Category Archives: UN United Nations Fraud Corruption

In 2015: 84 million

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Just imagine, the cyber espionage….industrial espionage….the hacking…..

Do you really want to continue to tell the world about everything you do and who you are connected with on Facebook?

Cybercriminals Making Computer Malware at a Record Rate: Researchers

NBC: Last year was a particularly bad year for hacks and computer intrusions, and it looks like 2016 will only get worse, Panda Security says.

The Spain-based Internet security company said its lab researchers detected and disabled more than 84 million new samples of malware in 2015 — 9 million more than the previous year. The figure means cybercriminals were churning out new malware samples at a rate of more than 230,000 a day throughout 2015.

In fact, more than a quarter (27 percent) of all malware samples ever recorded were produced in 2015, Panda Security said in a news release.

“We predict that the amount of malware created by cybercriminals will continue to grow,” said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. “We also can’t forget that the creation of millions of Trojans and other threats corresponds to the cybercriminals’ needs to infect as many users as possible in order to get more money.”

Malware is any type of software that is designed to gain access to and damage or disable a computer.

Trojans, a type of malware disguised as legitimate software, accounted for more than half the malware detected in 2015, according to Panda Security.

China topped the list of countries with the highest rate of infected computers, followed by Taiwan and Turkey. At the other end of the spectrum, nine of the top 10 countries with the lowest rates of infection were in Europe, led by Finland, Norway and Sweden.

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Barack Obama has been a big user of BIG DATA but he experienced a huge firestorm after the exposure of the NSA programs by Edward Snowden. Barack Obama enlisted John Podesta, at the time his chief of staff and now Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign architect to commission a study. Sheesh…but nonetheless, here is what you should read in the findings.

From the White House: Over the past several days, severe storms have battered Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other states. Dozens of people have been killed and entire neighborhoods turned to rubble and debris as tornadoes have touched down across the region. Natural disasters like these present a host of challenges for first responders. How many people are affected, injured, or dead? Where can they find food, shelter, and medical attention? What critical infrastructure might have been damaged?

Drawing on open government data sources, including Census demographics and NOAA weather data, along with their own demographic databases, Esri, a geospatial technology company, has created a real-time map showing where the twisters have been spotted and how the storm systems are moving. They have also used these data to show how many people live in the affected area, and summarize potential impacts from the storms. It’s a powerful tool for emergency services and communities. And it’s driven by big data technology.

In January, President Obama asked me to lead a wide-ranging review of “big data” and privacy—to explore how these technologies are changing our economy, our government, and our society, and to consider their implications for our personal privacy. Together with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the President’s Science Advisor John Holdren, the President’s Economic Advisor Jeff Zients, and other senior officials, our review sought to understand what is genuinely new and different about big data and to consider how best to encourage the potential of these technologies while minimizing risks to privacy and core American values.

Over the course of 90 days, we met with academic researchers and privacy advocates, with regulators and the technology industry, with advertisers and civil rights groups. The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology conducted a parallel study of the technological trends underpinning big data. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy jointly organized three university conferences at MIT, NYU, and U.C. Berkeley. We issued a formal Request for Information seeking public comment, and hosted a survey to generate even more public input.

Today, we presented our findings to the President. We knew better than to try to answer every question about big data in three months. But we are able to draw important conclusions and make concrete recommendations for Administration attention and policy development in a few key areas.

There are a few technological trends that bear drawing out. The declining cost of collection, storage, and processing of data, combined with new sources of data like sensors, cameras, and geospatial technologies, mean that we live in a world of near-ubiquitous data collection. All this data is being crunched at a speed that is increasingly approaching real-time, meaning that big data algorithms could soon have immediate effects on decisions being made about our lives.

The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society.

Big data is saving lives. Infections are dangerous—even deadly—for many babies born prematurely. By collecting and analyzing millions of data points from a NICU, one study was able to identify factors, like slight increases in body temperature and heart rate, that serve as early warning signs an infection may be taking root—subtle changes that even the most experienced doctors wouldn’t have noticed on their own.

Big data is making the economy work better. Jet engines and delivery trucks now come outfitted with sensors that continuously monitor hundreds of data points and send automatic alerts when maintenance is needed. Utility companies are starting to use big data to predict periods of peak electric demand, adjusting the grid to be more efficient and potentially averting brown-outs.

