In 2015: 84 million

Just imagine, the cyber espionage….industrial espionage….the hacking…..

Do you really want to continue to tell the world about everything you do and who you are connected with on Facebook?

Cybercriminals Making Computer Malware at a Record Rate: Researchers

NBC: Last year was a particularly bad year for hacks and computer intrusions, and it looks like 2016 will only get worse, Panda Security says.

The Spain-based Internet security company said its lab researchers detected and disabled more than 84 million new samples of malware in 2015 — 9 million more than the previous year. The figure means cybercriminals were churning out new malware samples at a rate of more than 230,000 a day throughout 2015.

In fact, more than a quarter (27 percent) of all malware samples ever recorded were produced in 2015, Panda Security said in a news release.

“We predict that the amount of malware created by cybercriminals will continue to grow,” said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. “We also can’t forget that the creation of millions of Trojans and other threats corresponds to the cybercriminals’ needs to infect as many users as possible in order to get more money.”

Malware is any type of software that is designed to gain access to and damage or disable a computer.

Trojans, a type of malware disguised as legitimate software, accounted for more than half the malware detected in 2015, according to Panda Security.

China topped the list of countries with the highest rate of infected computers, followed by Taiwan and Turkey. At the other end of the spectrum, nine of the top 10 countries with the lowest rates of infection were in Europe, led by Finland, Norway and Sweden.

***

Barack Obama has been a big user of BIG DATA but he experienced a huge firestorm after the exposure of the NSA programs by Edward Snowden. Barack Obama enlisted John Podesta, at the time his chief of staff and now Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign architect to commission a study. Sheesh…but nonetheless, here is what you should read in the findings.

From the White House: Over the past several days, severe storms have battered Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other states. Dozens of people have been killed and entire neighborhoods turned to rubble and debris as tornadoes have touched down across the region. Natural disasters like these present a host of challenges for first responders. How many people are affected, injured, or dead? Where can they find food, shelter, and medical attention? What critical infrastructure might have been damaged?

Drawing on open government data sources, including Census demographics and NOAA weather data, along with their own demographic databases, Esri, a geospatial technology company, has created a real-time map showing where the twisters have been spotted and how the storm systems are moving. They have also used these data to show how many people live in the affected area, and summarize potential impacts from the storms. It’s a powerful tool for emergency services and communities. And it’s driven by big data technology.

In January, President Obama asked me to lead a wide-ranging review of “big data” and privacy—to explore how these technologies are changing our economy, our government, and our society, and to consider their implications for our personal privacy. Together with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the President’s Science Advisor John Holdren, the President’s Economic Advisor Jeff Zients, and other senior officials, our review sought to understand what is genuinely new and different about big data and to consider how best to encourage the potential of these technologies while minimizing risks to privacy and core American values.

Over the course of 90 days, we met with academic researchers and privacy advocates, with regulators and the technology industry, with advertisers and civil rights groups. The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology conducted a parallel study of the technological trends underpinning big data. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy jointly organized three university conferences at MIT, NYU, and U.C. Berkeley. We issued a formal Request for Information seeking public comment, and hosted a survey to generate even more public input.

Today, we presented our findings to the President. We knew better than to try to answer every question about big data in three months. But we are able to draw important conclusions and make concrete recommendations for Administration attention and policy development in a few key areas.

There are a few technological trends that bear drawing out. The declining cost of collection, storage, and processing of data, combined with new sources of data like sensors, cameras, and geospatial technologies, mean that we live in a world of near-ubiquitous data collection. All this data is being crunched at a speed that is increasingly approaching real-time, meaning that big data algorithms could soon have immediate effects on decisions being made about our lives.

The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society.

Big data is saving lives. Infections are dangerous—even deadly—for many babies born prematurely. By collecting and analyzing millions of data points from a NICU, one study was able to identify factors, like slight increases in body temperature and heart rate, that serve as early warning signs an infection may be taking root—subtle changes that even the most experienced doctors wouldn’t have noticed on their own.

Big data is making the economy work better. Jet engines and delivery trucks now come outfitted with sensors that continuously monitor hundreds of data points and send automatic alerts when maintenance is needed. Utility companies are starting to use big data to predict periods of peak electric demand, adjusting the grid to be more efficient and potentially averting brown-outs.

