Apply More Shame to Facebook

Posted on September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 by Denise Simon

Okay, so without much media attention, YouTube was just fined $170 million for children’s privacy violations. Hello Google? WTH? This was a settlement by the way between Google and the Federal Trade Commission.

But what about Facebook and protecting our data? We have heard and read items about how casual Facebook is with out data. But hold on, there is more.

Primer: Cambridge Analytica was a cyber spy network with political operations and twisted tactics.

In part:

The company at the centre of the Facebook data breach boasted of using honey traps, fake news campaigns and operations with ex-spies to swing election campaigns around the world, a new investigation reveals.

Executives from Cambridge Analytica spoke to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News about the dark arts used by the company to help clients, which included entrapping rival candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring prostitutes to seduce them.

In one exchange, the company chief executive, Alexander Nix, is recorded telling reporters: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.” More here.

Meanwhile:

Techcrunch: Hundreds of millions of phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts have been found online.

The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam.

But because the server wasn’t protected with a password, anyone could find and access the database.

Each record contained a user’s unique Facebook ID and the phone number listed on the account. A user’s Facebook ID is typically a long, unique and public number associated with their account, which can be easily used to discern an account’s username.

But phone numbers have not been public in more than a year since Facebook restricted access to users’ phone numbers.

TechCrunch verified a number of records in the database by matching a known Facebook user’s phone number against their listed Facebook ID. We also checked other records by matching phone numbers against Facebook’s own password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number linked to their account.

Some of the records also had the user’s name, gender and location by country.

This is the latest security lapse involving Facebook data after a string of incidents since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw more than 80 million profiles scraped to help identify swing voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Since then the company has seen several high-profile scraping incidents, including at Instagram, which recently admitted to having profile data scraped in bulk.

This latest incident exposed millions of users’ phone numbers just from their Facebook IDs, putting them at risk of spam calls and SIM-swapping attacks, which relies on tricking cell carriers into giving a person’s phone number to an attacker. With someone else’s phone number, an attacker can force-reset the password on any internet account associated with that number.

Sanyam Jain, a security researcher and member of the GDI Foundation, found the database and contacted TechCrunch after he was unable to find the owner. After a review of the data, neither could we. But after we contacted the web host, the database was pulled offline.

Jain said he found profiles with phone numbers associated with several celebrities.

Facebook spokesperson Jay Nancarrow said the data had been scraped before Facebook cut off access to user phone numbers.

“This data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers,” the spokesperson said. “The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.”

But questions remain as to exactly who scraped the data, when it was scraped from Facebook and why.

Facebook has long restricted developers‘ access to user phone numbers. The company also made it more difficult to search for friends’ phone numbers. But the data appeared to be loaded into the exposed database at the end of last month — though that doesn’t necessarily mean the data is new.

This latest data exposure is the most recent example of data stored online and publicly without a password. Although often tied to human error rather than a malicious breach, data exposures nevertheless represent an emerging security problem.

In recent months, financial giant First American left data exposed, as did MoviePass and the Senate Democrats.

Feds Prepare States for Foreign Voting Interference

Posted on August 26, 2019August 26, 2019 by Denise Simon

The Democrats have really lost their argument against voter ID if they are being fully candid about foreign interference. It is without question that several cities and states are victims of ransomware and Florida is especially concerned. Remember that a foreign actor, where clues point to Russia were able to gain access to voter registration databases and it stands to reason China will attempt the same.

Continually, the Democrats say that the Trump administration is virtually doing nothing to protect the election system. Read on as the Democrats know the mission and actions of the Cyber division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Image result for foreign hackers us voting systems photo
As Reuters reports:

The U.S. government plans to launch a program in roughly one month that narrowly focuses on protecting voter registration databases and systems ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“We assess these systems as high risk,” said a senior U.S. official, because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the Internet.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, fears the databases could be targeted by ransomware, a type of virus that has crippled city computer networks across the United States, including recently in Texas, Baltimore and Atlanta.

“Recent history has shown that state and county governments and those who support them are targets for ransomware attacks,” said Christopher Krebs, CISA’s director. “That is why we are working alongside election officials and their private sector partners to help protect their databases and respond to possible ransomware attacks.”

A ransomware attack typically locks an infected computer system until payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, is sent to the hacker.

The effort to counter ransomware-style cyberattacks aimed at the election runs parallel to a larger intelligence community directive to determine the most likely vectors of digital attack in the November 2020 election, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“It is imperative that states and municipalities limit the availability of information about electoral systems or administrative processes and secure their websites and databases that could be exploited,” the FBI said in a statement, supporting the Homeland Security initiative.

CISA’s program will reach out to state election officials to prepare for such a ransomware scenario. It will provide educational material, remote computer penetration testing, and vulnerability scans as well as a list of recommendations on how to prevent and recover from ransomware.

