Category Archives: Cyber War

Delete TikTok and then Get a New Phone, Period

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Don’t use TikTok in any form. Don’t even open it when it has been sent to you. Spread the word and do it now. Why you ask?
Well if the Pentagon has issued an order to all military personnel, uniformed and civilian to not download or use TikTok that is a good reason to consider. But, there is a movement among Republican governors that have issued executive orders with much the same language for all state employees and contractors…TikTok is forbidden. So far those states include: Utah, South Dakota, Texas, Maryland and Nebraska. Even FBI Director Chris Wray has said he is extremely worried about the app.

TikTok - Make Your Day

There is a rather shallow attempt by TikTok otherwise known as Byte Dance the parent company to address security concerns. That effort is known as Project Texas. What about this Project Texas thing? It is a result of the letter sent to TikTok by several Senators dated last June. Read the letter here in case you need to understand more.

Source: Warnings don’t come as blunt as the one Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) dished Thursday to the users of the highly popular Chinese TikTok app.

“Let me just be clear,” said Cotton, a China critic. “If you have TikTok on your device, you should delete it from your device. And even better, you should go and buy a new device and not download TikTok,” he added.

Cotton is the latest official to warn of intelligence findings that the app is collecting vital information on users and possibly storing it for future use — even blackmail.

Addressing China and Chinese immigration scams at a conference hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, Cotton warned younger audience members about the possible trap the app was setting them up for.

“The back-office risks of TikTok aren’t the videos you see and the kind of corrosive effects it has on the minds of America’s youth. It’s the data that it collects,” he said.

“And that data can be used against our kids as they grow up, and not just kids obviously. Grown-ups use it too. I think, increasingly, people in Washington are using it to try and reach voters, communicate. That means they are being exposed as well,” he said.

Cotton also said that the app “exposes all of your personal data, perhaps all of the data that you have on your device, to collection and exploitation. It’s not like if your 15-year-old daughter is watching videos of drum major routines that that’s going to put her at risk. But if it accesses every bit of other information on her phone, then that can put her at risk. And it puts her at risk for the rest of her life. This data doesn’t just disappear. It’s collected in troves” and can be used against her if she lands a sensitive job in the future.

The center hosted Cotton because he has recently pushed Homeland Security on the app and TikTok’s use of visas to bring in Chinese nationals who take U.S. jobs at reduced pay.

“TikTok captures vast amounts of private information on users, including American citizens, and has long been suspected of providing the CCP with potential access to that information. This threatens the safety and security of American citizens and also functions as an avenue for the Chinese government to track the locations of and develop blackmail on federal employees and contractors,” he said in a letter to Homeland Security.

He also has asked the DHS to explain how many visas it has granted TikTok’s U.S. outlet, ByteDance. He said in the letter to the DHS that “Beijing-based employees of ByteDance have targeted specific American users for surveillance, and that at least 300 TikTok and ByteDance employees are also current or former employees of Chinese state media.”

 

Hurry and Reconsider you use of Venmo, PayPal or Other Payment Apps

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President Biden said that anyone making less than $400,000 per year would not a dime more in taxes….now a lie. Apps of all sorts are already asking for your banking information. Note….the banking information is getting reported by payments apps and other online sites such as Etsy, Marketplace and OfferUp. As you read further, understand what is not being revealed. The IRS is using private corporations to aid them in reporting personal information about you. Getting a 1099 could easily put you in a higher tax bracket dust because you collected dues from team members, sold an old umbrella or work on the side selling a potholder you knitted.

Best Mobile Payments Apps to Send & Receive Money | MyBankTracker photo source

FNC: Americans who made money online this year could be in for a potentially brutal shock when they file their taxes in 2023.

That’s because, beginning next year, taxpayers must report to the IRS transactions of at least $600 that are received through payment apps like Venmo, PayPal and Cash App.

In an explainer posted online last month, the IRS warned small business owners about the $600 threshold for receiving Form 1099-K for third-party payments exceeding $600.

Third-party payment processors will now be required to report a user’s business transactions to the IRS if they exceed $600 for the year. The payment apps were previously required to send users Form 1099-K if their gross income exceeded $20,000 or they had 200 separate transactions within a calendar year.