Big data is making government work better and saving taxpayer dollars. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun using predictive analytics—a big data technique—to flag likely instances of reimbursement fraud before claims are paid. The Fraud Prevention System helps identify the highest-risk health care providers for waste, fraud, and abuse in real time and has already stopped, prevented, or identified $115 million in fraudulent payments.

But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time. In particular, our review raised the question of whether the “notice and consent” framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected.

Big data raises other concerns, as well. One significant finding of our review was the potential for big data analytics to lead to discriminatory outcomes and to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections in housing, employment, credit, and the consumer marketplace.

No matter how quickly technology advances, it remains within our power to ensure that we both encourage innovation and protect our values through law, policy, and the practices we encourage in the public and private sector. To that end, we make six actionable policy recommendations in our report to the President:

Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Consumers deserve clear, understandable, reasonable standards for how their personal information is used in the big data era. We recommend the Department of Commerce take appropriate consultative steps to seek stakeholder and public comment on what changes, if any, are needed to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, first proposed by the President in 2012, and to prepare draft legislative text for consideration by stakeholders and submission by the President to Congress.

Pass National Data Breach Legislation. Big data technologies make it possible to store significantly more data, and further derive intimate insights into a person’s character, habits, preferences, and activities. That makes the potential impacts of data breaches at businesses or other organizations even more serious. A patchwork of state laws currently governs requirements for reporting data breaches. Congress should pass legislation that provides for a single national data breach standard, along the lines of the Administration’s 2011 Cybersecurity legislative proposal.

Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons. Privacy is a worldwide value that should be reflected in how the federal government handles personally identifiable information about non-U.S. citizens. The Office of Management and Budget should work with departments and agencies to apply the Privacy Act of 1974 to non-U.S. persons where practicable, or to establish alternative privacy policies that apply appropriate and meaningful protections to personal information regardless of a person’s nationality.

Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for Educational Purposes. Big data and other technological innovations, including new online course platforms that provide students real time feedback, promise to transform education by personalizing learning. At the same time, the federal government must ensure educational data linked to individual students gathered in school is used for educational purposes, and protect students against their data being shared or used inappropriately.

Expand Technical Expertise to Stop Discrimination. The detailed personal profiles held about many consumers, combined with automated, algorithm-driven decision-making, could lead—intentionally or inadvertently—to discriminatory outcomes, or what some are already calling “digital redlining.” The federal government’s lead civil rights and consumer protection agencies should expand their technical expertise to be able to identify practices and outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that have a discriminatory impact on protected classes, and develop a plan for investigating and resolving violations of law.

Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The laws that govern protections afforded to our communications were written before email, the internet, and cloud computing came into wide use. Congress should amend ECPA to ensure the standard of protection for online, digital content is consistent with that afforded in the physical world—including by removing archaic distinctions between email left unread or over a certain age.

We also identify several broader areas ripe for further study, debate, and public engagement that, collectively, we hope will spark a national conversation about how to harness big data for the public good. We conclude that we must find a way to preserve our privacy values in both the domestic and international marketplace. We urgently need to build capacity in the federal government to identify and prevent new modes of discrimination that could be enabled by big data. We must ensure that law enforcement agencies using big data technologies do so responsibly, and that our fundamental privacy rights remain protected. Finally, we recognize that data is a valuable public resource, and call for continuing the Administration’s efforts to open more government data sources and make investments in research and technology.

While big data presents new challenges, it also presents immense opportunities to improve lives, the United States is perhaps better suited to lead this conversation than any other nation on earth. Our innovative spirit, technological know-how, and deep commitment to values of privacy, fairness, non-discrimination, and self-determination will help us harness the benefits of the big data revolution and encourage the free flow of information while working with our international partners to protect personal privacy. This review is but one piece of that effort, and we hope it spurs a conversation about big data across the country and around the world.

Read the Big Data Report.

See the fact sheet from today’s announcement.

#13 Hours, the Stand Down of American Power

Having been so close to the mater of the Benghazi attack since it happened and deeply researching all the facts pre and post attack, seeing the movie was a personal quest to complete the circle of known circumstances and facts.

There were clearly political objectives by not only the U.S. State Department in cadence with other foreign diplomatic agencies with regard to Libya. This played out on the screen at the beginning of the movie. It is the common conclusion by the majority with interest in the matter of Libya, that the United States was running weapons from Libya to Syrian rebels. I still to this day somewhat dispute that notion, however, the bigger takeaway from the movie is the White House and State Department resolve to wean the U.S. military power from the global landscape and to install misguided diplomatic efforts in its place not only in Libya but several dozen countries across the globe.

