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Congress should sanction China operations due to synthetic opioid production and should also list all variants of synthetic opioids as weapons of mass destruction under the chemical and biological weapons convention. DEA now has offices in China to work with officials there and investigation trafficking patterns.
The United States consumes 85% of all the world’s natural and synthetic opiates, which in 2015 factored in 33,091 U.S. deaths, up more than 4000 from the previous year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999. When average U.S. life expectancies for men and women edged downward last year, for the first time in decades, many health professionals blamed opiate abuse.
The opium poppy is no longer the starting point for many of the opiates on the street. The new compounds, often sold mixed with heroin, originate in illicit labs in China. “For the cartels, why wait for a field of poppies to grow and harvest if you can get your hands on the precursor chemicals and cook a batch of fentanyl in a lab?” says Tim Reagan, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) Cincinnati office.
In late 2015, the drug agency persuaded its Chinese counterpart to add 116 synthetic drugs to its list of controlled substances; fentanyl and several analogs were included. In response, underground Chinese labs began tweaking the fentanyl molecule, which is easy to alter for anyone with basic knowledge of chemistry and lab tools. By adding chemical groups, unscrupulous chemists have created new, unregulated variants, some of them even more potent than the original.
Hoping to stem the tide of synthetic opiates, DEA has taken the fight to China, as prolific a maker of illicit drugs as it is of legitimate chemicals. According to a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report last month, “China is a global source of illicit fentanyl and other [new psychoactive substances] because the country’s vast chemical and pharmaceutical industries are weakly regulated and poorly monitored.” In response to U.S. pressure, China has scheduled fentanyl and several other derivatives. More here.
U-47700 is a short-acting synthetic opioid analgesic that first became available via online vendors in late 2014. It has only a short history of human use. U-47700 has been detected in counterfeit pharmaceutical opioids and associated with deaths.
Mar-Apr 2016 – Fake oxycodone tablets containing U-47700 are seized by law enforcement in Ohio and fake Norco tablets containing U-47700 and fentanyl appear in the Sacramento, CA area.
A fatal overdose in East Portland leads detectives into the Dark Web, where lab-created opioids are bought with Bitcoin.
Courtesy of Jessica Collins
Even by Portland standards, the weather was dreary on the day Aisha Zughbieh-Collins died.
It was late morning Feb. 16 when Jessica Collins drove through a 40-degree drizzle to the pink and yellow townhouse on Southeast 84th Avenue, where Aisha, her 18-year-old daughter, lived.
Collins drove gingerly down the rutted, dead-end gravel street. It’s the kind of street that’s often lined with abandoned shopping carts.
She got out of her truck, walked into Aisha’s townhouse and climbed the stairs with a sense of dread. For the past 12 hours, Collins had been unable to reach her daughter.
Just two weeks earlier, Aisha had overdosed, her life saved when a roommate called paramedics.
As Collins entered her daughter’s bedroom, Aisha was sitting lotus-style on her bed.
“Each step closer I could tell something was really wrong,” Collins recalls.
Aisha had a syringe in her right arm, and a shoelace tourniquet tied around her biceps. She wasn’t breathing. Her skin was cold.
“I know it sounds strange,” Collins says, “but a sense of peace came over me—that she’s OK now—even though she was dead in front of me.”
Drug overdoses now kill more people than firearms or automobile crashes in Oregon, according to state figures, and are the largest cause of accidental death in the U.S. As the country’s overdose death total continues to soar, Oregon officials have responded far more effectively than officials in most states (see chart below).
While opioid overdose deaths nationally rose 57 percent from 2010 to 2015, they actually dropped slightly in Oregon over the same period. Source: Oregon Health Authority
But even in Portland, which has slowed overdose deaths resulting from heroin and prescription opioids such as oxycodone, Aisha’s death is part of a new and dangerous development.
The drug that killed her was a potent “synthetic” opioid manufactured in China—a drug so new that narcotics investigators and Portland’s public health officials had never encountered it before.
“What we don’t have a lot of here yet is the synthetics,” says Dr. Paul Lewis, the Multnomah County health officer. “That could change.”
When Portland Police Bureau detectives arrived at Aisha’s townhouse, they were initially stymied. Their investigation would eventually lead them across the country and into the deepest recesses of the internet: places where the common currency is Bitcoin, and where buyers and sellers are anonymous and far removed from each other. Bitcoin is used for a lot of other purposes though, as people find it a lot easier to buy bitcoin. It just depends on the circumstances though obviously.
