Category Archives: NSA Spying

What DOES Congress Know About the Iran Deal?

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Breaking: Appears that the Iran deal now has a green light to continue with a caveat, get rid of some of the centrifuges. Now the question becomes, will Congress get a vote on this?

Chairman Royce of the House Foreign Affairs Committee made a stellar opening remark today opening the testimony and exchange with the witnesses that include Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin. It seems that the items in the talks led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman along with the rest of the P5+1 are worse than we know and in fact are quite chilling. Imagine what we don’t know.

From Chairman Royce: (video included)

We’ll hear the Administration’s case today. But it’s critical that the Administration hears our bipartisan concerns. Deputy Secretary Blinken, this is your first appearance before this Committee. I congratulate you on your position, and wish you well. After the hearing, I trust you will be in touch with Secretary Kerry, Under Secretary Sherman, and the others at the negotiating table to report the Committee’s views. This is important.
This Committee has been at the forefront of examining the threat of a nuclear Iran. Much of the pressure that brought Tehran to the table was put in place by Congress over the objections of the Executive Branch – whether Republican or Democrat. And we’d have more pressure on Iran today if the Administration hadn’t pressured the Senate to sit on the Royce-Engel sanctions bill this Committee produced and passed in 2013.
Congress is proud of this role. And we want to see the Administration get a lasting and meaningful agreement. But unfortunately, the Administration’s negotiating strategy has been more about managing proliferation than preventing it.
Case in point: Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the key technology needed to developing a nuclear bomb. Reportedly, the Administration would be agreeable to leaving much of Iran’s enrichment capacity in place for a decade. If Congress will be asked to “roll-back” its sanctions on Iran – which will certainly fund its terrorist activities – there must be a substantial “roll-back” of Iran’s nuclear program.
And consider that international inspectors report that Iran has still not revealed its past bomb work – despite its commitment to do so. The IAEA is still concerned about signs of Iran’s military-related activities; including designing a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran hasn’t even begun to address these concerns. Last fall, over 350 Members wrote to the Secretary of State expressing deep concerns about this lack of cooperation. How can we expect Iran to uphold an agreement when they are not meeting their current commitments? Indeed, we were not surprised to see Iran continue to illicitly procure nuclear technology during these negotiations. Or that Tehran was caught testing a more advanced centrifuge that would help produce bomb material quicker. This was certainly a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the interim agreement. Iran’s deception is all the more reason that the Administration should obtain zero-notice, anywhere, anytime inspections on Iran’s declared and undeclared facilities.
There is also the fact that limits placed on Iran’s nuclear program as part of the final agreement now being negotiated will expire. That means, the “final” agreement is just another interim step, with the real final step being Iran treated as “any other” non-nuclear weapon state under the Non- Proliferation Treaty – licensing it to pursue industrial scale enrichment.
With a deep history of deception, covert procurement, and clandestine facilities, Iran is not “any other” country, to be conceded an industrial scale nuclear program. Any meaningful agreement must keep restrictions in place for decades – as over 360 Members of Congress – including every Member of this Committee – are demanding in a letter to the President.
Meanwhile, Iran is intensifying its destructive role in the region. Tehran is propping up Assad in Syria, while its proxy Hezbollah threatens Israel. Iranian-backed Shia militia are killing hopes for a unified, stable Iraq. And last month, an Iranian-backed militia displaced the government in Yemen, a key counterterrorism partner. Many of our allies and partners see Iran pocketing an advantageous nuclear agreement and ramping up its aggression in the region.


This Committee is prepared to evaluate any agreement to determine if it is in the long-term national security interests of the United States and our allies. Indeed, as Secretary Kerry testified not long ago, any agreement will have to “pass muster with Congress.” Yet that commitment has been muddied by the Administration’s insistence in recent weeks that Congress not play a role. That’s not right. Congress built the sanctions structure that brought Iran to the table. And if the President moves to dismantle it, we will have a say.
I now turn to the Ranking Member.

Blinken’s remarks are here. Could the Iranian sanctions be lifted immediately? Seems that is part of the most recent talks.

