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An entry ban on the residents of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees wastouted by President Donald Trumps administration as a vital part of an effective counterterrorism policy.

On January 27, he signed an executive order that temporarily banned refugees and indefinitely suspended resettlement for all Syrian refugees. The order reportedly targeted citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for extreme vetting if they would like to come to the United States.

Im establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We dont want em here, Trump proclaimed, when signing the order. We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people.

Previously, Trump promised a Muslim registry and increased surveillance of Muslims.

Yet, experts warn that this policy will be seen by American Muslims as discriminatory and could actually undermine one of the U.S.s major counterterrorism assets: Muslims themselves.

This is a slippery slope to normalize discrimination as a political instrument, Trita Parsi, the president of the Iranian American Council, told Shadowproof.

The executive order that includes the entry ban may impact more than just Muslim immigrants. It could subject American Muslim citizens and green card holders to increased surveillance. This could push a large portion of the U.S. Muslim community to feel even more demonized.

The language in the executive order is very ambiguous. Its written in a way that could even implicate foreign-born U.S. citizens, Parsi said, referring to a draft of the order that leaked this week.

This order sets the stage for larger scale, structural Islamophobia to be installed at the highest levels that would even make the Bush years pale in comparison, says Imraan Siddiqi, Executive Director of CAIR-Arizona, a Muslim civil liberties organization.

Max Abrahms, professor at Northeastern University told Shadowproof, this order would potentially hurt terror investigations.

Theres no doubt that the people who have the best intel on potential extremists in the U.S. are local citizens, and theres no question that courting the Muslim community increases the chances of getting good information, Abrahms stated.

Abrahms added Trumps policies may reduce the quality of intelligence the U.S. receives from the Muslim community.

American Muslims play a hugely significant role in stopping terrorism.

The Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found, since 9/11, 28 percent of tips that led to a terror investigation came directly from the American Muslim community.

These statistics fly directly in the face of Trumps claims that Muslims fail to alert authorities to impending terror attacks.

Additional data from the New America Foundation shows 26 percent of all U.S. terror suspects are implicated due to a tip from a family member or a member of their community.

Beyond the statistics, there are a number of recent examples of Muslims directly intervening to prevent a terror attack.

In May 2010, Aliou Niasse, a Muslim immigrant from Senegal, was working as a street vendor when he noticed smoke coming from a parked car in Times Square. He immediately notified authorities, who disabled a bomb.

The following year, Farooque Ahmeds alleged plot to blow up DC metro stations was stopped due to a tip from a member of his mosque.

A similar instance occurred in France, where a Muslim woman tipped the police off to the hiding place of the mastermind of the 2015 Paris attacks, potentially preventing a second attack.

The woman said, Its important that the world knows that I am Muslim myself. Its important to me that people know what Abaaoud [Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Paris attack] and the others did is not what Islam is teaching.

In other cases where a terror act was committed, members of the Muslim American community had previously reported the individual to the authorities.

Omar Mateen, the shooter in the Pulse nightclub massacre, was investigated by the FBI for 10 months after a member of his mosque told authorities he watched extremist videos.

The perpetrator of the Chelsea bombing in New York was investigated years earlier after his father alerted law enforcement.

The proven counterterrorism credentials of American Muslims contrasts sharply with the record of enormous government agencies, like the National Security Agency.

The NSA, with its budget believed to be more than $10 billion per year, has never been able to identify a single terror attack it prevented in the U.S. despite its massive surveillance programs.

According to the New America Foundations research, NSAs phone records surveillance program had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden echoed this sentiment in 2015, when he said NSA spying is not going to stop the next attacks. Because theyre not public safety programs. Theyre spying programs.

The U.S. government spends an estimated $75 billion a year on counterterrorism, and its results are less than impressive. There were 38 prosecutions for terrorism last year. Considering that the FBI has 6,853 agents working on counterterrorism, this works out to 180 agents for every single terrorism arrest.

According to FBI data from 2009-2011, 96 percent of its almost 43,000 terror investigations of groups or individuals were determined to warrant no further inquiry, meaning they were innocent. Of the 4 percent of assessments that warranted further investigation, only a tiny portion led to criminal charges.

The FBI appears to spend a great deal of time investigating innocent people, and even in cases where an individual is charged with a terrorism-related offense, there are serious concerns.

A report from Human Rights Watch stated, Multiple studies have found that nearly 50 percent of the federal counterterrorism convictions since September 11, 2001, resulted from informant-based cases. Almost 30 percent were sting operations in which the informant played an active role in the underlying plot.

The report further indicated the FBI may have, in some cases, created terrorists out of law-abiding citizens through the aggressive use of sting operations that invented the targets willingness to act.

The FBI often targeted particularly vulnerable people, including those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent. The government, often acting through informants, then actively developed the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the targets to participate, and provided the resources to carry it out.

