no continuity of evidence to suggest that it was the card seen by Alex. As we all know continuity of exhibits is an essential ingredient in court cases. This was a major point that ruled a great deal of evidence inadmissible in the OJ trial and they did not send the exhibits by courier from another country.

5. In order to give any evidence whatsoever PC would have to come into the open this would destroy him in the Pirate Community and destroy his very successful business. He would not take this risk.

6. The card supplied by PC could be a card programmed by BILL, or anyone else.

7. The card was allegedly programmed in Canada. This is not a criminal offence in Canada and would not be acceptable as evidence in the USA. The only possible offence could be if Alex had sold a card as this did not happen there is no offence. Whereas PC sold cards to Jellyfish and did commit a criminal offence.

8. The RCMP would not waste their time and resources investigating a single card in these circumstances.

9. In Canada there is sufficient recent precedent to suggest that the Police and Courts would not co-operate with the USA in the investigation of the alleged offence. As a good illustration look at SCI. Afer one year of investigation with a mountain of evidence and maximum effort we are no nearer to resolving the case. This case is not effected by the very bad relationship between the USA and Canada whereas any contemplated against Alex would be.

10. LR is obviously condoning a very active Grey market operation by PC in Canada. Any attempt to launch a prosecution against Alex would immediately result in discovery against PC. It would seriously embarrass DTV. Apart from Copyright issues there are probably conspiracy offences that could be brought against DTV and LR personally. LR is aware of the discovery of the operation through the tracking of cards. I cannot imagine that he would ever run the risk of exposing his double agent, himself and his company to such problems by attempting to pursue Alex given the very weak case against him.

11. PC continued to programme cards with the BILL 3M after the Alex visit. As described he is conducting Grey market activity at the front door and pirate activity in the basement. His dealings in both types of cards runs into the thousa$$$.

12. If LR could take action against Alex he could also take action against Jellyfish. He has not dones so despite the fact that it would be ten times easier. Why not

13. JN says that the Alert to the Airports was to effect the arrest of Alex ‘on probably cause’. He would be searched and detained. The assumption being that something would be found in his possession. I am well aware of these provisions and know better than anyone their strengths and weaknesses. I was the Interpol Secretariat for Europe. I dealt with the RCMP and FBI on these very matters. A stop and detain alert is really a pathetic provision. It means that we have no evidence against the person ONLY suspicion so please stop him and if he has anything with him detain him and let us know. Alex had absolutely nothing with him. I even disobeyed your advice that he could walk through with his laptop. He did not even have a credit card with him. There would have been absolutely no legitimate grou$$$ for detaining him for a second. Had anyone done so there was a lawyer ready to get him out of trouble.

14. The only possible evidence that could ever have existed to connect Alex to the card was what was on his PC. It was wiped clean the same day the card was programmed. As an extra precaution the computer was broken into two parts and sent by two separate courier companies to two separate addresses in Germany. So what was on the card that LR received from PC. It was the 3M programme from BILL of which there are thousa$$$ in existence. Nothing existed technically to connect Alex to the card in either Canada, the USA or Germany.

So revealing to LR about Alex was done without a literal lire or death risk. As I said there was a tricky situation that required managing. I cannot see the reasons why we made the disclosure to LR and find it impossible to justify the risk and exposure we now face.

Telling LR is as good as telling PC. Agenst and Handlers have a relationship. In this one I suggest that PC is in control. JN described LR as a nice idiot to Alex. In fact, JN did a very good job initially at explaining just how useless LR really is, he described him as a speech writer.

We also discussed between ourselves that ‘under no circumstance must we tell LR that Alex works for us’. It was an absolute priority. That decision was made and we all acted on it. Yet JN now tells us that within 4-5 days of the days Alex left the USA he told LR. At that time the heat was removed as Alex was safely away. The motvie for telling LR was not to protect Alex. The only reasons could be to stop LR making further enquiries. However, even if he had made exhaustive enquiries there was nothing he could do against Alex. All he wanted to do was find out if he was working for us. This was the first question he asked. All we had to do was stick to our story and deny. JN did not know of the name given by LR and could truthfully say that he had not heard of him. Then if LR discovered the real name he could again say that he did not know anyone of that name. As JN said to me ‘I do not know his real name and do not want to know it.” I have not been told of the reasons why the revelations made and cannot understand why we did not stick to the plan.

Alex is under contract to us and us to him. We undertook not to reveal that he worked for us. Yet we did this and did not tell him. My own situation is difficult to understand I was not consulted nor told during the past month.

