Offensive Details in Response to the US Mexican Border

Posted on October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 by Denise Simon

In April, the Trump White House and the Pentagon authorized and deployed 2100 National Guard personnel to the Southern border region to provide support to Border Patrol. Most states complied with this order.

Just last week, the Department of Homeland Security requested 800 military personnel from the Pentagon for additional support. That request was granted. Most will come from Ft. Stewart and include, engineers, communications, logistical personnel, aviation, medical and intelligence personnel.

Since it was reported in the last few days, some migrants from the caravan broke through the barriers between Mexico and Guatemala and there is at least two more emerging caravans being mobilized.

The United States is not taking any chances of migrant cells breaking off and scattering to other barrier locations that would allow them to advance to the United States border with Mexico.

Immigrant caravan sets up camp along the Mexican border | Daily Mail Online

There are several envoys, media and intelligence operations occurring in at least four countries, including Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The mission is to perform checks and balances on human rights violations, human trafficking, mules and drug cartels as well as gangs. Additionally, information is being gathered on the organizers of the caravans and the money flow as well as the operations for meeting places, brochures and planning.

The Trump White House along with the Department of Justice and the lawyers at the Department of Homeland Security are meeting to determine the legal moves that can be authorized to close the border, stop all asylees and refugees for a time period. An announcement is pending on this order.

Just breaking is the Pentagon has authorized with the President another 5000 US troops to be deployed to the Southern border. The deployment package is for support personnel and NOT combat troops. This translates to more medical personnel, aviation operations and engineers. Truck loads of vehicles, barriers, tents and other national security threat operations gear.

This is purely an offensive posture and not a military hostilities operation.

You can bet progressive organizations have teamed with lawyers and are ready to strike with lawsuits filed in the 9th Circuit. So far however the Supreme Court has upheld Trump’s previous similar actions.

“The administration is considering a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options to address the Democrat-created crisis of mass illegal immigration,” a White House official said. “No decisions have been made at this time. Nor will we forecast to smugglers or caravans what precise strategies will or will not be deployed.”

But hold on….the UN wants to interfere too.

UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told VOA his agency has alerted countries along the caravan’s route that it is likely to include people in real danger.

“Our position globally is that the individuals who are fleeing persecution and violence need to be given access to territory and protection including refugee status and determination procedure. And, if the people who are fleeing persecution and violence enter Mexico, they need to be provided access to the Mexican asylum system and those entering the United States need to be provided access to the American asylum system,” he said.

Mahecic said the UNHCR is very concerned about the developing humanitarian situation along the migratory route. He said there are kidnapping and security risks in the areas where the caravan may be venturing.

Notice the UNHCR never did a blasted thing then or now in those countries where instability and peril is common, including Venezuela.

A Few More Details on Khashoggi vs. KSA

Posted on October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 by Denise Simon

MURDERED journalist Jamal Khashoggi was about to disclose details of Saudi Arabia’s use of chemical weapons in Yemen, sources close to him said last night. The revelations come as separate intelligence sources disclosed that Britain had first been made aware of a plot a full three weeks before he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Intercepts by GCHQ of internal communications by the kingdom’s General Intelligence Directorate revealed orders by a “member of the royal circle” to abduct the troublesome journalist and take him back to Saudi Arabia.

The orders, intelligence sources say, did not emanate directly from de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and it is not known if he was aware of them.

Though they commanded that Khashoggi should be abducted and taken back to Riyadh, they “left the door open” for other actions should the journalist prove to be troublesome, sources said.

Last week Saudi Arabia’s Attorney General confirmed that the murder had been premeditated – – in contrast to initial official explanations that Khashoggi had been killed after a fight broke out.

“The suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention,” he said.

“The Public Prosecution continues its investigations with the accused in the light of what it has received and the results of its investigations to reach facts and complete the course of justice.”

Those suspects are within a 15-strong hit squad sent to Turkey, and include serving members of GID.

Speaking last night the intelligence source told the Sunday Express: “We were initially made aware that something was going in the first week of September, around three weeks before Mr Khashoggi walked into the consulate on October 2, though it took more time for other details to emerge.

