Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Is the Federal Reserve About to Remake the U.S. Dollar? Going Crypto

Posted on by

Seems so…

Politico: The Federal Reserve is taking what may be the first significant step toward launching its own virtual currency, a move that could shake up banks, give millions of low-income Americans access to the financial system and fortify the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

The idea of creating a fully digital version of the U.S. dollar, which was unthinkable just a few years ago, has gained bipartisan interest from lawmakers as diverse as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) because of its potential benefits for consumers who don’t have bank accounts. But it’s also sparking strong pushback from those with the most to lose: banks.

“The United States should not implement a [central bank digital currency] simply because we can or because others are doing so,” the American Bankers Association said in a statement to lawmakers this week. The benefits “are theoretical, difficult to measure, and may be elusive,” while the negative consequences “could be severe,” the group wrote.

The explosive rise of private cryptocurrencies in recent years motivated the Fed to start considering a digital dollar to be used alongside the traditional paper currency. The biggest driver of concern was a Facebook-led effort, launched in 2019, to build a global payments network using crypto technology. Though that effort is now much narrower, it demonstrated how the private sector could, in theory, create a massive currency system outside government control.

Now, central banks around the world have begun exploring the idea of issuing their own digital currencies — a fiat version of a cryptocurrency that would operate more like physical cash — that would have some of the same technological benefits as other cryptocurrencies.

That could provide unwelcome competition for banks by giving depositors another safe place to put their money. A person or a business could keep their digital dollars in a virtual “wallet” and then transfer them directly to someone else without needing to use a bank account. Even if the wallet were operated by a bank, the firm wouldn’t be able to lend out the cash. But unlike other crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ether, it would be directly backed and controlled by the central bank, allowing the monetary authorities to use it, like any other form of the dollar, in its policies to guide interest rates.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Digital Currency Initiative are aiming next month to publish the first stage of their work to determine whether a Fed virtual currency would work on a practical level — an open-source license for the most basic piece of infrastructure around creating and moving digital dollars.

But it will likely be up to Congress to ultimately decide whether the central bank should formally pursue such a project, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell has acknowledged. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are intrigued, particularly as they eye China’s efforts to build its own central bank digital currency, as well as the global rise of cryptocurrencies, both of which could diminish the dollar’s influence.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the IRS budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP) | Evelyn Hockstein/AP Photo

Democrats have especially been skeptical about crypto assets because there are fewer consumer protections and the currencies can be used for illicit activity. There are also environmental concerns posed by the sheer amount of electricity used to unlock new units of digital currencies like Bitcoin.

Warren suggested the Fed project could resolve some of those concerns.

“Legitimate digital public money could help drive out bogus digital private money, while improving financial inclusion, efficiency, and the safety of our financial system — if that digital public money is well-designed and efficiently executed,” she said at a hearing on Wednesday, which she convened as chair of the Senate Banking Committee’s economic policy subcommittee.

Other senators highlighted the potential for central bank digital wallets to be used to deliver government aid more directly to people who don’t have bank accounts. A digital dollar could also be designed to have more high-tech benefits of some cryptocurrencies, like facilitating “smart contracts” where a transaction is completed once certain conditions are met.

Neha Narula, who’s leading the effort at MIT to work with the Boston Fed on a central bank digital currency, called the project “a once-in-a-century opportunity to redesign the dollar” in a way that supports innovation much like the internet did.

Still, there are a slew of unanswered policy questions around how a digital dollar would be designed, such as how people would get access to the money, or how much information the government would be able to see about individual transactions. The decision is also tied to a far more controversial policy supported by Democrats like Warren and Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown to give regular Americans accounts at the Fed.

“What problem is a central bank digital currency trying to solve? In other words, do we need one? It’s not clear to me yet that we do,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said. “In my view, turning the Fed into a retail bank is a terrible idea.”

And, “the fact that China is creating a digital currency does not mean it’s inevitable that the yuan would displace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” he said.

