Category Archives: NSA Spying

Entire VA System Broken, Moment of Reckoning

Posted on by

Eric Shinseki could not fix it, Robert McDonald cant fix it, $60 billion cant fix it. The culture, the bureaucracy and leadership is at issue, either take it out of all government hands or put it into the Department of Defense. It may save a life or it may or it may restore a life.

Either way, a solution is at hand, the WILL to do it must be reckoned today.

VA Needs ‘Systemwide Reworking,’ Independent Report Finds
Congressionally mandated independent review of Veterans Affairs health-care system identifies widespread problems

WSJ: A sweeping independent review of the Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system made public Friday shows the multibillion-dollar agency has significant flaws, including a bloated bureaucracy, problems with leadership and a potentially unsustainable capital budget.

More than a dozen assessments—from analysts including Mitre Corp., Rand Corp. and McKinsey & Co.—show that the Veterans Heath Administration, the health-care arm of the department known as VHA, is still plagued by long-standing issues, including unsustainable costs in the future and a system that veterans find tough to navigate.

The assessments, weighing in at more than 4,000 pages total, were mandated by the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, commonly known as the Veterans Choice Act, a more than $16 billion emergency funding measure passed last summer in the wake of a systemwide scandal at the VA that led to the resignation of a number of top officials, including then-Secretary Eric Shinseki. They appear to restate, more thoroughly, many issues that have been previously identified. The assessments will be used by the Commission on Care, also mandated by the act, which is tasked with presenting the VA and Congress a comprehensive reform plan in early 2016.

“The report bears out collectively what I have seen individually, what I have seen in my role as chairman over the past nine months,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “There is a huge focus on some glaring deficiencies that need to be addressed.”
Mr. Isakson said the VA suffers especially from a system saddled with a number of different departments that can’t effectively talk with each other, as well as a number of vacancies in leadership positions that need to be filled, though he said the department has been working to correct a number of issues.

“VA is undergoing a radical transformation,” the department said in response to the findings, pointing out a number of efforts to address problems highlighted in the assessments. “VA will work with Congress, veterans service organizations, veterans, and other stakeholders on the recommendations outlined in the Independent Assessment Final Report. VA will especially work closely with Congress on those final report recommendations that specify specific congressional action needed to implement.”

The assessments found VA care outperformed non-VA care by many measures but also showed a system that needs even more change.

“The independent assessment highlighted systemic, critical problems,” the report said. “Solving these problems will demand far-reaching and complex changes that, when taken together, amount to no less than a systemwide reworking of VHA.”

With an annual budget of some $60 billion, 1,600 health-care sites and 300,000 employees, the VHA says it is the largest integrated health-care system in the U.S. Last year, nearly 6 million veterans were treated in the system.

The reports portray the VA as a huge operation that has become difficult to steer and permeated by a bureaucratic system plagued by mismanagement and inconsistent care from hospital to hospital.

“It’s pretty bad for VHA, it’s pretty stinging,” said a senior staff member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “There’s nothing in here that has surprised me, but seeing it all in one place is probably the hardest thing.”

“They’ll push out a directive and they won’t follow-up to see how it’s implemented,” the congressional staffer said, adding that a large number of leadership positions in the organization remain unfilled or staffed by interim employees.

The report shows that the central office has grown 160% over the past five years, yet key leadership positions down the chain remain empty. More than half of the executives in the organization are eligible for retirement and could leave at any time, which could create even more leadership gaps.

The lengthy and critical reports come as the VA faces questions over whether it should allow more veterans to go outside of the system to receive private care. Recently, according to the assessments, health care obtained outside of the VA accounts for about 10% of VHA expenditures. The Veterans Choice Act of last year was built in large part around funding this type of care.

Questions about further privatization were highlighted recently when Ben Carson, a leading Republican presidential candidate and physician, suggested the VA make a push toward privatization and elimination of the VHA, its health-care delivery arm.

Earlier this week, a number of major veterans groups sent an open letter to Mr. Carson stressing the need to keep the VHA solvent.

