Mediaboss Marketing

One day following the explosive revelations of Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been engaging in mass surveillance of hundreds of millions of Americans without probable cause, I brought suit against then-President Barack Obama and his intelligence agencies. The case was randomly assigned to the Honorable Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, one of the few non-Obama-Clinton appointees left in this tribunal. To accelerate the case I then filed a motion for preliminary injunction, asking Judge Leon to temporarily enjoin the defendants illegal surveillance of the populace, during the time the case would otherwise proceed to discovery and then trial.

After Judge Leon reviewed my pleadings, which required that he take action to adjudicate my motion for preliminary injunction with 21 days, he held a status conference. At that conference, he forcefully instructed the Obama Justice Department lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch that he would move the case along quickly and that they should not seek to delay his ruling by asking for non-meritorious requests for extensions. Labeling the case as one at the pinnacle of national importance, Leon advised the Obama Justice Department lawyers to forget about not working on weekends and evenings, and he then set an accelerated briefing schedule.

Judge Leon made good on his promise and ruled promptly, finding that the mass surveillance by Obama and his NSA was unconstitutional and violative of the Fourth Amendment. He added that this was so illegal as to be almost Orwellian, a reference to the landmark book 1984, by George Orwell, in which he coined the term for a tyrannical government: Big Brother.

The initial preliminary injunction entered on Dec. 16, 2013, was entered again later when I amended the complaint to conform with the edicts of the appellate court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where the Obama Justice Department went after Leons ruling to try to slow down implementation. This second preliminary injunction, as well as the first, provoked Congress to enact a law that attempted to prevent further illegal and unconstitutional surveillance. It is called the USA FREEDOM Act.

However, now we have learned, as I suspected all along, that Obama and the NSA, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), continued to commit crimes by secretly conducting this illegal surveillance. This was revealed by disclosures obtained by Circa News, with reporters John Solomon and Sara Carter uncovering these continuing crimes.. And, my whistleblower client Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA and CIA contractor during the George W. Bush and Obama White House years, also revealed that this illegal surveillance was a constant by the FBI under the direction of former directors Robert Mueller and then James Comey as Montgomery himself worked with the FBI as well as the other intelligence agencies during these years.

And, this unconstitutional surveillance extended not just to millions of innocent Americans in general, but also other prominent persons such as Donald J. Trump, his family, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other SCOTUS justices, 156 judges and thousands of others, such as the family of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, my client. Anyone who was seen as critical of or a phantom threat to the government, or who had taken action to clean up corruption, such as myself, was put under the looking glass of the so-called Deep State.

The potential for coercion and blackmail under these circumstances was seen to be great. As one example, how does one explain the 12th hour flip of Chief Justice John Roberts, where he voted with leftist justices to rubber-stamp Obamacare, a clearly unconstitutional law? What did the Deep State potentially have on Roberts that got him to jump ship and craft a majority opinion that was a textbook example of rank intellectual judicial dishonesty? This ruling almost destroyed the American economy as well as innocent peoples lives, who were thrown off their health insurance policies or could no longer afford to be covered, as the price of premiums later skyrocketed. This is just one example of the potential consequence of the Big Brother criminal surveillance of the Deep State.

As a result of the new revelations that the illegal spying has continued, despite the enactment of the USA FREEDOM Act, my client Dennis Montgomery and I have brought a new suit, this time adding James Comey along with the FBI and the intelligence agencies as defendants. Comey was included not just because he orchestrated the illegal surveillance during his years as Obamas FBI director, but also because he covered up an investigation caused by Montgomery, in which he was entrusted to supervise. Montgomery, under grant of immunity, had turned over 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which was classified, to Comey. FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett also interviewed my client, under oath, and his testimony was videoed. But despite this having occurred over two years ago, no action by Comeys FBI was taken, and the investigation was apparently buried. The reason? Comey had obviously directed his agents to deep six the investigation as it would show his and former FBI Director Robert Muellers criminal conduct.

Given this obstruction and criminality, I recently filed suit on behalf of Montgomery and myself as our cellphones and computers have been obviously hacked and violated by Comeys FBI and the intelligence agency defendants in the last months, as they knew that my client, with my help, was offering his testimony to the intelligence and judiciary committees on Capitol Hill. But when Congress as usual failed to do its job, perhaps scared that the FBI and intelligence agencies would leak information harmful to senators and representatives, Montgomery and I had to take matters into our own legal hands and filed a new case before Judge Leon.