Big data is making government work better and saving taxpayer dollars. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun using predictive analytics—a big data technique—to flag likely instances of reimbursement fraud before claims are paid. The Fraud Prevention System helps identify the highest-risk health care providers for waste, fraud, and abuse in real time and has already stopped, prevented, or identified $115 million in fraudulent payments.

But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time. In particular, our review raised the question of whether the “notice and consent” framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected.

Big data raises other concerns, as well. One significant finding of our review was the potential for big data analytics to lead to discriminatory outcomes and to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections in housing, employment, credit, and the consumer marketplace.

No matter how quickly technology advances, it remains within our power to ensure that we both encourage innovation and protect our values through law, policy, and the practices we encourage in the public and private sector. To that end, we make six actionable policy recommendations in our report to the President:

Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Consumers deserve clear, understandable, reasonable standards for how their personal information is used in the big data era. We recommend the Department of Commerce take appropriate consultative steps to seek stakeholder and public comment on what changes, if any, are needed to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, first proposed by the President in 2012, and to prepare draft legislative text for consideration by stakeholders and submission by the President to Congress.

Pass National Data Breach Legislation. Big data technologies make it possible to store significantly more data, and further derive intimate insights into a person’s character, habits, preferences, and activities. That makes the potential impacts of data breaches at businesses or other organizations even more serious. A patchwork of state laws currently governs requirements for reporting data breaches. Congress should pass legislation that provides for a single national data breach standard, along the lines of the Administration’s 2011 Cybersecurity legislative proposal.

Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons. Privacy is a worldwide value that should be reflected in how the federal government handles personally identifiable information about non-U.S. citizens. The Office of Management and Budget should work with departments and agencies to apply the Privacy Act of 1974 to non-U.S. persons where practicable, or to establish alternative privacy policies that apply appropriate and meaningful protections to personal information regardless of a person’s nationality.

Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for Educational Purposes. Big data and other technological innovations, including new online course platforms that provide students real time feedback, promise to transform education by personalizing learning. At the same time, the federal government must ensure educational data linked to individual students gathered in school is used for educational purposes, and protect students against their data being shared or used inappropriately.

Expand Technical Expertise to Stop Discrimination. The detailed personal profiles held about many consumers, combined with automated, algorithm-driven decision-making, could lead—intentionally or inadvertently—to discriminatory outcomes, or what some are already calling “digital redlining.” The federal government’s lead civil rights and consumer protection agencies should expand their technical expertise to be able to identify practices and outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that have a discriminatory impact on protected classes, and develop a plan for investigating and resolving violations of law.

Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The laws that govern protections afforded to our communications were written before email, the internet, and cloud computing came into wide use. Congress should amend ECPA to ensure the standard of protection for online, digital content is consistent with that afforded in the physical world—including by removing archaic distinctions between email left unread or over a certain age.

We also identify several broader areas ripe for further study, debate, and public engagement that, collectively, we hope will spark a national conversation about how to harness big data for the public good. We conclude that we must find a way to preserve our privacy values in both the domestic and international marketplace. We urgently need to build capacity in the federal government to identify and prevent new modes of discrimination that could be enabled by big data. We must ensure that law enforcement agencies using big data technologies do so responsibly, and that our fundamental privacy rights remain protected. Finally, we recognize that data is a valuable public resource, and call for continuing the Administration’s efforts to open more government data sources and make investments in research and technology.

While big data presents new challenges, it also presents immense opportunities to improve lives, the United States is perhaps better suited to lead this conversation than any other nation on earth. Our innovative spirit, technological know-how, and deep commitment to values of privacy, fairness, non-discrimination, and self-determination will help us harness the benefits of the big data revolution and encourage the free flow of information while working with our international partners to protect personal privacy. This review is but one piece of that effort, and we hope it spurs a conversation about big data across the country and around the world.

Read the Big Data Report.

See the fact sheet from today’s announcement.

The Biggest Silent Lie Yet?

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Hillary’s fingerprints are all over this and it is likely the biggest betrayal to the families and the U.S. taxpayers yet. The shame never ends.

