Tag: fbi

Here’s How the CIA Plans To Use Your Ad Tracking Data

For years, the U.S. government has bought information on private citizens from commercial data brokers. Now, for the first time ever, American spymasters are admitting that this data is sensitive—but they’re leaving it up to the spy agencies on how to use it.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines released a “Policy Framework for Commercially Available Information.” Her office oversees 18 agencies in the “intelligence community,” including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), and all military intelligence branches.

In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant to obtain mobile phone location data from phone companies. (During the case, the Reason Foundation filed an amicus brief against warrantless snooping.) As a workaround, the feds instead started buying data from third-party brokers.

Haines’ new framework claims that “additional clarity” on the government’s policies will help protect Americans’ privacy. Yet the document is vague about the specific limits. It orders the agencies themselves to come up with “safeguards that are tailored to the sensitivity of the information” and write an annual report on how they use this data.

As national security journalist Spencer Ackerman points out in his Forever Wars newsletter, the framework doesn’t require the feds to delete old purchased data. Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) called on the NSA to purge all data that it bought without a warrant and without following the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy policies.

“The framework’s absence of clear rules about what commercially available information can and cannot be purchased by the intelligence community reinforces the need for Congress to pass legislation protecting the rights of Americans,” Wyden tells Reason. “The DNI’s framework is nonetheless an important step forward in starting to bring the intelligence community under a set of principles and policies, and in documenting all the various programs so that they can be overseen.”

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CISA, FBI Resuming Talks With Social Media Firms Over Disinformation Removal, Senate Intel Chair Says

Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said. 

“There seemed to be a lot of sympathy that the government ought to have at least voluntary communications with [the companies],” he said, adding that, in the event of election interference attempts akin to Russia in 2016, the Biden administration should more forcefully call out nation-state entities that attempt to meddle in the U.S. election process.

Warner said his committee will convene a hearing on elections security in two weeks. The panel was supposed to hold the session with CISA Director Jen Easterly and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines last month, but it was postponed amid GOP attempts to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

For around six months, agencies chilled their communications with social firms about election security and other disinformation flash points. Warner previously said that White House lawyers had been “too timid” in their legal interpretation of the case, especially given that the high court allowed the Biden administration to temporarily continue their talks until a ruling was made.

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FBI Brought Props To Stage Infamous Trump Crime Scene Photo

The FBI brought props to its raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for classified documents that were pictured in an infamous photo taken at the alleged crime scene, according to court documents.

Jay Bratt, the lead Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor now assigned to special counsel Jack Smith’s team, admitted in a recent court filing that FBI agents brought cover sheets reading “top secret” to the raid of Mar-a-Lago to use as placeholders in their gathering of classified documents. The classified documents, however, now appear to be out of order following their seizure, both Trump’s defense attorney and the special counsel have admitted, according to court documents first reported by Declassified with Julie Kelly.

The crime scene photo of classified documents allegedly found at Mar-a-Lago, complete with the bright red “classification” cover sheets, went viral in the weeks after the raid. Corporate media outlets breathlessly reported on the photo and the cover sheets as proof that Trump had been storing classified documents at his Florida property.

“[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose,” Bratt wrote in a recent filing.

In a May filing, Waltine Nauta, Trump’s defense attorney, wrote that the placeholders which the FBI brought to the scene to mark classified documents in stacks were out of place.

“Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes…and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information,” Nauta wrote, according to Kelly.

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FBI File On Jeff Bezos’ Grandfather, A DARPA Co-Founder, Has Been Destroyed

ZeroHedge reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, helped form the Pentagon’s supersecret Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA—renamed DARPA) in 1958. Years later, DARPA developed the internet and spurred breakthroughs in high-speed networking, voice recognition, and internet search. When Gise’s FBI file was requested through the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI responded that if there was one, it has been destroyed. News website Leading Report’s Patrick Webb wrote that “There has long been speculation that DARPA has been involved in the creation of many popular big tech companies, using “frontmen” for the allusion of a startup led by outsiders.” Questions swirl about DARPA’s involvement in creating Amazon that hosts ‘secret’ cloud services for the CIA and NSA, and other intel agencies. Some critics speculated that if not for the government contracts, Amazon would be a struggling company.