The assessments released Friday unfavorably compared the VA’s management style to a number of private health-care providers like Kaiser Permanente.

Sen. Isakson said the Veterans Choice Act, which allows veterans more leeway in seeking care outside the VA, was an emergency measure and not something meant to steer the VA down a privatized path. “The Choice program, contrary to what everyone thought, was not a sinister program to privatize the VA.”

Robert McDonald, who took over as VA secretary last summer, has been praised by many in Congress as well as most major veterans groups for his efforts to reform the VA and his willingness to listen to patients and workers. But he has also been criticized for things like moving too slowly in firing underperforming employees and not supporting efforts to create an environment where employees can point out wrongdoing in the department. Mr. McDonald has said multiple times in the past that he is forcing out bad actors as quickly as possible.

“As a general matter, the president has made it a priority to ensure that America’s veterans are getting the kind of health care and benefits they have so richly earned,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, saying he had not seen the substance of the report.

Mr. Earnest said that some of the reforms at the VA have already begun to show progress in improving care.

“But the president, Secretary McDonald and other senior officials at the VA are not going to rest until we have accomplished our goal of making sure that all our veterans are getting the kind of care that they deserve, on time,” Mr. Earnest said.

On Thursday, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog tasked with protecting government employees, especially whistleblowers, sent a letter to President Barack Obama criticizing what they said was the VA’s reluctance to take disciplinary action against officials responsible for inadequate patient care.

“I have identified recent additional cases in which the VA confirmed serious misconduct brought to light by whistleblowers, yet failed to appropriately discipline responsible officials,” said Carolyn Lerner, the head of the office. Her office criticized the VA for punishing whistleblowers while not punishing those who engaged in misconduct.

“Over the past year, the Department of Veterans Affairs has worked closely and in good faith with the Office of Special Counsel to correct deficiencies in the department’s processes and programs to ensure fair treatment for any whistleblower who raises a hand to identify a problem, make a suggestion or report what may be a violation in law,” the department said in a statement.

Access to VA care has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, the report said, as changes in policy opened up the system to include not just combat-wounded veterans but many others who have served. Former Secretary Shinseki pushed to have veterans take advantage of their benefits and increased access to those like Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Although the VA has other departments, including a benefits arm, the VHA accounts for nearly 90% of the department’s discretionary budget and employee base. While the total population of veterans in the U.S. peaked around 1980 at 30 million and has declined since then, according to the report, demand for VA care has been steadily increasing as greater numbers of vets take advantage of benefits. The number of enrollees and patients isn’t expected to peak until 2019.

U.S. Confrontation, Obama Tells Navy Put Tail Between Propellers

Posted on by

U.S. Navy video

Obama Blocks Navy from Sailing Near Disputed Chinese islands

Failure to assert passage rights in South China Sea bolsters Beijing’s illegal maritime claims

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration has restricted the U.S. Pacific Command from sending ships and aircraft within 12 miles of disputed Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea, bolstering Beijing’s illegal claims over the vital seaway, Pentagon leaders revealed to Congress on Thursday.

“The administration has continued to restrict our Navy ships from operating within 12 nautical miles of China’s reclaimed islands,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said in opening remarks criticizing the failure to guarantee safe passage for international commercial ships in Asia.

“This is a dangerous mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims,” he said.

The South China Sea is a strategic waterway used to transport $5 trillion annually in goods, including $1.2 trillion in trade to the United States.

David Shear, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs, sought to play down the restrictions on Navy ship transits close to the islands. According to Shear, a regional freedom of navigation exercise took place in April and the tactic is “one tool in a larger tool box … and we’re in the process of putting together that tool box.”

Shear acknowledged that “we have not recently gone within 12 miles of a reclaimed area,” noting the last time a Navy ship sailed that close to a Chinese-built island was 2012.

The disclosure undermines statements made Wednesday by Defense Secretary Ash Carter who said the United States would not be coerced by China into not operating ships or aircraft in Asia. Carter said the United States “will continue to protect freedom of navigation and overflight.”

