Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

The war on 5G Nationally and Internationally

Posted on by

The first, 1G, was invented by Motorola in 1973. The 1G networks provided basic phone service with analog protocols and speeds of 2.4 kilobits per second. Compare that to today’s 4G network speed of 100 megabits per second and 5G’s proposed 100 gigabits per second. Also in 1973, IEEE Member Robert M. Metcalf invented Ethernet, one of the key enablers of wireless and local Internet access. Ethernet is part of the IEEE 802 suite of standards that underpins wireless networking applications and includes access to the Internet. The 802.11 standard is better known by its trademark name: Wi-Fi. More here.

***

When fourth generation (4G) services launched early this decade, the U.S. led the way. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unlocked valuable spectrum, and carriers responded by accommodating a radical, 20-fold growth in global mobile data traffic. The massive investment in wireless network infrastructure rewarded American consumers with faster wireless speeds at affordable prices. In addition to speeding up smartphones in our pockets, the U.S. economy saw an estimated increase in GDP between $73–$151 billion and up to 700,000 new jobs as a result and America was established as the test bed for innovation in the global digital economy.

Now our country faces a similar opportunity and challenge with fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, and it warrants the attention of consumers, the mobile industry, and policymakers. The economic stakes for 5G may be significantly higher than for 4G, led by large-scale job creation and incubation of new devices, applications, and business models that could dramatically stimulate the U.S. economy. More here.

***

As of 2017, development of 5G is being led by several companies, including Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson, ZTE and others. Huawei and ZTE are part of the Chinese government and all our intelligence agencies have declared they are NOT safe to use in the government realm or the private sector. Canadian media is warning the same due to cyber vulnerabilities. This is all about the expanding digital economy where various cyber currencies will prevail over tangible currency and those respective values cannot be controlled or managed.

***  Image result for 5g photo

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January calling on federal agencies “to use all viable tools” to build broadband in rural areas on federal lands.

“Those towers are going to go up, and you’re going to have great, great broadband,” Trump said.

But telecom companies don’t have plans to expand 5G to rural areas. Where are they going? To urban and suburban neighborhoods where the business-friendly FCC is considering rules that would limit local governments from having as much of a say over where they go, how they look and how much they can charge for use of public property. Published in partnership with the New York Times 

Small cells, the next generation of wireless technology that telecommunications firms and cell-tower builders want to place on streetlights and utility poles throughout neighborhoods nationwide. The small cells come with a host of equipment, including antennas, power supplies, electric meters, switches, cabling and boxes often strapped to the sides of poles. Some may have refrigerator-sized containers on the ground. And they will be placed about every 500 or so feet along residential streets and throughout business districts.

Telecom companies say the cells will be both unobtrusive and safe, and insist the technology is needed to bring faster internet speeds required by a more connected world.

Telecommunications companies say the current 4G network is becoming overloaded as more people stream more videos and use more data-heavy apps. The advent of driverless cars, smart homes, telemedicine and virtual-reality will create more demand on wireless networks, requiring more bandwidth and faster speeds.

What’s needed, the wireless industry says, is 5G. The next generation network, still in development, is a combination of advanced hardware and standards such as distributed antenna systems, more fiber-optic cable, new data management practices and higher frequencies that will enable the network to carry more data up to 100 times faster than 4G.

5G will depend on so-called millimeter waves. These high-frequency bands, however, don’t travel as far as the signals 4G relies on and are easily blocked by walls, trees and even rain. So the network needs to be dense, with cells placed much closer together. That means way more wireless facilities. More than 300,000 cells are now in operation nationwide, and estimates for the number of small cells needed to make 5G work range from hundreds of thousands to millions more.

The rollout of 5G will be evolutionary, with the standards for the full complement of advanced technologies expected after 2020. Small cells already are being erected with 5G tests in many cities, and as that’s happened, citizens have descended on government meetings to express their anger — from  Woodbury, New York; to Liberty Township, Ohio; to Charlotte; to Pasco County, Florida; to Olympia, Washington.

5G promises to generate huge profits for the wireless companies, with as much as $250 billion in service revenue expected annually by 2025. And 5G will unleash an economic boom, say supporters of pre-empting local rules. They frequently cite a report by the consulting firm Accenture, which concluded that wireless firms will invest $275 billion over the next seven years deploying small cells, creating 3 million jobs and eventually boosting the national economy by $500 billion annually.

