Category Archives: FBI

ISIS Caliphate Cyber Army Next Soft Targets

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Companies could be the next ISIS target

MarketWatch: Companies could become larger targets of pro-Islamic State hackers, according to a security company that analyzes the group’s online activity.

The hacking capabilities of ISIS, which has spread propaganda through online channels such as Facebook and Twitter, remain nascent and relatively unsophisticated, according to researchers at the New York-based intelligence company Flashpoint. But the group has gained supporters with hacking skills who are helping propel the group’s online campaigns, the researchers say.

“These are individuals that are hackers first, ISIS supporters second,” says Laith Alkhouri, cofounder and director of research and analysis for the Middle East and North Africa at Flashpoint. “This is definitely a problem in the U.S. for individual businesses, especially individually businesses that are catering to customers digitally.”

Alkhouri says the pro-ISIS hackers typically deface websites to post messages in support of the group to gain notoriety and spread their propaganda. Flashpoint tracked one pro-ISIS hacking group by the end of 2014 and since then, at least five different groups have emerged, typically by defacing their websites. It’s difficult to know the full scope and number of ISIS-backing hackers because they’re behind computers, he says.

Pro-ISIS hackers have in the last year targeted government agencies, universities, businesses and media outlets of all sizes, according to a report released in August by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. While ISIS hacking capabilities have been considered relatively unsophisticated and focused on companies that may not have a large security apparatus, some still worry the group could bring on more skilled hackers.

For example, on Aug. 8, ISIS supporters posted messages saying “i love you Islamic State & Jihad” on the website of a Cincinnati restaurant, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. French media outlets held an emergency meeting after hack attacks on TV5Monde’s website in April 2015, according to The Guardian.

Small or medium-sized companies with amateur websites should monitor each page to ensure a subsection of the website hasn’t been defaced with pro-ISIS messages, Alkhouri says. Often, he says, companies may not immediately realize a subsection of their website has been taken over by ISIS supporters, and the message could hurt the brand among customers. Alkhouri says the group’s attacks could escalate as the hackers seek more notoriety and publicity for their acts.

One pro-ISIS hacking group claimed it planned to take down Google, according to Newsweek, but instead posted its messages on the website of an Indian company called Add Google Online.

The Pentagon has launched an online offensive against ISIS, according to reports, in an attempt to frustrate the group’s computer and phone networks.

A prominent ISIS hacker was killed in a drone strike last year, The Wall Street Journal reported, after U.S. and British officials determined he played a key role in sharpening the group’s computer skills.

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Meanwhile, the FBI is on the trail stemming from the attacks in Belgium where investigations of internet and electronic communications could reveal more on the cyberwar, soft targets.

FBI examining laptops linked to Belgian militants: source

Reuters: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining laptop computers linked to suspects in last week’s deadly Brussels bombings as investigators work to unravel the militant network behind the attacks.

The laptops arrived in the U.S. on Friday and now are being examined by FBI experts, a U.S. government source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Belgian authorities had provided copies of laptop hard drives to the FBI. It is not yet clear whether FBI technicians have recovered any significant data from the equipment the Belgians turned over, the source told Reuters.

U.S. officials have pledged support for Belgian efforts to crack down on militants behind the March 22 suicide bomb attacks at a Brussels Metro station and the city’s Zaventem Airport and other recent attacks.

The death toll from the attack on the airport, and the subsequent bombing of a rush-hour metro train, rose to 35 on Monday, excluding the three men who blew themselves up.

On Saturday, President Barack Obama said the a team of FBI agents was helping investigators on the ground in Belgium.

U.S. officials have said that Belgium’s security and intelligence agencies are overstretched and also hampered by internal political, financial and cultural problems, including a linguistic divide between French and Flemish speaking investigators.

 

Another Judge Piles onto the Hillary Discovery

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Judicial Watch: Second Federal Court Grants Discovery in Clinton Email Case

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth granted “limited discovery” to Judicial Watch into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email matter.  Lamberth ruled that “where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA cases.”

