Tag Archives: Security

I Think We Have Gone Over The Edge

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The Daily Wire is reporting today that the TSA will be replacing many of its pointy-eared dogs at airports with floppy-eared dogs. It seems that children are less scared of the floppy-eared dogs. So this decision was made not on the basis of public safety, but on the basis of children who might be intimidated by dogs with pointy ears.

The article reports:

“We find the passenger acceptance of floppy ear dogs is just better. It presents just a little bit less of a concern,” Pekoske added. “Doesn’t scare children.”

My former Examiner colleague Anna Giaritelli reports that the TSA currently has 1,200 doggos across the country performing security checks, and about 80% have floppy ears (such as Labradors or Golden Retrievers). In order to phase out the remaining 20%, the TSA is replacing retiring pointed-ear dogs with their floppy-eared cousins. Further, the TSA is purchasing sporting or hunting breeds, since they are easier to find.

“TSA uses five types of sporting breeds: Labrador Retrievers, German Short-haired Pointers, Wirehaired Pointers, Vizslas, and Golden Retrievers,” Giaritelli wrote. “It also uses two types of pointy-ear, or working breed, dogs: the German Shepherd and Belgian Malinois.”

Christopher Shelton, branch manager of the San Antonio, TX, canine training center, told Giaritelli that the TSA wouldn’t rule out a pointy-eared pup just because of his or her ears. The dog’s health, willingness and ability to sniff out security risks and its disposition still matter more. Training these dogs costs between $26,000 and $42,000, so the agency can’t be too picky about looks.

I remember coming into Logan Airport in Boston many years ago from an overseas trip. I was surprised to see beagles running around the area where we picked up our luggage. Although it seemed a little odd, it made perfect sense–beagles have very good noses. The top three breeds considered to have the best sense of smell are the bloodhounds, the basset hounds, and the beagles. It’s just that the look of the German Shepherd and the Belgian Malinois seems much more appropriate for a dog involved in law enforcement.

At any rate, I wish the TSA luck with their new program. It’s nice to see some of the working breeds get the recognition they deserve.

Why Immigration Matters

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Immigration with assimilation is a wonderful thing. Immigration without assimilation is a threat to the national sovereignty of the country involved. Massive immigration without assimilation will eventually change the public policies of the country involved. We are currently seeing that change in Britain.

National Review posted an article today about the case of Asia Bibi. The article was written by Douglas Murray.

The article reports:

When I wrote The Strange Death of Europe, I wanted to highlight the sheer scale of change that immigration brings. Some people might be happy with it, others unhappy: but to pretend that the change doesn’t occur, or won’t occur, or isn’t very interesting so please move along has always seemed an error to me. For instance, as I noted then, an internal document from the Ministry of Defence that leaked a few years back said that Britain would no longer be able to engage militarily in a range of foreign countries because of “domestic” factors. It takes a moment to absorb this. We’re used to wondering about how immigration changes domestic politics. But foreign policy as well?

All of this is to say that the latest news from the U.K. is both thoroughly predictable and deeply disturbing. Readers of National Review will be familiar with the case of Asia Bibi. She is the Christian woman from Pakistan who has been in prison on death row for the last eight years. Her “crime” is that a neighbor accused her of “blasphemy.”

Because it is not safe for Ms. Bibi to remain in Pakistan because of her Christian faith, she is seeking asylum in various western countries. Britain has stated that it will deny Ms. Bibi asylum.

The article reports:

But today there are reports that the British government has said that it will not offer asylum to Asia Bibi. The reason being “security concerns” — that weasel term now used by all officialdom whenever it needs one last reason to avoid doing the right thing. According to this report, the government is concerned that if the U.K. offered asylum to Bibi it could cause “unrest among certain sections of the community.” And which sections would that be? Would it be Anglicans or atheists who would be furious that an impoverished and severely traumatized woman should be given shelter in their country? Of course not. The “community” that the British government will be scared of is the community that comes from the same country that has tortured Asia Bibi for the last eight years.

The article concludes:

In any case, if it is true that the British government has declined to offer Asia Bibi asylum for this reason, then it should lead to a huge national and international outcry. Among other things, it suggests that the British government has got its priorities exactly the wrong way around. For it is not Asia Bibi who should not be in Britain. It is anyone from the “communities” who would not accept Asia Bibi being in Britain who should not be in the country. Though I wouldn’t expect any British politician to express that simple truth any time soon.

