Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

DEA Joins FBI Against WH on Ferguson Effect

Posted on by

Last month, this website wrote that FBI Director James Comey has determined the real cause of the low morale by the nation’s law enforcement. The White House has continued to push back hard on Comey but now the Drug Enforcement Agency is standing with the FBI on this very issue. Border Patrol also joined with the DEA and FBI.

DEA chief: Comey ‘spot on’ linking Ferguson impact to crime surge

USAToday – WASHINGTON — The nation’s top drug enforcement official said Wednesday that FBI Director James Comey was “spot on” when he recently offered the controversial assessment that violent crime surges in some cities may be linked to police officers’ reluctance to engage suspects.

“I think there is something to it,” Drug Enforcement Administration chief Chuck Rosenberg told reporters, referring to the so-called “Ferguson-effect” in which police have been reportedly hesitant to act for fear of prompting the kind of civil unrest that engulfed Ferguson, Mo., last year. “I think (Comey) was spot on.”

Comey’s remarks during appearances last month in Chicago put the FBI director at odds with some in law enforcement and the White House, which indicated that existing evidence did not support such a claim.

“I will say that the available evidence at this point does not support the notion that law enforcement officers around the country are shying away from fulfilling their responsibilities,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “On the contrary, I think you’ve seen a lot of local law enforcement leaders indicate that police officers and sheriffs and other local law enforcement officials are actually dedicated public servants who on a daily basis are putting their lives on the line to serve and protect the communities that they’re assigned to.”

The FBI director has acknowledged that data is lacking to support a definitive conclusion, yet he said that he maintained a “strong sense” of a connection based on reports from local law enforcement officials.

Rosenberg, who served as Comey’s chief of staff before his May appointment as acting DEA administrator, said he has heard similar concerns from local law enforcement officials.

“I’ve heard the same things,” Rosenberg said. “I think it’s worth talking about. I don’t know if it will turn out to be right or wrong. That’s why Comey called for better data. The data that we have is limited. It just is.”

Of the disagreement voiced by the White House, Rosenberg said: “The White House is a building, so I’m not sure what the White House thinks,” Rosenberg said, adding that he believed Comey’s remarks were “thoughtful and measured.”

“When you get criticized from the right and the left, you probably hit it just about perfectly,” he said.

For months, law enforcement officials have been grappling with the possible causes of recent spikes in violent crime plaguing some major cities — Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis among them — even as crime in much of the country has been in a sustained decline.

Last month, Attorney General Loretta Lynch hosted a meeting to address the issue where representatives of at least 20 cities cited poverty, heroin addiction and easy access to firearms as likely triggers. Others also voiced frustration that an erosion of public support for officers was having an effect on the way communities were being policed.

“We also cannot avert our gaze from the fact that police in cities feel like they are not being supported by the federal government,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said and referred to a recent federal focus on the operations of more than 20 police agencies in recent years prompted by allegations of officer misconduct. “Right now, officers feel like they are being defined by everything they are working against.”

“Every incident, regardless of where it happens, they are made to feel they must answer for,” the chief said. “It’s hurting them. National policing policy is being driven by random YouTube videos.”

Telegram App Moves Terror Money Globally

Posted on by

Mixing the good with the bad. Founderscode.com has previously posted about Telegram, the phone app, where Islamic State was using it for communications due to end to end encryption. Today, TRAC Insight took a deeper dive. A recommendation to smart phone users, think twice about using this app.

TRAC Insight: Massive Migration to Telegram, the new Jihadist Destination

October 30, 2015 from TRAC Insight
Submitted by

Veryan Khan
Brian Watts
Bethany Rudibaugh
Cat Cooper

 

Introduction

The roller coaster of social media suspensions and removed jihadi content is well documented. However, the jihadis’ struggle to keep up with the relentless suspensions and removal of jihadi social media content, may have finally run its course. The new frontier of jihadi communication is taking place on a recently launched tool, in a messaging platform that has revolutionized the social media sphere, and at least for now put an end to any watchdog oversight.