Friday, I again appeared before this courageous judge for an early status conference, and I will report on this in Freedom Watch publications that can be found at http://www.freedomwatchusa.org.

But for the time being, what can be said is that Comey, Mueller and their FBI, along with the rogue intelligence agencies, again are before the bar of justice. They and the others who have illegally violated our privacy must be held accountable under the rule of law. Indeed, if anyone has obstructed justice, it appears not to be President Trump, but his criminally minded chief accuser Comey and his equally corrupt special counsel friend Robert Mueller. And as a side note, contrary to the Kool-Aid swallowed by some ill-informed commentators in the media and elsewhere in the swamp that infests the nations capital, these are not men of great integrity! Just ask Dennis Montgomery, my co-plaintiff!

Media wishing to interview Larry Klayman, please contact media@wnd.com.

Excerpt from:
Why I sued Comey and the NSA, again! - WND.com

CNNs claiming Democratic and Republican sources for this, but even if its gospel truth, I cant imagine itll do Trump any (further) damage on Russiagate. WaPo first reported a few weeks ago that he asked DNI Dan Coats and NSA chief Mike Rogers to intervene with Comey to try to get the FBI to back off its Russia investigation. The idea that the president might have tried to enlist one part of the intelligence community to slow down a federal probe being conducted by another part is a serious charge.

But CNN doesnt repeat that charge. They claim that Coats and Rogers told Bob Mueller and the Senate Intel Committee behind closed doors (after their famous public testimony) that Trump asked them only to speak up publicly and affirm that theres no evidence that he personally colluded with Russia. If you strain hard, you can try to stretch that into some sort of obstruction ploy Comey had refused to clear Trump publicly, after all, because the FBI investigation was still ongoing but no average voter is going to fault Trump for feeling exasperated that his deputies wouldnt lift the cloud of suspicion over him if they had reason to believe hes been falsely accused. If they thought that he had colluded and then he asked him to lie and say that he hadnt, obviously that would be a different matter. But if all he was asking was for them to tell the exculpatory truth and if it really was a request, not a direct order then whats the red-letter scandal in his interactions with Coats and Rogers?

Coats and Rogers also met individually last week with the Senate intelligence committee in two closed briefings that were described to CNN by Democratic and Republican congressional sources. One source said that Trump wanted them to say publicly what then-FBI Director James Comey had told the President privately: that he was not under investigation for collusion. However, sources said that neither Coats nor Rogers raised concerns that Trump was pushing them to do something they did not want to do. They did not act on the Presidents alleged suggestion

One congressional source expressed frustration that Coats and Rogers didnt answer the questions in public, especially since what they ended up expressing in private was that they did not feel that the President pressured either of them to do anything improper.

Rogers interaction with the President is also documented in a memo written by his deputy at the NSA, Richard Ledgett.

Coats and Rogers each found Trumps request odd and uncomfortable, in CNNs words, but evidently neither believed he crossed a line. And theres no claim here that he ordered or even asked them to lean on Comey on his behalf. He wanted them to clear his name after having been told repeatedly by Comey that he wasnt personally a target of the FBI investigation. That may not have been proper protocol but everyone can sympathize with the impulse.

By the way, tomorrows the deadline for the White House to turn over any Oval Office recordings of Trump and Comey. If Trump ignores it, whats the House Intel Committees next move?

[E]ven with a subpoena, the panel stands little chance of actually compelling Trump to turn over anything he doesnt voluntarily want to produce, according to legal experts, setting lawmakers up for a high-stakes choice: Let it go, and look like they are giving the president a pass; or pursue the subpoena, and risk exposing the legislative branchs weakness in the midst of a historic probe of the president

There are exemptions for federal officials claiming executive privilege on behalf of the president and no figure in the White House is closer to the president than than the president himself. Congress can try to circumvent that hurdle by passing what is known as a contempt resolution ordering the matter to a court but against a Republican president, that is a tall order in a GOP-led Congress.

