Monthly Archives: August 2020

Protests in Beirut over Possible Stolen Millions?

Posted on by

238 people injured in Beirut protests » Breaking News ...

It is beginning to sound like some oligarch corruption out of Ukraine but read on.

Salamé became Governor of Lebanon’s central bank, on August 1, 1993. He was subsequently reappointed for four consecutive terms in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2017. Salamé chairs the BDL Central Council, the Higher Banking Commission, the AML/CFT Special Investigation Commission and the Capital Markets Authority.

He is a member of the board of governors at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and at the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF).

Le Commerce du Levant magazine économique libanais ...

In 2012, Salamé chaired the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group in Tokyo. So he is well connected and maybe a Middle East swamper,,,,but could something else be revealed?

***

(Reuters) – Offshore companies linked to Lebanon’s central bank governor own assets worth nearly $100 million, a media group said in a report, as his role in Lebanon’s economic turmoil is under intense scrutiny.

The companies tied to Riad Salameh invested in real estate in Britain, Germany and Belgium over the past decade according to a report by a collective of European news outlets called the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a nonprofit media organisation, and its Lebanese partner, Daraj.com.

The report by the Sarajevo-based OCCRP does not allege any wrongdoing by Salameh and Reuters has not reviewed any of the documents on which the report is based.

Responding to the report, Salemeh told Reuters he had declared during a TV interview in April his net worth prior to becoming a governor in 1993 and it was $23 million dollars.

“I have shown the supporting documents as a proof. This to eliminate doubts on the origin of my net worth and that it was prior to holding office,” he said.

He said he had previously stated that he asked professionals and trustees to manage his net worth. “The origin of my net worth is clear, this is the important matter,” he said.

Salameh, previously seen as a guarantor of financial stability in the country, has become a focus of anger for street protesters since Lebanon’s financial system collapsed earlier this year under the weight of one of the world’s biggest public debt burdens.

The report into his personal wealth comes at a sensitive time as Lebanon grapples with the aftermath of an enormous chemicals explosion that devastated the capital Beirut, fuelling public anger with the country’s leadership.

The OCCRP report also comes after central bank accounts seen by Reuters last month revealed that Lebanon’s central bank governor inflated the institution’s assets by over $6 billion in 2018, showing the extent of financial engineering used to help prop up the Lebanese economy.

The governor told Reuters last month that the central bank accounting was in line with policies approved by the board.

A Lebanese judge last month ordered a protective freeze on some assets held by the governor after ruling in favour of a complaint that he had allegedly undermined the financial standing of the state.

By the end of 2018, Salameh’s assets were worth more than $94 million, the report said, citing balance sheets of Luxembourg companies controlled by the governor.

Salameh said his declaration on his net worth demonstrated he was not trying to escape public scrutiny and was the proof he has “nothing to hide.” (Reporting by Davide Barbuscia and Laila Bassam; Editing by Tom Perry and Jon Boyle)

Warnings of Ransomware Affecting Elections

Posted on by

According to an intelligence report issued by the Department of Homeland Security, one of the top 2020 election security concerns is ransomware. A report entitled “Cybercriminals and Criminal Hackers Capable of Disrupting Election Infrastructure”, echos concerns CISA head Chris Krebs articulate at the Black Hat security conference in early August.

Department of Homeland Security fears 'ransomware' attacks ... source

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have issued advisories to local governments, including recommendations for preventing attacks.
“From the standpoint of confidence in the system, I think it is much easier to disrupt a network and prevent it from operating than it is to change votes,” Adam Hickey, a Justice Department deputy assistant attorney general, said in an interview.

US officials state that election interference will not be tolerated. They are proactively working with social media companies, among other groups, to help safeguard the elections.

In addition, the US Department of State’s “Rewards for Justice” program is offering a 10M to anyone who can provide information about foreign interference. The Department of State has reached out to targeted individuals in Iran soliciting information.

US officials are interested in identifying individuals who aim to disrupt campaigns, meddle with election infrastructure, and who pose threats to election officials. This is the third major “Rewards for Justice” initiative this year. More here.

***

“We’re seeing state and local entities targeted with ransomware on a near daily basis,” said Geoff Hale, a top election security official with Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Steps taken to improve security of voter registration systems after the 2016 election could help governments fend off election-related ransomware attacks. They’ve also acted to ensure they can recover quickly in the event of an attack.

Colorado, for example, stores redundant versions of its voter registration data at two separate secure locations so officials can easily shift operations. Backups are regular so the system can be quickly rebuilt if needed.

Even so, ransomware is an added concern for local election officials already confronting staffing and budget constraints while preparing for a shift from in-person voting to absentee balloting because of the pandemic.