The court’s ruling comes in a July 2014 Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records related to the drafting and use of the Benghazi talking points (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).  The lawsuit seeks records specifically from Hillary Clinton and her top State Department staff:

Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency

Judge Lamberth granted Judicial Watch’s Motion for Discovery, which was filed in opposition to the State Department’s Motion for Summary Judgement.  The court ruled:

An understanding of the facts and circumstances surrounding Secretary Clinton’s extraordinary and exclusive use of her “clintonemail.com” account to conduct official government business, as well as other officials’ use of this account and their own personal e-mail accounts to conduct official government business is required before the Court can determine whether the search conducted here reasonably produced all responsive documents. Plaintiff is certainly entitled to dispute the State Department’s position that it has no obligation to produce these documents because it did not “possess” or “control” them at the time the FOIA request was made. The State Department’s willingness to now search documents voluntarily turned over to the Department by Secretary Clinton and other officials hardly transforms such a search into an “adequate” or “reasonable” one.  Plaintiff is not relying on “speculation” or “surmise” as the State Department claims.  Plaintiff is relying on constantly shifting admissions by the Government and the former government officials.  Whether the State Department’s actions will ultimately be determined by the Court to not be “acting in good faith” remains to be seen at this time, but plaintiff is clearly entitled to discovery and a record before this Court rules on that issue.

The Court must observe that the Government argues in its opposition memorandum that “the fact that State did not note that it had not searched Secretary Clinton’s e-mails when it responded to Plaintiffs FOIA request … was neither a misrepresentation nor material omission, because these documents were not in its possession and control when the original search was completed.”  The Government argues that this does not show a lack of good faith, but that is what remains to be seen, and the factual record must be developed appropriately in order for this Court to make that determination.

Today’s ruling refers to U.S. District Court Emmett Sullivan’s decision to grant Judicial Watch discovery on the Clinton email matter in separate litigation:

Briefing is ongoing before Judge Sullivan.  When Judge Sullivan issues a discovery order, the plaintiff shall — within ten days thereafter–file its specific proposed order detailing what additional proposed discovery, tailored to this case, it seeks to have this Court order. Defendant shall respond ten days after plaintiff’s submission.

Judge Sullivan is expected to rule on Judicial Watch’s discovery plan after April 15.  Judicial Watch’s discovery plan seeks the testimony of eight current and former State Department officials, including top State Department official Patrick Kennedy, former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano, and Clinton’s two top aides at the State Department:  Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin.

“This remarkable decision will allow Judicial Watch to explore the shifting stories and misrepresentations made by the Obama State Department and its current and former employees,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “This Benghazi litigation first uncovered the Clinton email scandal, so it is good to have discovery in this lawsuit which may help the American people find out why our efforts to get Benghazi answers was thwarted by Clinton’s email games.”

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12 School Principals Charged with Bribery

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Rather disgusting when the FBI has to investigate. The pattern perhaps begins in 2009 with spending scandals?

Official statement from the Manager of Detroit Public Schools

Feds charge 12 Detroit school principals with bribery

USAToday: DETROIT —A dozen current and former principals in the Detroit Public Schools system are facing federal bribery and fraud charges, according to court records.

The charges are expected to be announced later Tuesday by the the U.S. Attorney’s Office at a news conference. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade will be joined by FBI and IRS officials at the news conference.

Besides the 12 principals, an administrator and a school district vendor also are among those facing charges.

The announcement comes nearly two months after ex-principal Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, who was hailed as a once-rising education star and turnaround specialist in Detroit Public Schools, pleaded guilty to bribery. Snapp admitted she pocketed a $58,050 bribe from a vendor and spent it on herself while working for the embattled Education Achievement Authority, a state-formed agency that was supposed to help Detroit’s most troubled schools.

Snapp, who is set to be sentenced June 1, faces up to 46 months in prison for bribery. Another women, Paulette Horton, an independent contractor who was involved in a deal to provide tutoring services at two high schools, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit program bribery. The 60-year-old consultant admitted that she was the middleman who handed over bribes to Snapp.

Vendor, Glynis Thornton, also pleaded guilty in January, admitting she gave Snapp money in exchange for awarding her company the tutoring contract. In her guilty plea, Thornton explained how the scheme worked: Thornton would give an independent contractor the bribe money for Snapp, that contractor would meet Snapp at a bank, give her the money, and keep some for herself.

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In part from Detroit News: One of the seven current principals charged, Ronald Alexander, 60, of Detroit, principal of Spain Elementary, accepted a $500,000 donation from the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in February for technology updates, campus renovations and additional staff funding.

DPS school board vice president Ida Short, who attended McQuade’s press conference, said a lack of oversight in the district allowed a conspiracy such as this to happen. Before the state took over the district, school board members were required to approve contracts, Short said.

“We have a czar over the district. …We would ordinarily not have principals approving this level of contract. It’s too much money. It’s too easy for people to get greedy as you see,” Short said. “We want to have the rights of every district in the state — to have an elected school board.”