This TRAC project does not merely document that many groups have shifted to Telegram, it describes how they operate on Telegram.  The following report is divided into three sections:

  • Jihadi Infrastructure on Telegram,
  • Money Transferring on Telegram, and
  • Cross Section of TRAC’s Telegram Archives.
The New Virtual Underground Railroad

Telegram was created as a free, encrypted, messaging application that guarantees both privacy and never to delete accounts. On September 22, 2015, Telegram introduced a new feature, called “channels”  – it is this new feature that has been enthusiastically embraced by many militant groups, becoming an underground railroad for distributing and archiving jihadi propaganda materials. Moreover, Telegram’s chat feature continues to be essential to both the recruiting and money moving activities.

For More on TRAC Insight: Adaptation Strategies in the Islamic State Twitter War

For More on TRAC Insight: Google Plus- Hidden Passage to Recruitment

Not a Fad

Though TRAC has seen sporadic attempts to jump to other social media platforms by many different militant groups worldwide, we have good reasons to believe this is an actual resettlement — a grassroots movement to shift communication styles. The usual pattern of initial attempts to transit from a mainstream social media outlet like Twitter, to another social media platform for covert communications is: initial patchy use; followed by a dropping off of content; then, ultimately becoming a “back-channel” for propaganda when all other media outlets are unavailable for one reason or another. This current migration to Telegram looks nothing like the past attempts to move from the more mainstream social media platforms like Twitter.  The sheer scale and momentum of the Telegram migration is hard to fathom. The force of the numbers using Telegram channels is staggering, watching hundreds of new members in an hours’ time; thousands coming on in over a few days is commonplace for many channels.

Membership in Elite Messaging: Telegram Channels

Since it went live on August 14, 2013, the messaging application Telegram has seen major success, both among ordinary users as well as jihadis; but it wasn’t until their launch of “channels” in September 2015, that TRAC began to witness a massive migration from other social media sites, most notably Twitter.

Advantages
  • Channels work like Twitter on steroids, you become a member, and then you are automatically updated anytime a new item appears on a channel. No need to check it every minute of the day; it simply pings you when new information is available. Only the channel administrator can post to the channel but as a user you can forward any message they post to any one of your contacts. Administrators of one channel can also forward content from a channel they visit to the one they administer.
  • Since many people were already using Telegram as a messaging application, the proliferation of messages on channels spreads like a virus. Often you will see a channel that has very few members but the posted messages will have 1,000s of views.
  • Any medium of any file size can be included in a channel message and then downloaded from by channel visitors or users, avoiding pesky YouTube or Just Paste It deletions. You do not have to join a channel to access messages or download content.
  • Telegram is nimble in use; one can ‘be on-the-go’ so to speak and access their account in many different ways. Telegram can be loaded to your mobile device or used as an application on your laptop or can simply be seen on the internet from any type of browser.  One can also log into all points of access simultaneously.

TRAC’s Archive

TRAC has archived 200+ major, mainstream jihadi channels. While many of the channels have Islamic State affiliations, there are an increasing number of channels from other major players in the global jihadi world. From al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya (ASL) to Jaysh al-Islam, the rate of membership escalation for each discrete channel is staggering. Within a week’s time, one single Islamic State channel went from 5,000 members to well over 10,000 members. Though it is unclear if what is commonly referred to as “the ISIS fan club” will migrate to Telegram, what is clear is that the hard core disseminators already have.

Jihadi Infrastructure

Nearly half the channels TRAC has archived belong to the Islamic State. Many of them have thousands of members, who seem to regularly access the posted message; messages in these channels get at many as 6,000 views in real time. Therefore, the Islamic State channels are the best example of how jihadis are currently using (and will continue to develop) Telegram as both an operational theater, and as a repository. The Islamic State has begun to create channel infrastructure and templates for each type of content in at least 12 different languages. The notorious Nashir (alternative: Nasher) distribution network has the most distinct matrix within Telegram. Languages include: Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Russian, Turkish, and Urdu.

Planning for the Future

There is also evidence that the Islamic State considers Telegram a permanent part of its future. Their most popular website for video distribution, ISDARAT, has five distinct Telegram channels, each with a corresponding new website that contains different content, tailor-made to its Telegram channel. ISDARAT is well-known and its website is constantly shut down by authorities or vigilante attacks. Thousands of twitter profiles include one version or another of the oft-changing URL. With Telegram’s promise of permanence, and the ability to transfer any type of file via a channel, ISDARAT no longer needs to play hide and seek with its followers.