Iran deal would reportedly ease sanctions immediately, allow nuclear enrichment

International sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy for years would be immediately eased and the Islamic Republic could continue to enrich uranium under the terms of a deal being hammered out in Geneva between Tehran and six world powers, according to a report Thursday.

Citing a draft that would serve as a framework for a 10-year deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, The Associated Press reported that Iran would be allowed to operate 6,000 enrichment centrifuges it claims are for peaceful purposes — while getting immediate relief from international economic sanctions.

U.S. lawmakers skeptical of Iran’s true intentions raised fresh concerns about the deal in a letter Thursday to the White House.

“Iran’s role in fomenting instability in the region — not to mention Iran’s horrendous repression at home — demonstrates the risks of negotiating with a partner we cannot trust,” stated the letter, whose signatories included majorities of both parties.

“I wouldn’t trust these people with a spare electron.”- Former US Amassador to the UN John Bolton
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied that there is a draft report circulating among the parties holding talks. The U.S. and the five other world powers, who also include Great Britain, France, Russia and China, have been negotiating with Iranian officials under a self-imposed March 31 deadline, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif doing most of the heavy lifting. The deal would be aimed at unshackling Iran from United Nations economic sanctions put in place in 2006 while giving the international community the ability to ensure the hard-line regime is not building a nuclear weapons stockpile.

Any March framework agreement is unlikely to constrain Iran’s missile program, which the U.S. believes could ultimately be designed to deliver nuclear warheads. Diplomats say that as the talks move to deadline, the Iranians continue to insist that missile curbs are not up for discussion. The deal would likely leave in place a ban on other nations transferring missile technology to Iran, however.

Separate U.S. sanctions would be phased out as part of a deal, although U.S. lawmakers have vowed to block such a move and also dispute the White House’s ability to enter into a binding deal with Iran.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for a hearing with top Obama administration officials from the State and Treasury departments to hear testimony on the negotiations.

Following the March 31 deadline, the parties would have until sometime in June to agree on all of the details.

Iran’s nuclear program has been under international scrutiny for a dozen years, since the regime blocked UN inspectors from verifying Iran was abiding by international mandates regarding its alleged nuclear weapons program.

It is not clear how many centrifuges — the machines that enrich uranium for possible weaponization — Iran now operates. Estimates have been as high as 20,000. The U.S. believes reducing the number of centrifuges will forestall by a decade or more Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said simply regulating the number of centrifuges is not enough to restrict supply, because better technology can increase production from each machine. More importantly, Bolton said, there is no reason to trust the Iranian regime, which traces its rise to power to the 1979 attack on the U.S. Embassy and which routinely calls for attacks on Israel and America.

“When they sign the deal, that will be the beginning of new negotiations, because Iran will violate the agreement before the ink is dry and then we’ll be back at the table,” Bolton said. “I wouldn’t trust these people with a spare electron.”

In addition to reducing the number of centrifuges, the deal would commit Iran to accepting rigorous monitoring of its nuclear program. A planned heavy water reactor would be re-engineered to produce much less plutonium than originally envisioned, relieving concerns that it could be an alternative pathway to a bomb.

For Iran, any deal granting sanctions relief would immediately boost the economy, which is especially hurting due to the bottoming out of oil prices.

Frank Gaffney, of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said the sanctions are the only leverage the West has against Iran, and surrendering it up-front makes what is being reported a bad deal.

“We cannot trust the Iranians to do anything other than to pursue what they have been pursuing for decades, a nuclear weapons program, secretly and in the open,” Gaffney said.

If Iran violates its end of the bargain, reinstating sanctions that resulted from arduous diplomatic wrangling will prove impossible, he said.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell you would get the Chinese and Russians back on board,” Gaffney said. “This is a permanent unraveling of the sanctions.”

Washington believes it can extend the time Tehran would need to produce a nuclear weapon to at least a year for the 10 years it is under the moratorium. Right now, Iran would require only two to three months to amass enough materiel if it covertly seeks to make a nuclear bomb. Among U.S. allies, France is the most adamant about stretching out the duration of the deal. A European official familiar with the French position told the AP it wants a 25-year time-span.

