Auch eine Verbindung zur Explosion eines Tesla Cybertrucks vor einem Trump-Hotel in Las Vegas sei zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt nicht erkennbar. Der Vorfall, bei dem der Fahrer des Wagens in Las Vegas getötet wurde, ereignete sich nur wenige Stunden nach der Attacke in New Orleans. Ein Zusammenhang erschien zunächst naheliegend, weil sowohl der aktive US-Soldat der Eliteeinheit der Green Berets als auch der mutmaßliche New-Orleans-Täter, Shamsud-Din J., einige Zeit auf dem Stützpunkt Fort Liberty (ehemals: Fort Bragg) gedient hatten. Man sehe bislang aber keine Überschneidung der Dienstzeiten der beiden Männer in Fort Bragg, teilte das FBI mit.
Archiv: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Suspects in Vegas explosion, New Orleans attack served at same Army base, sources say
The Colorado Springs resident suspected of detonating a Tesla Cybertruck in front of a Las Vegas hotel and the Texas man accused of driving a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans served at the same military base, sources told Scripps News Denver.
Suspects in Vegas explosion, New Orleans attack served at same Army base, sources tell Denver7 Investigates
Livelsberger was a member of the Army’s elite Green Berets, a special forces unit and guerrilla warfare experts, according to an Army statement reported by the Associated Press. He has served in the Army since 2006, rising through the ranks, and was on approved leave when he died, the statement said. The Green Berets work to counter terrorists abroad using unconventional techniques.
Livelsberger spent time at the base formerly known as Fort Bragg, a massive Army base in North Carolina that is home to Army special forces command.
Authorities warned of vehicle-ramming attack danger in US during holiday season
On Dec. 6, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center issued a joint intel bulletin warning law enforcement about the ongoing serious threat posed by lone offenders during the winter holiday season.
(,,,)
„Lone offenders have historically used simple tactics, such as edged weapons, firearms, or vehicle ramming, due to their ease of access, ability to inflict mass casualties, and lack of required training,“ the bulletin stated.
Live updates: 10 killed in New Orleans as driver plows truck into crowd
The FBI said in a statement Wednesday morning that it is investigating the Bourbon Street attack as a terrorist act. Earlier, before that designation had been officially made, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) called the incident an act of terrorism, but FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge for New Orleans Alethea Duncan said the incident “is not a terrorist event.”
‚Very intentional‘: Police describe perpetrator‘s behavior
Jan 1, 2025 #CNN #News
Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick of the New Orleans Police Department provides an update after a vehicle drove into a crowd during New Year’s celebrations on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
The FBI‘s mysterious case against Dr Aafia Siddiqui
The website of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is brimming with advice and useful information should you need help. There’s even a bright red button to press if you want to report a crime. I pressed it and reported the crime of perjury involving the complex case of US Prisoner Dr Aafia Siddiqui who is currently serving 86 years in a Texas prison for attempting to kill US soldiers. She didn’t do anything of the sort. Yes, there was a shooting incident in Ghazni Province’s National Police station in Afghanistan, but it was the soldiers who nearly killed her.
(…)
During the past 20 years, some very powerful senior figures in America, Pakistan and elsewhere have lied to and deceived the US authorities to ensure that the rather brilliant academic Dr Aafia Siddiqui remains behind bars. In 2023, her sister described her as looking like a “living corpse”.
The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice. I just don’t know what happened to him.
We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans. Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America. They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.
FBI Director Chris Wray to resign following Trump nomination of Patel
Wray will leave before the end of the 10-year term that Trump himself appointed him to in 2017.
I am proud to announce that Kashyap “Kash” Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People. He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.
Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”
Trump says he‘ll fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, replace him with longtime ally Kash Patel
President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he plans on firing FBI director Christopher Wray and replacing him with longtime ally Kash Patel.
The appointment must be approved by the Senate.
LIVE: Press conference to announce filing of lawsuit on behalf of Malcolm X’s family
Streamed live on Nov 15, 2024 #Reuters #News #Live
Civil-rights attorney Ben Crump holds press conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of Malcolm X’s family.