Protected Repository

Telegram is not just a tool for file sharing but rather it has become “the protected repository” of resources for the Islamic State. The images that follow include the info page for Khilafah News, which shows the number of shared media resources available, as well as a page of both the video and file listings for that channel.

Click to Enlarge
Click to enlarge                             Click to enlarge                      Click to enlarge 

Screen shots (above): Khilafah New’s Telegram feed nearly one month after establishment. As of 28 October 2015: 1,875 photos shared; 71 video files; 130 data files; 14 voice messages; 816 shared links.

For More on TRAC INSIGHT: Media Outlets of Islamic State

Creation and Background

Image: Screen shot of Telegram’s features, note look very much like Monopoly characters.

The Brothers Durov

Telegram was created by two Russian brothers, Pavel and Nikolai Durov. Pavel is the financial and visionary figure of the company, while Nikolai specializes in the technical and programming aspects. However, Telegram’s website states that the company is actually based in Berlin and holds no geographical or litigious ties to Russia.[1]

The company describes Telegram as an application that serves as a fusion between text messaging and sending e-mails. This is not to say that Telegram offers an e-mail component, rather that the design of the application is one that blends the functions of text messages and e-mails.[2] Furthermore, Telegram is a free service and currently operates as a nonprofit company. It is financed by Pavel Durov’s fund Digital Fortress.[3]

Security

Privacy and security are Telegram’s primary attraction to potential users and are a key reason for its widespread adoption. The company has been seemingly effective in riding the wave of privacy scares following Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding government encroachment on privacy. Notably, Pavel Durov publicly offered Snowden a job, an offer he declined.[4]

For More on Three Insider Leaks

Privacy

Telegram’s website highlights the services’ stance on internet privacy. It states, “At Telegram we think that the two most important components of internet privacy should be:

  1. Protecting your private conversations from snooping third parties, such as officials, employers, etc.
  2. Protecting your personal data from third parties, such as marketers, advertisers, etc.”[5]
Keeping Russian Eyes Off

Pavel Durov later echoed these sentiments when he stated that the prime motivation for creating Telegram was to establish a means of communicating that cannot be accessed by “the Russian security agencies.”[6] It is important to note that Telegram’s target market is a generation that grew up on social media and who currently have a heightened awareness of privacy issues.

End-to-End Encryption

The application boasts about its end-to-end encryption and the fact that its programming is not veiled, but is open-source and available to users. Telegram is so confident in its encryption that it has offered $300,000 rewards to the first individual to crack the encryption.[7] In an interview with TechCrunch, Pavel Durov stated that the encryption has not been cracked, but a developer received $100,000 for discovering a significant vulnerability.[8] Nevertheless, skeptics state it is only a matter of time before Telegram’s encryption system is breached.

User Information is Stored

Telegram provides an environment that is genuinely respectful of the user’s privacy, as opposed to other major social media and internet services such as Facebook and Google. Telegram posits that merely offering users options to make their posts or information “private” does not mean that the information itself, which is shared through given service, is protected. Conversely, Telegram argues that many sites use these methods to quell users’ privacy concerns, but user information is stored, “mined” for targeted advertising and remains prone to being shared with third parties.[9]

Self-Destruct Feature

The “self-destruct” option is particularly useful for those who move around a lot and forget passwords or have limited use of the internet for long periods of time. There are privacy settings for each individual account that can either set messages to self-destruct after a certain period of time (see Secret Chat below) or accounts to self-destruct after chosen periods of inactivity.

Channels

On September 22, 2015, Telegram announced channels as a way for users to “broadcast” their postings to a wide audience.[10] Prior to adding channels, Telegram served groups of up to 200 people using a broadcast feature to share information. Although Telegram is adding functionality to channels, it appears that the biggest attractions of the channel feature has been its feature of having an unlimited number of members, as well as non-member access to channel content.

Not surprisingly, the channel feature has become quite popular with jihadis. Although Telegram is still technically a messaging application, channels allow users to produce and share content with ever-growing audiences.

