Irish Revolt Issues - Essay Example

Q1. Assess the role of intelligence in the underground war in Ireland 1916-1922 Ireland separated from the colonial rule of United Kingdom and came in to being on 6 December 1922. Before that it was known as the Irish Free State. The Irish Free State was abolished when the state of Ireland was formally established on 29 December 1937, and on that day the Constitution of Ireland also came into force. Before Ireland got independence in the year 1922, there was an Easter Rising in the year 1916 under terms expressed in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. In the separation of Ireland from the United Kingdom, intelligence played a very important role especially in the underground war in Ireland from 1916-1922. Popularly it is known as the Irish Revolt. When this Irish revolt happened the British were at the back foot due to the war against Germany and its economy was in shambles. So it was very difficult for the British to control the insurgency in Ireland. During this period there was a great deal of political violence and upheavel. The violence used by the British to suppress the rebels led to an over-whelming support for them. To seek complete independence the Irish Republican Army waged a guerilla war against the British from 1919-1921. Though the World War I had weakened the British but still the Irish knew that it would be a Herculean task to engage Great Britain in a conventional war. So, the Irish nationalists collectively took a decision to bleed Great Britain slowly by starting an unconventional war against it through guerilla war tactics and intelligence played a very vital role in this. Michael Collins was the Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He pinched the British so much through his deadly tactics that he had an award of 10,000 over his head for 'dead or alive'. The IRA was particularly gruesome on those who took the bait to pass on information about Collins and immediately liquidated the person. Collins was equally vehement in acting against the British intelligence officers and played a vital role in executing a number of them. The British wanted to give a body blow to the Irish revolt by executing Collins and even raised a local force by the name of Black and Tans for the job. Despite that the local intelligence sources of the IRA were so effective that they on a number of occasions pre-empted the raids. There were a section of counterintelligence operatives in the IRA known by the name of Inner-Circle, and who were responsible for the penetration of various British installations. Their network spanned many nations and was able to penetrate deep in to various British facilities extending from Ireland to America and gathered hidden messages that were later decoded and that in turn helped in the Irish Revolutionaries. The Inner Circle also established a central records center, known by the name of Brain Center within Dublin to effectively control and co-ordinate the counter-intelligence activities. This brain center also had detailed dossiers on many high ranking officials and the known intelligence officers and sympathizers of the British. The British intelligence service tried to penetrate the intelligence arm of the IRA and in its bid even planted a fake spy known by the name of Digby Hardy but the Irish intelligence had a inkling about his past and gathered lots of incriminating evidence against him. Eventually, hardy was expelled from Ireland. It came as a major humiliation for the British Intelligence and equally showcased the efficiency of the Irish Intelligence. In their penetration efforts IIS operatives were more consistent and successful than their British counterparts. The IIS had a number of Dublin Castle officials on its payroll and extracted valuable information from them regarding the British military tactics and policies against the Irish Nationalists. The prominent among them were Ned Broy and James MacNamara. The IIS chief Collins also had a very valuable asset inside the British military intelligence who regularly passed information about the troop movements and military plans of the British enabling the Irish to ambush the British troops and loot the supply convoys. There were regular tips about the plans of the British to bust the IRA installations and the fore warnings often played a major role in pre empting any attack by the British. The frequent setbacks to the British military plans and the intelligence led the British to take stock of the situation and do a thorough home work before mounting any fresh action against the IIS. The British to contain and expose the IIS formed an elite group of some deep undercover operatives of the British intelligence, some of them drawn from other countries, so that their identity remains a secret. It was known by the name 'The Cairo Group'. The operatives comprising this group entered Ireland under different aliases seeking lowly jobs so that they don't raise any suspicion and not come under the scanner of the IIS. They started reorganizing the British Intelligence efforts in Ireland and were succeeding in their endeavors when IIS too realized that there were changes taking place on the British side and they too formed a surveillance and enforcement arm called the 'Twelve Apostles' to counter this counter-intelligence effort of the British. The highly developed local intelligence network of the IIS revealed the identity of various members of The Cairo Group. This in turn led to the IIS taking a unanimous decision that 'what has done to be done' and the IIS decided to target the British Intelligence operatives. The day it happened was an early Sunday morning, November 21, 1920 and is known by the name of 'The Bloody Sunday'. On this day several of the IIS members seeked and liquidated many members of the cairo group. Some of them were able to escape and report the matters. The British retaliated quickly and strongly by sending several attack teams. Though it is a