These guidelines, however, will not offer advice on whether a state should ultimately pay or refuse to pay ransom to a hacker if one of its systems is already infected.

“Our thought is we don’t want the states to have to be in that situation,” said a Homeland Security official. “We’re focused on preventing it from happening.”

Over the last two years, cyber criminals and nation state hacking groups have used ransomware to extort victims and create chaos. In one incident in 2017, which has since been attributed to Russian hackers, a ransomware virus was used to mask a data deletion technique, rendering victim computers totally unusable.

That attack, dubbed “NotPetya,” went on to damage global corporations, including FedEx and Maersk, which had offices in Ukraine where the malware first spread.

The threat is concerning because of its potential impact on voting results, experts say.

“A pre-election undetected attack could tamper with voter lists, creating huge confusion and delays, disenfranchisement, and at large enough scale could compromise the validity of the election,” said John Sebes, chief technology officer of the ESET Institute, an election technology policy think tank.

The databases are also “particularly susceptible to this kind of attack because local jurisdictions and states actively add, remove, and change the data year-round,” said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If the malicious actor doesn’t provide the key, the data is lost forever unless the victim has a recent backup.”

Nationwide, the local governments that store and update voter registration data are typically ill-equipped to defend themselves against elite hackers.

State election officials told Reuters they have improved their cyber defenses since 2016, including in some cases preparing backups for voter registration databases in case of an attack. But there is no common standard for how often local governments should create backups, said a senior Homeland Security official.

“We have to remember that this threat to our democracy will not go away, and concern about ransomware attacks on voter registration databases is one clear example,” said Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos. “We’re sure the threat is far from over.”

President Trump, As Long as You are Declassifying…

Posted on August 22, 2019October 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

Providing declassification authority to AG William Barr on all things Russia investigation is a great thing. Patriotic Americans need to understand all the abuses of power that were applied by Democrat operatives since your nomination.

Then as long as there is the matter of Israel and Iran that continues to fester and maintain a political as well as militant component, there are at least two suggestions noted below that will for sure be favorable to your foreign policy and will likely have some positive outcomes for domestic policy.

Let’s go back to 2016 and 2017 shall we? Congressman Louis Gohmert of Texas was part of a hearing where then Eric Holder was the witness. At one point, Gohmert demanded that Holder declassify and release the Holyland Foundation trial documents. ALL OF THEM. tic toc…

Since then, Gohmert is still ringing the bell. He continues to plea for more attention to the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR so that a legitimate status can be attached to black list those organizations.

So as long as Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib continue the path to attack Israel, consider Gohmert’s presentations.

In both House floor presentations, Congressman Gohmert lays out a cogent argument and rightly so. You can bet that ‘The Squad’ and Speaker Pelosi would certainly feel the political pain. The media? Yes, popcorn ready.

Now, on the Iran component. To remind the reader, there was once a DEA mission called Operation Cassandra. This was a multiple agency investigation with major opportunities to indict so many both at home and abroad. This mission to continue to completion was killed by President Obama because it would have complicated the Obama/Kerry quest to see the JCPOA through to the end. Frankly, Operation Cassandra had many piece parts including Bowe Bergdahl and the Afghanistan thing. Then should also take a long look at Bruce Ohr at the DoJ and his work assignments at the time.

(in full disclosure, I have done several interviews with former DEA Special Agent, Derek Maltz on Operation Cassandra)

For some basic details on Operation Cassandra, note below in part:

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

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The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

Of course there is more Mr. President. However, if you order release of just these two files in full on a well timed schedule it will play well in your favor and be an excellent counter-measure against the Pelosi lead House, the media, restoring some law and order and give a huge lift to John Bolton and Mike Pompeo’s good work.

Ilhan Omar is Already Dating Again?

Posted on August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

She is becoming her own exclusive section of National Enquirer.
So, we hear she married her brother or something. Then we hear she remarried and had children with yet someone else. Then we hear she has Federal Elections filing problems added to IRS tax filing problems.
Okay, well there is more.

Primer: Back in 2011, then Congressman Keith Ellison held a breakfast in DC, paid for by the DCCC and asked for suggested contributions ranging from $2500 to $500 and you must send the RSVP to Tim Mynett. Seems Mynett has been traveling these circles for years. An opportunist? A successful one?

Hat tip to the Daily Mail:
EXCLUSIVE: Is Ilhan Omar having an affair with this Dem strategist? The man she was holding hands with at a secluded eatery is Tim Mynett, who has constantly been by her side, left his physician wife and was paid $250K by her campaign

The Minnesota congresswoman, 37, has been carrying on with Mynett, 38, a campaign fundraising strategist, for several months, according to a source.

Mynett is married to Dr. Beth Mynett, but DailyMail.com has confirmed that he has recently left their marital home and is now living in a D.C. apartment.

