Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Can FBI Investigate the Director of CIA over Private Emails?

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There have been countless top agency people within the Obama administration that have violated law, procedures and even a White House directive regarding use of private emails and violations of communications security and operational security.

First we came to know about Lisa Jackson, Secretary of the EPA, then there was Eric Holder himself, while he was the top lawyer at the Department of Justice. Hillary and her server operation made an art of violating all protocols, but now John Brennan appears to be the next one in line where the FBI needs to open an investigation case. Is that possible? Has anyone asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about his use of private emails? How about a massive campaign where every administration official has to sign a compliance document, then take a polygraph, then be terminated for violations? Imagine…..just imagine the fallout. If for nothing else, these people should lose their respective security clearances, this is dereliction of duty and malfeasance, much less a violation of Oath.

Hackers release info on Obama’s national security transition team

by: Aaron Boyd 

The slow drip of information allegedly stolen from CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account continues to find its way onto WikiLeaks, with a list of personal information about 20 members of President Obama’s transition team added to the leak in the most recent post on Oct. 26.

The list — which includes names, personal emails, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and more — was originally posted to Twitter by user @_CWA_ on Oct. 19, however the account was quickly suspended and the post removed.

After the Twitter account was shut down, “Crackas With Attitude” — the duo claiming to have perpetrated the hack — began slowly posting the information to WikiLeaks. The third and latest dump came on Oct. 26, including the list and the dossier of a FBI agent in the counterterrorism division.

The list posted Monday mostly includes names of former intelligence and national security officials, some of whom served under President George W. Bush and some who served or currently serve under President Barack Obama, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The names have something else in common, as well.

All of the people listed were part of the Obama administration’s transition team, with most of them serving on the National Security Team. The team members listed covered the Defense Department, DHS, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Only three names advised on other aspects of the transition but Federal Times confirmed that everyone whose information was exposed served in some capacity.

The document was created (or most recently updated) on Nov. 16, 2008, according to the associated metadata.

The breadth of the release is minor compared to the high-profile breach of the Office of Personnel Management last year but the implications are still serious, especially as this information was released publicly on the Internet.

“It’s a pretty serious proposition to have any of that information out there,” said Marcus Christian, a former federal prosecutor and current partner with the law firm of Mayer Brown’s cybersecurity and data privacy practice.

While the perpetrators reportedly used social engineering to trick a helpline support employee into changing Brennan’s account password, the subsequent exfiltration of data and postings online still constitute a cyber crime, Christian said.

“Often times we look to the technological solution [for cybersecurity] but often times the problem — no matter how intricate and hardened we think our technology happens to be — there’s always some weakness,” he said, including the human element.

If the perpetrators are caught, Christian expects they could be prosecuted under a combination of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and federal Aggravated Identity Theft statutes, with the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Putin’s Most Terrifying Army

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This hacking wing of the Kremlin is not lost on our Congressional members, they clearly are aware of the names and events.

Organized crime is now a major element of Russia statecraft
BusinessInsider: In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In some cases, as with the hacking, this involves the Kremlin subcontracting organized crime groups to do things the Russian state cannot do itself with plausible deniability. And in others, it involves the state itself engaging in kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, bribery, and fraud to advance its agenda.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.

“It’s not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia,” Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute.

Hackers, Gangsters, And Goblins
According to a report by the FBI and US intelligence agencies, Russia is home to the most skilled community of cybercriminals on the globe, and the Kremlin has close ties to them.

“They have let loose the hounds,” Tom Kellermann, chief security officer at Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm, told Bloomberg News.

Citing unidentified officials, Bloomberg reported that Russian hackers had stepped up surveillance of essential infrastructure, including power grids and energy-supply networks, in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike, noted recently that the Russian security services have been actively recruiting an army of hackers.

“When someone is identified as being technically proficient in the Russian underground,” a pending criminal case against them “suddenly disappears and those people are never heard from again,” Alperovitch said in an interview with The Hill, adding that the hacker in question is then working for the Russian security services.

“We know that’s going on,” Alperovitch added.

And as a result, criminal hackers “that used to hunt banks eight hours a day are now operating two hours a day turning their guns on NATO and government targets,” Kellermann of Trend Micro told The Hill, adding that these groups are “willingly operating as cyber-militias.”

The hacking is just one example of how the Kremlin effectively uses organized crime as a geopolitical weapon.

Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas.

In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.

In annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as “The Goblin” as the peninsula’s chief executive.

And of course there is the case of Eston Kohver, the Estonian law enforcement officer who was investigating a smuggling ring run jointly by Russian organized crime groups and the Russian Federal Security Service.

