Govt Employees Concerned About Cyber Intrusions, Hillary?

Not nearly enough when every government employee is not fretting over cyber espionage most of all those at the State Department.

Nearly 9 in 10 Government Employees Concerned about Cyber Breaches in Their Organization

 

The public sector experienced nearly 50 times more cyber incidents than any other industry in 2014, and government agencies consistently cite implementing robust, agile cybersecurity measures as a top priority. As threats continue to evolve in both scale and capacity, it is increasingly essential that organizations devise and implement robust, agile measures to continuously detect, monitor, and address both external and internal vulnerabilities.

In an effort to learn more about the perspective of public sector employees on cybersecurity, Government Business Council conducted a flash poll on the following question:

GBC received responses from 160 federal, state, and local government employees. Nearly 90% stated that they were concerned or very concerned about the impact of cyber attacks; only 5% were not very concerned or not at all concerned about potential breaches. The results also reveal cybersecurity to be a more pressing concern for state and local organizations than for their federal counterparts: 96% of state and local respondents were concerned or very concerned about breaches, a 13-point difference from the percentage of federal employees expressing a similar level of concern.

Lack of resources might make cybersecurity a more pressing issue for state organizations — according to a 2015 survey of state CIOs, 64% cited insufficient funding as a major barrier against addressing cyber threats, and 62% cited inadequate availability of security professionals. There is also a disconnect between perception of state cybersecurity capabilities and reality: while 60% of state officials had a high level of confidence in the ability of states to defend against attacks, only a quarter of state CISOs responded likewise.

Moving forward, state and federal agencies should continue to invest in developing a cohesive cybersecurity strategy, recruiting and retaining personnel with the relevant skill set, and sharing threat information and best practices across organization. As federal CIO Tony Scott puts it, “Cyber threats cannot be eliminated entirely, but they can be managed much more effectively. And we can best do this by aligning and focusing our efforts, by properly funding necessary cyber investments, by building strong partnerships across government and industry, and by drawing on the best ideas and talent from across the country to tackle this quintessential problem of the 21st century.” GBC will revisit this topic in future research posts.

‘This was all planned’: Former IG says Hillary, State Dept. are lying

NYPost: The State Department is lying when it says it didn’t know until it was too late that Hillary Clinton was improperly using personal emails and a private server to conduct official business — because it never set up an agency email address for her in the first place, the department’s former top watchdog says.

“This was all planned in advance” to skirt rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency’s inspector general from 2005 to 2008.

The Harvard-educated lawyer points out that, from Day One, Clinton was never assigned and never used a state.gov email address like previous secretaries.

“That’s a change in the standard. It tells me that this was premeditated. And this eliminates claims by the State Department that they were unaware of her private email server until later,” Krongard said in an exclusive interview. “How else was she supposed to do business without email?”

He also points to the unusual absence of a permanent inspector general during Clinton’s entire 2009-2013 term at the department. He said the 5½-year vacancy was unprecedented. Much more to Sperry’s summary is here.

What do the former military special forces have to say on the matter of Hillary and even some betrayal within their own ranks?

Sofrep: A source within the State Department confirmed with SOFREP back in 2012 that Hillary’s top aid within the department pre-interviewed people regarding Benghazi before they were interviewed by the State Department’s own internal Benghazi Accountability Review Board.

The problem with the State Department investigating itself is that the investigation produced no significant change in the dysfunctional leadership, nor did it hold people accountable for clear negligence (the top three at fault being Hillary Clinton, Charlene Lamb, and Patrick Kennedy). The organization continues to rot from the top down.

Hillary, in particular, shares something in common with former Navy SEAL Team 6 member Matt Bissonette: They both potentially disclosed top secret government information, a clear violation of her non-disclosure agreement and oath. They also share pending legal problems with the feds.

The federal government continues to aggressively pursue Bissonette and anyone associated with him for disclosures in his book “No Easy Day” and for new information found on his personal computer that Bissonette turned over to federal investigators. SOFREP knows of at least one additional active-duty member forced to retire early as a result of information found on Bissonette’s laptop. Will the same measure of justice and accountability be applied to the political celebrity and former Secretary of State Clinton?