The trail would take them to a condo in South Carolina, and to one of the Dark Web’s most prolific synthetic opioid sellers.
“We’d never done a case like this,” says the Police Bureau detective who led the investigation. “We weren’t familiar with the substance. And we had no idea where it came from.”
Aisha Zughbieh-Collins traveled a long way in a short life that started on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
She was petite—barely 5 feet 4 inches tall, with a quick smile. She loved animals: She used to have a cat named Bebe and a Burmese python named Applejack. She liked sushi and Thai food, root beer and cream soda. She listened to Bright Eyes and Nirvana.
In November 2015, Aisha ran away from a foster-care facility in Baltimore, where her mother says she’d been assaulted. Aisha reconnected with her mother, who was also living in Maryland but who had lost custody of Aisha three years earlier.
Rather than return Aisha to foster care, the pair decided to head west to begin new lives. They left shortly before Thanksgiving. “We didn’t know where to go, but we wanted warm weather,” Collins says.
They drove west in a sunflower-colored Nissan Xterra, using throwaway phones and paying cash at cheap motels. They feared authorities might be looking for Aisha, who was 17 years old and still a ward of the state.
They arrived in Oregon in February 2016, and Collins found work as a host in a remote campground in Mount Hood National Forest.
They liked the woods, but for Aisha, there was little in the way of entertainment—nobody her age, nowhere to eat, and no WiFi. “It was hard for Aisha to be without the internet,” Collins says.
In May of that year, Aisha found a place to live on Craigslist and moved to the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood just east of 82nd Avenue, sharing with several housemates the townhouse where she would eventually die.
Collins says her daughter had been using hard drugs in Maryland, and had started using again when Collins moved to Portland, living near Aisha.
She told her mother she was using a drug called U-47700.
U-47700, known sometimes as U4 or “pink,” was developed by the pharmaceutical company Upjohn in 1976 as an alternative to morphine but never received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. As a result, it was never placed on the FDA’s schedule of illicit drugs, so for decades there was no prohibition on its manufacture or distribution. It existed in a gray zone—neither approved for use nor specifically illegal.
And while Upjohn never manufactured the drug, laboratories in China—where law enforcement officials say many synthetic opioids are made—figured out how to do so.
U-47700 is also lethal—nearly eight times more potent than heroin. Records show the feds first became aware that people were using U4 to get high in October 2015, although they weren’t sure where the drug was coming from.
In the next year, they recorded 46 overdose deaths, most on the Eastern Seaboard. In November 2016, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, “responding to the imminent threat to public health and safety,” made U-47700 a schedule I substance, classifying it among the most dangerous street drugs.
“I told Aisha U4 was suicide,” Collins recalls. “You can’t choose whether you live or die. It’s like Russian roulette.”
Rising Synthetic Tide: Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids rose much faster last year than overdose deaths from heroin or prescription pain pills.
Source: Centers for Disease Control
The day Aisha died, Portland narcotics detectives arrived at her townhouse. The lead detective is a stocky cop, with salt-and-pepper hair and, considering his job, a cheery demeanor.
The detective later spoke to WW but insisted on anonymity because he works undercover. He sees a lot of dead bodies: There are about two fatal overdoses a week in Portland, most opioid-related.
But this one stood out, the detective says, not only because he’d never heard of the drug that killed Aisha, but also because she was a woman, and so young—the average overdose victim in Oregon is a man over 35.
The house where Aisha Zughbieh-Collins died. (Hilary Sanders)
Portland’s approach to overdose deaths changed in 2007, when Kraig Crow, a Lincoln High School graduate, fatally overdosed.
“Our policy here is different from other jurisdictions’,” the detective says. “Before, we just walked away and let the medical examiner handle it.
“After the Lincoln case,” he continues, “we started asking, ‘What can we find at the scene that can allow us to investigate further?'”
When Portland detectives respond to an overdose death now, they are looking for witnesses, phones and the packaging in which drugs are delivered.
In the Crow case, prosecutors won convictions of six defendants, including what’s called a “Len Bias conviction” for the top dealer.
That law, named after University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986 after being picked second overall in the NBA draft, became a potent tool for prosecutors because it replaced lighter sentences with a 20-year prison term for those who deal drugs leading to a death.
Federal prosecutors in Oregon are recognized as national leaders in bringing Len Bias cases.
