Category Archives: Treasury

FBI Finally Investigating Hillary’s Server

Posted on by

The company that supports Hillary’s server operation is: http://platteriver.com/

FBI looking into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail setup

WaPo: The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.

Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Ken­dall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.

The FBI’s interest in Clinton’s e-mail system comes after the intelligence community’s inspector general referred the issue to the Justice Department in July. Intelligence officials expressed concern that some sensitive information was not in the government’s possession and could be “compromised.” The referral did not accuse Clinton of any wrongdoing, and the two officials said Tuesday that the FBI was not targeting her.

Kendall confirmed the contact, saying: “The government is seeking assurance about the storage of those materials. We are actively cooperating.”

A lawyer for the Denver company, Platte River Networks, declined to comment, as did multiple Justice Department officials.

 

The inquiries are bringing to light new information about Clinton’s use of the system and the lengths she went to install a private channel of communication outside government control — a setup that has emerged as a major issue in her presidential campaign.

For instance, the server installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home as she was preparing to take office as secretary of state was originally used by her first campaign for the presidency, in 2008, according to two people briefed on the setup. A staffer who was on the payroll of her political action committee set it up in her home, replacing a server that Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, had been using in the house.

The inquiries by the FBI follow concerns from government officials that potentially hundreds of e-mails that passed through Clinton’s private server contained classified or sensitive information. At this point, the probe is preliminary and is focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material.

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, declined to comment on the FBI’s actions. He noted that Clinton has called repeatedly for the State Department to release her e-mails to the public, a process that is ongoing.

In a statement, Merrill said that Clinton “did not send nor receive any emails that were marked classified at the time. We want to ensure that appropriate procedures are followed as these emails are reviewed while not unduly delaying the release of her emails. We want that to happen as quickly and as transparently as possible.”

The controversy over Clinton’s e-mail dates to the summer of 2014, when, according to government officials, State Department lawyers realized they didn’t have access to some of her records as they prepared responses to congressional requests related to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In October 2014, the State Department asked four former secretaries to turn over e-mails in their private possession. In December, Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of e-mails, which she said represented all of her work-related correspondence. She has said she deleted all other e-mails she had sent or received as secretary of state, indicating that they dealt only with personal matters.

In March, the New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail system. Clinton has said she handled her
e-mail this way for the convenience of carrying just one phone.

Critics say Clinton’s private server arrangement put her discussions with some aides outside the reach of government investigators, congressional committees and courts seeking public records from the State Department.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), wrote a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey on July 24 asking him what steps his office had taken to ensure that classified information held on Kendall’s thumb drive, and once kept on Clinton’s server, was being properly secured. A State Department official said that once the agency identified classified material in the e-mails in May, it instructed Clinton’s lawyers on “appropriate measures for physically securing” the e-mails.

Responsibility for setting up and maintaining the server that handled personal e-mail communications for Bill and Hillary Clinton passed through a number of different hands, starting with Clinton staffers with limited training in computer security and eventually expanding to Platte River.

In 2008, responsibility for the system was held by Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to the former president who served as a personal assistant and helped research at least two of his books. Cooper had no security clearance and no particular expertise in safeguarding computers, according to three people briefed on the server setup. Cooper declined to comment.

“The system we used was set up for President Clinton’s office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches,” Hillary Clinton said in March.

Those briefed on the server setup say the device installed for Bill Clinton was deemed too small for the addition of a sitting Cabinet official. Instead, a server that had been purchased for use by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign was installed at the Chappaqua home.

With the new server came an additional specialist: Bryan Pagliano, who had served as her campaign’s IT director. According to federal campaign finance records, Pagliano was paid by Clinton’s Senate leadership PAC through April 2009. The next month, he went to work for the State Department as an IT specialist, a department official said. The people briefed on the server indicated that he continued to act as the lead specialist responsible for it.

The e-mail system was not always reliable, these people said, with Pagliano summoned at various times to fix problems. Notably, the system crashed for days after New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

That led to new conversations about the need for better security, durability and a more professional setup, according to these people. In 2013, the Clintons hired Platte River to maintain the data.

Merrill, the Clinton spokesman, declined to respond to detailed questions about the setup of the server.

 

Benghazi Attacker Pleads to Go Home, Will Obama Approve?

Posted on by

The Benghazi suspect and leader of Ansar al Sharia, the group that attacked the two U.S. posts in Benghazi pleaded not guilty in October of 2014. Abu Khatallah’s lawyer, Michelle Peterson is a public defender located in Washington DC whose client list appears to be full of illegals and foreigners.

