Fail.
Tag: dhs
DHS Sued Over Its Social Media Surveillance Tactics
On paper at least, when a federal agency receives a FOIA request, it’s required to respond with either a denial or a so-called “grant of access” within the span of 20 business days. As the CDT points out in its suit, even if every requested document can’t be released in this time frame, at the very least the agency should notify which documents are on the table, which are being withheld, and give the party asking for these docs the right to appeal these decisions.
By that rationale, when the CDT filed its initial FOIA request in mid-August 2019, it should have heard a response sometime in mid-September. Instead, it alleges that it hasn’t gotten a substantial request to date. Even USCIS—the only agency to offer any sort of timeline for wrangling these requested documents—initially estimated it would take until the end of December. In the 13 months since its self-set deadline, the CDT alleges the agency hasn’t returned any of the records requested.
“The public deserves to know how the government scrutinizes social media data when deciding who can enter or stay in the country,” said CDT General Counsel Avery Gardiner in a statement. “Government surveillance has necessary limits, particularly constitutional ones.”
DHS Terror Alert Issued for First Time in a Year, Targets Those Upset Over Lockdowns
Despite Joe Biden running on a platform of unity to bring Americans back together, before he was even sworn in, he reneged on this promise by alienating tens of millions of Trump supporters — essentially declaring them the enemy.
“Don’t dare call them protesters,” Biden said after the largely peaceful march on DC which ended with a few hundred goons out of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters raiding the capitol. “They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic. It’s that simple.”
While some of the folks certainly thought they were part of some coup, the reality of the situation was nothing at all as serious as the media and establishment is claiming.
Just like Trump used Antifa violence to bolster the police state and add stricter penalties for protests, Biden is using the riot at the capitol to do the same. We predicted this outcome last month, and now it is escalating even further.
Using The DHS National Terrorist Advisory System — or NTAS — the Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning that anger “fueled by false narratives,” including unfounded claims about the 2020 presidential election, could lead some inside the country to launch attacks in the coming weeks.
This is the first time in a year that a terror threat bulletin has been issued on the system, and the first time we can find that it was issued over a domestic terror threat.
This threat bulletin is worrisome as it is all encompassing and covers a range of issues and beliefs held by tens of millions of Americans.
- Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest activity. DVEs motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities.
- Long-standing racial and ethnic tension—including opposition to immigration—has driven DVE attacks, including a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people.
- DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.
- DHS remains concerned that Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist groups, who committed three attacks targeting government officials in 2020, remain a threat.
- Threats of violence against critical infrastructure, including the electric, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, increased in 2020 with violent extremists citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for their actions.
Closing out the bulletin, DHS urged Americans to report any “suspicious activity and threats of violence, including online activity, to local law enforcement, FBI Field Offices, or their local Fusion Center.”
DHS’s Facial/Iris Recognition Can ID Airline Passengers Wearing Masks
It is official, unless airline passengers are willing to wear motorcycle helmets or Daft Punk style masks, the Feds can use facial and iris recognition to identify nearly everyone.
According to an S&T press release, a pilot program run by DHS proves they can use facial/iris recognition to identify airline passengers.
The in-person rally, held at the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF), included 10 days of human testing during which six face and/or iris acquisition systems and 13 matching algorithms were tested with help from 582 diverse test volunteers representing 60 countries.
What is DHS’s so-called motivation to ID everyone?
DHS Works to Improve Biometric Scanning of Masked Faces
Perhaps the most-worn accessories of 2020, face masks mark an unexpected new constant in people’s lives providing necessary protection against COVID-19—but they’re also known to pose some trouble for contemporary facial recognition systems.
The Homeland Security Department, one of the government’s biggest biometrics systems users, is now steering research to confront the complexities limiting existing technology and help push forward tools to safely verify people’s identities at security checkpoints in a pandemic.
Initial results from one recent effort “are actually quite promising,” according to Arun Vemury, director of DHS’ Biometric and Identity Technology Center.