The study appears everywhere — mentioned by FCC commissioners in speeches, cited in an official FCC docket, in wireless carriers’ comments, and in statements by the powerful Washington associations that represent them. What most don’t mention is that the study was paid for by the wireless association CTIA, one of Washington’s top lobbying spenders.

The wireless industry argues that localities’ high fees, design requirements and delays in processing permits have effectively prohibited the deployment of broadband, which they argue is a violation of federal law; they’ve asked the FCC to make that clear in reining in cities and counties.

Wireless carriers and the companies that build towers for them have begun flooding city and county permitting offices with applications for attaching small cells to poles and building new ones. Cities that normally see a few dozen such applications yearly began in 2016 to get hundreds, such as Houston.  Montgomery County said it had at one point more applications filed in four months than in the previous 18 years.

Wireless companies complain local governments can’t process the permits fast enough because their systems are set up to review applications for massive cell towers, not the small cells they claim are less intrusive. The process needs to move quickly, they say, because 5G requires so many more cells, and they want to beat other countries to set standards.

The FCC issued a notice in April that it would consider rules to streamline cell deployment by reducing the time cities’ and counties’ have to review applications. The agency also said it would study, with the possibility of proposing rules later, both how the FCC could limit cities’ requirements on the look and design of small cells, and if local fees to attach to poles are excessive. The FCC also asked for ways it could amend its own rules. The agency may consider the proposals by the summer.

Pai, a former attorney for Verizon, also created last year a committee of representatives mostly from the wireless industry to develop model codes that cities and counties can adopt to speed the permitting of small cells and to reduce costs to telecoms. The committee is considering proposals, which it plans to formally submit to the FCC later this spring, that run the gamut, from simply calling on cities and the wireless industry to work together to controversial recommendations such as capping what cities charge to attach to public property.

Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose, California, one of the few members on the committee representing local interests and who has been critical of wireless companies’ efforts to weaken local rules, resigned from the group in January, saying the wireless industry “has sought to create a set of rules that will provide it with easy access to publicly-funded infrastructure at taxpayer-subsidized rates, without any obligation to provide broadband access to underserved residents.”

In response, Pai said in a statement that the committee has “brought together 101 participants from a range of perspectives” and he looks forward to working with the committee and others “to remove regulatory barriers to broadband deployment and to extend digital opportunity to all Americans.”

Bipartisan agreement

Congress is also weighing in — in rare bipartisan fashion — on the side of the telecom firms. Numerous bills in both the Senate and House would ease regulations and fees for erecting cells on federal lands, such as a bill the Senate passed last summer that would exempt certain small-cell deployments from environmental and historic reviews. The bill, which the House has yet to consider, is sponsored by South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the Republican chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., the ranking member of the committee.

Also last year, Thune joined Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz from Hawaii to circulate a draft bill that rolls back local government control over wireless facilities including small cells, including shortening the permit review times to 60 days on applications to collocate wireless facilities and 90 days for other wireless applications — the same time frames wireless providers are asking the FCC to consider.

Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., introduced a bill that would exempt small cells being deployed in a public right of way from environmental and historical reviews under certain circumstances. A companion bill is in the House. Numerous other bills are moving through the House

Wicker and Thune are among the top 25 senators who have received the most campaign contributions from AT&T and Verizon since 2010, pulling in $32,500 and $30,500, respectively, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Schatz has received $29,000 from the two carriers, the third most among senators since 2014, when he ran his first campaign.

With such bipartisan support in Congress, and with an FCC that is sympathetic to telecoms, cities view their control over small cells as slipping away. That leaves people like King resigned to what is coming.

“A Russian woman stood up to speak at one of these public meetings, and she said that when she lived in Russia, the government slam dunked her and she had no say,” King said. “Now she lives in the United States of America, where she’s getting slam dunked by the government and she has no say. That gives you a window into what’s going on here.”

 

Do the Russians have the Voting Machines Source Codes?

Posted on by

On February 28th, the Senate asks what NSA and Cyber Command are doing about Russian election interference. Admiral Rogers’s answer, in brief, is that his organizations lack the authorities to do much (that he can openly discuss, that is).

US senator grills CEO over the myth of the hacker-proof voting machine
Nation’s biggest voting machine maker reportedly relies on remote-access software.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Democratic senators on Wednesday asked major vendors of U.S. voting equipment whether they have allowed Russian entities to scrutinize their software, saying the practice could allow Moscow to hack into American elections infrastructure.

