Unit 8200

[Magda Hassan]

Unit 8200 (read as eight two-hundred, or יחידה 8200 (shmone matayim) in Hebrew) is an IDF Intelligence Corps unit, responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption. It is also known in military publications as the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps, and was formerly known as Unit 515, and later, Unit 848.
It is the largest unit in the IDF, comparable in its function to the United States' National Security Agency, except that it is not a separate civilian (i.e. Ministry of Defense) body.
Urim SIGINT Base is the most important signal intelligence-gathering installation operated by Israel's military and is part of Unit 8200. The Urim base is located in the Negev desert approximately 30km from Beersheba.”[1]
In March 2004, The Commission to investigate the intelligence network following the War in Iraq recommended turning the unit into a civilian National SIGINT Agency, as is largely the case in other Western countries, but this proposal has yet to be implemented.
Unit 8200 is led by a Brigadier-General whose identity remains classified.
Ronen Bergman revealed in a 2009 book that a Hezbollah bomb, disguised as a cell phone, exploded at Unit 8200's headquarters in February 1999. Two officers were injured.[2]
Within IDF structure

• General Staff
  

• Intelligence Directorate
  

• Intelligence Corps
  

• Unit 8200
  

• Hatzav Unit
  

References

1. ^ Le Monde Diplomatique, 2010 September, "Israel’s Omniscient Ears: Israel’s Urim Base in the Negev Desert is among the most important and powerful intelligence gathering sites in the world. Yet, until now, its eavesdropping has gone entirely unmentioned," http://mondediplo.com/2010/09/04israelbase
   
2. ^ Book: Hezbollah got inside MI's inner sanctum Ynet, 13 Sept 2009
   

External links

• The Unit - Forbes.com
  
• Unit 8200 history - idf.il
  
• nrg.il
  

[Magda Hassan]

Israel’s omniscient ears

Israel’s Urim base in the Negev desert is among the most important and powerful intelligence gathering sites in the world. Yet, until now, its eavesdropping has gone entirely unmentioned
by Nicky Hager
Israel’s most important intelligence-gathering installation is only a 30km drive into the Negev desert from Beersheba prison – where those taking part in the Gaza aid flotilla were briefly detained this June. The base, hidden until now, has rows of satellite dishes that covertly intercept phone calls, emails and other communications from the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. Its antennas monitor shipping and would have spied on the aid ships in the days before they were seized.
Israel’s powerful position in the Middle East is often associated with its armed forces, nuclear weapons arsenal or covert (Mossad) operatives. But just as important is its intelligence gathering – monitoring governments, international organisations, foreign companies, political organisations and individuals. Most of this happens at the installation in the Negev a couple of kilometres to the north of the kibbutz of Urim. Our sources, close to Israeli intelligence, know the base first-hand. They describe lines of satellite dishes of different sizes, and barracks and operations buildings on both sides of the road (the 2333) that leads to the base. High security gates, fences and dogs protect the facility. As you can see on the internet, the satellite images of the base are quite clear. A practised eye easily discerns the signs of an electronic surveillance base. A large circle in the farmland shows the site of a direction-finding antenna (HF/DF) for monitoring shipping.
The Urim base was established decades ago to monitor Intelsat satellites that relay phone calls between countries. It expanded to cover maritime communications (Inmarsat), then rapidly targeted ever more numerous regional satellites. As such, says intelligence specialist Duncan Campbell, it is “akin to the UK-USA pact’s Echelon satellite interception ground stations”. The Echelon system is a network of interception stations around the world, set up in 1996 by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Satellite phones used by the Gaza-bound aid ships were easy targets for this hi-tech equipment.
Our Israeli sources described how the computers are “programmed to detect words and phone numbers of interest” from intercepted phone calls, emails etc, then transferred to Unit 8200 – the headquarters of Israeli signals intelligence – in the city of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. There they are translated and passed on to other agencies, including the army and Mossad.
Unit 8200 and its counterparts – the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the American National Security Agency (NSA) – are less famous than their foreign intelligence and special operations agencies (MI6, the CIA and Mossad). Yet the signals agencies are far bigger.
The Urim base targets many nations, friend and foe. A former analyst at Unit 8200, a military service conscript, said she worked full time translating intercepted calls and emails from English and French into Hebrew. It was “interesting” work, studying routine communications to find the nuggets. Her section listened mostly to “diplomatic traffic and other off-shore [international] signals”. They also searched public internet sites.
The Urim base, said our sources, is the centre of a spying network that taps undersea cables (notably Mediterranean cables linking Israel to Europe via Sicily) and has covert listening posts in Israeli embassy buildings abroad. Unit 8200, which is officially part of the Israeli army, also has secret monitoring units within the Palestinian territories and uses Gulfstream jets fitted out as signals intelligence aircraft.
Excluding television satellites, most satellites, in an arc stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, are probable targets: European, Arab, Russian and Asian, as well as the Intelsat and Inmarsat satellites. Images of the base show 30 listening antennas, making Urim one of the largest signals intelligence bases in the world. The only comparable-sized station is a US facility at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, UK.
Other stations have been known about since the 1980s. There is a large NSA base near the German city of Bad Aibling, and another US base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, just northwest of an airbase with a runway full of B-52 bombers. The main UK base, at Morwenstow, Cornwall, can be spotted through its 20 listening antennas above the cliffs. France has its own network, known as Frenchelon, under the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), which includes several bases in France and its overseas territories.
But unlike these, Israel’s spy facility at Urim remained invisible for decades.
http://mondediplo.com/2010/09/04israelbase

