Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Russian Hackers Also Hit the Clinton Foundation

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So, global adversaries came to understand early that much of the covert and diplomatic work and connections by Hillary Clinton during her term as senator and later as Secretary of State was going on in a dual location, meaning the Clinton Foundation and the U.S. State Department. So….let the hacking begin, and they did.

Now there is a question: Are there more than one servers? Evidence speaks to the answer, YES. See this item from Forbes where there are clues.

 

Records reveal that Hillary Clinton’s private clintonemail.com server shared an IP address with her husband Bill Clinton’s email server, presidentclinton.com, and both servers were housed in New York City, not in the basement of the Clintons’ Chappaqua, New York home.

Web archives show that the Presidentclinton.com Web address was being operated by the Clinton Foundation as of 2009, when Hillary Clinton registered her own clintonemail.com server.

Numerous Clinton Foundation employees used the presidentclinton.com server for their own email addresses, which means that they were using email accounts that, if hacked, would have given any hacker complete access to Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails, as well. More here.

Clinton Foundation Said to Be Breached by Russian Hackers

Bloomberg: The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the November election, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The attacks on the foundation’s network, as well as those of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, compound concerns about her digital security even as the FBI continues to investigate her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

A spokesman for the foundation, Brian Cookstra, said he wasn’t aware of any breach. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them.

For a primer on recent cyber intrusions, click here.

Before the Democratic National Committee disclosed a major computer breach last week, U.S. officials informed both political parties and the presidential campaigns of Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that sophisticated hackers were attempting to penetrate their computers, according to a person familiar with the government investigation into the attacks.

The hackers in fact sought data from at least 4,000 individuals associated with U.S. politics — party aides, advisers, lawyers and foundations — for about seven months through mid-May, according to another person familiar with the investigations.

Thousands of Documents

The thefts set the stage for what could be a Washington remake of the public shaming that shook Sony in 2014, when thousands of inflammatory internal e-mails filled with gossip about world leaders and Hollywood stars were made public. Donor information and opposition research on Trump purportedly stolen from the Democratic Party has surfaced online, and the culprit has threatened to publish thousands more documents.

A hacker or group of hackers calling themselves Guccifer 2.0 posted another trove of documents purportedly from the DNC on Tuesday, including what they said was a list of donors who had made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

The Republican Party and the Trump campaign have been mostly silent on the computer attacks. In an earlier statement, Trump said the hack was a political ploy concocted by the Democrats.

Information about the scope of the attacks and the government warnings raises new questions about how long the campaigns have known about the threats and whether they have done enough to protect their systems.

The Clinton campaign was aware as early as April that it had been targeted by hackers with links to the Russian government on at least four recent occasions, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s computer security.

U.S. Inquiries

The U.S. Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency are all involved in the investigation of the theft of data from the political parties and individuals over the last several months, one of the people familiar with the investigation said. The agencies have made no public statements about their inquiry.

The FBI has been careful to keep that investigation separate from the review of Clinton’s use of private e-mail, using separate investigators, according to the person briefed on the matter. The agencies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said that he couldn’t comment on government briefings about cyber security and that the campaign had no evidence that its systems were compromised.

“We routinely communicate and cooperate with government agencies on security-related matters,” he said. “What appears evident is that the Russian groups responsible for the DNC hack are intent on attempting to influence the outcome of this election.”

The DNC wouldn’t directly address the attacks but said in a written statement that it believes the leaks are “part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment about the government warnings. The Republican National Committee didn’t respond to e-mail messages. A Sanders spokesman, Michael Briggs, said he wasn’t aware of the warnings.

IDing the Hackers

The government’s investigation is following a similar path as the DNC’s, including trying to precisely identify the hackers and their possible motives, according to people familiar with the investigations. The hackers’ link to the Russian government was first identified by CrowdStrike Inc., working for the Democratic Party.

A law firm reviewing the DNC’s initial findings, Baker & McKenzie, has begun working with three additional security firms — FireEye Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc. and Fidelis Cybersecurity — to confirm the link, according to two people familiar with the matter, underscoring Democrats’ concerns that the stolen information could be used to try to influence the outcome of the November election.