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. TAXPAYERS, NOT TEHRAN, COMPENSATED VICTIMS OF IRANIAN ATTACKS AGAINST AMERICANS
BY JONATHAN BRODER

Newsweek: A little-noticed side agreement to the Iran nuclear deal has unexpectedly reopened painful wounds for the families of more than a dozen Americans attacked or held hostage by Iranian proxies in recent decades. U.S. officials, the families say, insisted that Tehran would pay for financing or directing the attacks, but American taxpayers wound up paying instead.


The agreement, which resolved a long-running financial dispute with Iran, involved the return of $400 million in Iranian funds that the U.S. seized after the 1979 Islamic revolution, plus another $1.3 billion in interest. Announced on January 17—the same day the two countries implemented the nuclear deal and carried out a prisoner swap—President Barack Obama presented the side agreement as a bargain for the United States, noting that a claims tribunal in the Hague could have awarded Iran a much larger judgment. “For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran,” Obama said.


But for the victims, the side deal is a betrayal, not a bargain. In 2000, the Clinton administration agreed to pay the $400 million to more than a dozen Americans who had won judgments against Iran in U.S. courts. At the time, American officials assured the victims that the Treasury would be reimbursed from the seized Iranian funds. That same year, Congress passed a law empowering the president to get the money from Iran. “We all believed that Iran would pay our damages, not U.S. taxpayers,” says Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey real estate lawyer who received $24 million for the death of his 19-year-old daughter in a 1995 bus bombing in the Gaza Strip. “And now, 15 years later, we find out that they never deducted the money from the account. It makes me nauseous. The Iranians aren’t paying a cent.”
Flatow’s cohorts agree. They include the families and survivors of some of the most high-profile foreign attacks against Americans in recent decades. Among them: five former Beirut hostages whom the Iran-backed Islamist group Hezbollah held for years during the 1980s; the wife of U.S. Marine Colonel William Higgins, whom Hezbollah kidnapped in 1988, before torturing and hanging him; the family of Navy diver Robert Stethem, whom an Iranian-backed group murdered in Beirut during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner; and a family whose daughter was killed in a Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem in 1996.
Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration who helped negotiate the settlement, admits he never told the victims and their families the truth about the money. Unbeknownst to the victims and their lawyers, he says, Tehran had filed a claim with the U.S.-Iran tribunal in the Hague over the funds. “We didn’t have the full freedom to say we’re just going to take the $400 million because that money was now part of a formal claim,” Eizenstat says.
What’s further angered the victims and their families: A senior Iranian military official now claims the $1.7 billion is effectively a ransom for the five American hostages Tehran released in January. “This money was returned for the freedom of the U.S. spies, and it was not related to the nuclear negotiations,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said Wednesday, according to the state-run Fars News Agency. The Obama administration denies any link between the prisoners and the $1.7 billion. But Republicans, already fuming over the nuclear deal, are now calling for an inquiry. “It’s bad enough the administration is giving Iran over $100 billion in direct sanctions relief, resumed oil sales and new international trade,” says Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. “But now it’s using U.S. taxpayer money to pay the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism a $1.7 billion ‘settlement.’”
Administration officials are trying to play down the deal, noting it follows a 2000 law that created the compensation mechanism for the victims and their families. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with State Department protocol, says the law only required the U.S. government, acting in place of the victims, to deal with their damage claims “to the satisfaction of the United States, which was the case with this settlement.” A major reason the U.S. was satisfied: The U.S. and Iran disagreed over whether the $400 million should have been placed in an interest-bearing account in 1979. “We reached this settlement on interest,” the official says, “to avoid significant potential exposure we faced at the tribunal on that question.”
But the revelation that Iran never paid the money has hit some of the families hard. They’ve lost the feeling that some measure of justice was served. “I feel like a schnorrer,” says Flatow, using the Yiddish term for a mooch, because U.S. taxpayers, not Iran, paid his damages. Other victims say they’re bothered by the administration’s reluctance to discuss the details of the side deal. It’s brought back memories from 20 years ago, when the victims won their judgments against Iran in U.S. courts, only to find themselves blocked at every turn by the Clinton administration. “There are limited ways to react to your child getting murdered,” says Leonard Eisenfeld, a Connecticut doctor whose son was killed in the 1996 bus bombing in Jerusalem. “Creating a financial deterrent to prevent Iran from more terrorism was one way, but we had to struggle very hard to do that.”
In a series of legal challenges, Clinton administration officials identified $20 million in Iranian assets in America. Among them: Tehran’s Washington embassy and several consulates around the country. But in arguments that sometimes echoed Tehran’s concerns, the officials maintained that attaching those assets to pay even a small portion the victims’ damages would violate U.S. obligations to respect the sovereign immunity of other countries’ diplomatic property.
Though their arguments succeeded in court, the optics were bad. The case caught the attention of the media and Congress, where many lawmakers openly supported the victims. The contours of a settlement began to emerge when lawyers for some of the victims, acting on a tip from a sympathizer inside the administration, located the $400 million in Iranian funds languishing in a foreign military sales (FMS) account at the Treasury. The money came from payments made by the shah for U.S. military equipment that was never delivered after the Iranian leader was overthrown in 1979. After several more clashes with the administration over the funds, first lady Hillary Clinton stepped in at a time when the bitter battles could have hurt her with Jewish voters in her 2000 bid for a New York Senate seat. She persuaded her husband to appoint Jacob Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to negotiate a settlement that would utilize the frozen Iranian funds.
That same year, Congress passed the legislation that paved the way for an agreement. The legislation required the Treasury to pay the $400 million in damages and empowered the president to seek reimbursement from Iran. Flatow, who had insisted the payments come directly from the Iranian account, recalls his negotiations with Lew. “I said, ‘Jack, where’s the money coming from? Is it coming from the foreign military sales account?’ And he said, ‘No, Steve. All checks that the United States of America writes come from the United States Treasury. But the statute says that we have the right to offset any payments we make against that FMS money.’ So I said, ‘OK, it’s not what I was hoping for, but it’s a settlement.’ We got paid in 2001. And we all believed that the government would reimburse itself from Iran’s foreign military sales account.”
Lew, now Obama’s Treasury secretary, declined to comment, as did former officials from the George W. Bush administration, which also never reimbursed the Treasury from the Iran weapons account.

