Now it is Human Smuggling VS. Immigration

Posted on June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 by Denise Simon

Let’s start calling it for what it is and it is profitable to epic levels. We cannot overlook that the Syrian refugees were also smuggled, so there is no longer much separating the United States from Europe in this human crisis and yet Congress is not acting.

Don Bartletti shares some of his most memorable images ...

Senator Lindsey Graham at least introduced a bill to address the asylum issue but is there Democrat on the House side that has visited the border or introduced anything? silence….

Arrests at the southwest border increased for the fourth straight month in May as authorities continued to grapple with an unprecedented influx of migrants from Central America. 132,887 people were arrested between ports of entry last month, up from 99,304 migrants in April, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Wednesday.

The cartels have shifted their business model to include smuggling and it has an annual value in the BILLIONS. (hat tip to Rand Corporation)

Unlawful migrants from Central America apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border each year often hire smugglers for assistance or pay others for rights of way at some point during their journey north. Policymakers face concerns that a substantial share of migrants’ expenditures on smuggling services could be flowing to transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), entities that represent a potential threat to homeland security.

In response to these concerns, the authors of this report conducted a scoping study to develop a preliminary estimate of TCOs’ revenues from smuggling migrants from the Northern Triangle region of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) to the United States and to characterize the TCOs’ structure, operations, and financing. They conducted interviews with subject-matter experts, a review of literature, and an analysis of governmental and nongovernmental data on migration and human smuggling and found that human smuggling involves many different types of actors and that most TCOs’ activities and revenues cannot be separated credibly from those of ad hoc groups, independent operators, and others who engage in human smuggling. They developed a preliminary estimate of revenues from human smuggling flowing to all types of smugglers, not just TCOs — ranging from about $200 million to $2.3 billion in 2017 — with uncertainty stemming largely from analytical challenges related to data limitations and time constraints. Separately, they also produced a preliminary estimate of the taxes, or pisos, that migrants pay to drug-trafficking TCOs to pass through their territories, ranging from about $30 million to $180 million.

Key Findings

Characteristics of actors that engage in human smuggling

Actors that engage in human smuggling range from independent operators, to ad hoc groups, to loose networks, to more-formally structured networks, such as TCOs.

Many of these actors are subcontractors that offer their services to different networks or groups or other independent operators at the same time.

Many of the actors engaged in human smuggling do not appear to meet the statutory definition of a TCO.

Relationship between human smuggling and drug trafficking

There is little evidence that drug-trafficking TCOs engage directly in human smuggling, but they maintain control of primary smuggling corridors into the United States and charge migrants a “tax,” known as a piso, to pass through their territories.

Drug-trafficking TCOs might also coordinate unlawful migrants’ border crossings to divert attention from other illicit activities and recruit or coerce migrants to carry drugs.

Preliminary findings on revenue estimation

Estimating revenues from human smuggling requires data on (1) the number of unlawful migrants, (2) the percentage hiring smugglers, and (3) typical payments. A lack of reliable information on each point contributes to uncertainty in revenue estimates.

The authors’ preliminary estimate of revenues to all types of smugglers from smuggling migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, combined, ranged from a total of about $200 million to a total of about $2.3 billion in 2017.

The authors’ preliminary estimate of taxes paid to drug-trafficking TCOs by migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who passed through those TCOs’ territories ranged from $30 million to $180 million in 2017.

Recommendations

Target vulnerabilities of human smugglers. For example, consider expanding existing efforts to investigate payments made to human smugglers, especially in the United States, and working more closely with formal and informal banking services to identify suspicious payments. Also, consider expanding current efforts to work with foreign law enforcement partners to disrupt smuggling operations.

Use information about the value of the smuggling market to inform decisions about efforts to allocate resources to market disruption.

Consider standardizing and expanding the range of questions that border officials ask migrants during interviews to seek more consistent and detailed information from migrants about different types of smugglers, routes, and payments.

Use shared portal for data entry that can screen for errors and use a randomized survey process to reduce the administrative burden of data collection on frontline personnel and increase the likelihood of successful data entry.

$37 Million for Migrant Detention Facilities is NOT Enough

Posted on May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 by Denise Simon

Click this link to see the video of the new detention facilities.

Now after watching that video we see how the Border Patrol cant do their real job and the need for the military supplementing surveillance and security.