A spokesman for Baker & McKenzie didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. DNC spokesman Luis Miranda said the party worked only with CrowdStrike.

If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person familiar with the party’s thinking said.

So far the released documents have revealed little that is new or explosive, but that could change. Guccifer 2.0 has threatened to eventually release thousands of internal memos and other documents.

Line of Attack

Sensitive documents from the Clinton Foundation could have the most damaging potential. The Trump camp has said it plans to make the foundation’s activities a subject of attacks against Clinton; the sort of confidential data contained in e-mails, databases and other digital archives could aid that effort.

An analysis by Fidelis confirmed that groups linked to Russian intelligence agencies were behind the DNC hack, according to a published report.

The government fills a crucial gap in flagging attacks that organizations can’t detect themselves, said Tony Lawrence, a former U.S. Army cyber specialist and now chief executive officer of VOR Technology, a computer security company in Hanover, Maryland.

“These state actors spend billions of dollars on exploits to gather information on candidates, and nine times out of ten [victims] won’t be able to identify or attribute them,” he said.

Google Accounts

Bloomberg News reported Friday that the hackers who hit the DNC and Clinton’s campaign burrowed much further into the U.S. political system than initially thought, sweeping in law firms, lobbyists, consultants, foundations and policy groups in a campaign that targeted thousands of Google e-mail accounts and lasted from October through mid-May.

Data from the attacks have led some security researchers to conclude that the hackers were linked to Russian intelligence services and were broadly successful in stealing reports, policy papers, correspondence and other information. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, denied that the Russian government was involved.

Russia uses sophisticated “information operations” to advance foreign policy, and the target audience for this kind of mission wouldn’t be U.S. voters or even U.S. politicians, said Brendan Conlon, who once led a National Security Agency hacking unit.

“Why would Russia go to this trouble? Simple answer — because it met their foreign policy objectives, to weaken the U.S. in the eyes of our allies and adversaries,” said Conlon, now CEO of Vahna Inc., a cyber security firm in Washington. Publishing the DNC report on Trump “weakens both candidates — lists out all the weaknesses of Trump specifically while highlighting weaknesses of Clinton’s security issues. The end result is a weaker president once elected.”

Russia Link

Russia has an expansive cyber force that it has deployed in complex disinformation campaigns throughout Europe, according to intelligence officials.

BfV, the German intelligence agency, has concluded that Russia was responsible for a 2015 hack against the Bundestag that forced shutdown of its computer systems for several days. Germany is under “permanent threat” from Russian hackers, said BfV chief Hans-Georeg Maassen.

Security software maker Trend Micro said in May that Russian hackers had been trying for several weeks to steal data from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, and that they also tried to hack the Dutch Safety Board computer systems to obtain an advance copy of a report on the downing of a Malaysian aircraft over Ukraine in July 2014. The report said the plane was brought down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.

The cyber attacks are part of a broader pattern of state-sponsored hacking by Russia focused on political targets, with a goal of giving Russia the upper hand in dealing with other governments, said Pasi Eronen, a Helsinki-based cyber warfare researcher who has advised Finland’s Defense Ministry.

 

Obama’s Retribution Against Florida, Orlando Terror Attack

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Shameful…yet this administration knows no shame. Reprehensible….

      

FEMA denies request for emergency declaration following Pulse shooting

OrlandoSentinel: A request to the federal government to declare an emergency for the state of Florida following the Pulse nightclub shooting was denied today, according to statement from Gov. Rick Scott‘s office.

“Because your request did not demonstrate how the emergency response associated with this situation is beyond the capability of the State and affected local governments… your request for an emergency declaration is denied,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a letter to Scott.

On Twitter, Scott called the denial “disappointing” and “unthinkable.”

If grated, the formal declaration of emergency would have made available $5 million in federal funding.

Scott said the money would have been used to cover the expense of provisions for health and safety measures and managing, controlling and reducing the immediate threat to public health and safety.

“It is incredibly disappointing that the Obama Administration denied our request for an Emergency Declaration,” Scott said on Twitter. “It is unthinkable that (the president) does not define the Orlando terror attack, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, as an emergency.

“We’re committing every state resource possible to help the victims and the community heal and we expect the same from the federal government.”