Shear insisted that in recent years the U.S. military has challenged “every category of Chinese claim in the South China Sea, as recently as this year.”

Blocking China from militarizing the new islands could include a range of options, including freedom of navigation operations, he said.

McCain, however, noted that the U.S. restrictions on close-in island military flights and ship visits were continuing despite the provocative dispatch of five Chinese warships in an unprecedented deployment to waters within 12 miles of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands—at the same time President Obama was concluding a recent visit to the state earlier this month.

A visibly angered McCain told Shear the best way to assert that international waters around the islands do not belong to China would be for American ships to make 12-mile passages by the disputed islands. “And we haven’t done that since 2012. I don’t find that acceptable, Mr. Secretary,” he said.

Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, was asked if he is authorized to order ships to travel within 12 miles of any of the man-made islands and answered, no. Harris also said no U.S. surveillance aircraft have flown directly over any of the islands.

Asked why not, Harris stated: “I’ll just [say] that Pacom presents options, military options to the secretary. And those options come with a full range of opportunities in the South China Sea, and we’re ready to execute those options when directed.”

The restrictions appear to be an element of the Obama administration’s conciliatory policies toward China that have increased in the months leading up to the planned visit to Washington next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The administration also has not taken steps to penalize China for large-scale hacking of U.S. government and private sector databases, although sanctions are planned.

China has been building islands on several reefs within the South China Sea for the past several years near the Paracels, in the northwestern sea, and near the Spratlys, near the Philippines. Several nations, including Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia have challenged Chinese claims to maritime sovereignty.

After ignoring the island building for several years, the Obama administration earlier this year began pressing the Chinese to halt the construction. The U.S. appeals were ignored.

A Chinese admiral recently declared that the entire South China Sea is China’s maritime territory.

“The South China Sea is no more China’s than the Gulf of Mexico is Mexico’s,” said Harris, who described himself as critic of China’s maritime behavior and large-scale military buildup.

Harris made clear implicitly during the hearing he did not agree with the restrictions on transit near the disputed islands but has been overruled by the president and secretary of defense.

“I think that we must exercise our freedom of navigation throughout the region …,” Harris said.

Pressed for his views on whether close passage of U.S. ships in the sea should be permitted, Harris said: “I believe that we should [be] allow[ed] to exercise freedom of navigation and flight—maritime and flight in the South China Sea against those islands that are not islands.”

Asked if he has requested permission for close-in island transits, Harris would not say, stating only that he has provided policy options for doing so to civilian leaders.

Harris said Pacific command surface ship commanders and crews, as well as Air Force pilots and crews, have orders when operating near China to “insist on our right to operate in international airspace and maritime space” and to respond professionally when challenged by Chinese warships or interceptor jets.

The four-star admiral warned that more incidents, such as the dangerous aerial intercept of a P-8 surveillance jet by a Chinese jet in 2014, are possible after China finishes building runways on Fiery Cross Reef and two other reefs.

With missiles, jet fighters, and warships stationed on the islands, “it creates a mechanism by which China would have de facto control over the South China Sea in any scenario short of war,” he said.

In a conflict the sites could be easily targeted, but “short of that, militarization of these features pose a threat, and certainly it poses a threat against all other countries in the region,” he said.

Shear also said the island militarization is a concern.

“The Chinese have not yet placed advanced weaponry on those features and we are going to do everything we can to ensure that they don’t,” Shear said. “This is going to be a long-term effort. There are no silver bullets in this effort. But we’re certainly complicating Chinese calculations already.”

Shear said U.S. forces are continuing to operate freely in the region and have deterred Chinese coercion of regional states.

“That we freely operate in the South China Sea is a success? It’s a pretty low bar, Mr. Secretary,” McCain said.

China’s dispatch of five warships to waters near the Bering Strait followed recent joint exercises with the Russians, after which the Chinese ships sailed near Alaska to demonstrated the ships’ ability to operate in the far north, Harris said, noting that he viewed the timing to the president’s Alaska visit as “coincidental.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, (R., Alaska) said the Chinese action was a “provocation” and criticized the administration’s weak response. The Pentagon dismissed the Chinese ship transit as legal under international law.

