The FBI has warned of increasing activity by China and Iran in an effort to silence critics of their governments on US soil and influence US domestic politics. Informs Freedom Matrix.
At a briefing on transnational repression and persecution, FBI counterintelligence officers urged victims of repression by China and Iran to contact the intelligence service to protect themselves and prevent further violation of their rights.. The statement was made against the background of monitoring the growing trend of interference in the internal affairs of America by authoritarian regimes through intimidation of certain categories of people. Officials said Iran and China have begun using private detectives to surveil critics of the regimes, and there have already been several criminal cases involving private detectives in Tehran and Beijing.
“We have not seen this in previous investigations related to China and Iran.. We will alert the private investigator sector as well as US law enforcement and local governments,” the FBI said.
The investigation has evidence that the police created fake accounts on social networks, with the help of which they discredited dissidents living in other countries. Some police officers had connections to US telecoms workers who used them to block access to large content distribution platforms for activists so that they could not speak in public. Separately, it is indicated that the police recruited many US citizens to spread Chinese narratives, propaganda of the Communist Party of China and espionage.