In a recent New York Times article, the editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton as an experienced presidential candidate.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton worked tirelessly, and with important successes, for the nation’s benefit. She was the secretary President Obama needed and wanted: someone who knew leaders around the world, who brought star power as well as expertise to the table. The combination of a new president who talked about inclusiveness and a chief diplomat who had been his rival but shared his vision allowed the United States to repair relations around the world that had been completely trashed by the previous administration. -NY Times editorial board 

Hillary leveraged her political star power to secure her position as secretary of state, a clear Democrat concession prize for losing to Obama last time around. It was likely her strategic plan to further build her resume, and wait things out until 2016. She did little to promote American diplomacy or secure global stability abroad (two pillars of the department’s mission statement).

This is a woman that will do and say anything to get what she wants. I have very little respect for her. I know what she said to me and she can say all day long that she didn’t say it. That’s her cross to bear. She knows that she knew what happened that day, and she wasn’t truthful, and that has come out in the last hearings — that she told her family one thing and was telling the public another thing. —Sister of fallen hero Glen Doherty, Kate Quigley  Full article and video is here.

 

DHS Fleecing and Iffy Bookkeeping

DHS Reports Spending Only 1 Percent of its $1.4B Training Budget

Though Congress provides more than $1 billion in funds to train personnel at the Department of Homeland Security, DHS spends a small fraction of that on workforce training—at least according to its bookkeepers.

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As an example of the iffy bookkeeping, auditors found that in fiscal 2014, Congress provided $1.4 billion for training, but the department reported spending only $1.9 million to the Office of Personnel Management. And as of August 2015, the DHS Office of the Chief Financial Officer could account for only $267 million in training expenditures in the prior year. Such lack of oversight on data quality, the Homeland Security inspector general found, meant the department reported only 1 percent of its training expenditures that year.

“DHS lacks reliable training cost information and data needed to make effective and efficient management decisions,” the IG concluded in a report released Wednesday. “It does not have an effective governance structure for its training oversight, including clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and delegated authorities” to oversee training programs, the watchdog wrote.

The difficulty the massive department would have in tracking training funds was predicted as far back as 2003, when the Government Accountability Office named human capital management as a high-risk area for the fledgling new department merging 22 agencies.

But DHS has failed to fully implement as many as 29 recommendations for improving training efficiencies made by several working groups, the new report said.

Among other problems, the IG found that the Transportation Security Administration did not report any training costs for January 2015, but after being questioned by IG staff, that agency reported $23 million in training expenditures.

DHS also lacks an oversight structure to monitor training after it transferred authority in 2012 to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and to departmental components. Such oversight is supposed to be supervised by the undersecretary for management, through the chief financial officer.

Inspector General John Roth recommended that DHS establish a better process for tracking training funds, set up an oversight structure and implement the remaining past efficiency recommendations.

Departmental managers agreed with the recommendations, with corrective actions underway for completion this year.

The actual Inspector General report is here.

Here is a previous interview with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, where he gives clues that he is in way above his head.

Hillary’s Email Contained Operational Intel/Detail

Official: Withheld Clinton emails contain ‘operational’ intel, put lives at risk

Herridge/FNC: EXCLUSIVE: Highly classified Hillary Clinton emails that the intelligence community and State Department recently deemed too damaging to national security to release contain “operational intelligence” – and their presence on the unsecure, personal email system jeopardized “sources, methods and lives,” a U.S. government official who has reviewed the documents told Fox News.