“I thought it was more of a provocation and a demonstration of their interest in the Arctic,” Sullivan said. “I’m not sure that this White House would recognize a provocation if it was slapped in the face, and we need to be aware of that.”

Harris also said he is concerned by China deploying submarines, including nuclear missile submarines, further from its shores.

“We’re seeing Chinese submarine deployments extend further and further, almost with every deployment,” he said. “It has become routine for Chinese submarines to travel to the Horn of Africa region and North Arabian Sea in conjunction with their counter piracy task force operations. We’re seeing their ballistic missiles submarines travel in the Pacific at further ranges and of course all of those are of concern.”

China’s claims to have halted island construction and militarization on some 3,000 acres are false, McCain said.

“Recently released satellite images show clearly this is not true,” the senator said. “What’s more, China is rapidly militarizing this reclaimed land, building garrisons, harbors, intelligence, and surveillance infrastructure, and at least three air strips that could support military aircraft.”

Surface-to-air missiles and radars also could be added enabling China “to declare and enforce an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, and to hold that vital region at risk,” McCain added.

Shear said the island building is nearly completed.

Meanwhile in the House, Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R., Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower, led a group of 29 members of Congress in writing to President Obama and Carter, the defense secretary, urging the lifting of the restrictions on naval and air operations near the disputed islands.

“The longer the United States goes without challenging China’s unfounded claims to sovereignty over these artificial formations—and to territorial waters and exclusive economic rights in the surrounding water—the greater the consequences will be for regional security,” the lawmakers stated in the Sept. 17 letter.

“It is our belief that the Defense Department should act immediately to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to freedom of navigation and the rule of law.”

Hillary Emails on Google and AOL Servers

Posted on by

The most recent update to the server-gate saga and the reckless handling of classified electronic interactions. Big question still remains, what about the subpoena for her mobile devices?

State Dept. concedes ‘gaps’ in Clinton email record; could result in perjury charge

WashingtonTimes: The emails former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton turned back over to the government last year contained “gaps,” according to internal department messages evaluating her production.

Mrs. Clinton took office on Jan. 21, 2009, but the first message she turned back over to the department was dated March 18, and the earliest-dated message she herself sent was on April 13, or nearly three months into her time in office, according to a message obtained through an open-records request by Judicial Watch, which released it Monday.

Mrs. Clinton has said she continued using a previous account she’d used during her time as a senator for business at the beginning of her time as secretary, but the differing dates between the first email received and the first sent raises still more questions.

The last recorded message she turned over was dated Feb. 1, 2013, and was one she received from top aide Cheryl Mills. But the last message Mrs. Clinton herself sent and turned over was dated Dec. 30, 2012 — a month before she left office.

Eric F. Stein, the State Department official who wrote the evaluation of Mrs. Clinton’s messages, described the missing times at the beginning of her term as “gaps.”

Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, but the State Department, in a statement, said it has gone back and found emails from Mrs. Clinton’s last days in office, so the department no longer believes there is a gap.

“We are not aware of any gaps in the Clinton email set, with the exception of the first few months of her tenure when Sec. Clinton used a different email account that she advised she no longer has access to,” the department said. “There is no ‘gap’ in Secretary Clinton’s sent messages from the December 2012 through the end of January 2013. Upon review, the department has many messages sent by Secretary Clinton during that period, including messages that appear to have been produced directly from her ‘sent’ mailbox. Future document releases will include emails from this time period.”

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has filed 20 separate open-records lawsuits demanding release of emails from Mrs. Clinton or her aides, said the gaps could contradict Mrs. Clinton’s assertion, under penalty of perjury, when she said she returned all work-related emails that were on the server she kept at her New York home.

“The Obama administration and Hillary Clinton have taken their cover-up of the email scandal too far,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “I suspect that federal courts will want more information, under oath, about the issues raised in these incredible documents.”