Investigators try to determine how the fatal dose moved from the original source to the consumer, establishing a chain of custody. “Every person in the chain is potentially liable for the overdose death,” says Steve Mygrant, an assistant U.S. attorney who has prosecuted several dealers in fatal overdose cases. (Local and federal officials often cooperate on Len Bias cases.)
Aisha’s mother told detectives she thought her daughter bought U4 online, and she provided them with Aisha’s email address.
The detectives also found unusual materials in Aisha’s bedroom—distinctive packaging suggested someone had carefully disguised the U-47700 to send it through the mail.
The drug Aisha bought had been hidden in a VeriQuick brand pregnancy test kit—sold only at Dollar Tree stores—and appeared to have arrived from an unknown seller in a U.S. Postal Service shipping envelope from South Carolina.
Those were clues. But the detectives couldn’t work their way up the usual chain of delivery as they do in heroin cases.
“Our calls usually come from people complaining about a neighborhood drug house,” the detective says. “This online stuff is at a completely different level.”
The next day, the detectives asked for help from federal experts who knew how to navigate the deepest recesses of the internet.
In 2013, federal agents busted Silk Road, a vast online bazaar for drugs, child pornography, illegal weapons, stolen credit cards, valuable personal information, hacking services and even contract killers.
Silk Road operated on what’s called the Dark Web. That’s the term used to describe the vast array of websites that operate out of reach of the average web surfer.
The internet is like an iceberg: Experts say less than 5 percent of websites are visible using typical browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Chrome.
Some of what’s under the surface is benign material that is simply password-protected: legitimate financial and medical records, for instance, that are shielded for privacy reasons. But it is also used by dissidents in countries where free speech isn’t allowed—and by criminals of all kinds.
Dark Web users need a couple of things to access such sites: a specialized (and easily downloadable) browser called Tor and, if they want to remain anonymous, a tool that encrypts their communications and preserves their anonymity. Aisha used what’s called a PGP (“pretty good privacy”) key to hide her activity.
And for people who wish to buy or sell goods or services on the Dark Web, using Bitcoin or another virtual currency adds another layer of anonymity. Bitcoin, which Aisha used, allowed her to purchase drugs without creating the kind of easily traceable trail that credit or debit cards leave behind.
“But once you clear the smoke,” says George Chamberlin, chief of the FBI’s Oregon Cyber Task Force, “it’s not that different from the visible internet.”
When Silk Road disappeared because of the indictment and conviction of its creator, other Dark Web marketplaces took its place. One, called AlphaBay, offers a staggering array of illicit drugs.
Sellers hawk their wares aggressively and encourage buyers to rate their experiences just as customers do on conventional sites such as Amazon, Yelp or Trip Advisor. But instead of rating tacos or hotel rooms, buyers are rating heroin, meth or the newest kind of illicit narcotic, synthetic opioids.
“The game is changing,” the FBI’s Chamberlin says, “especially because of synthetics. They are different because of their potency and because they are trafficked on the Dark Web.”
Detectives found that Aisha had written an alphanumeric code on a pad in her bedroom. That code identified her PGP key.
They determined that Aisha’s PGP key had been used to buy drugs on AlphaBay.
The detective learned that, using her PGP, Aisha had purchased U-47700 on Feb. 11, five days before her death, from a vendor who called himself “Peter the Great”—like the Russian emperor.
A U.S. postal inspector determined the envelope found in Aisha’s bedroom had a fictitious return address but was purchased at a post office in Greenville, S.C.
In April, the Portland detective bought U4 over the Dark Web from Peter the Great. The drugs arrived, wrapped in material from Dollar Tree.
The person who purchased the shipping labels—presumably Peter the Great—used secure email addresses. The investigators then filed a subpoena for all records related to those addresses.
They turned up a name: Ted Khleborod, a resident of Greenville.
Peter the Great—who detectives now believed was Khleborod—was a prolific salesman: Figures on AlphaBay showed he’d done 9,553 transactions.
The Portland detective contacted federal officials in South Carolina. “We scared the crap out the assistant U.S. attorney back there when we told him about the substance and volume of sales,” the detective says. “This guy was sending out the equivalent of bombs.”
Ted Khleborod (Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office)
Khleborod, now 28, was born in Moldova, part of the former Soviet Union. When he was in high school, records show he spent time on bodybuilder chat boards, discussing the benefits of steroid use and posting as “Arnoldismyhero,” a tribute to former California governor and champion body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He later studied at the University of South Carolina, where, according to his Facebook page, he was pre-med. He graduated in 2016.