In West Virginia, state officials are more concerned about the cyberthreat confronting its 55 county election offices than a direct attack on the statewide voter registration system. One click from a county employee falling victim to a spearphishing attack could grant a hacker access to the county network and eventually to election systems.

“I’m more worried that those people who are working extra hours and working more days, the temporary staff that may be brought in to help process the paperwork, that all this may create a certain malaise or fatigue when they are using tools like email,” said David Tackett, chief information officer for the secretary of state.

In states that rely heavily on in-person voting and use electronic systems to check in voters, a well-timed attack particularly during early voting could prevent officials from immediately verifying a voter’s eligibility, making paper backups critical.

For states conducting elections entirely by mail, including Colorado, an attack near Election Day may have little effect on voting because ballots are sent early to all voters, with few votes cast in-person. But it could disrupt vote-tallying, forcing officials to process ballots by hand.

In many states, local officials will face an influx of new ballot requests. That means they’ll need constant access to voter data as they handle these requests. An attack could cause major disruptions.

Hickey said he was unaware of ransomware attacks directly targeting election infrastructure. But local election offices are often connected to larger county networks and not properly insulated or protected.

A criminal targeting a county or state “may not even know what parts of the network they got into,” Hickey said. But as the malware creeps along and spreads, “what gets bricked is the entire network — and that includes but is not limited to election infrastructure.”

Even if election infrastructure isn’t directly targeted, there would likely be immediate assumptions it was, said Ron Bushar of the FireEye cybersecurity company.

A February advisory issued by the FBI and obtained by The Associated Press recommends local governments separate election-related systems from county and state systems to ensure they aren’t affected in an unrelated attack.

NASA Prepares to Launch Contact Tracing Program

Posted on by

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its spread in the U.S., NASA is tapping commercial software to start an internal contact tracing program.

Why NASA Needs a New Logo | Space

According to an information collection notice posted Tuesday in the Federal Register, the voluntary program “will be used to determine whether NASA personnel have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus and to track and trace their interactions across the NASA community for identifying possible points of exposure.”

Once the program is stood up, NASA plans to designate a health care-focused employee to act as the NASA Contact Tracer to lead the effort.

When a NASA employee or contractor agrees to sign up for the program, the Contact Tracer will start by going through the privacy considerations so the employee understands their rights and how their personal information will be used, after which the employee “will be asked, orally, to confirm if they have symptoms or not,” by replying “yes” or “no.”

That information—along with the employee’s contact information and the names, phone numbers and email addresses of those they have been in close contact with—will be entered into the new tracking app.

“While participation is voluntary, it is strongly encouraged as failure to provide the requested information may result in potential increased exposure of personnel to the virus,” the notice states.

The “newly developed tracking and tracing digital application” was built on NASA’s Salesforce platform. Salesforce’s workforce management platform has been used by a variety of organizations to start internal contact tracing programs, including some 35 state governments, according to company CEO Marc Benioff.

Interested parties have until October 4 to submit comments.

Specifically, under the Federal Register notice, the agency wants feedback on “whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of NASA, including whether the information collected has practical utility;” “ways to enhance the quality, utility and clarity of the information to be collected;” and “ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, including automated collection techniques or the use of other forms of information technology.”

*** The Flawed World of Contact Tracing: Where’s Carol The Tester? source

“While participation is voluntary, it is strongly encouraged as failure to provide the requested information may result in potential increased exposure of personnel to the virus,” NASA wrote in the notice.

The information collected through NASA’s contact tracing program may also be shared with private or government healthcare providers and other entities with access to all NASA systems of records. By keeping the contact tracing records in a digital format, NASA wrote that it hopes to “ensure higher rate of inclusion and assist in the efficiency of the stages of report processing by human subject matter analysts.”

NASA is estimating that the contact tracing program will cost about $1.9 million per year. The agency is accepting comments on its contact tracing program – such as ways to enhance the quality of its data and ways to minimize the burden of information collection on personnel – through October 4.

