[Daily Caller] In March 2017, FBI agents were tailing House of Representatives IT aides suspected of hacking Congress, and apprehended one at the airport trying to make a hasty exit to Pakistan. She refused to speak with them, and a search revealed that she was carrying an apparently illegal amount of cash.
The FBI allowed Hina Alvi, wife of Imran Awan, to board the plane anyway ‐ then filed paperwork saying agents believed she had no intention of returning to the U.S.
For nearly a year since, the case has lingered despite the House Office of Inspector General (OIG) determining that the family of Pakistanis made "unauthorized access" to Congress’s data shortly before the election.
Following revelations about the FBI’s actions in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server and Department of Justice officials’ handling of the Trump dossier, attention has turned to the agencies’ apparently lax attitude toward the congressional cyber breach case as perhaps the most jarring failure to enforce laws in cases that overlap politics.
The OIG alleged Imran Awan and his family members logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work, logged in using members’ personal usernames, covered their tracks, and continued to access data after they’d been fired.
Skipping down to.....explicit instructions from other gov't agencies "lack of desire to pursue the case."
Hosko said six months in, DOJ has all the tools it needs and cannot blame the House, and inaction can only indicate a lack of desire to pursue the case.
#4
I propose the Awans did a lot of cyber dirty work for the Democrats and it got out of hand...the Awans were very greedy and took out an insurance policy of stolen emails and other documents to protect themselves.
The FBI, under the direction of the Obamites in senior leadership, did not want to touch the Awans with a ten foot pole because of what a real investigation would expose...because they knew what the Awans were doing.
Me thinks a lot of this phony Russian hacking can be tracked back to the Awans. Afterall, the Klingons could have fed them some of those neat little false flag hacking tools.
#5
A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigmaa turd.
There, Besoeker, fixed it for ya, heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/01/2018 13:53 Comments ||
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#6
....the Klingons could have fed them some of those neat little false flag hacking tools.
...or anything else they wanted leaked to Paki intelligence. The cost? Oh, we'll let you continue to monitor traffic (as you have done for ten years), as long as you give us the password(s) to your storage servers. Do we understand one another ?
#9
If you were working the Paki desk in any named US intelligence agency, wouldn't you do your very best to recruit sources like the Awan's living in Woodbridge, VA and operating a car lot in Falls Church named..........CIA ?
[FoxNews] Authorities in San Francisco released body camera videos on Tuesday of a dramatic shootout in which police officers fired their weapons at least 65 times in 15 seconds at a murder suspect.
The San Francisco Police Department said the shooting happened on Feb. 17 in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood when officers confronted 31-year-old homicide suspect Joel Armstrong inside an RV at a homeless encampment.
Armstrong allegedly shot two men the day before during a carjacking in the city's Panhandle neighborhood, killing one of them.
Body camera footage released by police shows how officers tracked Armstrong to the neighborhood then the moment when he shot at officers, who then returned fire.
"Nobody was struck by gunfire during this incident. The evidence in the case so far indicates Armstrong fired two rounds from a weapon, and that seven officers fired 65 rounds from their department-issued weapons," SFPD Commander Greg McEachern told KTVU.
Armstrong eventually turned himself into police, and has been charged with murder, carjacking, and eight counts of attempted murder.
Posted by: Seeking cure for ignorance ||
03/01/2018 13:20 ||
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#1
Shades of the A team show on TV decades ago. Lots of ordinance exchanged but no hits.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/01/2018 13:51 Comments ||
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#2
But only cops should have guns....
They got their training from the Stormtroopers in Star Wars.
#8
I guess the SFO cops spent their normal range time in diversity training or homeless assistance programs.
65 shots and didn't hit anything???
I had a sergeant that could put that many shots in the black just on the sound...you know of course, a good pistol shot doesn't need to aim, you can point and shoot and hit the target, once you know your weapon well enough.
What a bunch of buffoons...err...maroons.
No wonder SFO is a homeless, illegal alien/criminal mecca, they know the police can't hit the broad side of a barn.
[Wash Times] Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill was booted off an American Airlines flight in Nashville Sunday for allegedly being too drunk.