The best-case scenario for the Committee is that they somehow get Paul Ryan to go along with a contempt resolution and the court battle over whether executive privilege entitles Trump to withhold any recordings drags on for years. That is to say, this is less a matter of squeezing evidence out of Trump than it is a test of Republican loyalty to the president. Will they challenge him by issuing a subpoena, knowing that if they win in court, the audio could further damage Trumps presidency and their own electoral chances, or will they roll over by refusing to issue a subpoena, leaving potential evidence of obstruction untouched? Theres going to be a court fight over the tapes between Mueller and the White House eventually, I assume. Maybe thatll be the House GOPs out: If Muellers going to take this on, why do we have to get in the middle of it?

The likeliest outcome here, actually, will be the White House declaring tomorrow that there are no tapes of Trump and Comey. Newt Gingrich hinted to the AP in an interview that he thinks Trumps tweet about Oval Office tapes was a bluff, designed to rattle a political enemy much as Trumps foray into Birtherism was designed to rattle Obama. Well see.

Read more here:
Report: DNI, NSA chief told Mueller that Trump asked them to say publicly that there was no collusion with Russia - Hot Air

The WCry ransomware worm has struck again, this time prompting Honda Company to halt production in one of its Japan-based factories after finding infections in a broad swath of its computer networks, according to media reports.

Honda officials didn't explain why engineers found WCry in their networks 37 days after the kill switch was activated. One possibility is that engineers had mistakenly blocked access to the kill-switch domain. That would have caused the WCry exploit to proceed as normal, as it did in the 12 or so hours before the domain was registered. Another possibility is that theWCry traces in Honda's networks were old and dormant, and the shutdown of the Sayama plant was only a precautionary measure. In any event, the discovery strongly suggests that as of Monday, computers inside the Honda network had yet to install a highly critical patch thatMicrosoft released in March.

In May, it was hard to excuse so many companies not yet applying a two-month-old patch to critical systems that were vulnerable to advanced NSA exploit code put into the public domain. The failure is even harder to forgive five weeks later, now that WCry's wake of destruction has come into full view.

View post:
Honda shuts down factory after finding NSA-derived Wcry in its networks - Ars Technica

Despite attempts to bolster security at the NSA following Edward Snowden's leaks, a new report indicates gaps remain.

A number of initiatives to strengthen security were mandated at the National Security Agency (NSA) following the leaks by Edward Snowden of 1.5 million documents, but implementation of those procedures lacked teeth, according to a report by the Department of Defense (DoD).

The 61-page report from the DoD's inspector general on the NSA's putting into practice of the Secure-the-Net (STN) initiative, faults the agency and, as security intelligence expert Christopher Burgess, writing for Sophos's Naked Security blog puts it, "the only image one can conjure up is that of the Katzenjammer Kids running amok."

Once the insider risk was presented by Snowden's leaks, the STN initiative was put into place offering 40 recommendations focused on insider threats to NSA systems, data and infrastructure.

Among that group of 40, seven directives specifically addressed secure network access, protect against insider threats and provide increased oversight of the personnel with privileged access.

The seven STN initiatives were:

The report from the DoD examined the NSA's progress in putting these seven recommendations into place, based on its study between January and July 2016 of four facilities.

The DoD report, acquired by The New York Times under a FOIA request, "takes the NSA to the woodshed," Burgess wrote. While the NSA did attempt to implement the recommendations, it failed to do an effective job in carrying out implementation, Burgess said.

The NSA only partially got some operations in place, the report explained. One example regarded two-factor authentication, which was implemented for system administrators but not for others with credentials for privileged access (which was how Snowden was able to exfiltrate data).

Perhaps even more critical, the report found that the NSA could not determine who had elevated access privileges. In light of Snowden's actions and then the later acquisition by the Shadow Brokers of NSA materials, there is lax security within the agency, the DoD report stated.

The tightening up of its operations was the intent of the STN initiatives. While Burgess, a former CIA operations officer, said some good resulted primarily an insider threat program initiated at all facilities insiders are still capable of harvesting NSA data, as evidenced by the arrest in May of Reality Winner, another NSA contractor, who used her privileged access to remove NSA material regarding Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and then provided it to the media.

"Reality Winner did not have need-to-know access," Burgess told SC Media on Wednesday. He pointed to one of the recommendations included in the seven STN initiatives: Oversee privileged user activities. Winner had privileged access, Burgess explained, but had no need to know about Russian meddling in the presidential election.

"Had monitoring activity been in place," Burgess said, "she would have been detected."

Clearly, Burgess concluded, some tweaking is still needed to the NSA's STN program to plug insiders' capabilities.