Jerome Powell

Jerome Powell
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 01: Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference on May 1, 2019 in Washington, DC. Powell said the Fed will not raise interest rates this quarter and no rate hikes are likely anytime soon. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

For their part, banks fear a Fed-issued digital currency could make it easier for customers to pull out large amounts of deposits and convert them to digital dollars during a crisis — the virtual equivalent of a bank run — putting financial stress on their institutions and making less money available to provide credit for people, businesses and markets.

It could also potentially deprive them of customers, something the lenders say would interfere with lawmakers’ vision of increased financial inclusion.

“While it is true that deposit accounts are often the first step towards inclusion, the benefits of a long-term banking relationship go well beyond a deposit account,” the ABA said in its statement. “The same is not true of a [central bank digital currency] account with the Federal Reserve, which would not grow into a lending or investing relationship.”

The Bank Policy Institute, which represents large banks, has also argued that many of the benefits of a digital dollar are “mutually exclusive (because they are predicated on different program designs) or effectively non-existent (because the program design that produces them comes with costs that are for other reasons unbearable).”

“The decision on whether to adopt a central bank digital currency in the United States is appropriately a long way off,” BPI President and CEO Greg Baer said. “There are also complex and serious costs that will need to be considered.”

But many lawmakers think it’s worth the effort to look into it.

“The Federal Reserve should continue to explore a digital [currency]; nearly every other country is doing that,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said at the hearing, citing the risk for the U.S. to lose its ability to deploy economic sanctions as effectively with decreased usage of the dollar.

Proof There are Bats Inside the Wuhan Lab

Posted on by

Primer question: Will social media shut down this article? It has evidence and comes from renowned scientists including at MIT.

Back in early 2020, during the middle of the nationwide lockdown, this site published two items, here and here regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that bats were in fact at the center of the cause of the pandemic.

Recently, former President Trump told media that the United States should demand at least $10 trillion from China due to the various forms of destruction and death by China. He is right. Frankly, the United States should declare all the debt load that China carries in the form of loans for the United States paid in full. Further, President Trump was exactly right to defund the World Health Organization and in fact it should be criminally charged for death and destruction.

*** The WIV had been genetically sequencing the mine virus in 2017 and 2018, analyzing it in a way they had done in the past with other viruses in preparation for running experiments with them.

For years, concerned scientists have warned that this type of pathogen research was going to trigger a pandemic. Foremost among them was Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, who founded the Cambridge Working Group in 2014 to lobby against these experiments. In a series of policy papers, op-eds, and scientific forums, he pointed out that accidents involving deadly pathogens occurred more than twice a week in U.S. labs, and estimated that just 10 labs performing gain-of-function research over a 10-year period would run a nearly 20 percent risk of an accidental release. In 2018, he argued that such a release could “lead to global spread of a virulent virus, a biosafety incident on a scale never before seen.”

Thanks in part to the Cambridge Working Group, the federal government briefly instituted a moratorium on such research. By 2017, however, the ban was lifted and U.S. labs were at it again. Today, in the United States and across the globe, there are dozens of labs conducting experiments on a daily basis with the deadliest known pathogens. One of them is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For more than a decade, its scientists have been discovering coronaviruses in bats in southern China and bringing them back to their lab in Wuhan. There, they mix genes from different strains of these novel viruses to test their infectivity in human cells and lab animals. source

 

Now we appear to have video evidence that came from an Australian media source.

As a reminder, the United States was not the only country that not only gave funding to ‘gain of function’ to the WIV but Australia did as well. More research paper summaries are surfacing as well as additional evidence that includes patent applications. The scientific theory now is that the WIV modeled the function of the virus to be more lethal in the transmission of human to human, altering it from animal to human.

So, where is Dr. Fauci on this? His emails did not include anything that resembled an inquiry of gain of function or bats.

There were live bats in the Wuhan Institute of Virology ... that is a bat hanging off the lab workers hat.

***

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was found to have filed patents for “bat rearing cages” and “artificial breeding” systems in the months before the coronavirus first emerged last December. WIV has been subject to international scrutiny as it was known to have been carrying out experiments on bat coronaviruses – and is located just miles from Covid’s ground zero.