Immigration without assimilation is not a good thing for any country.

 

In Areas Involving Security, The Government Needs To Function More Like A Business

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Yesterday Fox News posted an article with the title, “Here’s why Hillary Clinton losing her security clearance matters for the rest of us.”

The article explains:

Hillary Clinton no longer has a security clearance. A letter released from the Department of State to Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, says she lost her clearance on August 30 at her request. The State Department also withdrew security clearances from five people Clinton had previously requested clearances for, as she had designated them “researchers.” One was Cheryl Mills, who was once the deputy White House counsel for President Bill Clinton who defended him during his 1999 impeachment trial. The names of the others were redacted.

The mainstream media is treating the loss of these clearances as a move by Clinton to avoid a political snub by the Trump administration.

The article points out that Hillary Clinton should have lost her clearance when it was discovered that she had classified information on her private servers. Unfortunately, Hillary’s servers were not the only problem.

The article continues:

For instance, the group of House IT aides who made up what amounted to a spy ring didn’t even have to undergo background checks to get their insider positions—jobs that allowed them to see and copy all of the emails and more from the members of Congress they worked for.

Evidence shows that Imran Awan, the head of the group who was an IT aide working for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, was spying on congressmen and even congressional staffers. A current IT aide who wants his name kept out of print told me Awan even used his own email address as the Apple IDs when setting up staffer’s phones.

“The only reason I can think of for why Imran would do that is this would have given him the ability to see everything these staffers were doing,” said the House IT aide, a contracted employee who has more than a decade of experience working for congressmen.

This IT spying scandal, however, was covered up – as it only had to do with Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media apparently had no interest in pursuing the story.

But this lax security is not simply a political story. It puts every one of us in jeopardy. A congressman whose private emails or other data are in the hands of someone who can blackmail or otherwise influence them is a risk. For all of us. And without public pressure, it’s next to impossible to know whether Congress has tightened security to prevent this kind of spying from taking place.

There is a more recent incident:

Only weeks ago, a volunteer on the staff of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jackson A. Cosko, was arrested after Capitol Police became aware the Wikipedia pages of three U.S. Senators had been edited to include restricted personal information without their knowledge or permission.

“On the night of Oct. 2, 2018, according to the affidavit,” says a Department of Justice press release, “a witness saw Cosko at a computer in the office of a U.S. Senator who had once employed him. The witness confronted Cosko, who left the office. An investigation led to Cosko’s arrest by the U.S. Capitol Police.”

If Cosko hadn’t posted the information, as he is alleged to have done, for political purposes (called “doxxing”) but had instead used it privately or even gave it or sold it to a news agency or a foreign government, he might never have been arrested. Or he might have gotten off just as Imran Awan and his associates did.

The article reminds us that private companies do a much better job of internet security:

What other employer allows former employees to access their networks? Companies commonly terminate employees email accounts and access before they even tell them they’ve been let go.

The government needs to learn the lesson that private companies have already learned.

The Ignored Threat

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On October 5, The Daily Signal posted an article about the threat posed to the United States by China.

Vice-President Pence lists four major threats to America from China:

1. Cyber Espionage

…Microchips, about the size of a grain of sand, were inserted into the manufacturing of equipment in China of Super Micro Computer Inc., which is a server supplier for several major companies in the United States.

Investigators determined the chips allowed attackers to create backdoor entry to alter computers. However, Amazon, Apple, Super Micro itself, and the Chinese government all disputed the Bloomberg reporting.

“This is a backdoor into the hardware level in determining personal identification, health care records, and possibly even voting machines,” Dean Cheng, research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

“If the chip story is true, there is something fundamentally wrong with our supply chain,” he added.

Cheng contends these cybersecurity concerns are far weightier than concerns about election interference and spreading propaganda.

2. Election Meddling

…“It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence,” he said.

“When it comes to influencing the midterms, you need only look at Beijing’s tariffs in response to ours,” Pence added. “The tariffs imposed by China to date specifically targeted industries and states that would play an important role in the 2018 election.

“By one estimate, more than 80 percent of U.S. counties targeted by China voted for President Trump and I in 2016. Now, China wants to turn these voters against our administration,” he said.

3. Squeezing US Companies

Pence called out Google for its seeming willingness to work with the Chinese government.

“Google should immediately end development of the ‘Dragonfly’ app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,” he said in his Thursday speech.

Pence also noted that Chinese officials tried to influence business leaders.