Three weeks ago Alex contacted me and said that PC had told Sam Moreale that ‘Jellyfish is an idiot but to be wary of the German. He works for NDC, I know, I know’, he said/ SAM said that PC was doing his best to convey that he (PC) knew beyond doubt that what he was saying was true. When Alex told me what PC had said and asked whether LR could know about him working for $$$ I promised him that this was not the case. I offered to double check with yourself as Alex was clearly concerned over the confidence with which PC was making his claim. I telephoned you and again you assured me that LR did not know. I called Alex back and said ‘I guarantee you 1 million per cent that LR does not know.”

There then followed the strange claim by POMELLA that BILL knew that Alex worked for NDC to the extent that he said that he had seen the Payroll. We all know this could not be true. However, the talk of ‘payroll’ was assumed to be an invention by BILL so that he could pass on his confident claim in a convincing manner. Benji contacted POMELLA and he repeated his absolute conviction that Alex worked for NDC but declined to give over a copy of the payslip. He added that he knew it to be true but wished that Benji did not mention his (Pomella) name as his did not want trouble with NDC.

BELLA also dropped all contact with Alex at this time. We assumed that he was just angry that Alex would not help the Canadians. Bella is very close to SAM.

I now have the situation where Alex knows that we have revealed his name outside $$$. The reasons given do not add up to a justification. He accepts that we had a difficult position to manage but never dreamed we would go this far. He would rather have had the position where LR, the FBI and the RCMP spent the next five years trying to prosecute him than have his name revealed. He would not have taken that risk and would have begged us not the reveal his name.

Alex is convinced ‘100%’ that PC has been told by LR.

How Ray Adams’ hard drive disappeared
Posted on October 27, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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$$$ Operational Security chief Reuven Hasak on how Ray Adams’ hard drive went missing, and his plan to sue him immediately after the 2008 EchoStar trial. (This does not appear to have occurred). Given the strength of Hasak’s comments it would be very surprising then if any branch of News Corporation or its associates had ever provided financial or other assistance to Adams, directly or indirectly, after his departure from $$$ in May 2002.

Testimony by Reuven Hasak before the United States District Court, Central District of California, Southern Division  in Echostar Satellite Corp et al vs $$$ Group Plc

April 30, 2008

    Counsel for $$$ Darin Snyder

    Witness:  Reuven Hasak

    Before Judge David O. Carter

     Q.   And are you aware that at some point a hard drive containing $$$ materials disappeared from $$$?

    A.   Yes.

    Q.   Okay.  How did that hard drive disappear?

    A.   When Ray Adams, who used to be the head of our UK team, retired or resigned, I asked Len Withall, who replaced him, to get from him all the equipment belonged to $$$, especially laptop, cell phone, et cetera.  So Len went and called Ray Adams and told him that he needs it, and Ray told him to — sorry — to come to his home in Wi$$$or, England and to pick it up.

    Q.   What did Mr. Withall do?

    A.   He went to Wi$$$or, he visited Ray Adams in his home, he got the laptop, and he went back to the office in Maidenhead.

    Q.   What did $$$ discover when it examined the laptop? A.   Andy Coulthurst, C-O-U-L-T-H-U-R-S-T, was the technician.  Andy got this laptop, and he told Ray that something is wrong here because the hard drive inside is either corrupted or deleted, erased.

    Q.   Did $$$ follow up with Mr. Adams?

    A.   Yes.  At the same day or same moment, even, Len called Ray Adams and told him that “You are fooling me.”

    And Ray said, “Yeah, because I wanted to keep the other hard drive because I had some family pictures there.  So come by, and I’ll give you the original hard drive.”

    Q.   Okay.  What did Mr. Withall do then?

    A.   The next morning Mr. Withall then went back to Wi$$$or.

    Q.   Was he able to get the hard drive?

    A.   No.  Because, surprisingly, Mr. Adams told him that the last night the hard drive was stolen from him.  He said that he kept the hard drive in the car, in his wife’s car.  And, surprisingly, last night the car was broken in — burglared, and they stole a couple of things from the car including the hard drive.  He found other things in the neighborhood, but he did not find the hard drive.