[Magda Hassan]

The Unit
Gil Kerbs 02.08.07, 6:00 AM ET


TEL AVIV - Harvard, Wharton and Stanford alumni consistently head the charts of executive leaders, though, on a purely academic basis, others like the University of Chicago's business school rank as high or higher. Not only are elite university graduates better paid--they'll usually have an easier time finding a job and are by and large recruited by alumni of their own alma mater.
In Israel, on the other hand, one's academic past is somehow less important than the military past. One of the questions asked in every job interview is: Where did you serve in the army?
Israeli "networks" are often based on relationships from the army service ("he and I ate from the same mess tin ... " or "you can count on me brother, after all, we slept in the same boot camp tent ... "). In Israel, graduates of elite units are held at higher esteem and gain preferred terms in the business world. But when it comes to high-tech jobs, nothing can help you more than the sentence, "I'm an 8200 alumnus."
Unit 8200 is the technology intel unit of the Israeli Defense Forces' Intelligence Corps. And one thing about it is clear to all--Israel's high-tech world is "flooded" with Unit alumni, as entrepreneurs and company founders or junior and senior executives. For full disclosure, I served as an officer in the Unit and today I work as an adviser in the venture capital industry, specializing in penetrating China and in high technology.
But Unit members can be found in a host of top Israeli businesses. Check Point, ICQ, Nice, AudioCodes (nasdaq: AUDC - news - people ) and Gilat are just a handful of the companies founded by those who came from the Unit. Gil Shwed, Yoel Gat and Shlomo Dovrat are but a few famous alumni. And 8200 alumni, like American university alumni, are interested in co-workers who resemble themselves.
Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of Unit 8200 and current consultant to high-tech companies, explains that many areas of Israeli high tech would have been fundamentally weaker were it not for technologies that came from 8200.
"Take Nice, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology," says Gefen. "Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse's main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit's technology. Look at Metacafe, one of the hottest companies today. Eyal Herzog, one of the founders, is also an 8200 alumnus and he accumulated a huge amount of relevant experience in the Unit."
"I think there's an axiomatic assumption that Unit alumni are people who bring with them very high personal and intellectual ability," says retired Brig. Gen. Yair Cohen, the previous Unit commander and current vice president of Elron, who believes that Unit alumni prefer that other Unit alumni work under them. "They have a common background, and they know that 8200 has the privilege of sorting, choosing and selecting the best group so that you don’t have to invest so much in the selection yourself. I myself, after I came to Elron, brought five additional alumni with me."
Cohen can also explain why this recruiting tactic works so well. "Just genius isn't enough," he says. "The Unit understood it needed people who are also human beings: on the one hand, capable of working in a team, and on the other hand, won't loose the sparkle or the ability to be outstanding--and that's what we began searching for and bringing in. This combination of personality, behavior and values along with high intellectual ability is critical in the industry, and that, I think, is the secret of the Unit alumni's success."
"There are job offers on the Internet and wanted ads that specifically say 'meant for 8200 alumni,' says Ziv, a Unit alumnus. "So it doesn't really matter what you did in the unit--you've already benefited. It simply raises your shares in the civilian market."
The Alumni Association of Unit 8200 decided recently to take the integration of its alumni into high tech one step further. Last month, an alumni conference was held at the Unit's headquarters located in the center of the country. The goal was to strengthen the social network among the Unit alumni.
In Israel, there has been an abundance of alumni organizations of military units for years. The novelty for the 8200 was the decision not to focus on perpetuating the memory of the fallen, or on nostalgia for past glory, but to leverage the group for business development including an Internet site, similar to linkedin.com, for networking.