disputed fact that they fired indiscriminately on a score of innocent bystanders at a local football match. But the fact is that several people were killed in the retaliatory move. These two days are remains infamous in British as well as Irish history but it is very clear that the British completely failed to dislodge the IIS and that in turn helped the Irish Revolutioaries in changing the course of history. KIM PHILBY : Kim Philby was born in India in the year 1912 at Ambala, Punjab. He was a high-ranking officer of the British intelligence but in reality he was a Soviet Union KGB secret operative. He is best known as the member of the spy ring the 'Cambridge Five'. From the very start of his schooling career Kim Philby had a soft corner for communism and Soviet Union and in turn he enquired from various sources about his intent that how he could serve the ideals of communism in the best possible manner. His interest could not be forbidden for a longer time and eventually he came to the notice of possible recruiters. He was taken in by a Communist front organization and that in turn sent him to further training by the Comintern in Austria. Of course all this was done in a very secretive manner. He came out with flying colors and grasped the basics very well at the same time showing the insatiable thirst to serve the Soviet Union. According to some reports about his initial days at the training facility his handlers and trainers were highly impressed by the level of his ideological commitment for the communist cause. After his superb performance at the comintern he was recruited directly by the Soviet Intelligence agencies to work for them and to further the cause of communism worldwide. Kim Philby started his fantastic journey as a Soviet double agent in the year 1933 in Vienna by aiding refugees in a variety of ways who, managed to flee from the clutches of the Naazi Germany. Thereafter, he traveled to Spain and dabbled in the field of journalism to get a cover and also doubled up as a Soviet agent. He came under suspicion on a couple of occasions but was merely warned and let off after an initial investigation. In 1940 during the World War 2 he applied for a post at the elite British Intelligence agency SIS and was offered one after some preliminary enquiry. Kim Philby was not an operations man, his specialization lie in assessing and evaluating the intelligence inputs. During the Worl War II as a SIS officer Kim Philby made inroads in to the archives and library section and started passing information about the SIS operations against the Soviet targets in Spain, Portugal and other countries. The information passed on by Philby led to compromising of various British agents and operations during the World War II. After that Philby managed to rise through the ranks and became the head of the Soviet Desk eventually. He remained there from 1944-1946. It was like a coup accomplished for a soviet agent. As the head of Soviet desk Kim Philby had access to the names and identities of the British intelligence agents posted abroad and hundreds of classified documents that he passed on to the Soviet Union. In addition to that he had access to the World War II battle plans and the Cold War agreements between Britain and the United States to stop the spread of communism in its tracks in Europe. Everything was fine for Philby till a Soviet agent by the name of Konstantin Volkov decided to defect and come over to Britain and also agreed to reveal the names of the Soviet agents or moles in the British Intelligence network. Kim Philby passed of this information to the Soviets and they in turn liquidated Volkov before he could come over. Later, the flight of Burgess and Maclean in 1951 pointed the finger at him, too; he was interrogated, admitted nothing, and was ousted from the service, finally quitting for Moscow, from Beirut, only in 1963. Donald Maclean : Donald Maclean was born on 25th May 1913 at Marylebone, London. Like Kim Philby he too had a soft corner for the Soviet communism and was member of the 'Cambridge Five'. In Soviet Circles the group was known as the "magnificent five." He was recruited by the Soviet at Cambridge itself. After his graduation he cleared the Civil Services Examination to enter the British bureaucracy. Together the 'Cambridge Five' managed to infiltrate the highest level of the British Government. Maclean worked as a diplomat in the British Foreign Office. Maclean was posted at the British embassy at Paris during the starting of the Second World War. Maclean as a Soviet spy continued to give inputs on a regular basis during the World War II and the era of cold war. His position at the Foreign Office enabled him to have access to the British Cabinet and in that capacity he informed the Soviet Union about numerous classified atomic secrets, the british and American arsenals and in some cases he even supplied the actual minutes of the Cabinet to the Soviets. On the basis of Maclean's information about the atomic capacity of the Americans the Soviets created a blockade of Berlin in the year 1948. It can be said that the information supplied by Maclean to the Soviets played a central part in a number of strategic decisions that Soviets took during the Cold war era. Later in his career Maclean came under the needle of suspicion and was gradually denied access to sensitive documents. Maclean eventually, defected to the Soviet Union with Guy Burgess, another member of the 'Cambridge Five' UNIT - PTR 220 KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION SECURITY 1) Information Security includes preservation of information under three distinct categories i.e. confidentiality, integrity and availability. The primary goals and objectives of security are contained within the CIA Triad. It is the name given to the three primary security principles : confidentiality, integrity and availability. The first principle from the CIA Triad is Confidentiality. If a security mechanism offers