In retrospect, Eizenstat, the former deputy Treasury secretary, says it was a mistake to pay the judgments against Iran using U.S. funds with no financial consequences for Tehran. The payments have made Flatow, Eisenfeld and the others the only victims of Iranian attacks to receive compensation. That is expected to change this year now that Congress has established a $1 billion fund to begin paying other notable victims of Iranian attacks, including the Tehran embassy hostages and survivors of the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut. This time, however, the money for their damage judgments will come not from U.S. taxpayers but from fines collected from a French bank that laundered billions for Iran.
For Flatow and others like him, that’s little consolation. In the agreement, he notes, “there wasn’t a single sentence, not a single word that would ameliorate the pain of people who lost their loved ones. That’s very hurtful.”

Hey John Kerry, Iran’s Khamenei is Calling you a Liar

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People paying attention to the relationship between Iran and the United States, we tend to agree that John Kerry is a liar, but for much different reasons.

From Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, More Anti-American Rhetoric

WSJ: Less than a week after economic sanctions against Iran were lifted as implementation of the nuclear deal began, and the U.S. and Iran exchanged prisoners, Iran’s supreme leader resumed his anti-American rhetoric. In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the government against U.S. “deceptions” and sought to play down the significance of the nuclear agreement and its economic benefits for Iran.

The ayatollah’s tough talk fits the image he likes to project of the unwavering enemy of the world’s greatest power; but his remarks must be seen in context. Clearly, Iran’s supreme leader is not above compromises with the nation he calls the Great Satan. He allowed the nuclear negotiations to play out. His own “red lines” on these negotiations were crossed. The ayatollah supposedly barred Iranian officials from negotiating with the U.S. about anything but the nuclear issue, yet Iranian intelligence officials secretly negotiated a prisoner exchange with U.S. officials at the same time, and Iranian diplomats continue talking to their U.S. counterparts about Syria. A role for U.S. oil companies seems inevitable as Iran, released from sanctions, moves to develop its oil and gas industries.

Ayatollah Khamenei has voiced concerns about what he calls the American, or Western, “cultural onslaught.” He has warned that relations with the U.S. would have a considerable impact on Iranian society, particularly on youth.

