Free Republic

As you may recall, Admiral Mike Rogers tried to shut down FBI access to the NSA database in 2016 (while he was serving as NSA director) after learning that FBI contractors were illegally searching the database. Over at The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance has built a solid case that FBI contractors were exploiting the NSA database for opposition research on political enemies (also see here and here and here). One of the contractors with access to the NSA database, for example, appears to be Fusion GPS, which helped Christopher Steele produce the infamous “Russian collusion” dossier. ... Given the history of...

Rudolph W. Giuliani says that the FBI secretly spied on his Apple iCloud account beginning in late 2019 when he was having regular messaging conversations with his client, President Trump, during House impeachment proceedings. Mr. Giuliani said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan on Thursday informed his attorney, Robert Costello, that covert wiretapping took place. Mr. Giuliani, once the mob-fighting top prosecutor in New York and then the city’s mayor, said an assistant U.S. attorney made the disclosure because the operation will have to be detailed in court. The penetration happened under the Trump administration and then-Attorney General William P....

Special counsel John Durham is reportedly scrutinizing British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s main source for his discredited dossier, using a subpoena to obtain documents from the Brookings Institution related to its employment of Igor Danchenko, a researcher who visited Russia in 2016 as he worked for the ex-MI6 agent. The New York Times reported on Monday, citing “people familiar with the investigation," that Durham “has keyed in on the FBI’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser." The outlet...

Earlier this spring, the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky was testing an advanced antivirus software on one of its computers when it stumbled on something big: As the Moscow-based company puts it, it was "one of the most skilled, mysterious and powerful" spy viruses in the world. The piece of software was so sophisticated that it left few traces. It didn't leave files on the disk drive, and to stay hidden, it burrowed inside a computer's kernel memory, which is the place where a computer's most basic software is kept.Kaspersky says it assigned a team to watch its movements, and the team...

From calling for the destruction of Israel to the National Security Council. "Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?" an op-ed in the Washington Post had asked. The group was the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a BDS anti-Israel hate group whose conferences had a history of antisemitism, supporting Hamas and the murder of Jews. Maher Bitar, one of the executive board members of Students for Justice in Palestine, was one of the principal organizers of the 2006 conference which was being hosted by Georgetown University's SJP hate group. A photo appears to show him dancing in a keffiyah...

President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday he was nominating Samantha Power, a former Obama administration official and key unmasker of Trump campaign staffers, to a top position in his incoming administration. “Ambassador Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,” Biden said in a statement. “As USAID Administrator, she’ll be a powerful force for principled American engagement.”

The Secular Democrats of America PAC prepared a report for Joe Biden and his transition team that outlines a roadmap to "boldly restore a vision of constitutional secularism and respect in the land for religious and intellectual pluralism." The federal political action committee "represents secular Democratic individuals and organizations" and advocates for "secular governance, promote respect and inclusion of nonreligious Americans, and mobilize nonreligious voters." The proposal was formally presented by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jared Huffman, co-chairs of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, and endorsed by Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney. “We’ve offered the new administration a roadmap to restore...

WASHINGTON--An executive from a company that manages a large portion of the Internet's infrastructure on Thursday slammed federal wiretapping rules expected to take effect next spring. Paul Kouroupas, vice president of regulatory affairs for Global Crossing, strongly criticized the Federal Communications Commission's broadening of a 1994 law--originally intended to cover telephone providers--as disproportionately costly, complex, and riddled with privacy concerns. His company is one of the world's largest Internet backbone providers. "Our customers are large Fortune 500 companies--not too many of those companies are conducting drug deals or terrorist activities out of Merrill Lynch's offices or using their phones in...

Former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie the Trump campaign to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her private email server scandal before the 2016 election, according to newly declassified documents. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes along with a CIA memo showing that officials referred the alleged scheme to the FBI for potential investigation. “Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities,” Ratcliffe said in a statement. Brennan’s notes, which were...

As one of the hundreds of thousands who has proudly worked for the National Security Agency either directly or as a subcontractor, I believe the New York Times missed the real story under its Dec. 16 headline "Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts." Here is why. The New York Times concedes the story starts with the CIA capture of top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. With Zubaydah's capture came a treasure trove of eavesdropping intelligence sources -- e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and personal phone directories. These are prime intelligence sources that may...

