Last week, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) revealed massive identity fraud by illegal aliens in the United States, potentially affecting nearly 40 million Americans.
In April of this year, IRLI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Social Security Administration (SSA) seeking records related to the Obama-era decision to halt sending “no-match” letters to employers. According to the Justice Department’s website, a “no-match” letter is a “written notice issued by the SSA to an employer, usually in response to an employee wage report, advising that the name or Social Security number (SSN) reported by the employer for one or more employees does not “match” a name or SSN combination reflected in SSA’s records.” The long-held practice of sending the letters had been used to prevent fraud through the use of stolen SSN data by illegal aliens and other criminals.
Days after former President Obama implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty program, his administration announced the decision to stop sending “no-match” letters to employers. This decision led to a thriving SSN black market where illegal aliens are drawn to obtain an American’s information for employment. The SSN of children have proven to be especially valuable as they can be used undetected for years. However, when these children reach adulthood and begin to apply for college, car loans, credit cards, or other needs, many learn they have criminal records attached to their identities.
Specifically, IRLI’s investigation uncovered that from 2012 to 2016, there were a whopping 39 million instances where names and SSNs on W-2 tax forms did not match the legitimate Social Security records. Additionally, over $409 billion was added to the Earnings Suspense File (ESF), which holds any uncredited wages that cannot be correctly matched in the SSA’s database.
Previously, the SSA has estimated that seventy-five percent of illegal aliens possess a SSN— either one stolen from an American citizen, or legal resident, or one that has been made up entirely. Not only is this practice troublesome from an immigration law standpoint, but can actually be quite problematic for Americans, or legal residents, who have their SSNs stolen. In addition to receiving Internal Revenue Service (IRS) letters and audits accusing them of having income they are not claiming or having their benefits blocked, reconciling a compromised identifier is estimated to cost thousands of dollars and take years of effort.
The Trump administration did announce this summer that it would begin resuming notice letters to employers and third-part providers informing them of any mismatches. However, it is truly up to Congress to rectify this situation for all parties involved.
In July, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) introduced the bipartisan AG and Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 6417) – legislation that would mandate E-Verify, the effective web-based program that ensures a legal workforce. Furthermore, the legislation would protect against identity theft by requiring the Social Security Commissioner to notify individuals whose SSN demonstrates a pattern of unusual use; as well as assist Americans who believe their identity may have been stolen or used fraudulently.
Congress is required to protect American citizens and their interests above all else. It would be shrewd for them to remember that before the November midterms.
Meanwhile:
The Trump administration will admit no more than 30,000 refugees to the U.S. in the coming year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, down from the current cap of 45,000.
Pompeo announced the lowered ceiling during a press conference Monday at the Department of State headquarters in Foggy Bottom.
Pompeo said the 30,000 cap “must be considered in the context of the many other forms of protection and assistance offered by the United States” and should not be “sole barometer” to measure the country’s humanitarian efforts.
The hawkish turn demonstrates President Donald Trump’s willingness to push hard-line immigration policies in the run-up to the November midterm elections — even after his controversial “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy led to thousands of family separations and a court order to reunify parents and children.
Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway
Trump Declassifies Text Messages and FISA Order
It is fitting, it is Constitution Day too. Fighting fire with fire as the political contest marches on with the Democrats against Brett Kavanaugh.
The text messages include those of former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director fo the FBI Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and DoJ lawyer, Bruce Ohr.
The FISA warrant is that of former Trump advisor Carter Page.
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Statement from the Press Secretary
At the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency, the President has directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to provide for the immediate declassification of the following materials: (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.
In addition, President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.
Hey Moscow, What About the ‘neuroweapons’ Used in Cuba attacks
General view of the U.S. Embassy in Havana after the U.S. government pulled more than half of its diplomatic personnel out of Cuba in September 2017. (Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa/Getty Images)
Primer:
Intelligence agencies investigating mysterious “attacks” that led to brain injuries in U.S. personnel in Cuba and China consider Russia to be the main suspect, three U.S. officials and two others briefed on the investigation tell NBC News.
The suspicion that Russia is likely behind the alleged attacks is backed up by evidence from communications intercepts, known in the spy world as signals intelligence, amassed during a lengthy and ongoing investigation involving the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. agencies. The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the intelligence.
The evidence is not yet conclusive enough, however, for the U.S. to formally assign blame to Moscow for incidents that started in late 2016 and have continued in 2018, causing a major rupture in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Since last year, the U.S. military has been working to reverse-engineer the weapon or weapons used to harm the diplomats, according to Trump administration officials, congressional aides and others briefed on the investigation, including by testing various devices on animals. As part of that effort, the U.S. has turned to the Air Force and its directed energy research program at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where the military has giant lasers and advanced laboratories to test high-power electromagnetic weapons, including microwaves.
Although the U.S. believes sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon were likely used on the U.S. government workers, they are also exploring the possibility that one or more additional technologies were also used, possibly in conjunction with microwaves, officials and others involved in the government’s investigation say.