The daughters of Malcolm X sue the CIA, FBI and NYPD over the civil rights leader’s assassination
(November 15, 2024)
According to the lawsuit, the NYPD, coordinating with federal law enforcement agencies, arrested the activist’s security detail days before the assassination and intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where Malcolm X was killed. Meanwhile, it adds, federal agencies had personnel, including undercover agents, in the ballroom but failed to protect him.
The lawsuit was not brought sooner because the defendants withheld information from the family, including the identities of undercover “informants, agents and provocateurs” and what they knew about the planning that preceded the attack.
Iran roundly dismisses claims of assassination plot targeting Trump
Baghaei said the repetition of such claims at this juncture is “a malicious conspiracy by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles aimed at further complicating the issues between the United States and Iran.”
It came after Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election on Wednesday. On July 13, Trump survived an assassination attempt, suffering only minor injury to his ear.
In August, Iran dismissed having any connection with a Pakistani individual allegedly arrested in the United States and charged with being behind a foiled plot to assassinate US politicians.
DOJ announces charges in Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump
Prosecutors allege Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with law enforcement – was originally tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the US. (…)
Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, in statements released Friday, denounced the continued threats from the Iranian government against individuals in the United States.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Garland said.
Trump to ‚Dismantle Deep State‘ with ‚Truth and Reconciliation Commission‘
(March 21, 2023)
„We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them,“ Trump said.
„The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled,“ he continued. „So that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left‘s political enemies, which they‘re doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.“
Nach US-Wahl 2024: Was könnte Trump planen?
Mit dem Tag der Amtseinführung soll der Umbau der Exekutive beginnen. Ziel ist eine drastische Zentralisierung der Regierungspolitik, bei der das Weiße Haus eine straffe Kontrolle über alle Bundesbehörden, einschließlich des Justizministeriums erhalten würde.
Damit könnte er entscheidend auf Verfahren gegen ihn und andere Einfluss nehmen, die unter anderem am Sturm auf das Kapitol am 6. Januar 2021 beteiligt waren. Es würde ihm außerdem ermöglichen, gegen Personen vorzugehen, die diese Verfahren angestoßen haben.
Die Ministerien für Bildung und Heimatschutz etwa sollen abgeschafft werden, die US-Bundespolizei FBI, „eine zunehmend gesetzlose Organisation“, soll von Grund auf erneuert werden.
Cabello on terrorist plan: María Corina Machado is behind the entire operation
“They went with this tropicalized character,” Cabello said in relation to the US intentions to use a person with the same Latin American phenotype, seeking not to repeat the gringo mercenaries of Caucasian morphology.
“It is important to know that this person worked in special Navy SEAL units focused on Latin America, because they are made up of people who speak Spanish perfectly, like this person,” he explained.
The Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace added that two citizens of Spanish origin, a Czech citizen and an American expert in computer hacking are also in custody.
Terrorist plot led by active US military officer revealed
„We know that the United States Government is linked to this operation because during the investigation we have found out how, in Orlando, Florida, in one of these parcel services, in the warehouses, the FBI was there and we have that video (…) they allowed that operation to continue,“ he said.
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“A few days ago we captured some people who were talking about throwing grenades and explosives at the Argentine Embassy, where some terrorists and criminals from the opposition are taking refuge. This perfectly reversed the fact that if the Argentine Embassy, where some gentlemen and ladies from the opposition are, were attacked, it was immediately obvious that the person who would be blamed would be the Government of Venezuela,” he warned.
Senate passes surveillance bill despite contentious debate over privacy concerns
Congress had been up against a Friday deadline after authority for Section 702 was extended through that date as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Senate passes reauthorization of key US surveillance program after midnight deadline
After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.
The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
FBI chief makes fresh pitch for spy program renewal and says it’d be ‘devastating’ if it lapsed
Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, said that during his 13 years on the committee, he’d pressed multiple FBI directors about civil liberties violations associated with the surveillance program and had repeatedly been given false reassurances about the reforms being put in place.