On the economy, too, he wishes to project the image of the bulwark against the lure of Western investment or Iran’s integration into the world economy. In a tweet to his president, the supreme leader reverted to his oft-repeated theme that the Islamic Republic should rely on an “economy of resistance” and “self-sufficiency,” rather than on outsiders lifting sanctions, to achieve economic prosperity.

Here, too, reality is bound to intrude. Thirty-six years after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Iran imports huge amounts of its food, machinery, and consumer goods, and it remains highly dependent on oil exports for earnings. The “economy of resistance” to which Iranian officials pay lip service remains beyond reach.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s attempt to retain the support of his hard-line constituency while adjusting to regional realities was evident elsewhere. Nearly three weeks after a mob ransacked and set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, the ayatollah condemned the incident, calling it “very bad” and “detrimental to the country and Islam.” Apparently he felt the need to try to repair the damage the attack had inflicted on Iran’s relations with almost all other Arab countries. Taking his time to speak out is nothing new; it took Ayatollah Khamenei even longer to criticize the mobs who trashed the British embassy in Tehran in 2011. Still, these incidents should not be used to as an excuse to condemn “devoted, revolutionary, and [god-loving] youth,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ayatollah’s position on domestic politics has shifted very little. He gave a speech this week but said nothing about election supervisory councils disqualifying a large number of candidates, including many reformists, for parliamentary elections next month. Would-be reformers have complained that their candidates have been targeted, and President Rouhani has sharply criticized the disqualifications. “If only one faction is present in the vote, and the other is not, then why are we holding elections,” he reportedly said this week. The president has promised to take the matter up with the Council of Guardians, a 12-member body dominated by senior clerics that has final say on candidacies. The president and his supporters have been hoping the elections would give Mr. Rouhani a workable majority in parliament. Ayatollah Khamenei, while urging those opposed to the system to vote, has treated it as natural that opponents of the system should be barred from running for office. It is a mantra of Iranian hard-liners that many reformists are “seditionists” and enemies of the system.

On the other hand, the supreme leader has long regarded large-scale voter participation in elections as an important sign of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and acceptance by the people. After the 2009 presidential election, millions of Iranians poured into the streets, outraged that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Those protests shook the regime to its foundation; their shadow has hovered over subsequent elections. To ensure a large turnout and to mute controversy, Ayatollah Khamenei may yet nudge the Council of Guardians into allowing a significant number of prominent reformist candidates to run in February.

France warns the entire European project is in ‘very grave danger’

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EU leaders consider two-year suspension of Schengen rules

Leaders will consider emergency measures to reintroduce internal borders at meeting on Monday, as France warns the entire European project is in ‘very grave danger’

TelegraphUK: The Schengen system of free movement could be suspended for two years under emergency measures to be discussed by European ministers on Monday, as the French Prime Minister warned the crisis could bring down the entire European Union.

Manuel Valls said that the “very idea of Europe” will be torn apart until the flows of migrants expected to surge in spring are turned away.

On Monday, interior ministers from the EU will meet in Amsterdam to discuss emergency measures to allow states to reintroduce national border controls for two years.

The powers are allowed under the Schengen rules, but would amount to an unprecedented abandonment of the 30-year old agreement that allows passport-free travel across 26 states.

The measure could be brought in from May, when a six-month period of passport checks introduced by Germany expires. The European Commission would have to agree that there are “persistent serious deficiencies” in the Schengen zone’s external border to activate it.

“This possibility exists, it is there and the Commission is prepared to use it if need be,” said Natasha Bertaud, a spokesman for Jean-Claude Juncker.

Greece has been blamed by states for failing to identify and register hundreds of thousands of people flowing over its borders.

Other states that have introduced emergency controls are Sweden, Austria, France, Denmark and Norway, which is not in the EU but is in Schengen.

“We’re not currently in that situation,” Ms Bertaud added. “But interior ministers will on Monday in Amsterdam have the opportunity to discuss and it’s on the agenda what steps should be taken or will need to be taken once we near the end of the maximum period in May.”