HOUSTON —

The Trump administration wants to open two new tent facilities to temporarily detain up to 1,000 parents and children near the southern border, as advocates sharply criticize the conditions inside the tents already used to hold migrants.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a notice to potential contractors that it wants to house 500 people in each camp in El Paso, Texas, and in the South Texas city of Donna, which has a border crossing with Mexico.

Each facility would consist of one large tent that could be divided into sections by gender and between families and children traveling alone, according to the notice. Detainees would sleep on mats. There would also be laundry facilities, showers, and an “additional fenced-in area” for “outside exercise/recreation.”

The notice says the facilities could open in the next two weeks and operate through year end, with a cost that could reach $37 million.

But the agency has said its resources are strained by the sharp rise in the numbers of parents and children crossing the border and requesting asylum. It made 53,000 apprehensions in March of parents and children traveling together, most of whom say they are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. Many ultimately request asylum under U.S. and international law.

Immigrant children are led by staff in single file between tents at a detention facility next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, June 18, 2018.

In a statement Tuesday, CBP said it urgently needed additional space for detention and processing.

“CBP is committed to finding solutions that address the current border security and humanitarian crisis at the southwest border in a way that safeguards those in our custody in a humane and dignified manner,” the statement said.

The Border Patrol has started directly releasing parents and children instead of referring them to immigration authorities for potential long-term detention, but families still sometimes wait several days to be processed by the agency and released.

Land near the bridge in Donna was used last year as a camp by active-duty soldiers when they were ordered to South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

The Border Patrol also established a tent facility at Donna to hold migrants in December 2016, in the last weeks of the administration of former President Barack Obama, in response to a previous surge of migrants from Central America.

Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, said she had been allowed to visit the tent facility in 2016. She said that facility had been “open and clean,” but noted she visited before it began detaining people.

“Detention is never a good idea for any family,” Pimentel said. “I believe families are victims of a lot of abuse, and we just add to that abuse by the way we respond to handle and process them.”

PEACH Publishes Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Posted on April 29, 2019April 29, 2019 by Denise Simon

Jewish Group Spread Anti-Vax Propaganda Before New York’s ...

Anonymous anti-vaxxers push propaganda on local Orthodox community

The purported Jewish organization sent a 40-page anti-vaccine booklet that cites rabbis questioning the obligation to vaccinate children, links vaccines to physical harm and death.

An unwelcome package arrived in the mailboxes of many members of Pittsburgh’s Orthodox community last month — a 40-page anti-vaccination booklet titled “The Vaccine Safety Handbook,” published by a purported Jewish organization called PEACH (Parents Teaching and Advocating for Children’s Health).

The pamphlet, whose authors and editors hide behind pseudonyms, is filled with spurious “facts” that refute hard scientific studies, including long-refuted claims that vaccines are linked to autism.

The final page of the handbook bears an inscription of dedication to a child who “passed away from SIDS three days after her DTaP vaccine.”

Attempts by the Chronicle to reach PEACH for comment were unsuccessful. In a curt email response, a representative from the organization referred only to the handbook, calling it “comprehensive” and did not respond to an inquiry as to how it obtained its Pittsburgh mailing list.

The extensive booklet not only cites various rabbis questioning the obligation to vaccinate children, but also advances anecdotes and statistics in an attempt to connect vaccinations to physical harm and death. More here.

***

(In part)

A a 40-page booklet about vaccines that’s been circulating in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Borough Park neighborhoods is Public Health Enemy No. 1.

Called “The Vaccine Safety Handbook: A Handbook for Parents,” the magazine comes across as an official publication, cleanly designed and sporting extensive footnotes citing scientific studies. Published by Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, the booklet is commonly known as the “PEACH magazine” and has been passed among friends and relatives in ultra-Orthodox—also known as Haredi—communities.

And cover to cover, it’s full of misinformation about vaccines.

“When I got my hands on a copy…I realized this was a piece of anti-vaccination propaganda,” said Marcus, a nurse practitioner at Memorial Sloan Kettering and adjunct professor of nursing at Hunter College.

Amid the largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years, and a rise in vaccine hesitancy within the ultra-Orthodox community, Blima and other members of the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association decided to do something about it. They have been compiling a book of their own to respond to PEACH’s assertions, which is slated for publication in the next few weeks.

“We decided to be a little tongue and cheek and call it PIE, Parents Informed and Educated,” Marcus said. There’s a rotten peach on the front cover.

She blames the PEACH magazine, and the hotline also run by the group, for the spread of fears about vaccines in their communities. Marcus realized the influence the PEACH book had while she was giving presentations about vaccines in living rooms for groups of Orthodox moms; she found the book spooked many of them. They had questions about the book’s claims, but they weren’t getting their questions answered at the doctors office.