Downloads

The messaging only version of Telegram was enormously popular in the Middle East.  In December 2013, merely four months after Telegram’s launch, it was reported that users in the Middle East downloaded Telegram over 100,000 times in one day. This surge dwarfed previous Telegram downloads in the Middle East that had been approximately 2,000 per day.[11] Clearly not all of its earlier users in the Middle East were jihadis, especially since the militant and political ecosystem of the region is vastly different today than it was at the end of 2013. Nevertheless, the it has proven to be very attractive as an outlet for jihadi propaganda.

Promoting your Channel

Many of the larger jihadi channels have attracted thousands of members, and the view count for each message suggests some channels are visited more by non-members than by members. At least three channels have well over 10,000 members. Back on Twitter, Twitter account holders are pushing their followers to Telegram – they tweet and retweet information about how to get the Telegram app and which channels to join. Others on Twitter have implored their followers to join their Telegram channels. They rarely state that they are motivated by their next, imminent suspension.  But for followers who repeatedly search for “shout-outs” that point them to the new accounts of their favorite jihadis, the reason to switch to Telegram is apparent.

An Islamic State Nashir channel posted an infographic on how to spread material from a channel.

The image announced: “To support the channel, do not copy published material but follow these steps:

  1. Choose the desired post
  2. Press ‘Forward’
  3. Then choose the future recipient”

Transferring Funds

A Virtual Hawala System

Secret Chats

It has always been possible to transfer funds via text message – by using services that just require a person to establish their identity and provide a transaction number. Telegram makes that type of exchange more appealing because the encryption and self-destruct features of the “Secret Chat” limit access to the information. And for even more anonymity, bitcoin and other crypto-currencies don’t even require that an individual establish there identity.

Untraceable

Law enforcement agencies have been emphasizing the potential for bitcoin to be used in all manner of criminal enterprises. But in the US, by obtaining a warrant, they are typically able to get data from unencrypted conversations. Telegram has asserted that they will not comply with such warrants – that private conversations are private. However, even if Telegram changes its policy to allow warrant access, the Secret Chat function deletes any information passed via the self destruct feature making it the virtual Hawala system of Telegram.

For More on Cyber Crime Nexus: Liberty Reserve, Freedom Hosting and Silk Road

For More on Concealment Practices Among Cybercriminals & Terrorists

Using ‘Bots’

In addition to transactions that involve merely exchanging information, there are bots designed to facilitate the actual transfer of crypto-currency. The most publicized is Julia – an app dependent bot developed by GetGems to move funds to and from Coinbase accounts (Coinbase is a bitcoin “bank”).

The Telebit Bot

Another well-established bot – that operates entirely within Telegram – is Telebit. It is accessed by searching Telegram to find the bot (by entering “telebit” in the search box, then selecting @Telebit (Telebit Sender). The result looks like an empty chat, but as shown in the following images, sending the message “help” produces all of the information needed to access all the Telebit functions.

   

Creating Bots

Telegram encourages individuals to create new bots and there are already quite a few of these fund-transfer bots. The following Tweet is from the creator of another Telegram bot, who has developed a way to transfer the bitcoin value of phone minutes via a Telegram chat.

Numerous Outlets for Asset Transfer on Telegram

There are undoubtedly numerous other bots and informal fund transfer systems operating on Telegram. The use of Telegram and other messaging applications to transfer funds (and other assets of value) is expected to be a rapidly changing environment that will require constant monitoring. TRAC will provide regular updates regarding the rapid adoption of Telegram, as well as changes in the way it is utilized in support of terrorist communication and operations.

Cross Section of TRAC’s Archive

TRAC’s archive is consistently expanding, the 200+ channels have an estimated 150,000 ever-increasing total membership levels. The following is a cross-section of some of the more interesting accounts from the archive.

Image: 07 October 2015, Screen shot of Tweet advertising AQAP’s Telegram channel.

Must Be Directed to Channel Addresses

Its very important to note that Telegram channels are not easy to just “stumble upon,” account names are case sensitive and there is no autofill function to help one search for channels. Jihadis have been passing Telegram channel “addresses” so to speak a number of ways, advertising on Twitter accounts, advertising on specific Blogs like https://ansarukhilafah.wordpress.com/news-sources/, or advertising on specific websites like ISDARAT (mentioned above in Infrastructure section). Because Telegram was already widely used as an encrypted messaging application, it can be assumed that direct messaging was the initial way to spread new channel accounts. Like Twitter, the hash tag #function is operational on Telegram but the hashtags only work if you already subscribe to a channel.