For decades, the United States has been the leader in the world, and rightly so to maintain as much equilibrium as possible, often deploying in order, diplomatic efforts, CIA efforts and finally military efforts. Once Barack Obama made the case in the April 2009 famous Cairo speech, the forecast was clear that he was going to even out the power and positions of nations in the world with particular emphasis on securing Muslim based nations as protected and promoted states.

The last real offensive military operation with any kind of ‘win’ was Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power. Since, we have seen the rise of al Qaeda, Khorasan, Islamic State and the Taliban, where rules of engagement have been so feeble the death tolls rise and the refugee numbers are staggering. This demonstrates that when there is a mission, strategy and resolve to an objective, it can be achieved.

13 Hours proved Libya was in complete chaos for quite some time prior to the attack on September 11, 2012. There had been countless terror attempts, growing militant factions and assassination attempts leading up to that fateful day. Was going back in to Libya to complete the task of establishing a real and functional government beyond the scope of attention and resolve by the State Department and the White House?

I would argue, the unspoken objective of Barack Obama is to no longer demonstrate the power of the United States including military might, but rather to have diplomatic achievements that are only gained by allowing the other side to completely prevail as is the case with Iran.

One of the jobs of the Global Response Staff is to protect people and interests by deploying all assets near and far, calculating responses, time, personnel and approvals. Such was not the case in Libya and in countless other countries during that entire week in September. Many locations had protests and attacks on U.S. posts.

The movie demonstrated that movement of U.S. personnel in Libya was by all foreign contractors or borrowed assets. This places the safety and security of people at risk from the start. No lessons were learned or heeded or laws followed from previous historical attacks.

In March of 2015, there was a growing terror condition in Yemen by the Iranian back Houthis. Yemen was a very large CIA operation there to address AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Moving into April, the United States under John Kerry at the State Department once again failed to respond and upwards of 5000 were at risk, their fate unknown had to fend for themselves. Global Response Staff teams or the military exfil FEST teams or the QRF, Quick Reaction Force were not deployed at the behest of the State Department. Thankfully, India provided the larger portion of the rescue operations.

The military does not leave anyone behind and neither does  any human being with a shred of benevolence. The exceptions are Barack, Hillary and John. America and Americans fate is damned by this trio. Of this, there is no dispute.

By the way, leaving Benghazi, a borrowed oil company aircraft was used for the first flight out and a Libyan transport plane was use for the last flight out, carrying 4 dead Americans. Still no Americans as the lights went out in Benghazi.

 

 

The Biggest Silent Lie Yet?

Hillary’s fingerprints are all over this and it is likely the biggest betrayal to the families and the U.S. taxpayers yet. The shame never ends.

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. TAXPAYERS, NOT TEHRAN, COMPENSATED VICTIMS OF IRANIAN ATTACKS AGAINST AMERICANS
BY JONATHAN BRODER

Newsweek: A little-noticed side agreement to the Iran nuclear deal has unexpectedly reopened painful wounds for the families of more than a dozen Americans attacked or held hostage by Iranian proxies in recent decades. U.S. officials, the families say, insisted that Tehran would pay for financing or directing the attacks, but American taxpayers wound up paying instead.


The agreement, which resolved a long-running financial dispute with Iran, involved the return of $400 million in Iranian funds that the U.S. seized after the 1979 Islamic revolution, plus another $1.3 billion in interest. Announced on January 17—the same day the two countries implemented the nuclear deal and carried out a prisoner swap—President Barack Obama presented the side agreement as a bargain for the United States, noting that a claims tribunal in the Hague could have awarded Iran a much larger judgment. “For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran,” Obama said.