(allegedly)

Published by Orthodox Jews, the booklet is targeted to ultra-Orthodox Jews, with excerpts from the Torah, bits written in Hebrew, and a letter signed by several rabbis from Lakewood, New Jersey, and Philadelphia in support of parents of unvaccinated children.

This type of slickly produced misinformation from anti-vaccination groups is familiar to Sean O’Leary, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who specializes in vaccines and vaccine preventable illnesses at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He says he’s seen the claims in the PEACH magazine used by anti-vaccination groups across the country for years.

“They use these sort of leaps of logic if you’re not really paying attention and you don’t live in this world of reviewing scientific literature it’s very easy to miss,” O’Leary said. “I absolutely understand how parents get taken in by this. They’re trying to do what’s best for their children and these misinformed pamphlets; they play on parents’ fears.”

But O’Leary added, the same thing that made the PEACH manual so dangerous, might make the PIE book by the group of nurses a success.

“This was being shared parent to parent. You get it from a trusted friend you think, ‘Oh this must be true,’” he said. “So the fact that people within the community around the community are helping dispel those myths I think is very powerful.”

One of the contributing researchers to the PEACH manual is Barbara Loe Fisher, who co-founded National Vaccine Information Center, a group that lobbies against mandatory vaccination laws. Contributing editor Moishe Kahan, who lives in Williamsburg, helped facilitate the PEACH group’s conference calls, according to two doctors who were contacted by him. When reached by Gothamist/WNYC at his Williamsburg apartment, he threatened a reporter with arrest, adding, “I have no interest in talking to fake news reporters.” Read the full summary here from the Gothamist.

Anyone Fretting over the Real Russian Hacking from the Mueller Report?

Posted on April 19, 2019April 19, 2019 by Denise Simon

Remember the timeline, it was the Comey FBI, the Brennan CIA, the Lynch Department of Justice and the Obama White House. So, Obama only expelled a pile of Russians and closed 3 dachas. Remember? When the dust settles just a little, President Trump has some work to do to clean up this hacking mess via Russia. Congress has some work to do also by defining some kind of hacking legislation.

The Mueller Report’s conclusions about Russian operations are unambiguous: the GRU’s Unit 26165 did the hacking, and the Internet Research Agency managed the influence campaign. The Report also concluded that the GRU’s Unit 74455 retailed the results of the doxing through its subsidiaries DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, and through a sympathetic WikiLeaks.

What is Unit 26165, Russia's elite military hacking centre?

Boris Zilberman on Twitter: "DOJ indictment against the ...

At one point, the Russians used servers located in the U.S. to carry out the massive data exfiltration effort, the report confirms.

Much of the information was previously learned from the indictment of Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, the Russian officer in charge of Unit 26165. Netyksho is believed to be still at large in Russia.

The operatives working for the Russian intelligence directorate, the GRU, sent dozens of targeted spearphishing emails in just five days to the work and personal accounts of Clinton Campaign employees and volunteers, as a way to break into the campaign’s computer systems.

The GRU hackers also gained access to the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, of which its contents were later published.

Using credentials they stole along the way, the hackers broke into the networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee days later. By stealing the login details of a system administrator who had “unrestricted access” to the network, the hackers broke into 29 computers in the ensuing weeks, and more than 30 computers on the DNC.

The operatives, known collectively as “Fancy Bear,” comprised several units tasked with specific operations. Mueller formally blamed Unit 26165, a division of the GRU specializing in targeting government and political organizations, for taking on the “primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,” said the Mueller report.

The hackers used Mimikatz, a hacking tool used once an intruder is already in a target network, to collect credentials, and two other kinds of malware: X-Agent for taking screenshots and logging keystrokes, and X-Tunnel used to exfiltrate massive amounts of data from the network to servers controlled by the GRU. Mueller’s report found that Unit 26165 used several “middle servers” to act as a buffer between the hacked networks and the GRU’s main operations. Those servers, Mueller said, were hosted in Arizona — likely as a way to obfuscate where the attackers were located but also to avoid suspicion or detection.

In all, some 70 gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from Clinton’s campaign servers and some 300 gigabytes of data were obtained from the DNC’s network.

Meanwhile, another GRU hacking unit, Unit 74455, which helped disseminate and publish hacked and stolen documents, pushed the stolen data out through two fictitious personas. DCLeaks was a website that hosted the hacked material, while Guccifer 2.0 was a hacker-like figure who had a social presence and would engage with reporters.

