Tag: fbi

FBI Conducted Millions of Searches of Americans’ Electronic Data in 2021 without a Warrant

The FBI conducted millions of searches of Americans’ electronic data in 2021 without a warrant, according to a new report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The FBI claims it conducted the searches as they sought to curb cyberattacks.

“In the first half of the year, there were a number of large batch queries related to attempts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure by foreign cyber actors,” according to the report, Bloomberg reported. “These queries, which included approximately 1.9 million query terms related to potential victims — including U.S. persons — accounted for the vast majority of the increase in U.S. person queries conducted by FBI over the prior year.”

The ACLU called the FBI’s warrantless spying an invasion of privacy ‘on an enormous scale.’

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FBI Accused of Doctoring Evidence in Child Sex Trafficking Case

A convicted child sex trafficker has accused the FBI of doctoring evidence in his case, which is under appeal.

Keith Raniere, the former leader and founder of NXIVM, was sentenced to 120 years in October 2020 after a federal jury found him guilty of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and racketeering. Raniere’s alleged crimes have been the subject of multiple documentaries, including HBO’s August 2020 series, The Vow.

An appeal hearing is set for May 3 for Raniere, but the defendant said on April 28 that he has come into possession of evidence that could overturn his entire case. According to Raniere, the FBI manipulated digital photos to make it appear as if he had photographed a female under the age of 18.

“Specifically, there is evidence that computer data related to digital photographs taken of a nude female were materially altered to make it appear that these photographs were taken in 2005,” Raniere’s motion said. “The government used the year 2005 to establish the female as being under the age of eighteen, making the photographs contraband.”

Raniere’s motion contains sworn statements from three digital forensic experts, including one who worked for the FBI for 20 years.

Retired FBI special agent Richard Kiper, who was a computer forensic examiner for the bureau from 1999 to 2019, said in his sworn statement that he believes there was evidence tampering in Raniere’s case.

“In my 20 years serving as an FBI agent, I have never observed or claimed that an FBI employee tampered with evidence, digital or otherwise. But in this case, I strongly believe the multiple, intentional alterations to the digital information I have discovered constitute evidence manipulation,” Kiper said.

“My analysis demonstrates that some of these alterations definitely took place while the devices were in the custody of the FBI. Therefore, in the absence of any other plausible explanation, it is my expert opinion that the FBI must have been involved in this evidence tampering.”

Among his findings, says Kiper, are dates, file names, and timestamps of digital photos being altered while in FBI possession.  He also said photos were manipulated to appear as though they came from Raniere’s computer hard drive when they were actually placed there manually.

In addition, Raniere’s motion included sworn statements from Steven Abrams, an attorney and retired digital forensics expert, and computer scientist Wayne Norris.

They agreed with Kiper’s findings.

“Dr. Kiper’s third finding is that the filesystem access data metadata was overwritten on Sept. 19, 2018. I agree. This sort of mishandling of digital evidence is common among lay people. I regularly observe attorneys mishandle their client’s evidence produced in discovery in this manner, but this sort of mishandling of evidence is unexpected from the FBI,” said Abrams.

“This is either a rookie mistake or a purposeful act of digital sabotage.”

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It’s Time We Get Answers About the FBI’s Involvement In the OKC Bombing

This past week marked the 27th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. As the worst terrorist act committed on U.S. soil at the time, we all know the reported facts of the horrific event well: a 27-year-old Desert Storm-vet, Timothy McVeigh, acting with minimal help from Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, detonated a 7,000-pound fertilizer bomb from a parked Ryder truck outside the federal Alfred P. Murrah building, killing 168 people, 19 of them children.

Two years later, in 1997, McVeigh was convicted of “Using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death,” among other federal charges. For a time, he was held on the same cell block as the Unabomber and WTC-bomber Ramzi Yousef (who tried to convert him to Islam), before being put to death by lethal injection in 2001.

There is much we still don’t know about the case, however. Thanks to years of heroic work by people like Salt Lake City-based attorney Jesse Trentadue, writer and researcher J.M. Berger, and independent investigative reporter Wendy S. Painting, the American public is slowly learning more and more key (and disturbing) facts about the case. Facts involving the FBI’s possible incitement of McVeigh and the subsequent cover-up of these facts by Newsweek magazine.

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FBI May Have Made Off With $500 Million In Lost Civil War Gold, Treasure Hunter Group Alleges

A group of treasure hunters is suing the Department of Justice over “several tons of buried Civil War-era gold” that they claim the FBI may have found and made off with. The haul was supposedly lost or stolen during the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, according to local lore.

The group is called Finders Keepers – and they they wrote in a court filing last week that the FBI has failed to turn over records on its search for the gold. Previously, these records were said to have included 17 videos, but the government is now claiming only 4 such videos exist. 

The FBI took part in a March 2018 dig at the supposed site of the gold, but claims they came up with nothing.

