Posted on 06/05/2015 6:30:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
‘We have a lot of information about people, and that is something that our adversaries want.”
That’s how Donna Seymour, an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) official recently described the OPM hacking to a reporter for the Washington Post. As we found out yesterday, in April, Chinese hackers intruded OPM networks and potentially acquired the personal information of 4 million U.S. government employees.
So how did this happen? Well, according to an OPM press release, the agency has been upgrading its network security over the past year. That said, yesterday’s press release also notes that it was only after the April hacking that OPM focused on “restricting remote access for network administrators . . . and deploying anti-malware software” against programs that might “compromise the network.” In short, OPM hasn’t been moving fast enough to prevent hacking.
Regardless, it makes sense that China was involved in the intrusion. For a start, China has exceptionally capable, experienced, and wide-ranging cyber-hacking forces. These units are experts at both physical access and remote penetration of network-security systems. Moreover, China has a penchant for attacking the OPM. In July last year, the New York Times reported on China’s hacking of OPM information on applicants for top-secret security clearances. That the OPM didn’t urgently upgrade its security after that 2014 incident is inexcusable. We’ve paid the price in our damaged national security.
So China appears to have scored a major win here. John Schindler, a former NSA counter-intelligence official and the author of the 20 Committee strategy blog told me that OPM information can be “vital to recruiting or compromising” U.S. government officials. The agency gathers “extensive details of their personal lives, their finances, their families, their career highs and lows,” he said. “In short, everything you would never want your enemy to know about you – from a counterintelligence viewpoint, this breach represents a true nightmare scenario.”
By finding U.S. officials with personal or professional difficulties, China can target them for recruitment.
Schindler’s point is well made. After all, it’s not hard to guess why hackers are so interested in the OPM. By finding U.S. officials with personal or professional difficulties, China can target them for recruitment. And China has a record here. In recent years, China has worked hard to recruit Westerners — both in the United States and in China. It does so because it wants people who have access (or who will have access) to steal information for China’s military and industrial development.
But the significance of this incident isn’t only that information has been stolen. It’s that it reveals massive flaws in the broader American policy towards China. It proves that U.S. warnings to China over hacking have so far been utterly impotent. Seeing that his aggressive cyber-operations result only in occasional, unenforceable indictments from the U.S. Justice Department, President Xi Jinping simply keeps doubling down. Today, while he challenges America across the planet, Jinping is also challenging America in cyberspace. It’s a full-spectrum Chinese effort. And it’s uncontested by America.
Oh, and one final observation: If hackers can repeatedly breach American government servers, we should certainly assume that Jinping has also read Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
— Tom Rogan is a panelist on The McLaughlin Group and holds the Tony Blankley chair at the Steamboat Institute
We should ask more than just China. Ask the Russians, North Koreans, or just anyone who has really good hacking skills.
The scenario I would hope for is that China (or Russia, or anyone) has indeed hacked her e-mails, and they keep their powder dry until she has testified under oath about the e-mail situation. Then, the e-mails get posted to some server, somewhere, a la WikiLeaks, and kaboom - no more Hillary. I think she is concerned about this possibility, and it explains her highly constrained comments and answers in public so far.
The problem with this scenario is that is assumes that the holder of the information would rather see Hillary knocked out of the election, when in fact they may just want to leverage the threat to control her once in office.
I can see the words to Go Ask Alice being re-written...
DEMAND THAT CONGRESS ACT NOW---CONTACT CONGRESS HERE:
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
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Demand that Congress launch multiple investigations into Hillary’s State Dept tenure together w/ her confidantes (like Huma Abedin):
<><> expense accounts,
<><> use of federal credit cards,
<><> their participation in the State Dept's disbursement of funds to "private contractors;"
<><>collusion and conspiracy with the Clinton Foundation--using classified info as an instrument for fund-raising.
Hillary's official calendar, and her contact with foreign leaders. will tell the tale of donations to the Foundation....with the Clintons profiteering off secret intel.
Top secret FBI/CIA files may be involved.
THE NYT REPORTED 3/27/15: Clinton’s review (and erasing?) of her emails did not occur when she was secretary of state ......or even shortly after she left office.
Last October, nearly two years after she left office, the State Department sent her a letter requesting all government records, like emails, she may have possessed. In response, she provided the State Department in December with about 30,000 printed emails that she said were government records. She has said that an additional 30,000 emails were personal.
It appears Clinton still has copies of the emails she deemed public records. Attached to Mr. Kendall’s letter was one sent to him by the State Department this week.
A letter from the under secretary of state for management, Patrick F. Kennedy, said that the department understood that she wanted to keep copies of those documents. Mr. Kennedy said that the agency had consulted with the National Archives, and that allowing her “access to the documents is in the public interest as it will promote informed discussion” as she responds to congressional and other inquiries.
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NOTE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT: The State Dept should face charges of misleading a court WRT the court's request for documents, for tampering w/ evidence....and for misleading Congress.
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NB: EVEN BEFORE HER INFAMOUS UN PRESSER Fox News aired Hillary on video wherein Hillary tells an earlier tech conference in California: “I have, you know, an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry.”
Where are all those electronics and their contents?
I’m shocked to hear this, simply shocked!
Will someone in the hacking community please do us a favor and reveal the goods they have on Obama and the Clintons? And while we are asking, who were the U.S. government officials who were working for the Soviet Union…besides Ted Kennedy…during the cold war? The country would be eternally grateful for this information.
Top Spy: Hillary’s Emails ‘Likely’ Hacked by China, Russia, Iran
And ‘potentially the North Koreans’
8:34 AM, APR 7, 2015 • BY DANIEL HALPER
A top intelligence official under President Obama, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, says that the chances Hillary Clinton’s private emails were hacked is “very high.” Flynn, who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency but is now retired, called it hackings “likely.”
Why would they do that?
If it's a private citizen, they can leverage it into a substantial amount of money. The Clinton Foundation doesn't have to worry about those pesky bank regulations that tripped up Hastert. They'll just bury it in some "charity" and transfer the money off-shore.
If it's a state actor, they can use it to control Hillary in the (hopefully) unlikely event she actually wins the election. Of course, it's quite likely that has already occurred, while she was Secretary of State....
By the way, Hillary is not as beloved as people think. Does anyone remember how her campaign literally imploded by the end of 2007? In short, her campaign is going to be running into a lot of trouble soon just like what happened to Sepp Blatter at FIFA.
Hillary's new Indian nickname: Seeping Bladder
It would not be in their interest to do so. It would be in their interest to remain silent, see her elected, and blackmail her after she takes office.
Trey Gowdy and that Committee better not let this bitch off. They better take this to the nth degree and even seek an indictment and prosecution. Even if she does no jail time, an indictment would be damning to her Presidential aspirations.
It would be in their interests to surreptitiously back her campaign and do what they can, to see she gets elected.
People have been wondering why foreign intelligence services have not unmasked Obama’s past. They know about it, but they’re effectively blackmailing him. It explains the erratic and nonsensical nature of his foreign policy.
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