Yet Another American Caught Spying for China

Posted on June 4, 2018June 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

It is an epidemic, only no one will admit that. Mr. Hansen’s charges are found here.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A former officer with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested over the weekend for allegedly trying to spy on the United States for China, the Justice Department said on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation took Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, into custody on Saturday while he was on his way to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to get a connecting flight to China.

The department said he has been accused of trying to transmit national defense information to China and with receiving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” while acting illegally as an agent for the Chinese government.

Reuters could not immediately learn who may be representing Hansen in the case.

Hansen is the latest person in a string of former U.S. intelligence officers to be swept up in criminal probes related to spying for the Chinese.

Earlier this year, former CIA case officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was indicted for conspiring to gather or deliver national defense information to China.

Another former U.S. intelligence employee named Kevin Mallory is on trial in Virginia, also in connection with selling secrets to China.

In the new case announced Monday, prosecutors said that Hansen speaks fluent Mandarin-Chinese and Russian.

He served as a case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency while on active military duty from 2000-2006, and later continued that line of work as a civilian employee and a contractor.

He also held a top secret clearance for years.

The government said that between 2013 and 2017, he traveled between the two countries attending conferences and provided the information he learned to China’s intelligence service.

He was paid via wire transfers, cash and credit cards. He also allegedly improperly sold export-controlled technology.

“His alleged actions are a betrayal of our nation’s security and the American people and are an affront to his former intelligence community colleagues,” said John Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

According to court records, the FBI started investigating his activities in 2014. He was unaware of the probe, and participated in nine voluntary meetings with federal agents in Salt Lake City. Utah.

Prosecutors say that during his meetings, he told the FBI that Chinese intelligence had tried to recruit him, offered to cooperate as a source and even provided thumb drives to the FBI that contained classified materials he was not authorized to have.

Hansen appeared before a magistrate judge in Seattle on Monday, and is charged in a 15-count complaint.

Mr Hansen, who lives in Syracuse, Utah, was charged with attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government.

Other charges – there are 15 in total – include acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, bulk cash smuggling, structuring monetary transactions and smuggling goods from the US.

photo, Mallory

*** Now about those phones and Kevin Mallory:

The phone the Chinese intelligence operatives gave Kevin Mallory was a specialized spy gadget. If it had worked like it was supposed to, he might be a free man today.

The former CIA officer, on trial in Alexandria federal court on espionage charges, freely told his old colleagues that he had been approached by those spies on social media in February of 2017. He said he had been invited on two trips to China and given a Samsung Galaxy phone with special encryption capabilities.

What he didn’t tell his U.S. intelligence contacts, and, according to prosecutors, what he thought they would never learn, was that he also traded classified documents to the Chinese agents in exchange for $25,000.

Mallory, a 61-year-old from Leesburg, Va., who also served in the Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department and U.S. Army, was arrested last spring. While prosecutors say he was selling secrets, he contends he was trying to expose the Chinese spies. Whatever jurors decide, the veteran intelligence operative’s trial is offering a glimpse into some of the inner workings of both Chinese espionage and American attempts to counter it.

It’s “very rare” for a foreign intelligence service’s device “to be revealed like that,” FBI agent Paul Lee testified on Thursday. The phone would have cost the Chinese government a lot of money to develop, he had told Mallory last year.

Mallory explained in meetings with the CIA and FBI, which were recorded and played for the jury, that the phone contained an app designed to facilitate steganography, or the hiding of information inside of an image. Documents were merged into a file that appeared as an image — in this case, the Chinese chose horses grazing in front of a mountain range.

To send the files through the secure version of the app, which was a customized version of the Chinese messaging service WeChat, both parties had to be online and type in a password. (The one built into the application, Mallory told the officials, was the word “password,” in English.)

Mallory told the FBI that the Chinese spies told him they had found a “special way” to make the app safer.

But their system was flawed. James Hamrock, an engineer who analyzed the phone for the FBI, said he believes the encrypted application crashed at one point, creating an unintentional log of Mallory’s communications with one of the Chinese spies.

If the app had not crashed, Hamrock testified, he likely would not have been able to see Mallory’s communications. Instead, as Mallory and FBI agents met in a hotel room in Ashburn, Va., last May to look at the phone, they saw conversations in which Mallory had discussed delivering “more documents,” including something related to a foreign intelligence service. (The name of that service was redacted from exhibits shown in court).

“I’m — I’m surprised it kept this much,” Mallory told the agents as they examined the phone.

But defense attorneys stressed that U.S. law enforcement would never have known about the phone — let alone have been able to examine it — had Mallory not brought it to them.