“Every darn one of them has told me the same thing: ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ve got this taken care of, we’ve got new procedures, it’s going to be different now,’” Lee said. “It’s never different. You haven’t changed.”
FBI director makes plea for 702 reauthorization without a warrant requirement
(05.12.2023)
FBI Director Christopher Wray at a Tuesday hearing gave an impassioned pitch for Congress to reauthorize warrantless surveillance powers for the intelligence community without the need to secure a court’s blessing to review information on Americans swept up in the process.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is set to expire at the end of the year unless it is reauthorized by Congress, threatening to topple a program that allows the U.S. government to monitor the communications of foreign nationals located abroad.
FBI director warns senators he sees ‘blinking lights everywhere’ on threats against the US
(December 6, 2023)
The FBI director is pushing senators on reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year. The law enables the US government to obtain intelligence by targeting non-Americans overseas who are using US-based communications services.
Biden administration privately warned by American diplomats of growing fury against US in Arab world
(10.11.2023)
“We are losing badly on the messaging battlespace,” reads a Wednesday cable from the US Embassy in Oman, citing conversations with “a wide range of trusted and sober-minded contacts.”
The robust US support for Israel’s actions is being seen, the cable warns, “as material and moral culpability in what they consider to be possible war crimes.”
The cable from the embassy was written by the second-highest US official in Muscat and sent to, among others, the White House’s National Security Council, the CIA and the FBI.
Courts Strike a Blow Against White House‘s Social Media Censorship | Opinion
The plaintiffs in the case, led by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, eminent doctors, and others alleged that under guise of combating „mis-, dis-, and mal-information,“ the Biden White House and nearly a dozen federal agencies have, alongside private-sector cutouts, cajoled and colluded with Big Tech platforms to silence millions of Americans. The topics social media platforms have censored at the government‘s direction, measuring likely hundreds of millions of posts, range from the Hunter Biden laptop story, to matters of election integrity, to virtually every aspect of the coronavirus pandemic.
CRITICAL FOUNDATIONS: PROTECTING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURES – The Report of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection
(13.10.1997)
Existing Information Sharing Efforts
(…) We also found a great deal of information sharing already underway. Trade associations, consortia, and other groups exchange information among their members and, in some cases, directly with government. Many federal, state and local government agencies have existing relationships with infrastructure owners and operators. Within all the infrastructure sectors, at least some portions are subject to regulatory control by government agencies, and information is shared, albeit sometimes within carefully defined constraints. Several federal agencies provide information to infrastructure owners and operators. The FBI’s Awareness of National Security Issues and Response (ANSIR) program gives over 25,000 industry members information that provides threat and vulnerability insights. More narrowly focused programs are the Department of Transportation’s terrorist threat notification to the civil aviation industry and the National Security Agency’s INFOSEC Vulnerability Assessment Program, which provides information systems-related data to private sector partners. The Comptroller of the Currency operates another system providing advisories on information integrity and security risks to financial institutions.
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The third and least predictable threat to the infrastructure comes from deliberate attack. Depending on their objectives, attackers may seek to steal, modify, or destroy data stored in information systems or moving over networks, or to degrade the operation of the systems and net-works themselves, denying service to their users. Attackers include national intelligence organizations, information warriors, terrorists, criminals, industrial competitors, hackers, and aggrieved or disloyal insiders. While insiders constitute the single largest known security threat to information and information systems, controlled testing indicates that large numbers of computer based attacks go undetected, and that the unknown component of the threat may exceed the known component by orders of magnitude.
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The air traffic control system of the FAA is based on decades old technology. The replacement system, while doubtless more efficient, will be more vulnerable unless special security measures are incorporated.
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The Commission recommends the Secretary of Transportation:
1) Fully evaluate actual and potential sources of interference to, and vulnerabilities of, GPS before a final decision is reached to eliminate all other radiovnavigation and aircraft landing guidance systems.
2) Sponsor a risk assessment for GPS-based systems used by the civilian sector, projected from now through the year 2010.