Kohver was kidnapped in Estonia September 2014, brought across the Russian border at gunpoint, and convicted of espionage. He was released in a prisoner exchange last month.

The Geopolitics Of Extortion
But Putin’s mafia statecraft doesn’t just involve using and colluding with organized crime groups.

It often acts like an organized crime group itself.
In some cases this involves using graft as a means of control. This is a tactic Moscow has deployed throughout the former Soviet space, involving elites in corrupt schemes — everything from shady energy deals or money-laundering operations — to secure a “captured constituency.”

This is a tactic Russia attempted to use in Georgia following the 2003 Rose Revolution and in Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution, where “corruption and shadow networks were mobilized to undermine the new leadership’s reform agenda,” according to James Greene in a 2012 report for Chatham House.

This was particularly successful in Ukraine, where opaque gas deals were used “to suborn Ukraine’s post-Orange Revolution new leadership,” Greene wrote.

And Putin is clearly hoping to repeat this success in eastern Ukraine today — especially after elections are held in the rebel areas of Donbas.

“His bet in the eastern Ukraine local election, if it ever takes place, won’t be on the rebel field commanders but on local oligarchs who ran the region before the 2014 ‘revolution of dignity.’ Through them, he will hope to exert both economic and political influence on Kiev.” political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.

In addition to graft, Moscow has also effectively utilized blackmail — making the international community a series of offers it can’t refuse.

It’s a neat trick. First you create instability, as in Ukraine, or exasperate existing instability, as in Syria.Then offer your services to establish order.

You essentially create demand — and then meet it. You get to act like a rogue and be treated like a statesman.

It’s how protection rackets operate. And it has become one of the pillars of Putin’s foreign policy.
“It’s the geopolitics of extortion, but it’s probably working,” Galeotti told Voice of America in a recent interview.

“He’s identifying a whole series of potential trouble spots around the world, places that matter to the West, and is essentially indicating that he can either be a good partner, if they’re willing to make a deal with him, or he can stir up more trouble.”

Cold War Part 2, Gathering Conditions

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At the center of the conditions we have Iran, Russia, China and for extra measure, more aggressive terror factions and cells.

We had Afghanistan won until Barack Obama declared a termination to hostilities and combat roles. Now, conditions include:

Islamic State militants who say they are based in Afghanistan have in recent days promoted their alleged successes in the country. And on Wednesday they issued a call for Muslims to “take up arms” against Jews and Christians and “fight them in whatever way we can.”

The message in the Pashto language was the third time in less than a week that IS has highlighted its activities in Afghanistan on its website. In recent days, U.S. and Afghan officials have warned of an increased IS presence in Afghanistan and of its threat to Central Asia.

FNC: Russia has helped Iran deliver weapons into Syria twice a day over the past 10 days, western intelligence sources tell Fox News. Those sources say Russian cargo planes transported the weapons. The planes were spotted earlier this month on the tarmac at the Russian air base in Latakia, Syria’s primary port city. The flights are not registered, and are in breach of two United Nations Security Council resolutions which impose an arms embargo on Iran.

Fox News is told the increased Russian transport of Iranian weapons is being coordinated by Qassem Soulimeini, the head of the Iranian Al-Quds force, as well as President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. An Iranian civilian airline, Mahan Air, is flying military personnel into Syria several times each day from Tehran to Latakia.

Tehran’s support has been crucial to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s survival. Besides significant financial aid to Assad, Iran has acknowledged that its Revolutionary Guard officers are on the ground in Syria in an advisory role. There have been multiple Iranian officers and soldiers killed in fighting in Syria, though Tehran denies the presence of actual combat troops in the country.

In part: The United States has upgraded the security at its two largest overseas nuclear weapons bases, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy. Incirlik is undergoing a particularly extensive upgrade, a move connected to its vulnerable location close to the Syrian border.

Recent satellite images from Incirlik and Aviano show double-fence security perimeters—a sealed-off area where intruders can be shot—being built around the nuclear weapons storage areas. At Incirlik the garage holding the trucks that service the warheads is also being improved, along with the trucks themselves. Incirlik’s newly upgraded area contains 21 vaults, each holding two to three warheads, and will be equipped with lighting, cameras, and intrusion-detection devices. In addition to soldiers already guarding the enclosure, manned vehicles will also patrol space between the two fences around the clock.