Mallory maintains that as soon as he realized the Chinese recruiters who had approached him on LinkedIn were spies, he decided to deliver them to American hands.

“Kevin Mallory has worn a white hat throughout his career, and he did not take it off for a relatively small amount of money,” public defender Geremy Kamens said in his opening statement. “If he was motivated by money, he would have kept his mouth shut.”

Instead, Mallory caught the attention of authorities because he repeatedly contacted a CIA employee from his church and a CIA contractor he worked with from 2010 to 2012 to say he believed he was in touch with Chinese intelligence.

In a text to the contractor, a covert operative who testified from behind a screen under the pseudonym John Doe, Mallory said the operatives “asked me a few questions that could have only come from our side of the house.”

Doe testified that he took that to mean that the Chinese had penetrated the CIA.

Doe said Mallory’s request to be put in touch with someone in the agency’s East Asia Division “seemed odd.”

Ralph Stevenson, a CIA resources officer, agreed. When Mallory contacted him in a similar manner, Stevenson said, he deleted the texts and responded with a terse email.

At the Montgomery Chinese Branch of the Mormon Church that weekend, Stevenson upbraided Mallory. Read more here.

*** One last item:

China’s influence in New Zealand is so extensive that it threatens the traditionally close intelligence contacts between New Zealand and its Western allies, according to a report written by the Canadian spy agency.

The report, entitled China and the Age of Strategic Rivalry, was authored by experts at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). It contains a summary of views expressed by participants at an academic outreach workshop that was organized in Canada by the CSIS. In a section focusing on Chinese “interference in democratic systems”, the report suggests that, despite its small size, New Zealand is “valuable to China […] as a soft underbelly through which to access Five Eyes intelligence”. In recent years, claims the report, Beijing has adopted “an aggressive strategy” that has sought to co-opt political and economic elites in New Zealand as a means of influencing political decision making in the country. As part of that process, China seeks to gain advantages in trade and business negotiations, suppress negative views of China, facilitate espionage and control the views of the Chinese expatriate community in New Zealand, according to the report. Ultimately, Beijing seeks to “extricate New Zealand from […] its traditional [military and intelligence] partners]” as a means of asserting its regional and —eventually— global influence, the report concludes.

In a separate but connected development, it emerged this week that China expert Peter Mattis told an American Congressional committee last month that New Zealand’s position in the Five Eyes alliance was tenuous due to China’s influence. Mattis, a former China analyst for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, was speaking before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group of experts that advise the US Congress. He told the Commission that the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in New Zealand is so deep that it raises questions about whether the Pacific Ocean country can continue to share intelligence with the other members of the Five Eyes alliance.

On Wednesday, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern emphatically dismissed questions about her country’s role in the Five Eyes alliance. She told reporters in Wellington that the issue of New Zealand’s Five Eyes membership had “never been raised” with her “or anyone else” by Five Eyes partners. Ardern added that her government received its information “from official channels, not opinions expressed at a workshop”.

Facebook Shared your Data with 60+ Other Tech Companies

Posted on June 4, 2018June 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

New privacy law forces some U.S. media offline in Europe

continue here where it has affected U.S. media.

It is a privacy war. It is data abuse. It is exploitation.

More than 50 companies including Apple and Amazon participated in the Facebook data-sharing partnership.

Have you noticed emails and terms of privacy has changed in volumes with those sites you often visit? Well we can thank Europe as the new privacy law went into effect in recent weeks.

On May 25, however, the power balance will shift towards consumers, thanks to a European privacy law that restricts how personal data is collected and handled. The rule, called General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, focuses on ensuring that users know, understand, and consent to the data collected about them. Under GDPR, pages of fine print won’t suffice. Neither will forcing users to click yes in order to sign up. Read the details here.

But, it is suggested that you actually read what updates are in fact happening in the U.S., as it may not be all that protective. Fair warning and take caution, abuses may still continue.

Read on…it is no wonder that Facebook is running TV ads, but that still does not assure us our data is being abused.

Facebook: The Social Accelerator? | emergent by design photo

Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep
Access to Data on Users and Friends

The company formed data-sharing partnerships with Apple, Samsung and
dozens of other device makers, raising new concerns about its privacy protections.

As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information.

Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.

But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.

Most of the partnerships remain in effect, though Facebook began winding them down in April. The company came under intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators after news reports in March that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users.

In the furor that followed, Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends. But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.

“You might think that Facebook or the device manufacturer is trustworthy,” said Serge Egelman, a privacy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the security of mobile apps. “But the problem is that as more and more data is collected on the device — and if it can be accessed by apps on the device — it creates serious privacy and security risks.”