Given the shortcomings in the U.S. governments ability to identify terrorists, the American Muslim community plays a vital role keeping Americans safe.

Professor Charles Kurzman at the University of North Carolina told Shadowproof, Muslim allies are a crucial part of the effort to combat violent extremism. It is reckless to turn allies into enemies through disproportionate overreactions.

The threat of terrorism, though real, is greatly inflated, according to Kurzman. He pointed to data that show an average of 8 people per year have been killed by terrorists since 9/11. Compare this to the 240,000 people murdered over the same time period.

Kurzman contended the Islamic States strategy is to take advantage of Americans oversensitivity to small-scale terror attacks.

One of the strangest facets of the entry ban is that it targets people from countries with little history of terror in the United States.

Parsi pointed out, This is not about security. This measure is being taken for other reasons, which arent immediately clear. There havent been any terror attacks in the U.S. committed by an individual from the countries included in the ban.

Also included in the executive order is a ban on Syrian refugees, but according to the State Department, refugees pose little risk of terrorism.

There have been 785,000 refugees admitted through the U.S. since 9/11 and only about a dozen a tiny fraction of one percent of admitted refugees have been arrested or removed from the U.S. due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S. None of them were Syrian.

The threat to the U.S. homeland from refugees has been relatively low. Almost none of the major terrorist plots since 9/11 have involved refugees. Even in those cases where refugees were arrested on terrorism-related charges, years and even decades often transpired between their entry into the United States and their involvement in terrorism. In most instances, a would-be terrorists refugee status had little or nothing to do with their radicalization and shift to terrorism.

Arie Kruglanski, a professor that studies terrorism at the University of Maryland, told Shadowproof Trumps policies will backfire in a massive way.

Terrorists essential strategy has always been based on provoking governments to overreact, thus inciting outrage of thousands and swelling the ranks of volunteers to violent extremism. Donald Trump seems to be falling right into this trap in disregard of the wisdom that we cannot kill, deport, ban, or torture our way out of this mess.

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American Muslims Stop More Terror Attacks Than The NSA - Shadowproof (blog)

The notoriously secretive National Security Agency is raising security concerns to justify an apparent new policy of pre-emptively denying Freedom of Information Act requests about the agencys contractors.

The policy was cited by John R. Chapman, the agencys chief FOIA public liaison officer, in a letter to Gizmodo on January 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trumps inauguration. In explaining that the agency had declined to even conduct a search for records about a company called SCL Group, Chapman wrote, Please be advised that due to changing security concerns, this is now our standard response to all requests where we reasonably believe acquisition records are being sought on a contract or contract-related activity.

The response appears to indicate that the NSA will no longer releaseor even search forany records pertaining to the private contractors it works with. SCL Group is a U.K.-based behavioral research firm that has reportedly worked with the Department of Defense in the past; its subsidiary Cambridge Analytica was a central component of the Trump campaigns winning strategy.

Several FOIA experts contacted by Gizmodo said they had never heard of such a denial before.

This sounds like a non-Glomar Glomar response, Bradley Moss, deputy executive director for The James Madison Project, told Gizmodo, using a nickname for the notorious practice of national security and law enforcement agencies refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records. There are existing reasons to categorically deny a request, and even to refuse to conduct a search, Moss said, but hes never seen such a response justified in this way.

Theyre clamping down across the board, Moss said. There is clearly a determined and deliberate attempt to plug any gap that might allow the public to see how the national security apparatus actually works. The apparently new standard hasnt been reflected in the regulations that govern the NSAs FOIA practices, and no rules or proposed rules have been recorded in the Federal Register that might illuminate the issue. Any decision by the NSA to pre-emptively deny requests for contractor-related records would be a major departure for the agency; in 2008 it produced a 22-page internal guidebook for responding to just such requests.

Chapmans letter didnt specify which changing security concerns motivated the new policy, and he did not immediately respond to an emailed inquiry from Gizmodo. When we called his office, the person answering the phone told us that Chapman wasnt in the office and that we dont really answer questions over the phone. The NSAs public affairs office did not respond to a request for comment.

Gizmodo will appeal the denial. As for the company we were asking about: SCL Group (originally Strategic Communication Laboratories) has a complicated and sprawling corporate structure that makes it difficult to determine which of its components conduct what business and for whom. Cambridge Analytica, the subsidiary that worked on both the Trump and Brexit campaigns, made some $14.4 million in this election cycle, filings with the Federal Election Commission show, including $5.7 million from Ted Cruzs campaign and $5.6 million from Donald Trumps. The secretive father-daughter duo Robert and Rebekah Mercerbillionaire patrons to both Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conwayare reportedly investors.