“These details included primary orders to capture Mr Khashoggi and bring him back to Saudi Arabia for questioning. However, the door seemed to be left open for alternative remedies to what was seen as a big problem.

“We know the orders came from a member of the royal circle but have no direct information to link them to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

“Whether this meant he was not the original issuer we cannot say.”

Crucially, the highly-placed source confirms that MI6 had warned his Saudi Arabian counterparts to cancel the mission – though this request as ignored.

“On October 1 we became aware of the movement of a group, which included members of Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-‘Āmah (GID) to Istanbul, and it was pretty clear what their aim was.

“Through channels we warned that this was not a good idea. Subsequent events show that our warning was ignored.”

Asked why MI6 had not alerted its Five Eye intelligence partner, the US (Khashoggi was a US citizen) the source said only: “A decision was taken that we’d done what we could.”

However analysts offered one possible explanation for this.

“The misleading image that has been created of Jamal Khashoggi covers up more than it reveals. As an insider to the Saudi regime, Khashoggi had also been close to the former head of the intelligence agency.He was an Islamist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and someone who befriended Osama Bin Laden and had been sympathetic to his Jihad in Afghanistan,” said Tom Wilson, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank.

“All of these connections are being hidden by a simplistic narrative that Jamal Khashoggi was just a progressive freedom fighting journalist. It isn’t plausible that he was murdered simply for being a journalist critical of the regime. The truth is much more complicated.”

Last night a close friend of Mr Khashoggi revealed that he was about to obtain “documentary evidence” proving clams that Saudi Arabia had used chemical weapons in its proxy war in Yemen.

“I met him a week before his death. He was unhappy and he was worried,“ said the middle eastern academic, who did not wish to be named.

“When I asked him why he was worried, he didn’t really want to reply, but eventually he told me he was getting proof that Saudi Arabia had used chemical weapons. He said he hoped he be getting documentary evidence.

All I can tell you is that the next thing I heard, he was missing.”

While there have been recent unsubstantiated claims in Iran that Saudi Arabia has been supplying ingredients that can be used to produce the nerve agent Sarin in Yemen, it is more likely that Mr Khashoggi was referring to phospherous..

Last month it was claimed that Saudi Arabia had been using US-supplied white phosphorous munitions against troops and even civilians in Yemen,

Though regulations state the chemical may be used to provide smokescreens, if used illegally it can it burn to the bone.

Chemical warfare expert Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said: “We have already seen in Syria that nothing is as effective as chemical, weapons in clearing urban areas of troops and civilians – Assad has used phosphorous for this very reason.

“If Khashoggi did, in fact, have proof that Saudi Arabia was deliberately misusing phosphorous for this purpose, it would be highly embarrassing for the regime and provides the nearest motive yet as to why Riyadh may have acted when they did against him.”

***

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, couldn’t have imagined one of the other characters in his book was going to be at the centre of a huge political and diplomatic controversy, no less than the book’s central character, namely Osama Bin Laden.

The book was adapted for television as a series with the same title and tells the story of Al-Qaeda’s infamous attacks on New York and Washington. In one paragraph, Wright mentions a close friend of Bin Laden’s who shared the latter’s ambition to “establish an Islamic state anywhere.” That friend was Jamal Khashoggi. Both Bin Laden and Khashoggi were at the time active members of the Muslim Brotherhood and later Bin Laden would split from the Brotherhood to form with Abdullah Azzam Al-Qaeda, the most dangerous organisation in the world. Khashoggi, Bin Laden, and Azzam, were all the merry companions of the same extremist group.

Today, the world is busy keeping up with the news of the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, journalist and Human Rights activist in Saudi Arabia, but very few know the man’s past and his affiliation with Al-Qaeda during the war in Afghanistan. He promoted Saudi Mujahedeen focusing on his friendship with Bin Laden.

On May 4, 1988, the Saudi daily Arab News published a report by Jamal Khashoggi about his tour in Afghanistan in the company of Al-Qaeda operatives. Even though Khashoggi was just a journalist doing a report, the photos published with the article show him wearing Afghani garb and shouldering a RBG rocket launcher. More here.