The emails obtained by Judicial Watch give more details about the documents Mrs. Clinton turned over — 55,000 printed pages, divided into 12 boxes.

One March 23, 2015, letter to Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer, David E. Kendall, detailed the department’s early thoughts about the documents.

The State Department asked that any of the emails still in electronic format be preserved, warned that some of the documents could be deemed classified, and said Mrs. Clinton would need permission before releasing any of the documents.

***

Now-classified Clinton emails sitting on Google servers

Politico: Aides to the former secretary of state sent sensitive messages through Gmail and other private email services.

Classified emails passed through commercial email services like Google and AOL on their path to or from a private server maintained by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, but so far, the government appears to have done little to retrieve or secure the messages.

A POLITICO review of Clinton emails made public by the State Department shows that at least 55 messages now deemed to include classified information appear to have been sent to or from private accounts other than Clinton’s. That number is certain to grow substantially as State processes all Clinton emails and sorts through emails turned over to the department by several of her top aides.

Only about a quarter of the former secretary’s messages have been released up to this point, and her advisers sent emails on the same topics that never reached Clinton. The nonchalant response to messages stored on commercial servers contrasts sharply with recent FBI efforts to take possession of email copies on a thumb drive maintained by Clinton’s attorney David Kendall and on a server kept by a Denver tech company that managed Clinton’s account.

“They are discordant, and they reflect inconsistent notions of information security,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. “They are totally incompatible positions.”

“The logic is classic government logic: If I know classified material is in place X, I’m going to go get it,” said one former senior State Department official. “They’re not going to, without reasonable cause, start searching everyone’s home email. In a sense, [Clinton] is suffering the mortification on behalf of the entire department.”

The most evident example of the discrepancy in the government’s response is the private email account used by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills.

In a July 31 letter to lawyers for Mills and other former officials, State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy — who had previously allowed ex-officials to keep copies of any records they were returning to the department — struck a newly urgent tone.

“For records management purposes, the Department asks that you and your client now take steps to return all copies of potential federal records in your possession to the Department as soon as possible,” Kennedy wrote. “The Department’s Office of Information … will contact you regarding additional steps with respect to the disposition of your and/or your client’s electronic copies of these documents.”

Mills’ lawyer Beth Wilkinson replied that Mills planned to delete her electronic copies of work-related emails on her personal account after she finished providing copies of those emails to the State Department.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan stepped in, asking Mills, fellow Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Clinton not to delete any records in their possession. All three agreed.

The result is that any classified emails Mills has in her account now can’t be erased without a court order but are housed outside the government’s control and without the usual safeguards taken to protect classified information.

The status of Abedin’s emails is less clear because most of her work-related emails sent on a private account appear to have involved an account she had on Clinton’s server. Attorneys for Mills and Abedin declined to comment for this story.
Because the information was not marked classified at the time it was sent, some of those who now have such messages in their accounts may not even know it. One lawyer reached by POLITICO expressed surprise that information his client received from Clinton is considered classified.

“Nobody contacted me,” said the attorney, who asked not to be named. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Asked about efforts to recover classified information from commercial email services, the FBI declined to comment. A State Department official was vague about precise actions.

“The Department is taking appropriate steps. There are reviews and investigations underway, so beyond that we cannot comment any further,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

A spokesman for Google, which operates Gmail, declined to discuss specifics. However, the spokesman said the company would usually encourage the government to contact a user directly to get sensitive data erased. In the absence of such an agreement, some type of legal order would be required, the Google spokesman said. An AOL spokeswoman suggested that the company would not erase user data without a legal order or customer permission.

“Federal law and our privacy policy prohibits us from disclosing information about our users or their use of our services absent legal process or user consent,” spokeswoman Natalie Azzoli said.

The former head of the federal government’s classification policy office said the discrepancy between the handling of Clinton’s server and the private accounts could reflect a conclusion that trying to recover all classified material might just draw more attention to it.