Telegram Channel

Affiliation

Membership 10.29.2015

Icons
IS_new_2 IS 9,904
IS_new IS 3,310
a3maqagency IS 10,672
nasherislamicstate IS – Arabic 11,195
Is_news_ru IS – Russian 2,410
nashirislamicstateDE IS – German 401
nashirislamicstateBN IS – Bengali 240
nashirislamicstateINA IS – Indonesian 1,451
nashirislamicstateEN IS – English 1,264
nasherislamicstateFR IS – French 424  
nashirislamicstateKURDI IS – Kurdish 111  
nashirislamicstateIT IS – Italian 4
nashierislamicstateBOS IS – Bosnian 275
nasherislamicstateTR IS – Turkish 287
nashirislamicstateUR IS – Urdu 15  
isyemen IS – Yemen 858  
ICA_ES IS – Hacking 847  
DabiQ IS 3,337
isdarat_News IS 786
isdarat1 IS 2,709
isdarat_is IS  521
isdaraty IS 615
isdarat_islamicstate IS 1,319
KhilafahNews IS 1,787
FURSANUpload IS 3,349
Nashr4k IS 1,112
azalkelafa11 IS 1,895
DarAlislam IS 1,015
AQAPTV AQAP 2,760
Rayareporter ASL 726
allewaa6 FSA 25
AlnasarArmy Al-Nasar Army 185
jaishalislam01 Jaysh al-Islam 2,047
GIMF_Channel AQ aligned 1,072
doaat Varied 6,369
JihadnewsCh Varied 6,579
mujahednews Varied 2,203
almonaseronn Detainees 3,009
sawtaljihad Varied 1,370  
KhilafahTree IS 1,093

 

[1] https://telegram.org/faq (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/technology/once-celebrated-in-russia-programmer-pavel-durov-chooses-exile.html?_r=0)

[5] https://telegram.org/faq (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[5] http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/telegram-saw-8m-downloads-after-whatsapp-got-acquired/ (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[6] https://telegram.org/crypto_contest (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[7] http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/telegram-saw-8m-downloads-after-whatsapp-got-acquired/ (Access Date: October 21, 2015); https://telegram.org/blog/crowdsourcing-a-more-secure-future (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[8] [8] https://telegram.org/faq (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[9] https://twitter.com/telegram/status/646268856684707840 (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[10] http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/27/meet-telegram-a-secure-messaging-app-from-the-founders-of-vk-russias-largest-social-network/ (Access Date: October 21, 2015).

[11] https://news.bitcoin.com/getgems-joining-telebit-bringing/ (Access Date: October 28, 2015)

Profile of Palestinian Terrorists Who Carried Out Attacks in Israel

Posted on by

Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

The contagious effect of stabbing attacks: a notice posted to the Palestinian social networks, some of them affiliated with Hamas, reading “If you don’t stand up for Jerusalem, who will?” It features recent postings written by terrorist operatives Muhannad Shafiq and Fadi Aloun, who were killed carrying out stabbing attacks in Jerusalem and became role models for terrorists who followed in their footsteps.

Overview

1.   The wave of Palestinian violence and terrorism currently plaguing Israel began during the most recent Jewish High Holidays. In retrospect, the ITIC has concluded it began with the stones thrown at the vehicle of Alexander Levlowitz near the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem on September 14, 2015. Initially the wave of violence and terrorism focused on the Temple Mount and east Jerusalem and later spread throughout Jerusalem and to other sites inside Israel and various hotspots in Judea and Samaria (especially the region around Hebron). So far 12 Israelis and more than 70 Palestinians have been killed.[1]

2.   The current wave of violence and terrorism is part of the overall “popular resistance” strategy adopted by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah at the Sixth Fatah Conference in August 2009.[2] It is manifested by rising and falling levels of popular terrorism. The current wave (which is unique in some aspects) is one of the most serious. Its popular terrorism includes riots, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, and stabbing and vehicular attacks which are supported and condoned by the PA. The current wave of Palestinian terrorism, like those before it, has included several shooting attacks, which are not included in the modus operandi of the “popular resistance,” but the PA does not condemn them, and in effect supports them.