Under pressure from the U.S. government, the two GRU-backed personas were shut down by the social media companies. Later, tens of thousands of hacked files were funneled to and distributed by WikiLeaks .

Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.

“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.

More than a dozen staffers were targeted by Unit 26165, including a senior aide. “It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public,” said Mueller.

Mueller said the Trump campaign made efforts to “find the deleted Clinton emails.” Trump is said to have privately asked would-be national security advisor Michael Flynn, since convicted following inquiries by the Special Counsel’s office, to reach out to associates to obtain the emails. One of those associates was Peter Smith, who died by suicide in May 2017, who claimed to be in contact with Russian hackers — claims which Mueller said were not true.

Does that implicate the Trump campaign in an illegal act? Likely not.

“Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy,” according to Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst. “The special counsel’s report did not find that any person associated with the Trump campaign illegally participated in the dissemination of the materials.”

Is China an Adversary of the United States?

Posted on April 12, 2019April 12, 2019 by Denise Simon

Yes, and frankly, we should completely reconsider an trade agreements in total with China. The whole launch of a harmonious relationship between the United States and China established by President Nixon in 1972 is not today’s condition. China is hostile to not only the United States but to any country frankly for the sake of money, China needs it by any and all means possible.

Exclusive: Secret NSA Map Shows China Cyber Attacks on U.S ...

China is using ‘debt traps’ effectively to financially punk foreign governments to gain power, influence and assets.

China is working to influence media outlets beyond its borders in an effort to impose its ideology and deter criticism of its actions, a press freedom group said.
In a report released Monday, Reporters Without Borders detailed what it said was China’s impact on a global decline in press freedom and analyzed President Xi Jinping’s strategy to control information outside his own country. The group found that Beijing was using advertising buys, paid-trips for journalists and an expanding global propaganda network to impose its “ideologically correct” terminology and to obscure darker chapters of the country’s history.
Huawei has been a theft and spy operation for decades. A major concern and consequence is a renewed U.S. campaign to pressure and persuade America’s allies to keep Huawei technology and equipment out of the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G. The stakes in this campaign are much bigger than U.S. market share or the effectiveness of Iran sanctions. If Huawei’s chips and routers find their way into this new network, everything from digital privacy to intellectual property could be at risk.
Chinese employees stole corporate secrets from Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) reported on Thursday.
The paper said, citing its own investigation, technology had been stolen by high-level Chinese employees in the research and development department of ASML’s U.S. subsidiary and ultimately leaked to a company linked to the Chinese government.
That Chinese worker employed by that farm in Iowa is likely a spy, performing agricultural/intellectual property theft.
China has and continues to infect the American education system. It is called the Confucius Institute. It ranges from Kindergarten to graduate school. China has already spent $200 million USD on this effort. So, the Senate held a hearing. Legislation? Still waiting.
U.S. government contractors hired by China to be a hacker/ perform espionage or to steal technology. Examples are here, here and here.

Just this past December, the Assistant Director of the FBI for the Counterintelligence Division gave an extended statement and testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that spoke to the non-traditional espionage methods employed by China against the United States. Simply put, he described it as a Cold War and honestly it is.

In part:

The Chinese government is attempting to acquire or steal, not only the plans and intentions of the United States government, but also the ideas and innovations of the very people that make our economy so incredibly successful. The Chinese government understands a core lesson of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union: economic strength is the foundation of national power. The competition between the United States and China will be greatly influenced, if not ultimately decided, on the strength of our economies.

The Chinese government means to compete with us in every way possible, playing by the rules at times, bending them at others, and breaking them when necessary to ensure their success. They also aim to rewrite the rules to shape the world in their image, and they have already made progress on this front. The rules they write seek to guarantee the dominance of their businesses and root Chinese national power in the very fabric of an international system.

From my vantage point, it appears we are at the early stages of a hyper-competitive world. This is not simply a competition between businesses and industries but also between governments and the ways in which they govern their societies. Make no mistake: the Chinese government is proposing itself as an alternative model for the world, one without a democratic system of government, and it is seeking to undermine the free and open rules-based order we helped establish following World War II. Our businesses and our government must adapt in order to compete and thrive in this world.

Perhaps AOC, Omar, Nadler, Pelosi, Tlaib and Schiff should be concentrating on the real work to protect American….eh? Better still, perhaps CNN should report on the real stuff….uh huh