Suburban Spies

© Copyright 2006 Anthony Brina.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1 Fortune 500s

2 Espionage

3 Japan

4 Back to Canada then Italy

5 People’s Republic of China

6 Good Spies

7 More espionage and corruption

8 Back to Canada with a spy

9 Canada still immoral

10 Your future

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With appreciation and thanks to those few people who have offered me assistance in the last 6 years. I will not mention their names as they know who they are.

An additional thought of heartfelt gratitude for one person who tried so hard to bring some sincerity to my life with her consideration, understanding and patient love.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is a presentation of fixed factual situations as a series of stories. For this reason it does not expand in creative description. Should there be strong request by readers, this story can be revisited with comprehensive details of characters and settings as a novel based on true events.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For the sensitive nature of some topics and material in the book, the name Anthony Brina (Antonio Brinatella) is a pseudonyme for the actual author of the book.

The author is a dual citizen of Canada and the European Union Community. He was raised in Canada and attended University in Toronto. He held management positions for 12 years in large multinational companies.

He is well travelled and speaks a second language fluently with basic speaking of four additional languages. He is divorced from his first and only marriage and is father to one child.

PREFACE

As I sit down to write this book I think back over the last 6 years which have brought me great difficulty and suffering in my life. I had considered writing this book several times and in fact had started at one time. It was the complicated and difficulty ridden life that had been dealt me which kept me from focusing on writing the book for other priorities, namely finding places to live which were free from harassment and finding work so as to have a place to sleep and eat.

Finally, with some encouragement from a friend, and having achieved some normality in my life, I sit down to write the book. The title of the book Suburban Spies serves to introduce the idea of espionage activities that occur in an unassuming way that would not be detected by the average person. This book is nonfiction. It is about myself and things that have happened to me and still happen. It is not a life story, but rather a chronology of key events. I will give accounts of situations and events starting in Canada and leading on to Europe and Asia.

Some of the things you will read may sound far-fetched and you may struggle to believe them. In the end I have had conversations with people in governments, experts and other international groups who have acknowledged my situation despite prevailing corruption, and recent new coverage has corroborated it. So, as incredible as some of this book may seem, it really is true. The accounts I present are straight from situations I have been personally involved in.

The subtitle of the book A true story of one innocent Canadian caught in an unsolved international mystery is pretty much self-explanatory. It is an unsolved mystery in that I am still a victim to covert espionage activities as I write this, with the culprits not yet brought to justice.

You could say that this book is live. What I mean is that my communications are monitored which includes my writing of this book. So, as I write, the environment around me will change depending on what information I am revealing in the book. For this reason I have selectively included actual names of people and places, with other names falsely used to hide true identities.

This may have a good effect in that the problem of invasion of privacy and monitoring of people may stop by the time I am finished the book, or I may suffer some misfortune which will prevent me from completing this book.

I want to give you some understanding of the harassment I deal with now and have been for these years. I ask you to keep this in mind when you read the book and imagine yourself in the same situations.

Imagine going to stores, restaurants, bars and other public places to hear music that is programmed purposely to harass you. Imagine going to work every day on public transit to have people follow you. Imagine lookalikes of people you know or had known showing up at places you go, giving you signals with hidden meaning about the person they represent. Imagine talking to your government’s representatives about routine matters only to have them give you false information and mislead you about government procedures. Imagine having your telephone tapped and your conversations, anywhere, all monitored and recorded and shared. Imagine your coworkers, girlfriend, family and friends, all knowing of your private and personal matters as they have been provided recordings of your conversations. Imagine all these people repeating your own words back to you, causing meaningless, confusing and mind-boggling conversations. Imagine these people telling you that your crazy when you go to them for help or confront them. Imagine trying to speak to authorities for help, knowing that the conversation is being listened to and will end up in the hands of the people causing yourproblems. Imagine being watched at any place and at any time to have your actions scrutinized for their meaning. Imagine being constantly tested in conversations or mocked-up situations to validate information people have about you. Imagine trying to have a relationship with someone who spies on you and discredits you by misrepresenting your personal matters to others. Imagine television personalities knowing your every action and word in your own home. Imagine television programs purposely programmed for meaning they imply to you. Imagine people in your life knowing this and continuing the cruel nightmare.

The closest analogy I can think of to describe what a life like this feels like, is to experience the feeling of drowning. The absence of air in drowning is replaced by the absence of reality in your life. As your brain and eventually your consciousness shutdown to the lack of oxygen, similarly in this situation, your emotions and mind become numb to the absence of sincere interaction. A perfect outcome for someone to be controlled, and if unchecked I suspect it could lead to a psychosis.

To those readers not so familiar with such matters, you should take this quite seriously for the illegal and violating methods they are. Self serving expressions like people of interest are used to justify someone as a victim to such harassment. In other words, a perfectly normal and law abiding person can be made a target of these methods for the simple reason there is something a little different about them. Does this scare you? It should. You could easily have your life taken from you by these means because someone is curious about you. Sit back and ponder how easy it would be to have your career sabotaged, to have your family and friends intimidated or bribed to turn their backs on you, to have your reputation ruined or to be wrongfully accused of illegal activity. Even though countries begin to implement privacy of information laws, it is meaningless when considered in light of such covert activities. All your personal matters, be they relationships, finances, professional or career are taken and shared with others to harass and discredit you with.

My experience has found that people who play down the wrongdoing of these methods are usually corrupt themselves or afraid to touch the topic.

As of today, March 11, 2006 it was recently reported at www.cbsnews.com (60 minutes) that the New York Times newspaper is suing the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States for their illegal phone tapping of Americans, and that the Supreme Court of the United States has issued a court order allowing the seizure of recorded phone conversations made by the NSA.