Khleborod lived well for a college student, records show, driving a BMW—with a vanity plate that read “TEDALICUS”—and a Ducati motorcycle.
In late April, Portland detectives flew to Greenville to coordinate with local police.
For three days, they staked out Khleborod at his condo. They saw his girlfriend, Ana Barrero, leave his place twice to mail dozens of parcels, with labels matching those they’d found earlier in Aisha’s room and identical to those matching labels from the drugs that investigators bought over the Dark Web from Peter the Great.
They also obtained video of Barrero buying 71 VeriQuick pregnancy test kits at a Dollar Tree in Greenville.
On April 26, officers arrested Khleborod as he left work at an urgent care clinic. “He was a quiet guy, contemplative,” says the Portland detective. “I don’t think he used his own product, and based on his numbers, he could have made a million bucks in the past couple years.”
Khleborod, who is now in custody, faces federal charges in South Carolina. (His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.)
When officers served a search warrant on Khleborod’s condo, they wore hazmat suits to guard against the toxicity of U-47700. They hauled away 9 kilos of the drug, worth $270,000.
They also found a book, written for prospective doctors, called Kill as Few Patients as Possible.
The Portland detective says Aisha’s case revealed to him a new world of synthetic opioids and the Dark Web. He says he also realized that despite all the technically sophisticated tools dealers like Peter the Great employ, they are subject to human mistakes.
“Internet privacy—even with encryption—is not as great as you think,” the detective says. “People on the Dark Web still leave breadcrumbs we can follow.”
Jessica Collins says she’s happy police arrested Khleborod. But she remains heartbroken over her daughter’s death.
“I feel like she’s with me every day,” Collins says, “and I worry about how many other families this might happen to.”
Cam Strahm, the DEA chief for Oregon, applauds the police work that led to Khleborod’s capture. But he says after 26 years of chasing drug dealers, he’s come to understand the limits of that work.
“Addiction is a treatable disease,” he says, “and we’re facing an epidemic. We can’t arrest our way out of it.”
Aisha Collins (Courtesy of Jessica Collins)
The Wages of Synthetics
The new challenge from synthetic opioids marketed over the Dark Web comes at a time when the trend in overdose deaths in Oregon is relatively positive.
Opioid deaths here have declined in recent years, while the trend in the rest of the country is still sharply upward. (The New York Times recently reported deaths jumped nearly 20 percent nationally in 2016.)
“When you look at the rest of the country, flat is good,”says Multnomah County Health Officer Dr. Paul Lewis.
There are two reasons for the good news. The first is naloxone, marketed under the brand name Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses overdoses. Under the leadership of former Multnomah County Health Officer Dr. Gary Oxman, the Portland area was a national pioneer in making naloxone widely available (“Who Wants to Save a Junkie?” WW, March 13, 2013).
And Oxman’s successor, Lewis, pushed large metro-area medical systems to decrease the number of opioid pain pills prescribed to patients. That number has decreased each of the past five quarters.
Together, those two developments have caused the number of overdose deaths in Oregon to decline, a result most states would envy.
But deaths such as Aisha Zughbieh-Collins’ highlight a new danger: synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, carfentanil and U-47700 that are not prescribed by physicians but instead manufactured and sold illegally.
Lewis says there have been just two confirmed deaths in the metro area in the past 18 months in which U-47700 was the primary cause. But synthetic opioids are now the nation’s fastest-growing cause of overdose deaths. The death toll in some states is extraordinary: Last year, for instance, there were 34 deaths from synthetics in Oregon in 2015—and 949 in Massachusetts.
“The synthetic thing is new to everybody,” Lewis says. “We thought heroin was the foe, but now these synthetics come along. It’s a new chapter, and we don’t know how it ends.”
Cam Strahm of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration notes that synthetics such as fentanyl and carfentanil are dozens or even hundreds of times stronger than heroin.
Strahm says synthetics are also less predictable than heroin, which is now fairly standard in quality and potency. The dealers who sell synthetics often mix them in nonstandard “cocktails” and also frequently misrepresent what they are selling.
“When you are making illicit purchases from anonymous sources, you can’t depend on purity or that what you think you are buying is what you actually get,” Strahm says. “You really don’t know what you are purchasing. It’s like going on a vacation without knowing your destination.”
You would think by virtue of a UN heritage committee known as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, they would get history right. Israel has provided proof and historical evidence, where is that from the Palestinians?