 From Observer: (  CIA Officers names (including NOCs) in Hillary emails. Discussions with Intelligence Community officials have revealed that Ms. Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included Holy Grail items of American espionage such as the true names of Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officers serving overseas under cover. Worse, some of those exposed are serving under non-official cover. NOCs (see this for an explanation of their important role in espionage) are the pointy end of the CIA spear and they are always at risk of exposure – which is what Ms. Clinton’s emails have done.Not only have these spies had their lives put in serious risk by this, it’s a clear violation of Federal law. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, enacted due to the murder of the CIA’s station chief in Athens after his cover was blown by the left-wing media, makes it a Federal crime to divulge the true identity of any covert operative serving U.S. intelligence if that person has not previous been publicly acknowledged to be working for our spy agencies.)

The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record and was limited in discussing the contents because of their highly classified nature, was referring to the 22 “TOP SECRET” emails that the State Department announced Friday it could not release in any form, even with entire sections redacted.

The announcement fueled criticism of Clinton’s handling of highly sensitive information while secretary of state, even as the Clinton campaign continued to downplay the matter as the product of an interagency dispute over classification. But the U.S. government official’s description provides confirmation that the emails contained closely held government secrets. “Operational intelligence” can be real-time information about intelligence collection, sources and the movement of assets.

The official emphasized that the “TOP SECRET” documents were sent over an extended period of time — from shortly after the server’s 2009 installation until early 2013 when Clinton stepped down as secretary of state.

Separately, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who sits on the House intelligence committee, said the former secretary of state, senator, and Yale-trained lawyer had to know what she was dealing with.

“There is no way that someone, a senior government official who has been handling classified information for a good chunk of their adult life, could not have known that this information ought to be classified, whether it was marked or not,” he said. “Anyone with the capacity to read and an understanding of American national security, an 8th grade reading level or above, would understand that the release of this information or the potential breach of a non-secure system presented risk to American national security.”

Pompeo also suggested the military and intelligence communities have had to change operations, because the Clinton server could have been compromised by a third party.

“Anytime our national security team determines that there’s a potential breach, that is information that might potentially have fallen into the hands of the Iranians, or the Russians, or the Chinese, or just hackers, that they begin to operate in a manner that assumes that information has in fact gotten out,” Pompeo said.

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, one day before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton claimed ignorance on the sensitivity of the materials and stressed that they weren’t marked.

“There is no classified marked information on those emails sent or received by me,” she said.

Clinton was pressed in the same ABC interview on her signed 2009 non-disclosure agreement which acknowledged that markings are irrelevant, undercutting her central explanation. The agreement states “classified information is marked or unmarked … including oral communications.”

Clinton pointed to her aides, saying: “When you receive information, of course, there has to be some markings, some indication that someone down the chain had thought that this was classified and that was not the case.”

But according to national security legal experts, security clearance holders are required to speak up when classified information is not in secure channels.

“Everybody who has a security clearance has an individual obligation to protect the information,” said national security attorney Edward MacMahon Jr., who represented former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling in the high-profile leak investigation regarding a New York Times reporter. “Just because somebody sends it to you … you can’t just turn a blind eye and pretend it never happened and pretend it’s unclassified information.”

These rules, known as the Code of Federal Regulations, apply to U.S. government employees with security clearances and state there is an obligation to report any possible breach by both the sender and the receiver of the information. The rules state: “Any person who has knowledge that classified information has been or may have been lost, possibly compromised or disclosed to an unauthorized person shall immediately report the circumstances to an official designated for this purpose.”

The Clinton campaign is now calling for the 22 “TOP SECRET” emails to be released, but this is not entirely the State Department’s call since the intelligence came from other agencies, which have final say on classification and handling.

“The State Department has no authority to release those emails and I do think that Secretary Clinton most assuredly knows that,” Pompeo said.

Meanwhile, the release of other emails has revealed more about the high-level exchange of classified information on personal accounts. Among the latest batch of emails released by the State Department is an exchange between Clinton and then-Sen. John Kerry, now secretary of state. Sections are fully redacted, citing classified information – and both Kerry and Clinton were using unsecured, personal accounts.

Further, a 2009 email released to Judicial Watch after a federal lawsuit — and first reported by Fox News — suggests the State Department ‘s senior manager Patrick Kennedy was trying to make it easier for Clinton to check her personal email at work, writing to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills a “stand-alone separate network PC is … [one] great idea.”