“We’re getting to the point with this technology, where at least from the preliminary results, it looks like there’s some combinations of biometric acquisition systems, the camera systems and the matching algorithms—when you combine them together, you could match eight or nine out of 10 people without asking them to remove their masks,” Vemury told Nextgov during a recent interview. “This means that for the vast majority of people in airports, they might not have to remove their masks anymore to even go through the security checks, and we could do a really good job of still matching them. So, I think it’s very promising from that perspective. Is it 100%? Is it perfect? No. But it reduces the number of people who potentially have to take their masks off.”
DHS PLANS TO START COLLECTING EYE SCANS AND DNA — WITH THE HELP OF DEFENSE CONTRACTORS
THROUGH A LITTLE-DISCUSSED potential bureaucratic rule change, the Department of Homeland Security is planning to collect unprecedented levels of biometric information from immigration applicants and their sponsors — including U.S. citizens. While some types of applicants have long been required to submit photographs and fingerprints, a rule currently under consideration would require practically everyone applying for any kind of status, or detained by immigration enforcement agents, to provide iris scans, voiceprints and palmprints, and, in some cases, DNA samples. A tangled web of defense and surveillance contractors, which operate with little public oversight, have already begun to build the infrastructure that would be needed to store these records.
DHS to label white supremacists as the ‘most persistent and lethal threat’ to the US
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is set to label white supremacists as the most serious terror threat facing the United States.
In three draft reports reviewed by Politico, DHS says the threat posed by white supremacists is more significant than the immediate danger from foreign terrorists.
“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.
Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents add.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Kevin McAleenan, the former acting DHS secretary, ordered the agency last year to start crafting annual homeland threat assessments. The three draft documents use varying language to describe the threat posed by white supremacists, but all of them say they pose the most significant threat, according to Politico.
Homeland Security Seized $2 Billion in Cash From Travelers at U.S. Airports
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm.
The institute’s report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren’t ever charged with a crime.
AS TRUMP THREATENS SECRET POLICE DEPLOYMENT NATIONWIDE, DEMOCRATS DEBATE EXPANDING SURVEILLANCE POWERS AND NEW MONEY FOR DHS
THE ROGUE DEPLOYMENT of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration’s vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security. In March, a sweeping set of government authorities to monitor people in the United States expired, and Congress continues to debate what limits should be put on such powers before reauthorizing them. And the House is debating its next DHS funding bill, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing leadership not to bring it up for a vote given Trump’s abuse of power and DHS agents’ role in a Portland arrest.
House Democratic leaders, however, are considering lumping in DHS funding with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that the CPC is urging leadership either to not bring up the bill at all or to break it off from Labor-HHS and allow for a separate vote.
DHS Goes Full Gestapo In Response To Ongoing Protests In Oregon
Looks like we finally have some secret police to call our own. Ongoing protests stemming from a Minnesota police officer’s brutal killing of an unarmed Black man have provoked a federal response. In some cases, the National Guard has been called in to quell the more violent and destructive aspects of some demonstrations. Others — like the 50+ days of continuous protests in Portland, Oregon — have been greeted with something far more frightening.
Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson of Oregon Public Broadcasting were the first to break the news of unidentified federal officers yanking people off the street into unmarked vehicles and disappearing them for a few hours of interrogation.
In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.
[…]
A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.
“So that was terrifying to hear,” Pettibone said.
They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them.
“I see guys in camo,” O’Shea said. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh shit. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”
Pettibone was grabbed by the unidentified officers, who wore nothing indicating which branch of the federal government they worked for, and shoved into a van with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was taken to the federal courthouse (something he wasn’t aware of until he was released), patted down, photographed, and had his belongings searched. After all of this, he was put into a cell where he was finally read his Miranda rights. He refused to talk to the officers and they released him about 90 minutes later. At no point was he told what he had been detained for, nor was he given any paperwork documenting his detainment.
No one appears to know for sure which branch of the federal government is taking people off the street and detaining them without probable cause. The officers performing these sweeps use unmarked vehicles and dress in camouflage uniforms that contain no identfying info that might indicate what agency they work for.
The federal government has deployed a mixture of federal agencies to cities with ongoing protests, including the US Marshals Service, CBP, ICE, and Bureau of Prisons riot officers. Presumably the DEA is in the mix as well, since it invited itself along for this anti-free-speech ride.
Hellbound and Down 
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