Photos show that Mynett and Omar are constantly by each other’s sides at events, traveling to Los Angeles, New York City, Austin and Seattle together.

Mynett has even spent time with Omar’s daughter Isra, 16, who is a budding activist, as the threesome were photographed together on two separate occasions, most recently in July.

Omar’s camp has paid Mynett’s company – E Street Group – more than $250K in consulting fees and travel expenses, dating from last August until June 11, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The intimate dinner came to light days after DailyMail.com revealed Omar had recently split with her husband Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children.

Ilhan Omar has been getting up close and personal with married aide Tim Mynett, DailyMail.com can reveal. The Minnesota congresswoman has been carrying on with Mynett, 38, a campaign fundraising expert, for several months, according to a source. Pictured: Omar and Mynett in Seattle on May 26 at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) event

Mynett and Omar, through her spokesperson Jeremy Slevin – repeatedly refused to comment when asked by DailyMail.com if they were having an affair.

Mynett is currently a partner at E Street Group, which bills itself as providing national progressive strategies for candidates, nonprofits and advocacy efforts.

Mynett started the firm in July of 2018, according to LinkedIn – only one month before Omar started paying the company for its services.

Previously, Mynett worked as former Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison’s national finance director. Omar took over Ellison’s seat when he ran for Attorney General.

Federal Election Commission records show Omar’s team began paying Mynett’s company in August of 2018, splashing out $62,500 by the end of 2018.

Payments continued into 2019, with $5,000, $10,000 and $12,000 chunks being shelled out every month, totaling just over $253,000 in a single year.

In January, Mynett posted an image on his Instagram of Omar’s name plaque outside of her congressional office, writing: ‘It’s been one hell of a journey. Incredibly proud of this fearless woman.’

Mynett is currently living in a luxury residential complex in DC’s trendy Petworth neighborhood where a two-bedroom apartment costs around $3,000 a month.

DailyMail.com approached him outside but the veteran political operative initially refused to confirm his identity, saying: ‘This is bizarre, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

His rental pad is about a 10-minute drive from where he previously lived with wife Beth Mynett, a high-flying doctor 17 years older than him, their young son and Beth’s daughter from a previous marriage.

Beth, 55, who is medical director for the DC Department of Corrections, was similarly reluctant to answer any questions about her husband’s relationship with Omar.

‘I have no comment at this time,’ she told DailyMail.com, speaking on the front step of the estranged couple’s three-bed marital family home in northern DC, worth $900,000.

‘I’m not in any position to talk whatsoever but I thank you for your concern. I’m sorry I have no comment at this time. But thank you sir.’

Mynett runs E Street Group with fellow veteran strategist William Hailer from a shared WeWork office space in DC.

Their website currently has a single accessible page displaying the message: ‘Accepting new clients by referral only.’ But an archived version accessed by DailyMail.com includes a lengthy ‘about us’ section where Mynett reels off his career accomplishments and boats of close ties with ‘national opinion leaders’.

‘Tim Mynett brings over 15 years of experience conducting high-level national fundraising and providing political and strategic advice to our clients at E Street Group,’ it says.

‘He has continually developed and implemented successful fundraising plans for national nonprofits, progressive advocacy efforts, and Democratic leaders in Congress. Throughout his career he has raised of over $100 million in gifts, grants, and donations.’

The profile goes on to say that Mynett has served as a lead fundraiser for a string of Dems including Ellison, Senator Jeff Merkley, Congresswoman Hilda Solis and Congressman Ron Kind.

He’s also worked for national non-profits and ‘progressive organizations’ including Angelina Jolie’s Global Action for Children and the SEIU’s Change that Works initiative focused on passing Obamacare.

It adds: ‘Having spent the majority of his career based in DC while conducting extensive client travel to every corner of the country Tim has cultivated strong relationships with national opinion leaders and is a sought-after advisor to a diverse group of constituencies.’

Omar’s team have refused to say exactly what work E Street or Mynett does for her, how much either is paid, or what role they played in her election campaign.

A woman who answered the door to Mynett’s business partner William Hailer’s home in Arlington, Virginia on Saturday afternoon said he was asleep and took a contact number and email. Hailer never got in touch.

Mynett has been spotted by Omar’s sides at fundraising events, including at the California for Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) banquet in Woodland Hills in March.

He was front and center for her speech, where the congresswoman made controversial remarks blaming 9/11 on ‘someone doing something.’

The following day, Omar and Mynett were seen leaving the out-of-the-way Caffé Pinguini in Playa Del Rey.

DailyMailTV learned that an eyewitness observed Omar and her companion holding hands while dining inside the bistro.

‘The bigger question is why they were at this particular restaurant,’ said the man who took the video. You don’t just stumble across Playa Del Rey on a chilly Sunday evening in March.