At the January gathering, one Unit alumnus who now works at Check Point looked around him. "It looks like there are many lieutenant colonels here from the Unit who came mainly to find work after their discharge," he grinned.
Retired Col. Nir Lampert, chairman of the 8200 Alumni Association, former Unit deputy commander and current CEO of Dapei Zahav group, explained that "we've decided to update the objectives of the Alumni Association." Now, the Unit's alumni network will help graduates find a job, investment capital or recruit new talent for a corporation.
"I see the acceptance into the Unit as a changing point in my life, an opportunity I feel has been given to me," says Tal, who was a technician in the Unit and today studies electrical engineering at the Technion--the MIT of Israel. "When someone puts it into your head that you can do anything and that everything is just a matter of time, you begin to believe it."
Tal offered to compare engineering teams in the U.S. and Israel: "In the U.S., they have several times more budget and manpower. The average engineer there is much older, with many years of experience and lots of advanced degrees. Theoretically, it sounds like we have no chance to compete and be relevant. How can a bunch of children with no degree and several soldier-students with a degree but no experience succeed in accomplishing anything?
"Turns out we are successful. Flexible thinking is our advantage. For some positions, there's a huge advantage to 18-year-old children who think they know everything--or, more precisely, who have been told time and again that no mission is too difficult for them. Take 10 of the smartest academics and they won't be able to do half the work my team does."
Unit members are taught that there's no such thing as "impossible," while "no" is something temporary that can change by persistence and insistence, even if it's the Unit commander himself who said "no."
"I think the uniqueness of Unit alumni is that if you are a small screw or have just arrived at a company two weeks ago, you still behave as if you're management. Unit alumni aren’t afraid to contribute ideas and make suggestions--they're always 'big heads' even if it's their first day on the job," sums it up an alumnus who serves today as CEO of a large Israeli investment fund.
"The Unit was a home for me. In addition, it's an amazing hotbed for the best brains in the state of Israel," says another conference attendee, Minister of Tourism Issac (Buji) Herzog, a Unit alumnus. "And the truth is that's also where I met my wife."
In the past, the Ministry of Defense did try to check the drain of top engineers from the Unit to the private sector, taking with them to companies like ICQ or Check Point concepts that may have begun in the military. "In my opinion, the only criteria should be whether or not it exposes the Units' capabilities or is a threat to national security," says Gefen, a former Unit commander. "As for exposing capabilities, the Unit's people have been commendably responsible. People worked on sensitive projects and knew to identify the boundaries."
"Moreover," says Yair Cohen, another former unit commander, "there's a decisive contribution here to the economy of the State of Israel. Although 8200 doesn't directly enjoy the fruits, the State of Israel does, and in my opinion that's a complementary part of the Unit's task."
Originally published in the February issue of Forbes Israel.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-...srael.html

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20..._boot_camp

"Everybody who matters in high tech here is ex-8200," says Medved. "I salivate over these guys." A partial list of 8200 vets-cum-millionaires includes Gil Shwed, one of Israel's youngest billionaires. He spent four years in the unit in the late 1980s, then went on to found Check Point Software, whose firewall technology now protects the networks of 98 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. Shlomo Dovrat, an 8200 vet, sold his financial software company to a U.S. competitor for $210 million. Two other alums of the secretive unit, brothers Yehuda and Zohar Zisapel, are a veritable start-up factory. They've sold 23 telecommunications companies -- six went public on New York's NASDAQ, and seven sold for more than $1 billion each.

[Magda Hassan]

Is Israel's booming high-tech industry a branch of the Mossad?

Author of 'The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America' says the NSA thinks so.