In interviews, Facebook officials defended the data sharing as consistent with its privacy policies, the F.T.C. agreement and pledges to users. They said its partnerships were governed by contracts that strictly limited use of the data, including any stored on partners’ servers. The officials added that they knew of no cases where the information had been misused.

The company views its device partners as extensions of Facebook, serving its more than two billion users, the officials said.

“These partnerships work very differently from the way in which app developers use our platform,” said Ime Archibong, a Facebook vice president. Unlike developers that provide games and services to Facebook users, the device partners can use Facebook data only to provide versions of “the Facebook experience,” the officials said.

Some device partners can retrieve Facebook users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data. Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did.

Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.

In interviews, several former Facebook software engineers and security experts said they were surprised at the ability to override sharing restrictions.

“It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who formerly served as the F.T.C.’s chief technologist.

Details of Facebook’s partnerships have emerged amid a reckoning in Silicon Valley over the volume of personal information collected on the internet and monetized by the tech industry. The pervasive collection of data, while largely unregulated in the United States, has come under growing criticism from elected officials at home and overseas and provoked concern among consumers about how freely their information is shared.

In a tense appearance before Congress in March, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, emphasized what he said was a company priority for Facebook users.“Every piece of content that you share on Facebook you own,” he testified. ”You have complete control over who sees it and how you share it.”

But the device partnerships provoked discussion even within Facebook as early as 2012, according to Sandy Parakilas, who at the time led third-party advertising and privacy compliance for Facebook’s platform.

“This was flagged internally as a privacy issue,” said Mr. Parakilas, who left Facebook that year and has recently emerged as a harsh critic of the company. “It is shocking that this practice may still continue six years later, and it appears to contradict Facebook’s testimony to Congress that all friend permissions were disabled.”

The partnerships were briefly mentioned in documents submitted to German lawmakers investigating the social media giant’s privacy practices and released by Facebook in mid-May. But Facebook provided the lawmakers with the name of only one partner — BlackBerry, maker of the once-ubiquitous mobile device — and little information about how the agreements worked.

The submission followed testimony by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, during a closed-door German parliamentary hearing in April. Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker, one of the lawmakers who questioned Mr. Kaplan, said in an interview that she believed the data partnerships disclosed by Facebook violated users’ privacy rights.

“What we have been trying to determine is whether Facebook has knowingly handed over user data elsewhere without explicit consent,” Ms. Winkelmeier-Becker said. “I would never have imagined that this might even be happening secretly via deals with device makers. BlackBerry users seem to have been turned into data dealers, unknowingly and unwillingly.”

In interviews with The Times, Facebook identified other partners: Apple and Samsung, the world’s two biggest smartphone makers, and Amazon, which sells tablets.

An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September.

Samsung declined to respond to questions about whether it had any data-sharing partnerships with Facebook. Amazon also declined to respond to questions.

Usher Lieberman, a BlackBerry spokesman, said in a statement that the company used Facebook data only to give its own customers access to their Facebook networks and messages. Mr. Lieberman said that the company “did not collect or mine the Facebook data of our customers,” adding that “BlackBerry has always been in the business of protecting, not monetizing, customer data.”

Microsoft entered a partnership with Facebook in 2008 that allowed Microsoft-powered devices to do things like add contacts and friends and receive notifications, according to a spokesman. He added that the data was stored locally on the phone and was not synced to Microsoft’s servers.

Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers. A Facebook official said that regardless of where the data was kept, it was governed by strict agreements between the companies.

“I am dumbfounded by the attitude that anybody in Facebook’s corporate office would think allowing third parties access to data would be a good idea,” said Henning Schulzrinne, a computer science professor at Columbia University who specializes in network security and mobile systems. Keep reading here for specific details.

7-2 SCOTUS Decision, Jack Phillips Wins

Posted on June 4, 2018June 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD.,

ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION

ET AL.

The high court decision is here.

Justice Ginsberg and Sotomayer were the dissenting opinions.

This is a decision that upholds the freedom of religion and the dedication to practice that religion. Frankly, it was never about the wedding cake, if the truth be told.

The Masterpiece Cakeshop same-sex wedding cake case isn’t ...

photo

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor today of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who declined to bake a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding because of his religious beliefs.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is a historic case involving religious liberty, LGBT rights, and the First Amendment.

In the 7-2 ruling, the high court said the Colorado Commission of Civil Rights, which had ruled against Phillips, demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” toward the baker and cake artist’s Christian belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated [Phillips’] objection,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, in 2014 Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice compared Phillips’ not making a cake to slavery and the Holocaust. Rice apparently didn’t know that Phillips’ father fought in World War II and was part of a group that helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor today of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who declined to bake a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding because of his religious beliefs.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is a historic case involving religious liberty, LGBT rights, and the First Amendment.