“The emails show that the top administrator at the State Department, Patrick Kennedy, who is still there overseeing the response to all the inquiries about Hillary Clinton, was in on Hillary Clinton’s separate email network and system from the get-go,”  Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

Kennedy is expected to testify this month before the Republican-led Benghazi Select Committee.

*** What is additionally terrifying is John Kerry not only emailed Hillary on his unprotected iPad but Kerry further admits that foreign espionage and intelligence services also likely hack and or found a way to intrude on Hillary’s server and emails along with any of those inside the State Department. Even Germany tapped John Kerry’s cell phone.

Obama Greased the System for Big Lobby/Money

Government Drags Us Back in Time – Because Cronies and Ideology Tell It To

Motley/RS: Government by ideological fantasy – at the expense of actual facts – is a terrible idea. So too is government of, by and for the donors. Far too often government regulators and bureaucrats ignore Reality – to tilt at ideological windmills. And WAY too often government becomes one giant stenographer for contributors – writing laws and regulations to accommodate their check-cutters’ every whim and wildest dream.

Thus does equal protection before the law – become special treatment for Friends of Government (FOG, if you will). Donors and dumb ideas are favored – at inordinate expense to the rest of us.

To wit: “green” “energy” (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ethanol) is neither green nor energy. It’s far worse for the environment than traditional energy sources – that actually produce, you know, affordable energy. Governments here and all around the world have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this phony energy. It’s been a titanic failure – for decades.

Why has government continued to throw this copious coin out the window – to keep us locked into an uber-failed yesterday? Because their ideological fantasies trump Reality. Why else? Because donors get government money at dollars-on-the-pennies they donated. To wit: President Barack Obama and his Democrats threw $80 billion more at the fake “green energy” industry in the 2009 “Stimulus.” 80% of that money – went to Obama donors.

The more government gets involved – the less the private sector can advance. The more rapidly a sector is advancing – the bigger an impediment government is. Likely no sector is advancing more quickly than the Tech sector. Enter government.

The Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already done egregious damage there. To appease their ridiculous fantasies – and huge donors. About a year ago the Commission’s three unelected Democrat bureaucrats decided to go all the way back in time to1934 landline telephone law – and unilaterally impose it on the Internet. Behold Internet Reclassification – so as to impose the ridiculous Network Neutrality.

The Obama Administration did it – because donors asked for it. Donors like Google. No one did more to get President Obama elected and reelected – than Google. Just about no company swapped staff with the Obama Administration at such prodigious numbers – than did Google.

And after Google greased the skids for Obama – Obama greased the skids for Google. Google spent nearly the entirety of the 2000s trying and failing to get Net Neutrality passed in Congress. Because it is government forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give uber-bandwidth-hogs like Google – unlimited free bandwidth. We the People didn’t want it – Congress couldn’t pass it. So Obama just issued a fiat – and gave it to them.

But the problem with buying support – is that the “supporters” rarely stay bought. Google is now channeling West Wing President Josiah Bartlet – “What’s next?” And most unfortunately, President Obama’s government stenographers have many, many responses to that request.

Here’s one: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has penned a defense of the next backwards-looking power grab – huge new backdoor mandates via television set-top-boxes. Which they have attempted to obfuscate – as a deregulation of set-top-boxes.

Set-top-boxes are the devices we lease from cable companies – to watch their television packages. Which we are doing to a lesser and lesser degree – as the marketplace has already created myriad ways for us to “cut the cord.” Meaning give up cable television – and the set-top-boxes – altogether.

The future (and increasingly the present) of television – isn’t boxes. It’s apps (and alternate hardware like Apple TV and Amazon Firestick). Netflix, Amazon Prime, Roku, Hulu and a host of other companies deliver you (via their apps) unlimited streaming TV and movie content – using only an Internet connection. No cable TV subscription required. And unlike programmed TV, you can watch whenever you want, wherever you want. So more and more people are cutting their cords.