When Will the US Begin to Sanction China?

Posted on October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 by Denise Simon

Last week, Defense Secretary Mattis said:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis this week voiced new U.S. opposition to China’s continued militarization of islands in the South China Sea.

“We remain highly concerned with continued militarization of features in the South China Sea,” Mattis told reporters on Monday as he traveled to Vietnam.

Mattis also said China is using predatory economics to seek control over other nations.

The Chinese are engaged in a global infrastructure development plan called the Belt and Road Initiative that U.S. officials have said is being used by Beijing to expand influence and control abroad, and expand Chinese military bases around the world.

Mattis said the predatory economic policies include loans “where massive debt is piled on countries that fiscal analysis would say they are going to have difficulty, at best, repaying in the smaller countries.”

The defense secretary, echoing the new U.S. hardline policy toward China, said the United States is not seeking to “contain” China but wants more reciprocal relations.

In part from Newsweek:

“Beijing can now deploy military assets, including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers to the Spratly Islands at any time,” said the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) on Monday in a report that included images of the three man-made islands—Fiery Cross reef, Subi, and Mischief. Its director Greg Poling told Voice of America that new antennas had been spotted on Subi and Fiery Cross, so he expected deployments there soon.

The Spratly Islands are around 500 miles from the coast of China, and Fiery Cross Reef about 740 miles from mainland China. It is approximately 170 miles off the coast of Vietnam. Why did China build these islands and how did they manage to make land out of sea?

***

But media is not paying attention.

It gets worse.

Researchers have mapped out a series of internet traffic hijacks and redirections that they say are part of large espionage and intellectual property theft effort by China.

The researchers, Chris Demchak of the United States Naval War College and Yuval Shavitt of the Tel Aviv University in Israel, say in their paper that state-owned China Telecom hijacked and diverted internet traffic going to or passing through the US and Canada to China on a regular basis.

Tel Aviv University researchers built a route tracing system that monitors BGP announcements and which picks up on patterns suggesting accidental or deliberate hijacks and discovered multiple attacks by China Telecom over the past few years.

In 2016, China Telecom diverted traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its PoP in Toronto. From there, traffic was forwarded to the China Telecom PoP on the US West Coast and sent to China, and finally delivered to Korea.

Normally, the traffic would take a shorter route, going between Canada, the US and directly to Korea. The traffic hijack lasted for six months, suggesting it was a deliberate attack, Demchak and Shavitt said.

Demchak and Shavitt detailed other traffic hijacks, including one that saw traffic from US locations to a large Anglo-American bank’s Milan headquarters being terminated in China, and never delivered to Italy, in 2016.

During 2017, traffic between Scandinavia and Japan, transiting the United States, was also captured by China Telecom, ditto data headed to a mail server operated by a large Thai financial company.

China Telecom is able to divert the traffic by announcing bogus routes via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that governs data flows between Autonomous Systems, the large networks operated by telcos, internet providers and corporations.

After the traffic was copied by China Telecom for encyption breaking and analysis, it was delivered to the intended networks with only small delays. Demchak and Shavitt said.

Such hijacking is difficult to detect as China Telecom has multiple points of presence (PoPs) in North America and Europe that are physically close to the attacked networks, causing almost unnoticeable traffic delivery delays despite the lengthened routes.

China in comparison does not allow overseas telcos to establish PoPs in the country, and has only three gateways into the country, in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. This isolation protects the country’s domestic and transit traffic from foreign hijacking.

BGP hijacking of internet traffic is a common phenomenon, one which requires the support of large network operators to exploit at scale.

While the US and China agreed in 2015 to not hack one another’s computer networks, the deal did not cover hijacking of internet backbones, Demchak and Shavitt pointed out.

The researchers suggest the allied democratic nations establish an “access reciprocity” policy for internet PoPs located in their countries, to address the traffic hijacking.

Under the access reciprocity policy US telcos and providers should be allowed to set up PoPs in China, Demchak and Shavitt said.