‘It’s so out of the way. It’s the sort of place you go when you don’t want anyone to know where you are.’

Omar’s private life has become the subject of massive speculation amid accusations that her second husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is in fact her brother and she only married him to get him entry to the United States.

She later divorced Elmi and remarried Hirsi, but now that marriage is headed for a second divorce.

Omar has refused to address her marriages, leading to criticism from political rivals and her hometown newspaper.

President Donald Trump has often targeted Omar — a freshman congresswoman who won her Minneapolis-based district with 78 percent of the vote — for her views and for her close alliance to firebrand congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

He has alluded to Omar’s complicated marriage history. ‘There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it,’ Trump told reporters in June.

Omar was born in Somalia in the Horn of Africa. She left her war-torn home when she was 8. She lived in a Kenyan refugee camp for four years before coming to the United States and settling in Minneapolis, the largest hub for Somali refugees in the country.

She first married Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony in 2002 when she was 19. Six years later, after two children, the couple said they had ‘reached an impasse in our life together,’ and divorced.

The following year Omar married Elmi, a British citizen, just two weeks after he entered the United States. He has been identified as her brother by many media outlets, though due to a lack of records in their war-torn country of birth that has not been fully proven.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote in June that it ‘could neither conclusively confirm nor rebut the allegation that (Elmi) is Omar’s sibling.’ Politifact and another myth-busing website, Snopes, came to similar conclusions.

On their marriage application they gave their address as Columbia Heights, Minnesota, but were married 25 miles away in Eden Prairie at a nondescript single-story brick building that houses a county office and a library.

Despite both being Muslim, the ceremony was conducted by Wilecia Harris, a Christian minister. ‘If they had gone to an imam he would have almost certainly have known if they were related,’ one Somali leader in Minnesota told DailyMail.com.

That marriage lasted just two years but it was enough to allow Elmi to study alongside his new wife at North Dakota State University.

Records suggest that Omar, Elmi and Hirsi all lived together for at least part of that time.

Omar then had a third child with Hirsi in 2012 and in 2015 she filed a joint tax return with him — even though she was still legally married to Elmi.

She finally divorced Elmi in 2017 and married Hirsi in a civil ceremony the following year. For more photos and videos via DailyMail, go here.

Hey Bernie and Kamala, Government Can’t Run Medicare

Posted on August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Denise Simon

Legitimately that is. The crimes and fraud within the system are so bad already that the FBI is and has been overwhelmed with cases.

Image result for Medicare Fraud Strike Force (MFSF)
Heck, just last month, the FBI announced the results of Operation Brace Yourself. 24 people were arrested due to Medicare fraud billing amounting to over $1 billion. Get that? One case, over a billion dollars. A medical equipment company out of the Philippines recruited people, there were kickbacks, money-laundering, yachts, luxury real estate deals all inside of at least 100 equipment companies. This FBI investigation involved 20 field offices, agency partners, the IRS, the IRS, Health and Human Services, the Department of Veteran Affairs and even Secret Service.

But wait, that was just one case.

How about a few more?

District of Columbia Physician Indicted for Alleged Role in $12.7 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme
A physician with a practice in the District of Columbia was charged in an indictment unsealed today for his role in an alleged $12.7 million health care fraud scheme to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for complicated medical procedures he never provided.

Telemarketer And His Companies Agree To Pay $2.5 Million To Settle Allegations That They Operated Telemedicine Schemes Involving Illegal Kickbacks And Unnecessary Prescriptions
United States Attorney Maria Chapa Lopez and U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey for the Eastern District of Tennessee announce that Scott Roix, together with several entities through which he ran his telemarketing business, including HealthRight, LLC; Health Savings Solutions, LLC; Vici Marketing, LLC; and Vici Marketing Group, LLC (hereinafter collectively referred to as “marketing companies”), have agreed to pay $2.5 million to resolve allegations that Roix and these marketing companies violated the False Claims Act by causing the submission of false claims to federal healthcare programs in connection with telemedicine health care fraud schemes.

Patient Recruiter Found Guilty in $1.3 Million Medicare Kickback Scheme
A federal jury in Detroit, Michigan found a patient recruiter guilty today for his role in a scheme involving approximately $1.3 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for home health care that were procured through the payment of kickbacks.

Medical Business Owner Sentenced to More Than 10 Years in Federal Prison for Medicare Fraud
AUGUSTA, GA: The owner of a Thomson, Ga., medical equipment company was sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison Tuesday, July 30, for a wide-ranging Medicare fraud scheme.

Millcreek Community Hospital Will Pay $2,451,000 to Settle Claims for Medically Unnecessary Inpatient Rehabilitation Services
PITTSBURGH – Millcreek Community Hospital, located in Erie, Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $2,451,000 to resolve claims that the hospital violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary inpatient rehabilitation services, Scott W. Brady announced today.