The letter from Senators Amy Klobuchar and Jeanne Shaheen followed a series of Reuters reports saying that several major global technology providers have allowed Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software deeply embedded across the U.S. government.

The senators requested that the three largest election equipment vendors – Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart Intercivic – answer whether they have shared source code, or inner workings, or other sensitive data about their technology with any Russian entity.

They also asked whether any software on those companies’ products had been shared with Russia and for the vendors to explain what steps they have taken to improve the security of those products against cyber threats to the election.

The vendors could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear whether any of the vendors had made sales in Russia, where votes are submitted via written ballots and usually counted by hand.

“According to voting machine testing and certification from the Election Assistance Commission, most voting machines contain software from firms which were alleged to have shared their source code with Russian entities,” the senators wrote. “We are deeply concerned that such reviews may have presented an opportunity for Russian intelligence agents looking to attack or hack the United States’ elections infrastructure.”

U.S. voters in November will go to the polls in midterm elections, which American intelligence officials have warned could be targeted by Russia or others seeking to disrupt the process.

There is intense scrutiny of the security of U.S. election systems after a 2016 presidential race in which Russia interfered, according to American intelligence agencies, to try to help Donald Trump win with presidency. Trump in the past has been publicly skeptical about Russian election meddling, and Russia has denied the allegations.

Twenty-one states experienced probing of their systems by Russian hackers during the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.

Though a small number of networks were compromised, voting machines were not directly affected and there remains no evidence any vote was altered, according to U.S. officials and security experts.

Related reading:

Top intel official says US hasn’t deterred Russian meddling (Fifth Domain) “I believe that President (Vladimir) Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay and that therefore, ‘I can continue this activity,‘” Adm. Mike Rogers, director of both the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, told Congress.

Senators: Cyber Command should disrupt Russian influence campaigns (Fifth Domain) Senators pressed Cyber Command on how they can use their national mission force to combat Russian cyber intrusions.

Rogers: CyberCom lacks authority, resources to defend all of cyberspace (FCW) The outgoing NSA and U.S. Cyber Command chief told lawmakers CyberCom is not sitting on its hands when it comes to potential Russian cyber interference, but it lacks the authority to do more absent additional presidential direction.

NSA: Trump’s Lukewarm Response on Russia Will Embolden Putin (Infosecurity Magazine) NSA: Trump’s Lukewarm Response on Russia Will Embolden Putin. Expect more election interference, Cyber Command boss warns

Decoding NSA director Mike Rogers’ comments on countering Russian cyberattacks (Washington Examiner) It’s not as simple as ‘I’m not authorized to do anything.’

*** Footnotes:

Electronic Systems and Software:

1. In 2014, ES&S claimed that “in the past decade alone,” it had installed more than 260,000 voting systems, more than 15,000 electronic poll books, provided services to more than 75,000 elections. The company has installed statewide voting systems in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. ES&S claims a U.S. market share of more than 60 percent in customer voting system installations.

The company maintains 10 facilities in the United States, two field offices in Canada (Pickering, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia) and a warehouse in Jackson, Mississippi.

2. Dominion Voting Systems is a global provider of end-to-end election tabulation solutions and services. The company’s international headquarters are in Toronto, Canada, and its U.S. headquarters are in Denver, Colorado. Dominion Voting also maintains a number of additional offices and facilities in the U.S. and Europe.

Dominion’s technology is currently used in 33 U.S. states, including more than 2,000 customer jurisdictions. The company also has 100+ municipal customers in Canada.

3. Hart InterCivic Inc. is a privately held United States company that provides elections, and print solutions to jurisdictions nationwide. While headquartered in Austin, Texas, Hart products are used by hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including counties in Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in Ohio, California, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Hart entered the elections industry in 1912, printing ballots for Texas counties. (Side note: As Republican and Democratic state legislators hustle to pass a law moving Georgia toward paper ballot voting technology, election integrity advocates said they’re concerned a bill that already cleared the state Senate could lead to a new vulnerability in Georgia’s next voting system, if it becomes law.

One way a new system might work is through a touchscreen computer similar to those currently used in Georgia. It would print a paper ballot with a visual representation of a voter’s choices so they themselves can check for accuracy.