The Tomb and the city of Hebron is the second holiest site in Judaism, after the Temple Mount and its Western Wall, he noted. The Bible clearly records its purchase by Abraham. The committee of T21 members are: Angola, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, United Republic of Tnzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Anymore questions on the countries that refuse history and remain Anti-Semitic?
Now is the time for the United States to defund UNESCO and the UNRWA.
Following the resolution passed by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee regarding the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Friday, 7 July 2017), decided to cut an additional $1 million from the membership funds that Israel pays to the UN and to transfer it to the establishment of “The Museum of the Heritage of the Jewish People in Kiryat Arba and Hebron” and to additional heritage projects related to Hebron.
Against UNESCO’s denial of the past, Prime Minister Netanyahu is determined to present to the entire world the historic truth and the Jewish People’s deep connection – of thousands of years – to Hebron.
***
Tomb of Sarah, wife a Patriarch Abraham
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The U.N. cultural organisation declared an ancient shrine in the occupied West Bank a Palestinian heritage site on Friday, prompting Israel to further cut its funding to the United Nations.
UNESCO designated Hebron and the two adjoined shrines at its heart – the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Muslim Ibrahimi Mosque – a “Palestinian World Heritage Site in Danger”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called that “another delusional UNESCO decision” and ordered that $1 million be diverted from Israel’s U.N. funding to establish a museum and other projects covering Jewish heritage in Hebron.
The funding cut is Israel’s fourth in the past year, taking its U.N. contribution from $11 million to just $1.7 million, an Israeli official said. Each cut has come after various U.N. bodies voted to adopt decisions which Israel said discriminated against it.
Palestinian Foreign Minister, Reyad Al-Maliki, said the UNESCO vote, at a meeting in Krakow, Poland, was proof of the “successful diplomatic battle Palestine has launched on all fronts in the face of Israeli and American pressure on (UNESCO) member countries.”
Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank with a population of some 200,000. About 1,000 Israeli settlers live in the heart of the city and for years it has been a place of religious friction between Muslims and Jews.
Jews believe that the Cave of the Patriarchs is where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives, are buried. Muslims, who, like Christians, also revere Abraham, built the Ibrahimi mosque, also known as the Sanctuary of Abraham, in the 14th century.
The religious significance of the city has made it a focal point for settlers, who are determined to expand the Jewish presence there. Living in the heart of the city, they require intense security, with some 800 Israeli troops protecting them.
Even before Netanyahu’s budget announcement, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan signalled Israel would seek to further make its mark at the Hebron shrine, tweeting: “UNESCO will continue to adopt delusional decisions but history cannot be erased … we must continue to manifest our right by building immediately in the Cave of the Patriarchs.”
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
We, the Leaders of the G20, strongly condemn all terrorist attacks worldwide and stand united and firm in the fight against terrorism and its financing. These atrocious acts have strengthened our resolve to cooperate to enhance our security and protect our citizens. Terrorism is a global scourge that must be fought and terrorist safe havens eliminated in every part of the world.
We reaffirm that all measures on countering terrorism need to be implemented in accordance with the UN Charter and all obligations under international law, including international human rights law.
We call for the implementation of existing international commitments on countering terrorism, including the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and compliance with relevant resolutions and targeted sanctions by the UN Security Council relating to terrorism. We commit to continue to support UN efforts to prevent and counter terrorism.
We will address the evolving threat of returning foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) from conflict zones such as Iraq and Syria and remain committed to preventing FTFs from establishing a foothold in other countries and regions around the world. We recall UN Security Council Resolution 2178 (2014), which requires a range of actions to better tackle the foreign terrorist fighter threat.
We will facilitate swift and targeted exchanges of information between intelligence and law enforcement and judicial authorities on operational information-sharing, preventive measures and criminal justice response, while ensuring the necessary balance between security and data protection aspects, in accordance with national laws. We will ensure that terrorists are brought to justice.
We will work to improve the existing international information architecture in the areas of security, travel and migration, including INTERPOL, ensuring the necessary balance between security and data protection aspects. In particular, we encourage all members to make full use of relevant information sharing mechanisms, in particular INTERPOL’s information sharing functions.
We call upon our border agencies to strengthen cooperation to detect travel for terrorist purposes, including by identifying priority transit and destination countries of terrorists. We will support capacity building efforts in these countries in areas such as border management, information sharing and watch-list capability to manage the threat upstream. We will promote greater use of customs security programs, including where appropriate, the World Customs Organization’s (WCO) Security Programme and Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which focus on strengthening Customs administrations’ capacity to deal with security related issues and managing the cross-border flows of goods, people and means of transport to ensure they comply with the law.
