Questions tagged [espionage]
Espionage (also called spying) is the process states use to gather intelligence on each other. Use with specific country tags.
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What useful information can court judgments provide to intelligence agencies?
China’s court system appears to be dramatically pivoting away from a
decade-long effort at judicial transparency. A leaked document from
China’s top court – dated November 2022 - reveals that ...
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Which Western allies of the US have been caught spying against the US?
I was debating a friend of mine as to whether it is in the American interest to continue supporting Israel. I argued against this. One point I raised was that Israel has an extensive history of covert ...
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Is there a precedent for a Western European country expelling U.S. diplomats over spying?
Events in September this year led to the unfolding of a spy saga
involving the US and Spanish intelligence agencies, with the focus
centred on Madrid.
The Spanish Government confirmed reports to El ...
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Is there any precedent of technology falling into the hands of the Chinese or Russians through Israel?
Is there any precedent of technology falling into the hands of the Chinese or Russians through Israel?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-approves-selling-f-22-raptor-to-israel-report/
US Secretary ...
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Does the European Union play any role in mediating conflicts related to industrial espionage between two member countries?
AFP - France is the top offender when it comes to industrial
espionage, and is even worse than China and Russia, the head of a
German company was quoted as saying in a leaked US diplomatic cable
made ...
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Was an Israeli spy ever arrested and sentenced to jail by the U.S. according to the public domain?
"The Israelis are pretty aggressive" when it comes to espionage,
including against the United States. "They're all about protecting the
security of the Israeli state and they do ...
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Have any NATO countries publicly raise objections as being spied upon (by the US) in "Operation Triangulation"?
According to a story sourced to the FSB
“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, together with the Federal Security Service of Russia, uncovered a reconnaissance operation by American ...
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What was the biggest punishment given by Canada against a U.S. spy?
OTTAWA—New figures show Canada has turfed out five spies in the past
decade from a surprising source country — its best friend and ally,
the United States.
From 2004 to 2014 Ottawa sent back to the U....
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Was an American spy ever punished for spying against an European country according to what's available in the public domain in modern time?
Was an American spy ever punished for spying against an European country according to what's available in the public domain?
COPENHAGEN, May 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)
...
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Did China ever get caught spying on a government in a Western country using their technology, alleged or proven?
According to Le Monde Afrique, in January 2017, the African Union's IT
department noticed that their server traffic was unusually full
between midnight and 2 a.m. local time, when few people were
...
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Has the downing of a spy airplane ever been a justifying ground for waging war or causing an escalation that might lead to war?
Both the cause of the collision and the assignment of blame were
disputed. The U.S. government stated that the Chinese jet bumped the
wing of the larger, slower, and less maneuverable EP-3. After
...
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Is there a precedent for a country sending a spy vehicle without doing any actual spying?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G1kFbUmUy0
The above video describes the U.S. detecting an alleged spy balloon and U.S. General Milley claiming that the balloon was a spy balloon, but that it did not ...
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Is China's definition of spying one of the loosest in the world?
The United States government, analysts, and lawyers say that the
revisions to Beijing's anti-espionage law are vague and will give
authorities more leeway in implementing already opaque national
...
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For the purpose of espionage, is it more beneficial to have access to the original classified documents versus its copies?
As far as I understand, the illegal access to classified documents in the US is regulated by the Espionage Act. This old act has since been amended to cover electronic copies of classified information....
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Is the link between China's research and espionage a recent phenomenon or a pattern?
In August 2022, a Chinese ship, the Yuan Wang 5 visited Sri Lanka.
This was claimed to be a "research ship" by China, while
India said it was a "spy ship".
This caused certain ...
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China spy balloon story. International implications of the use of foreign airspace [closed]
This is a follow up to this question.
If I understood correctly the USA are not complaining for a single episode, but they claim that China set up a worldwide surveillance system using balloons. The ...
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What would be the advantages of balloon over other spying tech for China?
Why would China send a huge spy balloon to spy on the U.S.?
The balloon carried an underslung payload described as a "technology
bay" estimated to be the size of "two or three school ...
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Do sub-national governments spy on each other?
It's well-known that even "friendly" or "allied" countries regularly spy on each other. Considering this, I started to wonder whether sub-national entities spy on each other too. ...
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Has any head of state ever proven to be a foreign spy? [closed]
WWI and Russia
In his tour de force conspiracy theory book series Victor Suvorov(a pen name) makes a number of claims about alternative interpretation of the origins of the Soviet Union, Germany and ...
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Why does the US need to spy on its allies?
Recently, I've read about the NSA (the US National Security Agency) spying on European leaders - Angela Merkel in particular.
But this is highly unusual for me. I can understand the US spying on its ...
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Does Facebook have a program that regularly checks their employees' (especially their content moderator teams) political involvements?