In some systems, counting the votes means scanning an entire image of the ballot that may include a timestamp and precinct information.

In other systems, barcodes or QR codes on a ballot would correspond with the voter’s choices, which can make counting easier and faster for election officials, said Peter Lichtenheld, vice president of operations with Hart Intercivic, one of several election technology companies that hired lobbyists at the statehouse this year.)

*** The text of the letter to the three vendors is below:

The full text of the senators’ letter is below:

Dear Mr. Braithwaite, Mr. Burt, and Mr. Poulos:

Recent reports of U.S. IT and software companies submitting to source code reviews in order to access foreign markets have raised concern in Congress given the sensitivity of the information requested by countries like China and the Russian Federation. As such, we write to inquire about the security of the voting machines you manufacture and whether your company has been asked to share the source code or other sensitive or proprietary details associated with your voting machines with the Russian Federation.

The U.S. intelligence community has confirmed that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential elections. As a part of a multi-pronged effort, Russian actors attempted to hack a U.S. voting software company and at least 21 states’ election systems. According to the Chicago Board of Elections, information on thousands of American voters was exposed after an attack on their voter registration system.

Foreign access to critical source code information and sensitive data continues to be an often overlooked vulnerability. The U.S. government and Congress have recently taken steps to address some cyber vulnerabilities, including by banning the use Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm that has maintained a relationship with Russia’s military and intelligence sectors, from all U.S. government computers. Now, we must also ensure the security of our voting machines and associated software.

Recent reports indicate that U.S. based firms operating on U.S. government platforms gave Russian authorities access to their software. In order to sell their software within Russia, these companies allowed Russian authorities to review their source code for flaws that could be exploited. While some companies maintain this practice is necessary to find defects in software code, experts have warned that it could jeopardize the security of U.S. government computers if these reviews are conducted by hostile actors or nations. U.S. tech companies, the Pentagon, former U.S. security officials, and a former U.S. Department of Commerce official with knowledge of the source code review process have expressed concerns with this practice.

In addition, Russia’s requests for source code reviews have increased. According to eight current and former U.S. officials, four company executives, three U.S. trade attorneys, and Russian regulatory documents, between 1996 and 2013 Russia conducted reviews for 13 technology products from Western companies, but has conducted 28 such reviews in the past three years alone.

As the three largest election equipment vendors, your companies provide voting machines and software used by ninety-two percent of the eligible voting population in the U.S. According to voting machine testing and certification from the Election Assistance Commission, most voting machines contain software from firms which were alleged to have shared their source code with Russian entities. We are deeply concerned that such reviews may have presented an opportunity for Russian intelligence agents looking to attack or hack the United States’ elections infrastructure.  Further, if such vulnerabilities are not quickly examined and mitigated, future elections will also remain vulnerable to attack.

In order to help the security and integrity of our systems and to understand the scope of any potential access points into our elections infrastructure, we respectfully request answers to the following questions:

  1. Have you shared your source code or any other sensitive data related to your voting machines or other products with any Russian entity?
  2. To your knowledge, has any of the software that runs on your products been shared with any Russian entity?
  3. What steps have you taken or will you take in order to upgrade existing technologies in light of the increased threat against our elections?

The 2018 election season is upon us. Primaries have already begun and time is of the essence to ensure any security vulnerabilities are addressed before 2018 and 2020.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and we look forward to working with you to secure our elections.

Sincerely,

 

Seems the FBI Loves Best Buy’s Geek Squad, Hello Strzok?

Posted on by

Now many of the emails I receive about certain FBI cases make sense.

*** The document referring to the FBI tour of the Geek Squad facility in Kentucky.

Image result for geek squad repair facility kentucky photo and more details

After the prosecution of a California doctor revealed the FBI’s ties to a Best Buy Geek Squad computer repair facility in Kentucky, new documents released to EFF show that the relationship goes back years. The records also confirm that the FBI has paid Geek Squad employees as informants.

EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year to learn more about how the FBI uses Geek Squad employees to flag illegal material when people pay Best Buy to repair their computers. The relationship potentially circumvents computer owners’ Fourth Amendment rights.

The documents released to EFF show that Best Buy officials have enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the agency for at least 10 years. For example, an FBI memo from September 2008 details how Best Buy hosted a meeting of the agency’s “Cyber Working Group” at the company’s Kentucky repair facility.