Khatallah filed his 24 page motion to the U.S. District Court on August 3, 2015 to return to Libya.

Benghazi defendant asks U.S. judge to send him back to Libya

HamptonRoads: The accused ringleader of the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, has asked a federal judge to dismiss terrorism charges against him and send him home.

In court papers filed Monday, lawyers for militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah claim U.S. military and Justice Department officials came up with an illegal ruse to secretly interrogate him for days on a Navy warship after he was captured by U.S. special forces in Libya in June 2014.

The lawyers contend Khatallah should have been flown to Washington, normally a 13-hour plane ride, to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Instead, they say, he was held aboard the New York, an amphibious transport dock, for 13 days where he was interrogated by CIA and counterterrorism officials before he was advised of his legal rights and turned over to a separate team of FBI agents investigating the Benghazi attack.

The court papers say President Barack Obama and other administration officials approved the lengthy sea transfer from Libya, even though it “deliberately and outrageously” violated federal law.

Libyan and U.S. officials have described Khatallah as the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, which the State Department considers a terrorist organization. In an 18-count indictment, authorities say he devised and helped carry out armed attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi during the night of Sept. 11, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.

The U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and a foreign service officer, Sean Smith, died during the raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound. Two contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in a subsequent armed attack on a CIA facility about a mile away.

In the court filings, defense lawyers urged U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to return Khatallah to Libya, which they said opposed his transfer to the United States. They said he was charged in a sealed criminal complaint on July 15, 2013, but not seized by U.S. authorities until a year later.

“In the interim,” they said, “the government conceived and executed a deliberate plan to capture Mr. Abu Khatallah and transport him to the United States in a manner intended to facilitate the government’s prosecution while violating not only Mr. Abu Khatallah’s fundamental rights, but also domestic and international law.”

Defense lawyers said U.S. government agencies, including Justice, Defense and the CIA, had developed the arrest and transfer plan. “Thus, the violations of law at issue here were not committed by a few rogue agents of the government, but by the executive branch as a whole,” they wrote.

They said Khatallah was transferred by ship “in order to allow investigators the maximum amount of time to question him.”

They said the New York sailed “at the slowest possible speed in order to extend the time within which the investigators could interrogate him without a lawyer.”

And they said he was not turned over to the FBI and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination until five days after he was put aboard.

Government prosecutors have not yet responded to the defense allegations.

Inside the Iran Deal, Killers Go Free

Posted on by

Breitbart: The Iranian regime has filed a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency, alleging that the United States has already broken the Iran deal.

The complaint cites remarks by White House press secretary Josh Earnest about the possible use of military force in the long run, and the use of nuclear inspections to gain intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities in the meantime. These are frequent talking points that the White House uses to reassure legislators like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Iran calls them a “material breach” of the nuclear deal itself.

According to the text of the Iran deal itself (page 20), any of the parties can treat “significant nonperformance” of the agreement “as grounds
to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA.” More here.

Then, the Washington Times notes that Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has come out early in full support of the Iran deal. One wonders if she has read the whole document much less the annex agreements.

The real terrifying part of the agreement

Forgotten flaw in Iran nuclear deal: It lets killers go free

Reuters: President Barack Obama has in good faith negotiated an agreement with Iran that would end a broad range of economic sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran’s promise to scale back its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. I believe that Congress’s support of the agreement would be a very serious mistake.

I find persuasive the arguments of many analysts that the proposal fails because it lifts sanctions before Iran has over time proven that it is committed to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

Perhaps even more importantly, I oppose the agreement because it does not require Iran to stop its funding of Hezbollah and other extremist hoodlums around the world.

But more fundamentally, I oppose the proposal because, while addressing strategic issues, the deal ignores a moral issue, among the most profound of our time.

Put simply: Iran sponsors terrorism. I am convinced I could prove that proposition in a court of law, and indeed some Americans have done so. Survivors of terrorist attacks have sued the Iranian government in American courts, and won significant judgments.

But the Iranian government has refused to pay those judgments, and the proposed agreement does nothing to challenge that intransigence. In fact, the agreement would release up to 150 billion dollars of frozen assets to Iran, without requiring that a dime go to paying off the survivors of Iran-sponsored terror.