Steven Rhodes, emergency manager for DPS, said Tuesday the district has suspended business with Shy and all of his companies. He added the district has changed policies to prevent fraud.

“I cannot overstate the outrage that I feel about the conduct that these DPS employees engaged in that led to these charges,” Rhodes said. “And I am sure that this sense of outrage is shared by the other dedicated and committed DPS employees, as well as DPS parents and everyone who is interested in the future success of DPS.”

McQuade said her office received a tip from the state of Michigan after it performed an audit at the Education Achievement Authority that raised several red flags.

After her office investigated the EAA and a federal grand jury indicted three people there on criminal charges, McQuade said they next learned about Shy.

The principals charged in the case were not working with each other, McQuade said, and did not know others were participating in the fraud.

She said the decision to file charges in the case has nothing to do with “DPS or the emergency manager.”

“It’s about these 14 people who breached the public trust. The real victims are students and families who attend Detroit Public Schools. … This case is a real punch in the gut for those who do the right thing,” McQuade said.

Also charged in the case are:

■Tanya Bowman, 48, of Novi, former principal of Osborn Collegiate Academy.

■Nina Graves-Hicks, 52, of Detroit, former principal of Davis Aerospace Tech High.

■Josette Buendia, 50, of Garden City, principal of Bennett Elementary.

■James Hearn, 50, of West Bloomfield, principal of Marcus Garvey Academy.

■Beverly Campbell, 66, of Southfield, former principal at Rosa Parks School and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School.

■Gerlma Johnson, 56, of Detroit, former principal at Drew Academy and Earhart Elementary-Middle School.

■Stanley Johnson, 62, of Southfield, principal of Hutchinson Elementary.

■Tia’Von Moore-Patton, 46, of Farmington Hills, principal at Jerry L. White Center High school.

■Willye Pearsall, 65, of Warren, former principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary school.

■Ronnie Sims, 55, of Albion, former principal of Fleming Elementary and Brenda Scott Middle School.

■Clara Smith, 67, Southfield, principal at Thirkell Elementary.

Each of the 14 defendants faces up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on charges of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery.

Shy and Flowers face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $100,000 on the tax evasion charges.

Rhodes said he was advised Tuesday morning by McQuade of the charges and instructed the district’s employee relations department to place the current employees on unpaid administrative leave.

Rhodes said the policies put in place in light of the charges are suspending  all purchases by individual schools until further notice; requiring central office approval for all school-based purchases, suspending the ability by principals and assistant principals to sign off on or execute any vendor agreements and contracts without central office approval by the superintendent’s office, finance and/or procurement.

He is requiring two signatures on all school-based invoices before they will be paid, conducting a review of all purchases made by the employees identified by the U.S. Attorney, launching a full review of all school-based vendor contracts to determine if all or a portion need to be terminated and rebid, and recruiting an independent auditor to do a thorough review and assessment of procurement processes and procedures to ensure they are in compliance with all state and federal rules and regulations.

“The actions of these individuals are reprehensible and represent a breach of the public trust that has deprived our students of more than $2.7 million in resources,” he said.

David P. Gelios, special agent in charge, FBI Detroit Division, said as a former educator, the case strikes to his very core.

“To enrich oneself at the expense of school children is bad enough, but to misapply public funds intended to educate kids in a district where overall needs are so deep, funding sources are so strained, and the need for better education is so crucial, is reprehensible and an insult to those educators working every day to make a better future for our children,” he said.

In October, the FBI launched a corruption investigation involving DPS and the EAA to determine if contracts were awarded to vendors who paid kickbacks.

In December, a federal grand jury in Detroit indicted a former EAA principal and two school vendors on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and bribery.

Prosecutors said Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, former principal of Mumford and Denby high schools, was part of a kickback scheme along with co-defendants Paulette Horton and Glynis Thornton.

Horton was an EAA vendor who conspired with Snapp and Thornton, a tutoring vendor, to take money from the federally funded school district to enrich themselves.

All three have entered guilty pleas in the case. Sentencing is scheduled for June.

The EAA was created in 2011 by Gov. Rick Snyder as a school district to turn around Detroit’s lowest performing public schools.

The defendants are expected to turn themselves in for a court hearing in U.S. District Court, McQuade. No dates have been set.

ISIS: Our Soldiers are Everywhere

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And a major recruiting center in Europe and Belgium are prisons.