“In one recent example, China threatened to deny a business license for a major U.S. corporation if they refused to speak out against our administration’s policies,” Pence said.

4. Military Buildup

…China wants nothing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies. But they will fail.

America had hoped that economic liberalization would bring China into a greater partnership with us and with the world.

Instead, China has chosen economic aggression, which has in turn emboldened its growing military.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We ignore this threat at our own peril.

This Says A Lot About How Things Work In Washington

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported the following:

A Democratic staffer arrested last week on charges that he revealed the personal information of several Republican Senate Judiciary Committee members was not an “intern” for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), as originally reported. The 27-year-old career staffer, Jackson Cosko, was, instead, reportedly a “fellow” paid by an “outside institution” who served as a primary adviser in Lee’s Congressional office.

This wasn’t some unpaid intern–it was an advisor in a Congressional office.

The article notes:

As the Tennessee Star points out, that raises questions: “It seems clear Cosko isn’t some unlucky and overzealous intern who got caught being a naughty boy. Rather, it seems Cosko might be a Democratic operative, paid by an outside organization, planted in an unpopular congresswoman’s office possibly so he could engage in exactly the type of behavior that just got him arrested.”

Cosko was arrested last week after federal investigators discovered he was responsible for editing a Wikipedia article revealing the personal names, addresses, and phone numbers of several Republican senators, almost immediately after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) concluded a fiery speech defending then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

This is simply another example of totally unacceptable behavior by Democrat operatives. This creates a nightmare for the security details of these Senators. The Senators are considerably safer when the crazies out there don’t know where they live. How many attacks on Senators do we need before we admit the need for absolute secrecy regarding their home addresses?

Hopefully this paid operative will spend some time in jail.

Quite Often There Is A Reason For Protocols And Procedures

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The Hillary Clinton private email server scandal is old news. However, there is a new aspect of this story that has just recently come out.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the Chinese hacking into Hillary Clinton’s email server.

The article reports:

  • A Chinese-owned company penetrated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server, according to sources briefed on the matter.
  • The company inserted code that forwarded copies of Clinton’s emails to the Chinese company in real time.
  • The Intelligence Community Inspector General warned of the problem, but the FBI subsequently failed to act, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said during a July hearing.

Wow. The Chinese had all of our classified correspondence from the State Department in real time. That is scary.

The article reports the timeline:

Two officials with the ICIG, investigator Frank Rucker and attorney Janette McMillan, met repeatedly with FBI officials to warn them of the Chinese intrusion, according to a former intelligence officer with expertise in cybersecurity issues, who was briefed on the matter. He spoke anonymously, as he was not authorized to publicly address the Chinese’s role with Clinton’s server.

Among those FBI officials was Peter Strzok, who was then the bureau’s top counterintelligence official. Strzok was fired this month following the discovery he sent anti-Trump texts to his mistress and co-worker, Lisa Page. Strzok didn’t act on the information the ICIG provided him, according to Gohmert.

Gohmert mentioned in the Judiciary Committee hearing that ICIG officials told Strzok and three other top FBI officials that they found an “anomaly” on Clinton’s server.

The former intelligence officer TheDCNF spoke with said the ICIG “discovered the anomaly pretty early in 2015.”

“When [the ICIG] did a very deep dive, they found in the actual metadata — the data which is at the header and footer of all the emails — that a copy, a ‘courtesy copy,’ was being sent to a third party and that third party was a known Chinese public company that was involved in collecting intelligence for China,” the former intelligence officer told TheDCNF.

“The [the ICIG] believe that there was some level of phishing. But once they got into the server something was embedded,” he said. “The Chinese are notorious for embedding little surprises like this.”

As if this were not discouraging enough:

London Center for Policy Research’s vice president of operations, retired Col. Anthony Shaffer, told TheDCNF that Clinton’s server was vulnerable to hacking.

“Look, there’s evidence based on the complete lack of security hygiene on the server. Fourteen-year-old hackers from Canada could have probably hacked into her server and left very little trace,” Shaffer said. “Any sophisticated organization is going to be able to essentially get in and then clean up their presence.”

For a list of the federal laws that may have been violated in setting up the private server go here.

It is difficult to create a totally hack proof server, but had Hillary used her proper email address and government servers, it is much less likely that the Chinese would have been able to obtain the classified information that flowed through the State Department during her tenure. The rules and regulations regarding email by government bureaucrats are there for a reason. Although I have my theories as to why she ignored them, by ignoring them she put national security issues of America at risk. That is not acceptable.