Recently, here in the Philippines, there's news that Facebook took down an account/group/page of an organization named "Hands Off Our Children". This is an organization that fights for ...
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What stops one country from issuing another country's passports?
In following the ongoing story about a Chinese spy who defected to Australia, I see this paragraph about the breaking point for why the defection happened:
He said that in Taiwan he was part of an ...
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Why did Wang 'William' Liqiang identify himself?
Wang 'William' Liqiang claims to be a Chinese spy who's defecting to Australia.
In the world of spies, double agents, and triple agents, where intelligence agents go to great lengths to conceal what ...
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Have there been any prior cases of US social media employees charged with spying for (or interfering on behalf of) a foreign power?
NBC reports that two Twitter employees have been charged in the Northern District of California for spying for the Saudis.
Saudis recruited Twitter workers to spy on critics of Saudi regime, U.S. ...
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Is there a clearly-defined meaning of "asset" in authoritative US national-security documents?
Although aware of the subsequent correction from Clinton's spokesperson, defending the original claim of Clinton that Gabbard is a Russian asset, former double-agent Naveed Jamali writes in Newsweek:
...
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How does a government agency know if it is compromised?
The U.S. spies on other nations and in turn gets spied on. I don't think I need a citation to prove this.
Every now and then, there are people who gain access to highly classified information and ...
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Why is an Indian spy case in the International Court of Justice?
Pakistan has captured an Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav, and awarded him the death sentence; but India pursued this in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
How does the ICJ have jurisdiction over ...
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Soviet or Russian equivalent of the Church Committee?
Following the Watergate scandal in 1972, the US senate created a select committee (the Church Committee) to investigate the abuse of power by US intelligence agencies.
Has there ever been a Soviet ...
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Is espionage internationally tolerated?
This might be my perception being biased from what media is reporting about.
But how I see it, here in Germany it is usually reported in media like:
"Spy [Name] was convicted of having transfered [...
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Definition of active measures in a political warfare context
Is there a good definition of active measures in a political warfare context? Wikipedia has an article on active measures in that context, but it lacks a concise definition. Rather than stating a ...
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Did China engage in spy swaps?
The Soviet union and then Russia regularly engaged in spy swaps with the West (even if a recent trend seems to be to "get them good" even after the swap, at least on select occasions.) But ...
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Why is this reply by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein funny? [closed]
During the congressional hearing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on June 28th, Mr. Rosenstein was asked the following question:
Did you threaten to subpoena their [staffers on the House ...
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What could the UK stand to gain from the attempted assassination of ex-spy Skripal? [closed]
Russia has been accused by the UK to be responsible for the alleged chemical attack on Sergey Skripal, but has officially and vehemently denied any involvement. Moreover, Russian government officials ...
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How do these deals with rogue states and the like happen?
It is mostly from Hollywood movies but I have read true story books and have seen news reports on people (not always spies) selling things from weapons, secrets, hacking products, to infiltration ...
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What would the Kremlin stand to gain from killing the ex-spy Sergey Skripal?
What would the Kremlin stand to gain from assassinating the ex-spy Sergey Skripal, now critically ill after being poisoned on March 4th 2018 with a nerve agent?
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What might Russia gain from a false-flag hack on the Olympics?
During the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, a number of South Korean computers were hacked prior to the opening ceremony. A report following the event from two U.S. officials who spoke on the ...
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Did the US request that Russia extradite the 13 Russians charged by Mueller?
On Friday February 16th, 2018, the office of special council announced indictments of 13 Russian Federation nationals with the crimes of fraud against the United States. According to CNN, Russia has ...
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Are the U.S.A. and Russia in a conflict similar to the "Cold War" in 2018?
From my understanding the "Cold War" was not really a war in the traditional sense, but a term to describe the tension between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. as they attempted to destabilise and weaken each ...
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Why doesn't PRC help install a new leadership or stage a coup to preserve DPRK -- or even take it over altogether before the US does?
I realize the title of this question is a bit odd and apparently counter-intuitive, and might give someone a good chuckle, but bear with me for a second.
The People's Republic of China and the ...
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What happens if the President of the United States is deemed a risk to US national security?
Hypothetically, what happens if the President of the United States is deemed a risk to U.S. national security?
If, for example, the President engages in a pattern of (perhaps otherwise entirely ...
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Could a POTUS be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 [closed]
I hear this talk about POTUS being able to deem "classified" information as "declassified" as per their own arbitrary discretion and per that, the POTUS does not violate anything; I wonder if this is ...
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GCHQ denying circumvention, or not?
In the recent blowup over the unverifiable allegation by a White House spokesman that GCHQ was spying on Trump before the election at the behest of the previous administration, the GCHQ issued a rare ...
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Why would the Russian government use hackers and email leaks to try to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election? [closed]
Assuming the Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security is correct that:
only Russia’s senior-most officials ...