What’s not widely known is that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, helped form the Pentagon’s supersecret Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA—renamed DARPA) in 1958. Years later, DARPA developed the internet and spurred breakthroughs in high-speed networking, voice recognition, and internet search. 

John Greenewald Jr., who operates The Black Vault, a website dedicated to revealing declassified government documents through obtaining Freedom of Information Act requests, posted on X that he went after Gise’s “FBI file, but found out if there was one, it has been destroyed.” 

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Appeals Court Hammers Prosecution About FBI Conduct In Whitmer Kidnap Plot

The much-anticipated appeal hearing was held Thursday for Barry Croft and Adam Fox, the alleged “ringleaders” of the 2020 militia conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Croft and Fox were convicted of plotting to kidnap Whitmer after their second trial in late 2022. At their first trial earlier that year, a jury acquitted two other men while failing to reach a verdict for Croft and Fox.

The two men appealed their convictions on multiple grounds. Thursday’s hearing focused largely on the conduct of FBI informants and their handling agents.

Croft’s attorney, Timothy Sweeney, argued that his client should get a retrial because he wasn’t allowed to introduce numerous text messages that showed improper conduct by the FBI.

Those text messages showed how FBI informants were pressuring Fox and Croft to formulate a plan against Whitmer. A list of the texts can be found in this document.

Representing the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler argued that the FBI text messages were irrelevant because Fox and Croft were already predisposed to committing an act of terrorism.

“All the [FBI] statements identified by defense go to inducement. If jury found they were predisposed [to kidnapping Whitmer], none of that matters,” Kessler said. “This court has held that entrapment can only happen if the government plants an idea in an innocent persons’ head.”

The appeals justices expressed skepticism about Kessler’s argument. One justice disagreed with the prosecutor’s reading of the law.

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Former NSA worker gets nearly 22 years in prison for selling secrets to undercover FBI agent

A former National Security Agency employee who sold classified information to an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Russian official was sentenced Monday to nearly 22 years in prison, the penalty requested by government prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore said he could have put Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 32, behind bars for even longer, calling the 262-month sentence “mercy” for what he saw as a calculated action to take the job at the NSA in order to be able to sell national security secrets.

“This was blatant. It was brazen and, in my mind, it was deliberate. It was a betrayal, and it was as close to treasonous as you can get,” Moore said.

Dalke‘s attorneys had asked for the Army veteran, who pleaded guilty to espionage charges last fall in a deal with prosecutors, to be sentenced to 14 years in prison, in part because the information did not end up in enemy hands and cause damage. Assistant federal public defender David Kraut also argued for a lighter sentence because he said Dalke had suffered a traumatic brain injury, had attempted suicide four times, and had experienced trauma as a child, including witnessing domestic violence and substance abuse. Research has shown that kind of childhood trauma increases the risk of people later engaging in dangerous behavior, he said.

Later, Dalke, who said he was “remorseful and ashamed”, told Moore he had also suffered PTSD, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

He denied being motivated by ideology or earning money by agreeing to sell the secrets. Dalke also suggested he had an idea that he was actually communicating with law enforcement but was attracted to the thrill of what he was doing.

But Moore said he was skeptical of Dalke’s claims about his conditions since the defense did not provide any expert opinions or hospital records.

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FBI Turns Over Nashville, Tennessee Mass Shooter’s Manifesto To The Court

The FBI has turned over Nashville Tennessee Covenant School mass shooter Audrey Hale’s private writing and manifesto to a federal judge who will read them privately and decide how to deal with their release. 

Star News Digital Media Inc., The Tennessee Star’s parent company, sued the FBI in May 2023 after the March 2023 shooting. The news organization had claimed the FBI had violated the First Amendment by rejecting multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for Hale’s manifesto.

U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger, who has presided over the case agreed with the Tennessee Star over a month ago that it was in the public’s interest to release the documents to determine what the motive of the mass shooting was. 

Hale killed three nine-year old children and three faculty members during her mass shooting spree before she was shot dead by law enforcement on the scene inside the school. 