The Justice Department announced new restrictions Tuesday on how it conducts any secret national security surveillance of candidates for federal office or their staff. The restrictions, announced by Attorney General William Barr in a pair of memos, are part of broader changes to the Justice Department’s surveillance procedures implemented in response to problems detected during the 2016 investigation into ties between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign. Coming just two months before the 2020 election, the changes are designed to ensure that law enforcement officials have to clear additional hurdles before pursuing the same type of surveillance as was conducted...

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained 323 pages of emails between former FBI lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page showing Comey’s FBI was investigating President Trump over his critical tweets of Barack Obama and the FBI. The FBI is purposely slow-rolling its production of emails to Judicial Watch and only processing 500 pages per month in response to a 2017 FOIA lawsuit. Judicial Watch obtained a March 2017 email Peter Strzok sent his boss Bill Priestap and others about probing President Trump’s tweets about being wiretapped by the FBI. Judicial Watch reported:

President Trump on Monday suggested without evidence that his predecessor, former President Obama, committed treason in connection with the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.“Treason. Treason. It’s treason,” Trump said in an interview with CBN News. The president did not elaborate on the specific charge but repeated his assertion that the previous administration “spied” on his campaign in the course of the Russia probe.“They’d been spying on my campaign,” Trump told CBN News’s David Brody. “Turned out I was right. Let’s see what happens to them now.”Trump signaled he was looking forward to the results of U.S. Attorney...

A former White House physician lashed out at former President Barack Obama, claiming he “weaponized the highest levels” of government to “spy” on his successor. Ronny Jackson, who is running for Congress in Texas, made the accusation after Obama weighed in on the Justice Department’s dismissal of charges against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, . . . “Every Deep State traitor deserves to be brought to justice for their heinous actions,” Jackson tweeted Tuesday. . . . Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for Obama, was shocked by Jackson’s comment. “Ronny Jackson was friends with Obama and his entire staff. I never...

Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set...

RUSH: They’re Chinese-made drones, and the data collected by these drones is going back to China, and New Jersey is bragging about it. Well, you want to hear the sound bite? Grab sound bite number 2. This ran on MSNBC, where they’re ecstatic about this. The correspondent is Rehema Ellis, a report about Elizabeth, New Jersey, using drones to monitor its citizens’ social distancing. And you’ll hear the mayor of Elizabeth on this sound bite as well. ELLIS: Elizabeth, New Jersey, is now using drones to spread the lifesaving message. The mayor hopes the drones message will reinforce the CDC...

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Falungong members are suing Cisco Systems for custom-building "Golden Shield" Internet technology used by China to track down devotees of the spiritual movement. Cisco dismissed the case Monday as being without basis and vowed to "vigorously defend" itself. Cisco "designed, supplied and helped maintain a censorship and surveillance network known as Golden Shield" used by Chinese officials to identify Falungong practitioners who were detained, tortured and sometimes killed, a lawyer for the group said in court documents filed last week. Cisco established a China Network Technology Corp. subsidiary in Beijing in 1998 that went to work...

The top deputy to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft refused two years ago to approve important parts of the secret program that allows domestic eavesdropping without warrants, prompting two leading White House aides to try to win the needed approval from Mr. Ashcroft himself while he was hospitalized after a gall bladder operation, according to officials knowledgeable about the episode. With Mr. Ashcroft recuperating from gall bladder surgery in March 2004, his deputy, James B. Comey, who was then acting as attorney general, was unwilling to give his certification to crucial aspects of the classified program, as required under the procedures...

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald...

FBI officials involved in the wiretapping of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page have been blocked, at least temporarily, from appearing before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in regard to other cases, in rebuke that exceeded the remedial recommendations made by the monitor recently appointed by the court. The decision by James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the secretive court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), comes as Congress faces a March 15 deadline on whether to renew three FBI national-security surveillance and investigative tools that were enacted after 9/11. "FBI personnel under disciplinary review in relation...