Daily Archives: July 22, 2016

Obama/DoJ Allowing Foreigners to Serve Warrants

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This sounds like selective investigations, prosecutions and collaborated witch hunts which all add up to an offshore shadow NSA and new type of Interpol. Is this something else that also will be under the purview of the United Nations? Hello Google?

 Photo: Leaksource

 Photo: Security Affairs

WSJ: The Obama administration is working on a series of agreements with foreign governments that would allow them for the first time to serve U.S. technology companies with warrants for email searches and wiretaps—a move that is already stirring debates over privacy, security, crime and terrorism.

Brad Wiegmann, a senior official at the Justice Department, discussed the administration’s efforts during a public forum on Friday at a congressional office building in Washington, D.C. The first such agreement is being assembled with the U.K., he said.

Word of the plans came one day after a federal appeals court ruled that federal warrants couldn’t be used to search data held overseas by Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.07 % , dealing the agency a major legal defeat.

The court’s decision in favor of Microsoft could prove to be a major barrier to the Obama administration’s proposed new rules to share data with other nations in criminal and terrorism probes, which would be sharply at odds with the ruling. It might lead some companies to reconfigure their networks to route customer data away from the U.S., putting it out of the reach of federal investigators if the administration’s plan fails.

The Justice Department has indicated it is considering appealing the Microsoft ruling to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Justice Department officials are pressing ahead with their own plan for cross-border data searches.

Under the proposed agreements described by Mr. Wiegmann, foreign investigators would be able to serve a warrant directly on a U.S. firm to see a suspect’s stored emails or intercept their messages in real time, as long as the surveillance didn’t involve U.S. citizens or residents.

Such deals would also give U.S. investigators reciprocal authority to search data in other countries.

“They wouldn’t be going to the U.S. government, they’d be going directly to the providers,’’ said Mr. Wiegmann. Any such arrangement would require that Congress pass new legislation, and lawmakers have been slow to update electronic privacy laws.

That U.K. agreement, which must be approved by the legislatures of both countries, could become a template for similar deals with other countries, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Wiegmann said the U.S. would strike such deals only with nations that have clear civil liberties protections to ensure that the search orders aren’t abused.

“These agreements will not be for everyone. There will be countries that don’t meet the standards,’’ he said.

Greg Nojeim, a privacy advocate at the Center for Democracy and Technology, criticized the plan. He said it would be “swapping out the U.S. law for foreign law’’ and argued that U.K. search warrants have less stringent judicial protections than U.S. law.

British diplomat Kevin Adams disputed that, saying the proposal calls for careful judicial scrutiny of such warrants. Privacy concerns over creating new legal authorities are overblown, he added.

“What is really unprecedented is that law enforcement is not able to access the data they need,’’ Mr. Adams said. The ability to monitor a suspect’s communications in real time “is really an absolutely vital tool to protect the public.’’

While Thursday’s court decision represented a victory for Microsoft, which strives to keep data physically near its customers, it may not be viewed as a positive development for all internet companies, said University of Kentucky law professor Andrew Woods. Yahoo Inc., YHOO -0.63 % Facebook Inc. FB -0.37 % and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -0.02 % ’s Google operate more centralized systems. They didn’t file briefs in support of Microsoft’s position in the case, he noted.

Mr. Woods warned that increased localization of data could have the unintended consequence of encouraging governments to become more intrusive.

“If you erect barriers needlessly to states getting data in which they have a legitimate interest, you make this problem worse,’’ he said. “You increase the pressure that states feel to introduce backdoors into encryption.”

Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said the company shares concerns about the “unintended consequences” of excessive data localization requirements.

“But rather than worry about the problem, we should simply solve it” through legislation, Mr. Smith said. Microsoft supports the proposed International Communications Privacy Act. That legislation would, among other provisions, create a framework for law enforcement to obtain data from U.S. citizens, regardless of where the person or data was located.

Companies and governments generally agree that the current legal framework for cross-border data searches is far too slow and cumbersome. Though major tech firms don’t always agree on the particular changes they would like to see, the industry has long sought to get clearer rules from the U.S. and other governments about what their legal obligations are.

A coalition of the country’s largest tech companies, including Microsoft, Facebook and Google, created a group called Reform Government Surveillance that is pushing for updating data-protection laws. The group has said it was “encouraged by discussions between the U.S. and the U.K.”

Thursday’s ruling could lead some Microsoft rivals that offer email, document storage, and other data storage services, but which haven’t designed systems to store data locally, to alter their networks, said Michael Overly, a technology lawyer at Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles.

Google, for example, stores user data across data centers around the world, with attention on efficiency and security rather than where the data is physically stored. A given email message, for instance, may be stored in several data centers far from the user’s location, and an attachment to the message could be stored in several other data centers. The locations of the message, the attachment and copies of the files may change from day to day.

