Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 16 January 2015

USAHitman | Conspiracy News

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Posted: 13 Jan 2015 04:25 PM PST
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The White House has unveiled a proposal aimed at strengthening cybersecurity within the US by encouraging sharing between sectors and installing new penalties after a series of high-profile attacks targeted government and private sector networks.
The initiative, announced by US President Barack Obama during a planned visit on Tuesday to the US Department of Homeland Security in Virginia, calls for new legislation to be adopted by Congress in order to enhance the sharing of electronic threat information between the private sector and the government, while also revamping the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA – the 1984 federal law that outlines when and what hacking charges can be brought against suspected cyber criminals.
Additionally, the White House again insisted on Tuesday that American businesses should be obliged under penalty of law of quickly notifying consumers in the event that their networks are compromised, echoing remarks the president made a day earlier when he proposed new data protection rules during an address at the main office of the Federal Trade Commission in which he advocated for securing the types of personal financial data often pilfered in hacks that have targeted major companies.
“This extraordinary interconnection” made possible by the internet “creates enormous opportunities,” Obama said Monday, “but also creates enormously vulnerabilities for us as a nation and for our economy and for individuals.”
Details on the latest proposal surfaced less than a month after the White House and FBI said they’ve attributed the major security breach suffered by the computers of Sony Pictures Entertainment last November to North Korea, and only a day after the US Central Command saw both its Twitter and YouTube accounts compromised by a group claiming to be supportive of Islamic State militants.
“With the Sony attacks that took place, with the Twitter account that was hacked by Islamist jihadist sympathizers yesterday, it just goes to show how much more work we need to do, both public and private sector, to strengthen our cybersecurity to make sure that families’ bank accounts are safe, to make sure that our public infrastructure is safe,” Obama told members of Congress during a meeting earlier on Tuesday, according to CNN.
He’s been doing everything he can within his executive authority to move the ball on this,” a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Washington Post. “We’ve got to get something in place that allows both industry and government to work more closely together.”
In hopes of accomplishing as much, the newest proposal from the president includes provisions enabling private sector entities to better communicate attack details with the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), ideally giving the government a heads up with regards to future breaches. The White House says the president also wants changes applied to the CFAA that would give the Justice Department added ability to prosecute suspected cybercriminals, specifically singling out individuals who sell botnets – compromised computer networks that can be remotely controlled and used to launch attacks – and persons who sell US financial information overseas, while at the same time updating the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in order to apply to cybercrimes.
The president’s proposal, the White House said, “modernizes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by ensuring that insignificant conduct does not fall within the scope of the statute, while making clear that it can be used to prosecute insiders who abuse their ability to access information to use it for their own purposes.”
“Today, at a time when public and private networks are facing an unprecedented threat from rogue hackers as well as organized crime and even state actors, the president is unveiling the next steps in his plan to defend the nation’s systems,” the White House said.
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The post Obama proposes cyber law update in wake of Sony hack appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 13 Jan 2015 04:21 PM PST
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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – the fourth largest local policing agency in the United States – has taken another step towards building the biggest biometric database outside of the FBI’s by inking a new $24 million contract.
NEC Corporation of America – a Texas-based IT firm that provides biometric services to commercial entities, law enforcement groups, and governments around the globe – announced on Monday that it’s been awarded a multi-year contract by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to provide the agency with specialized, state-of-the-art policing services, including high-tech facial recognition software.
Previously published paperwork out of the LA County Board of Supervisors reveals that the Sheriff’s Department requested approval last year for a $24.4 million contract with NEC that would provide the agency – the largest sheriff’s department in the US – with biometric identification services for six years. The board authorized that request in December, setting the stage for NEC to soon provide area law enforcement with a new toolkit with regards to investigating criminal activity and tracking down suspects within a jurisdiction that includes roughly 2.6 million residents.
According to a statement put up by NEC Corp. this week, the deal will allow the LA Sheriff’s Department to access fingerprint, palmprint, face, voice, iris and DNA matching capabilities offered through the company’s Integra ID 5 Multimodal Biometrics Identification Solution (MBIS), as well as the NeoFace program touted by NEC being the “most accurate facial matching product” available in the world.
“NEC’s experience in offering such solutions, their leading fingerprint and facial recognition technology and their ability to meet our business continuity and disaster recovery requirements, all under a flat monthly fee, were among key advantages of the NEC offering,” Lt. Josh Thai of the LASD said in a statement explaining the agency’s decision to offer the contract.
According to an analysis published by the Center for Investigative Reporting last year, the database being offered to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, once complete, “would augment the county’s existing database of fingerprint records and create the largest law enforcement repository outside of the FBI of so-called next-generation biometric identification.” It is scheduled to be fully installed and operational within three years, according to the Center, although other reports have indicated it may take only half that.