When Justice Takes A Vacation

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No, this is not an article about either Paul Manafort or Michael Cohen. This is an article about former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan.

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported:

A federal judge declined to give jail time to former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan Tuesday, saying he has “suffered enough” at the hands of politicians “at the highest levels of government.” In addition, the Department of Justice said it did not find any evidence that supported criminal charges.

…Judge Tanya Chutkin gave Imran three months of supervised release. Imran’s attorney had hoped to avoid the supervision, indicating Imran wanted to go back to Pakistan: “By ending this today, you will allow Hina to build her family wherever she chooses and allow Imran to visit his father’s grave and secure his legacy,” the attorney said.

The lawyer, former Hillary Clinton aide Chris Gowen, said Imran was motivated by love for his father, who was dying in Virginia when Imran flew to Pakistan. Imran, he said, was in a “panic” to get money to urgently build a charity hospital, described in court as a “women’s shelter.” He described the urgent moves as “securing his father’s legacy.”

Well, I guess everyone is entitled to their version of the story.

The article continues:

The story is at odds with a 2009 Pakistani newspaper article, police reports and lawsuits in Pakistan, as well as interviews. Those allege Imran tried to cut others out of a fraud-plagued real estate deal and secure a massive inheritance in the form of a major real estate complex, known as a “colony.”

A dozen farmers accused Imran and his father of stealing their land and subdividing it to build the development. The 2009 article said that Imran used political “muscle” stemming from his job in Congress to attempt to frame his alleged victims. Later, Faisalabad Agricultural University faculty apparently paid for some of those plots, but said that they, too, were ripped off. Dr. Zafar Iqbal, a university professor and president of the faculty association, told TheDCNF that Imran and his father refused to turn over the deeds and that in January 2017, Imran cautioned them that he “has got powerful political connections.”

In addition to two separate groups of victims, the Awans had two partners in this land deal — Rashid Minhas and Shabbir Ahmed — both of whom were allegedly cut out of the partnership. Minhas said that when he went out of town, they seized his share of the proceeds. Ahmed’s widow, Bushra Bibi, said in the 2009 article that, immediately after a car crash killed both Ahmed and the Awans’ mother, Imran threatened her with “dire consequences” to force her to give up her share, and framed her brother-in-law. A support letter submitted by a former aide to Rep. Robert Wexler seemed to contradict the widow’s own statements, claiming “Imran would send money every month to the widow and children of the driver to help take care of them.”

As if that were not enough, let’s look at some of the past antics of Mr. Awan.

In July, The Daily Caller reported the following:

A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”

In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

The July article in The Daily Caller might shed some light on what just happened:

Eighteen months after the evidence was recounted in the urgent memo, prosecution appears to have stalled for reasons not publicly explained. Imran is in court July 3 for a possible plea deal in the bank fraud case. Gohmert said the FBI has refused to accept evidence demonstrating alleged House misconduct, and some witnesses with first-hand knowledge say the bureau has not interviewed them.

Let’s bring a little common sense into this. Mr. Awan had access to a large number of computers of Democrat House members. In some cases he had their passwords. He was aware of everything that went on in their computers and quite likely made copies of much of the information. Might there be some information people high up in our government are keeping from the American public? Is this another example of injustice in the Washington Swamp?

Maybe We Need To Rethink This

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A website called Clearancejobs.com includes an article answering the question, “What happens to your security clearance after you’ve been fired, suspended or retired?” The website explains the various procedures based on the circumstances. The website points out that in many cases a clearance may remain in effect or be suspended but easily renewed if necessary. When you consider the politicization of the Justice Department and FBI during the Obama administration, it would seem logical to cancel all of the security clearances of those at the top of those organizations who are no longer employed there. However, as usual with anything involving common sense, this is considered a controversial idea.

Considering the news that surfaced over the weekend about the FISA abuse regarding the spying on Carter Page, anyone who was involved in that escapade should be fired and have their security clearance revoked. Clearly, the government’s ability to spy on American citizens was used for political purposes by the Obama administration. However, the media is not going to let common sense enter into the argument.

Bloomberg posted an article today stirring up the kerfuffle about revoking security clearances.

The article is headlined, “Trump Weighs Revoking Security Clearances for Several Ex-Obama Officials.” It should read, “Some of the people involved in the misuse of intelligence gathering within the United States may face consequences.”