“I think it will come as a shock out of nowhere that people are getting these,” Nancy Dollar, a tax lawyer at Hanson Bridgett, told FOX Business.

Democrats made the change in March 2021, when they passed the American Rescue Plan without any Republican votes.

Now, a single transaction over $600 will trigger the form. The change is intended to crack down on Americans evading taxes by not reporting the full extent of their gross income. However, critics say that it amounts to government overreach at its worst and that it could ultimately hurt small businesses.

The lower reporting threshold threatens to sweep up millions of Americans who make money online. Roughly one in four Americans rakes in extra income on the side by selling something online, renting their home or using a digital platform to do work, according to the Pew Research Center.

The change could discourage some Americans from participating in the gig economy, according to Dollar.

“Everyone I know offloads old goods that they have on these platforms because it’s so easy,” Dollar said. “Or they’ve been engaging in gig work on a very casual basis, and that affects gig workers as well who have been underreporting their income. I think it’s going to force people to either cut down on those activities or kind of take them more seriously and track them.”

The new rule only applies to payments received for goods and services transactions, meaning that using Venmo or PayPal to send a loved one a gift, pay your roommate rent or reimburse a friend for dinner will be excluded. Also excluded is anyone who receives money from selling a personal item at a loss; for example, if you purchased a couch for $300 and sold it for $250, the amount is not taxable.

“This doesn’t include things like paying your family or friends back using PayPal or Venmo for dinner, gifts, shared trips,” PayPal previously said.

To be clear, business owners are already required to report that income to the IRS. The new rule simply means that the IRS will figure out what business owners earned on the cash apps, regardless of what that individual actually reports on their 1099-K, because it broadens the scope of the threshold.

Form 1099-K is used to report goods and services payments received by a business or individual in the calendar year, but there are certain exclusions from gross income that are not subject to income tax, including amounts from selling personal items at a loss, amounts sent as reimbursements and amounts sent as gifts.

“For the 2022 tax year, you should consider the amounts shown on your Form 1099-K when calculating gross receipts for your income tax return,” PayPal said in a Q&A on its website. “The IRS will be able to cross-reference both our report and yours.”

The cash apps will now be required to send users who meet the newest requirements Form 1099-K for transactions made electronically or by mail.

The apps may request additional information from users shortly to properly report transactions, and users may be asked to provide their Employer Identification Number (EIN), Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN), or Social Security Number (SSN) if it’s not already on file.

A Deeper Look Due to the Twitter Files

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Elon Musk has assigned three people so far to drop summaries of internal communications at the Twitter headquarters. While much has been revealed, much has been held back including the actual communications. So withhold your excitement and gratitude of Elon Musk….however, there is some strategic thinking that does need to be applied here with what we have come to learn.

Let’s begin with something most disgusting and how it festered not only at Twitter but appears to have permeated throughout social media and now Congress and our education system….

Yoel Roth, the now former Twitter employee responsible for Trust & Safety appears to be a really dark and yikes …into child sex. The Post Millennial and the Libs of Tik Tok reports in part:

after it was revealed that Roth’s PhD thesis argued for minors to have access to adult content, writing “…it’s worth considering how, if at all, the current generation of popular sites of gay networked sociability might fit into an overall queer social landscape that increasingly includes individuals under the age of 18.” Read the full summary here.

BREAKING: Former Twitter exec Yoel Roth argued for minors' access to adult internet services in PhD thesis | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com source

With that nasty part out of the way…The video above hosted by Steve Hilton of The Fox News Channel does an excellent breakdown of the U.S. security apparatus working in partnership/cadence with ALL social media. Big Tech that includes, Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Y0uTube, Reddit, Yahoo, Instagram, Facebook and Apple. We have a rogue Federal government and an even more rogue and nefarious social media/big tech system throughout the United States and actually the world.