Anne Weismann, Finders Keepers’ lawyer, told CBS: “This raises the obvious question of whether videotapes were destroyed in the interim.” Weismann is trying to have a court order the FBI to explain the discrepancy in videos. 

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NYC Subway Shooter and Black Supremacist Frank James Is Arrested in Manhattan

New York City subway shooter Frank James was still on the loose on Wednesday morning after shooting at least 10 people inside a Brooklyn subway station Tuesday. Officials say five victims are in critical condition but are expected to survive.

Frank James was a black nationalist and posted several videos on the oppression of black people.

Frank James was also previously on the FBI terrorist radar until 2019. Then they stopped watching him.

Earlier today Brooklyn subway shooter and black supremacist Frank James was arrested following the manhunt.

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20 Federal ‘Assets’ Embedded at Capitol on Jan. 6, Court Filing Says

At least 20 FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “assets” were embedded around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a defense attorney wrote in a court filing on April 12.

The disclosure was made in a motion seeking to dismiss seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges against 10 Oath Keepers defendants in one of the most prominent Jan. 6 criminal cases.

David W. Fischer, attorney for Thomas E. Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, filed a 41-page motion to dismiss four counts on behalf of all Oath Keepers case defendants before U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington, D.C.

Caldwell is charged in the indictment, but is not a member of the Oath Keepers, he told The Epoch Times in March.

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NYC subway shooter’s Philly-rented U-Haul is found abandoned on Brooklyn highway five miles from where he shot ten straphangers: Gunman was on FBI’s terrorist radar until 2019

The suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting was on the FBI’s terrorist radar in New Mexico until 2019, according to a report – and was cleared after ‘multiple interviews’. 

The shooter has not yet been publicly identified and he remains on the loose hours after opening fire on a busy northbound N train as it approached 36th Street in Sunset Park.

Investigators believe they know who he is, having identified the suspect after finding a credit card at the scene that was also used to rent the U-Haul cargo van, two law enforcement sources told CNN.  

A federal law enforcement source told Newsweek the suspect was the previously known to the FBI, having been entered into the Guardian Lead system in New Mexico.

The system is the FBI’s way of coordinating information from other law enforcement partners about potential terrorism-related threats and suspicious activity reports. 

He was cleared after multiple interviews in 2019. 

The federal law enforcement source said that he is believed to have driven to New York from New Mexico. 

The FBI has now joined the hunt for him and armed police units are patrolling Brooklyn for any clue of his whereabouts. 

NYPD has located the U-Haul believed to have been used in Tuesday morning’s subway shooting abandoned in the street in Brooklyn, five miles from the scene of the crime. 

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White House, IRS, CDC, and many other US government websites sending data to Big Tech via Google tracking code

Most of the major US federal government websites and numerous state and local government websites are sending real-time surveillance data back to Google as users browse their websites. Even websites where users are submitting sensitive or personal information, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) tips page and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, contain tracking code that sends real-time visitor data back to Google.

Most of these government websites contain tracking code from the web traffic analytics tool Google Analytics. This code collects detailed user data which is sent to Google’s servers, analyzed, and presented to website owners via an online dashboard.

Google Analytics automatically collects data on the pages visited, the time and duration of each visit, and other visitor data (such as the device, browser, operating system, and screen resolution of visitors). It can also be configured to collect data on more specific actions such as when users click or tap specific links, download content, or fill out forms.

Some government websites also have code from other Google services (such as DoubleClick, Google Adsense, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube) and other tech giants (such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter) embedded on some of their pages.

The US government openly admits to using Google Analytics tracking code on 400 executive branch domains and 5,700 total websites. It even displays this surveillance data publicly via a real-time online dashboard which also tracks visitors with Google Analytics.

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FBI Memos Suggest Agency Had Moles in Media

Investigator Roger Charles was combing through records of the FBI’s Oklahoma City bombing investigation more than a decade ago, when he discovered a memo suggesting that someone working at ABC News provided a tip to the bureau a day after the deadly April 19, 1995, domestic terrorist attack.

It appeared that a senior ABC News journalist had been doubling as an FBI informant. The memo made a few headlines in 2011, but quickly passed through the news cycle with little impact and hardly any coverage by major outlets.

However, Charles’s discovery stoked the curiosity of his friend, attorney Jesse Trentadue. The Utah resident was suing the FBI for records related to his brother’s murder, and began filing requests in 2012 to see if the bureau had other informants in the media, as well as places such as congressional offices, courts, churches, other government agencies, and the White House.

Trentadue said the U.S. government’s response shocked him.

“I thought they’d come back and say, ‘We would never do that because that would be illegal and unconstitutional,’” he said. “Instead, they came back and said, ‘Yeah, we do that. We have manuals on that, but you can’t have them because of national security.’”

The FBI fought against Trentadue for years in federal court to keep its manuals secret, and was ultimately successful. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2015.

However, Trentadue said the litigation helped him piece together what he calls the FBI’s “sensitive informant program.” According to his lawsuit over the matter, this program is used to place informants in the national media, among other institutions.

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