Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [239]
As has been the case in the United States, British efforts to change the legal structure to combat terrorism have been controversial. In July 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed several new measures, including a border patrol police to cover airports and seaports and biometric screening (data derived from unique identifying sources, such as fingerprints) for all visa applicants. Most controversial, however, has been his proposal to extend the period in which terrorist suspects could be held without charges from 28 days to 56 days. (A 2005 proposal by then-prime minister Tony Blair to extend the period to 90 days was defeated in Parliament.) Brown’s proposal has run into opposition from civil liberties groups, as well as some officials involved in law enforcement.
CHINA
In the past few years, the press has written much about Chinese intelligence, stemming largely from allegations of espionage activities against the United States. Intelligence in China, as in all communist states, has a twofold purpose: internal security activities against dissidents and foreign intelligence operations. As was the case with the Soviet KGB, the internal suppressive function is an important distinction between the Chinese intelligence service and those of the United States or Britain.
Chinese intelligence is run by the Ministry of State Security. As with all other security issues in China, however, the most powerful body in the state is the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Communist Party, which has much greater influence than its title would imply. (Control over the commission was a sore point between outgoing president Jiang Zhemin and his successor, Hu Jintao. Hu became president in 2002 but Jiang did not give up his chairmanship of the CMC until 2004. Their struggle underscores the importance of the commission as a key lever of control in the Chinese government.) Five Ministry of State Security bureaus are of greatest importance in intelligence.
• Second Bureau: intelligence collection abroad
• Fourth Bureau: technology development for intelligence gathering and counterintelligence
• Sixth Bureau: counterintelligence, primarily against Chinese communities overseas
• Tenth Bureau: economic, scientific, and technical intelligence
• Foreign Affairs Bureau: foreign intelligence liaison
Although much controversy surrounds allegations of Chinese espionage, its existence is not in doubt. China has a well-developed HUMINT program that relies on the large overseas Chinese population. For example, Larry Wu-tai Chin was a Chinese spy who worked for the CIA for decades before being discovered in the 1980s. A more controversial, and ultimately inconclusive, case was that of Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos Laboratory scientist who downloaded thousands of pages of sensitive material. Chinese espionage puts special emphasis on scientific and technology targets, both civil and military. These activities were the major focus of the 1999 report of the Cox Committee (U.S. House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China), especially allegations that China had stolen an array of information about nuclear weapons and satellite-related technology. Some observers have also expressed concern about the large number of Chinese students enrolled in U.S. colleges and graduate schools, many of them in technical areas (physics, computing) that might indicate national security concerns. There have been several prosecutions of individuals on charges of spying for China since the Wen Ho Lee case, suggesting—at least anecdotally—a robust Chinese espionage program.
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