Redoubling Efforts to Secure Midterm Election Elvis Chan, 2018 on election security

This particular release of the deposition of Elvis Chan. Chan is the head of cyber security , agent in charge at the FBI Bureau located in San Francisco. The reason for this deposition is due to the lawsuit against against the Federal government and the Biden administration brought by the Attorney General(s) of Missouri and Louisiana. The almost 400 pages is quite revealing. Chan under oath admitted that the FBI met weekly with social media companies in the lead up to the 2020 election with the topic of the Russia hack and dump operation. That is the continued script that began with Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and continued through, well even today.

To validate the statement above that partnership between the security apparatus and social media understand the following:

All of the people listed below once or do work at Twitter….you can likely win a bet if there are others that work at the other big tech corporations…so here we go…

Elvis Chan, FBI

Shelby Pierson, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Jim Baker, former FBI top lawyer and signer of false FISA warrants

Vijaya Gaddes, now currently hired by the Biden administration in the CISA agency

Dawn Burton, FBI

Jeff Carlton, formerly with the CIA and FBI

Matthew W. FBI

Patricia G. FBI

Bruce A. FBI

Michael Scott Robinson, CIA and FBI

Greg Anderson, NATO

Gordon McMillan, British Army Officer psyops soldier

Aaron Berman, CIA (now at Meta/Facebook)

Scott Stern, CIA

Deborah Berman, CIA

Bryan Weisbard, CIA

Cameron Harris, CIA

Emily Vacher, FBI

Hagan Barnett, former CIA contractor

Neil Potts, former USMC intelligence officer

Olga Belogolova, from the Defense Department

There are more people that moved within the big tech circles, leaving one company to join another. You can read the details here.

What do you feel you missed with news that should have been reported legacy media, social media or even our own agencies at the Federal government? You missed it because it was suppressed, unreported or completely censored. Every part of that is noted above cheated the entire voting public and that included congressional committees. Really? Yes.

Per the Chan testimony:

Chan also explained how the FBI would share the “disinformation” or “misinformation” with social media companies. It would take place around the time of quarterly meetings, if not more frequently through secure e-mails if the FBI field offices thought necessary. For example, the FBI might notify Facebook that a certain IP address is associated with the Internet Research Agency. The accounts flagged by the FBI are always removed by the social media companies, in large part because of pressure from Congressional Committees. As explained by Chan:

Around this same time, there were visits from Congressional staffers to pressure social media companies. Senior-level staffers have even visited Facebook, Google, and Twitter as part of these influence – or censorship – campaigns.

Chan continued:

The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) is none other than Adam Schiff. As for the SCCI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has Democrat Mark Warner as the Chairman.

 

 

 

Censorship Ordered by Biden Admin

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Simply, it is a violation of law. Remember recently when the Department of Homeland Security was creating a disinformation task force? Remember how it was quickly terminated? Well…it was never terminated.

Primer: Attached is our final report, DHS Needs a Unified Strategy to CounterDisinformation Campaigns. We incorporated your formal comments into the final report.

(that report is dated August 2022)

Then there is this Fact Sheet from May of 2022 by DHS.

Do you ever wonder about what is actually on social media including Wikipedia? You should, but even more importantly, you should wonder what is not on social media, Wikipedia but more…those internet search results. Every American is being politically engineered by tech companies, social media and the cable/print media operations….but read on…

A big hat tip to the Attorney General of Missouri and to The Intercept…excellent work and this case continues.

Court Orders Depositions of Top Biden Officials in Missouri AG’s Case
Oct 21, 2022, 16:38 PM by AG Schmitt
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced today that the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted Missouri and Louisiana’s request for depositions from top-ranking officials in the federal government. This is movement in his lawsuit against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding to suppress freedom of speech. The list of granted depositions includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, CISA Director Jen Easterly, and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan.
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden Administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”

The original lawsuit was filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on May 5, 2022. Missouri and Louisiana filed a Motion for Expedited Preliminary Injunction-Related Discovery on June 17, 2022, and that motion was granted on July 12, 2022, clearing the way for Missouri and Louisiana to gather discovery and documents from Biden Administration officials and social media companies.

The request for depositions was filed on October 10, 2022, and that motion was granted on October 21, 2022, allowing Missouri and Louisiana to depose top-ranking officials in the federal government under oath. More here.

