TD's Link
There was nary a word mentioned about it at the time. Crickets. They are in shrieking mode over Trumps hiccups, which are not bad at all in any honest comparison.
Dems owned congress PaulZ. No real way to stop em, unless the corrupt and stupid in the nominees shined through. That's how Obamacare was pissed.... er, passed..... dems had the majority in both house and senate. Hopefully you don't teach those poor lil bastages history......
I know the point went right over yur pointy lil head, that the MSM put their hands in their pockets, turned and walked away whistling..... all was right with the world.... er, left...
now it seems they've lost their pockets..... they have skirts over their heads and panties in a wad.....
Let this short clip from Maria Bartiromo (from a couple of weeks ago; sorry I didn't cover this then) catch you up quickly.
The Daily Caller News Foundation wrote about this two weeks ago:
Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission.
Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation's most sensitive issues and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.
Also among those whose computer systems may have been compromised is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat who was previously the target of a disastrous email hack when she served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
The brothers are suspected of serious violations, including accessing members' computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress.
Jamal handled IT for Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves on both the intelligence and foreign affairs panels.
"As of 2/2, his employment with our office has been terminated," Castro spokeswoman Erin Hatch told TheDCNF Friday.
....
A criminal investigation into five unnamed people began late last year related to serious and potentially illegal violations of House IT policies, Politico reported Thursday. Chiefs of staff for the members were briefed Thursday by the Sergeant-at-Arms.
Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki said the investigation was still ongoing, and arrests have not been made but staff were "asked to update their security settings."
Despite brief mentions on Politico and Buzzfeed, no one in the media seemed very interested in the story.
Now House Conservatives say they want to investigate this non-fake-news story of illegal hacking with possible connections to hostile foreign powers:
House conservatives want to investigate three IT employees, all brothers, suspected of compromising the networks of Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Conservative Republicans -- disappointed in House Democrats for hushing up the issue and in the media for failing to widely report the story -- hope the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR) will examine how House Democratic offices allowed the potential breach in national security information.
...
Perry, who first heard the story on WMAL radio Monday morning, more than a week after TheDCNF first reported the story, expressed frustration that the media isn't giving the story more attention and that, in the initial reports he heard, "not one name was mentioned."
We should definitely trust our Deep State pencil-pusher overlords, though.
Anony Mouse's Link
PaulZy also conveniently blocks out any memory of the number of "aye" votes Obama got from Democratic Senators for his budgets......
Google that one skippy......34 times and still an epic fail......next!!!!
ABC’s Nightline’s intro to this piece about Trayvon Martin’s parents’ Black Lives Matter advocacy leaves a little something out. See if you can spot what’s missing . . .
It was five years ago this month when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, unarmed, holding just a bag of skittles and a bottle of iced tea, was shot and killed by neighborhood watch George Zimmerman.
No, not the noun between “neighborhood watch” and “George Zimmerman” (“member”?) — although editing. I’m thinking there should be something about the fact that a court of law adjudicated Mr. Zimmerman innocent of murder, confirming that Mr. Martin had attacked and was beating Mr. Zimmerman at the time of the shooting.
But that would have killed the vibe for this piece, which probably should have aired on WTBS (Waving The Bloody Shirt). Granted, ABC goes on to mention the acquittal in passing, without touching on the self-defense component. Enough said?
Martin’s father has his own take on the shooting, of course. “This was a child who lost his life to a senseless act of violence, gun violence, to someone who wanted to be a vigilante.”
Counterpoint? Yeah, no. Pictures of Trayvon as smiling teen? Sure! And why not finger Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law too, despite the fact that Mr. Zimmerman never used its provisions in his defense. Might as well also trot out President’s Obama’s assertion that if he’d had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon.
Trayvon’s mother is considering running for office. I wonder where she stands on gun control, and why this report didn’t mention any of the Martin’s proposed solutions for “gun violence.” Or not.
Anytime you see/hear the words "gun violence" at the start of a sentence or in a title know that the rest of what you will see/hear is pure bullsh*t.
Gun are not/cannot and will never be "violent".
Congressional IT staffers who are the subject of a criminal investigation into misusing their positions had full access to members’ “correspondence, emails, confidential files,” and there was almost no tracking of what they did, a former House technology worker said.
Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn’t be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was requesting. And their actions were not logged, so members have no way of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT employee said.
Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of his relatives — including brothers Abid and Jamal — appeared on the payroll of dozens of other members, collecting $4 million in taxpayer funds since 2010.
U.S. Capitol Police named him and his relatives as subjects of a criminal probe on Feb. 2, and banned them from the complex’s computer networks. But members of Congress for whom they worked have downplayed their access or publicly ignored the issue.
“They had access to EVERYTHING. Correspondence, emails, confidential files — if it was stored on the Member system, they had access to it,” the former House Information Resources (HIR) technology worker with first-hand knowledge of Imran’s privileges told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Technology employees who work for members must initially get authority from HIR, a component of the House’s chief administrative officer, which maintains campus-wide technology systems.
“There were some things – like access to the House email system that were totally controlled by the technicians at HIR. In order for certain permissions to be granted, a form was required to ensure that there was a paper trail for the requested changes. Imran was constantly complaining that he had to go through this process and trying to get people to process his access requests without the proper forms. Some of the permissions he wanted would give him total access to the Members’ stuff.”
“IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,” the worker said. But by comparison, “when these guys were granted access to the Member’s computer systems there is no oversight or tracking of what they may be doing on the Member’s system. For example they could make a copy of anything on the Member’s computer system to a thumb drive or have it sent to a private server they had set up and no one would know.”
That raises questions about why members are so quick to brush off the seriousness of the investigation.
“After being notified by the House Administration Committee, [Abid] was removed from our payroll. We are confident that everything in our office is secure,” Hilarie Chambers, chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, told TheDCNF.
Multiple House IT workers said it is impossible for members’ offices to make that judgment, and that Capitol Police — who are running an investigation that involves cybercrimes and current and potential international fugitives, despite their primary duties being providing physical security — aren’t capable of determining what actually occurred either.
The Capitol Police web page listing their authority, scope of work and expertise does not mention the word “computers.”
A Fairfax County, Va., police report shows that the brothers’ stepmother called the police on them in January, and a relative said Imran has been out of the country attempting to access assets stored in Pakistan in his deceased father’s name. The relative said they forced her to sign power of attorney documents against her will.
After naming them as suspects in a criminal investigation, the Capitol Police have not taken their passports or arrested them. The brothers previously took a $100,000 loan from a fugitive wanted by U.S. authorities, Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who has fled to Iraq and been linked to Hezbollah.
Imran ran technology for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz–who resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after a disastrous email hack she blamed on Russians–and had the password to an iPad used for DNC business.
Politico described the investigation this way: “Five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”
But it later said Hill staffers were downplaying the information security component, writing, “Sources close to the House investigation said the former staffers, while able to view some member data, did not have access to any classified information.”
That description rankled multiple House IT workers, who told TheDCNF those semantics misleadingly made it seem like they didn’t have access to extremely sensitive information.
“Classified” is a terminology used by spy agencies and other executive branch agencies, not generally Congress, with the exception of the intelligence committee. The full email correspondence and hard drives of members of Congress are nonetheless sensitive, extremely private and likely to contain privileged information of the utmost import.
And an email need not deal with national security to open that member to blackmail or extortion. All a rogue IT staffer would need to do was threaten to release emails that were politically embarrassing.
The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers’ access didn’t span the full gamut of congressional intrigue was silly because they were the ones giving out permissions.
“When a new Member begins, they guide them on everything from which computer system to purchase to which constituent management system to go with and all other related hardware purchases. Then they install everything and set up all the accounts AND grant all the required permissions and restrictions,” the staffer said.
“In effect, they are given administrative control of the Members’ computer operations. They then set up a remote access so they can connect from wherever they are and have full access to everything on the Member’s system.”
Numerous members of Congress who employed the suspects wouldn’t say whether they’ve been fired or what steps they’ve taken to examine whether their information is safe.
Spokesmen for Diana Degette, Frederica Wilson, Jackie Speier, Julia Brownley, Karen Bass, Pete Aguilar, and Ted Lieu all ignored requests or refused to say.
The central IT worker said they are ignoring the problem in the hopes that it will go away, but that their apathy speaks to the problem.
“Unfortunately, as the recent election has shown, security of computer systems on the Hill is not really taken seriously.”
God Bless men
Anony Mouse's Link