By Yossi Melman In 2006 the Check Point Software Technologies company, which specializes in protecting computer systems from hackers and data theft, wanted to acquire an American company called Sourcefire, which works in the same field. The great advantage of Sourcefire was that its clients include the American Defense Department and the National Security Agency. The U.S. administration, however, by means of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, did not approve the acquisition.
The committee made its decision based on an opinion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NSA security officers. The two organizations were afraid that Check Point, which was founded by Gil Shwed and fellow graduates of Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' high-tech intelligence unit, would have access to top-secret information, which it could pass on to Israel's intelligence community.
The fear and suspicion currently is directed not only toward Check Point, but also other Israeli high-tech companies like Verint, Comverse, NICE Systems and PerSay Voice Biometrics, some of which work in data mining and engage in software development for tapping telephones, fax machines, e-mail and computer communications.
The above accusations come from journalist and writer James Bamford, whose new book, "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America" (Doubleday), came out this week in the United States.
Bamford, a former producer for the ABC television network, has spent the last 30 years writing about the NSA - one of the most important and least-known intelligence agencies in the United States, but usually in the shadow of the Central Intelligence Agency. The NSA is responsible for eavesdropping on telephones, fax machines and computers; intercepting communications and electromagnetic signals from radar equipment, aircraft, missiles, ships and submarines; and decoding transmissions and cracking codes. It has contributed immeasurably to U.S. intelligence and national security.
In this respect, the United States resembles Israel: Successes attributed to the Mossad should often be credited to other intelligence units - first and foremost Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the NSA.
This is Bamford's third book, and it affords a look into the mazes of the NSA. In 1982 the Justice department threatened to prosecute him for revealing agency secrets in his first book, "The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." In his second book, "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency," he described the NSA with a great deal of enthusiasm, which made him the organization's hero of the day. The NSA even organized a party in his honor at headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. His new book, which is critical of the NSA, has sent him back to his starting point.
Bamford's main thesis is that before September 11, 2001, the agency failed along with other intelligence agencies in understanding the Al-Qaida threat, even though it had intercepted members' phone calls and e-mails. This stemmed in part from excessive caution for upholding laws and respecting citizens' privacy. In April 2000, then-NSA director general Michael Hayden (currently the director of the CIA), vividly described to a Congressional committee how, if at that very moment Osama bin Laden were to step onto the Peace Bridge at Niagara Falls and cross into the United States, "my people must respect his rights."
After the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the organization swung over to the other extreme. According to Bamford, since September 11 the NSA has had no compunctions about violating the Constitution and has been eavesdropping on American citizens.
One of the outstanding examples in the book, which has been well-covered in the American media, is the fact that the NSA has listened in on bedroom conversations of journalists, military officers and officials serving in Iraq. The NSA may eavesdrop on and intercept transmissions outside the United States, but cannot do so to American citizens without a court order.
Another of Bamford's important assertions, which also concerns Israel, is that the largest telephony and communications companies in the United States - in fact all of them except QWEST - have cooperated with the NSA, allowing it to tap their lines and optic fibers.
The above-mentioned Israeli companies and others are important software and technology suppliers for not only the American telephony companies, but for the NSA itself. Bamford claims that 80 percent of all American telephone transmissions are conducted by means of the Israeli companies' technology, know-how and accessibility. Thus, Bamford believes, the American intelligence community is exposing itself to the risk that the Israeli companies will access its most secret and sensitive digital information.
Bamford does not provide any backing for this thesis; he only points to a circumstantial relationship. The Israeli companies were largely established by graduates of 8200, and therefore he says they are connected by their umbilical cords to Israeli intelligence, and their CEOs and boards of directors include senior Shin Bet officials like Arik Nir or former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy (Nir is the CEO of Athlone Global Security, a hedge fund that has invested inter alia in PerSay Voice Biometrics, and Ephraim Halevy is a member of the Athlone Advisory Board).
To put it mildly, Bamford has no love lost for Israel. In his articles, he publishes claims by American Navy officials who believe Israel maliciously attacked the American spy ship Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War. He holds that the September 11 attack did not stem from radical Islam's basic hatred of America, but rather from its anger at the United States' support for Israel. He calls the nineteen September 11 terrorists "soldiers" and describes them with a great deal of sympathy - Davids who "only" demolished four airplanes of the American Goliath.
In this context, and apparently because of his deep hostility, Bamford asserts that in light of the problematic record of Israel, which did not hesitate to spy against America on American soil, Israeli companies should not have been given the keys to the kingdom of America's secrets. His attitude toward Israel apparently pushes him over the psychological brink, as his book hardly mentions the close cooperation between the two countries' intelligence communities, mainly in the war against international jihad terror or in monitoring Iran.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/fea...d-1.255520