Furthermore, the Biden White House approving the operations are already infecting the mid-term elections and those of the 2024 general election.

In part from the documents revealed by The Intercept:

  • DHS is “directly engaging with social media companies to flag MDM” (MDM is defined as mis-information, dis-information, and mal-information). It is doing so “Ahead of midterm elections in 2022” and is readying its efforts with eyes focused on 2024:
  • DHS is questioning how to “inspire innovators to partner with the government” without this “being seen as government ‘propaganda’”.
  • The “rapid response team would need to surge for short periods of time around elections.”

CISA is by the way is The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency. It is an agency known to work with partners to defend against threats and collaborates to build a more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future as noted on the website. Hummm…is right. www.cisa.gov

***

Additional details include in part:

The government had its fingers all over social media companies. DHS would tell social media companies what they wanted off the platforms via “takedown requests,” and then the platforms would submit reports to government. They would be “called on to ‘process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.'”

This was specifically done with election information, which would be flagged by state election officials, submitted to DHS, which would then tell social media companies to pull it. source

Who Needs to be Fired or Jailed at the Pentagon?

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Chinese Hypersonic Missile To Specifically Check US, Indian Threats

Is there an Inspector General on the case? Where is the DIA or the FBI?

Hypersonics refers to a range of emerging technologies that can propel missiles at greater than five times the speed of sound and potentially evade current defenses. Pentagon officials have said the United States and China are locked in an arms race to develop the most potent hypersonic weapons. “In this case the American technology is superior—we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” a Chinese scientist whose lab conducts testing for hypersonic vehicles told the Post. “There isn’t the same technical foundation.” Using Chinese government procurement databases and other contract documents, The Post identified almost 50 U.S. firms whose products were sold through intermediaries since 2019 to Chinese military groups that work on missile technology. The Post reviewed procurement documents related to seven other sales since 2020 of Ansys technology to Chinese groups that are either on the export blacklist or have known missile links,including through three other Chinese intermediaries that had no apparent link to Pera Global. These groups include the National University of Defense Technology, which is on the Entity List, and the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute in Luoyang, which develops long-range, high-precision missiles. More here.

FB: Research groups for China’s hypersonics and missile program are buying specialized American technology produced by firms funded by the Pentagon, according to a Washington Post investigation released Monday.

The Post found over 300 sales since 2019 of advanced software products from nearly 50 U.S. firms to research groups involved in China’s missile development program. Many of the firms that developed these products received millions of dollars in grants from the Department of Defense. The companies are finding their way around U.S. export bans by selling to private Chinese middleman distributors.

“It’s very disturbing, because the bottom line is that technology that can be used for military hypersonics was funded by U.S. taxpayers, through the U.S. government, and ended up in China,” University of Colorado Center for National Security Initiatives director Iain Boyd, who conducts experimental research on hypersonics, told the Post.

The report reveals the U.S. government’s struggle to keep American military innovations out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The acquired commercial software—the results of decades of research—will save the Chinese military time and resources as it strives to outpace the United States in a race to create the most effective hypersonic weapons.

The Defense Department has strict export controls designed to prevent products that threaten national security from reaching China.

“U.S. export controls require a license for the export of any type of software, hardware, or technology to China if there is knowledge that it would be used to develop a missile or other item used for weapons of mass destruction,” Kevin Wolf, a former senior official at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, told the Post. “And that license would generally be denied.”

American firms are skirting these safeguards by blindly selling advanced software to private Chinese firms. Some of those firms openly advertise their relationships with Chinese weapon and military groups, the Post found.

“What we’ve always told companies is you cannot self-blind,” Matthew Borman, the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant secretary for export administration, told the Post. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m selling it to a distributor, I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.’ Especially if it’s a party where it’s readily ascertainable that they are a supplier to the Chinese military.”

The Post found that two of the U.S. firms—Arizona-based Zona Technology and California-headquartered Metacomp Technologies—sold software to the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, which played a key role in designing China’s 2021 hypersonic missile test. Both companies are also beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovation Research grant program, which incentivizes development of American defense technology.