We will address in close coordination the evolving threats and potential vulnerabilities in aviation security systems and exchange information on risk assessments. We recall the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2309 (2016) which urges closer collaboration to ensure security of global air services and the prevention of terrorist attacks. We will promote full implementation of effective and proportionate aviation security measures established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in partnership with all its contracting states as necessary. We call to urgently address vulnerabilities in airport security related measures, such as access control and screening, covered by the Chicago Convention and will act jointly to ensure that international security standards are reviewed, updated, adapted and put in place based on current risks.
We highlight the importance of providing appropriate support to the victims of terrorist acts and will enhance our cooperation and exchange of best practices to this end.
Fighting terrorism finance
We underline our resolve to make the international financial system entirely hostile to terrorist financing and commit to deepening international cooperation and exchange of information, including working with the private sector, which has a critical role in global efforts to counter terrorism financing. We reaffirm our commitment to tackle all sources, techniques and channels of terrorist financing and our call for swift and effective implementation of UNSCR and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards worldwide. We call for strengthening measures against the financing of international terrorist organisations in particular ISIL/ISIS/Daesh, Al Qaida and their affiliates.
There should be no “safe spaces” for terrorist financing anywhere in the world. However, inconsistent and weak implementation of the UN and FATF standards allows them to persist. In order to eliminate all such “safe spaces”, we commit to intensify capacity building and technical assistance, especially in relation to terrorist financing hot-spots, and we support the FATF in its efforts to strengthen its traction capacity and the effectiveness of FATF and FATF-style regional bodies.
We welcome the reforms agreed by the FATF Plenary in June and support the ongoing work to strengthen the governance of the FATF. We also welcome the FATF intention to further explore its transformation into a legal person, which recognises that the FATF has evolved from a temporary forum to a sustained public and political commitment to tackle AML/CFT threats. We also appreciate FATF commencing the membership process for Indonesia that will broaden its geographic representation and global engagement. We ask the FATF to provide an update by the first G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in 2018. We call on all member states to ensure that the FATF has the necessary resources and support to effectively fulfil its mandate.
We welcome that countering terrorist finance remains the highest priority of FATF, and look forward to FATF’s planned outreach to legal authorities, which will contribute to enhanced international cooperation and increased effectiveness in the application of FATF’s standards.
We will advance the effective implementation of the international standards on transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons and legal arrangements for the purposes of countering financing terrorism.
Low cost attacks by small cells and individuals funded by small amounts of money transferred through a wide range of payment means are an increasing challenge. We call on the private sector to continue to strengthen their efforts to identify and tackle terrorism financing. We ask our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to work with FATF, FSB, the financial sector, Financial Intelligence Units, law enforcement and FinTech firms to develop new tools such as guidance and indicators, to harness new technologies to better track terrorist finance transactions, and to work together with law enforcement authorities to bridge the intelligence gap and improve the use of financial information in counter-terrorism investigations.
We call upon countries to address all alternative sources of financing of terrorism, including dismantling connections, where they exist, between terrorism and transnational organized crime, such as the diversion of weapons including weapons of mass destruction, looting and smuggling of antiquities, kidnapping for ransom, drugs and human trafficking.
Countering radicalization conducive to terrorism and the use of internet for terrorist purposes
Our counterterrorism actions must continue to be part of a comprehensive approach, including combatting radicalization and recruitment, hampering terrorist movements and countering terrorist propaganda. We will exchange best practices on preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism conducive to terrorism, national strategies and deradicalisation and disengagement programmes, and the promotion of strategic communications as well as robust and positive narratives to counter terrorist propaganda.
We stress that countering terrorism requires comprehensively addressing underlying conditions that terrorists exploit. It is therefore crucial to promote political and religious tolerance, economic development and social cohesion and inclusiveness, to resolve armed conflicts, and to facilitate reintegration. We acknowledge that regional and national action plans can contribute to countering radicalisation conducive to terrorism.
We will share knowledge on concrete measures to address threats from returning foreign terrorist fighters and home-grown radicalised individuals. We will also share best practices on deradicalisation and reintegration programmes including with respect to prisoners.