confidentiality, it offers a high level of confidence that data, objects, or resources are not exposed to unauthorized subjects. If a threat exists against confidentiality, there is the possibility that unauthorized disclosure could take place. Violations of confidentiality are not limited to directed intentional attacks. Confidentiality violations can occur because of the actions of an end user or a system administrator. They can also occur due to an oversight in a security policy or a misconfigured security control. The second principle from the CIA Triad is Integrity. It is the principle that objects retain their veracity and are only intentionally modified by authorized subjects. If a security mechanism offers integrity, it offers a high level of confidence that the data, objects, and resources are unaltered from their original protected state. Integrity violations are not limited to intentional attacks. Many instances of unauthorized alteration of sensitive information are due to human error, oversight, or ineptitude. The third principle from the CIA Triad is Availability. According to it authorized subjects are granted timely and uninterrupted access to objects. If a security mechanism offers availability, it offers a high level of confidence that the data, objects, and resources are accessible to authorized subjects. Violations of availability are not limited to intentional attacks. Many instances of unauthorized alteration of sensitive information are due to human error, oversight, or ineptitude. 2) By Identity Theft we mean to use any other person's identity in order to steal money or gain other benefits. Identity Fraud happens when someone uses deception to get goods, services or money. The victims of Identity Theft and Fraud can have a very traumatic experience, as it's not merely concerned with the theft of identity but to be held liable for the acts of some fraudster and to face the consequences from the authorities. In this age of terrorism and insurgency there is very high risk of being the victim of an identity theft racket and later on face the consequences. 3) An aspect of security solution concepts and principles is the element of protection mechanisms. These are common characteristics of security controls. Layering, also known as defense in depth, is simply the use of multiple controls in a series. No one specific control can protect against all possible threats. The use of a multilayered solution allows for numerous different and specific controls to be brought to bear against whatever threats come to pass. When security solutions are designed in layers, most threats are eliminated, mitigated or thwarted. Abstraction is used for efficiency. Similar elements are put into groups, classes, or roles that are assigned security controls, restrictions, or permissions as a collective. Thus, the concept of abstraction is used when classifying objects or assigning roles to subjects. The concept of abstraction also includes the definition of object and subject types or of objects themselves. Data Hiding is exactly what it sounds like : preventing data from being known by a subject. Keeping a databse from being accessed by unauthorized visitors is a form of data hiding, as is restricting a subject at a lower classification level from accessing data at a higher classification level. Preventing an application from accessing hardware directly is also a form of data hiding. Data hiding is often a key element in security controls as well as programming. 4) "Industrial espionage pertains to the covert activities performed by businesses to get information about their competition. They use this information to formulate strategies to gain a bigger share of the market. Bigger Profit is the primary goal why spying is being performed in the corporate world."( http://ezinearticles.com/The-Role-of-Computer-Forensics-in-Industrial-Espionage&id=1384290) The direct competitors are most likely to be the perpetrators of this kind of activity. They will be most willing to know about the level and extent of activities going on in the opposite camp. The methods mostly used in Industrial espionage or corporate espionage are data theft or the theft of the trade secrets of the opposite camp. Otherwise it is the most traditional method of creating sabotage in the opposite camp. Information is the key in today's business activities. Whosoever, has the first hand information and the resources to use that information is the winner. So, the information or the data theft plays a big part in industrial or corporate espionage. 5) There are a broad range of laws formulated to address the legal and ethical issues that impact on the security of information held by the individuals and corporations. There are a number of criminal laws that serve to protect society against information crime like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act(among others), these provide criminal penalties for serious cases of Information Crime. In addition to these there are the Intellectual Property Laws that covers the Patents, Copyright and the Trademark laws. These laws equally address the criminal as well as the civil aspect of the problem. References R.F. Foster, The Modern Ireland, Penguin History M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, Routledge Kim Philby, The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition, 2008-12-02 Frdedrick Forsyth, The Deceiver, Bantam Books http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/355048/Donald-Maclean http://www.espionageinfo.com/Bl-Ch/Cambridge-University-Spy-Ring.html www.yourwindow.to/information-security/gl_confidentialityintegrityandavailabili.htm Ed Tittel, Mike Chapple ; Certified Information Systems Security Professional; BPB Publications Fink, Steven. Sticky Fingers: Managing the Global Risk of Economic Espionage. Dearborn Trade, January 15, 2002 Harold. F. Tipton, Information Security Mangement Hand book, Auerbach Publications; 1st edition (March 17, 2008) Read More