“In reality, what it does reflect is the challenge that once stuff gets out into the wild, it is almost impossible to corral it again,” said Bill Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office. “When I’ve confronted situations like this in the past, one of the first things you should do is a gain-loss type of assessment of what the gain is and what you are losing by trying to corral all this material. Sometimes, just by going after material, you bring more attention to it and cause greater damage than if you just kind of let it lay low.”

It’s also possible the State Department or other authorities have decided to try to recall all copies of “secret” or “top secret” information but not anything classified at the lowest tier of classification, “confidential.”

So far, only one document containing information officially designated “secret” has been released — in edited form — from Clinton’s email trove: a Nov. 18, 2012, memo about arrests in Libya possibly related to the deadly attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi two months earlier. The copy of that message forwarded to Clinton does not appear to have circulated outside official but unclassified State Department accounts, although it is difficult to know whether anyone in the chain might have forwarded it to others.

However, intelligence agencies contend that even more sensitive classified information — which should have been marked “top secret” — was found during a review of a small sample of Clinton’s messages. Those messages reportedly related to drone strikes in Pakistan and nuclear tests in North Korea. The State Department is disputing the classification of those messages.

But even the kind of triage that allows “confidential” information to live unmolested outside the government’s control would appear to run afoul of claims by some in the intelligence community that individual government employees, as Clinton and her aides were, have a duty to step in whenever classified information appears to have “spilled.”

Indeed, some national security specialists have argued that President Barack Obama’s executive order on classification and the State Department’s rules require that all or most information obtained from a foreign government be classified at least at the “confidential” level and treated as such.

Others say that treating all such information as classified would bring the work of the State Department and the National Security Council to a screeching halt.

“The daily operations of State and, I would add, the White House, would not be possible if everyone put everything on the classified email system that involved foreign government information,” the former State official said. “Classification has an element of discretion given to the person responsible for classifying. There’s a lot of stuff you would get from a foreign government that you would say ‘let’s not put that on the unclassified system’ and you’d put it on the classified system, or you’d run down the hall and have a meeting, [but] it doesn’t make sense to me that every single conversation with a foreign government official is per force classified.”

Aftergood also noted that State Department regulations actually allow classified “confidential” foreign government information to be handled on official, unclassified email accounts under certain circumstances.
That’s something that would be anathema at many intelligence agencies where most employees don’t even have unclassified work email accounts.

Part of what is playing out in the furor over Clinton’s emails is a culture clash between intelligence agencies that allow little or no interaction with the public by their employees and places like State or the White House that must regularly engage journalists, foreign officials and think tanks.

“The fact that the intelligence community inspector general is involved in this means you’re basically applying different rules from different universes. You have one universal classification system, but it applies quite differently in different agencies,” the former State official said.

Leonard said he’s convinced it was a mistake for Clinton to use a private email server, in part because there were certain to be different views about what was classified and some degree of seepage of classified information into her unclassified email.
“If you examine any senior government official’s email account, I guarantee you’ll find material in there that somebody considers classified. It’s a given,” the former classification director said. “All of it speaks to the perils of using nongovernment controlled servers in the first place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How the Internet/Hacking Could Affect You Personally

Posted on by

From NextGov:

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have issued alerts about, in essence, the modern Internet.

Their public service announcements concern security risks posed by the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT, a situation where everyday objects connect to a network.

Researchers this summer proved that connected items can endanger people driving cars and wearing pacemakers. The Defense Department secretary last week mentioned the inventors of the Internet have been working on security fixes for IoT.

But until those technologies are rolled out, the FBI and DHS are offering some pointers.