Theresa May, the British Home Secretary, will attend the meeting.

in numbers

European refugee crisis

Pic: Action Press/REX Shutterstock

1 million

Refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe via illegal routes

38 percent

Proportion of migrants who are from Syria

1,200,000

Syrian refugees being housed in Lebanon – a country 100 times smaller than Europe

One in five

Proportion of people in Lebanon who are refugees

1 in 122

According to the head of the UN refugee agency, one in 122 people is a refugee

1.2 percent

Proportion of migrants who land in Italy and Greece, then get as far as Calais

100,000

Illegal migrants were stopped from entering Britain by UK Border Force officials in 2015

15 per cent

Proportion of female refugees from Syria who are pregnant in Turkey

Data as of November 2015

In a further blow, Mr Valls said that France would keep its state of emergency, which has included border checks, until the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant network is destroyed.

“It is a total and global war that we are facing with terrorism,” he said.

He warned that without proper border controls to turn away refugees, the 60-year old European project could disintegrate.

“It’s Europe that could die, not the Schengen area. If Europe can’t protect its own borders, it’s the very idea of Europe that could be thrown into doubt. It could disappear, of course – the European project, not Europe itself, not our values, but the concept we have of Europe, that the founding fathers had of Europe.

Migrants help children go over a fence as refugees waits to cross the Slovenian-Austrian border in Sentilj, Slovenia

“Yes, that is in very grave danger. That’s why you need border guards, border controls on the external borders of the European Union.”

He said Europe must tell refugees that they cannot expect to reach Europe.

“We cannot say or accept that all refugees can be welcomed in Europe,”

“Germany is faced with a major challenge. We need to help Germany. But the first message we need to send now is with the greatest of firmness is to say that we will not welcome all the refugees in Europe. Because a message that says come, you will be welcome, provokes major shifts,” he told the BBC.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, said that a fence should be erected on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece to curb the inflow of migrants into Europe.

Stefan Lofven, the Swedish Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister, and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, have each in the past week said that leaders have until March to save the Schengen zone.

Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that is the Schengen zone dies then the euro and the single market could follow.

The Schengen Agreement

What is it?

An agreement, signed in 1985 in the town of Schengen in Luxembourg, to remove border checks within Europe. It means anyone, regardless of nationality, can move freely between member states without showing a passport or visa

Who is a member?

Not the UK. But most EU states are in, as are Switzerland, Iceland and Norway. In total, 26 countries comprising 400 million people

Why is it under strain?

Terrorists and mass migration. Police checks have been brought in on the Italian border at the request of Bavaria, amid a wave of non-EU migrants attempting to reach Germany. Angela Merkel warns the system will be pulled apart unless countries share asylum seekers. And Belgium wants more ID checks on trains in the wake of the Thalys train terrorist attack

Are checks legal?

Police are allowed to make targeted ‘security’ checks on the border, and states can impose border controls in an emergency or for major events for up to 30 days. But permanent, systematic checks on passports are forbidden

What does the European Union say?

Jean Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, says the system is non-negotiable, irreversible, and the EU’s greatest achievement

What do Eurosceptics say?

“Schengen has now hit the buffers of the real world and is falling apart,” says Nigel Farage, Ukip leader

 

Austria announced on Wednesday that it planned to limit the number of people allowed to apply for asylum to 1.5 percent of its population over the next four years, or 37,500.

The move piles more pressure on Angela Merkel, who is facing intense demands from her conservative allies to follow suit.

EU border agency Frontex said on Friday some 108,000 migrants arrived in December in Greece.

That compares to 150,000 arrivals in November and puts the total for Greece and Italy at 1.04 million in 2015, or five times as many as in 2014, Frontex said.

Crossings have slowed due to the cold weather, and are expected to surge when the spring returns.

DHS is Not Deporting Visa Overstays

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The numbers are staggering but just for the time period of 2015, 482,000 are residing in the United States illegally. This number is clearly worse than those numbers coming in from the southern border.

DHS admits it’s not deporting most visa overstays

WashingtonExaminer: A pair of Department of Homeland Security officials told the Senate Wednesday that the government does not search for most of the people who overstay their temporary visas, a day after DHS said that nearly 500,000 people were still in the U.S. after having overstayed their visas last year.

“I didn’t mean to imply that we’re actually out monitoring them,” Craig Healy, an assistant director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during Senate Judiciary subcommittee panel. Healy said that they review the universe of people who overstayed their visas and “prioritize” the deportation of people who went on to commit other crimes.