TMZ reported that Mr. O’Neill was kicked off an American Airlines jet bound for Dallas after flight attendants noticed he was intoxicated. Eyewitnesses told the website that he called an airline employee a "vile name" and passed out in his seat, and when he eventually woke up, a flight attendant told him he had to leave. Witnesses said Mr. O’Neill became belligerent and loud and the police had to be called to escort him off the plane, though he was not arrested.
When asked to comment on the report, Kris Kelly, Mr. O’Neill’s assistant, told The Montana Standard that "the truth has been stretched a bit, which sometimes happens," and that Mr. O’Neill was never combative.
#3
Sadly being a war hero doesn't mean one can relate well to life afterwards. Pappy Boyington of Black Sheep Squadron (aka Baa, Baa, Blacksheep) was an ace in the pacific and become a raging alcoholic after the war. I suspect there are a number of examples.
#6
Report I read today said he was polite and didn't put up a fuss. He also had a statement saying that he's fond of American Airlines and has no issues with them.
#7
rjschwarz, was it the Daily Caller link Skidmark shared above, which contains the following update:
UPDATE: Rob O’Neill released the following statement after finding out about the witness supporting him up:
My wife and I were celebrating her best friend’s birthday In Nashville. We had a party on Sunday and then I boarded my Flight later. They did tell me to depart the flight and re book for the next morning, which I did. I flew American the next day… twice… and am flying American right now. I truly appreciate their professionalism and patience!! I look forward to flying American for a very long time
The entire link is worth reading to see the exercise of character assassination. The truth has been stretched a bit, indeed — Mr. O’Neill is a true gentleman.
#12
#3 Sadly being a war hero doesn't mean one can relate well to life afterwards. Pappy Boyington of Black Sheep Squadron (aka Baa, Baa, Blacksheep) was an ace in the pacific and become a raging alcoholic after the war. I suspect there are a number of examples.
Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-03-01 10:45
...Sadly, Greg Boyington was probably a functioning alcoholic long before that. And at least he admitted it - he wrote in his autobiography, "Show me a hero, and I'll show you a bum."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/01/2018 18:22 Comments ||
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#13
Consider Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln knew the score "“Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
With that said, I have no problem at all with AA asking a drunk former SEAL to get off the plane, sober up, and then continue his travels.
[WashingtonPost] The "Beast from the East" continues to pummel Britain with heavy snow and brutal wind chills, prompting the U.K. Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service, to issue a red snow warning for the first time since 2013 [I would be more worried about yellow snow but that's just me].
The red warning was in effect on Wednesday for parts of Scotland, including Edinburgh and Glasgow, until 10 a.m. Thursday. An additional 16 inches of snow is possible there. nice images at the link
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/01/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Hope the Queen and the Scotts survive. Everyone else can succumb to frost bite.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/01/2018 11:21 Comments ||
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#9
16" of snow would be quite problematic if you have little in the way of snow removal equipment.
Plus it's very windy and that means drifting. Dangerous for the smaller, lighter, vehicles typically driven in the UK.
F-150 and a couple of sand bags in the bed over the rear wheels works for that around here. Still not fun.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/01/2018 14:31 Comments ||
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#10
Drink up!
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/01/2018 14:34 Comments ||
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#11
Reminds me of a funny Dale story, Frank.
My last weekend in the Colorado mountains it snowed 63" in 3 days. The Dodge would push thru it but we had to climb in and out of the windows because we couldn't get the doors open.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A bridegroom in New Delhi has been killed by a stray bullet after a member of his wedding party opened fire to celebrate the occasion, police said Wednesday.
Deepak Kumar, 21, was shot while leading the party to his bride’s home in the Indian capital on Tuesday evening.
Police said a guest dancing with the wedding party opened fire but a stray round struck the husband-to-be.
"He collapsed and was rushed to hospital where he was declared dead after midnight," Nupur Prasad, deputy commissioner of Delhi police, told AFP.
Firing weapons in the air at weddings and other festivities is a common celebration across South Asia.
The practice is illegal in India but remains rife, though fatalities are relatively few.
Prasad said the groom’s family had identified the man who fired the bullet.
"It is an ongoing investigation and we are trying to ascertain the source of his weapon," he said.
Amit, one of the wedding guests, told the Times of India newspaper there "were a couple of people carrying guns for celebratory firing, which is considered a tradition in the family".
Posted by: Fred ||
03/01/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Shot in the crown of the head , was he?