“[Internet companies] themselves can’t tell where the data is minute from minute because it’s moving dynamically,” Mr. Overly said.

The ruling could encourage tech companies to redesign their systems so that the data, as it courses through networks, never hits America servers.

A person familiar with Google’s networks said that such a move wouldn’t be easy for the company.

Julian Castro was a Hillary VP Pick, What Happened?

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Julian Castro is an Obama cabinet official. Yet no consequence.

Obama won’t punish HUD chief Castro for giving partisan interview

Special Counsel Finds Hatch Act Violations by HUD Chief, Others

With the electoral campaigns in full swing, the Office of Special Counsel in recent days has announced a series of findings of Hatch Act violations, including one by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.

On Monday, the independent investigative and prosecutorial agency sent the White House a report saying that Castro violated the act during an April 4 interview with Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric. His statements “impermissibly mixed his personal political views with official agency business despite his efforts to clarify that some answers were being given in his personal capacity,” OSC said. “Federal employees are permitted to make partisan remarks when speaking in their personal capacity, but not when using their official title or when speaking about agency business.”

The questionable comments came late in an interview that dealt mostly with HUD policy. Couric asked Castro what makes him most fearful about Donald Trump being president, to which he responded that “Mr. Trump is not prepared for the office of president because Mr. Trump does not understand what leadership or being president is about, or the basic functions of our government or its relationships with other countries.”

Couric then asked Castro whether he wanted to be the vice presidential nominee on a ticket with Hillary Clinton, to which he replied that he did not think that would happen. “What I am interested in, though, is trying to do a great job here at HUD and serving the people that we do serve, folks that are of modest means but who deserve our attention and our efforts,” he said. “And so I don’t believe that is going to happen, but I am supportive of Secretary Clinton and I believe she is going to make a great president.”

The OSC investigated after receiving a complaint. Its report included details such as the preparations the HUD public affairs staff executed in arranging the interview and the fact that Castro had received four briefings on the Hatch Act since arriving at HUD. “Although he stated during the interview that he was ‘taking off my HUD hat for a second and just speaking individually,’ to indicate he was answering questions in his personal capacity,” OSC wrote, “that disclaimer could not negate the fact that he was appearing in his official capacity for the rest of the interview.”

In response, Castro sent Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner a letter acknowledging error. “I offered my opinion to the interviewer after making it clear that I was articulating my personal view and not an official position,” he said. “At the time, I believed that this disclaimer was what was required by the Hatch Act. However, your analysis provides that it was not sufficient. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. When an error is made — even an inadvertent one — the error should be acknowledged.”

Castro commended the OSC staff’s “professionalism” and said he was tasking HUD’s executives with enhancing training in compliance with the Hatch Act.

Separately, the OSC on Friday announced it had filed a petition for discipline against a Commerce Department GS-15 employee for sending “several emails, while on duty, in support of the Montgomery County (Md.) Republican Party and to assist candidates running for local and state office.” That employee, it added, also invited—while at work– more than 100 individuals to attend an annual “Lincoln and Reagan” Republican Party fundraiser and asked them to send him a check if they wanted to attend.

The Commerce employee had previously received guidance from a senior ethics official warning him not to solicit or receive political contributions or engage in local political activity while at work.

OSC is seeking disciplinary action from the Merit Systems Protection Board.  “As the presidential election approaches,” Lerner said in a statement, “it is important for federal employees to remember the Hatch Act’s restrictions on engaging in partisan political activities while at work and the ban on soliciting contributions for partisan political candidates or groups at any time.”

Last week, OSC announced that it had obtained disciplinary settlements with three other federal employees for Hatch Act violations.

At the Labor Department, a wage and hour investigator was found to have circulated a nominating petition for a mayoral candidate, obtaining signatures from three co-workers and retweeting one of the candidate’s requests for political contributions. She received a three-day unpaid suspension and a letter of reprimand.

At the U.S. Postal Service this May, a letter carrier admitted to displaying a congressional candidate’s campaign sticker on his official vehicle while delivering mail in his official uniform. He will be suspended for five days without pay.

At the Internal  Revenue Service in June, OSC confirmed allegations that an employee, while on official travel to perform site visits with her subordinates, canceled a site visit and asked a subordinate to drop her off at the location of a presidential candidate’s campaign rally. The employee did not return to her place of duty for over four hours and did not request leave, OSC found. The employee agreed to serve an unpaid 14-day suspension.

OSC’s annual report, released last week, showed that its Hatch Act Unit had better focused its activity since a 2012 law relieved its staff of responsibility for state and local government officials who run for political office. In fiscal 2015, the Hatch Act Unit received 106 complaints while resolving 131 complaints, and issued 1,023 total advisory opinions, a drop of 359 from the previous year.