Their exchange came at the outset of a hearing on the federal government’s failure to implement a biometric system to track entries into and exits from the country, as required by a 2004 law. A Customs and Border Patrol official said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing “gridlock” at U.S. airports, a response that failed to allay bipartisan concern that the lack of this system is an ongoing national security threat.

“The biometric exit system is still not off the ground and that is unfortunate, very unfortunate, because it is a matter of national security,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting, said during the hearing.

John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing two-hour delays when boarding airplanes. “It’s the placement of the technology and how you collect it to ensure that the person actually departed the United States,” Wagner said. “There’s no zone to do that.”

These answers frustrated Democratic lawmakers who otherwise disagree with Sessions and other immigration hawks the issue of border security and deportations. “It’s hard for me to envision that we can’t figure out where to get a space to do this at an airport or seaport,” said Senator Al Franken, D-Minn. “If you can’t solve it in 11 or 12 years, how can we know it will ever be solved?”

DHS’s report saying hundreds of thousands of people remained in the United States after having overstayed their visas drew complaints from both parties, but Sessions in particular.

“That is a population of individuals that is larger than any city in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina,” Sessions said. Healy replied that about 3,000 of the people who had overstayed their visas were under investigation, a statistic Sessions cited to argue that President Obama’s team has made no effort to implement the system or to deport people who overstay their visas, as long as those people “keep their nose clean” and do nothing to draw the attention of law enforcement or counterterrorism officials.

He said the lack of a biometric exit system was part of a broader failure by the Obama administration to implement federal immigration law.

“Our executive branch is on strike against the will of the American people,” Sessions said. “Simply put, there is no border at all if we don’t enforce our visa rules.”

****

Hold on, there is more…

Administration eases visa rules for travelers visiting terror hotspots

FNC: The Obama administration on Thursday eased visa rules for certain European travelers who have visited terror hotspots in the Middle East and Africa, triggering a backlash from congressional lawmakers who sought the restrictions for security reasons.

Moments after the announcement, two key Republicans declared the administration is “blatantly breaking the law” – a law that President Obama signed – by implementing the changes.

“This is not a difference of opinion over statutory interpretation, it is a clear contradiction of the law and the agreement we reached with the White House,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., author of the bill, said in a statement.

The revised requirements announced Thursday pertain to changes passed by Congress in the Visa Waiver Program.

Lawmakers had sought new restrictions to tighten up the program – which allows visa-free travel for residents of eligible countries — in order to prevent Europeans who have joined ISIS from entering the United States. Under the newly passed Visa Waiver Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, nationals of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan as well as other travelers who have visited those countries since Mar. 1, 2011 now must apply for a visa in order to travel to the U.S.

The administration implemented those changes Thursday — but with some changes of its own.

Under the revised requirements, some Europeans who have traveled to those four countries in the last five years may still be allowed to travel to the United States without obtaining a visa if they meet certain criteria.

The administration announced it will use its waiver authority — granted to it in the legislation — to give waivers to travelers who traveled to the terror hotspots as journalists, for work with humanitarian agencies or on behalf of international organizations, regional organizations and sub-national governments on official duty.

Further, an additional waiver was announced for people who have traveled to Iran “for legitimate business-related purposes” since the conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal in July. The administration offers waivers for individuals who have traveled to Iraq for business as well.

Republicans reacted angrily to the waivers, saying the Obama administration had exploited the limited authority and has compromised national security.

“President Obama and his administration’s decision to abuse their limited waiver authority and allow scores of people who have traveled to or are dual nationals of countries like Iraq and Syria flies in the face of reason and congressional intent,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement.

“The Obama Administration is essentially rewriting the law by blowing wide open a small window of discretion that Congress gave it for law enforcement and national security reasons,” Goodlatte said.

Under the visa program itself, citizens of 38 countries, mostly in Europe, are generally allowed to travel to the United States without applying for a visa. But they still have to submit biographical information to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.

The Homeland Security Department said waivers for some ESTA applicants will be granted on a “case-by-case” basis. Those travelers who are denied visa-free travel can still apply for visa through a U.S. embassy in their home country.

The new restrictions had previously been criticized by the Iranian government which suggested the U.S. might be violating the nuclear deal by penalizing legitimate business travel to the country.