Scott’s office has 30 days to appeal the denial.

Despite the denial, the federal government will allocate $253,000 to pay for overtime for the first responders who assisted the victims of the Pulse shooting, Scott’s office said.

FEMA Letter

 

 

Here is One That Should Have Received a Visa, But…

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Athens, Greece – Working for the US Army in Afghanistan can get you killed, but there’s a silver lining.

  

The US Army offers its Afghan translators the right to request the Special Immigration Visa (SIV). It’s a program initiated by the US to help certain foreign employees leave their home countries and get on a path to permanent residency in the states—usually for protection from groups like the Taliban. For the last four years, the program has been renewed in the National Defense Authorization Act. This year, however, both the House of Representatives and the Senate failed to vote for the allocation of more visas, which could imperil remaining applicants.

Through that program, Muhammad, a former US Army translator in Afghanistan that I met in the port of Piraeus, Greece, should already be in the US. But like several other forgotten Afghan translators who served the United States, his visa has not come through. After being laid off by his army base in 2014, Muhammad fell into a bureaucratic gap between the United States’ promises to its employees in Afghanistan, and its rocky attempt to withdraw from the country.

Muhammad applied for the SIV in 2014. He was rejected in May 2015. According to the rejection email, his application was ruled invalid on the grounds of “Lack of faithful and valuable service.” Muhammad says that’s because he was fired—but not for lack of faithfulness or value. 2014 was simply the year that the Obama administration started closing army bases, in an early phase of withdrawal from Afghanistan. With fewer bases and fewer troops, fewer translators were needed. Muhammad was downsized by government contractor Mission Essential.

So in January 2016, he decided to make a go of it on his own. He paid $5,500 in smuggling fees to be trafficked from Afghanistan to Iran, from Iran to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Greece. By the time he arrived in the port of Piraeus in March, the 22-year-old’s life had been reduced to the phone in his pocket, the clothes on his back, and a sheaf of papers from his job with the United States Army.

His service and his perfect English together, in theory, put him in a better position than most refugees, but because he is Afghan, he isn’t even eligible for any of the expedited European relocation measures that the Syrian and Iraqi refugees sheltering in the port can claim.

Today he lives in limbo in a tent outside the port’s E1 terminal, where he can watch the Greek ferries come and go, bearing tourists to their summer holidays.

A life-threatening profession

Muhammad says that he was well aware his job translating between US and Afghan forces in the city of Khost came with a death sentence from Taliban insurgents, who oppose the current government and US intervention. He never told anyone, not even his family, what he did for a living.

“I was trying to keep a low profile,” he says, sitting cross-legged next to a ship bollard in the port. He forks a clump of rice from crinkled plastic tray on the ground in front of him. If anyone asked about his work in Afghanistan, he says, he told them he was going to school. These days, he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen.

In an Oct. 2014 episode of Last Week Tonight, US comedian John Oliver highlighted the bureaucratic nightmare that Iraqi and Afghan translators have to deal with in applying for an SIV—and the US system’s inability to take into account individual circumstances and dangers. One Afghan translator interviewed by Oliver had to wait three years and four  months between applying for his SIV and arriving in the United States. In that time, the Taliban killed his father and kidnapped his younger brother.

In April 2016, Muhammad met someone who nearly met a similar fate: another former Afghan translator for the US army named Ahmad. Until Jan. this year, 25-year-old Ahmad worked for the US army in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Knowing the dangers of his job, he applied for his SIV in 2014, but the paperwork moved slowly. He went back to work on the base.

In Dec. 2015, Ahmad’s family in Kabul received a letter from the Taliban, which threatened to kill his parents if he kept working for American troops. The next month, in January 2016, Ahmad decided he could not wait for a visa any longer, and decided to flee Afghanistan with his younger brother. They paid smugglers nearly $11,000, and got as far as Piraeus. Like Muhammad, the two brothers now camp in the port. Ahmad has not yet tried to restart his visa application process.

The SIV process has five basic steps, which include several phases of petition and permission before actually applying for the visa. The State Department estimates that this entire process takes 357 business days—but clearly, it can also take much longer.