How Belgian prisons became a breeding ground for Islamic extremism

WaPo: LIEGE, Belgium — Stephane Medot knows a thing or two about Belgian prisons. He spent 10 years in them. Arrested for carrying out more than a dozen armed bank robberies, the stocky, bald-headed Medot moved from prison to prison, from one cell of his own to another, until he served out his time.

Along the way, he got a front-row seat in a prison system that has become a breeding ground for violent Muslim extremists. Many of those involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks first did short stints behind bars for relatively petty crimes. And there these wayward young people met proselytizers and appear to have acquired a new, lethal sense of purpose.

A Belgian prison is where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped plan the Paris attacks and who was killed in a police raid in November, met Salah Abdeslam, an alleged Paris attacker who was captured in Brussels this month. Salah’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up in Paris, also served time.

[Probe into Brussels bombings expands across Europe]

Two of the suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks last week, brothers Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, had spent time in Belgian prisons for violent offenses that included armed robbery and carjacking.

Medot, now 37, said that from prison to prison, the routine he witnessed was similar. Proselytizing prisoners used exercise hours and small windows in their cells to swap news, copies of the Koran and small favors such as illicit cellphones. Gradually, they won over impressionable youths and taught them to stop drinking and start thinking about perceived injustices such as the invasion of Iraq, the plight of Palestinians or the treatment of their own immigrant families.

The prison guards, who could not understand Arabic, had a “laissez-faire attitude,” he said, and did nothing to stop the pulsating music or political discussions.

“If you’re not a Muslim, you feel the need to adapt to the rules,” said Medot, who is not Muslim. When the hour for prayer arrived, everyone was asked to turn off televisions so as not to disturb the faithful.

For the past year, Belgium’s Ministry of Justice has been planning to change a prison system widely seen as a school for radicals. It is creating two isolated areas, each with room for 20 people, at Hasselt and Ittre prisons for the most radical inmates. At the moment, said ministry spokeswoman Sieghild Lacoere, only five inmates clearly qualify. The segregation is set to begin April 11.

“The best solution for fighting the process of radicalization,” the ministry said in its action plan last year before the Paris and Brussels attacks, is “one part isolation by concentration, completely isolating the radical individuals from the other detainees to avoid a great contamination” and prevent them from “feeding other detainees more of their ideology.”

The ministry also said it would improve living conditions in the overcrowded prisons. Belgium has about 11,000 prisoners, ­Lacoere said, of whom 20 to 30 percent are Muslims, even though Muslims make up only about 6 percent of the population.

France, with Europe’s largest Muslim population, is facing similar problems. It, too, has opened special units, manned by psychologists, historians and sociologists, for potentially violent extremists at five prisons. A year ago it vowed to hire 60 more Muslim chaplains.

[French prisons, hotbeds of radical Islam, get new scrutiny after Paris attacks]

Medot said that changing the culture of prison is difficult. He said that youths “arrive alone, feel alone” and that the older Muslim inmates “attract guys who want to become fuller members of the group.”

Medot was in prison when terrorists attacked London, Madrid and a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. He said many prisoners celebrated what their “brothers” did. Medot said that when discussing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, many would say that “Americans stole the [Middle East’s] oil and that this is revenge and this is just.”

For several months, Medot said, he overlapped with Nizar Trabelsi, a professional soccer player turned al-Qaeda follower who confessed in 2003 to an aborted plot to drive a car packed with explosives into Kleine Brogel, a NATO air base in Belgium where U.S. nuclear missiles are thought to be stored. Trabelsi served 10 years in Belgium and then was extradited to the United States, despite condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights.

“He was one of the guys who was seen as a hero,” Medot said. In prison in Belgium, Trabelsi, a Tunisian, taught Arabic by passing books through the cells’ small windows. Though Medot, considered a flight risk, had his own cell, others stayed in cells with two to five people. Trabelsi also played loud Koranic music and prayers from his cell, as well as recordings of bullets and shooting. The guards did nothing except occasionally ask that he turn down the volume.

“The parents will come and visit, and the detainee will say he wants books, wants to find religion and change his ways,” Medot said, “and parents see that as positive, to take a path away from petty crime, away from drugs, away from alcohol. And they don’t know what is happening on the inside.”

[Security forces missed chances before the Brussels attacks]

But Medot said that the government’s plan to isolate radicals won’t work. Who will decide which prisoners are too radical to stay with other detainees? Won’t they become even more radical in isolation? And what will happen to them when their sentences run out?