In the 7-2 ruling, the high court said the Colorado Commission of Civil Rights, which had ruled against Phillips, demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” toward the baker and cake artist’s Christian belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

“The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated [Phillips’] objection,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, in 2014 Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice compared Phillips’ not making a cake to slavery and the Holocaust. Rice apparently didn’t know that Phillips’ father fought in World War II and was part of a group that helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

“For her to compare not making a cake to the Holocaust, knowing what my dad went through, is ludicrous, and personally offensive,” Phillips, 62, told The Daily Signal.

“This is a big win for the religious liberty of all Americans,” says Ryan Anderson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The Court held that the state of Colorado was ‘neither tolerant nor respectful’ of Jack Phillips’s beliefs about marriage. But as the Court also noted ‘religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.’”

“Americans should be free to live their lives, including at work, in accordance with their belief that marriage unites husband and wife. Congress and the states should make this crystal clear by passing legislation, such as the First Amendment Defense Act, which explicitly prevents the type of government intolerance that took place in Colorado,” Anderson added.

**

Meet the Lawyer Who’ll Argue at Supreme Court for Christian Baker’s Right to Free Speech

As far back as grade school, Kristen Waggoner’s father taught her to seek God’s purpose for her life.

This paternal counsel, after much prayer, resulted in her knowing her calling at age 13.

But growing up in a small mill town in Washington, she could not have guessed that, little more than 30 years later, she would be a lawyer arguing a widely known case in the nation’s capital before the nation’s highest court.

“My hope is that the court will use this case as an opportunity to say, ‘We’re protecting the liberty of both sides,’” Waggoner says.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

Talk about culminations.

Waggoner will stand Tuesday before the nine justices of the Supreme Court and ask them to protect a Colorado baker’s constitutional right not to be forced by the government to create a custom cake celebrating a same-sex marriage—or any other occasion or sentiment that would violate his traditional Christian faith.

Waggoner, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, the prominent Christian legal aid organization, represents Jack Phillips. The owner of a family business in Lakewood, Colorado, Phillips became famous for declining to make a cake in July 2012 for two men for a local celebration of their upcoming marriage in Massachusetts.

One way or another, Waggoner has been at Phillips’ side since shortly after he politely turned down the couple’s order of a wedding cake while offering to sell Charlie Craig and David Mullins virtually any other baked good made by his Masterpiece Cakeshop.

The two men left in anger and soon filed a formal complaint, triggering hateful phone calls, death threats, and legal proceedings in Colorado against Phillips.

Those events eventually would intersect with the calling heeded by Waggoner, 45, when she was barely a teenager: defending the rights of religious individuals and institutions in America.

Now, Waggoner finds herself on the verge of making her first arguments before the Supreme Court, on behalf of Phillips, 61, and those she describes as countless other creative professionals committed to living, working, and expressing themselves in line with their faith—or lack of it.

Room for a Different View of Marriage

Phillips and other people of faith are defending their freedom as radical activists and government officials across the country wield nondiscrimination laws on the local and state levels in ways never intended by legislators, Waggoner says:

They’re being used to silence and to punish people who have a different view of marriage. It’s no longer about a government affirming a right and a recognition of same-sex marriage. It’s now about requiring private citizens to affirm that as well—which violates the core convictions of millions of Americans who subscribe to the Abrahamic faiths. It’s not just Christianity, it’s Judaism, Islam.

When the Supreme Court was weighing whether to recognize same-sex marriage in the landmark 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, Waggoner reminds, advocates told people of faith that they had nothing to worry about, that their rights would be protected:

I think what’s so alarming is how we’ve gone so quickly from this concept of liberalism to, really, illiberalism. From tolerance to intolerance. … From ‘live and let live’ to … you either affirm my view or you’re branded as a bigot and you lose your business.

How is forcing Phillips to create a cake in violation of his conscience different than forcing an atheist singer to perform at religious service, she suggests, or requiring a Jewish artist to glorify the Holocaust?

Friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, show that “tons of people” who support same-sex marriage also support Phillips’ right to decline an order, she says.

“And that’s the right position, because that’s freedom for everyone, even those we disagree with. So it does an injustice to the case to suggest this is about same-sex marriage. It’s not. It’s about the right to live and to work and to speak consistent with your convictions, and not have the government tell you what to say.”