Meanwhile, the government is yet again stuck in the past. The FCC is dubiously invoking a twenty-year-old law (and seriously, how unbelievably different was how we watched TV twenty-years ago?) – to “open” to competitors the collapsing set-top-box market. This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons.

It is just stupid from an evolutionary standpoint. This is like the government issuing mandates to “open” the horse-buggy industry – as Model T Fords are rolling with ever increasing frequency into our driveways and hearts. If you’re “helping” prop up yesterday’s technology – you aren’t helping.

This mandate forces cable companies to spend a LOT of money totally reconfiguring their networks – to accommodate the new boxes. A new configuration for each new box, most likely – because each box will most likely connect uniquely to each network. And cable companies have a LOT of proprietary information and content to protect – so they will have to spend EVEN MORE time and money reconfiguring so as to ensure its protection. For which we will inexorably pay in higher fees – on TV, and the other services cable companies provide (like Internet). All to make room for more devices – of which people want less.

And you will be trading the box lease – for the box purchase. Which requires more coin upfront. And unlike with the lease, when the next upgraded model comes out – you won’t get it for free. You will pay all over again. And given the rapid technological advancement – how often will that purchase have to happen again, and again, and…?

Think how quick is the smart phone tech turnover (which is a MUCH more intensive product). Where you just purchased the “latest” Google Android – only to almost immediately watch Google roll out the next Android. Does Google give you that next version for free? Of course not. Google won’t give you their latest set-top-box either.

Wait – Google wants to get into the going-out-of-business set-top-box business? You bet they do. So the Obama Administration is prepping to issue yet another fiat – to make Google’s wishes come true. Again.

Crony-infested and ideologically-blinded is no way to go through life, Son. It is also absolutely no way to run a government.

Obama Lies, has Jack Lew Doing the Same on Debt Crisis

Ted Cruz is right, but there is a caveat, a White House cartel inside the Washington cartel.

EXCLUSIVE: Secret Fed Docs Show Obama Misled Congress, Public During Debt Limit Crises

 Pollock/DCNF: Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were “unworkable,” according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will convene a public hearing on the report Feb. 2.

The report also states that the Obama administration crafted actual contingency plans to pay for Social Security and veterans benefits, as well as principal and interest on the national debt if the government was temporarily unable to borrow more money. The Committee concludes that over the last two years the Treasury Department has “obstructed” congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the administration’s real-time policy during the two showdowns.

The Constitution stipulates that only Congress can determine how much money the federal government can borrow. Presidents thus cannot unilaterally spend beyond congressional debt ceiling limits set. The committee — chaired by Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas — charged that during both confrontations, the Obama administration held the country’s creditworthiness “hostage” by claiming default was the only possibility if the debit ceiling was not raised.

“These internal documents show the Obama Administration took the nation’s creditworthiness and economy hostage in a cynical attempt to create a crisis so the president could get what he wanted during negotiations over the debt ceiling,” Hensarling said in a statement to be released with the report Tuesday.

 

The report also revealed that the Treasury Department did not publicly divulge its plans to prioritize payments “for the express purpose of creating market uncertainty in an effort to pressure Congress to acquiesce in the administration’s ‘no negotiation’ posture on the debt ceiling.”

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, the financial services panel’s oversight subcommittee chairman, said the administration “manufactured a crisis to put politics ahead of economic stability.”

The massive, 322-page report chronicles frank, behind-the-scenes discussions among Federal Reserve Board and Federal Bank of New York officials as Congress debated whether to keep existing debt limits or allow Treasury to borrow more money. The House committee and the Treasury Department have been fighting a bitter, two-year battle over Federal Reserve documents.

The report states that “Treasury apparently directed the New York Fed not to answer valid congressional oversight inquiries because Treasury knew the answers would expose the dishonesty of the administration’s public statements.”