Any agreement faces fierce opposition from the U.S. Congress as well as close American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, which believe the Obama administration has conceded too much. After the deal expires, Iran could theoretically ramp up enrichment to whatever level or volume it wants.

Iran, a Terror State But Latin America Also?

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Iran has a long history of killing Americans and has several proxy armies including Hezbollah, Qods and the Madhi Army. No one seems to ask deeper questions but personally I have been quite concerned over the Iranian influence in Central and South America, our own hemisphere. For years I have been watching this closely. Why?

Bombshell report alleges Argentina, Iran, and Venezuela were once all bound together by sex, drugs, and nuclear secrets

Three former Venezuelan government officials who defected from Hugo Chavez’s regime spoke to the Brazilian magazine Veja about an alleged alliance between Argentina, Venezuela, and Iran, which included a deal in which Argentina would get Interpol to remove from its database the names of Iranians suspected of bombing a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Alberto Nisman, an Argentine prosecutor, had been investigating the deadly bombing before he was found dead in his apartment in January with a gunshot wound to the head. He was about to testify to Argentina’s legislature that the administration of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had helped cover up Iran’s hand in the bombing.

Nisman alleged that the Fernandez regime engaged in the cover-up to secure an oil-for-grain deal with Iran (Argentina is energy poor), but Veja’s sources take it a step further. They say the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez helped broker a deal between Argentina and Iran that secured cash for Argentina (including funds for Fernandez’s 2007 presidential run) and nuclear intelligence for Iran on top of derailing the AMIA probe.

“Not only is [the Veja report] credible, but it underscores the allegations prosecutor Nisman put forth about Iran’s longstanding desire to have Argentina restart nuclear cooperation with Iran,” Toby Dershowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Business Insider.

Nisman believed the bombing of the Jewish center, called AMIA, may have been about more than Iran’s attitude toward Israel and the Jewish people. He believed it was a punishment directed at Argentina. Back in the 1980s, Iranian nuclear scientists receieved training at Argentine nuclear plants.

Iranian nuclear scientist Ali Akbar Salehi was mentioned in Nisman’s report as being among the back-channel negotiators who reportedly wanted to clear the names of Iranians from an Interpol database. He spent six months learning about nuclear technology in the 1980s. In 1987, Argentine scientists went to Iran to help upgrade a Tehran research reactor.

“The DOJ and other USG agencies should be concerned about who killed a prosecutor with whom it had an important relationship and whether it was aimed at silencing him and his work implicating Iran,” Dershowitz said. “Nisman’s work was akin to a canary in a coal mine, and his suspicious death is a matter I hope the next attorney general and others will pursue impartially even if it comes at an inconvenient time as the P5+1 negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.”

kerry zarifREUTERS/Rick Wilking US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif before a meeting in Geneva in January.

To Dershowitz, Nisman’s report was about more than just AMIA. It was about how Iran operates in Latin America — how it recruits, how it uses resources, how it activates sleeper cells.

According to a member of the military who said he was in the room during negotiations between Venezuela and Iran, here’s how a conversation between Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then Iran’s president, on January 13, 2007, went down (via Veja):

Ahmadinejad — It’s a matter of life or death. I need you to help me broker a deal with Argentina to help my country’s nuclear program. We need Argentina to share its nuclear technology. Without their collaboration it would be impossible to advance our nuclear program.

Chávez — Very quickly, I will do that Comrade.

Ahmadinejad — Don’t worry about what it costs. Iran will have all the money necessary to convince Argentines … I need you to convince Argentina to continue to insisting that Interpol take Iranian officials off their list.

Chávez — I will personally take charge of this.

hugo chavez mahmoud ahmadinejadReutersMahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, then Iran’s president, with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez at Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2012.

The kind of nuclear technology Iran was looking for, specifically, was a heavy-water nuclear reactor. It’s expensive, complicated, and old-fashioned technology, but it allows plutonium to be obtained from natural uranium. That means the uranium doesn’t have to be enriched, which makes the whole operation more discreet.

To sweeten the deal for Argentina, Venezuela allegedly bought $1.8 billion worth of Argentine bonds 2007 and $6 billion worth in 2008. Remember that Argentina has been a pariah of international markets since it defaulted in 2002. The Kirchners (Cristina and her husband, late-president Nestor) each thanked Venezuela for these purchases publicly.