But for the victims, the side deal is a betrayal, not a bargain. In 2000, the Clinton administration agreed to pay the $400 million to more than a dozen Americans who had won judgments against Iran in U.S. courts. At the time, American officials assured the victims that the Treasury would be reimbursed from the seized Iranian funds. That same year, Congress passed a law empowering the president to get the money from Iran. “We all believed that Iran would pay our damages, not U.S. taxpayers,” says Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey real estate lawyer who received $24 million for the death of his 19-year-old daughter in a 1995 bus bombing in the Gaza Strip. “And now, 15 years later, we find out that they never deducted the money from the account. It makes me nauseous. The Iranians aren’t paying a cent.”
Flatow’s cohorts agree. They include the families and survivors of some of the most high-profile foreign attacks against Americans in recent decades. Among them: five former Beirut hostages whom the Iran-backed Islamist group Hezbollah held for years during the 1980s; the wife of U.S. Marine Colonel William Higgins, whom Hezbollah kidnapped in 1988, before torturing and hanging him; the family of Navy diver Robert Stethem, whom an Iranian-backed group murdered in Beirut during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner; and a family whose daughter was killed in a Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem in 1996.
Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration who helped negotiate the settlement, admits he never told the victims and their families the truth about the money. Unbeknownst to the victims and their lawyers, he says, Tehran had filed a claim with the U.S.-Iran tribunal in the Hague over the funds. “We didn’t have the full freedom to say we’re just going to take the $400 million because that money was now part of a formal claim,” Eizenstat says.
What’s further angered the victims and their families: A senior Iranian military official now claims the $1.7 billion is effectively a ransom for the five American hostages Tehran released in January. “This money was returned for the freedom of the U.S. spies, and it was not related to the nuclear negotiations,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said Wednesday, according to the state-run Fars News Agency. The Obama administration denies any link between the prisoners and the $1.7 billion. But Republicans, already fuming over the nuclear deal, are now calling for an inquiry. “It’s bad enough the administration is giving Iran over $100 billion in direct sanctions relief, resumed oil sales and new international trade,” says Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. “But now it’s using U.S. taxpayer money to pay the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism a $1.7 billion ‘settlement.’”
Administration officials are trying to play down the deal, noting it follows a 2000 law that created the compensation mechanism for the victims and their families. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with State Department protocol, says the law only required the U.S. government, acting in place of the victims, to deal with their damage claims “to the satisfaction of the United States, which was the case with this settlement.” A major reason the U.S. was satisfied: The U.S. and Iran disagreed over whether the $400 million should have been placed in an interest-bearing account in 1979. “We reached this settlement on interest,” the official says, “to avoid significant potential exposure we faced at the tribunal on that question.”
But the revelation that Iran never paid the money has hit some of the families hard. They’ve lost the feeling that some measure of justice was served. “I feel like a schnorrer,” says Flatow, using the Yiddish term for a mooch, because U.S. taxpayers, not Iran, paid his damages. Other victims say they’re bothered by the administration’s reluctance to discuss the details of the side deal. It’s brought back memories from 20 years ago, when the victims won their judgments against Iran in U.S. courts, only to find themselves blocked at every turn by the Clinton administration. “There are limited ways to react to your child getting murdered,” says Leonard Eisenfeld, a Connecticut doctor whose son was killed in the 1996 bus bombing in Jerusalem. “Creating a financial deterrent to prevent Iran from more terrorism was one way, but we had to struggle very hard to do that.”
In a series of legal challenges, Clinton administration officials identified $20 million in Iranian assets in America. Among them: Tehran’s Washington embassy and several consulates around the country. But in arguments that sometimes echoed Tehran’s concerns, the officials maintained that attaching those assets to pay even a small portion the victims’ damages would violate U.S. obligations to respect the sovereign immunity of other countries’ diplomatic property.
Though their arguments succeeded in court, the optics were bad. The case caught the attention of the media and Congress, where many lawmakers openly supported the victims. The contours of a settlement began to emerge when lawyers for some of the victims, acting on a tip from a sympathizer inside the administration, located the $400 million in Iranian funds languishing in a foreign military sales (FMS) account at the Treasury. The money came from payments made by the shah for U.S. military equipment that was never delivered after the Iranian leader was overthrown in 1979. After several more clashes with the administration over the funds, first lady Hillary Clinton stepped in at a time when the bitter battles could have hurt her with Jewish voters in her 2000 bid for a New York Senate seat. She persuaded her husband to appoint Jacob Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to negotiate a settlement that would utilize the frozen Iranian funds.
That same year, Congress passed the legislation that paved the way for an agreement. The legislation required the Treasury to pay the $400 million in damages and empowered the president to seek reimbursement from Iran. Flatow, who had insisted the payments come directly from the Iranian account, recalls his negotiations with Lew. “I said, ‘Jack, where’s the money coming from? Is it coming from the foreign military sales account?’ And he said, ‘No, Steve. All checks that the United States of America writes come from the United States Treasury. But the statute says that we have the right to offset any payments we make against that FMS money.’ So I said, ‘OK, it’s not what I was hoping for, but it’s a settlement.’ We got paid in 2001. And we all believed that the government would reimburse itself from Iran’s foreign military sales account.”
Lew, now Obama’s Treasury secretary, declined to comment, as did former officials from the George W. Bush administration, which also never reimbursed the Treasury from the Iran weapons account.