The U.S. has said 26 government workers were injured in unexplained attacks at their homes and hotels in Havana starting in late 2016, causing brain injuries, hearing loss and problems with cognition, balance, vision and hearing problems. Strange sounds heard by the workers initially led investigators to suspect a sonic weapon, but the FBI later determined sound waves by themselves couldn’t have caused the injuries. More here.
*** Truth be told, this investigation and the details are rather disjointed and weird.
Four scientists, including the first doctor to examine the diplomats reporting symptoms in Cuba, took part in a Pentagon-sponsored teleconference on Friday, where they announced new research results, including what they determined to be the probable use of “neuroweapons” in what they called the Havana Effect.
At issue are the more than two dozen U.S. government officials stationed in Havana, who have described hearing strange sounds, followed by a combination of medical symptoms, including dizziness, hearing loss and cognitive problems. More recently, a similar case has been reported in a U.S. embassy worker in Guangzhou, China. For months, a mix of secrecy and speculation has surrounded those incidents, including an increasingly popular theory that the diplomats were the victims of microwave weapons.
Michael Hoffer, an otolaryngologist at the University of Miami, who was the first to conduct tests on the embassy workers, said on the Friday call that the diplomats are suffering from a “neurosensory dysfunction,” which is primarily affecting their sense of balance.
The Friday call was organized as part of a study program sponsored by the Pentagon and titled “Probable Use of a Neuroweapon to Affect Personnel of US Embassy in Havana: Findings, Pathology, Possible Causes, and Disruptive Effects.”
A Pentagon official told Yahoo News that the briefing was offered by the scientific team for interested people in the Defense Department and was to gain “general knowledge” about their findings. “This didn’t have an operational element,” the official said. Read on from here.
More International Classified Material on Hillary’s Server
Ruh Roh…hope the statute of limitations does not apply here.
As a reminder:
When Clinton was running for president in 2008, she had a private server installed at her home in Chappaqua, New York. The domains clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com, which were registered to a man named Eric Hoteham, all pointed to that server. In 2013, a Denver-based IT company called Platte River Networks was hired to manage the server, but wasn’t cleared to work with classified information. The company executives received death threats for taking on the contract. It was later discovered that multiple private servers were used for Clinton’s email.
Clinton used a BlackBerry phone to communicate during her tenure as secretary of state, including sending and receiving emails through her private server in New York. The State Department expressed concern about the security of the device. Clinton had requested the NSA provide a strengthened BlackBerry, similar to the one used by President Obama. But, her request was denied. Instead, the NSA requested that Clinton use a secure Windows Phone known as the Sectera Edge, but she opted to continue using her personal BlackBerry.
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The classified material Hillary Clinton sent and received using an unsecure, private email server included correspondence with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained from the State Department by a government watchdog group.
Judicial Watch, which has called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order “an honest criminal investigation” of Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state, now awaits a federal judge’s Sept. 28 deadline for the State Department to finish sorting through the emails.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton last month said the classified information in Clinton emails uncovered by his team shows that then-FBI Director James Comey and other top FBI officials conducted a “sham investigation” into Clinton’s misuse of email as secretary of state.
“These classified Hillary Clinton emails that she tried to hide or destroy show why it is urgent that the DOJ [Department of Justice] finally undertake an honest criminal investigation,” Fitton said in a press release Aug. 16. “It is past time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order a new investigation of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.”
Comey, apparently without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, told reporters in July 2016 that Clinton was careless in using her private email account for official business and transmitted classified information, but did not commit prosecutable offenses. President Donald Trump, who defeated Clinton in the November 2016 election, fired Comey in May 2017.
The FBI had uncovered 72,000 documents as part of its 2016 investigation into Clinton’s use of the private email server while serving as secretary of state under President Barack Obama from Jan. 21, 2009, to Jan. 31, 2013.
Judicial Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as promoting “integrity, transparency, and accountability in government,” last month released two new batches of Clinton emails (here and here) that it pried loose from the State Department.
Besides five instances of classified materials, the group said, the newly released Clinton emails contain messages about a meeting with billionaire financier George Soros and a memo to Clinton about a foreign government from a former top aide to her husband when he was president.
U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the State Department to complete processing the Clinton emails by Sept. 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brough by Judicial Watch.
It is not clear whether State will meet that deadline.
In its FOIA request filed initially in March 2015, Judicial Watch sought all emails sent or received by Clinton in her official capacity as secretary of state, “as well as all emails by other State Department employees to Secretary Clinton regarding her non-‘state.gov’ email address.”
The tens of thousands of Clinton emails include messages sent to her by a longtime aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI found emails from Abedin on the laptop of her estranged husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., prompting Comey to briefly reopen the FBI probe days before the election on Nov. 8, 2016.
One chain of emails from Abedin, with the subject “Invites for the week,” refers to a two-hour meeting in Southampton, New York, with Soros, founder and chairman of Open Society Foundations, a New York-based international institution known for financing progressive political causes.