And the allegations continue despite the World Health Organisation appearing to exonerate the lab in its findings after a mission to Wuhan – which since been branded a “whitewash”.

The new revelations about the bat cages raises more questions about the work the Chinese scientists – lead by Dr Shi Zhengli, known as Batwoman – were doing in the months leading up to the pandemic.

It had previously been denied that WIV was keeping any live bats on site – but an online profile of the lab reportedly claimed it has capacity to keep 12 bat cages.

WIV scientists filed patents in June 2018 and October 2020 for the cages and methods for breeding of bats, which are believed to be the natural reservoir of Covid.

The first patent was filed for “bat rearing cages” which would be “‘capable of healthy growth and breeding under artificial conditions”, reports the Mail on Sunday.

And the second patent relates to a method of “artificially breeding” of wild bats, and in the document it describes bats being “artificially” infected with coronaviruses.

It explains it is hoped the breeding scheme will allow them to create a “brand-new model experimental animal for scientific research”.

The patents raise yet further questions about the work of the shadowy lab which has been accused by the US of having links to the Chinese military.

It comes as the White House said it has “deep concerns” that the Chinese government may have interfered with WHO’s investigation into the origins of Covid.WHO investigator Peter Daszak, who has longstanding links with WIV, had previously claimed no live bats were being kept by the lab.

Last April, he said: “All bats are released back to their cave site after sampling. It’s a conservation measure and is much safer in terms of disease spread than killing them or trying to keep them in a lab.”

In December, he appeared to repeat the claim by stating labs he had worked with “DO NOT have live or dead bats in them. There is no evidence anywhere that this happened”.

Daszak had been a member of the ten-person WHO team who swung its weight behind the Chinese government’s effort to deflect blame over the origins with the virus.

The team all but ruled out the lab leak, suggested the virus may have come from outside of China, and appeared to place their focus on claims the virus may have come from frozen food.And then just days later, WHO investigator Dominic Dwyer backtracked as he said it likely did start in China, and later claimed the Communist Party authorities refused to hand over raw data.

He said: “Why that doesn’t happen, I couldn’t comment. Whether it’s political or time or it’s difficult .

“But whether there are any other reasons why the data isn’t available, I don’t know. One would only speculate.”

The WHO mission was tightly controlled and stage managed by China – and even saw the scientists visits a propaganda museum celebrating Wuhan’s fight against Covid.

The organisation itself is also facing questions about how it handled the early days of the pandemic, being accused by former US President Donald Trump of being “China-centric”.

Heartless, Biden Admin Closes Office that Helps Victims of Crimes

Posted on by

In full disclosure, I personally have met several of the victims in recent years in Washington DC.

Biden admin closes office that helps victims of crimes committed by immigrants, opens immigrant services center

On Friday, the Biden administration announced that it would be closing a government office set up to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, to be replaced with an office aiding in immigration services, according to the Associated Press.

Created by the Trump administration during his first week in office, the Victim Of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, or VOICE, would be replaced with what the US Immigration and Customs enforcement called a “more comprehensive and inclusive victim support system.”
Replacing VOICE is the The Victims Engagement and Services Line, “which will combine longstanding existing services, such as methods for people to report abuse and mistreatment in immigration detention centers and a notification system for lawyers and others with a vested interest in immigration cases,” writes AP.
(the website of VOICE before it was closed)
“The new office will add a service for potential recipients of visas designated for victims of human trafficking or violent crimes in the United States,” they continue

“Providing assistance to society’s most vulnerable is a core American value. All people, regardless of their immigration status, should be able to access victim services without fear,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
On Twitter Friday, Stephen Miller slammed the decision to close the office, stating “law enforcement is now forced to aid lawmakers.”** 

 

“This is in addition to all of the free help illegal aliens already get from mega-billionaires, the ACLU & powerful special interests. Americans have become second-class citizens in their own country. And grief-stricken families, mourning loved ones, are the collateral damage,” Miller continued.
According to the Associated Press, Miller stating that opening the new office would be like the DEA opening “a call center to help drug dealers get lawyers and amnesty for their crimes.” The Department of Homeland Security “is a law enforcement agency, not a legal help center for criminals and lawbreakers.”

