Pro-Kremlin Machine Right in Front of YOU

Posted on July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Vladimir Putin has his propaganda machine working in full speed. We are being sucked into it and not recognizing the clues much less asking harder questions against his agenda.

There is a two part series on the Pro-Kremlin operation. Part 1 video is here. Part 2 video is here.

Now, the movement behind the machine is something called ‘The Agency’ which is a location in St. Petersberg, Russia called the Internet Research Agency.

Graph showing shared use of Google Analytics, server software and social media

From DenisonForum: The Agency’s origins can be traced to the 2011 anti-government protests, organized because of the growing evidence of fraud in the Parliamentary elections that year. The protests had been organized largely via Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal and the government wanted to ensure that similar protests were far more difficult to put together in the future. So the next year, Vyascheslav Volodin was named the new deputy head of Putin’s administration and given the task of gaining better control over the internet. In addition to starting the Agency, laws were passed that required bloggers to register with the state and the government was allowed to censor websites without a court order. Putin justified the new laws “by calling the Internet a ‘C.I.A. project,’ one that Russia needed to be protected from.”

The full background investigation on the Internet Research Agency, or rather the Kremlin troll factory is found here.

For the software and internet geeks out there, below is the proof of the machine where evidence was peeled back by using open source analytic tools.

From Global Voices Online: In April of this year, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Guardian reported on the website вштабе.рф, a large photo gallery of pro-Russian memes and “demotivator” graphics. Most of these crude caricatures ridicule US, Western, and Ukrainian leaders, whilst portraying Vladimir Putin as strong and heroic.

The site gives no credit or attribution for its design, and offers no indication as to who might be behind it. Intrigued by this anonymity, I used Maltego open-source intelligence software to gather any publicly-available information that might provide clues.

The Secrets of Google Analytics
My use of Maltego revealed that the site was running Google Analytics, a commonly used online analytics tool that allows a website owner to gather statistics on visitors, such as their country, browser, and operating system. For convenience, multiple sites can be managed under a single Google analytics account. This account has a unique identifying “UA” number, contained in the Analytics script embedded in the website’s code. Google provides a detailed guide to the system’s structure.

Whilst investigating the network of sites tied to account UA-53176102, I discovered that one, news-region.ru, had also been linked to a second Analytics account: UA-53159797 (archive).

This number, in turn, was associated with a further cluster of nineteen pro-Kremlin websites. Subsequent examinations of these webpages revealed three more Analytics accounts, with additional sites connected to them. Below is a network diagram of the relationships I have established to date.

Most notably, Podgorny is listed in the leaked employee list of St. Petersburg’s Internet Research Agency, the pro-Kremlin troll farm featured in numerous news reports and investigations, including RuNet Echo’s own reports.

Podgorny’s date of birth, given on his public VK profile, is an exact match for that shown in the leaked document.

Podgorny is also VK friends with Igor Osadchy, who is named as a fellow employee in the same list. Osadchy has denied working for the Internet Reseach Agency, calling the leaks an “unsuccessful provocation.”

*** This internet researcher will continue the investigation and report more. For expanded details on the first cut of the investigation, click here.

Obama’ Clemency Project

Posted on July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Today, Barack Obama freed 46 inmates under his authority to do so. Here is the list. Here is the letter they receive. with his signature.

From the DoJ’s Deputy Attorney General as published by Washington Post: ‘More than 35,000 inmates are seeking clemency, but a complicated review process has slowed the Obama administration’s initiative. In February, Obama commuted the sentences of 22 drug offenders, the largest batch of prisoners to be granted early release under his administration and the first group of inmates who applied after the new criteria were set.

“Certainly, I don’t think I can ever be accused of being soft on crime,” Yates said. “But we need to be using the limited resources we have to ensure that we are truly doing justice and that the sentences we’re meting out are just and proportional to the crimes that we’re charging.”

“We’re not the Department of Prosecutions or even the Department of Public Safety,” Yates said. “We are the Department of Justice.”

Enter the Clemency Project and Barack Obama having it both ways with a lottery system.

“Obama said that he had “revamped” the Office of the Pardon Attorney, and promised to be “more aggressive” with his clemency powers.