The memo and a related email show that Geek Squad employees also gave FBI officials a tour of the facility before their meeting and makes clear that the law enforcement agency’s Louisville Division “has maintained close liaison with the Geek Squad’s management in an effort to glean case initiations and to support the division’s Computer Intrusion and Cyber Crime programs.”

Another document records a $500 payment from the FBI to a confidential Geek Squad informant. This appears to be one of the same payments at issue in the prosecution of Mark Rettenmaier, the California doctor who was charged with possession of child pornography after Best Buy sent his computer to the Kentucky Geek Squad repair facility.

Other documents show that over the years of working with Geek Squad employees, FBI agents developed a process for investigating and prosecuting people who sent their devices to the Geek Squad for repairs. The documents detail a series of FBI investigations in which a Geek Squad employee would call the FBI’s Louisville field office after finding what they believed was child pornography.

The FBI agent would show up, review the images or video and determine whether they believe they are illegal content. After that, they would seize the hard drive or computer and send it to another FBI field office near where the owner of the device lived. Agents at that local FBI office would then investigate further, and in some cases try to obtain a warrant to search the device.

Some of these reports indicate that the FBI treated Geek Squad employees as informants, identifying them as “CHS,” which is shorthand for confidential human sources. In other cases, the FBI identifies the initial calls as coming from Best Buy employees, raising questions as to whether certain employees had different relationships with the FBI.

In the case of the investigation into Rettenmaier’s computers, the documents released to EFF do not appear to have been made public in that prosecution. These raise additional questions about the level of cooperation between the company and law enforcement.

For example, documents reflect that Geek Squad employees only alert the FBI when they happen to find illegal materials during a manual search of images on a device and that the FBI does not direct those employees to actively find illegal content.

But some evidence in the case appears to show Geek Squad employees did make an affirmative effort to identify illegal material. For example, the image found on Rettenmaier’s hard drive was in an unallocated space, which typically requires forensic software to find. Other evidence showed that Geek Squad employees were financially rewarded for finding child pornography. Such a bounty would likely encourage Geek Squad employees to actively sweep for suspicious content.

Although these documents provide new details about the FBI’s connection to Geek Squad and its Kentucky repair facility, the FBI has withheld a number of other documents in response to our FOIA suit. Worse, the FBI has refused to confirm or deny to EFF whether it has similar relationships with other computer repair facilities or businesses, despite our FOIA specifically requesting those records. The FBI has also failed to produce documents that would show whether the agency has any internal procedures or training materials that govern when agents seek to cultivate informants at computer repair facilities.

We plan to challenge the FBI’s stonewalling in court later this spring. In the meantime, you can read the documents produced so far here and here.

Qatar Foundation Buying American Education/Teachers

Posted on by

Remember when the Obama regime traded out the top Taliban commanders from Gitmo to Qatar for Bowe Bergdahl? Remember when the Obama regime was working to normalize relations with the Taliban by funding an embassy for them in Qatar?

In 2017, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis placed the blame for the current mess in Afghanistan squarely on the Obama administration, telling Congress Wednesday that by cutting support for the Afghan forces prematurely, President Obama allowed the Taliban to regroup and recover.

“I believe that we pulled out forces at a time, as you know, when the violence was lower, but we pulled them out on a timeline rather than consistent with the maturation of the government and the security forces,” Mattis told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

“The result was that as security declined, all the other stresses have come to bear, to include heavy casualties on the part of the Afghan forces, other nations pulled their forces out as well, and the Taliban was emboldened.”

Or remember when Eric Holder traveled to Qatar in 2009 to deliver a speech on financial corruption? Did he know that the Qatari Fund was buying American teachers and spreading hate against Israel and promoting Islam in the American education system? uh huh….

Image result for qatar arizona photo

The emirate’s educational foundation spreads anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda in U.S. schools.

Image result for qatar arizona

NR: On January 27, Qatar Foundation International (QFI) sponsored a continuing-education event titled “Middle East 101” for public-school teachers in Phoenix, Ariz. It was hosted by the Arizona Department of Education — which is not surprising, given that QFI has donated over $450,000 to Arizona public schools (and over $30 million to public schools across the country). Unfortunately, while there was a good deal of interesting material, teachers also got a large helping of Islamist propaganda, designed to influence American schoolchildren and ultimately to advance Qatari foreign policy.