If access reciprocity is refused, “then an appropriate defence policy in response could state that no traffic to or from the US or ally is allowed to enter a China Telecom PoP in the US or in the ally’s networks,” the researchers suggested.

Such a policy could be inserted into BGP routing tables as required for automatic implementation.

U.S. Treasury Employee Arrested Charged with Leaking to Media

Posted on October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 by Denise Simon

The official 18 page indictment is here.

US Treasury employee arrested, accused of leaking media secret information about suspicious financial transactions related to Paul Manafort, Russians

A U.S. Treasury employee has been arrested and charged with leaking to a BuzzFeed News reporter multiple secret reports about suspicious financial transactions.

The documents relate to former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, Trump campaign official Richard Gates, accused Russian agent Maria Butina, the Russian Embassy and suspected Russian money launderer Prevezon Alexander.

The accused employee, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards will face criminal charges in New York.

A U.S. Treasury employee has been arrested on charges that she leaked to BuzzFeed News multiple reports about suspicious financial transactions involving ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, law-enforcement officials said.

The highly confidential documents allegedly leaked by the employee also were related to former Trump campaign official Richard Gates, accused Russian agent Maria Butina, a suspected Russian money launderering entity and the Russian Embassy in Washington, according to a criminal complaint.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a 40-year-old senior advisor in Treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network who was arrested Tuesday, will face federal criminal charges in New York, officials said.

She is charged with unlawfully disclosing so-called suspicious activity reports, or SARS, and conspiracy to do the same. Both felony counts carry a maxmium potential sentence of five years in prison.

A Quinton, Virginia, resident, Edwards was released on a $100,000 personal recognizance bond after her presentment Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Under the conditions of her release, Edwards is barred from contacting reporters or handling documents belonging to her Treasury division without approval.

A lawyer for Edwards did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SARS are used to alert Treasury officials and other authorities about financial transactions that may be related to criminal conduct, such as money laundering. Treasury’s FinCEN division, for which Edwards works, manages the collection of SARS. It is illegal for a government employee to disclose a SAR or its contents outside of the scope of their work.

The complaint against Edwards says that she started leaking “numerous SARS in October 2017” to an unidentified reporter, and continued doing so until this month.

She had “hundreds of electronic communications” with the reporter, “many via an encrypted application,” the complaint said.

After Edwards began leaking SARS, the journalist wrote about a dozen articles which mentioned the details of those reports, according to the complaint.

Articles cited in the complaint carry the bylines of Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, two BuzzFeed reporters, as well as other journalists at that media outlet.

The articles cited documents transactions pertaining to Manafort and Gates, both of whom have since pleaded guilty to financial crimes related to their consulting work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.

They also related to Butina, who is currently being held without bond on charges of being a Russian agent, the accused money launderering real-estate entity Prevezon Alexander, and the Russian Embassy in Washington.

At the time of Edwards’ arrest, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, she “was in possession of a flash drive” that appeared to be the same device “on which she saved the unlawfully disclosed” SARS.

Also in her possession was “a cellphone containing numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted [SARS] and other sensitive government information” illegally, prosecutors said.

“When questioned by law enforcement officials [Tuesday], Edwards confessed she has provided [SARS] to [the reporter] via an encrypted application, through falsely denied knowing that [the reporter] intended to or did publish that information” through a news organization, the complaint said.

BuzzFeed News declined to comment. Leopold and Cormier did not immediately return requests for comment.

DHS Concerns on Election Related Incidents, Facebook Doesn’t Care

Posted on October 16, 2018October 16, 2018 by Denise Simon

The Department of Homeland Security notices an increase of election-related incidents, but thinks midterm voting will go off relatively unproblematically. Anomali reports a surge in black-market trafficking of voter records.

Voting Records of Over 40 Million Americans for Sale on ...

But you wont find out from Facebook if there are any issues….Facebook is going to block all posts regarding voting issues.

What could be the issues?