But memos from the White House obtained by USA TODAY revealed a different story. President Obama would “very rarely, if ever grant pardons for major drug offenses and guns crimes,” said one memo, and during his first 18-months in office, the President knowingly and deliberately allowed the Bush Administration’s clemency policies to remain in effect.”

Clemency Project 2014 – a working group composed of lawyers and advocates including the Federal Defenders, the American Civil Liberties Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as individuals active within those organizations – launched in January after Deputy Attorney General James Cole asked the legal profession to provide pro bono (free) assistance to federal prisoners who would likely have received a shorter sentenced if they had been sentenced today. Clemency Project 2014 members collaborate to recruit and train attorneys on how to screen for prisoners who meet the criteria listed below and assist prisoners who meet the criteria to find lawyers to represent them. Clemency Project 2014 lawyers provide assistance free of charge to applicants. Anyone asking you to pay is not working with Clemency Project 2014.

The ACLU

WASHINGTON – Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced today a new set of criteria the Justice Department and White House will use when considering clemency petitions from federal prisoners. The new criteria will help the Justice Department identify federal prisoners who, if sentenced today under current sentencing laws and policies, would likely have received a substantially lower sentence.

“Our federal sentencing laws have shattered families and wasted millions of dollars,” said Vanita Gupta, ACLU deputy legal director. “Too many people—particularly people of color—have been locked up for far too long for nonviolent offenses. The President now has a momentous opportunity to correct these injustices in individual cases. If we’re ever going to see truly systemic and smart reform of the federal criminal justice, however, we need Congress to step up and pass the Smarter Sentencing Act.”

Clemency Project 2014, a working group composed of the Federal Defenders, the American Civil Liberties Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Bar Association, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as individuals active within those organizations, wholeheartedly supports Cole’s announcement and the Justice Department’s plans to restore the integrity of the clemency process.

Cyberwar, Deeper Truth on China’s Unit 61398

Posted on July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

The NSA has been hacking China for years, so it is a cyberwar. What the United States cyber experts have known at least since 2009 spells out that there has been no strategy to combat cyber intrusions much less a declaration that these hacks are an act of war.

The NSA Has A Secret Group Called ‘TAO’ That’s Been Hacking China For 15 Years

China hacking charges: the Chinese army’s Unit 61398
Operating out of a tower block in Shanghai, Unit 61398 allegedly hacks Western companies in support of the Chinese government’s political and economic aims.

From DarkReading:

According to the DOJ indictment, Huang Zhenyu was hired between 2006 and 2009 or later to do programming work for one of the companies (referred to as “SOE-2” in the indictment). Huang was allegedly tasked with constructing a “secret” database to store intelligence about the iron and steel industry, as well as information about US companies.

“Chinese firms hired the same PLA Unit where the defendants worked to provide information technology services,” according to the indictment, which the US Department of Justice unsealed Monday. “For example, one SOE involved in trade litigation against some of the American victims herein hired the Unit, and one of the co-conspirators charged herein, to hold a ‘secret’ database to hold corporate ‘intelligence.'”

The for-hire database project sheds some light on the operations of China’s most prolific hacking unit, Unit 61398 of the Third Department of China’s People’s Liberation Army (also known as APT1), where the alleged hackers work. US Attorney General Eric Holder announced an unprecedented move Monday: The Justice Department had indicted the five men with the military unit for allegedly hacking and stealing trade secrets of major American steel, solar energy, and other manufacturing companies, including Alcoa, Allegheny Technologies Inc., SolarWorld AG, Westinghouse Electric, and US Steel, as well as the United Steel Workers Union.

It has never been a secret, it has only been a topic debated with no resolutions behind closed doors. China has a database on Americans and is filling it with higher details, growing their intelligence on everything America.

China has launched a strategic plan when one examines the order of hacks of American companies, the timing and the data. A full report was published on Unit 61398.

New York Times report

Hacked in the U.S.A.: China’s Not-So-Hidden Infiltration Op

From Bloomberg: The vast cyber-attack in Washington began with, of all things, travel reservations.

More than two years ago, troves of personal data were stolen from U.S. travel companies. Hackers subsequently made off with health records at big insurance companies and infiltrated federal computers where they stole personnel records on 21.5 million people — in what apparently is the largest such theft of U.S. government records in history.