‘Part of a Bigger Story’

The Daily Signal’s interview with Waggoner occurs in her final week of preparing in Washington, D.C., for her Supreme Court appearance with fellow ADF lawyers defending Phillips. Among them are Jeremy Tedesco, who has logged many hours on the Phillips case, and her co-counsel, Jim Campbell.

Waggoner’s husband Benjamin is also a practicing attorney back home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Historically, his wife is a Seattle Seahawks fan, but these days relies on their three children—ages 9, 15, and 17—to keep her current with the football team’s progress.

In about an hour, she plans to be on a nightly 7:30 session on FaceTime with her third-grader son, a commitment while she is away.

Waggoner grew up as Kristen Kellie Behrends in Longview, Washington, about two hours south of Seattle and an hour north of Portland.

What she treasures most about her upbringing, Waggoner says, is that she was steeped in consistent values at home, church, and school that shaped her worldview without sheltering her.

Her father taught her from Scripture about “being an Esther, being a Deborah, used by God,” she says, and that “joy and fulfillment come from having a purpose that’s bigger than ourselves.”

“It’s not about us, we’re a part of a bigger story that has to do with helping human flourishing. And that just shaped my whole life, even now.”

A Defining Moment

Clint Behrends, a Christian pastor and educator, was principal of the school his elder daughter Kristen attended from first through 12th grade.

Waggoner has two younger brothers and a younger sister, two of them adopted but born brother and sister. Her mother, Lavonne Behrends, “thrived” at being a stay-at-home mom for the most part, but also worked part time in accounting-related jobs.

Once a teacher in public schools, today her father is a licensed minister in the Assemblies of God denomination. He is associate pastor of Cedar Park Church in Bothell, Washington, and superintendent of an affiliated school system.

Young Kristen would go to the principal’s office to visit her father three or four times a day, sometimes because she got into trouble. In these encounters, he urged her to find and develop her talents, and apply them in a way that would honor God.

And one day, Waggoner recalls, she saw clearly that defending ministries and religious freedom should be her path. Although her “rebellious teenage years” were not yet behind her at 13, she never really looked back, Waggoner recalls in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“That’s what I thought God was impressing on me to do, and it matched with my skill set,” she says. “And it worked out.”

Waggoner’s father was the first college graduate in the family, and she became the second.

By choice, her entire education was in Christian schools. She ran cross country and played volleyball and basketball in high school, where she continued to be a good student and graduated as valedictorian in a class of 21.

She won a drama scholarship to go to Northwest University, a school outside Seattle affiliated with the Assemblies of God. She ended up doing debate, winning some tournaments and “best speaker” awards. She also played volleyball. (“That and the law are my two loves.”)

Then it was on to law school at Regent University in Virginia Beach, where she won “best oralist” and the Whittier Moot Court Competition.

What grabbed her about law?

“I think that the pursuit of justice is something that really motivated me, and taking stands on principles,” she says, adding: “But once you start working with clients and you experience being able to help individuals, when most of the time they’re at their low point, it’s very fulfilling.”

‘On the Tough End’

Right after law school, she clerked for Richard Sanders, a member of the Washington state Supreme Court. She first sought a summer job with him two years earlier because he practiced constitutional law, not knowing he was running for a seat on the court.

“The day I called him to follow up on the status of my resume was the day he was elected to the [state] Supreme Court,” she recalls. “He picked up the phone and talked to me for about 45 minutes.”

Nearly two years later, a few weeks out from graduation and planning to clerk for a federal judge in Virginia, she got a call from the law school saying a justice on the Washington Supreme Court had been looking for her for weeks. Sanders was hiring; she interviewed and got a clerkship there.

The law school graduate proved to be “up for the challenge,” Sanders, now back in private practice, recalls, and she worked hard to “get better and better.”

“This is exactly where she should be, and this is what she does best,” the former judge says of Waggoner’s current role. “I think she realizes that she’s on the tough end of those arguments.”

Sanders, knowing his law clerk’s interests, proved instrumental in urging her to look into the law firm where she would stay for 17 years.

Ellis, Li & McKinstry had a good reputation for its work in constitutional law in Seattle, not exactly a conservative bastion. It represented many large churches and religious organizations.

Sanders “consistently encouraged” her to go to work there, Waggoner recalls, rather than at a public interest law firm, to gain broader and deeper experience.

“My very first case was a religious liberty case,” Waggoner recalls, “which I don’t think is coincidental.”

‘A Lot Has Changed’

Ellis, Li & McKinstry also happens to be perhaps the nation’s largest private law firm made up of Christian attorneys, partner Keith Kemper tells The Daily Signal.