3.   This study examines the profiles 35 Palestinian terrorists who carried out attacks in Israeli territory (Jerusalem and other locations inside Israel) during the current wave of terrorism. Twenty-four of them were killed while carrying out the attacks and 11 were injured. They carried out a total of 29 terrorist attacks, most of them in greater Jerusalem and some in other locations inside Israel. Their personal attributes were different, but based on the initial examination a general profile can be drawn.

4.   The Palestinian who most commonly carries out a terrorist attack in Israel, especially a stabbing attack, is generally male, young, between the ages of 17 and 19, unmarried, unknown to Israeli security, not affiliated with a terrorist organization, and lives in one of the neighborhoods of east Jerusalem (especially Jabel Mukaber and Sur Bahr in southeast Jerusalem) and in several instances also in the Hebron region. In most instances he carries out the attack by himself following a spontaneous personal decision without instructions from any organization or leadership. He does not follow an Islamist ideology (some of the terrorists lived fairly secular lives) and does not belong to a terrorist organization, although he feeds off the incitement to terrorism and anti-Israel hatred disseminated by the various terrorist organizations.

5.   The Palestinian terrorist who carries out an attack in Israel is motivated by Palestinian nationalism, and for the past six years he has been deeply influenced by reports of popular terrorism. He has also been influenced by events on the Temple Mount and by the false slogan “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger.” He is personally and socially frustrated and feeds off the anti-Israel hatred and incitement on the social networks (mainly Facebook). He is willing to risk his life and aspires to follow in the footsteps of Palestinians who died initiating the current wave of terrorist attacks (the deaths of some of them and their glorification in the Palestinian media has become contagious, and copying them has become a challenge and “fashionable”).

 

6.   An initial conclusion of this study is that the attributes of the terrorists who have carried out terrorist attacks inside Israeli territory during the current wave of terrorism are different in some respects from those who carry them out in Judea and Samaria. The main difference would appear to be the areas they come from: many terrorists in Judea and Samaria have come from the Hebron region, while most of the terrorists who carry out the attacks in Israel have come from east Jerusalem (for reasons that will be discussed below). Another difference is their ages: the terrorists who carry out attacks in Israel are younger (average age of 18) while those from Judea and Samaria are slightly older (average age of 20).[3] As far as their level of education, the percentage of students in Judea and Samaria who carry out terrorist attacks (and participate in riots) seems higher.

7.   The current wave of terrorist attacks has witnessed young, lone Palestinians carrying out terrorist attacks. They have made a personal decision to carry out attacks with high personal risks that are likely to cost them their lives. On the other hand, stabbing attacks have no dramatic or spectacular results (like the suicide bombing attacks of the second intifada). That has become more and more obvious as the current wave of violence and terrorism continues.

8.   That characteristic seems to indicate the depth of the frustration and desperation felt by the younger generation of Palestinians at the forefront of the wave of attacks. Their generation did not experience the second intifada, but rather was raised in the shadow of the violent characteristics of the “popular resistance.” They are frustrated by what seems to them as the ongoing Israeli occupation, disappointed by the PA and apparently also by the Palestinian terrorist organizations. They regard the violent struggle as the only path to bring change to Palestinian national prospects and to their own personal futures. The intense incitement around the Temple Mount and the difficult conditions in the Palestinian neighborhoods and east Jerusalem are unique additional incentives motivating young Palestinians from the eastern part of the city to stand at the forefront of the current wave of terrorism (which did not happen in the past). The result is that the strong anti-Israel incitement spread by the Palestinian media, especially by the social networks, falls on willing ears and contributes to their motivation to carry out terrorist attacks.

Methodological Remarks

9.   This study is primary and partial. It deals only with profiles of the Palestinian terrorists who carried out attacks in Israeli territory (and not Judea and Samaria). The ITIC considers them two separate categories because they have unique attributes not shared by those who have carried out attacks in Judea and Samaria. For that reason, and because of the primary nature of the information, general conclusions cannot be drawn about the Palestinians who carry out “popular resistance” terrorist attacks or about the deep-seated motivations of young Palestinians (such as the importance of nationalist vs. religious motives; the influence of socio-economic factors; and the role of personal, family or regional considerations).