Those individual attacks, once believed to be unconnected, now appear to be part of a coordinated campaign by Chinese hackers to collect sensitive details on key people that went on far longer — and burrowed far deeper — than initially thought.

But time and again, U.S. authorities missed clues connecting one incident to the next. Interviews with federal investigators and cybersecurity experts paint a troubling portrait of what many are calling a serious failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to spot the pattern or warn potential victims. Moreover, the problems in Washington add new urgency to calls for vigilance in the private sector.

In revealing the scope of stolen government data on Thursday, Obama administration officials declined to identify a perpetrator. Investigators say the Chinese government was almost certainly behind the effort, an allegation China has vehemently denied.

‘Facebook of Intelligence’

Some investigators suspect the attacks were part of a sweeping campaign to create a database on Americans that could be used to obtain commercial and government secrets.

“China is building the Facebook of human intelligence capabilities,” said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence for cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc. “This appears to be a real maturity in the way they are using cyber to enable broader intelligence goals.”

The most serious breach of records occurred at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where records for every person given a government background check for the past 15 years may have been compromised. The head of the government personnel office, Katherine Archuleta, resigned Friday as lawmakers demanded to know what went wrong.

The campaign began in early 2013 with the travel records, said Laura Galante, manager of threat intelligence for FireEye Inc., a private security company that has been investigating the cyber-attacks.

Stockpiling Records

By mid-2014, it became clear that the hackers were stockpiling health records, Social Security numbers and other personal information on Americans -– a departure from the country’s traditional espionage operations focusing on the theft of military and civilian technology.

“There was a clear and apparent shift,” said Jordan Berry, an analyst at FireEye.

Recognition came too late for many of the victims. Vendors of security devices say health-care companies are spending tens of millions of dollars this year to upgrade their computer systems but much of the data is already gone.

U.S. intelligence agencies were collecting information on the theft of personal data but failed to understand the scope and potential damage from the aggressive Chinese operation, according to one person familiar with the government assessment of what went wrong.

In the last two years, much of the attention of U.S. national security agencies was focused on defending against cyber-attacks aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure like power grids.

Numbers Even Backdoor to Front-door entry into U.S.

Posted on July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

There are almost 20 different visa applications forms, each for unique circumstances to enter into the United States. Some are easier and more likely used than others for fast processing and requiring less background investigations.

The State Department outsources the processing of visas and in some visa classifications there are annual quotas that can be finessed by waivers and or exemptions. There are even legal cottage industry members that handle the complex legal process with enough money, they know how to skirt the process and hasten the approval process.

Now, that these people have front-door entry, who are they and what happens if they overstay the visa time limit? Short answer is not much.

In March of 2012, John Cohen, the Deputy Counter-terrorism Coordinator for DHS provided written testimony to the House Sub-committee on DHS which fully explains the convoluted process and lack of resources. In the same hearing, Peter T. Edge, Deputy Executive Associate Director of DHS Investigations for ICE offered his written testimony on the scope of fraud of the visa program. This was in response to Amine el-Khalifi, an individual who allegedly attempted to conduct a suicide attack at the U.S. Capitol, is not the first time terrorists have exploited the visa process. In fact, el-Khalifi follows a long line of terrorists, including several of the 9/11 hijackers, who overstayed their visa and went on to conduct terror attacks.

Of particular note, the Visa Security program of 2002 is the basis of law today and reads in part from 2012 statistics:

The Visa Security Program
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assist in the identification of visa applicants who seek to enter the United States for illegitimate purposes, including criminal offenses and terrorism-related activities. The visa adjudication process often presents the first opportunity to assess whether a potential nonimmigrant visitor or immigrant poses a threat to the United States. The Visa Security Program (VSP) is one of several ICE programs focused on minimizing global risks.
Through the Visa Security Program (VSP), ICE deploys trained special agents overseas to high-risk visa activity posts in order to identify potential terrorist and criminal threats before they reach the United States. ICE special agents conduct targeted, in-depth reviews of individual visa applications and applicants prior to issuance, and recommend to consular officers refusal or revocation of applications when warranted. DHS actions complement the consular officers’ initial screenings, applicant interviews, and reviews of applications and supporting documentation.
ICE now conducts visa security investigations at 19 high-risk visa adjudication posts in 15 countries. In FY 2012 to date, VSP has screened 452,352 visa applicants and, in collaboration with DOS colleagues, determined that 121,139 required further review. Following the review of these 121,139 applications, ICE identified derogatory information on more than 4,777 applicants.