A Treasury Department spokesman told TheDCNF, “Treasury has been committed to working cooperatively with the Committee to provide it with the information it needs,” including providing it with the New York Fed documents. The report is based on 3,878 pages of internal documents the committee eventually acquired despite Treasury’s opposition. The panel finally obtained the documents by subpoena. The report contains 41 separate appendices.

The revelations will likely add new intensity to the long-running public debate on the proper level of federal spending as the 2016 election campaign accelerates with Monday’s Iowa presidential caucus and next week’s New Hampshire presidential primary. Obama administration officials repeatedly declared that a complete government shutdown with no partial or interim payments was the only alternative to congressional approval of an increased debt ceiling.

In testimony Oct. 13, 2013, before the Senate Finance Committee, for example, Lew said the government could not “pick and choose” the funding of individual government programs once the debt limit ceiling was reached.

“I do not believe there is a way to pick and choose on a broad basis. The system was not designed to be turned off selectively,” Lew said.

The Federal Reserve documents revealed in the report show the Obama administration was in fact prepared to pick and choose which payments to make “in order to protect the creditworthiness of the United States.”

An internal e-mail from an official in the New York Fed’s Financial Institution Supervision Group states that regardless of the congressional outcome, “Treasury is adamant they will make [Principal and Interest] payments. Not considering possibility of missing debt payments.”  The P&I payments are made to Treasury bond holders.

“At the same time that Treasury was insisting to Congress and the American people that prioritization is unworkable, Treasury and New York Fed officials were working behind the scenes on a prioritization plan,” the report charges.

In private, Federal Reserve Board Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials vigorously denounced the administration’s secrecy over its contingency planning, one calling it “crazy, counter-productive, and add[ing] risk to an already risky situation.”

Federal Reserve Governor Jerome H. Powell, for example, complained that the administration tactics were part of political brinkmanship. “Treasury wants to maximize pressure on Congress by limiting communications on contingency planning,” he said in an email.

The report noted that both the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Bank of New York had “grave concerns with Treasury’s political decision not to inform the public of the administration’s debt ceiling contingency plans.”

The Federal Reserve Board staff “strongly encouraged Treasury to reveal its plan in advance” so that the private sector could prepare properly for a debt ceiling event but Treasury officials were “very reluctant to do so,” according to the report.

The Federal Reserve documents also depict officials at the Federal Bank of New York twice engaging in intense “tabletop exercises” about how government agencies could operate under a spending limit.

A March 16, 2011, table-top exercise included an hour-by-hour simulation of how 29 governmental agencies and market players would react when the federal government reached its debt limit.

At the time, the federal government would be within $25 million of its $14.3 trillion budget limit. The Secretary of the Treasury would invoke the Federal Reserve Debt Ceiling Crisis procedures, which provide that the “The President and the Secretary of the Treasury meet with the Fed Chairman at noon and agree that the Federal Reserve should pursue actions to honor and settle SSI, veterans benefits and P&I payments.”  SSI refers to Social Security and disability payments.

A similar April 9, 2013, debt ceiling table-top exercise focused on a “scenario” in which “Treasury begins controlling the flow of payments” and in which ”SSI, veterans benefits and P&I payments [would] be prioritized over all other governmental obligations.” The debt ceiling was $16.3 trillion at the time of the second exercise.

The procedures also state that “based on direction from the President, Treasury will pay only selected type of payments and withhold other government payments.”

Both Moody’s and Goldman Sachs publicly suggested during the 2013 crisis that it was possible the government could assure markets by pledging to pay principal and interest, Social Social and veterans benefits.

When contacted by TheDCNF, the Treasury Department did not directly address the issue of prioritizing payments but forwarded an October 16, 2015 blog, which stated in part, “The New York Fed’s system would be technologically capable of continuing to make principal and interest payment,” but added, “this approach would be entirely experimental and create unacceptable risk to both domestic and global financial markets.”

Multiple think tanks, including the Mercatus Center, have released reports suggesting numerous alternatives to default if the debt limit ceiling is not increased.

The national debt limit has tripled under Obama and now stands at $18.9 trillion.