    Q.   So Mr. Withall wasn’t able to get the hard drive?

    A.   He was not able, and he told Ray that he’s a liar.

    Q.   Mr. Withall told Ray Adams he was a liar?

    A.   Yes.

    Q.   Did $$$ do anything to follow up on the disappearance of that hard drive?

    A.   We are looking, and we distributed the information that the hard drive is missing to see if it will surface in the pirate community.  And we were hoping that the police will do something.  But because the complaint was submitted to the police by Ray –

    Q.   Who submitted a complaint to the police?

    A.   Ray, Ray Adams.

    Q.   Did $$$ submit a complaint to the police?

    A.   No.

    Q.   Why not?

    A.   Because according to the rule in the UK — I checked it then — and they said, “The rules in our country, you cannot submit two complaints.”  If we have a problem, for example, in Israel that the laptop is stolen from an employee, he should submit the complaint, not us.  He should submit the complaint because the laptop, for an example, was under his responsibility.  So he should prepare the complaint.

    Q.   Did $$$ check to determine whether or not Mr. Adams had filed a complaint with the police?

    A.   No.  I asked Len to check it, and he said he cannot. The police will not respond to him if he would check about other complaints.

    Q.   Does Mr. Withall have experience with law enforcement in the UK?

    A.   Correct.

    Q.   What kind of experience does Mr. Withall have?

    A.   I think for 30 years he was an officer with the police.

News Corp phone hacking: So how high will US courts look in the chain of command?
Posted on October 29, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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In April 2008, the month that James Murdoch agreed secretly to pay Gordon Taylor £700,000 to settle a UK phone hacking claim, Judge David Carter in the District Court of California was asking questions about corporate responsibility—when a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was accused of corrupt behaviour, how high in the chain of command should executives be called to account?

Why is it important? It’s significant for the US actions to be filed over telephone hacking. How high is the chain of responsibility in such cases likely to go? It’s a taste of what may come on this issue.

To date, more than 70 people have been arrested in the UK in connection with the various hacking investigations, and close to 20 people are facing criminal charges. No senior executives have lost their jobs as a consequence, other than Rebekah Brooks, former head of News International, who is herself facing criminal charges over over phone hacking and perverting the course of justice. James Murdoch, to whom she reported, has moved to an executive position in the US. But as the EchoStar case shows, the ground rules are different in the US courts. This is not to prejudge any finding. It is merely mapping the terrain for the conflict.

The context here: US satellite broadcaster EchoStar and its conditional access arm NagraStar had accused News Corp’s $$$ arm of pirating its product. $$$ in turn claimed that EchoStar had improperly obtained stolen emails from the hard drive of its former UK security chief Ray Adams.

In the course of the 2008 trial Judge Carter repeatedly warned counsel that senior executives on both sides had better show up to testify. Echostar chief Charlie Ergen had been the first witness. Now Carter wanted the other three leading players on the stand: “There are four individuals behind all these corporations — Peled, Murdoch, Ergen, and Kudelski.” ($$$ chief exec Abe Peled, Rupert Murdoch, Ergen and Andre Kudelski of Kudelski Corporation, which owned NagraStar together with EchoStar). ‘. . . Those are horrendous allegations on both sides.’

It’s a theme he returned to, again and again. You can see the idea evolving for him. In the end he would be assuming that at least Abe Peled would be testifying, if not Rupert Murdoch. But he would be disappointed


No. SACV 03-950 DOC  US District Court, Central District of California, Judge David O Carter presiding. (All text below comes from the transcript)

Judge Carter: You may tactically end up placing yourself in a position where there’s a certain assumption amongst jurors — and you can’t read their mind — that leadership starts at the top, and it’s hard to believe with billions and billions of dollars and this industry in flux that the top of the ladder didn’t know that.

Just as Mr. Ergen, you would argue, should have known as a leader — and his conniving that you’ve alleged in terms of revenge motive — all starts with Mr. Ergen.  And now he’s been presented, and the jury can judge that  credibility.  That side thinks it’s good; your side thinks  it’s not so good.

Without Mr. Murdoch here or Mr. Peled here, you leave yourself in the position of an argument that Rupert Murdoch on behalf of DirecTV or Mr. Peled on behalf of $$$ not only knew about the thefts that took place, these 26,000 pages of documents, but the unsaid supposition is that leadership starts at the top.  And this isn’t a couple hundred there that got stolen.  This is a whole industry with two primary competitors.  And some jurors may find it  hard to believe that minimally, if it doesn’t come from  Mr. Ergen or Mr. Murdoch, it certainly comes from the  highest levels of management.

 â€”————

Now, I understand that we’re using these  engineers, et cetera, to speculate about where the  management decisions came.  Why didn’t you call Thomson  chip?  We can go right up the ladder to Shmoe or whatever  his name is, but we’ll never find as a practical matter if  that order was given.  You’ll never find it in a major  corporation with thousa$$$ of employees.  So it’s fair warning, because if, in fact, the  argument ensues, I don’t know that I’m going to limit that  argument.