Was the "member of the wedding party" offered a glass of Champagne or shown the door and his gun confiscated ?
Or was the "member" a relative, perhaps ?
A lot more to this story than what is in the article, it seems.
Perhaps we shall never know.
And, as usual, the ChiComs are not helping (understatement of the week).
[GCaptain] As Washington and Seoul try to maintain a unified front against North Korea, the case of two cargo ships shows how Kim Jong Un's regime keeps finding ways to evade increasingly tough international sanctions aimed at halting its nuclear weapons program.
Both vessels have gone through repeated changes of names and owners, part of an international shell game that has undercut the escalating sanctions led by the U.S. and backed by the United Nations. President Donald Trump's administration has vowed to maintain its "maximum pressure" campaign on North Korea even as America’s ally, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, pursues a fragile detente sparked by the Olympics.
[DW] German security services have admitted they uncovered a Russian cyberattack on the foreign and defense ministries in December. Sources say the malware had been planted up to a year earlier.
The German government admitted on Wednesday that the foreign and defense ministries had been infiltrated by Russian hacking group APT28.
Citing anonymous sources, the German news agency dpa reported the group likely placed a piece of malware in a key government network. The malware could have remained in the government's networks for as long as a year, security officials said.
The German Interior Ministry confirmed the breach. "We can confirm that the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and intelligence services are investigating a cybersecurity incident concerning the federal government's information technology and networks," an Interior Ministry front man said.
Hackers attack German government: DW's Fabian von der Mark
The targeted ministries had since taken necessary measures to investigate the attack and protect their data, the front man added.
How much data was intercepted in that time remains unclear.
"Secure" network jeopardized
The hackers reportedly infiltrated the government's "Informationsverbund Berlin-Bonn" (IVBB) network, a specially designed communications platform that sits separate from other public networks for supposed added security. It's used exclusively by the Chancellery, the German parliament, federal ministries, the Federal Audit Office and several security institutions in Berlin and Bonn, the former German capital where some ministries still have offices.
The government said it receives roughly 20 attempted hacking attacks per day, while German intelligence services also carry out penetration tests once per week.
APT28's alleged Kremlin ties
APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been linked to Russian military intelligence. The group was identified as the likely source of an attack on the German parliament in 2015, as well as NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... and governments in eastern Europe.
The group's 2015 attack on the Bundestag was so far-reaching that the German government was forced to replace its entire IT infrastructure.
German officials had feared that a trove of private documents could be released ahead of last September's federal elections, as happened just before the final round of the French election in May. However, there's more than one way to skin a cat... those fears proved unfounded.
[DAWN] A mother of six was allegedly rubbed out by her husband reportedly in the name of 'honour' in Sindh's Shikarpur district on Wednesday, police said.
The accused man bumped off his wife, 36-year-old Aooraan, after suspecting her of having illicit relations with a neighbour in Dilawar Marfani village of Garhi Yasin tehsil, SHO Shahzado Dasti said.
The suspect managed to flee after committing the crime, the SHO added.
After being alerted about the incident, police reached the scene of the crime and shifted the victim's body to Garhi Yasin taluka hospital. The body was handed over to the woman's relatives after postmortem examination.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/01/2018 00:00 ||
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[The Verge] According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, Palantir first approached New Orleans in 2012 through a well-known intermediary: James Carville, the Democratic Party power broker and architect of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign. Carville is a paid adviser of Palantir whose involvement with the data-mining company dates back at least to 2011.
“I AM THE SOLE DRIVER OF THAT PROJECT.”
In an interview, Carville told The Verge that he was the impetus for the collaboration between Palantir and New Orleans. “I am the sole driver of that project. It was entirely my idea,” said Carville, adding that he and Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew down to New Orleans to meet with Mayor Landrieu. “To me, it was a case of morality. Young people were shooting each other, and the public wasn’t as involved as they should have been.”
The documents outlining Palantir’s relationship with New Orleans describe the company’s role as “pro bono” and philanthropic. In 2015, Palantir mentioned its work in New Orleans in its annual philanthropic report, characterizing the effort as collaborative “network analysis” for law enforcement and other city stakeholders.
Carville’s remarks on a Bay Area public radio station four years ago elucidate how Palantir’s relationship with the city came about. In a January 2014 appearance on KQED’s Forum talk show, Carville and his wife Mary Matalin touted Palantir’s work in New Orleans as a major driver in the city’s two-year decline in the murder rate.