10.       The study is based on primary Palestinian and Israeli open sources. A great deal of material was taken from the Palestinian media, especially websites and the social networks (including sites dedicated to the memories of Palestinians who were killed, sites of various towns and villages, personal Facebook pages, statements from relatives). Israeli sources included Israeli Police Force reports, indictments handed down against terrorists who carried out attacks and the website of the Israel Security Agency, and the Israeli media, which closely follow the various events, and its reports contain much important information (even if it is primary and partial) about the terrorists who carry out attacks.

11.       The study is time-defined: it refers to the period that began on September 14, 2015, when Palestinians threw stones at the vehicle of Alexander Levlowitz near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, killing him (which the ITIC considers the beginning of the current wave of terrorism). Thus the current wave of terrorism has so far lasted for about a month and a half (it is dated by others as beginning on October 1, 2015, with the killing of the Henkins on the road between Alon Moreh and Itamar). The study is updated to October 25, 2015, although the wave of terrorism continues and it will be necessary to update it further in the future, in view of the daily terrorist attacks being carried out.

12.       The study has three appendices. The first presents the main findings of the primary examination of the attributes the terrorists. The other two include a short, initial summary of the attacks carried out in Israel and individually examine each of the terrorists who carried them out. The parameters examined include the modus operandi of attack, its geographical location, where the terrorist came from, his motivation, age, organizational affiliation (if it exists), family status, education, profession, the involvement of women in terrorist attacks and various other aspects unique to each individual terrorist.

Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box

Posted on by

In part from Officer.com: The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to release 6,000 prisoners at the end of October, implementing a decision last year to slash the number of incarcerated drug offenders by nearly half.

Officials said the nationwide releases over four days starting Oct. 30 will be the largest in U.S. history.

Last year, in line with a concerted effort by the Obama administration to reduce the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to cut drug sentences by an average of two years, potentially affecting as many as 46,000 of 100,000 cases.

In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he said that not all of them will be approved.

What are employers supposed to do to vet applicants especially in positions where a clean background is required, something like banking, retail or any position for that matter where integrity and morality is centric to employment? Well…there is always Facebook, where employers are presently using social media platforms to determine history, friends, associates and even political bias.

Further, presidential executive orders are designed for exclusive use of operating government, yet with Barack Obama and this mission of his, he is injecting his policies into private enterprise. There must be legal challenges to this new ‘protected class’ operation which is common in the Obama administration, as we clearly know foreign illegals are a proven protected class.

HuffPo:WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a series of measures designed to reduce obstacles facing former prisoners reintegrating into society, including an executive action directing federal employers to delay asking questions about a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the application process.

Many states, cities and private employers have already taken steps to “ban the box,” which refers to the checkbox on employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. However, some federal employers and contractors still ask the question. Obama’s executive action will apply to federal employers, but not to contractors.

Hillary joins Barack Obama on this same objective calling it ‘racial profiling’. This is all yet another misguided social engineering plan to reform the criminal justice system, where law enforcement, district attorneys and judges don’t seem to get any opportunity to voice their respective positions.

Obama to announce executive actions to help prisoners rejoin society

Plans for current and former inmates include education and housing efforts and a push to remove criminal-background questions from job applications

Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.

Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.

Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.

The president has for months toured the nation in a loose campaign for reform, visiting police in Chicago, the NAACP in Philadelphia, and inmates in Oklahoma. On Saturday, he again raised the issue in his weekly address, saying: “We know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable.”

There are 2.2m people incarcerated in federal and state prisons around the US, roughly 20% of the world’s total number of imprisoned people. The number ballooned in the decades of the “war on drugs”, in particular due to “tough on crime” laws enacted during the 1990s.

Obama’s latest push for reform coincides with the early release of several thousand federal prisoners this past weekend. About 6,000 drug offenders were granted early releases thanks to policy changes by the US Sentencing Commission, which made the revisions retroactive last year. Judges then reviewed tens of thousands of applications, with the 6,000 federal prisoners the first to receive early release.

But despite the push for reducing mandatory minimum sentences – often seen as a major cause of mass incarceration over minor crimes – reform advocates around the country have called for more attention for former prisoners. About 650,000 inmates are released every year, and many return to an alien, hostile America facing bars to housing and employment and with little to their names. More here.

Putin’s Most Terrifying Army

Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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