26M Amazon, Facebook, Apple, eBay User Logins Stolen by Hackers

Posted on by

The private login information belonging to tens of millions of people was compromised after malware infiltrated over 3.2 million Windows-based computers during a two-year span.

According to a report by cybersecurity provider NordLocker, a custom Trojan-type malware infiltrated the computers between 2018 and 2020 and stole 1.2 terabytes (TB) of personal information.
As a result, hackers were able to get their hands on nearly 26 million login credentials including emails, usernames and passwords from almost a million websites, according to Nordlocker’s report, which was conducted in partnership with a third-party company specializing in data breach research.

The targeted websites include major namesakes such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Dropbox and LinkedIn.

Adobe breach far bigger than thought - 38 million records ...

The malware was transmitted through email and “illegal software” which included a pirated version of “Adobe Photoshop 2018, a Windows cracking tool, and several cracked games,” according to the report.

To steal the personal information, the malware was reportedly able to take screenshots of a person’s information and also photograph “the user if the device had a webcam.”

Among the stolen database were 2 billion browser cookies and 6.6 million files, including 1 million images and more than 650,000 Word and .pdf files.

“Cookies help hackers construct an accurate picture of the habits and interests of their target,” the report read. “In some cases, cookies can even give access to the person’s online accounts.”

Making up the bulk of the stolen database was “3 million text files, 900,00 image files, and 600,000+ Word files.”

What was of most concern, according to Nordlocker, was that “some people even use Notepad to keep their passwords, personal notes, and other sensitive information,” according to the report.

***

McDonald's discloses hack of customer data in South Korea ...

But now McDonald’s is the latest victim.

McDonald’s on Friday disclosed limited details of a data breach that may have exposed some customer data.

“While we were able to close off access quickly after identification, our investigation has determined that a small number of files were accessed, some of which contained personal data,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said, adding that based on the company’s investigation so far, only Korean and Taiwanese customers were impacted.

The Wall Street Journal initially reported that U.S. markets were also impacted and that the breach exposed some U.S. business and employee contact information.

Those markets “will be taking steps to notify regulators and customers listed in these files,” which did not include customer payment information, the McDonald’s spokesperson said.

“McDonald’s understands the importance of effective security measures to protect information, which is why we’ve made substantial investments to implement multiple security tools as part of our in-depth cybersecurity defense,” the spokesperson said.

The fast-food chain said it was able to “quickly identify and contain” threats on its network. It also conducted a “thorough investigation” and worked with “experienced third parties” to do so.

McDonald’s did not share any additional details about the breach.

From Cyberscoop in part:

In other cases, by compromising payment machines, cybercriminals have swept up troves of customer data. That’s what happened in a 2019 breach of Checkers Drive-In Restaurants, when hackers accessed data such as payment card numbers and verification codes in an incident that affected more than 100 Checkers locations. The most notorious group to use the tactic is known as FIN7, a multibillion dollar criminal enterprise that has targeted payment data at Chipotle, Red Robin and Taco’s John.

McDonald’s defended its cybersecurity practices on Friday.

“McDonald’s understands the importance of effective security measures to protect information, which is why we’ve made substantial investments to implement multiple security tools as part of our in-depth cybersecurity defense,” the company’s statement reads.

“Moving forward, McDonald’s will leverage the findings from the investigation as well as input from security resources to identify ways to further enhance our existing security measures.”

Airline Hacked by APT41

Posted on by

On March 4, 2021, SITA, an international provider of IT services for the air transport industry worldwide, said it had suffered a security incident. The announcement, however, was not getting the attention it deserved until Air India, one of SITA’s customers, reported a massive passenger data breach on May 21 caused by an earlier attack against SITA. Between March and May, various airline companies, including Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, and others, disclosed data breaches. All of those companies were SITA customers. After Air India revealed the details of its security breach, it became clear that the carriers were most likely dealing with one of the biggest supply chain attacks in the airline industry’s history.