Kemper describes Waggoner as a tenacious but gracious advocate whose “incredibly strong work ethic” drives her to study up on the case at hand to learn more than her colleagues or opponents.

“She will be better prepared,” says Kemper, who supervised Waggoner in her early years with the firm. “She will know the material backward and forward.” More here from The Daily Signal.

Fed Gov Spent $76 Billion in 2017 for Cyber Security, Fail v Success

Posted on June 1, 2018June 1, 2018 by Denise Simon

Go here for the Forum Part One

Go here for the Forum Part Two

Fascinating speakers from private industry, state government and the Federal government describe where we are, the history on cyber threats and how fast, meaning hour by hour the speed at which real hacks, intrusions or compromise happen.

David Hoge of NSA’s Threat Security Operations Center for non-classified hosts worldwide describes the global reach of NSA including the FBI, DHS and the Department of Defense.

NSA Built Own 'Google-Like' Search Engine To Share ... photo

When the Federal government spent $76 billion in 2017 and we are in much the same condition, Hoge stays awake at night.

With North Korea in the constant news, FireEye published a report in 2017 known as APT37 (Reaper): The Overlooked North Korea Actor. North Korea is hardly the worst actor. Others include Russia, China, Iran and proxies.

Targeting: With North Korea primarily South Korea – though also Japan, Vietnam and the Middle East – in various industry verticals, including chemicals, electronics, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, and healthcare.
Initial Infection Tactics: Social engineering tactics tailored specifically to desired targets, strategic web compromises typical of targeted cyber espionage operations, and the use of torrent file-sharing sites to distribute malware more indiscriminately.
Exploited Vulnerabilities: Frequent exploitation of vulnerabilities in Hangul Word Processor (HWP), as well as Adobe Flash. The group has demonstrated access to zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-0802), and the ability to incorporate them into operations.
Command and Control Infrastructure: Compromised servers, messaging platforms, and cloud service providers to avoid detection. The group has shown increasing sophistication by improving their operational security over time.
Malware: A diverse suite of malware for initial intrusion and exfiltration. Along with custom malware used for espionage purposes, APT37 also has access to destructive malware.

More information on this threat actor is found in our report, APT37 (Reaper): The Overlooked North Korean Actor.

** NSA 'building quantum computer to crack security codes ... photo

Beyond NSA, DHS as with other agencies have cyber divisions. The DHS cyber strategy is found here. The fact sheet has 5 pillars:

DHS CYBERSECURITY GOALS

Goal 1: Assess Evolving

Cybersecurity Risks.

We will understand the evolving

national cybersecurity risk posture

to inform and prioritize risk management activities.

Goal 2: Protect Federal Government

Information Systems.

We will reduce vulnerabilities of federal agencies to ensure they achieve

an adequate level of cybersecurity.

Goal 3: Protect Critical

Infrastructure.

We will partner with key stakeholders

to ensure that national cybersecurity

risks are adequately managed.

Goal 4: Prevent and Disrupt Criminal

Use of Cyberspace.

We will reduce cyber threats by

countering transnational criminal

organizations and sophisticated cyber

criminals.

Goal 5: Respond Effectively to Cyber

Incidents.

We will minimize consequences from

potentially significant cyber incidents

through coordinated community-wide

response efforts.

Goal 6: Strengthen the Security and

Reliability of the Cyber Ecosystem.

We will support policies and activities

that enable improved global cybersecurity risk management.

Goal 7: Improve Management of

DHS Cybersecurity Activities.

We will execute our departmental

cybersecurity efforts in an integrated

and prioritized way.

NPPD’s vision is a safe, secure, and resilient infrastructure where the American way of life can thrive. NPPD leads the national effort to protect and enhance the resilience of the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructure.

*** Going forward as devices are invented and added to the internet and rogue nations along with criminal actors, the industry is forecasted to expand with experts and costs.

Research reveals in its new report that organizations are expected to increase spending on IT security by almost 9% by 2018 to safeguard their cyberspaces, leading to big growth rates in the global markets for cyber security.

The cyber security market comprises companies that provide products and services to improve security measures for IT assets, data and privacy across different domains such as IT, telecom and industrial sectors.

The global cyber security market should reach $85.3 billion and $187.1 billion in 2016 and 2021, respectively, reflecting a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.0%. The American market, the largest segment, should grow from $39.5 billion in 2016 to $78.0 billion by 2021, demonstrating a five-year CAGR of 14.6%. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow the fastest among all major regions at a five-year CAGR of 21.4%, due to stringent government policies to mitigate cyber threats, and a booming IT industry.