3) Base decisions regarding the proper federal navigation systems mix and the final architecture of the NAS on the results of that assessment. The DOT and FAA must develop a better understanding of interference and other vulnerabilities of GPS before a final decision is reached concerning the status of all other radionavigation and landing guidance systems. A federally sponsored thorough, integrated risk assessment would lay a sound foundation for decisions on future courses of action.
The National Airspace System
The Commission recommends the FAA act immediately to develop, establish, fund, and implement a comprehensive National Airspace System Security Program to protect the modernized NAS from information-based and other disruptions, intrusions and attack. Program implementation should be guided by the recommendations found in the Vulnerability Assessment of the NAS Architecture, prepared for the Commission. The Vulnerability Assessment included the following recommendations: (…)
3) The FAA should consider the implementation of full “trusted” hardware and software security capabilities for only the FAA’s most vulnerable future subsystems, since the software cost for embedded applications, together with full audit, tracking, and monitoring, may be too great if applied to all subsystems. Relaxation of the full capabilities, such as less rapid revalidation (e.g., a slower fifteen minutes down time) and less constant vigilance of data integrity, should be considered on a case-by-case basis for less critical subsystems, particularly in situations where existing air traffic control recovery procedures exist.
4) The FAA should conduct a comprehensive investment analysis of NAS INFOSEC in order to determine the degree of security protection that is needed
(…)
Transportation: A critical infrastructure characterized by the physical distribution system critical to supporting the national security and economic well-being of this nation, including the national airspace system, airlines and aircraft, and airports; roads and highways,trucking and personal vehicles; ports and waterways and the vessels operating thereon; mass transit, both rail and bus; pipelines, including natural gas, petroleum, and other hazardous materials; freight and long haul passenger rail; and delivery services.
Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973
(September 11, 1998)
Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.
These documents include:
– Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende‘s election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.
– CIA memoranda and reports on „Project FUBELT“–the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende‘s government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende‘s government
– National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to „destabilize“ Chile economically, and isolate Allende‘s government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.
– State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.
– FBI documents on Operation Condor–the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.
These documents, and many thousands of other CIA, NSC, and Defense Department records that are still classified secret, remain relevant to ongoing human rights investigations in Chile, Spain and other countries, and unresolved acts of international terrorism conducted by the Chilean secret police. Eventually, international pressure, and concerted use of the U.S. laws on declassification will force more of the still-buried record into the public domain–providing evidence for future judicial, and historical accountability.
FBI nimmt weltgrößte Biometrie-Datenbank stückweise in Betrieb
(24.03.2011)
Das FBI hat begonnen, ihre 2007 geplante neue Datenbank für biometrische Merkmale in Betrieb zu nehmen. Das „Next Generation Identification“-System habe die erste Phase der „operationalen Einsatzfähigkeit“ erreicht, heißt es in US-Medienberichten. Die Datenbank soll das Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) der US-Polizeibehörde ersetzen und wird daher zunächst mit Fingerabdrücken gefüttert. Später sollen auch Iris-Scans, Stimmproben, Abbildungen von Handabdrücken, Tätowierungen, Narben und Gesichtsformen erfasst werden.
EU-Kommission prüft Zugriff auf Biometriedaten durch US-Polizei
Insgesamt 40 Länder nehmen derzeit am „Visa Waiver Program“ (VWP) der US-Regierung teil. Washington garantiert damit, dass die Bürger:innen der betreffenden Staaten zu geschäftlichen oder touristischen Zwecken für maximal drei Monate ohne Visum einreisen dürfen. Die Regelung gilt gegenseitig, auch US-Staatsangehörige können die 40 Länder visafrei besuchen. Unter den Teilnehmenden des VWP befinden sich fast alle Schengen-Staaten.
Nun verlangt die US-Regierung, dass die am VWP teilnehmenden Staaten im Rahmen einer „Enhanced Border Security Partnership“ (EBSP) Zugang zu ihren polizeilichen Biometrie-Datenbanken gewähren. US-Grenz- und Polizeibehörden sollen dafür Fingerabdrücke und Gesichtsbilder in Informationssystemen in den Schengen-Staaten abfragen dürfen.