First, the FBI names the following 10 things as examples of IoT devices:

  1. Automated devices that remotely or automatically adjust lighting or HVAC
  2. Security systems, such as security alarms or Wi-Fi cameras, including video monitors used in nursery and daycare settings
  3. Medical devices, such as wireless heart monitors or insulin dispensers
  4. Thermostats
  5. Wearables, such as fitness devices
  6. Lighting modules that activate or deactivate lights
  7. Smart appliances, such as smart refrigerators and TVs
  8. Office equipment, such as printers
  9. Entertainment devices to control music or television from a mobile device
  10. Fuel monitoring systems

Some of the potential horror stories depicted by the FBI:

  • Cyber criminals can take advantage of security gaps in the configuration of surveillance video cameras used by private businesses or built-in cameras on baby monitors. “Systems not properly secured can be located and breached by actors who wish to stream live feed on the Internet for anyone to see.”
  • Criminals can exploit unsecured wireless connections for “garage doors, thermostats and lighting,” among other automated systems. Those security holes can let crooks “remotely monitor the owner’s habits and network traffic,” as well as “easily exploit these devices to open doors, turn off security systems, record audio and video, and gain access to sensitive data.”
  • Unprotected home health care devices provide avenues for bad guys to glean personal or medical information stored there, as well as “possibly change the coding controlling the dispensing of medicines or health data collection.”
  • Monitoring systems on gas pumps that are connected to the Internet can be tampered with. Nefarious individuals could make the pump register incorrect levels, “allowing a refueling vehicle to dangerously overfill the tanks, creating a fire hazard.”

People using one of the above things, or other network-infused objects, are advised to:

  • Place the device on a separate protected network
  • Disable “Universal Plug And Play” settings that allow an item to automatically connect to another device on the Internet
  • “Consider whether IoT devices are ideal for their intended purpose”
  • Purchase IoT devices from manufacturers with a good track record on network security
  • When vendors make them available, update devices with security patches
  • Identify any passwords and Wi-Fi connections to the device and change the passwords; only allow the device to operate on a home network with a secured Wi-Fi router
  • When changing the password, do not use common words, simple phrases or passwords containing easily found personal information, such as important dates or pet names
  • Make sure patients prescribed medical devices capable of remote operation are informed about the risk they could be targeted

A military agency that gave birth to the Internet, and by default, IoT, has been researching patches, Defense Secretary Ash Carter says.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2011 launched a program to help make “the code behind the physical control systems of an airplane or self-driving car,” for instance, “become mathematically, provably unhackable,” Carter said at a future technology forum hosted by the agency.

“DARPA’s already made some of that source code openly available online – it can give the Internet of Things a critical foundation of cybersecurity, which it’s going to need,” he said.

By 2020 there will be 250 million Internet-connected vehicles on the road, according to Gartner. A Wired journalist a few months ago had private researchers remotely kill the transmission of a Jeep on a St. Louis highway — while he was sitting in the driver’s seat.

Meanwhile, University of South Alabama students demonstrated the fatal dangers of network-synched health devices by manipulating a pacemaker in a medical-grade human simulator, Motherboard reports.

“The simulator had a pacemaker so we could speed the heart rate up, we could slow it down,” said Mike Jacobs, director of the university’s simulations program. “If it had a defibrillator, which most do, we could have shocked it repeatedly. If it was the intent, we could definitely cause harm to the patient. It’s not just a pacemaker, we could do it with an insulin pump, a number of things that would cause life-threatening injuries or death.”

Some industry groups, such as CompTIA, expect federal agencies will try to contain privacy and security threats in the IoT by adapting regulations created for electronic health records, the digital collection of financial information, and other data-intensive activities.

Even Russia is Cheating When it Comes to Gold

Posted on by

In 2012, a Russian agent (spy) who worked for a bank as cover was arrested in New York. The criminal complaint is here.

Then there were the Russian gangs (mafia) in New York in the last decade.

A former correspondent for the venerable emigre newspaper “Novoye Russkoye Slovo,” Grant has cultivated convicted murderers and extortionists as sources and landed interviews with notorious reputed crime kingpins like Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevich, listed by the FBI on its “10 Most Wanted” list of fugitives.

When bodies began piling up in the turf wars that rocked Russian-speaking New York neighborhoods like Brighton Beach in the 1990s, it was Grant that U.S. journalists turned to to make sense of the murky motivations and underworld machinations behind the bloodshed.

Putin’s agents in America have been very busy.