Factors such as the growing complexity and frequency of threats, increasing severity of cyber security, stringent government regulations and compliance requirements, ubiquity of online communication, digital data and social media cumulatively should drive the market. Moreover, organizations are expected to increase IT spending on security solutions and services, as well. Rising adoption of technologies such as Internet of things, evolution of big data and cloud computing, increasing smartphone penetration and the developing market for mobile and web platforms should provide ample opportunities for vendors.

By solution type, the banking and financial segment generated the most revenue in 2015 at $22.2 billion. However, the defense and intelligence segment should generate revenues of $50.7 billion in 2021 to lead all segments. The healthcare sector should experience substantial growth with an anticipated 16.2% five-year CAGR.

Network security, which had the highest market revenue in 2015 based on solution type, should remain dominant through the analysis period. Substantial growth is anticipated in the cloud security market, as the segment is expected to have a 27.2% five-year CAGR, owing to increasing adoption of cloud-based services across different applications.

“IT security is a priority in the prevailing highly competitive environment,” says BCC Research analyst Basudeo Singh. “About $100 billion will be spent globally on information security in 2018, as compared with $76.7 billion in 2015.”

Crimes or War, the Body Collectors in Mosul

Posted on June 1, 2018June 1, 2018 by Denise Simon

Imagine the other cities in Iraq and Syria. Mosul was part of Assyria as early as the 25th century BC. Of note, in 2008, there was a sizeable exodus of Assyrian Christians. They sought sanctuary in Syria and Turkey due to threats of murder unless they converted to Islam.

Turkish Airlines New Flight Route to Mosul photo

Iraq Mosul picture, Iraq Mosul photo, Iraq Mosul wallpaper photo

Inside the killing rooms of Mosul

Warning: Graphic images

MOSUL, Iraq — In March, VICE News returned to Mosul for the first time since the war against ISIS was declared over eight months ago.

While life may be returning to normal in the eastern half of the city, on the other side of the river — where the fighting was most intense — the scale of rebuilding that needs to be done is monumental. It’s estimated there are still 8 million tons of conflict debris that need to be moved before reconstruction can start, equivalent to three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. About 75 percent of that rubble is in West Mosul, and it’s mixed with so much unexploded ordnance that experts say this is now one of the most contaminated spots on the planet.

In the Old City, where ISIS made its last stand, residents have slowly started to come back – a few business owners hoping to repair shops, and families who have no other option but to live in their damaged homes. Some water tanks have been trucked in, and electricity cables have been temporarily patched together along some streets, but the place feels deserted, and in some ways the scene was not that different from how it looked shortly after the fighting.

Eight months on, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of bodies still under the rubble, making life unbearable for the families who have returned.

The putrefied corpses are mainly Islamic State fighters or their families, since many of the non-ISIS civilian bodies have been dug out and reclaimed by family members or civil defense workers. The bodies that remain are a severe health hazard, but there’s little political will to deal with them, and removing them is risky given the unexploded munitions littering the area. Nevertheless, teams of citizen volunteers are going house-to-house carrying out this gruesome, dangerous work on a daily basis.

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One volunteer team is led by Sroor al-Hosayni, a 23-year-old former nurse. Many of her group are even younger; some are medical students, but most have no formal training in handling corpses. So far, they say they’ve pulled and bagged more than 350 bodies that no one else was willing to deal with. They laid them in white plastic body bags where municipal trucks can easily collect them, labeling them for any potential explosives found with the corpse.

“We saw that there were bodies everywhere, in the alleys and inside the houses,” Hosayni said. “I took my team and started implementing this idea by going to help municipality and government workers in removing these bodies before summer comes and disease spreads in the city.”

At first the authorities complained, telling her: “‘You don’t have to move ISIS bodies. Leave them there; the dogs will eat them.”

Hosayni replied, “But one or two dogs can’t eat them; there are thousands of bodies.”

A suspected execution room inside the basement of a collapsed building Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team say there are more than 100 rotting corpses here. So far they have pulled more than 30 bodies from this room n the last few weeks. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

After filming Hosayni’s team at work near the destroyed Al Nuri mosque, we followed them to Al Maydan — the Old City neighborhood where ISIS made its last stand — where they had been working on one particular site for weeks.

Bulldozers have started clearing a path where Souk Al-Samak Street once ran along the river, but almost nothing else has changed since the air bombardment flattened this district.

The ruins of arched and intricately carved stone doorways open onto inner courtyards like dioramas of the war, frozen in time: Human corpses in varying degrees of decay lying amid stray ordnance, broken china, plastic toy trucks, and discarded military apparel.