Biden’s DOJ Is Pressuring Journalists to Help Build Its Case Against Assange
The Department of Justice and FBI are pressuring multiple British journalists to cooperate with the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, using vague threats and pressure tactics in the process. I know because I am one of the British journalists being pressured to cooperate in the case against him, as someone who used to (briefly) work and live with him, and who went on to blow the whistle on WikiLeaks’ own ethical lapses.
FBI spied on Albert Einstein for 22 years until his death
The FBI started spying on renowned German-born scientist Albert Einstein when he moved to America in 1933, shortly before Adolf Hitler rose to power. Agents listened to the physicist‘s phone calls and searched his mail and trash, suspecting he was a Soviet spy. The surveillance, totalling 1,800 pages, ended with Einstein‘s death on April 18, 1955, with no supporting evidence.
Elon Musk: The US Government, Intelligence Agencies Had Access To Twitter Backdoor, Ability To Spy On Direct Messages
(Apr 17, 2023)
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Carlson. “I was not aware of that.”
Revealed: Google and Facebook DID allow NSA access to data and were in talks to set up ‚spying rooms‘ despite denials by Zuckerberg and Page over PRISM project
(8 June 2013)
Meanwhile, Twitter is one company which has managed to keep mum in PRISM discussions.
NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
(7 Jun 2013)
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims „collection directly from the servers“ of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.
The FBI abused its surveillance of Americans 278,000 times in 18 months
Section 702 of the FISA Act allows agencies like the NSA to eavesdrop on foreign nationals overseas. It prohibits spying on US citizens or anyone who‘s within the United States. (…)
In practice, then, NSA maintains a huge database of information about the communications of US citizens. Agencies like the FBI are allowed to query this database, but only under strict rules. The primary rule is that queries can only be done if they are related to foreign intelligence or are likely to show evidence of a crime.
Citing cyber investigations, officials ask Congress to renew surveillance powers
(14.06.2023)
In a joint written testimony from the Biden administration witnesses, the NSA, FBI and CIA all cited Section 702’s usefulness for cybersecurity.
„Albtraumszenario“: US-Dienste kaufen massenhaft Handydaten für Überwachung
„Der Regierung wäre es nie erlaubt worden, Milliarden Menschen dazu zu verpflichten, jederzeit Geräte zur Standortüberwachung bei sich zu haben, ihre sozialen Interaktionen aufzuzeichnen oder lückenlose Aufzeichnungen ihrer Lesegewohnheiten vorzuhalten“, fasst das Office of the Director of National Intelligence zusammen. Doch Smartphones, vernetzte Fahrzeugen, Webtracking, das Internet der Dinge und „andere Innovationen“ hätten die gleichen Folgen, ohne dass die Regierung etwas tun müsse.
Bestätigt: US-Geheimdienste kaufen persönliche Daten – Datenschutzbedenken wachsen
Die Art und Weise, wie US-Geheimdienste Daten aus verbundenen Fahrzeugen, Webbrowser-Aktivitäten und Smartphones sammeln und nutzen, steht zunehmend im Fokus. Dabei besteht die Gefahr, dass die unregulierte Verbreitung und der Verkauf von privaten Informationen amerikanischer Bürgerinnen und Bürger deren Privatsphäre bedroht. Der Bericht wurde vom Büro des Direktors der nationalen Geheimdienste (ODNI) veröffentlicht.
In response to my request, DNI Haines has confirmed that the government is buying Americans‘ private data with no guardrails for when and how that data is used. If this isn‘t a wake up call for Congress to stop feds from buying up Americans‘ information, I don‘t know what is.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence Senior Advisory Group Panel on Commercially Available Information
(27 January 2022, approved for release by ODNI on 5 June 2023)
(U) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
(U) There is today a large and growing amount of what the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) refers to as “Commercially Available Information” (CAI). As the acronym indicates, and as we use the term in this report, CAI is information that is available commercially to the general public, and as such, is a subset of publicly available information (PAI). We do not use the term CAI to include, and we do not address in this report, commercial information that is available exclusively to governments. The volume and sensitivity of CAI have expanded in recent years mainly due to the advancement of digital technology, including location-tracking and other features of smartphones and other electronic devices, and the advertising-based monetization models that underlie many commercial offerings available on the Internet. Although CAI may be “anonymized,” it is often possible (using other CAI) to deanonymize and identify individuals, including U.S. persons.