“The single biggest cause for delay is security checks,” says Betsy Fisher, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), which provides legal assistance to refugees. A puzzling problem, considering that anyone who has worked as a translator on a US army base in a conflict zone, has already undergone extensive security checks, including periodic polygraph tests.

Those who make it to the United States…

With patience, some Afghan translators do make it to the United States. Hamed, who asked to go by his first name only, is a former translator who worked for the US Army in the provinces of Khost and Paktika between 2010 and 2015. He began his SIV application in 2012. His application was approved the next year, but he did not receive his visa until early 2015. Luckily, he and his family survived the wait.

“I told them I want to leave as quick as possible,” Hamed told Quartz about the sense of urgency he felt after multiple threats due to his work for the Army. When he got word one night that he was finally cleared to leave, he says, he was so overcome with joy that he couldn’t sleep. In May 2015, he and his family boarded a plane to the United States.

But their departure has not had an entirely happy ending. In Afghanistan, Hamed’s wife was in her last semester of law school in Afghanistan, but they left before she could finish. Hamed has a degree in information technology, but in Woodbridge, Virginia, where they now reside, he has only been able to find a job in fast food.

…and those who don’t

Today, fewer than 4,000 SIV visas are still available, according to Fisher. Roughly 10,000 SIV applicants are currently waiting for a decision.

With the Balkan route that saw a million refugees work their way into Europe in 2015 effectively shut down, Muhammad and Ahmad’s only options are to wait, apply for asylum in Greece, or go home again. Asylum in Greece is not an option, says Muhammad. “This is not a country which can bear refugees,” he says of its record-high unemployment and the economically paralyzing effects of austerity. “Greeks already have too many problems.”

Despite being stonewalled by US immigration authorities, he carries with him at all times proof of his years of army service: copies of letters of recommendation from two sergeants he worked for, as well as certificates commending his work—just in case they might come in handy.

“I have no idea what to do,” he says.

U.S. Supreme Court Sotormayor’s Dissent, Focus on Color

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Sotomayor Dissent Reads Like ‘A Black Lives Matter Manifesto’

   

Kevin Daley/DailyCaller: U.S. . Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor submitted a racially-charged dissent in a Fourth Amendment case on Monday, which commentators hailed as a “Brown/Black Lives Matter manifesto.”

The case, Utah v. Strieff, was occasioned when police stopped Salt Lake City man Edward Strieff on leaving a house suspected to quarter drug activity. The state of Utah concedes the initial stop was illegal, as the officers in question had no probable cause to seize and search Strieff.

During the course of the stop, officers discovered Strieff had an outstanding warrant for a small traffic violation, and methamphetamine in his pocket. The Court was asked to decide whether the exclusionary rule — which prohibits police and prosecutors from using evidence obtained illegally — applies when an officer learns during an illegal stop that there is a warrant for an individual’s arrest, and finds additional contraband while executing the arrest on said warrant.

The High Court ruled 5-3 that the arrest, and the evidence obtained during the arrest, were legitimate, even if the initial stop was not. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by the Chief Justice, and Justices Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito.

Sotomayor filed a peppery dissent, joined in part by Justice Ginsburg.

“The white defendant in this case shows that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner,” she wrote. “But it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk’— instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.”

“We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are ‘isolated,’” she continued. “They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.”

Elsewhere in the dissent, she characterizes the United States as a “carceral state,” and pillories the “civil death” endured by those subject to arrest, a process she describes in vivid terms. She also accuses the Court of treating minority communities as “second class citizens.”

The dissent’s citations are as interesting as the text itself, which read like a survey of the American black literary tradition. At various points, she cites “The Souls of Black Folk,” by W. E. B. Du Bois, Michelle Alexander, a law professor who has written extensively on over incarceration, and the more radical works of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Sotomayor has written passionately on racial issues before. Liberal commentators were effusive in their praise of her dissent in Schuette v. Coalition To Defend Affirmative Action, among the most widely read of the Court’s opinions in recent years.

“Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, ‘No, where are you really from?’, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country,” she wrote. “Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’”

Liberals observers lionized the dissent within minutes of its publication. Lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald said the opinion is a “perfect illustration of why diversity matters.” Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia attorney and DailyKos blogger, called it “epic and important.” “It’s a Brown/Black Lives Matter manifesto,” he added.