Combined, the Incirlik measures amount to a major security upgrade. “They didn’t use to have the special double-fence security perimeter with sensors and the patrol road around the nuclear weapons vaults,” explained Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, who first reported the Incirlik and Aviano activity on his blog. “When the vaults were constructed in the nineties, they were considered so secure that the special security perimeter that had previously been used for nuclear weapons storage areas was no longer considered necessary.” He added that it’s unclear whether the upgrade is a direct result of volatility in the region or related to changed Pentagon security requirements.

More Cold War Part 2 Indicators:

Just as Russia has increased its military activism in the Middle East, the Kremlin is turning down the temperature in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, as the September 1 cease-fire is largely holding and larger caliber weaponry is being pulled back. The October 2 Paris meeting of the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia—the so-called Normandy Format—yielded a modest but positive result in postponing unsanctioned elections in the separatist areas. Yet the ultimate goal of returning Ukraine’s sovereignty over its eastern border still seems distant. Russia’s shadow therefore continues to loom over NATO’s eastern flank.

Against this geopolitical backdrop, 28 NATO defense ministers agreed on a plan to expand the NATO Response Force (NRF) to 40,000 troops, more than double its current size. This implements one of the principal elements of the program launched by NATO leaders at the September 2014 Wales Summit to upgrade NATO’s rapid-response capacity and to begin adapting the alliance to the challenges from Russia in the east. Among the other key elements in NATO’s adaptation are the creation of a high-readiness “spearhead” task force—Secretary General Stoltenberg announced October 8 that lead nations for the spearhead force have been identified through 2022 (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom), demonstrating resolve by NATO members to put resources behind its top-priority initiative. Thus far, the United States has deferred a decision to become a lead nation for the spearhead force, but the Obama administration’s European Reassurance Initiative invested $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2015 in strengthening European defense, enabling U.S. force rotations, security assistance, and pre-positioning of equipment in Europe. Sustaining U.S. investments beyond FY15 will be essential to ensuring European—and transatlantic—security.

Need more? al Qaeda in the Maghreb, deploying more special forces to Iraq against ISIS, additional success and growth of ISIS in Afghanistan, terror plan or Asia discovered, the Taliban is aiding and harboring al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

There is more, but you understand that since America under Barack Obama has retreated, the enemies are exploiting the weakness and lack of strategy by the West, where the United States used to lead.

MI5 and the FBI: Terrorists on Twitter-Social Media

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Twitter is the least cooperative technology company calling terrorists on the internet ‘freedom fighters. This was revealed in testimony this week.

Twitter has come under criticism from some analysts who say the social media company has failed to swiftly remove accounts that recruit potential terrorists and incite violence, raising concerns that the United States has not done enough to combat the Islamic State’s rapid expansion of its propaganda operations online.

Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, said on Wednesday that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group has effectively used social media sites such as Twitter to propagandize and radicalize individuals, including Americans. His nonprofit project recently chronicled 66 U.S. citizens who are accused of joining or attempting to join the Islamic State, plotting attacks in the United States, providing financial support to extremist groups, or disseminating radical propaganda.

“These individuals have very different backgrounds and experiences, but the one characteristic they seem to share is active participation on social media,” he said in testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The terror group known as Islamic State or Daesh has deployed and exploited unprescendented use of social media, where the effectiveness is beyond definition. Intelligence agencies in the West are grappling with solutions pushing the protections of free speech and use of the internet.

In part from Newsweek: The head of Britain’s internal counter-intelligence service MI5, has warned that ISIS and other extremist groups “continue to aspire to mass casualty attacks against the U.K.” and that an increasing proportion of their communication online and via encrypted channels is out of reach of Britain’s security services.

“All of this means the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career,” Andrew Parker said in his keynote speech made at a lord mayor’s event in London on Wednesday night.
Parker also warned of the “three-dimensional threat” that ISIS pose—at home, overseas and online. “We are seeing plots against the U.K. directed by terrorists in Syria; enabled through contacts with terrorists in Syria; and inspired online by Isil’s [ISIS] sophisticated exploitation of technology.”

Parker said MI5 must evolve its activities in order to combat modern threats, and emphasized that the agency’s ability to intercept communications has “been a key component in MI5’s toolbox throughout our history.”

The MI5 boss said he imagined the forthcoming defence review would garner more public interest than previous debates on similar matters. “But I hope that the public debate will be a mature one, ” he added. “Informed by the three independent reviews, and not characterized by ill-informed accusations of ‘mass surveillance’, or other such lazy two-worded tags.”

When it comes to the very similar requests by FBI Director, James Comey, his pleas are in earnest yet, tech companies and the U.S. Constitution actually prevent some actions due to the 1st Amendment. It is a slippery slope for both sides.