I understand that sometimes strategic interests require us to negotiate with enemies; and I do not underestimate the imminence of Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb capability. And as a veteran of war, I favor peace, when peaceful means can be found to deter aggression.

But the world has within its grasp those peaceful means, in international sanctions, and those sanctions should be strengthened, not abandoned, so long as Iran sponsors terror against civilian populations and foments unrest among its neighbors. Some of those individuals and entities who will be removed from the sanctions list are associated with terrorism in addition to nuclear proliferation.

I have had the good fortune to have lived through a good deal of history, enough to know that history most often favors principled actions over short-term pragmatism.

One of the most significant regimens of international sanctions ever imposed was the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. In response to a humanitarian crisis in South Africa, that law imposed economic sanctions against South Africa, sanctions would not be lifted until South Africa met specified conditions, granting basic human rights to its own people.

When President Ronald Reagan vetoed that bill, Nobel Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu predicted that the veto would be “judged harshly by history.” Congress overrode the President’s veto, kept the sanctions in place – and five years later, minority white rule ended.

Historians still debate the role that those sanctions played in ending apartheid. But I don’t think anyone can doubt that Congress would be “judged harshly by history” had it given up, or had it agreed to end sanctions in return for a mere temporary suspension of apartheid rule. Congress met the most important moral issue of its time the way moral issues must be met – with principle.

And so must Congress act today in the face of Iranian terror and aggression.

The proposed agreement contains a very long list of individuals and institutions – previously identified as supporting attacks against the West or Iran’s nuclear bomb project – whose names are on international sanctions lists but who, should the agreement be approved, will soon be off. The roll call should make anyone shudder.

For example, among those who would be freed from European sanctions is Ahmad Vahidi, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard and a suspect in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people died in that bombing, and hundreds were injured, making it the deadliest bombing in the history of Argentina.

No one has ever been held accountable for those murdered, a denial of justice that led human rights leaders, among them Pope Francis, to sign a petition in protest. Justice moved slowly, but in 2007, the Argentine judicial authorities identified Ahmad Vahidi as one of those responsible for the bombing, INTERPOL listed him as wanted for “aggravated murder.” Incredibly, part of the deal with Iran would remove him from Europe’s sanctions list, before he ever faces the bar of justice.

Peruse the agreement some more, and you will find the name of Javad Al Yasin, the head of something called the “Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.” Al Yasin was on the sanctions list for his work in developing Iran’s nuclear bomb. Not only does the Iranian agreement take Al Yasin off the sanctions list, it even removes sanctions from the Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.

International sanctions against Iran were effective because they created an economic incentive for Iran to come to the bargaining table. But they were effective as well because they prevented funds from reaching named militants and organizations sponsoring attacks against the West. It would be a mistake of historic proportions to remove the sanctions without evidence that Iran has ceased its sponsorship of such attacks, and without a permanent end to their ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

And so, our negotiators must insist on an agreement in which Tehran agrees to permanent, not temporary, limitations on its abilities to prepare weapons-grade fissionable materials and ballistic missiles.

The sanctions must remain in place until Tehran renounces terrorism, stops funding Hezbollah, and honors judgments awarding compensation to those whose loved ones have been killed in past attacks.

Can we get such a deal? In urging the nation to support the end of sanctions, the president has said that the deal he presented to Congress is the best one that could be negotiated. Others disagree. But whoever is right, one thing is certain: no agreement is worth supporting if it undermines the most basic principles that must govern relations among civilized nations.

Shortly before his death, President John Kennedy delivered a speech in which he told Americans of the peace he hoped to bring to the world. He called it “genuine peace … not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.”

The proposed Iran agreement does just the opposite: faced with an international crisis, it just kicks the can down the road. It provides for temporary restrictions on nuclear aggression, while largely ignoring the broader threats of militant attacks and proxy war.

It asks the next generation to solve a problem that this generation refused to address squarely.

We owe it to our progeny to leave a record not of avoidance but of principled action. Congress should reject the proposed agreement.

 

Stimulus Money Fraud in Maryland

Posted on by

TheHill.com:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) wants the White House to look at unspent money from the 2009 stimulus package instead of asking Congress for a new fiscal package.

President Barack Obama on Saturday night wrote to congressional leaders urging them to pass legislation extending tax cuts and add new spending to prevent “hundreds of thousands” teacher layoffs, among other cuts. Obama said that without such measures the economy could “slide backwards.”