The emails referring to Soros do not include dates, but Judicial Watch investigators deduced they were written before November 2011, and perhaps as long ago as early 2009, based on individuals involved in the exchange and the timing of certain events. It is not clear whether the meeting took place.
Five messages in the just-released batch of Clinton emails include classified material, according to Judicial Watch.
For example, on June 7, 2011, Clinton received classified information on her unsecure email account from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair with regard to Blair’s Middle East negotiations with Israel, the Palestinians, and the French. Blair also forwarded the information to Jack Sullivan, who was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.
On Jan. 26, 2010, Sullivan sent classified information through his own unsecure BlackBerry to Abedin’s State Department email address, information that he previously sent to Clinton’s and Abedin’s unsecure @clintonemail.com accounts.
The email, classified as confidential, concerned negotiations between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and included a “call sheet” Clinton received before making a call to political leaders in Northern Ireland.
Redacted portions appear to have contained the names of members of the left-wing Irish political party Sinn Fein, according to Judicial Watch. The Sinn Fein members had been invited to a meeting, but its purpose is not clear.
Northern Ireland was also the subject of a June 13, 2009, email from Sullivan to Clinton that was classified as confidential and almost entirely redacted by the State Department.
As previously reported, Clinton also received emails from Sid Blumenthal, a confidant and former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, her husband. The Obama administration had barred Blumenthal from serving in the State Department under Clinton.
Yet the email messages obtained by Judicial Watch show that Blumenthal advised Hillary Clinton on government policy. In an April 8, 2010, memo that included information classified as confidential, for example, Blumenthal encouraged her to develop relations with the new government in Kyrgyzstan.
N Korean, Park Jin hyok Charged with Global Cyber Attacks
U.S. CHARGES NORTH KOREAN HACKER
Federal prosecutors charged a North Korean man, Park Jin-hyok, with crimes in connection with a series of costly cyberattacks around the globe, including the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2018, the heist of Bangladesh’s central bank in 2017, and the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014. It is the first time the Justice Department has explicitly charged a North Korean hacker backed by the government. Park was allegedly working as a programmer for a North Korean front company in China called Chosun Expo, which had ties to North Korea’s military intelligence.
Legal analysts say the complaint is the most detailed public accounting yet of North Korea’s cyberattacks against foreign adversaries. The Justice Department has now brought hacking-related charges against North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia. (WSJ, NYT, Reuters, DOJ)
Park Jin Hyok, named by officials as a member of the so-called Lazarus Group hacking team behind last year’s WannaCry global ransomware attack and the 2014 digital attack on Sony, apparently used not only advanced technology, but elaborate reconnaissance work to digitally steal money and sensitive information.
First, Park would obtain a number of email addresses of people affiliated with target businesses from traders dealing in large amounts of personal information. Then he would use the emails to gain an understanding of company employees’ fields of interest and personal relationships.
That would let him craft emails that could pass as genuine messages from major companies in content and style, a tactic known as spear phishing. After spending some time building trust, he would send the malicious links to websites that would infect a target’s computer.
In one case, Park apparently masqueraded as a human resources official at a U.S. defense-linked company to exchange messages with workers at one of the company’s competitors.
Last week’s charges were said to be the first in years against a North Korean hacker related to high-profile attacks linked to the state. The attack on Sony came as the company was preparing to release a movie called “The Interview,” which depicted the assassination of a character resembling North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The group also allegedly stole $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in 2016.
A North Korean suspect is wanted by U.S. authorities on suspicion of hacking. (Courtesy of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation)
“We stand with our partners to name the North Korean government as the force behind this destructive global cyber campaign,” Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement on Sept. 6.
The U.S. Treasury also imposed sanctions on Park and a Chinese business he was affiliated with. “We will not allow North Korea to undermine global cybersecurity to advance its interests and generate illicit revenues in violation of our sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in his own statement.
Under Kim, the North has consolidated its cyber forces under its Reconnaissance General Bureau, which handles overseas spying. The state has a team of 6,800, according to the South Korean government, and is counted as one of the five cyber powers along with the U.S., Russia, China and Israel.
The core of cyber operations is a team known as “Bureau 121,” established in 1998 by Kim’s father, then-leader Kim Jong Il. Bureau 121 is known for its willingness to commit crimes for the sake of bringing in cash.
“The technology behind North Korea’s cybercrimes is some of the most advanced in the world,” said a source with the U.S. State Department.
Governments and businesses around the world are hurrying to guard themselves from the North’s attacks even as its methods grow more sophisticated. Further cooperation between countries’ cyberdefense authorities may be key to finding effective solutions.
British Airways: The airline said a “very sophisticated” hacker stole credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers in recent days. Anyone who lost out financially as a result of the breach would be compensated, BA officials said. (Reuters)
JPMorgan Hacker: A Russian man, Andrei Tyurin, has been extradited by Georgia to the United States on charges that he participated in the 2014 hack of JPMorgan Chase and other U.S. companies. (Reuters)