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Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.
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(U) A May 2014 report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides a similar account:
(U) Data brokers collect data from commercial, government, and other publicly available sources. Data collected could include bankruptcy information, voting registration, consumer purchase data, web browsing activities, warranty registrations, and other details of consumers’ everyday interactions.
(…)
1.3. (U) Examples of CAI. We do not attempt a comprehensive description of the scope and scale of data that are available as CAI, or the relevant markets, in part because they are so large and so dynamic. However, a few examples of CAI offerings will illustrate the current nature of available offerings:
• (U) “Thomson Reuters CLEAR is powered by billions of data points and leverages cutting-edge public records technology to bring all key content together in a customizable dashboard.”
• (U) LexisNexis offers more than “84B records from 10,000+ sources, including alternative data that helps surface more of the 63M unbanked/underbanked U.S. adults.”
• (U) Exactis has “over 3.5 billion records (updated monthly)” in its “universal data warehouse.”
• (U) PeekYou “collects and combines scattered content from social sites, news sources, homepages, and blog platforms to present comprehensive online identities.”
(…)
As the FTC explained in its May 2014 report:
(U) Data brokers rely on websites with registration features and cookies to find consumers online and target Internet advertisements to them based on their offline activities. Once a data broker locates a consumer online and places a cookie on the consumer’s browser, the data broker’s client can advertise to that consumer across the Internet for as long as the cookie stays on the consumer’s browser. Consumers may not be aware that data brokers are providing companies with products to allow them to advertise to consumers online based on their offline activities. Some data brokers are using similar technology to serve targeted advertisements to consumers on mobile devices.
(…)
2.2. (U) Examples of CAI Contracts. The IC currently acquires a large amount of CAI. Unclassified IC and other contracts for CAI can be found at Sam.Gov, a U.S. government website that allows searching by agency or sub-agency and by keywords, among other things. By way of example only, this website shows that the following agencies have, have had, have considered, or are considering the following contracts or proposals related to CAI:
• (U) The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with ZeroFox for social media alerting (15F06721P0002431)
• (censored)
• U) The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for social media reports on individuals who are seeking a security clearance (HHM402-16-SM-CHECKS), and with LexisNexis for “retrieval of comprehensive on-line search results related to commercial due diligence from a maximum number of sources (news, company, public records, legal, regulatory financial, and industry information),” among other things (HHM402-21-Q-0094)
• (U) The U.S. Navy with Sayari Analytics, Inc. for access to its database that “contains tens of thousands of previously-unidentified specific nodes, facilities and key people related to US sanctioned actors including ‘2+3’ threats to national security” (N0001518PR11212)
• (U) Various offices within the Treasury Department for access to Banker’s Almanac (RFQ-FIN-55100-21-0010)
• (U) The Department of Defense (DOD) for access to Jane’s online (W31P4Q17T0009)
• (U) The Coast Guard with Babel Street for “Open Source Data Collection, Translation, Analysis Application” (70Z08419QVA044).
(U) In addition, DIA has provided the following information about a CAI contract in an unclassified and publicly-available paper sent to Congress on January 15, 2021:
(U) DIA currently provides funding to another agency that purchases commercially available geolocation metadata aggregated from smartphones.
……………………………………
US intelligence agencies buy Americans’ personal data, new report says
The report was completed in January 2022 but only recently declassified. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the ODNI for the report.
“Congress needs to pass legislation to put guardrails around government purchases, to rein in private companies that collect and sell this data, and keep Americans’ personal information out of the hands of our adversaries,” Wyden said in a statement Monday in response to the report.
FBI restarts Julian Assange probe despite hopes of release
(June 1, 2023)
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can reveal that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week sought to interview acclaimed novelist Andrew O’Hagan about his time working as a ghostwriter on Assange’s autobiography over a decade ago.