Original post:
DoD faults NSA for lax security implementations, Sophos report - SC Magazine

After reading through the 61 pages of redacted content of the August 2016 DOD Inspector Generals report on the National Security Agencys (NSA) implementation of the Secure-the-Net initiative, acquired by The New York Times via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the only image one can conjure up is that of the Katzenjammer Kids running amok.

The NSA data protection (or lack thereof) was thrust into the spotlight when Edward Snowden, then a contractor in Hawaii, purloined 1.5m documents. How Snowden carried out his massive data collection is interesting, as he used his natural access and then conned his colleagues into giving up their internal access credentials in his role as the system admin. In the months that followed there were no shortage of opinions on how the NSA could or should tighten up its ship.

The Secure-the-Net (STN) initiative was launched post-Snowden, which included 40 specific recommendations focused on insider threats to NSA systems, data, and infrastructure. Seven of those recommendations were designed to secure network access, protect against insider threats and provide increased oversight of the personnel with privileged access.

The seven STN initiatives were:

The Department of Defense (DOD) report reviewed the NSAs progress on tightening up its ship with respect to the seven STN recommendations. The audit was conducted at four facilities between January and July of 2016.

The DOD report takes the NSA to the woodshed. Not because the NSA didnt attempt to implement, but rather, because they did a half-ass job in the implementation.

The reports scorching verbiage surrounds this partial implementation of the recommendations: for example, the

NSA did not effectively implement the three privileged access related STN initiatives because it did not develop an STN strategy that detailed a structured framework and methodology to implement the initiatives and measure completeness.

For example, with respect to two-factor authentication (2FA), the NSA implemented it for system admins, but not for those with privileged access. It is well documented how Snowden bypassed the then presentprivileged access controls and conned his colleagues into giving him their credentials which he then went on to use to expand his access.

A 2FA requirement would have required the owner of the credentials to have been participatory in Snowdens use of their credentials. NSA implementation as described in the report shows how they opted to leave open the very window that Snowden climbed through to harvest the data he stole.

Furthermore, the report goes on to chastise the NSA for not having a clue about how many individuals had privileged access in 2014, nor in 2016, and nor could the NSA document how the purge/pruning had been carried out. That meant the inspection team couldnt find out exactly how many people had privileged access.

While focus has largely been on the trusted insider gone bad, Edward Snowden, the Shadow Brokers acquisition of NSAs Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO)collection tools compromise clearly indicates a need by the NSA to continue to place their focus on locking down their own house.

How the TAO compromise occurred remains a mystery. It could have been an insider (contractor or staff) or it might have been a result of the contractor alleged to have built the exposed tools, the Equation Group, having themselves been hacked. Coincidentally, the inspector general report was published the week after the Shadow Brokers offered the TAO tools for auction. An active August 2016 indeed.

But what of the NSA contractor Harold Martin, another NSA insider?Martin, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, he was found to have hoarded up to 50 terabytes of NSA information. The indictment on Martin was sealed until October 2016, but he was arrested on 27 August 2016, yes two days prior to the arrival of the inspectors general report. August 2016 was truly a busy month in the world of espionage and counterespionage.

Is it hard to catch an insider?Yes, it is. If the individual does not exceed their natural access, process and procedures, they will be difficult to detect, and while it is safe to say that 100% is not achievable, there are steps which can be taken to secure the environment to bring the risk as close to zero as possible. This was the intent of the STN.

Has there been any good to come out of the STN? Absolutely, the National Industrial Security Program of the United States, marshaled by the Defense Security Service, has brought into play their mandatory insider threat program at all cleared facilities and contractors. These programs became mandatory on June 1 2017.

One might recall the recent arrest of NSA contractor, Reality Winner, also a contractor from Booz Allen Hamilton, who took a highly classified document assessing and discussing the Russian military intelligence entitys (the GRU) hand in meddling in the US election. Winner, using her privileged access, printed out the report, and then mailed it to a media outlet. Once the NSA saw the document, they quickly determined who had had access, who had printed the document and then who had had contact with a media outlet.

What they apparently werent able to do was to determine how and why Winner had privileged access to information to information about which she had no need to know.

One could argue this rapid-fire capability used to identify Winner would not have been present without the STN initiatives. On the other hand, one might surmise the privileged access portion of NSAs STN program continues to need tweaking.

Link:
NSA failed to implement security measures, says damning report - Naked Security