Tip Sheet on Kamala Harris

Posted on by
          1. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India.
          2.  Harris said she believed women who accused Biden of inappropriate touching.’I believe them, and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it’.
          4. Harris was the designated pit bull to attack Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing. At one point when he was holding a worn copy of the Constitution that he kept in his coat pocket, she referred to it as THAT BOOK showing her disdain for his fidelity to the Constitution. Read more here.
          5. As both a district attorney and state attorney general, Harris pushed for a new statewide law that lets prosecutors charge parents with misdemeanors if their children are chronically truant.
          6. Harris strongly supports “familial DNA searching,ˮ in which police take DNA samples from crime scenes and compare them to existing databases to look for not just any direct matches in criminal databases, but any familial matches.
          7. In her first speech on the Senate floor, Harris declared, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She later avowed the belief that illegal immigration is “a civil violation, not a crime.”
          8. In October 2017, Harris declared that she would rather shut down the government than vote for a spending bill that did not address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and ensure those covered by the program would not be deported. “I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country,” she said. And she has kept her word, at least so far. More details here from NR.
          9. Harris did not protect the Catholic Daughters of Charity Health System but rather finessed the sale as a favor to SEIU.
          10. Harris says Americans need to be “educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment,” and says she would change the dietary guidelines to reduce the amount of red meat you can eat.
          11. Harris will push Congress to provide monthly economic impact payments to qualifying Americans that are recurring.
          12. Harris and her Senate colleagues pushed for the inclusion of a provision that would cancel at least $10,000 of student debt for all borrowers.
          13. Harris insisted that the 2017 tax reform law must be repealed in its entirety.
          14. Harris has a long record of action on climate change including investigating Exxon Mobil XOM in 2016, voting against repeals of methane emissions, and sponsoring the resolution of disapproval for the 2019 rollbacks on power plant carbon pollution limits.
          15. Her plan, by 2045 we will have basically zero emission vehicles only,” but her climate plan calls for 100% of vehicles as soon as 2035.
          16. She lied about smoking pot listening to Snoop and Tupac.

Her sister Maya is a lawyer, public policy advocate, and television commentator. She is a political analyst for MSNBC and in 2015 was appointed as one of three senior policy advisors to lead the development of an agenda for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She was formerly a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. From 2008 until she took her current position, she was Vice President for Democracy, Rights and Justice at the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she served as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. Swampy huh? Oh and Maya is married to Tony West. West previously served as the Associate Attorney General of the United States, the third highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice; and Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice.

California Attorney General Kamal Harris marries Douglas Emhof Kamala Harris’ Criminal Justice Policies Blasted After ...

Trump’s ‘Operation Legend’ Getting Results

Posted on by

July of 2020, President Trump announced Operation LeGend.

Operation Legend was announced in Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Operation Legend is a sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies work in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials to fight violent crime. The Operation was first launched on July 8 in Kansas City, Missouri, and expanded on July 22, 2020, to Chicago and Albuquerque. Additionally, Memphis and St. Louis are part of the initiative.

President Trump sending federal agents into U.S. cities is part of “Operation Legend,” named after a 4-year-old boy who was killed while sleeping in his home last month.

LeGend Taliferro was fatally shot while he lay asleep at home in Kansas City, Mo., on June 29.

“My one and only child who fought through open-heart surgery at four months is gone due to senseless gun violence,” LeGend’s mother Charron Powell said during a press briefing about Operation Legend on Wednesday at the White House.

“Children are supposed to be our future, and our 4-year-old son didn’t make it to kindergarten,” she said.

Trump on Wednesday said he’s sending federal officers into U.S. cities “plagued by violent crime” as part of Operation Legend: Combating Violent Crime in American Cities. More here.

As for results that the media and Democrats wont report, consider the following:

  1. KANSAS CITY, Mo. – U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison announced today that 59 additional arrests have been made in the past week by local and federal law enforcement officers in Operation LeGend, for a total of 156 arrests since the start of the operation.Among those arrested since Aug. 1, new federal charges have been filed against six defendants, for a total of 17 new federal cases in Operation LeGend. All of the new federal defendants were charged with firearms-related crimes. Four of the six new defendants were charged with being felons in possession of firearms. One defendant was charged with heroin trafficking and illegally possessing a firearm. One defendant was charged with participating in a conspiracy to commit armed robberies at several local businesses.

    Among the remaining 53 arrests in the past week, 35 were fugitives with either state or federal warrants for their arrest. The remaining 18 non-fugitive arrests were referred for prosecution in state court. Seven arrests were for homicides, for a total of 12 homicide arrests under Operation LeGend. Other offenses cited in the arrests included assault (including non-fatal shootings), drug trafficking, illegally possessing firearms, robbery, bank robbery, child molestation, sexual assault, possessing stolen property and possessing stolen firearms.

  2. MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Local and federal law enforcement officers have made 32 arrests and recovered 27 firearms since the mid-July commencement of Operation Legend in Milwaukee according to United States Attorney Matthew D. Krueger of the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Officials say those arrested include individuals alleged to have committed firearms-related offenses, as well as fugitives wanted for violent crimes, including homicide, armed robbery, and recklessly endangering safety.

  3. Three men charged with illegally possessing guns and ammunition are the first in Chicago prosecuted under Operation Legend, officials announced Friday.

    Darryl Collins, 30, of Dolton, is charged with one count of illegal possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. Romeo Holloway, 21, is charged with illegal possession of a firearm by felon. And Darryl Phillips 22, is charged with illegal possession of a machine gun, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Under Operation LeGend, if you have any information on these cases, please contact the FBI at tips.fbi.gov