Is this the tip of the iceberg? Keep in mind, just because something is called classified, it doesn’t mean it is legal. Which, by extension implicates people involved who are blindly fooled to think its OK to participate.

Even though this story begins in Canada, we live in an international environment with people, companies and governments around the world, involved in their own respective matters which they keep secret from the public, and go to great lengths to keep secret.

In these far reaching scenarios of espionage activities, corruption and cover ups we find government groups, corporations, and mere individuals. Consider what these different groups have at stake. Consider what these different groups have to lose. Consider what these different groups have to gain. In face of the advantages and benefits that come with controlling other’s activities and opinions and spying on people, you start to see the motivation of such groups in participating in these affairs.

People who have not been tainted by this corruption have talked with me plainly about the matter and asked why Iwould be a target of such extensive harassment and control. I will share with you the same answers I gave them. As you read the book, you will come to understand reasons as to why I have become the center of an international collusion of espionage activity, having had my life threatened in Canada, having had a suicide note planted in my residence in China, and having close people to me wrongfully tell me that I am wanted by the police.

One of the ironies of this situation is that I have done nothing illegal to bring it about. Part of the mystery is what prompted all this control and monitoring of me. Could it be for fear of me, or perhaps someone wants something from me which they get from all the testing they put me through. If it is for reasons of fear, it would explain the death threat and planted suicide note. If it is for reasons of observation and learning, it would explain why I have not been killed yet. Perhaps there is another scenario that some behind the scenes people want to observe me while others want to kill me. This raises the possibility of two different groups and why they differ in their intentions toward me. It is for this that I am using the word mystery in the subtitle of the book.

INTRODUCTION

(CBS) Everywhere in the world, every day, people’s phone calls, emails and faxes are monitored by Echelon, a secret government surveillance network. No its not fiction straight out of George OrwelVs 1984. Its reality, says former spy Mike Frost in an interview broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Feb. 27.

Its not the world of fiction. Thafs the way it works. Fve been there, Frost tells CBS News 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft. I was trained by you guys, says the former Canadian intelligence agent, referring to the United States National Security Agency.

The NSA runs Echelon with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand as a series of listening posts around the world that eavesdrop on terrorists, drug lords and hostile foreign governments.

But to find out what the bad guys are upto, all electronic communications, including those of the good guys, must be captured and analyzed for key words by super computers… .

My concern is no accountability and nothing, no safety net in place for the innocent people who fall through the cracks, he tells Kroft.

Democracies usually have laws against spying on citizens. But Frost says Echelon members could ask another member to spy for them in an end run around those laws

The exposing of such possible abuses of Echelon will surely add to the growing firestorm in Europe over the system.

On Feb. 23, the European Parliament issued a report accusing the U.S. of using Echelon for commercial spying on two separate occasions, to help American companies win lucrative contracts over European competitors. The US State Department denies such spying took place and will not even acknowledge the existence of the top secret Echelon project.

Rep. Porter Goss (R.-Fla), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which has oversight of the NSA, does acknowledge that the U.S. has the capability to pick up any phone call, and that even his own conversations would have been monitored.

But Goss says there are methods to prevent the abuse of that information. I cannot stop the dust in the ether…but what I can make sure, is that …the capability is not abused, he tells Kroft.

This book is an account of events starting near 1995 in Canada and continuing to the date of this book, April 2006. The situations and events described are true having occurred in Canada, Japan, Italy and China. The book initially presents key events in my life which serve as possible causes of the mystery, followed by accounts of espionage activities and cover ups spanning Canada, Europe and Asia. You will read of Japanese, Italian and Chinese culture and society for their role in events having occurred in those countries. No conclusions are drawn as to who is behind the mystery. You are given the events and are told of means and methods, for the opportunity to figure out the mystery. Who is doing it and what are their reasons for doing it.

Is it family or friends, a government, or perhaps corporations are behind this international mystery? Remember this is a true story. I hope you enjoy the book and find it helpful to your life.

1

Fortune 500s

1995 cover up

It was 1995 when i was working for a multinational company in Canada. I had been with the company for nearly two years at the time it first happened.

It was at times an exciting place to work, as a multinational company with household brand names, you were part of a large process of getting fun products to customers.

I had been hired in a professional position in one of the company’s manufacturing facilities (or plants) which processed and prepared products to supply the North American market. After about one year and a half I had been promoted to Senior status in my position with respective responsibilities.

My role saw me interacting with all business groups in this business unit, such as manufacturing, logistics, marketing, finance, quality and research & development, with my main focus on productivity management (or cost reduction). To be sure there is no misunderstanding, cost reduction does not mean I was an ax-man serving the purpose of eliminating jobs. I worked to clearly defined corporate objectives which came down through the company as annual goals for all management staff.

My role was not an easy one, and more difficult than people knew. Unlike other management positions, this role did not have resources reporting directly to it which was a great help in this environment, and yet the business objectives of the position were equivalent. Working through team-based approaches in this set up was a stretch and made relationship building difficult.

This company was expert in its ability to plan and execute its business. A portion of my time was spent meeting with research & development teams from the United States for new products, extensions to existing products or reformulations requiring preparations in manufacturing. I also represented the plant on other teams such as Corporate Finance, Brand Marketing and Canadian Logistics. As the strategic planners laid out action plans to meet short and long term business objectives, these teams brought their respective plans to the manufacturing site for implementation plan making. Aside from external groups to the manufacturing facility, we had our own strategic plans which came