In retrospect, Eizenstat, the former deputy Treasury secretary, says it was a mistake to pay the judgments against Iran using U.S. funds with no financial consequences for Tehran. The payments have made Flatow, Eisenfeld and the others the only victims of Iranian attacks to receive compensation. That is expected to change this year now that Congress has established a $1 billion fund to begin paying other notable victims of Iranian attacks, including the Tehran embassy hostages and survivors of the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut. This time, however, the money for their damage judgments will come not from U.S. taxpayers but from fines collected from a French bank that laundered billions for Iran.
For Flatow and others like him, that’s little consolation. In the agreement, he notes, “there wasn’t a single sentence, not a single word that would ameliorate the pain of people who lost their loved ones. That’s very hurtful.”

There Goes Another IRS Hard Drive

To be honest, this sounds like the work of Hillary’s camp for the benefit of the Clinton Foundation at work, certainly while everyone is concentrating on the fight between the parties and the presidential campaign.

InpartfromTheHill: “The IRS’s missteps in preserving documents — whether they be the subject of a congressional investigation, court order, or FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request — are concerning, and necessitate further oversight into the agency’s document preservation practices,” Hatch and Wyden wrote.

The matter relates to the IRS’s controversial hiring of an outside law firm to help in an audit of Microsoft, Law360 reported.

Chaffetz, Jordan Erupt After IRS Erases Another Hard Drive

 DailyCaller: Leading members of Congress are ripping IRS officials for erasing a computer hard drive after a federal judge ordered it to be preserved.

“The destruction of evidence subject to preservation orders and subpoenas has been an ongoing problem under your leadership at the IRS,” Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen late Thursday.

“It is stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect,” Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said in the letter to Koskinen.

The IRS recently admitted in court to erasing the hard drive even though a federal judge had issued a preservation related to a Microsoft Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the federal tax agency last year, according to court documents. Microsoft accuses the IRS of inappropriately hiring an outside law firm to audit it and of failing to hand over related documents requested under the FOIA.

Chaffetz and other members of the oversight panel began calling for Koskinen’s impeachment in October. Chaffetz and Jordan in their letter point out that the IRS in March 2014 also destroyed 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails sent or received by Lois Lerner, former director of IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division.

Lerner was the central figure in the scandal sparked by the tax agency’s illegal targeting and harassment of conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.

Samuel Maruca, owner of the hard drive in question and a former senior IRS executive, participated in the IRS hiring of the outside law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP allegedly to investigate Microsoft. Maruca left the IRS in August 2014, according to court documents.

Chaffetz and Jordan told Koskinen to hand over all documents on IRS preservation policies and all documents related to the destruction of Lerner and Maruca’s hard drives.

 

Perspective: The Real Violation of Hillary with SAP on Her Server

Humm, was Hillary ever in a SCIF?

(Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility)

The smoking gun?  

TheHill: Special Access Programs (SAP) is a game changer.  It is now undeniably clear that the results of the FBI investigation will be the end of one of two things:  Hillary’s bid for the White House or the legitimacy of the FBI—at least when it comes to prosecuting cases on the mishandling of classified material.

In 2006, a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) from my company was deployed to Afghanistan.  Theirs was a particular mission that differed from the combat missions the typical ODAs were conducting at that time.  Everyone on that team maintained a Top Secret Sensitive and Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance and was “read-on” to their special program.  A few months into their deployment, their Intelligence Sergeant lost a thumb-drive that possessed classified information.  A week later the thumb drive was found for sale at a local bazaar.

In response to the events, Col. Ken Allard (ret.) stated, “You’ve got a situation in which the U.S. is going to be forced to change an awful lot of its operational techniques.”

Beyond the compromise of classified information, a lot did change.  New protocols for the handling of classified material were established, and the transportation of classified material on thumb drives was strictly forbidden.  The knee jerk reaction even went as far as to disable USB ports on our work computers—in case we forgot.