In 2012: The Obama administration doesn’t consider deporting people whose only offense is overstaying a visa a priority. It has focused immigration enforcement efforts on people who have committed serious crimes or are considered a threat to public or national security.

A House Homeland Security subcommittee is conducting an oversight hearing Tuesday. The panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., said El Khalifi “follows a long line of terrorists, including several of the 9/11 hijackers, who overstayed their visa and went on to conduct terror attacks.” His tourist visa expired the same year he arrived from his native Morocco as a teenager in 1999.

Going back to 2006, it was stated: “Many immigrants who are in the United States illegally never jumped a fence, hiked through the desert or paid anyone to help them sneak into the country. According to a recent study, 45 percent of illegal immigrants came here on a legal visa, and then overstayed that visa.” For the audio interview and Pew Research summary report, click here.

In closing, the LA Times proves the process on visa overstays with a few key cases.

* Laura Lopez first came to the U.S. at 15. She had joined a group of students from Guatemala who were visiting Orange County.

She remembers her first trip to Disneyland, eating at Taco Bell and strolling through the streets of downtown Santa Ana, with its impressive red sandstone courthouse.

“I felt so much energy,” said Lopez, now 30. “I looked around and saw that courthouse, and it was like something that spoke about freedom. I just didn’t want to leave.”

Lopez returned to Santa Ana two years later on a tourist visa. This time, she never left.

*Billy Lee came to California from South Korea with his mother when he was 5. Their trip included exploring Hollywood and spending time with relatives. “They told my mother they had great jobs, great schools — that this was a wonderful, open place to live and that we should take a risk and copy them,” said Lee, now 31.

So they stayed.

“Homeland Security Department officials estimate that up to 40% of the roughly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally arrived this way. Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “It happens all the time.”

Yet, he said, no system exists “to follow up on what these folks do once they’re in the States. There’s no process by which officials can track if someone stayed the proper amount of time or beyond that.” For more cases covered by the LA Times, click here.

In the Obama administration, nobody knows anything or for that matter really investigates or reports the numbers.

Nobody is sure how many people are in the U.S. on expired visas.

A long-standing problem in immigration enforcement — identifying foreigners who fail to go home when their visas expire — is emerging as a key question as senators and President Barack Obama chart an overhaul of immigration law. The Senate is discussing an overhaul that would require the government to track foreigners who overstay their visas. The problem is the U.S. currently doesn’t have a reliable system for doing this.

The Center for Immigration Studies is the best source for visa overstays, yet few listen.

The General Accountability Offices does offer some insight that is useful.

Lastly, the piece parts are offered here from a 2013 hearing.

Written testimony of ICE Homeland Security Investigations Executive Associate Director James Dinkins, CBP Office of Field Operations Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Wagner, and NPPD Office of Biometric Identity Management Deputy Director Shonnie Lyon for a House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security hearing titled “Visa Security and Overstays: How Secure is America?”

In closing, the system is broken simply due to lack of will, enforcement and resources. Adjustments do need to be made especially when it comes to ‘visa waiver companies and countries, which should both be terminated.

IRS Mafia Tactics Proven in Wisconsin Against Gov. Walker

Posted on July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

It begins with something in Wisconsin called the ‘Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’….what is in a name after all. How bad can it be?

Fire all of them and then prosecute all of them.

Alright, start here with the lawsuit against GAB and Kevin Kennedy.

From The Watchdog: Kevin Kennedy, the director of Wisconsin’s speech regulator integrally tied to the probe into dozens of conservative organizations, is a longtime “professional friend” of former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner.

Lerner led the Obama administration’s IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. The Senate Finance Committee is looking into more than 6,000 emails from Lerner once thought to be lost.

The Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Thursday and headlined “Wisconsin’s friend at the IRS” reveals that Lerner and Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’s Kennedy were in contact between 2011 and 2013 — when the GAB assisted partisan prosecutors in investigating scores of conservatives and in raiding several of their homes.