We will work with the private sector, in particular communication service providers and administrators of relevant applications, to fight exploitation of the internet and social media for terrorist purposes such as propaganda, funding and planning of terrorist acts, inciting terrorism, radicalizing and recruiting to commit acts of terrorism, while fully respecting human rights. Appropriate filtering, detecting and removing of content that incites terrorist acts is crucial in this respect. We encourage industry to continue investing in technology and human capital to aid in the detection as well as swift and permanent removal of terrorist content. In line with the expectations of our peoples we also encourage collaboration with industry to provide lawful and non-arbitrary access to available information where access is necessary for the protection of national security against terrorist threats. We affirm that the rule of law applies online as well as it does offline.
We also stress the important role of the media, civil society, religious groups, the business community and educational institutions in fostering an environment which is conducive to the prevention of radicalisation and terrorism.
Bloomberg: Specialized teams from Homeland Security and the FBI have been scrambled to help extricate the hackers from the power stations, in some cases without informing local and state officials. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Security Agency is working to confirm the identity of the hackers, who are said to be using computer servers in Germany, Italy, Malaysia and Turkey to cover their tracks.
Many of the power plants are conventional, but the targeting of a nuclear facility adds to the pressure. While the core of a nuclear generator is heavily protected, a sudden shutdown of the turbine can trigger safety systems. These safety devices are designed to disperse excess heat while the nuclear reaction is halted, but the safety systems themselves may be vulnerable to attack.
Homeland Security and the FBI sent out a general warning about the cyberattack to utilities and related parties on June 28, though it contained few details or the number of plants affected. The government said it was most concerned about the “persistence” of the attacks on choke points of the U.S. power supply. That language suggests hackers are trying to establish backdoors on the plants’ systems for later use, according to a former senior DHS official who asked not to be identified.
Those backdoors can be used to insert software specifically designed to penetrate a facility’s operational controls and disrupt critical systems, according to Galina Antova, co-founder of Claroty, a New York firm that specializes in securing industrial control systems.
Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries.
Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., according to security consultants and an urgent joint report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week.
The joint report was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by security specialists who have been responding to the attacks. It carried an urgent amber warning, the second-highest rating for the sensitivity of the threat.
The report did not indicate whether the cyberattacks were an attempt at espionage — such as stealing industrial secrets — or part of a plan to cause destruction. There is no indication that hackers were able to jump from their victims’ computers into the control systems of the facilities, nor is it clear how many facilities were breached.
Wolf Creek officials said that while they could not comment on cyberattacks or security issues, no “operations systems” had been affected and that their corporate network and the internet were separate from the network that runs the plant.
In a joint statement with the F.B.I., a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said, “There is no indication of a threat to public safety, as any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks.”
The hackers appeared determined to map out computer networks for future attacks, the report concluded. But investigators have not been able to analyze the malicious “payload” of the hackers’ code, which would offer more detail into what they were after.
John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which works with all 99 electric utilities that operate nuclear plants in the United States, said nuclear facilities are required to report cyberattacks that relate to their “safety, security and operations.” None have reported that the security of their operations was affected by the latest attacks, Mr. Keeley said.
In most cases, the attacks targeted people — industrial control engineers who have direct access to systems that, if damaged, could lead to an explosion, fire or a spill of dangerous material, according to two people familiar with the attacks who could not be named because of confidentiality agreements.
The origins of the hackers are not known. But the report indicated that an “advanced persistent threat” actor was responsible, which is the language security specialists often use to describe hackers backed by governments.
The two people familiar with the investigation say that, while it is still in its early stages, the hackers’ techniques mimicked those of the organization known to cybersecurity specialists as “Energetic Bear,” the Russian hacking group that researchers have tied to attacks on the energy sector since at least 2012.
Hackers wrote highly targeted email messages containing fake résumés for control engineering jobs and sent them to the senior industrial control engineers who maintain broad access to critical industrial control systems, the government report said.
The fake résumés were Microsoft Word documents that were laced with malicious code. Once the recipients clicked on those documents, attackers could steal their credentials and proceed to other machines on a network.
In some cases, the hackers also compromised legitimate websites that they knew their victims frequented — something security specialists call a watering hole attack. And in others, they deployed what are known as man-in-the-middle attacks in which they redirected their victims’ internet traffic through their own machines.
Energy, nuclear and critical manufacturing organizations have frequently been targets for sophisticated cyberattacks. The Department of Homeland Security has called cyberattacks on critical infrastructure “one of the most serious national security challenges we must confront.”