FBI Director James Comey called for a national conversation about how far tech companies should be allowed to go in applying encryption to their devices, saying law enforcement faces growing and overlapping challenges in accessing data needed to prosecute crimes.

During a speech at the Brookings Institution Thursday, Comey said the new forms of encryption being developed for mobile devices, as well as the rapid growth of the devices themselves, make it tough for the FBI to keep up with ways criminals can “go dark.”

“With going dark, those of us in law enforcement and public safety have a major fear of missing out,” Comey said. “Missing out on predators who exploit the most vulnerable among us; missing out on violent criminals who target our communities; missing out on a terrorist cell using social media to recruit, plan and execute an attack. We have seen case after case — from homicides and car crashes to drug trafficking, domestic abuse and child exploitation — where critical evidence came from smartphones, hard drives and online communication.”

To advance the discussion, Congress is holding hearings with counter-terrorism experts and they too make a compelling argument siding with Comey.

Refugees in America Before those in Europe

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We watch in horror the refugee crisis in Europe and the stories are terrifying but for a deeper argument, it has been going on here in America for decades so the slow flow of migrants is not a robust as that currently in Europe.

What is more, global leaders are in full discussion on several tracks including how to find housing, medical care, schools, jobs, transportation and more. Additionally, big talks are underway to create a safe zone for Syrians in their home country. Well, the argument can be made there are at least two of them in Jordan and Turkey now….creating one in Syria? How about creating zones in respective countries in Central America?

Refugee crisis grows in Central America as women ‘run for their lives’

Women and children are increasingly fleeing gang violence in Mexico and Central America in hopes of reaching the US, says new UNHCR report

Thousands of women flee their homes in parts of Central America and Mexico each year to escape armed gangs and domestic violence and seek refuge in the United States, a flow that is becoming a refugee crisis, the UN refugee agency says.

The number of women, some with children, fleeing rampant gang violence in parts of Mexico, and the Northern Triangle region of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, is rising, the UNHCR said in a report published on Wednesday.

More than 66,000 children travelled with their families or alone from the Northern Triangle region – which has the world’s highest murder rates – to the United States in 2014.

More unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle and Mexico reached the United States in August than in the same month last year, the US government said.

“With authorities often unable to curb the violence and provide redress, many vulnerable women are left with no choice but to run for their lives,” Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), said in the report.

While attention is focused on the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to Europe from countries such as Syria and Iraq, a new refugee crisis is taking shape in Central America, the UNHCR warned.

“The dramatic refugee crises we are witnessing in the world today are not confined to the Middle East or Africa,” Guterres said in a statement. “We are seeing another refugee situation unfolding in the Americas.“

The UNHCR said it had recorded a nearly five-fold increase in asylum seekers arriving in the United States from the Northern Triangle since 2008. In 2014, 40,000 people from these countries and Mexico applied for asylum in the United States.

The UNHCR report includes 160 interviews with women who had fled their homes in the Northern Triangle region and Mexico and travelled to the United States. After crossing the border illegally, they were detained and placed in detention centres.

All the women interviewed had either been recognised as refugees or been screened by US authorities, “and determined to have a credible or reasonable fear of persecution or torture”, the report said.

One 17-year-old Salvadorean girl called Norma says she was gang raped by three members of the notorious M18 gang in a cemetery in late 2014. She said she was targeted because she was married to a police officer.

“They took their turns … they tied me by the hands. They stuffed my mouth so I would not scream,” Norma is quoted as saying in the report. Then “they threw me in the trash”.

Nearly two-thirds of the women said threats and attacks by armed criminal gangs, including rape, killings, forced recruitment of their children and extortion payments, were among the main reasons why they left their home countries.

“The increasing reach of criminal armed groups, often amounting to de facto control over territory and people, has surpassed the capacity of governments in the region to respond,” the report said.

US government figures show that 82% of 16,077 women from the Northern Triangle region and Mexico interviewed by US authorities in the last year were found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture and were allowed to pursue their claims for asylum in the United States.

Violence at the hands of abusive husbands and partners, including rape and beatings with baseball bats, was another key reason why women were fleeing their homes.

“Unable to secure state protection, many women cited domestic violence as a reason for flight, fearing severe harm or death if they stayed,” the report said.

More than three-quarters of the women interviewed said they knew the journey overland to the United States was dangerous, but it was a risk worth taking.

Some said they took birth control pills before starting their journey to avoid getting pregnant as a result of rape by human traffickers or gangs, the report said.

“Coming here [to the United States] was like having hope that you will come out alive,” the report quoted Sara, who fled Honduras and sought asylum in the United States, as saying.