Trauger will review the documents privately, before deciding whether to share the writings with the plaintiffs.

“Pursuant to this Court’s Order dated March 15, 2024, ECF No. 42, the FBI notifies the Court that today, April 17, 2024, the FBI provided the requested records to the Court for its ex parte, in camera review,” the FBI said in its formal notification.

Trauger previously said that there was “significant public interest” in the shooter’s manifesto, when a few pages were leaked by conservative commentator Steven Crowder last November. 

Those leaked pages revealed anti-white writings. 

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FBI found it ‘alarming’ that Fauci-funded virus research at Wuhan lab would leave no trace of ‘human manipulation’

The FBI was tipped off in April 2020 to gain-of-function virus research in China, funded by the agency formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, that “would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation,” emails from agents at the bureau show.

At least one FBI agent at the bureau’s Newark Field Office referred to the revelation as “alarming.”

Another agent called the tip “interesting,” and vowed to follow-up with others at the FBI.

The five-pages of emails were obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act request and released Friday. 

“These smoking gun documents showed the FBI quickly understood that Fauci’s agency funded the gain-of-function research that could disguise the resulting coronavirus as ‘natural,’” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. 

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Soros-Funded California DA Gascon Dropped Charges Against Konnech CEO for Political Reasons After He Was Caught Storing US Elections Data in China – The FBI Also Mysteriously Dropped the Investigation – What Are They Hiding?

In October 2022, Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was arrested in Michigan in connection with “theft of personal data.”

The alleged stolen data belonged to poll workers and was the subject of TrueTheVote’s “PIT” in Arizona in August 2022, in which Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips singled out the Michigan-based company.

During the PIT conference, Phillips and Engelbrecht alleged they were cooperating with the FBI in Michigan about data being sent overseas by this company. The investigation quickly turned on them after the FBI distanced itself from it for some strange reason.

Journalist “incognito” Kanekoa covered this company and researched Konnech.

Here is the link to the LA County website after the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on October 4, 2022, announced the arrest of Konnech CEO Eugene Yu on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information by investigators at the LA District Attorney’s office.

The theft of data only impacted the election workers, alleged Soros-funded Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon at the time.  The LADA seized hard drives and other digital evidence from the Michigan software firm with the assistance of Meridian Township Police in MI.  The LADA was seeking Yu’s extradition to Los Angeles.

Following the CEO’s arrest Fairfax County in Virginia announced they stopped using Konnech’s PollChief election officer management software.

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and investigator Gregg Phillips were then hauled into court by lawyers representing Konnech who sued Catherine and Gregg for defamation for reporting on the company and its actions.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt demanded the conservative nonprofit group disclose their sources of the information central to the case, about sensitive poll worker data managed by Konnech Inc.

After Konnech sued True the Vote for defamation, Hoyt ordered True the Vote to turn over any Konnech data the organization still had and disclose the name of the individual who’d helped them obtain it.

Gregg and Catherine refused to “burn” their source in the Konnech reporting and spent 10 days in prison for not turning over their source to Konnech and their corrupt attorneys.

The Soros-funded LA District Attorney dropped the charges against Konnech the day after the 2022 midterm election.  The reason for the dismissal was never explained – until recently.

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Tucker Carlson: For the Third Time in Three Consecutive Cycles, Secretive Federal Agencies are Trying to Rig Our Presidential Election – This Is What They Call ‘Democracy’

Tucker Carlson weighed in on the end of democracy in America today.

For the third straight election cycle secretive federal agencies are trying to rig our presidential election.

In fact, did the secretive federal agencies ever stop their attacks on Trump and his supporters since 2016? We know of several pro-Trump groups and individuals who were ruined or who are currently being destroyed by the radical Democrats and their allies in the federal government.

Now they are trying to ruin pro-Trump groups and supporters financially and they have the legacy media to cover for them.

We found our earlier this week that the FBI and CIA are even targeting conservative media outlets like Alex Jones (and Gateway Pundit?) for financial ruin.

As Tucker Carlson says in his monologue below – they call this “democracy.”

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