Two hundred yards up the street and on the right, the team pointed us to a building on the banks of the Tigris River. Scrambling through the collapsed masonry, we emerged into two mostly intact basement rooms with barred windows looking out onto the river. In the far room, buzzing with flies and inescapable stench, were dozens and dozens of corpses, stacked too deep to count, one on top of another. It seemed to be the remains of a mass execution.

The body collectors told us there were at least 100 bodies in here; the team had already cleared more than 30 but had barely made a dent in the mound of corpses.

23 year-old Sroor al-Hosayni, a former nurse, leads a team of volunteer body collectors pulling corpses out of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team of volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

We saw what appeared to be the bodies of children, though it was difficult to verify given the level of decay. We saw no weapons or military gear on the bodies. The team told us they could see bullet wounds to their heads.

There are reports that ISIS locked large numbers of people in rooms like this, using them as human shields during the final days of the conflict. Many of those families died in coalition airstrikes — but this room was intact. It’s possible they could have been executed by ISIS fighters as government forces closed in. But it’s not clear why ISIS would kill or dispose of civilians in this way.

There are also reports of Iraqi forces executing captured ISIS members in this exact neighborhood. Beards and long hair were still visible on some of the corpses, leading the body collectors to believe some could be men who may have been affiliated with ISIS. But speaking to VICE, a senior Iraqi military official rejected any notion that Iraqi forces may have been responsible for the killings and told us that the site had already been investigated, without providing further details.

One international organization that has documented instances where Iraqi security forces have been accused of carrying out executions is Human Rights Watch.

Belkis Wille, the lead Iraq investigator at Human Rights Watch, visited the site soon after we did. She told us she was unaware of any investigation having been done at this particular site, and that — whoever was responsible for the deaths — the removal of evidence was troubling given that this was potentially the site of a war crime.

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“Sites like that need the proper forensic teams securing the site and conducting the analysis needed to determine whether this is indeed the site of a crime,” Wille told VICE News. “Despite promises by the prime minister at the end of the battle to investigate abuses, we haven’t seen any sign of that leading to teams coming in and doing the investigations necessary. And the question really is, at what point do these sites potentially lose their forensic value and lose the evidence?”

Inside the remains of Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic State caliphate in 2014. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)

But for the body collectors — and for many residents of Mosul — with the heat of summer approaching, the overwhelming priority right now is to clean up this city and begin rebuilding. The need to properly document and investigate potential war crimes isn’t at the top of the agenda.

“It’s time to focus on the living, not the dead,” was the mantra we heard from authorities and from many families trying to rebuild their shattered lives.

Nevertheless, the question of what happened in neighborhoods like Al Maydan and others in those final stages before victory was announced, and in the days shortly afterward, refuses to disappear.

In the ultimate stages of the battle to extinguish the last pockets of ISIS from Mosul last summer, access to the “fight zone” became increasingly restricted.

Baghdad declared the conflict officially over on July 10. The announcement, broadcast live on state television, came as a surprise to many, since there were explosions and gunfire still echoing out from the Old City where the last dregs of the Islamic State terrorist group were refusing to surrender.

Just a day before that, VICE News was one of the few outlets that managed to get past the cordon to join a general from Iraq’s elite counterterrorism brigade and an advance team of his men as they carefully picked their way across the booby-trapped rooftops of collapsed buildings in the district of Al Maydan to plant an Iraqi flag on the banks of the Tigris.

It was a journey through hell. The neighborhood had been pulverized by airstrikes and shelling throughout the campaign, but the intensity had grown as ISIS fell back to these ancient, narrow streets lined with buildings dating back to the 12th century. There was hardly a structure still intact, ordnance and bodies lined the route, some fresh, some bloated and badly decomposed from days or weeks in the sun.

Reaching the river was a symbol of having decisively broken through ISIS defensive lines, a long-awaited moment of triumph for the soldiers. But as the flag was raised and the soldiers took selfies, gunfire from a sniper still alive among the rubble sent the party scattering for cover. In those final days, as different units of Iraq’s security forces held impromptu victory celebrations after liberating neighborhoods, the question lingered of what the end of hostilities actually looks like when the enemy is hell-bent on fighting to the death.

We will likely never know who killed the people in the basement room of the house on Al-Samak Street — but as long as claims persist that extrajudicial killings by Iraqi security forces may have taken place, the stakes of not investigating those could be high. While there is little sympathy for ISIS right now in the devastated neighborhoods of Mosul, a culture of impunity for any abuses that were committed could set the stage for the same kinds of grievances that contributed to the group’s rise in the first place.

Cover image: The basement of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room filled with more than 100 corpses in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)