Ever since Putin reclaimed the presidency last year, the trampling of the rule of law has only accelerated. It is now being used to stifle the last remnants of political opposition. There are lots of recent examples, like the bogus charges brought against Alexei Navalny, the heroic investigative blogger, and the posthumous case currently being prosecuted against, believe it or not, Sergei Magnitsky. And then there’s the case of Dmitry Gudkov and his father, Gennady.
Both men were opposition politicians in Russia’s Duma. Both supported the Sergei Magnitsky Act, which President Obama signed in December and which freezes the U.S. assets of Russian government officials who are labeled “gross human rights violators.” Putin and his underlings are understandably threatened by the new law. They have retaliated by passing a bill banning the adoptions of Russian children by Americans. (That’s right. The Putin government is getting back at the United States by punishing Russian orphans.) Gennady Gudkov, a former K.G.B. official, had built a security company, Oskord, with some 4,000 employees. Last summer the government conducted an “inspection” and found the company to have committed numerous violations. It quickly put Oskord out of business. Two months later, a committee of the Duma charged Gudkov with violating Duma rules and tossed him out of Parliament. More details here.

 

Would those Russian diamonds be fake by chance in New York?

 

Zerohedge: Over the past several years, incidents involving fake gold (usually in the form of gold-plated tungsten) have emerged every so often, usually involving Manhattan’s jewerly district, some of Europe’s bigger gold foundries, or the occasional billion dealer. But never was fake gold actually discovered in the form monetary gold, held by a bank as reserve capital and designed to fool bank regulators of a bank’s true financial state. This changed on Friday when Russia’s “Admiralty” Bank, which had its banking license revoked last week by Russia’s central bank, was reportedly using gold-plated metal as part of its “gold reserves.”

According to Russia’s Banki.ru, as part of a probe in the Admiralty bank, the central bank regulator questioned the existence of the bank’s reported quantity of precious metals held in reserve. Citing a source, Banki.ru notes that as part of its probe, instead of gold, the “regulator found gold-plated metal.”

The Russian website further adds that according to “Admiralty” bank’s financial statements, as of August 1 the bank had declared as part of its highly liquid assets precious metals amounting to 400 million roubles. The last regulatory probe of the bank was concluded in the second half of August, said one of the Banki.ru sources. Another source claims that as part of the probe, the auditor questioned the actual availability of the bank’s precious metals and found gold-painted metal.

The website notes that shortly before the bank’s license was revoked, the bank had offered its corporate clients to withdraw funds after paying a commission of 30%. This is shortly before Russia’s central bank disabled Admiralty’s electronic payment systems on September 7.

Admiralty Bank was a relatively small, ranked in 289th place among Russian banks in terms of assets. On August 1 the bank’s total assets were just above 8 billion roubles, while the monthly turnover was in the order of 40-55 billion rubles. The balance of the bank’s assets was poorly diversified: two-thirds of the bank’s assets (4.9 billion rubles) were invested in loans. The rest of the assets, about 30%, were invested in highly liquid assets.

Or at least highly liquid on paper: according to Banki.ru the key reason for the bank’s license revocation was the central bank’s insistence that the bank had insufficient reserves against possible loan losses.

The Russian central bank has not yet made an official statement.

The first question, obviously, is if a small-to-mid level Russian bank was using gold-plated metal to fool the central bank about the quality of its “gold-backed” reserves, how many other Russian banks are engaged in comparable fraud. The second question, and perhaps more relevant, is how many global banks – especially among emerging markets, where gold reserves remain a prevalent form of physical reserve accumulation – are engaging in comparable fraud.

Finally, what does this mean for gold itself, whose price on one hand is sliding with every passing day (thanks in part to what is now a record 228 ounces of paper claims on every ounce of physical gold as reported before), even as it increasingly appears there is a major global physical shortage. If the Admiralty bank’s fraud is found to be pervasive, what will happen to physical gold demand as more banks are forced to buy the yellow metal in the open market to avoid being shuttered and/or prison time for the executives?