 

 

 

WH Ignoring Law Banning Russian Arms to Iran

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Obama Admin Under Scrutiny for Ignoring U.S. Law Banning Russian Arms Sale to Iran

White House stalls congressional inquiry into its failure to invoke law

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is stalling a congressional inquiry into its ongoing refusal to uphold a U.S. law that would sanction Russia for selling advanced missile systems to Iran, according to recent communications between the State Department and Congress exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

President Obama has the authority under U.S. law to designate as illegal Russia’s recent sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 missile system, a long-range weapon that would boost the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities.

 

The administration has so far declined to exercise its sanction authority under law and has been stalling attempts by Congress to discern the rationale behind this decision, prompting accusations that the administration is ignoring U.S. law and “acquiescing” to the sale in order to preserve last summer’s comprehensive nuclear deal.

Rep. Steve Chabot (R., Ohio), who first launched an inquiry challenging the administration’s reluctance to sanction the sale in early April, told the Free Beacon that the White House is continuing to punt questions from lawmakers, jeopardizing efforts by Western nations to block the arms sale.

The administration informed Chabot on June 8—more than two months after his initial request—that it has not reached a determination as to whether it will move forward with sanctions as specified under the law.

Obama administration officials reiterated this stance when contacted by the Free Beacon late last week.

“Frankly, I’m disappointed in the administration’s response to my letter requesting a quick determination that Russia’s transfer of the S-300 missile system to Iran is progressing their efforts to acquire advanced conventional weapons systems,” Chabot told the Free Beacon. “Unfortunately, the administration’s abysmal response indicates that they are more than reluctant to provide a determination on this case—which is exceptionally disconcerting considering the administration admits they have been trying to persuade Russia not to proceed with the weapon transfer.”

U.S. officials continue to avoid specifying whether the president will use current U.S. laws to designate the sale as illicit and place sanctions upon Russia.

This power, granted under the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act of 1992, allows the president to sanction any sale of “advanced conventional weapons” to Iran by other nations.

Obama administration officials have not explained why the law is still not being followed months after Russia announced it had made good on the multi-million dollar arms sale to Iran.

“We regret the delay in responding to your inquiry,” the State Department informed Chabot in its most recent communication, according to a copy viewed by the Free Beacon.

While the administration remains “concerned” about the S-300 sale, it is not prepared to take action, according to the State Department, which was ordered by the White House to provide Chabot’s office with a response.

“We remain concerned about this and have strongly urged Russia not to proceed with the sale of an S-300 system to Iran, as the transfer of these surface-to-air weapons systems to Iran would add to tension in the region and be clearly inconsistent with our common nonproliferation goals,” the State Department wrote to Chabot.

“The Department will continue to implement, as required, the various sanctions authorities we have to support our non-proliferation priorities,” the letter adds.

A State Department official further told the Free Beacon it has not yet decided how to react to the sale.

“We’re continuing to closely follow reports concerning the delivery of the S-300 missile system from Russia to Iran,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on record. “We have not yet made any determination as to whether this delivery, if and when complete, would trigger any actions under U.S. authorities.”

Lawmakers, as well as reporters, have been trying for months to obtain answers from the administration about the sale. So far, U.S. officials have declined to provide a rationale as to why the administration has not exercised its sanction authority.

“These systems would significantly bolster Iran’s offensive capabilities and introduce new obstacles to our efforts to eliminate the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. I believe existing U.S. sanctions should be used to deter Russia from transferring this or other dangerous weapons systems to Iran,” Chabot wrote in his initial inquiry to the White House.

Obama administration officials are fighting against enforcing U.S. laws designating the sale in order to keep Iran from breaking its commitments under the nuclear agreement, according to one foreign policy adviser who works intimately with Congress on the issue.

“The Obama administration seems willing to let Iran get away with anything, up to and including acquiring destabilizing weapons that will remake the military balance in the Middle East, just to preserve the nuclear deal,” the source said. “It’s difficult to imagine what would ever trigger U.S. action, if importing these missiles that make Iran immune from outside pressure isn’t enough. Critics of the Iran deal predicted a lot of this, but the collapse on S-300s is worse than many of them imagined.”