Also in January 2007, Ahmadinejad and Chavez allegedly hatched the plan for “aeroterror,” as Chavistas came to call it. It was a flight from Caracas to Damascus to Tehran that was made twice a month. It flew from Caracas carrying cocaine to be distributed to Hezbollah in Damascus and sold. The plane then went to Tehran carrying Venezuelan passports and other documents that helped Iranian terrorists travel around the world undetected.

tehran iran skylineTehran, Iran.

Where this story makes a turn for the bizarre is that the woman who was allegedly handling the Argentine side of negotiations was former defense minister Nilda Garre, who is now Argentina’s ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Veja’s sources say she had a sexual relationship with Chavez.

“It was something along the lines of ’50 Shades of Grey,'” the former Venezuelan official said, adding that when the two were together, all of Miraflores (Venezuela’s presidential palace) could hear it.

“I cannot say that the Argentine government gave nuclear secrets, but I know it received much by legal means (debt securities) and illegal (bags of money) in exchange for some valuable asset to the Iranians.”

Another former Chavista said: “In Argentina, the holder of secrets is the former ambassador Garre.”

On Wednesday the House Foreign Affairs Committee is having a meeting — this should probably come up.

Cristina fernandez nilda garreReutersKirchner with defense minister Nilda Garre, right, during a meeting with Chavez at the Casa Rosada Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires in 2009.

 

 

Immigration Scams, Tourism and Colleges

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The numbers are staggering when it comes to fraudulent scams as they relate to immigration. We cant begin to know all of them, but it should challenge our imagination and then we must begin to ask questions calling for more research. Here are but two symptoms of problems that rarely hit media radar.

What is more chilling is members of Congress are well aware of the two conditions below as is the Governor of California. Since the White House learns about issues and situations in the news. perhaps help out by sharing this post with the Obama team as it seems the full news media cant seem to report it.

Children born in the US automatically qualify for citizenship, one of the reasons behind the popularity of ‘maternity tourism’

Row over US-born immigrant children heats up
Federal agents in California have raided more than a dozen hotels that cater to pregnant foreigners who want their children to be born US citizens.

The “birth tourism” hotels hosted mainly Chinese women who paid between $15,000 (£9,756) to $50,000 for the services.

The raids focused on hotels suspected of engaging in visa fraud.

Court records said companies would coach women to falsify records and claims for their visa screening.

Birth tourism is not always illegal and many agencies openly advertise their services as “birthing centres”.

The raids represent a rare federal crackdown against the widespread practice of foreign nationals giving birth in the US.

Undercover operation

It is estimated that 40,000 of 300,000 children born to foreign citizens in the US each year are the product of birth tourism, according to figures quoted in court documents filed to obtain search warrants for the schemes.

In one of the investigations into an Irvine “birthing centre”, an undercover agent posed as a pregnant mother.

She was helped to provide false proof of income and a college diploma, told to enter through popular US destinations like Hawaii or Las Vegas and make reservations with hotels and tours.

A China-based “trainer” assigned to help put together the visa application asked for full-length frontal and side photo of the undercover agent’s belly to see how visible her pregnancy was, according to agents.

Agents were also concerned that the schemes defrauded hospitals. Even though the women were paying birth tourism operators between $15,000 and $50,000 for their service, they paid local hospitals nothing or a reduced sum for uninsured, low-income patients, according to the affidavit.

No arrests were expected on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times, but authorities said investigators would be seizing evidence and interviewing the mothers to build a criminal case against scheme operators.

*** Going Further:

Businesses engaged in maternity tourism, also known as “birth tourism,” are believed to have been operating for several years, relying on websites, newspaper advertising and social media to promote their services, immigration officials said.

Based on the results of previous investigations, the women who subscribe apparently pay cash for pre-natal medical treatment and actual delivery of their babies.

As part of the package, clients were promised they would receive Social Security numbers and U.S. passports for their infants – documentation the mothers would take with them when they returned to their home countries, ICE said.

Once the children, who by birth are U.S. citizens, reach adulthood they can apply for visas for family members living abroad.