On May 11, during the attacks, President Trump signed an executive order to strengthen the cybersecurity defenses of federal networks and critical infrastructure. The order required government agencies to work with public companies to mitigate risks and help defend critical infrastructure organizations “at greatest risk of attacks that could reasonably result in catastrophic regional or national effects on public health or safety, economic security, or national security.”
The order specifically addressed the threats from “electricity disruptions and prolonged power outages resulting from cybersecurity incidents.”
Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said in an interview last week that while the security of United States’ critical infrastructure systems had improved in recent years, they were still vulnerable to advanced hacking attacks, particularly those that use tools stolen from the National Security Agency.
“We never anticipated that our critical infrastructure control systems would be facing advanced levels of malware,” Mr. Wellinghoff said.
In 2008, an attack called Stuxnet that was designed by the United States and Israel to hit Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility, demonstrated how computer attacks could disrupt and destroy physical infrastructure.
The government hackers infiltrated the systems that controlled Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and spun them wildly out of control, or stopped them from spinning entirely, destroying a fifth of Iran’s centrifuges.
In retrospect, Mr. Wellinghoff said that attack should have foreshadowed the threats the United States would face on its own infrastructure.
Critical infrastructure is increasingly controlled by Scada, or supervisory control and data acquisition systems. They are used by manufacturers, nuclear plant operators and pipeline operators to monitor variables like pressure and flow rates through pipelines. The software also allows operators to monitor and diagnose unexpected problems.
But like any software, Scada systems are susceptible to hacking and computer viruses. And for years, security specialists have warned that hackers could use remote access to these systems to cause physical destruction.
Title of the conference:54th Annual ISNA Convention
Hope and Guidance Through the Qur’an
Chicago Tribune: “ISNA’s Annual Convention is more than simply a coming together of the Muslim community,” said Azhar Azeez, ISNA President. “Our goal is to unite people across different faiths and backgrounds in the spirit of peace and better understanding. We hope the convention will be used as platform and catalyst for social change”, he added.
ISNA has invited a rich list of speakers, scholars, community leaders and public servants to address Convention attendees. Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the National Women’s March, will be the keynote speaker during the Community Service Recognition Luncheon which will honor Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed for his lifelong dedication to serving the community, building interfaith relationships and social justice advocacy.
Complementing the main ISNA offering of programs, there are conferences being hosted by the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada (MSA National) and the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA).
ISNA is the largest and oldest Islamic umbrella organization in North America. Its mission is to foster the development of the Muslim community, interfaith relations, civic engagement, and better understanding of Islam.
*** So, what did one of these esteemed speakers have to say at this convention?
Do you suppose anyone from CNN, MSNBC or NBC attended and reported this? Nah….but the Huffington Post did publish a report and well, they used the same definition of ‘jihad’ that former CIA Director John Brennan used…..it just means struggle. Ah sure… Anwar al Awlaki called for peaceful demonstrations too. Maybe HuffPo should check with their counterpart Peter Bergen at CNN on al Awlaki. After the Secret Service visited with Kathy Griffin for an hour, will they too go pay a visit to ISNA or to Linda?
Speaking in Chicago at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention over the weekend, Sarsour, an organizer of January’s Women’s March, discussed what it means to be a patriot in the United States.
In her speech, which was posted online Monday, Sarsour discussed leaders like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali who helped shift culture by being unapologetically themselves.
A number of conservativeoutlets zeroed in on a particular section of Sarsour’s speech, in which she used the word “jihad” to describe efforts to resist unjust policies.
The word “jihad” has long been misused and misunderstood by both Muslim extremists and people seeking to spread hatred against Muslims. But for the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, “jihad” is a word that literally means “to struggle.” It’s a concept within Islam that represents a commitment to serve God, and to be good to yourself and your neighbors. It can be personal, like struggling to get through a rough workday, or overarching, like striving to seek justice for all people.
As Sarsour recounted in her speech, the Prophet Muhammad is said to have described the best form of jihad as “a word of truth in front of a tyrant, ruler or leader.”
FBN: She said that Muslim-Americans’ number one priority should be protecting and defending their communities, not assimilating or pleasing people in power.
“I hope, that when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad, that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America, where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reining in the White House,” she said.
Sarsour was a leader behind January’s Women’s March, and she was named a “Champion of Change” by the Obama administration in 2012.
Watch her full address above, and see Asra Nomani weigh in on Sarsour and the anti-Trump movement using this link.
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Tomb of Sarah, wife a Patriarch Abraham
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