So do you have to produce Rupert Murdoch?  Absolutely not.  Mr. Peled?  Absolutely not.  Do they ever  have to produce Mr. Kudelski?  Absolutely not.  But if they don’t, the adverse inference is so strong that your case would be over.  So Mr. Kudelski is going to be here.

————-

THE COURT:  Counsel, however you designate it, for either EchoStar or $$$, I think it’s literally tragic that you’re placing on both parties’ parts low-level engineers on the witness stand from Haifa, Israel, who don’t quite know where they got directions from in Jerusalem.

I think it’s tragic that we have this whole milieu of $$$, NagraStar — so I am fair to both sides — NagraStar, $$$, and DirecTV, and you have what you may designate a corporate representative for 30(b) and yet the gentleman doesn’t quite understand the structure.

Both of you in my humble opinion with international companies crossing international borders should have had Ergen here.  You should have had Andre Kudelski here.  You should have the gentleman from England — help me.

MR. SNYDER:  Dr. Peled.

THE COURT:  Dr. Peled, and you should have Rupert  Murdoch.  When you have alleged piracy of this type and you  have the trading and stealing of documents of this type in  those allegations, the jury has the right to hear it from the very top of these organizations that they didn’t know  about this theft or they had no knowledge of it, and they  have the right to see the person and judge their demeanor  and their credibility.  I don’t think I could have been any clearer about that by giving a warm invitation to all to testify, nor do I think I could have any more clear about the fact that sometimes jurors may assume that leadership starts at the top.

———————

THE COURT:  Can you get Dr. Peled here?  Can you get Mr. Murdoch here?  How about Andre Kudelski?  Is he going to come in here and say he never had knowledge about stealing $$$ documents?  Can you get Mr. Murdoch and Mr.  Peled to say, you know, at the top of this pyramid, at the top of this structure, they had no idea about the alleged satellite piracy if it occurred? If you can’t produce somebody in court, why is this jury listening?  I don’t mean to denigrate either of you gentlemen.  You are not middle management.  You are the top of the structure, but you are the top of a limited structure.  I am getting tired of hearing about different corporations who are supposedly separate entities, and, quite frankly, there are four individuals behind all these corporations — Peled, Murdoch, Ergen, and Kudelski.

So you can divide that up, slice that with the jury  and pretend that all these are separate entitles, but the  shares flow, and the ownership flows, and finally they are  publicly held companies.  That’s another reason why the  consumer has the right to know it’s a publicly-held company.

————————————

- In our society, and generally speaking, this  concept of plausibility/deniability has grown up, where the  top of these various institutions are somewhat insulated by those who work in different capacities, who, in a sense make the everyday decisions and oftentimes end up or sometimes end up in court.

It’s a difficult position to foresee, but with the allegations involved in this rather small competitive market, that I may be approached four weeks from now by EchoStar, wishing to argue that not only is this a satellite piracy, but this has to have occurred at the highest levels  of $$$’s management structure.  And since the Court is not  bifurcating liability and punitives and is going to the jury  at one time, there is only one opportunity during your cases  in chief, on behalf of EchoStar and $$$, to put your best  foot forward in front of this jury.

If liability was found, in that same argument,  you’ll probably seek to argue that not only is this  egregious, but it could only be conducted over this period  of time — with these stakes — not by middle management,  but by the very top of the $$$ power structure.  And perhaps  you’ll pick names, and I don’t know that that’s fair.  I  haven’t heard the evidence yet.  I don’t know how far I’ll  let those arguments go.  But there’s every possibility.

And the same thing on $$$’s behalf.  It’s been  represented to me that they’re going to be able to show that  26,000 pages of $$$ documents were literally stolen, that  has great weight to $$$; and that that’s transferred in some airport near the North Pole or someplace in Canada in the middle of the night to one Mr. Ereiser, who then gets that back to EchoStar.

Interview at the ABC, LateNight

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/pirating-pay-tv/4339420

TS

After Toronto: NewsCorp/$$$ makes a winning play
Posted on November 1, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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The next NewsCorp/$$$ undercover operation after the debacle in Toronto would be played straight by the book—perhaps for that reason, it was one of $$$’s successful operations.

In September 1997 Ray Adams, European chief for $$$ Operational Security, had told his boss Reuven Hasak of his plan to provide 1000 blank smartcards to help a European hacker codenamed Ilean perfect his pirate hack of digital $$$$$$ cards used by News Corp competitors.