Using its external threat hunting tools, Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence team attributed the Air India incident with moderate confidence to the Chinese nation-state threat actor known as APT41. The campaign was codenamed ColunmTK.

On May 21, Air India, India’s flag carrier, published an official statement on their website about a data breach. The announcement revealed that the breach was caused by a February incident at the airline’s IT service provider, SITA PSS, which is responsible for processing customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). It came to light that the SITA cyberattack affected 4,500,000 data subjects globally, including data related to Air India’s customers.

On May 21, Air India, India’s flag carrier, published an official statement on their website about a data breach. The announcement revealed that the breach was caused by a February incident at the airline’s IT service provider, SITA PSS, which is responsible for processing customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). It came to light that the SITA cyberattack affected 4,500,000 data subjects globally, including data related to Air India’s customers. Significant attribution detail continues here.

***

The FBI defines the APT41 as:

From 2020:

A global hacking collective known as APT41 has been accused by US authorities of targeting company servers for ransom, compromising government networks and spying on Hong Kong activists.

Seven members of the group—including five Chinese nationals—were charged by the US Justice Department on Wednesday.

Some experts say they are tied to the Chinese state, while others speculate money was their only motive. What do we really know about APT41?

Who are they?

Five members of the group were expert hackers and current or former employees of Chengdu 404 Network Technology, a company that claimed to provide legitimate “white hat” hacking services to detect vulnerabilities in clients’ .

But the firm’s work also included malicious attacks on non-client organisations, according to Justice Department documents.

Chengdu 404 says its partners include a government tech security assessor and Chinese universities.

The other two hackers charged are Malaysian executives at SEA Gamer Mall, a Malaysia-based firm that sells video game currency, power-ups and other in-game items.

What are they accused of?

The team allegedly hacked the computers of hundreds of companies and organisations around the world, including healthcare firms, and telecoms and pharmaceutical providers.

The breaches were used to collect identities, hijack systems for ransom, and remotely use thousands of computers to mine for cryptocurrency such as bitcoin.

One target was an anti-poverty non-profit, with the hackers taking over one of its computers and holding the contents hostage using encryption software and demanding payment to unlock it.

The group is also suspected of compromising in India and Vietnam.

In addition it is accused of breaching video game companies to steal in-game items to sell back to gamers, the Justice Department court filings said.

How did they operate?

Their arsenal ran the gamut from old-fashioned phishing emails to more sophisticated attacks on software development companies to modify their code, which then allowed them access to clients’ computers.

In one case documented by security company FireEye, APT41 sent emails containing malicious software to human resources employees of a target just three days after the firm recovered from a previous attack by the group.

Wong Ong Hua and Ling Yang Ching, the two Malaysian businessmen, ordered their employees to create thousands of fake video game accounts in order to receive the virtual objects stolen by APT41 before selling them on, the court documents allege.

Is the Chinese government behind them?

FireEye says the group’s targeting of industries including healthcare, telecoms and news media is “consistent with Chinese national policy priorities”.

APT41 collected information on pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong and a Buddhist monk from Tibet—two places where Beijing has faced political unrest.

One of the hackers, Jiang Lizhi, who worked under the alias “Blackfox”, had previously worked for a hacking group that served government agencies and boasted of close connections with China’s Ministry of State Security.

But many of the group’s activities appear to be motivated by financial gain and personal interest—with one laughing in chat messages about mass-blackmailing wealthy victims—and the US indictments did not identify a strong official connection.

Where are they now?

The five Chinese hackers remain at large but the two businessmen were arrested in Malaysia on Monday after a sweeping operation by the FBI and private companies including Microsoft to block the hackers from using their online accounts.

The United States is seeking their extradition.

None of the men charged are known to have lived in the US, where some of their targets were located.

They picked targets outside Malaysia and China because they believed law enforcement would not be able to track them down across borders, the court documents said.