The article states:

The president is “exploring the mechanism” to remove their access to classified information because of criticism the officials have leveled against his conduct of relations with Russia, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday.

“They’ve politicized and in some cases monetized their public service and security clearances,” Sanders said. “Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate.”

Sanders said Trump also was considering stripping security clearances from James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence; Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency; and Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

The article concludes:

The idea of moving to revoke Brennan’s security clearance gained traction recently in conservative media circles. Fox News host Tucker Carlson on July 19 called Brennan an extremist with “a documented history of dishonesty” and said he shouldn’t have a clearance.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said he urged Trump to revoke Brennan’s security clearance at a meeting with the president Monday. Trump is trying to court Paul to vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh despite reservations the senator has expressed about Kavanaugh’s commitment to privacy rights.

I have my doubts as to whether anyone will face consequences for misusing FISA for political purposes. However, removing a few security clearances might send a message to those holding those clearances to use them judiciously.

 

Nothing To See Here–Keep Moving

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the House Democratic Caucus’s server. It seems that the server went missing soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. Wow. What a coincidence. A newly obtained secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”

The article reports:

In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

The memo, addressed to the Committee on House Administration (CHA) and dated Feb. 3, 2017, was recently reviewed and transcribed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter bolsters TheDCNF’s previous reporting about the missing server and evidence of fraud on Capitol Hill.

It details how the caucus server, run by then-caucus Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, was secretly copied by authorities after the House Inspector General (IG) identified suspicious activity on it, but the Awans’ physical access was not blocked.

…Rep. Louie Gohmert — a Texas Republican on the House Committee on the Judiciary who has done oversight work on the case — said the missing server contained copies of Congress members’ emails.

“They put 40 members of Congress’s data on one server … That server, with that serial number, has disappeared,” he said.

The article concludes:

A Democratic IT aide who alleged that Imran solicited a bribe from him told TheDCNF he believes members of Congress are playing dumb and covering the matter up. Wendy Anderson, a former chief of staff to New York Rep. Yvette Clarke, told House investigators that she suspected that her predecessor, Shelley Davis, was working with Abid on a theft scheme, but Clarke refused to fire Abid until outside investigators got involved, TheDCNF reported.

Eighteen months after the evidence was recounted in the urgent memo, prosecution appears to have stalled for reasons not publicly explained. Imran is in court July 3 for a possible plea deal in the bank fraud case. Gohmert said the FBI has refused to accept evidence demonstrating alleged House misconduct, and some witnesses with first-hand knowledge say the bureau has not interviewed them.a

I will admit that over the years of writing this blog I have become somewhat cynical–with that in mind, I am convinced that there is someone or some people walking around Washington that have a lot of pictures showing many of our Congressmen that the Congressmen do not want revealed. I suspect those pictures and information will eventually come out. My suspicion is based on a public, but unique, internet source that I will not name. It is possible that the July 3 court date could take an interesting turn. Stay tuned. This story is totally underreported by the mainstream media, but The Daily Caller has followed it from the beginning.

An Invitation To Identity Theft

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ObamaCare could have a very negative affect on my life in the coming months. My husband and I will be losing our health insurance on January 1. The questions is, “Do we go to the ObamaCare website and risk having our identity stolen, or do we go without health insurance?” How dangerous is it to type your personal information into the ObamaCare website? Well, an article posted at the CNBC website last Monday provides answers to that question.

The article reports:

It could take a year to secure the risk of “high exposures” of personal information on the federal Obamacare online exchange, a cybersecurity expert told CNBC on Monday.

“When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time,” said David Kennedy, a so-called “white hat” hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.

“It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,” said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. “We’re talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.”

This is not encouraging. Another online security expert stated that the ObamaCare website needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

The article further reports:

Last month, a Sept. 27 government memorandum surfaced in which two HHS officials said the security of the site had not been properly tested before it opened, creating “a high risk.”

HHS had explained then that steps were taken to ease security concerns after the memo was written, and that consumer information was secure. Technicians fixed a security bug in the password reset function in late October, the agency said.

But on CNBC, Kennedy disputed those claims, saying vulnerabilities remain on “everything from hacking someone’s computer so when you visit the website it actually tries to hack your computer back, all the way to being able to extract email addresses, users names—first name, last name—[and] locations.”

It really is time for Plan B.

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