In October 1997, Adams had sent Oliver Koemmerling to Toronto to pose as a pirate hacker, only to have $$$’s client DirecTV alert the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI to put out a Stop and Detain alert for Oliver. The $$$ hacker fled over the border into the US, then was flown discreetly back to Europe.

In the days following, DirecTV security chief Larry Rissler, the head of Signal Integrity, forced $$$’s John Norris to admit that Oliver worked for $$$.

DirecTV was outraged that $$$ had pulled an undercover operation, offering to priate DirecTV cards as a cover, without telling them. With the future of the business at stake, $$$ was forced to agree to a moratorium on any further undercover operations that were not approved by $$$.

So in November 1997, $$$ pitched a new operation and won DirecTV’s approval. It was called Operation Johnny Walker, and it was the first undercover operation by Chris Tarnovsky, who had become a full-time $$$ employee on July 1. Tarnovsky had previously worked as a programmer for Canadian pirate Ron Ereiser using the name ‘biggun’.

The plan was recorded in an $$$ internal email dated November 24 1997. Tarnovsky would produce pirate software and pirate programmer devices on order from a group of Canadian pirate dealers, which would be engineered in a way that meant that the pirate cards they produced could be “killed” by an electronic counter measure by DirecTV.

The object was to disrupt the pirates’ business model and cashflow. And it was all subject to getting approval from Larry Rissler at DirecTV.

Ron Ereiser said later that the warning lights were there that Tarnovsky was working for $$$, but at the time “I didn’t have a clue.”

Tarnovsky testified about his undercover role in the 2008 EchoStar trial. The trickiest moment was when one of the pirates saw from his ticket that he had caught a connecting flight to meet them in Calgary via Dallas, Texas.

$$$ had secretly moved Tarnovsky and his family to southern California to live, which was why his ticket went via Dallas, but his cover story was that he lived in Virginia.

Tarnovsky testified that one of the dealers “threatened to break my legs or my knees or something, some part of my lower body, if he ever found out that I was a ‘narc’”.

It’s not clear how real the threat to Tarnovsky was. But the operation as a whole received DirecTV’s approval and it appears to have been an outstanding success.

This makes it all the more surprising then, that the following year when $$$ initiated another undercover operation, which appears to have been within the moratorium period, they did it without DirecTV’s knowledge. Perhaps even more surprisingly, it ran into problems.

The US Customs undercover op that came unstuck: NewsCorp/$$$’s discreet silence
Posted on November 4, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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The 1998-99 undercover operation that followed NewsCorp/$$$’s success with Operation Johnny Walker in North America remains shrouded in mystery.

It’s almost as if there were two separate undercover operations. One was a huge success, a coup for US Custom and the FBI that triggered headlines across the United States. The other operation, as described in $$$ internal emails, careered out of control.

John Norris’s email of August 24 1999 reads like a classic example of an operational stuff-up, the carefully controlled phrases covering what must be close to panic and despair: “The skills of the hackers in the field continue to impress me unfortunately . . . The Eurocard must somehow die and stay dead
.”

Norris’s great rival, Ray Adams in London, could hardly restrain his satisfaction at Norris’s plight. “This is what you said all along,” he wrote to Oliver Koemmerling.

The public and private descriptions of what happened are very different. And yet they seem to refer to the same operation. There are three sets of accounts of what happened. The first is what Chris Tarnovsky, the hacker who worked as an undercover agent for $$$ Operational Security out of California, and his boss John Norris, testified in the 2008 EchoStar trial.

Tarnovsky was asked about Operation Smartcard.

    “I worked with U.S. Customs out of Blaine, Washington, on an operation where they were selling counterfeit DirecTV.”

It was a sting where Customs officers actually sold pirate cards for DirecTV, which were based closely on the pirate cards developed by Ron Ereiser’s dealer group.

    “So the same ECM [Electronic Counter Measure] that I already designed would knock both Ron out and the Customs operation out when this was finished, when it was determined to pull the plug on the operation.,”

John Norris, the US head of $$$ Operational Security, also testified about Operaton Smartcard:

    “It was approximately a year-long operation headed by United States Customs out of Washington State.  At the time I read a Customs document, it was the largest fraud investigation in United States Customs not related to drugs . . . Operation Smart Card was focused on identifying and prosecuting large distributors of pirated DirecTV, $$$ technology within the borders of the United States. $$$ provided intelligence and assistance on this operation in addition to technology that we provided to U.S. Customs.