QFI program officer Craig Cangemi introduced QFI as an American member organization of the Qatar Foundation (QF), which he blandly described as “a private, education-focused foundation in Doha, Qatar.” In fact, QF is a massive apparatus directly managed by Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family, which conducts a tremendous range of state-development activities ranging from technology research to higher education. This includes “Education City,” a district in Doha that hosts Qatari branches of American universities, including Texas A&M, Northwestern, Georgetown, and others, which QF funds to the tune of more than $400 million annually. Georgetown alone received nearly $300 million in grants from QF between 2011 and 2016.

However, while the American universities are able to preserve some freedom of thought, other QF-backed schools in Doha enforce a rigid ideological program. QF schools and mosques often host the most virulently radical Islamist preachers, including one who referred to the 9/11 attacks as a “comedy film,” another who said that Jews bake Passover matzoh with human blood (“believing that this brings them close to their false god”), and a third who accused the Shia of “poisoning” and “sorcery.”

A featured lecturer of the QF-backed Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies was Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti, currently a professor at the QF’s flagship Hamad bin Khalifa University. El-Shinqiti was once an imam at a West Texas mosque, where he openly encouraged young people to engage in terror attacks against Israel and Egypt. The dean of the QF’s College of Islamic Studies (CIS) is Emad al-Din Shahin, a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose prominence led Egypt’s military regime to sentence him to death in absentia. Other CIS faculty are connected to the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), the Muslim Brotherhood’s American think tank that is the nexus of a terror-finance network named the SAAR Network. These CIS faculty include Louay Safi, former IIIT executive director and research director, and Jasser Auda, also an IIIT lecturer. Other faculty seem closely aligned with the IIIT’s long-term goal of the “Islamization of knowledge,” including one professor working under Auda who has written about “Revelation as a source of engineering sciences.”

An American educator who worked at a QF educational institution in Doha told the Middle East Forum that faculty were not allowed to purchase maps showing the state of Israel, the entire territory of which was instead labeled “Palestine.” Even tangentially mentioning the existence of Israel or the Holocaust in class would provoke severe reprisals from the Qatari Ministry of Education. The official government policy was “Israel doesn’t exist.”

QF is a committed supporter of Islamist extremism, particularly at its Al-Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal — named in honor of Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who chaired the committee that established the Center’s faculty. (Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly endorsed suicide bombings, terrorist attacks against the United States, and the total extermination of the Jews. He is barred from entering the U.S. because of terrorism concerns.) And in 2012, QF hosted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (who was just designated as a terrorist by the federal government) and gave him a “victory shield” featuring the Dome of the Rock.

Meanwhile, during the “Middle East 101” event, Cangemi insisted that QFI (the American branch of QF) sets its own policies, saying, “We are an autonomous organization. . . . We do not have any ties with Qatar: the government, the state, or really [the] Qatar Foundation.” This is patently false. The CEO and nominal founder of QFI is Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al-Thani, the daughter of Qatar’s former emir. The chairman of the board of QFI is Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz Al-Thani, another member of the royal family. As of 2012 (the most recent year for which public records are available), the treasurer of QFI was Khalid Al Kuwari, a senior Qatari government official and a scion of the powerful Al-Kuwari clan. QFI is in fact a key instrument of Qatari state policy.

Evidence of this is found in the teaching materials that Cangemi recommended to his schoolteacher audience. Al Masdar, for instance, is QFI’s flagship curriculum project. It offers lesson plans and resources about countries all over the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, the most flattering collection is about Qatar. One resource offered is even titled: “Express Your Loyalty to Qatar.” No lesson plan appears particularly critical of Qatar, whereas other countries discussed in Al Masdar’s resources are subject to much more varied discussion.

Other lesson plans contain anti-Semitic and anti-American material, particularly several lessons produced by the Zinn Education Project, which claims to promote a revisionist “people’s history.” These include “Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War,” which examines the “greed” of the corporations ostensibly responsible for the Iraq war in order to “feast on Iraq’s economy,” and “Whose ‘Terrorism’?”, which questions the definition of terrorism, creating scenarios for students to discuss — for example, if “Israeli soldiers taunting and shooting children in Palestinian refugee camps, with the assistance of U.S. military aid” should be considered an example of terrorism.