SCL Group worked predominately with commercial clients until the late 90s, when the Indonesian government reportedly hired the organization for its psychological warfare expertise to respond to secessionist and religious violence. On its website, SCL Group claims to have worked with a variety of governmental and private entities the world over, including the U.S. State Department. SCL did not return a request for comment. (When we asked the State Department for documentation of that work, an official responded, The claim by the company that you conveyed in your request is peculiar. Without additional information, I am not able to verify the vendors claim.)

If you know anything about the NSAs changing security concerns, SCL Group, or Cambridge Analytica, please do get in touch, on a confidential basis if you like.

Originally posted here:
The NSA Has Found a New Way to Categorically Deny FOIA Requests - Gizmodo

The average fee for a professional to prepare and submit a 1040 and state return with no itemized deductions is $176, the average fee for an itemized 1040 with Schedule A and a state tax return is $273, and the average fee for an itemized 1040 with Schedule C and a state tax return is $457, according to a biennial survey from the National Society of Accountants.

A 1040 and state return alone cost an average of $17 less two years ago, or $159, when the NSA last conducted this survey, but a 1040 with a Schedule A and a state return cost the same -- $273. (See Average tax prep fee inches up to $273.)

The tax and accounting professionals surveyed are owners, principals, and partners of local tax and accounting practices with an average 28 years of experience.

The survey covered the average fees charge for a number of other forms, including:

Fees vary by region, firm size, population, and economic strength of an area.

The average tax preparation fee for an itemized 1040 with Schedule A and a state return range from highs of $333 in New England and $329 in the Pacific states to a low of $210 in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.

All fees assume a taxpayer has gathered and organized all necessary information: Near three out of four (71 percent) of preparers charge an average fee of $117 for dealing with disorganized or incomplete files.

Most tax and accounting firms also report they have seen no increase in the number of IRS audits during the past two years. The average fee for an IRS audit response letter is $128 and the average hourly fee for an in-person IRS audit is $150.

Most tax and accounting firms offer prospective clients a free consultation, which is worth about $150 based on the average hourly fees of tax preparers, added NSA executive vice president John Ams, in a statement.

Jeff Stimpson is a veteran freelance journalist who previously served as editor of The Practical Accountant.

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Fee for a 1040 averages $176: NSA - Accounting Today

By Collin Breaux | 747-5081 | @PCNHCollinB | CollinB@pcnh.com

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NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY PANAMA CITY Since Monday, hyperbaric doctor Brad Hickey has been isolated from the outside world.

Hickey and five others began a 500-foot descent Monday in the Ocean Simulation Facility (OSF) at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) as part of a 10-day saturation dive. Six divers have been separated from family, friends pretty much everything but each other and an extensive task list since the start of the week and wont come back up until Feb. 2.

Despite the challenging conditions, Hickey was in good spirits Wednesday.

I am doing great, he said. Weve got a great group of divers and, more importantly, weve got a great group of individuals outside working three shifts a day, 24 hours a day, taking care of us.

The divers are all Navy-trained and certified, and have varying degrees of experience with saturation diving.

So far everyone is doing great and there are no medical concerns to speak of, Hickey said.

By Wednesday, the divers had descended more than 300 feet with plans to reach 500 feet. The OSF, built in 1975 and with a working depth of more than 2,000 feet, is a training ground for what-if scenarios such as how equipment and the human body functions several hundred feet underwater.

It simulates open diving at extreme depths, NEDU Lt. Jonathan Brown said.

NEDUs divers arent actually 300 feet below ground this week, however; using the simulation, they are nestled above ground in capsule-shaped wet and dry chambers.

In laymans terms, saturation diving is when divers are sent to safely live in high-pressure environments underwater for an extended period of time. The saturation refers to divers being saturated with nitrogen or helium, which allows them to breathe safely and avoid nitrogen narcosis, Brown said. It has a rich history in Bay County NSA PC is billed as the home of military diving encapsulated at the nearby Man in the Sea Museum where the legendary SEALAB 1 underwater habitat is displayed.

Saturation diving allows the Navy and divers to go deep depths for extended periods of time, NEDU Cmdr. Jay Young said. There is a need for it for depths below 300 feet. ... It allows divers to train inside and to maintain efficiency on the saturation system.

At NEDU, divers are spending this week in hyperbaric chambers, where they are sent food, clothes and other supplies in pressurized chambers from up top. To get to the underwater part of the unit called the wet chamber they pass through whats called a trunk. The entire system is above ground at NSA PC.

NEDU does saturation dives at least twice a year, sometimes more.As common practice, doctors are sent down to live with the divers in case they get sick or injured an essential role, because decompression can take hours, at the least. Before the dive, there were months of heavy planning including medical screenings and equipment testing for divers and chambers.