“The CEO of a company called Palantir – the CEO, a guy named Alex Karp — said that they wanted to do some charitable work, and what’d I think? I said, we have a really horrific crime rate in New Orleans,” Carville told KQED Forum’s host Michael Krasny, without mentioning his professional relationship to Palantir. “And so he came down and met with our mayor… they both had the same reaction as to the utter immorality of young people killing other young people and society not doing anything about it. And we were able to, at no cost to the city, start integrating data and predict and intervene as to where these conflicts were going to be arising. We’ve seen probably a third of a reduction in our murder rate since this project started.”
Matalin, who is also a political consultant, made it clear to Krasny that the prediction work being done with NOPD by the Palo Alto firm was both a prototype and potentially could sweep up innocent people.
Co-founded in 2004 by Alexander Karp and Peter Thiel (the company’s single largest shareholder), Palantir Technologies’ rapid ascent to becoming one of the highest-valued private Silicon Valley companies has been driven by lucrative contracts with the Pentagon and United States intelligence services, as well as foreign security services. In recent years, Palantir has sought to expand its data fusion and analysis business to the private sector, with mixed success.
Prediction is not new territory for Palantir. Since at least 2009, Palantir was used by the Pentagon to predict the location of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq — a wartime risk-assessment program absent the civil liberties concerns that come with individualized predictive policing. Its commercial software platform, Metropolis, also reportedly uses predictive analytics to help businesses develop consumer markets and streamline investments. But before 2012 with the New Orleans program, there is no publicly available record that Palantir had ventured into predictive policing.
#2
Regarding the uptick of bee activity in on your farm. We have noticed periodic swarming near the small woods on the other side of your hay field. One corner of the woods has a number of old-growth hardwood containing knotty, rotting limb scars. Your dog will not go near the woods.
#4
Yes it is. It's the SW analytic tool our soldiers and Marines asked for repeatedly, but our DoD refused to purchase or integrate. The attached graphic might tell you why.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/01/2018 7:45 Comments ||
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#9
Reads like a movie review for that old Tom Cruise movie, "Minority Report."
An action-detective thriller set in Washington D.C. in 2054 where police utilize a psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crime.
#11
One of the technologies being used in the 7th District is HunchLab, a predictive policing program made by Philadelphia-based company Azavea. It combines crime data with factors including the location of local businesses, the weather.....
#15
Why in the world is Palantir giving that dumbazz Carville a single dollar for advice?
Predictive analysis is a bunch of nonsense in policing...not a dang thing is actionable.
How about this? I predict that if New Orleans would get off their azz and arrest all the criminals with active arrest warrants running around in their community...than wasting time talking to Carville about something he knows absolutely nothing about...there would be a lot less crime in NO. I am 100% positive of my analysis.
#16
I'm not sure what the headline is here. "Predictive policing" has been making advances for at least a decade and there are many companies and products vying for budget for predictive analytics. The inside Chicago story is they sent out multiple RFQ's to all the major vendors, and finally decided to "build it themselves" in house because...well you know its easier to just build a new Facebook than simply buy software as a service. Public servants are smarter than Silicon Valley geeks in most all matters.
#18
#15 - like many *ahem, FBI* they assumed The Beast would win
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/01/2018 12:50 Comments ||
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#19
Maybe. But Peter Thiel - a Trump supporter - was one of Palantir's original founders and still IIUC is the largest shareholder, individually and via his investment fund.
More likely they are looking for a big city win and .... those cities tend to be dominated by Democrats.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Caller] In March 2017, FBI agents were tailing House of Representatives IT aides suspected of hacking Congress, and apprehended one at the airport trying to make a hasty exit to Pakistan. She refused to speak with them, and a search revealed that she was carrying an apparently illegal amount of cash.
[FoxNews] Authorities in San Francisco released body camera videos on Tuesday of a dramatic shootout in which police officers fired their weapons at least 65 times in 15 seconds at a murder suspect.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A bridegroom in New Delhi has been killed by a stray bullet after a member of his wedding party opened fire to celebrate the occasion, police said Wednesday.
[DAWN] A mother of six was allegedly 
According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, Palantir first approached New Orleans in 2012 through a well-known intermediary: 