Raffie Beroukhim, vice president of the NEC Biometrics Solutions Division, added in a statement that the company’s products “will enable LASD to solve even more crimes and serve the public safety and security needs of citizens of Los Angeles County for years to come.”
According to NEC, the biometric service being leased to Los Angeles law enforcement interfaces with databases maintained by outside agencies, including state, city and federal police groups such as the California Department of Justice, the Western Identification Network and the Next Generation Identity (NGI) – a system that the FBI elevated to operational status last September, allowing cops in Southern California to quickly, in theory, ID a suspect caught on closed-circuit surveillance cameras with any millions of images on any linked repository.
Lt. Thai, the Sheriff’s Department employee tasked with implementing MBIS for LA County, told The Epoch Times last year that law enforcement officers won’t collect biometric data on innocent Los Angelenos, but rather on individuals that have been arrested and booked in county jail or any of downtown LA’s holding centers. Criminal charges don’t always lend to successful convictions, however, meaning potentially millions of records pertaining to non-criminal Californians stand to end up in the database and thus at the disposal of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department.
As RT reported previously, the FBI’s NGI system has been built up at a cost of $1 billion over the last several years, with the goal of letting federal investigators easily access a database containing over 100 million individual records that may ink a person’s biometric data – like individualized fingerprints and face scans – with personal information including home addresses, age and legal status. Allegations concerning an absence of oversight and proper privacy protections have alarmed digital rights advocates, however, and DC-based watchdog the Electronic Privacy Information Center previously sued the FBI in hopes of having the bureau disclose as much information as possible about the still infant system.
“The NGI database will include photographic images of millions of individuals who are neither criminals nor suspects,” attorneys for EPIC previously argued in legal motions.
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The post California cops sign contract to begin using massive biometric database appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:43 PM PST
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The new Universal Credit Rating Group (UCRG) is being set up to rival the existing agencies Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, and its first rating will be issued this year.
The setting up of UCRG is in its final stages, ready to challenge the ‘Big Three’ that currently dominate the industry, the Managing Director of RusRating Aleksandr Ovchinnikov told Sputnik News Agency on Tuesday.
“In our opinion, the first ratings [will]appear … during the current year,” Ovchinnikov said, adding that accreditation with the local regulator is already underway.
The news comes on the heels of Fitch’s decision to follow S&P in downgrading Russia’s sovereign credit rating to BBB-, a step above junk level and on par with India and Turkey.
The new agency will be based in Hong Kong, and provide a check on the ‘Big Three’, which some analysts say don’t provide an accurate reading of economic situations.
Many securities and bonds in the US that had triple-A ratings in 2008 and were considered ‘safe’, turned out to be a bubble, revealed by the subprime mortgage crisis.
“When the issue of creating an agency alternative to the ‘Big Three’ [Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch Group] was raised, we in fact offered [a]project that was ready to be launched and was supported by the governments of Russia and China,” Ovchinnikov said.
Developed economies are often given a free credit rating pass, whereas developing economies are assigned more risky ratings, the RusRating analyst said.
UCRG was officially created in June 2013 by China’s Dagon, Russia’s RusRating and America’s Egan-Jones Ratings. Each member will hold an equal share in the venture, with an initial investment of $9 million.
Source
The post China and Russia to launch new credit rating agency in 2015 appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:43 PM PST
Dramatic footage of the Charlie Hebdo terrorists has emerged online, showing the gunmen calmly leaving the magazine’s office in their car after murdering 12 people. The extremists are seen firing at a police car upon escaping the crime scene.
Filmed from a nearby window, the video shows two armed masked men, dressed in black – later identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi – approaching a black Citroen car. By the vehicle, the terrorists calmly check their ammunition and reload their guns, placing one of the automatic rifles on top of the car.

“We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed,” one of the armed men is heard shouting in French.
“That’s France for you,” a man filming the scene is heard commenting behind the camera.
After a brief discussion, the two attackers get into the car and start driving off. However, the man continues filming, apparently learning out of his window, and shows a police car driving down the narrow street towards the black Citroen.
The attackers then shoot directly at the vehicle, which has to travel backwards, while the terrorists drive off. The two people off screen couldn’t believe their eyes, as they began discussing whether the bullets were real.
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The post New online video shows Charlie Hebdo attackers shooting at police appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:18 PM PST
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The US Department of Homeland Security has no coordinated strategy to counter cyber-attacks targeting basic electronic systems in government buildings, a report by the US Government Accountability Office has revealed.
Many components of modern remotely-controlled operation maintenance systems, such as elevators, electrical power, central heating and air conditioning, are increasingly incorporated into computer networks with internet connections.
According to the latest Government Accountability Office (GAO) report: “The increased connectivity heightens their vulnerability to cyber-attacks, which could compromise security measures, hamper agencies’ ability to carry out their missions, or cause physical harm to the facilities or their occupants.”