Decompression sickness also known as the bends is one medical concern for resurfacing divers. Saturation diving cuts down on this, although divers still require time in a decompression chamber once they come back up. The time spent decompressing depends on how long they are down there. Because the divers are descending so deep this week, it will take about six days for them to decompress a rate of about 5-6 feet per hour, Brown said. Their carefully controlled ascent will begin Feb. 2.

While the divers are under, a team in a control room communicates with them and tracks their every move using computer monitors and high-end technology. The team extensively monitors the physical conditions in the OSF, including gas levels, and can alter them for diver safety.

Navy Diver Senior Chief William Sinrich was at the depth control board Wednesday, which also controls the chamber and water temperature. Although the OSF water was a chilly 50 degrees, the team cancontrol the hot water that flows through the divers diving suits.

It feels very important because we do unique evolutions that no other dive command does, Sinrich said. It benefits all the services that use diving and increases medical knowledge.

Here is the original post:
NSA PC saturation divers to spend week 500 feet deep - The News Herald

Posted by Edridge D'Souza on January 26, 2017 Leave a Comment

Barack Obama is no longer the president, but some of his actions may still significantly affect us in the coming days. Namely, in early-mid January, he gave 16 agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, access to information collected by the National Security Agencys (NSA) controversial (and arguably unconstitutional) warrantless surveillance program. In essence, the incoming Trump administration will have a much easier time targeting private citizens using information gathered by the controversial PRISM program.

This should be alarming to anyone who cares about privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union has described this sort of spying, conducted with little to no oversight, as blatantly illegal and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Most of this data was previously only accessible to the NSA. However, opening it up to other agencies means that there is a far greater threat.

Advocates of the NSA will claim that there should be nothing wrong with granting wider access to this data. The common refrain is, You shouldnt be worried if you have nothing to hide. I believe the comic artist Zach Weinersmith refutes this idea rather succinctly:

Everyone has something to hide and usually no one cares. By surveilling everyone, you catch the benign breaches of law and taboo, a character in his comic says while being monitored. If the public are all guilty, the executive part of the government can selectively enforce lawswhich defeats the whole point of separation of powers.

Expanding access to this warrantless data will therefore only increase the power of the executive office. Regardless of the morality or legality of doing so, some might have believed that the executive office would not misuse this power and only use it to stop national security threats. However, in the past year, weve learned not to believe conventional wisdom very much. Former President Obama essentially weaponized the power of the federal government and subsequently handed it over to someone he believes is unfit to serve.

People might have been willing to accept such programs under what they perceive to be a benign administration, but let this be a reminder that power can and will be transferred, and when it is, it will most certainly be used for different purposes than intended. In Trumps administration, if all agencies have access to personal data on every individual, there is very little to stop them from abusing this power. Perhaps this means selectively targeting and arresting political opponents and dissenters for breaking the law, while ignoring supporters who do the same. Perhaps, as it did for the fictional Frank Underwood of House of Cards, this means covertly collecting voter data to rig elections. Or perhaps this means using the information exactly as intended, with no ill intentions.

The problem is, no one knows. There is absolutely no way for any citizen to know how the government is using this power, and with Trumps record on transparency, it seems were not likely to find out. Even if the latter case is true, and the Trump administration only uses this vast amount of power for necessary occasions, there is no oversight and no way to independently verify that it is not being abused. This runs in direct contrast to the constitutional vision of a government constrained by the people.

How can this be stopped? Well, it really cant. Well just have to wait and see what this incoming administration does, and try to hold them accountable when something goes wrong. However, this serves as a valuable lesson to all political parties in the future: do not give excessive power to the federal government, because it can and will fall into the hands of the people you least want it to.

In fact, this rule holds true for the legislative branch as well. In 2013, congressional Democrats voted for a nuclear option that would drastically reduce the Republicans power to block presidential appointments. Now that there is a Republican president making the appointments, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he regrets it. Had the old system been in place, Democrats might still be able to block many of Trumps controversial Cabinet picks.

The take-away from this is that all rules can and will be abused. The public may have perceived Bush and Obama as relatively benign, conducting warrantless surveillance only for our own good. But theres nothing benign about unconstitutional spying. Although theres no telling as of yet how Trump will use this power, its not far-fetched that he, like his predecessors, will also continue the unchecked expansion of executive power. However, with a less-charismatic figurehead, people will hopefully be a bit more careful before allowing the federal government to expand its authority and take away their constitutional rights. Donald Trump has promised to drain the swamp of Washington; lets wait and see if hell also drain the swamp of executive power.

Edridge DSouza is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at edsouza@umass.edu.

Filed under Archives, Columns, Opinion, Scrolling Headlines Tagged with american civil liberties union, Chuck Schumer, DEA, department of homeland security, Donald Trump, fbi, Frank Underwood, NSA, President, PRISM, Trump, Zach Weinersmith

Originally posted here:
NSA surveillance can't go unchecked - The Massachusetts Daily Collegian