Hoyer said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that there is “spending fatigue” across the country and that he is encouraging the administration to look at last year’s $787 billion stimulus package to see if some money can be redirected.

“I have asked the White House to look at the package we already passed,” Hoyer said. “I personally believe if we have dollars not yet expended in the recovery act we could apply to this immediate need.”

***

Has one wondering now, does it not?

IG Finds Extensive Abuse of Stimulus Energy Efficiency Funds

Maryland contractors’ directors used grant funds to renovate home, donate to child’s school, hike executive pay

 

FreeBeacon: Officials at a pair of government contractors routinely overbilled the Energy Department and used government funds for personal expenses such as home renovation and donations to an executive’s child’s school, according to federal watchdogs.

Those were just a few of the numerous improper expenditures of grant funds under a DOE weatherization program funded by federal taxpayers and administered by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).

“Weak fiscal controls over subgrantees, combined with deficiencies in subgrantee accounting systems, have led to the Program funding improper payments to local agencies rather than furthering the Program’s goals of installing energy efficiency retrofits for low-income families,” DOE’s inspector general said in a report released on Tuesday.

The report accuses the contractors, C&O Conservation and Maryland Energy Conservation (MEC), of “unethical accounting practices” and warns, “in the absence of immediate improvements in financial controls, the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse is increased.”

The two contractors together received more than $15 million in taxpayer funds through the weatherization program. In addition to illicit financial practices, the report raises concerns about the two contractors’ “less-than-arm’s-length business arrangements.”

According to the report, M&O routinely overbilled DHCD for services related to DOE weatherization grants partly funded by the 2009 stimulus bill, which set aside $5 billion for weatherization grants to state agencies.

The IG examined just 80 of C&O’s 1,135 federally funded weatherization projects. It identified 57 examples of the company charging excessive fees for its services or inflating the hourly rates for which it billed the DHCD.

The report also identified a host of unallowable billings under the program, including maintenance of a C&O director’s personal vehicle, a $4,000 donation to a director’s child’s school, and “about $8,000 in bad debt expenses related to reimbursement claims that C&O had written off and then charged to the Program.”

“C&O used Program funds for the personal benefit of inside directors,” the IG wrote. “Of great concern, we found that construction on a C&O inside director’s home was funded in part with Program funds.”

C&O and MEC employees took part in insulation and drywall installation “training,” they told the IG. That training entailed renovating the home of a C&O director and charging related expenses to the weatherization program.

The relationship between the two contractors is also of concern, the IG found. “C&O and MEC’s boards of directors included employees and multiple related family members,” the report found.

“Given this lack of independence on the boards, family members and executive employees had the ability to substantially influence the actions of their respective organizations, such as approving their own compensation or conducting business with inside directors and related parties.”

Due in part to those apparent conflicts, excessive compensation was a particular issue of concern for the contractors. One C&O director who also served as an “executive employee” received a 79 percent raise in 2012, which the IG deemed “unreasonable under OMB cost principles.”

It also questioned compensation for an MEC director’s spouse, who received “an hourly rate more than 50 percent higher than that of the nearest counterpart in the organization” while performing administrative work from home.

MEC declined to comment on the report. C&O did not return a request for comment by press time.

What About Those Stingrays? You Cool With This?

Posted on by

Surveillance Nation is here today and are you good with this?

Is Microsoft reading YOUR emails? Windows 10 may threaten your privacy, watchdogs warn

Windows 10:  DailyMailUK

Within 45 pages of terms and conditions, the privacy information suggests Microsoft begins watching from when an account is created, saving customer’s basic information, passwords and credit card details, Newsweek reported.

The tech giant is also said to save Bing search queries and conversations with Cortana, as well as lists of which websites and apps users visit and the contents of private emails and files, as well as their handwriting.   The privacy statement says: ‘your typed and handwritten words are collected.’

The policy adds that Microsoft collects information about a user’s speech and handwriting to ‘help improve and personalise our ability to correctly recognise your input,’ while information from their contacts book is used, such as names and calendar events ‘to better recognise people and events when you dictate messages or documents’.

Cortana, for example, makes use of information about who a user calls on their phone, plus data from their emails and texts, calendar and contacts, as well as their web history and location.  Microsoft says that data is collected to provide users with a more personalised service and better character recognition, for example, but may also be used for targeted adverting, meaning it may share information with third parties.

The company assigns each of its users a unique advertising ID so it does not reveal what they ‘say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files to target ads to you.’

But it has still come under fire from privacy campaigners.