Norris was asked how $$$ handled concerns that pirates would be able to keep using the pirate cards after the operation finished. He said,

    “An effort was made to write software that could be downloaded from the satellite to the footprint on — in the   United States that would deactivate or disable those specific Smart Cards
.

    Q    Do you believe that Operation Smart Card was a success?

    A    Yes.

Version 2 of Operation Smartcard is the string of media reports about it on August 9 2000. Martin Crutsinger of Associated Press described Operation Smartcard as a 22-month undercover sting that kicked off in September 1998, in which

    “undercover agents sold counterfeit access cards they called ‘Eurocards’ through an Internet business created by Customs agents. By the time the Customs Service terminated the undercover portion of the operation in June 1999, agents had sold 3,195 illegal cards to dealers and 382 cards to individuals, generating more than $516,000, which was turned over to the U.S. Treasury, officials said.

    “In July 1999, DirecTV used electronic countermeasures to shut down all of the pirated cards sold through the governments Web site.”

Four people had pleaded guilty to felony charges and another seven people had been charged, Crutsinger reported.

It was a joint Customs and Treasury anti-counterfeiting operation. The key term is counterfeiting, which puts it in the province of the US Secret Service out of Treasury.

A DirecTV spokesman was quoted in the new reports as praising the investigation.

Version 3 of Operation Smartcard emerges from $$$ internal emails which were on the hard drive of Ray Adams, European chief for $$$ Operational Security.

Tarnovsky had designed the Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) broadcast by DirecTV on July 6 1998 that killed the Eurocards sold by Customs. Four days later with all of the pirate cards out of commission, Tarnovsky was gloating over an email from Ron Ereiser to Bulgarian hacker Plamen Donev, in which Ereiser suggested the ECM offered a theory of what had gone wrong with the cards.

    Negative houston! They just don’t have a clue
 The jumps were just a bluff actually and they bought if and totally missed the real reason the kill is not revivable! Heheheheheheh I love it when a plan comes together!

But six weeks later on August 23, $$$ online researcher Ted Rose reported that several Canadian sites claimed that they could repair the Eurocards.

Norris replied the following day confirming that this was correct. He summarised the position. $$$ had prepared two versions of a pirate software called Montana for the Customs operation. But there had been a second piece of pirate programming called Van, prepared for an undercover operative called Myron.

Within six months Tarnovsky had discovered that the Van pirate cards had been ripped off by another pirate, who then began reselling his own version of the Van program  called Ring of Steel. At this point then, which would have been around March 1999, the Van program had escaped $$$ control and was in the wild.

$$$ had believed that hackers would not be able to exploit their pirate products but neither the Van nor the two Montana cards turned out to be safe:

    “The hackers were eventually able to dump the technology and sell it as their own
. It took 6-7 weeks after the July 6 ecm but now, the hackers have discovered how to repair the Eurocards :-( This is confirmed – not rumors.

Norris said the RCMP was moving slowly but would eventually ask $$$ for an ECM to kill the pirate cards off, this time for good.

    We must remember however, that when they tell us to shut off the Eurocards, we must be able to respond accordingly (there will be no problem with DTV assuming the moratorium is over explained that there were two parts to the operation.

    Whatever this countermeasure is going to be, I hope and trust it will be the mother of all countermeasures. The Eurocard must somehow die and stay dead


In short, Norris was saying, $$$ had to find a way to kill these cards, but six weesk down the track he knew of no way to do so; and he thought DirecTV would not “assuming the moratorium” is over.

That was the moratorium under which $$$ had promised not to run any undercover operations in North America without DirecTV’s approval. Norris seems to be saying DirecTV had not been consulted.

$$$ appears to have taken the view that if they were assisting law enforcement, there was no need for DirecTV approval. In fact, Norris did not seem to know when the moratorium would expire.

At that point then, US Customs had been involved in selling pirate cards which were still functioning, without DirecTV’s knowledge. It appeared many more had been pirated from the cards sold by Customs. Court cases at that time had put the cost to DirecTV of piracy at $10,000 for every card sold. The 3,577 cards sold by US Customs would have cost DirecTV $35.77 million, and millions more from the re-pirated cards.

All apparently without DirecTV’s knowledge.

What was the outcome? At some $$$ must have found a way to kill its pirate cards though the Ray Adams emails shed no further light on this. A year after Norris’s email, US Customs went public, reporting the 11 people charged. The announcement was paired with new of another series of piracy arrests organised by DirecTV. It was common cause that it was all a major coup.