Vol. 75/No. 45      December 12, 2011

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. agency responsible for government-sponsored nonmilitary broadcasting outside the country, granted a contract to Maryland-based firm Washington Software Inc. to set up a system capable of sending 24,000 messages from the U.S. government every week to cell phone users in Cuba, with the option of further increases. The contract term began September 15.

In the government’s bid solicitation, it provided a list of answers to potential questions, including: “We are concerned with the legality of sending these types of notifications to people in another country. Does the U.S. government take legal responsibility?” Answer: “The Agency assumes responsibly for the content of the messages. The contractor assumes all responsibility under this requirement.” In other words, for the $84,000 a year contract the bidder must be willing to disregard international law.

According to the Palm Beach Post, “the system makes it almost impossible to block the texts because the computer makes them look as though each individual message, or SMS, was sent from a different telephone number.”

Carlos García-Perez, the director of Radio and TV Martí, said that the stations are “using the text messages to deliver the same kind of news and information that the U.S. government-run stations already broadcast” to Cuba. The two stations transmit counterrevolutionary propaganda in Cuba and southern Florida.

Earlier this year a Cuban court sentenced Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor, to 15 years in prison for distributing sophisticated satellite Internet and voice communications equipment to selected individuals and groups in Cuba as part of a covert State Department operation.

According to the April issue of the Paris-based Le Monde Diplomatique, “Possession of a satellite phone is strictly forbidden in Cuba for national security reasons. In fact, apart from avoiding all control by local authorities, such devices … permit the transmission of data to coordinate an air strike to a country that has been the victim of many terrorist attacks—close to a total of 6,000, the most recent in 1997—and air bombings since 1959.”

In addition to direct government operations, Washington’s proxy groups based among counterrevolutionary Cuban exile mercenaries are also increasingly involved in cyberwar operations. The Miami Herald published Nov. 27 a front page article titled “Cyber commandos spill phone numbers of top Cuban officials.” The article reported that the Miami-based website of the United Front of Exiles and Organized Groups, or FUEGO in Spanish, has been publishing the personal phone numbers and other details on the private lives of many central Cuban officials, saying it wants to “warn” them that they “face a dark future if the government collapses.”

The group brags it will post the cell phone numbers of thousands of Cuban security and intelligence officers and the street addresses of “virtually every single military base on the island.”
 
 
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