{"id":7068,"date":"2015-04-03T07:43:34","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T12:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7068"},"modified":"2015-04-03T07:43:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T12:43:34","slug":"britain-used-spy-team-to-shape-latin-american-public-opinion-on-falklands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7068","title":{"rendered":"BRITAIN USED SPY TEAM TO SHAPE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION ON FALKLANDS"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/04\/02\/gchq-argentina-falklands\/\" target=\"_blank\">BRITAIN USED SPY TEAM TO SHAPE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION ON FALKLANDS<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Faced with mounting international pressure over the Falkland Islands territorial dispute<\/span><span class=\"s2\">,<\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0the British government enlisted its spy service, including a highly secretive unit known for using \u201cdirty tricks,\u201d to covertly launch offensive cyberoperations to prevent Argentina from taking the islands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A shadowy unit of the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had been preparing a bold, covert plan called \u201cOperation QUITO\u201d since at\u00a0<\/span>least 2009. Documents provided to\u00a0<em>The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published in partnership with Argentine news site\u00a0<em>Todo Not\u00edcias,<\/em>\u00a0refer to the mission as a \u201clong-running, large scale, pioneering effects operation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the heart of this operation was the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group, known by the acronym JTRIG, a secretive unit that has been involved in spreading misinformation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The British government, which has continuously administered the Falkland Islands \u2014 also known as the Malvinas \u2014 since 1833, has rejected Argentine and international calls to open negotiations on territorial sovereignty. Worried that Argentina, emboldened by international opinion, may attempt to retake the islands diplomatically or militarily, JTRIG and other GCHQ divisions were tasked \u201cto support FCO\u2019s [Foreign and Commonwealth Office\u2019s] goals relating to Argentina and the Falkland Islands.\u201d A subsequent document suggests the main FCO goal was to \u201c[prevent] Argentina from taking over the Falkland Islands\u201d and that new offensive cyberoperations were underway in 2011 to further that end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Tensions between the two nations, which fought a war over the small archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean in 1982, reached a boil in 2010 with the British discovery of large, offshore oil and gas reserves potentially worth billions of dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BRITAIN USED SPY TEAM TO SHAPE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION ON FALKLANDS Faced with mounting international pressure over the Falkland Islands territorial dispute,\u00a0the British government enlisted its spy service, including a highly secretive unit known for using \u201cdirty tricks,\u201d to covertly launch offensive cyberoperations to prevent Argentina from taking the islands. A shadowy unit of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[249,2254,1511,3298,4413,4543,4605,4604,551,577,4603,655,2080],"class_list":["post-7068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-edward-snowden","tag-falkland-islands","tag-gchq","tag-government-communications-headquarters","tag-great-britain","tag-intercept","tag-joint-threat-research-and-intelligence-group","tag-jtrig","tag-national-security-agency","tag-nsa","tag-operation-quito","tag-propaganda","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7073,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7068\/revisions\/7073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}