“Emails we’ve seen show that between 2011 and 2013 the two were in contact on multiple occasions, sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections,” the op-ed notes.

“The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch. ‘Are you available for the 25th?’ Ms. Lerner wrote in January 2012. ‘If so, perhaps we could work two nights in a row.’”

Kennedy’s GAB is Wisconsin’s political speech regulator. It oversees elections, campaign finance and lobbying laws.

It is also the subject of a state lawsuit that claims the agency manipulated state campaign finance laws and regulations in advising Democrat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, his assistants and other prosecutors in their political probe.

The multi-year, multi-county investigation included pre-dawn, paramilitary-style raids at the homes of John Doe targets, including a raid that, according to a recent story in National Review, victimized a 16-year-old boy who was home alone at the time.

As Wisconsin Watchdog has reported, John Doe prosecutors conducted an extensive spying operation on conservatives described by one target as worse than the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. Affidavits reviewed by Wisconsin Watchdog show prosecutors seeking and receiving warrants and subpoenas to tap into conservatives’ Internet service providers, some of whom still don’t know they were targets of the investigation.

The probe followed the partisan recall campaigns by unions and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and several state senators. Walker and most of the senators survived.

But the secret John Doe investigation would drag Walker and his conservative allies through the political mud for years to come, thanks to many, many leaks.

POLITICAL SPEECH COP: Kevin Kennedy and the GAB are the subject of a state lawsuit alleging the agency manipulated campaign finance laws in an abusive investigation at taxpayers expense. Sources say top GAB officials have been deposed in the lawsuit.

Prosecutors confiscated more than 3 million records — a conservative count in a Wisconsin Watchdog analysis — of targets. The investigation has been based on the idea the groups illegally coordinated with Walker’s campaign during the recall campaigns. Multiple courts have rejected that theory, including the John Doe presiding judge, who tossed out several subpoenas because they had failed to show evidence a campaign finance crime had been committed.

While all of this was going on, the IRS was increasing its harassment of conservative nonprofits.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lerner’s lawyer declined to comment. Kennedy, in an email, told the newspaper “Ms. Lerner is a professional friend who I have known for 20 years.” He declined to say more.

The opinion piece notes:

“In an email exchange in July 2011, Mr. Kennedy sent Ms. Lerner an article in the Racine Journal-Times on the declining relevance of public campaign financing amid more private and ‘special interest’ money. ‘Note the last paragraph where the paper supports more transparency,’ Mr. Kennedy writes to Ms. Lerner. ‘The Legislature has killed our corporate disclosure rules.’”

John Doe investigators asked the IRS to look into a conservative group that was a primary target of the probe, sources told the Journal.

“The IRS doesn’t appear to have followed up, but the request shows Wisconsin prosecutors saw their pursuit of independent groups as part of a common agenda with national Democrats,” the op-ed states.

That’s the point, the Wall Street Journal contends. John Doe transcends Wisconsin, with interconnections revealing “the use of tax and campaign laws to limit political speech was part of a larger and systematic Democratic campaign.”

President Obama laid it all out at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010 when he blasted the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

“Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, (Republicans) are being helped along this year, as I said, by special interest groups that are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on attack ads. They don’t even have to disclose who’s behind the ads,” Obama said.

“Conservative nonprofits like the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce were later subpoenaed and bound by secrecy orders as their fundraising all but ceased,” the opinion piece notes.

“Liberals worked together to turn the IRS and the GAB into partisan political weapons.”

Earlier this week, Judicial Watch reported that newly discovered Department of Justice and IRS documents show there was “an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.”

Eric O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, told Wisconsin Watchdog the Wall Street Journal has “exposed a whole new dimension of government abuse.”

“The permanent government does not believe that we, the people, are capable of governing ourselves. They want to control everything,” said O’Keefe, who is suing the GAB for its costly investigation.

Part 217 of 218 in the series Wisconsin’s Secret War

Many more details here. Consider: collusion, fraud, RICO, financial terror, targeting, who gave the orders and where it all leads. Imagine that the IRS got with the FBI and the DoJ to investigate and prosecute conservatives too. These are White House mafia tactics…..there is no dispute.