Anomali Labs researchers in close partnership with Intel 471, a leading cybercrime intelligence provider, have uncovered a widespread unauthorized information disclosure of US voter registration databases. To be clear, this voter information is made generally available to the public for legitimate uses. Anomali and Intel 471 researchers discovered dark web communications offering a large quantity of voter databases for sale. The databases include valuable personally identifiable information and voting history. The disclosure reportedly affects 19 states and includes 23 million records for just three of the 19 states. No record counts were provided for the remaining 16 states, but do include prices for each state. We estimate that the entire contents of the disclosure could exceed 35 million records. Researchers have reviewed a sample of the database records and determined the data to be valid with a high degree of confidence.

Of note, the seller indicates they receive weekly updates of voter registration data across the states and that they receive information via contacts within the state governments. Certain states require the seller to personally travel to locations in-state to receive the updated voter information. This suggests the information disclosure is not necessarily a technical compromise but rather a likely targeted campaign by a threat actor redistributing possibly legitimately obtained voter data for malicious purposes on a cybercrime forum.

To our knowledge, this represents the first reference on the criminal underground of actors selling or distributing lists of 2018 voter registration data, including US voters’ personally identifiable information and voting history. With the November 2018 midterm elections only four weeks away, the availability and currency of the voter records, if combined with other breached data, could be used by malicious actors to disrupt the electoral process or pursue large-scale identity theft. More here.

Meanwhile, over to Facebook…. (who are they to determine what is false? See something, say something and Facebook will punish us all.)

MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) – Facebook Inc will ban false information about voting requirements and fact-check fake reports of violence or long lines at polling stations ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections, company executives told Reuters, the latest effort to reduce voter manipulation on its service.

The world’s largest online social network, with 1.5 billion daily users, has stopped short of banning all false or misleading posts, something that Facebook has shied away from as it would likely increase its expenses and leave it open to charges of censorship.

The latest move addresses a sensitive area for the company, which has come under fire for its lax approach to fake news reports and disinformation campaigns, which many believe affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, won by Donald Trump.

The new policy was disclosed by Facebook’s cybersecurity policy chief, Nathaniel Gleicher, and other company executives.

The ban on false information about voting methods, set to be announced later on Monday, comes six weeks after Senator Ron Wyden asked Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg how Facebook would counter posts aimed at suppressing votes, such as by telling certain users they could vote by text, a hoax that has been used to reduce turnout in the past.

The information on voting methods becomes one of the few areas in which falsehoods are prohibited on Facebook, a policy enforced by what the company calls “community standards” moderators, although application of its standards has been uneven. It will not stop the vast majority of untruthful posts about candidates or other election issues.

“We don’t believe we should remove things from Facebook that are shared by authentic people if they don’t violate those community standards, even if they are false,” said Tessa Lyons, product manager for Facebook’s News Feed feature that shows users what friends are sharing.

Links to discouraging reports about polling places that may be inflated or misleading will be referred to fact-checkers under the new policy, Facebook said. If then marked as false, the reports will not be removed but will be seen by fewer of the poster’s friends.

Such partial measures leave Facebook more open to manipulation by users seeking to affect the election, critics say. Russia, and potentially other foreign parties, are already making “pervasive” efforts to interfere in upcoming U.S. elections, the leader of Trump’s national security team said in early August.

Just days before that, Facebook said it uncovered a coordinated political influence campaign to mislead its users and sow dissension among voters, removing 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram. Members of Congress briefed by Facebook said the methodology suggested Russian involvement.

Trump has disputed claims that Russia has attempted to interfere in U.S. elections. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied it.

WEIGHING BAN ON HACKED MATERIAL

Facebook instituted a global ban on false information about when and where to vote in 2016, but Monday’s move goes further, including posts about exaggerated identification requirements.

Facebook executives are also debating whether to follow Twitter Inc’s recent policy change to ban posts linking to hacked material, Gleicher told Reuters in an interview.

The dissemination of hacked emails from Democratic party officials likely played a role in tipping the 2016 presidential election to Trump, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has warned that Russia has recently been attempting to hack and steal information from U.S. candidates and government officials. More here.