The report says that as of October 2014, electronic service systems in nearly 9,000 America’s government buildings protected by the Federal Protective Service (FPS, an integral part of the DHS) are not guarded properly against outside hacker attack due to the DHS lacking a solid plan to deal with this threat.
“The absence of a strategy that clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of key components within DHS has contributed to a lack of action within the department,” the GAO said in its report.
The GAO partly excuses the Department of Homeland Security’s failure, however, saying that the “DHS has not developed a strategy, in part, because cyber threats involving these systems are an emerging issue.”
To a certain extent that could be true, yet Hollywood’s “Live Free or Die Hard” blockbuster (released at Die Hard 4.0 outside the US) vividly exposed the potentially dire consequences of such cyber-attacks against government infrastructure in 2007.
The DHS has taken the leading role in providing cyber security for government offices in recent years. The agency runs the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) responsible for data sharing between the government, federal agencies and America’s private sector.
In 2014, American legislators codified the DHS’s leading role in providing cyber security to government entities nationwide, with even more bills expected to pass Congress in 2015.
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The post 9,000 US federal facilities vulnerable to cyber threats – govt report appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:10 PM PST
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A conservative Jewish newspaper edited a picture of world leaders rallying in anti-extremism solidarity in Paris last week, manipulating female politicians, including one of the most powerful people on the planet, Angela Merkel, out of the picture.
The German Chancellor, along with the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs Federica Mogherini and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt all vanished from the already famous photograph in the Israeli Haredi “HaMevaser” (The Announcer) paper.
Images of women are usually completely absent from the conservative publication, which refers to protecting female modesty as the reason for its men-only visual world. First spotted by a religion reporter on the Hebrew-language Walla! website, the manipulation sparked condemnation in international media.
Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz, called the incident “infuriating and shocking.” It “deserves to be called out – like denying the fact that in the wider world, beyond the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, women do stand on the world stage and shape events,” the paper wrote in a blog.
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The post Ultra-Orthodox Jewish paper edits Merkel out of Paris march appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:04 PM PST
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that 2,000 more people died from heroin-related deaths in 2013 than in 2012, as prescription painkillers became harder to obtain and led to a rise in cheaper, illicit street drugs.
Data released by the CDC on Monday shows that heroin-related deaths surged from 5,925 in 2012 to 8,257 in 2013 – an increase of 39 percent. Overall, deaths from drug overdoses increased to 43,982 from 41,340 during the same period. The rise has been attributed to changes in laws over prescription opioids, causing many painkiller users to look for other options.
“These troubling statistics illustrate a grim reality: that drug, and particularly opioid abuse, represents a growing public health crisis,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that the number of people who had used heroin rose from 2012 to 2013.
Laws concerning prescription opioids were enacted in response to fatal poisonings and emergency room visits, which more than doubled to 300,000 nationwide between 2004 and 2008. The rules mandated that primary care doctors consult with board-certified pain specialists before prescribing daily morphine-equivalent doses of 120mg or greater, and marked the first dosage threshold of its kind in the United States.
One of the recent solutions to the rise in overdose deaths has been to have local police carry naloxone, a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses. The World Health Organization estimated earlier this month that naloxone could save as many as 20,000 lives every year. States like New York and Maine have also increased the number of law enforcement agents tasked with drug enforcement while they have expanded naloxone access.
Advocate groups for community based programs, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, applaud the increased distribution of naloxone to police, but also hope community groups are included.
“Community-based naloxone distribution programs continue to struggle mightily to be able to afford to do this lifesaving work, while police departments have access to a much larger pot of money,” Meghan Ralston, harm-reduction manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Huffington Post.
Source
The post CDC: Heroin-linked deaths jumped by 39 percent in one year appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 12 Jan 2015 04:00 PM PST
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A woman has died and two others remain in critical condition after an incident at L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, DC. The station was evacuated and closed for commuters after smoke filled a subway car.
“We don’t know yet the cause of the heavy smoke,” the general manager of DC’s metro system, Richard Sarles, told a local NBC affiliate as he announced that one woman had died as a result of the incident.

In addition, Sarles said that two people are in critical condition at George Washington Hospital. Another 40 are being treated at Howard University Hospital, while 20-25 people were taken to Washington Hospital Center, the Washington Post reported.
The Metropolitan Police Department are launching an investigation.
The station was evacuated shortly before 3:30 p.m. as smoke filled the car. Service was suspended near L’Enfant on the Yellow and Green lines. Orange, Blue and Silver line trains were bypassing L’Enfant.
Source
The post Woman dies in Washington DC metro smoke incident appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 11 Jan 2015 07:49 PM PST
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Hackers claiming allegiance to the Islamic State took control of the social media accounts of the U.S. military’s Central Command on Monday, posting threatening messages and propaganda videos, along with some military documents.