More expensive packages “include recreational activities, such as visits to Disneyland, shopping malls and even an outing to a firing range,” the ICE statement said.

The practices came to public attention in California in recent years when residents of some Los Angeles-area communities complained about what they said were maternity hotels springing up in their neighborhoods, causing sanitation and other issues.

Ah, but hold on there is more.
Federal Agents Raid Suspected Fake Schools
Foreigners on U.S. student visas allegedly paid millions but didn’t take classes
LOS ANGELES—Amid a widening crackdown on immigration fraud, federal agents on Wednesday raided a network of schools alleged to be part of a scheme to collect millions of dollars from foreigners who came to the U.S. on student visas but never studied.

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations arrested three individuals who ran four schools in the Los Angeles area alleged to serve as a front for the purported scheme.

Hee Sun Shim, 51 years old, was arrested at his Beverly Hills home, and his alleged associates, Hyung Chan Moon and Eun Young Choi, were arrested in their offices near downtown Los Angeles.

They were taken into custody and charged in Los Angeles federal court with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, money laundering and of other immigration offenses, U.S. authorities said. They weren’t immediately available for comment and their attorneys weren’t known.

Wednesday’s action was the latest in a series targeting visa fraud nationwide.

“It’s a priority for us,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of HSI in Los Angeles. “It is something that can be exploited by types who want to do harm to the country.”

He added that authorities haven’t seen any evidence in this case that suspected terrorists used the alleged scheme to enter the country.

The main school in the alleged scam is Prodee University, located in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. It is affiliated with three other schools: Walter Jay M.D. Institute and American College of Forensic Studies in Los Angeles and Likie Fashion and Technology College in nearby Alhambra.

Catering primarily to Korean and Chinese nationals, the schools enrolled 1,500 students, the government said, most of whom live outside of Los Angeles, including in Texas, Nevada and Hawaii. They generated as much as $6 million a year in purported tuition payments, authorities said.

Sham colleges across the U.S. are believed to attract thousands of foreigners who pay fees, some of them with the promise of an education they don’t receive and others with assurance that no classes need be taken.

“It’s never clear to what extent the students are victimized or are in on the scheme,” said Barmak Nassirian, policy analysis director at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The crackdown comes at a time when U.S. colleges and universities are attracting a record number of foreign students—about one million currently.

The spate of student-visa scams has prompted some lawmakers to call for better government monitoring of both schools and students. In recent years, authorities have raided schools in Virginia, New Jersey and California, the state considered the center of the illicit activity.

A 2012 Government Accountability Office report concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was failing in its mission to detect fraud by school operators.

The agency last year began deploying field representatives to foster compliance with regulations; a compliance unit makes surprise visits to schools and a new risk-assessment tool helps identify suspicious activity at schools. ICE also says it has enhanced electronic record keeping of students.

“We have been working to fix vulnerabilities,” said Rachel Canty, deputy director of ICE’s Student Exchange and Visitor program, which certifies schools that enroll foreigners.

Concern about the legitimacy of foreign students and institutions they attend first surfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, schools have been required to provide information about students to an online government database, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, overseen by ICE.

The Sevis contains a student’s personal record, including country of origin, age, coursework and U.S. address and other details. Schools that fail to comply can lose their certification.

More than three-quarters of some 9,000 certified schools have fewer than 50 international students, which makes it more challenging to comply with regulations. “People think foreign students come to UCLA and Harvard. We have a lot of mom-and-pop schools,” said Ms. Canty.

Security concerns resurfaced in 2013 after the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. Authorities learned that Azamat Tazhayakov, who hid evidence about the attack, had entered the U.S. on a student visa that was no longer valid. Since then, the government has integrated the SEVIS database into the screening process at airports. Mr. Tazhayakov, a Kazakhstan national, was convicted last July of obstruction of justice in the bombing.

Investigators say the defendants misrepresented students on federal forms, enabling them to secure student visas in what amounted to a pay-to-stay scheme. In exchange for the so-called Form I-20, a student made “tuition” payments for up to $1,800 to “enroll” for six months in one of the schools, according to the indictment.

