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National Security Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 24, 2017 17 Comments
CBS News obtained medical records from U.S. diplomats in Cuba that show doctors diagnosed them with brain injuries from possible sonic attacks while in Havana. From CBS News:
The diplomats complained about symptoms ranging from hearing loss and nausea to headaches and balance disorders after the State Department said "incidents" began affecting them beginning in late 2016. A source familiar with these incidents says officials are investigating whether the diplomats were targets of a type of sonic attack directed at their homes, which were provided by the Cuban government. The source says reports of more attacks affecting U.S. embassy workers on the island continue.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 02, 2017 19 Comments
Republicans have suggested that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz should testify to explain why she kept IT aide Imran Awan on her payroll after he became a subject of an FBI investigation in March. Wasserman Schultz did not fire Awan until last week when authorities arrested him at Dulles Airport on bank fraud charges. The Capital Police placed Awan along with his wife and two brothers under investigation months ago for breaching House IT systems and stealing equipment. Other House lawmakers fired the four, but Wasserman Schultz kept Awan on payroll.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 26, 2017 34 Comments
Authorities arrested Imran Awan, the IT aide of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) under an FBI investigation, at Dulles Airport after he wired almost $300,000 to Pakistan. The police arrested Awan on bank fraud charges and cannot leave the country. A source recently told The Daily Caller “that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into ‘serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network'” by Awan, his wife Hina Alvi, and his brothers Abid and Jamal.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 24, 2017 39 Comments
The Daily Caller reported that the FBI has taken the smashed hard drives from the home of Pakistani-born Imran Awan, a former IT aide that worked for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). The Capitol Police took "computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker." A source told The Daily Caller "that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into 'serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network'" by Awan, his wife Hina Alvi, and his brothers Abid and Jamal. Officials suspect these four people “accessing members’ computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 11, 2017 21 Comments
Que Twilight Zone theme.  Scott Johnson of the conservative blog Powerline has been served a draft subpoena ordering that he preserve records of items he noted in his blog posts. Judge James Robart, presiding over the Hawaii v. Trump "travel ban" case, authorized the move. Johnson writes:
These are strange days. I seem to have been caught up in the so-called “travel ban” litigation challenging President Trump’s executive orders “Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.” Yesterday I was served with a letter and draft subpoena from one Tana Lin of the Keller Rohrback law firm’s Seattle office alerting me to my “document preservation obligations with respect to documents that are relevant or potentially relevant to this litigation.” Lin represents plaintiffs in Doe v. Trump, venued in the federal district court for the Western District of Washington.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 10, 2017 21 Comments
Just when you thought Obama's disastrous Iran deal couldn't get any worse, we learn that in order to protect the bad deal, Obama systematically disbanded units investigating Iran's terror-funding networks.  Not only that, but he also disbanded units investigating the state funding of terrorists by Syria and Venezuela. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
The Obama administration "systematically disbanded" law enforcement investigative units across the federal government focused on disrupting Iranian, Syrian, and Venezuelan terrorism financing networks out of concern the work could cause friction with Iranian officials and scuttle the nuclear deal with Iran, according to a former U.S. official who spent decades dismantling terrorist financial networks.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 24, 2017 14 Comments
Four IT staff for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers lost their jobs in February after suspicions arose that they breached security on the House IT network. The U.S. Capitol Police named Hina Alvi, her husband Imran Awan, and his brothers Abid and Jamal "as subjects of a criminal probe." Now relatives have said that Alvi has fled the United States with her daughters and sought protection from the Pakistani government.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 23, 2017 3 Comments
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a stop in my hometown on Friday. During the visit, he urged cities and other government jurisdictions with sanctuary policies to reconsider and work with federal law enforcement to identify criminals who should be deported.

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 20, 2017 37 Comments
President Donald Trump has picked U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser. Acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg will remain as chief of staff to the National Security Council:
“I think that combination is something very, very special,” Trump said of the pair.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 04, 2016 14 Comments
A raid conducted by authorities in Ghana shut down a fake U. S. embassy that was set up and run by a crime ring who issued legitimate visas and other documents to anyone who could pay for them. It is not yet known where they got the genuine U. S. passports, birth certificates, visas, and other documents.  Such documents for other countries were also found at the site. It is also not known how many of these documents were used to illegally enter the U. S. over the past ten years.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 21, 2016 13 Comments
Earlier this month, the United States District Court in Baltimore charged ex-NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin III with removal of classified documents and theft of government property. Officials have revealed that Martin took over 500 million pages of records and secrets over two decades. The Justice Department will probably charge Martin with other crimes, "including violating the Espionage Act." The latest DOJ document does not say if Martin shared this information, but made it known he had the ability to do so.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 06, 2016 9 Comments
The United States District Court in Baltimore has charged a Maryland government contractor with the removal of classified documents and theft of government property for allegedly possessing paper and digital classified materials, including "highly classified computer code developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments." The Washington Post reports:
A federal contractor suspected of leaking powerful National Security Agency hacking tools has been arrested and charged with stealing classified information from the U.S. government, according to court records and a law enforcement official familiar with the case. Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, authorities said. He was arrested in August after investigators searched his home in Glen Burnie, Md., and found documents and digital information stored on various devices that contained highly classified information, authorities said.
Martin is a "decorated former Naval officer and reservist with a broad interest in cyber issues".

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 14, 2016 11 Comments
Despite France's recent acknowledgement that it fights Islamic terrorism on a daily basis and last year's warning that ISIS has targeted our refugee program, the Obama administration has announced that it is has raised the refugee target for 2017 to "at least 110,000." The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration will seek to accept 110,000 refugees from around the world in fiscal 2017, according to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Kerry briefed lawmakers Tuesday on the new goal, which is an increase from 85,000 in fiscal 2016 and 70,000 in the previous three years. It represents a 57 percent increase in refugee arrivals since 2015, as ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere have spurred an exodus of migrants seeking asylum in Europe, Canada and other regions.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 28, 2016 10 Comments
The Terminator is an iconic film that helped propel former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. The movie is also a basis for discussion about the future of military weaponry, as Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, uses the film as reference in describing autonomous weaponry systems that could be developed in the next decade.
The nation’s second-highest ranking military officer believes that our adversaries may try to build completely autonomous “Terminator”-like systems that can conduct lethal operations on the battlefield. “I don’t think it’s impossible that somebody will try to build a completely autonomous system, and I’m not talking about something like a cruise missile … or a mine that requires a human to target it and release it and it goes and finds its target,” Selva told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. when asked about such capabilities. “I’m talking about a wholly robotic system that decides whether or not, at the point of decision, it’s going to do lethal ops.”

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 23, 2016 1 Comment
Israel and the United States have signed an agreement aimed at increasing bilateral cooperation in the field of cyber defense. The Cyber Defense Cooperation Agreement penned on Tuesday, June 21, seeks to build joint infrastructure in cyber defense, create partnerships in private sector, fund research, and develop new technologies. The agreement wants to improve the existing mechanisms for sharing of operative information between U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Israeli counterparty, National Cyber Security Authority. Israel has long established itself as a technology superpower with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as major centres for cutting edge startup innovation -- second in the world only to the Silicon Valley. In recent years, the city of Beersheba located in the middle of the Negev desert has emerged as the world leader in cyber security. Today, around 20 percent of all technology companies in Israel are working in cyber security, making it the biggest technology related sector in the country.
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