Lacoere said the Justice Ministry’s plan includes hiring more experts to “de-radicalize” inmates. She said guards will get special training. She said isolating the radicals isn’t the same as abandoning them; they will get more intensive attention, she said.

Still, she acknowledged, there will be difficult issues. “There is not a lot of knowledge in the academic world on this de-
radicalization. It’s a very hard topic to talk about,” she said. “It’s about influencing people’s ideas, and there’s freedom of speech and thought in our country.”

Salmi Hedi, a Tunisian-born imam, has worked in the Belgian prison system for nearly 20 years trying to de-radicalize inmates. He said Belgium’s 18 penitentiaries share just eight imams and one woman religious counselor. The Justice Ministry has promised 11 more.

He disagrees with the government’s diagnosis and concern about “contamination” by radicals.

“Are they viruses? It is not a constructive view,” Hedi said. “It is very dangerous. If you put these people together, you cannot control them anymore. They will feel stronger.”

Customs Border Patrol in Pacific, Whoa

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US agents nearly caught $194 million worth of cocaine in a narco submarine

US Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents had a close call with a high-value target in the Pacific Ocean.

The crew of a P-3 Long Range Tracker, working as part of a joint military-law-enforcement task force, picked up a self-propelled semi-submersible traveling in the eastern Pacific Ocean on March 2.

Agents later intercepted the semi-submersible, on which they found more than 12,800 pounds of cocaine, an amount with an estimated value of $193,939,000, according to a CBP release issued on March 24. US agents arrested four people operating the craft.

The seizure was short-lived however, as the “semi-submersible became unstable and sank,” the CBP said in a release. Semi-submersible crafts used for drug smuggling are also referred to as “narco submarines.”

Despite losing the cargo, the CBP characterized the operation as a success. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity,” said John Wassong, the director of the National Air Security Operations Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Semi-submersibles used for smuggling are usually built to travel just below the surface, with just an exhaust pipe, a wheelhouse, and an airstack emerging from the water, according to Vice News. The vessels are often camouflaged, and many of them are constructed in Colombia, a major hub for cocaine production.

View gallery

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narco submarine

(US Customs and Border Patrol)
A semi-submersible transporting drugs was captured at sea last year by US agents, but it sank before it could be fully unloaded.

“Typically crews are made up of an experienced sailor, the so-called “captain” who can also be the person who handles communication with the ‘base,'” Javier Guerrero, a researcher focused on drug-trade technology, told Vice in 2015. “Most likely the crew is made up of experienced sailors,” as well, said Guerrero, and their experience and relationship with the cargo’s owner or the narco sub’s owner determines the command hierarchy on the vessel.

The emphasis traffickers have put on seaborne smuggling is one of the latest logistical and technical developments in the drug trade. Throughout much of 1970s and 1980s, most trafficking routes, via air and sea, transited the Caribbean. As interdiction efforts increased, smugglers switched to land and air routes through Mexico, eventually branching into more intense maritime smuggling.

“They started to build the submarines and they’re still using them, but it’s aircraft, commercial freighters, speedboats. You name it and they have it,” Mike Vigil, the former chief of international operations for the DEA, told Business Insider. “They never settle on one method of transportation or on one route. They’re always exploring.”

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Colombia cocaine submarine

(REUTERS/John Vizcaino)
Counternarcotics police guard an under-construction submersible that was seized from the “Los Urabenos” drugs cartel, in Puerto Escondido, Monteria province October 18, 2011. Colombian authorities said that the submersible ship seized on Monday could be used to carry six tons of cocaine illegally.

In 2012, 80% of the illegal drugs smuggled to the US came on maritime routes, and 30% of the illegal drugs delivered to US shores via the sea were carried on narco submarines, according to a 2014 study cited by Vice News.

In late summer last year, US agents intercepted a semi-submersible laden with roughly eight tons of cocaine. US authorities offloaded about six tons of the illicit cargo before the vessel sank. The capture and subsequent sinking of the narco sub were recorded by the Coast Guard.

Had US agents been able to bring this latest shipment to shore, it would have been one of the more substantial hauls captured in recent months. In early February, Air and Marines Operations agents intercepted a 2,300-pound shipment with an estimated value of $172 million. In early March, CBP agents caught a 154-pound shipment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which had an estimated value of $2 million.

Air and Marine Operations agents took part in 198 seizure, disruption, or interdiction efforts in their 42-million-square-mile operation zone — which spans the Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico — in fiscal year 2015, capturing over 200,000 pounds of cocaine.