As part of the suspected conspiracy, the defendants allegedly created bogus student records, including transcripts, for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.

The indictment further alleges that purported students often were transferred from one school to another to avoid arousing suspicion of immigration authorities about individuals in the country for long periods.

“We have nothing to indicate the students were getting education for anything,” said Mr. Arnold, the special agent.

After Wednesday’s raid, the schools’ access to Sevis was ended and authorities are seeking to withdraw the schools’ certification to enroll foreign students, ICE said.

The students’ fate is unclear. Foreign pupils enrolled at the schools should contact the Student Exchange Visitor Program office in Washington, officials said.

The largest student-visa fraud case, involving Tri-Valley University in northern California, left more than 1,000 students in limbo and sparked protests in India. The school’s president, Susan Su, was imprisoned in 2013 for making millions of dollars in the scheme.

That scandal prompted U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) and others to call for action.

“The potential for bad actors to abuse the student-visa program has increased significantly over recent years,” Ms. Feinstein said, noting that a Senate-passed bill to overhaul immigration in 2013 included a provision to combat such fraud.

Where Were You America on Net Neutrality?

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Going back as far as 2010, for the Federal government to take over the internet has been a building coup and while America did not care….the FCC assumed control.

After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies. In a 2005 interview with the progressive website Buzzflash, Mr. McChesney said that campaign-finance reform advocate Josh Silver approached him and “said let’s get to work on getting popular involvement in media policy making.” Together the two founded Free Press.

Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.

 

 

FCC Cites Soros-Funded, Neo-Marxist-Founded Group 46 TIMES In New Regs

New internet regulations finally released by the Federal Communications Commission make 46 references to a group funded by billionaire George Soros and co-founded by a neo-Marxist.

The FCC released the 400-page document on Thursday, two weeks after it passed new regulations, which many fear will turn the internet into a public commodity and thereby stifle innovation.

“Leveling the playing field” in that way has been a clear goal of Free Press, a group dedicated to net neutrality which was founded in 2003.

As Phil Kerpen, president of the free-market group American Commitment, first noted, Free Press is mentioned repeatedly in the FCC document. Most of the references are found in footnotes which cite comments by Free Press activists supporting more internet regulation.

The term “Free Press” is mentioned 62 times in the regulations. Some are redundant mentions referring to the same Free Press activists’ comments in favor of more oversight. In total, the FCC cited Free Press’ pro-net neutrality arguments 46 times.

The FCC received more than 4 million public comments as it was weighing the net neutrality initiative, but Free Press and other activist groups have received the most attention by pressuring the FCC and the White House on behalf of their cause.

One argument made against the FCC’s regulatory push is that the general public is largely happy with its internet service. Support for net neutrality was seen as the domain of special interest groups like Free Press.

The activist group has big money behinds its effort. It has received $2.2 million in donations from progressive billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and $3.9 million from the Ford Foundation.

And one of Free Press’ co-founders, Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has not been shy about his desire to see the internet regulated heavily. (RELATED: A Leading Net Neutrality Activist’s Neo-Marxist Views)

But internet regulation appears to be only part of McChesney’s more radical agenda of completely revamping how the media operate in the U.S.

“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,” McChesney wrote in a 2009 essay.

“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism,” he said.

“The news is not a commercial product. It is a public good, necessary for a self-governing society. Once we accept this, we can talk about the kind of media policies and subsidies we want,” McChesney once argued.

Sentiments such as these have raised questions about whether the FCC’s new regulations will eventually led to oversight of internet content.

“The unthinkable has become thinkable, and the free-market Internet – one of freedom’s greatest triumphs – is set to be reduced to a public utility, subject to pervasive economic regulation and, in turn, to content control,” American Commitment’s Kerpen wrote in an open letter to McChesney after the FCC voted 3-2 in favor of the regulations.

McChesney, who is currently on Free Press’ board of directors, made a series of progressive proposals in a 2010 book, “The Life and Death of American Journalism.” He suggested spending $35 billion on federal subsidies for public media outlets. He also proposed creating a journalism branch of AmeriCorps and said it would be a good idea to give each American a $200 news voucher which could be given only to publicly-owned media outlets.