Online privacy pressure group, European Digital Rights (EDRi) told The Times that Microsoft’s policy was ‘not only bad news for privacy. Your free speech rights can also be violated on an ad hoc basis.’

Microsoft ‘basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties.’

Kirsten Fiedler, EDRi’s Managing Director told MailOnline: ‘Unlike Microsoft’s promise, the company’s new 45 page-long terms of service are not straightforward at all.

‘Online companies should finally start explaining their terms in an understandable manner so that we can make informed choices about the services we want to use.

 

Stingray surveillance sparks privacy concerns in Congress

USAToday: WASHINGTON — Members of Congress are increasingly trying to rein in a secretive federal law enforcement program that uses devices known as Stingrays to capture cellphone data from unsuspecting Americans.

“They are spying on law-abiding citizens as we speak,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who recently won House approval of a measure to end the program.

The box-shaped Stingray devices are the size of small suitcases, cost about $400,000 to buy and operate, and are usually attached to the cars of federal, state or local law enforcement agents. They mimic cellphone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius to connect to and feed data to police about users’ locations, text messages, calls and emails.

At least a half-dozen federal agencies — including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — use the technology, which can penetrate the walls of a home, apartment complex or office.

Police say the technology — which can also be attached to planes — helps them catch criminals by tracking their movements and actions. But critics complain that it violates the constitutional rights of innocent citizens whose cellphone data is also seized, often without a warrant.

At least 53 law enforcement agencies in 21 states also use Stingrays or similar devices, according to research by the American Civil Liberties Union. Local police typically buy the devices with grants from the federal government and sign agreements with the FBI not to disclose their use, said ACLU attorney Nathan Wessler.

A June 2014 investigation by USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers found that an increasing number of local and state police agencies were deploying Stingrays and other technology to secretly collect cellphone data from suspected criminals and law-abiding Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing.

“It’s become clear how staggeringly widespread the use of this technology is,” Wessler said. “We’ve been heartened to see that some members of Congress are taking the privacy concerns quite seriously.”

The House this summer passed, by voice vote, a Justice Department spending bill that included Issa’s amendment to bar funding for the use of Stingrays without a warrant. Issa said he won’t stop there, in part because the Senate is unlikely to pass that measure .

“I will use additional opportunities to get it done,” Issa told USA TODAY. “Right now, law enforcement won’t even tell us how many Stingrays they have. The only way to protect the American people is to change the law.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also are targeting the Stingray program in a broader bill called the GPS Act. The legislation would require law enforcement agents to obtain warrants before tracking Americans’ locations by using Stingray-type devices or tapping into cellphones, laptops, or GPS navigation systems.

“I don’t see how you can use a Stingray without it raising very substantial privacy issues,” Wyden told USA TODAY. “I want police to be able to track dangerous individuals and their locations, but it ought to be done with court oversight under the Fourth Amendment.”

The FBI has said it has a policy of obtaining warrants before using Stingray devices, although it has broad exceptions, including one that allows the technology to be used in public places where the agency believes people shouldn’t have an expectation of privacy.

“It’s how we find killers, it’s how we find kidnappers, it’s how we find drug dealers, it’s how we find missing children, it’s how we find pedophiles,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters in Charlotte. last fall. “It’s work you want us to be able to do.”

Chaffetz is also using his position as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to gather information as part of an investigation into the use of stingrays, said his spokesman, M.J. Henshaw.

At the same time, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the panel, have been pressing the Department of Justice for answers about Stingray practices and policies. Sen. Bill Nelson, R-Fla., has also called on the Federal Communications Commission to review how the devices are used.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the agency is reviewing its policies for the use of Stingray devices. He said he didn’t know when the review would be done.

“With regards to this technology, the Department of Justice is in the process of examining its policies to ensure they reflect our continued commitment to conducting our vital missions while according appropriate respect for privacy and civil liberties,” said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush.

While the Justice Department reviews its policies, states have begun passing their own laws to ban state and local police from using Stingrays without a warrant.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a ban in May after legislation was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the state Legislature. In addition to requiring police to obtain a warrant before using Stingray devices, the law says police must quickly delete any data collected on people who were not targets of a criminal investigation.

Similar laws have been passed in Virginia and Utah and are being considered in California, New York and Texas.

“The American people are looking for a balance between security and liberty,” Issa said. “After 9/11, we moved too far towards security. We need to move back toward liberty.”