The main speaker at the “Middle East 101” event was Barbara Petzen, a senior staff member at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who once worked for the Saudi-funded Middle East Policy Council (MEPC). Petzen has been longaccused of anti-Israel bias in educational fora. During her presentation, she repeatedly argued that religion or ideology had no relationship with Islamic terrorism, which she claimed was more immediately rooted in Muslim political grievances against the West for its support of Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Petzen hit similar themes in a 2015 presentation for QFI.)

Petzen particularly whitewashed the role of Islamism, a religious-political ideology with roots in 20th-century totalitarianism that demands political supremacy as a religious value, and thus leads inevitably to political violence. She argued that Islamism, as represented by Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is focused on governing society (albeit in a religiously severe fashion), and is therefore opposed to extremism, since “extremism, by definition, turns things over — is destabilizing. . . . If you’re in power, you don’t want extremism because it destabilizes your control.” (By this faulty definition, no ruling ideology can be “extremist.” Indeed, ISIS would not be considered “extremist” once it set up its government.)

Similarly, when commenting on the June 2017 decision by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and seven other Muslim countries to sever ties with Qatar, Petzen downplayed the importance of the Qatari regime’s deep, systematic support for Islamism and terrorism. Instead, she claimed the diplomatic crisis was motivated mainly by Qatar’s close economic relations with Iran, a geostrategic competitor of Saudi Arabia. This ignores the fact that Qatar’s neighbors fear destabilization by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters and have abruptly reversed their own prior support of the Brotherhood in response.

Petzen’s claim echoes the line taken by QFI itself. In July 2017, QFI and Al Jazeera jointly produced a propaganda video condemning the so-called blockade of Qatar. In November, QFI organized a panel discussion claiming that the Gulf states’ isolation of Qatar was due to “fake news,” a claim that QFI’s executive director, Maggie Salem, explicitly endorsed on Twitter. For QFI to belittle the very real alarm that other Muslim states feel about Qatar’s support for extremism is telling, and it calls into question QFI’s claims of independence from the Qatari state.

Qatar Foundation International presents itself as a beneficent charity, merely working to spread knowledge of different cultures. In fact, it is an agent of Qatari foreign policy, with the aim of influencing American schoolchildren to support the Qatari agenda. No matter how attractive Qatari money may be, American educators must reject QFI.

Sessions DoJ Sues California

Posted on by

California, Gov. Jerry Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra as co-defendants in the DoJ lawsuit.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday attacked the mayor of Oakland, California for warning residents about impending immigration raids, one day after filing a lawsuit against the state alleging it obstructs federal immigration enforcement.
“How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda,” Sessions said of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

Image result for doj lawsuit california photo

***

In his remarks, Sessions noted “worrisome” trends as violent crime increased in 2014 and 2015, particularly a surge in homicide and drug availability. He said that a lawful immigration system was part of tackling such trends.

Sessions said that while America admits the highest number of legal immigrants in the world, the American people deserve a legal, rational immigration system that protects the nation and preserves the national interest.

“It cannot be the policy of a great nation to reward those who unlawfully enter its country with legal status, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and work permits and so forth. How can this be a sound policy?” he asked.

“Meanwhile, those who engage in this process lawfully and patiently and wait their turn are discriminated against, it seems, at every turn.”

Turning to California, he described “open borders” policies that refuse to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants as a “radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted” and rejected the right of states to obstruct federal immigration law.

“There is no nullification. There is no secession,” he said. “Federal law is the supreme law of the land. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, or to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln.”

He then tore into Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who tipped off the public to an immigration raid in the San Francisco Bay Area last week — a move he said led to as many 800 illegal immigrants evading capture and put both residents and law enforcement at risk. More here.

The 18 page complaint is here.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the state capital of Sacramento, challenges three specific laws:

— SB 54, which restricts law enforcement officials from notifying federal immigration agents about the release dates for prisoners in their custody who have been convicted and therefore face deportation. It also prohibits local officials from transferring those prisoners to federal custody.

As a result, the Justice Department says, immigration agents face greater danger in re-arresting the former prisoners once they’re back on the streets.

— AB 450, which forbids private employers from cooperating with immigration agents who conduct worksite enforcement operations. The law also requires employers to tell their workers when federal agents are coming to conduct inspections.

The Justice Department said a committee of the state legislature described the law as an effort to frustrate “an expected increase in federal immigration enforcement actions.”

— And AB 103, which requires the state to inspect detention facilities where federal authorities are holding immigrants who face deportation.