“Advertising is the voice of capital,” McChesney said in a 2009 interview with the Socialist Project. “We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.”

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai blew the whistle on the agency’s attempt to sneak the new regulations in under the radar. He pressed FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to release the proposed regulations so that the public could view them before the commission voted on the measure. Wheeler refused.

In his dissent, Pai, a Republican, slammed the commission’s secrecy and also mentioned Free Press as one of the activist groups which received special attention on the matter.

“What the press has called the “parallel FCC” at the White House opened its doors to a plethora of special-interest activists: Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, just to name a few,” Pai wrote.

Indeed, even before activists were blocking Chairman Wheeler’s driveway late last year, some of them had met with White House officials. But what about the rest of the American people? They certainly couldn’t get White House meetings. They were shut out of the process. They were being played for fools.”

 

Swell, Eric Holder had Email Aliases Too

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It is an epidemic in government, all kinds of powerbrokers in the Federal government are using alias emails. The very agency bound to enforce law and the very top lawyer at the agency, the Department of Justice, is in violation himself.

There is a U.S. Criminal Code where government business transactions including emails, text messages, photos, documents and more belong to the Federal government, not the individual. This must be certified upon leaving office and Eric Holder has tendered his resignation. There is a separation notice (Form OF; 109) under penalty of perjury that all materials are turned over.

Per Shannen Coffin, lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) adopted regulations in 1995 which required the preservation of official e-mails created on non-official accounts. The Archivist interpreted the Federal Records Act to apply to e-mail records and further provided that “[a]gencies with access to external electronic mail systems shall ensure that federal records sent or received on these systems are preserved in the appropriate recordkeeping system . . .” So as early as 1995, all federal agencies were required to preserve official e-mails, including those created or maintained on “external electronic mail systems.” Later NARA regulations merely clarified this requirement. In 2009, after a Government Accountability Office report indicated that certain agencies had lax e-mail practices, the NARA adopted new regulations that provided that any emails created on private e-mail accounts must be preserved. But that regulation merely restated, in perhaps slightly different language, what the 1995 regulation had already mandated, requiring that “[a]gencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.” More here.

Eric Holder Used Email Aliases. DOJ Says It Wasn’t A Transparency Dodge.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder has used three email aliases to conduct government business over the past six years, a Justice Department official revealed Tuesday.

All three email aliases, including the one Holder currently uses, are official Justice Department addresses on the @usdoj.gov domain, the official told The Huffington Post. Holder has used the aliases to prevent spam and to keep his inbox from being overwhelmed by the public, not to avoid transparency, the official said. The addresses were known to DOJ officials handling Freedom of Information Act requests and congressional inquiries, according to the official.

“The Attorney General uses a Justice Department email address to conduct official business. As with many Cabinet officials, he does not use his given name in the handle of his email address,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “This practice is similar to using initials or numbers in an email address and helps guard against security risks and prevent his inbox from being needlessly inundated. It does not in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests. The Attorney General’s email address is known to the individuals who process FOIA requests, and his emails are regularly produced, albeit with his exact address redacted.”

Holder’s first alias, Henry Yearwood, was a combination of his mother’s maiden name and the first name of another family member. His second alias, David Kendricks, came from the names of two members of the Temptations: singers David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks.

Fallon, who described Holder’s choice of email addresses as “soulful,” declined to provide Holder’s third and current email alias, but said it is based on the name of an athlete.

The aliases were changed twice over Holder’s tenure, once when the email address was accidentally exposed by another federal agency responding to a FOIA request.

The email practices of top officials in the Obama administration have come under increased scrutiny due to Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email as secretary of state. Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson pointed to indications that Holder used an email alias in a recent post on The Daily Signal. Attkisson noted that the names associated with Holder’s email address were redacted in documents disclosed by the Justice Department, with his name replaced by “Attorney General.”

Many high-ranking government officials use email addresses that are not readily available to the general public. Lisa Jackson, for example, came under scrutiny for using an email alias during her tenure as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Although an EPA Inspector General report found a lack of internal agency controls for identifying such email addresses, it found no evidence the practice was intended to dodge federal record-keeping rules.