Janitors targets for espionage?

DEFENSE Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr has ordered a halt to outsourcing of janitorial services for the defense department for “operational security.”

“We have to tailor even the most basic services to conform to operational security,” Teodoro said during a forum Tuesday night organized by the Manila Overseas Press Club.

He said contractors are now being subjected by the DND to “secure and strict vetting.

“We are getting them from manpower agencies. They are not properly motivated. They are part of your secure environment, and yet they are a possible target for espionage and other things,” said Teodoro.

Teodoro also said there is an ongoing “full security review” at the Department of National Defense. He said the review starts from him and will be implemented down the line.

He also said security is also among reasons he has not responded to calls and text messages.

“I perhaps have offended some people by not responding to text or calls in unsecured devices because the threat of vulnerability is really there,” he said.

Teodoro said the defense department is a “highly secure, operationally secure and sensitive national organization.”

“Which is why we are transitioning into a highly operationally secure environment,” he said.

He said this is “not only for our own protection but also for our ability to interoperate freely through the free exchange of information and capabilities with partners and allied countries.”

In October last year, Teodoro ordered all DND and Armed Forces personnel to stop using a digital application that uses artificial intelligence to generate portraits. He said the application “can be maliciously used to create fake profiles that can lead to identity theft, social engineering, phishing attacks, and other malicious activities.”

A month earlier, the National Security Council (NSC) said it was studying the possibility of banning the Chinese-owned social media platform Tiktok among uniformed personnel due to the risk of data surveillance.

The NSC said there is a possibility the application is being used by China to monitor the movement of military personnel and members of the security sector amid the ongoing dispute in the West Philippine Sea in