The command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were eventually taken offline, but not before a string of tweets and the release of military documents, some of which listed contact information for senior military personnel. A Centcom spokesman confirmed their accounts were “compromised,” and said later that the accounts have been taken offline while the incident is investigated more.
“CENTCOM’s operation military networks were not compromised and there was no operational impact to U.S. Central Command,” a military statement said. “CENTCOM will restore service to its Twitter and YouTube accounts as quickly as possible. We are viewing this purely as a case of cybervandalism.”
Military officials added in the statement that their initial assessment is that no classified information was posted, and that none of what was released came from Centcom’s server or social media sites. The command will notify Defense Department and law enforcement authorities about the release of personally identifiable information and make sure that those affected are notified as quickly as possible, Centcom said.
Virtually all of the documents posted appear to already have been publicly available online, but the incident is nevertheless embarrassing to the U.S. military. Centcom oversees the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and frequently posts videos of airstrikes on the same accounts attacked Monday.
The United States and the Islamic State have waged a propaganda battle online for the better part of a year, after the militants rose to prominence and seized broad swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. Twitter accounts sympathetic to the militants have distributed graphic images of beheadings and other violence along with threats, while the Defense Department and State Department have sought to expose the Islamic State as an oppressive group willing to slaughter innocent men, women and children.
The first rogue tweet Monday was posted about 12:30 p.m. and the account was not suspended for about another 40 minutes. The background and profile photo of the Twitter account were both changed to show an apparent militant and the phrases “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis,” using one of the acronyms for the militant group.
“AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK,” one tweet said.
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The post CENTCOM social media accounts hacked by Islamic State Hackers appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 11 Jan 2015 04:22 PM PST
Posted: 11 Jan 2015 04:05 PM PST
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Students in South Carolina could soon be studying material endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), if a state lawmaker can successfully push his proposal into law.
Under a measure filed by South Carolina State Rep. Alan Clemmons (R), the state curriculum would require students to take a three-week class focused on the US Constitution – with a special focus on the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
During the class, high school students would learn about gun rights, gun safety, and – if a companion bill also passes into law – potentially attend shooting ranges. There is already a petition to fight the proposal.
At the end of December, Clemmons filed the Second Amendment Education Bill, which would designate December 15 as Second Amendment Awareness Day and require elementary, middle, and high schools to enter a poster or essay contest and study a curriculum supported with material from the NRA. The lawmaker wants more emphasis placed on the Second Amendment and to focus on guns in order to “demystify” them.
“The discussion should be a scholarly discussion about the history of the second amendment, why was it important to our fathers, why was it so important that it was included in the bill of rights, and how the second amendment folds into modern society,” Clemmons told CarolinaLive.
The poster and essay contest would feature the theme “The Right To Bear Arms: One American Right Protecting All Others.” The entries would be judged by the South Carolina Legislative Sportsman’s Caucus, and the winners would be recognized and honored by the South Carolina Legislature.
Clemmons hopes for an early hearing before the House Education Committee this year.
The proposed date for Second Amendment Awareness Day, December 15, falls just one day after the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, during which gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adult staff members, injured two staff, and killed his mother at home prior to the shooting. It is the deadliest mass shooting ever to take place at a US school.
Clemmons said he filed the bill in response to Zero Tolerance rules at schools across the state that prevent students from bringing guns on campus, which he thinks have turned into an anti-Second Amendment policies.
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The post South Carolina lawmaker wants mandatory NRA gun classes in schools appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.
    
Posted: 10 Jan 2015 04:05 PM PST
Hylan Boulevard ticket blitz
A new report, by the Citizens Budget Commission, showing the decline in traffic tickets in NYC, is being touted in a negative manner by media outlets who spin the lack of petty revenue collection done by police, as a loss for the city. However, it’s actually a gain for the people.
According to the Post, there were just 1,191 parking summonses handed out between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4 — down nearly 93 percent from the same period last year, when 16,008 of the dreaded orange envelopes were slapped on windshields.
Based on the weekly average ticket take of $10.5 million in fiscal 2014, the Citizens Budget Commission estimated the reduction could have bled about $10 million from city coffers.
And that doesn’t include other revenue losses from similar reductions in moving violations and court summonses during the slowdown, which is now in its third week.
Sadly we live in such a time where it is widely considered “a loss” when the government fails to extort the citizens enough to cover their expansive and often tyrannical endeavors.
Drug offenses, parking violations, traffic citations; these are not so much crimes as they are streams of revenue for the city. They are also the reason for the majority of police harassment within certain communities.
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The post NYPD Slow Down is Saving Citizens $10 Million a Week in Parking Fines appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.