Since then I’ve deployed to several locations where, at times, we operated in small teams with only non-secure cellphones with which to communicate.  We often found ourselves with a lot of information that needed to be sent up in reports, but due to the nature of our mission we were forced to sit on it for a few days until we were able to type it up and send it through a secure medium.  I’d be lying if I said we didn’t concoct elaborate plans with “foolproof” ways to communicate the information over non-secure channels, but in the end, no one was willing to take the risk of our “fail-safes” failing.

As more information from Hillary Clinton’s server has been made available, it is clear that the contents of the server contained Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT).  Understanding that much of the information has been retroactively classified, there are a few facts that are tough to grasp—at least from the perspective of an intelligence practitioner.

First, when imagery that is classified SECRET//NOFORN (no foreign national) is viewed, regardless of the absence of classification markings, it is distinctly evident. Second, any documents that contain or reference HUMINT is always classified SECRET, and if specific names of sources or handlers are mentioned, they are at a minimum SECRET//NOFORN.  Third, SIGINT is always classified at the TS level.  It’s not uncommon for some SI to be downgraded and shared over SECRET mediums, however, it is highly unlikely that a Secretary of State would receive downgraded intelligence.  Finally, SAP intelligence has been discovered on Clinton’s private server, and many are now calling this the smoking gun.  SAP is a specialized management system of additional security controls designed to protect SAR or Special Access Required.  SAR has to do with extremely perishable operational methods and capabilities, and only selected individuals who are “read on” or “indoctrinated” are permitted access to these programs.  The mishandling of SAP can cause catastrophic damage to current collection methods, techniques and personnel.

In other words, if you have worked with classified material for more than a day, it seems highly implausible that someone could receive any of the aforementioned over an un-secure medium without alarm bells sounding.  However, reading about a Special Access Program on an unclassified device would make anyone even remotely familiar with intelligence mess their pantsuit.

With more damming information being released almost weekly now, it’s interesting that during last Sunday’s Democratic debate, Clinton resoundingly stated: “No one is too big for jail.”Although the context was referencing bank CEOs and Hedge fund managers, the obvious correlation left many scratching their heads and wondering—did Hillary Clinton just say, “I dare you” to the FBI?”

DeChristopher is a 9-year veteran of the United States Army Special Forces.  He holds an M.A. in Strategic Security Studies from National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs with a concentration in Irregular Warfare.  He currently works as an Independent Intelligence Consultant.

***

The State Department Inspector General who investigated the Hillary server, had security clearance but to complete the assignment to investigate deeper the issues and data on the server, he had to go through and additional process to get the highest security clearance. It must also be mentioned that some top intelligence community professionals are now part of the investigation and they are in fact stationed to do nothing but investigate the actual communications and determine what was, should have been classified even though ‘some’ communications had designations removed.

****

FNC: Some of Hillary Clinton’s emails on her private server contained information so secret that senior lawmakers who oversee the State Department cannot read them without fulfilling additional security requirements, Fox News has learned.

The emails in question, as Fox News first reported earlier this week, contained intelligence classified at a level beyond “top secret.” Because of this designation, not all the lawmakers on key committees reviewing the case have high enough clearances.

A source with knowledge of the intelligence review told Fox News that senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite having high-level clearances, are among those not authorized to read the intelligence from so-called “special access programs” without taking additional security steps — like signing new non-disclosure agreements.

These programs are highly restricted to protect intelligence community sources and methods.

As Fox News previously reported, a Jan. 14 letter from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III to senior lawmakers said an intelligence review identified “several dozen” additional classified emails — including specific intelligence from “special access programs” (SAP).

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the Democratic presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

Fox News is told that the reviewers who handled the SAP intelligence identified in Clinton’s emails had to sign additional non-disclosure agreements even though they already have the highest level of clearance — known as TS/SCI or Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented information. This detail was first reported by NBC News.

This alone seems to undercut the former secretary of state’s and other officials’ claims that the material is “innocuous.”

In an interview with NPR, Clinton claimed the latest IG finding doesn’t change anything and suggested it was politically motivated.

“This seems to me to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign, it’s another leak,” she said. “I’m just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified.”

Despite Clinton’s claims, it is the content that is classified; the markings on the documents do not affect that.

A former Justice Department official said there is another problem — warnings from State Department IT employees and others that she should be using a government account.

“If you have a situation where someone was knowingly violating the law and that they knew that what they were doing was prohibited by federal law because other people were saying, you’re violating the law, knock it off, and they disregarded that advice and they went ahead, that’s a very difficult case to defend,” Thomas Dupree said.