RUTHFULLY YOURS

Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another. They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack to North Korea.

The attack spread indiscriminately across the world in May. It encrypted and rendered useless hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses and homes. While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers. It was cowardly, costly and careless. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible.

We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either. Other governments and private companies agree. The United Kingdom attributes the attack to North Korea, and Microsoft traced the attack to cyber affiliates of the North Korean government.

The consequences and repercussions of WannaCry were beyond economic. The malicious software hit computers in the U.K.’s health-care sector particularly hard, compromising systems that perform critical work. These disruptions put lives at risk.

The world is increasingly interconnected with new technologies, devices, networks and systems creating great convenience. Unfortunately, that provides bad actors opportunities to create mayhem with the hope of anonymity, relying on the complex world of ones and zeros to hide their hand. They have stolen intellectual property and done significant damage in every sector.

North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious. WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless.

Stopping malicious behavior like this starts with accountability. It also requires governments and businesses to cooperate to mitigate cyber risk and increase the cost to hackers. The U.S. must lead this effort, rallying allies and responsible tech companies throughout the free world to increase the security and resilience of the internet.

Change has started at the White House. President Trump has made his expectations clear. He has ordered the modernization of government information-technology to enhance the security of the systems we run on behalf of the American people. He continued sanctions on Russian hackers and directed the most transparent and effective government effort in the world to find and share vulnerabilities in important software. We share almost all the vulnerabilities we find with developers, allowing them to create patches. Even the American Civil Liberties Union praised him for that. He has asked that we improve our efforts to share intrusion evidence with hacking targets, from individual Americans to big businesses. And there is more to come. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON — The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee charged Wednesday that there’s been “a slow, unexplained erosion” at the State Department under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that threatens national and global security and the “values that it promotes and the vital role it plays around the world.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) noted that more than 30 key ambassadorships still lack a nominee, dozens of senior-level posts remain vacant, the Foreign Service is “being hollowed out” with a sharp drop in recruits, and the most experienced career officials not tied to any presidential appointment are leaving or being forced out.

“I honor the experienced career officials stepping in to fill vacancies and carry out the Department’s important work, but there are limits to what officials can accomplish in an acting role,” he said. “It is now December… we cannot afford to have a department that remains hamstrung because of rudderless stagnation at the top.”

Morale at the State Department is “devastatingly low,” he noted.

At a House Foreign Affairs hearing last week, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan admitted that “morale hasn’t improved — it’s not something that I’m proud to say.”

“I think one of our greatest failings has been a lack of communication,” Sullivan said. “Communication particularly with our own career professionals, both at state and in the field. And a rededication to do a better job of that.”

Cardin said that Tillerson’s corporate-style redesign of the department “continues to tinker around the edges while the department’s core functions are deliberately hollowed out.”

“Why should we tolerate a massive exodus of diplomatic and development expertise at the State Department and USAID? Our president said recently that we do not need to worry about the fact that many of the senior level positions at the State Department remain unfilled because when it comes to foreign policy his opinion is the only one that matters. Why on earth would he say that?” the senator asked. “For the thousands of FSOs around the world working to advance the ideals of United States, this was a horrible and offensive message.”

He asked if the administration even understands that the State Department and USAID “are every bit as vital and critical an element of our national security as the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, our law enforcement, or the countless others in the federal government who work tirelessly every day to protect our security, extend our prosperity, and promote our values.”

“Diplomacy is an investment we make so we don’t have to go to war. Nickel-and-diming it is not in our national security interest.”

Stressing that U.S. foreign policy leadership is “paying the price and will continue to pay the price if things aren’t turned around quickly,” Cardin called for more transparency from Tillerson including regular briefings to the Foreign Relations Committee, a detailed timeline for Tillerson’s department reorganization, movement to fill senior vacancies and ambassadorships, and a vow that “the promotion of democracy and respect for human rights around the world must remain a central part of the State Department’s overall mission.”

Tillerson argued in May that putting human rights foremost in policy can create “obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”

Cardin said “improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Department is critical to our national security given the countless challenges our nation faces,” and “reforms to information technology, human resources, and procurement systems are long overdue.”

“However, if the department continues down its current path my colleagues and I will be forced to turn to legislative options to address our many concerns,” he vowed. “My goal is to ensure that the employees of the State Department have all the resources and support they require to complete their tasks and ensure the United States remains a global diplomatic leader. And, I will do everything in my power to guarantee this goal is accomplished.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The terrorism charges filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday against the Port Authority jihadist underscore that, while the rhetoric from the White House is different, the change of administrations from Obama to Trump has not altered the Justice Department’s approach to terrorism: It is regarded principally as a law-enforcement issue, and its connection to Islamic doctrine goes studiously unnoticed.

The five-count complaint filed by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York charges that Akayed Ullah, by attempting a mass-murder attack, materially supported the Islamic State terror network (ISIS). Ullah was scorched in the blast, and a few people near him suffered relatively minor injuries. Fortunately, he failed to kill and maim, as he told police he had hoped to do, a goal made manifest by his plan to strike at the height of the morning rush in one of the world’s busiest transportation hubs.

The 27-year-old Bangladesh native became a permanent resident alien through a combination of reckless government immigration policies — the visa lottery, by which his uncle got in, and chain migration, which enabled Ullah to follow in 2011. The complaint alleges that he was “inspired” by the Islamic State, law-enforcement parlance for a terrorist who is not a member of the “inspirational” jihadist organization or otherwise directed by it (i.e., no “operational” connection).

In the politically correct fashion that confuses the medium with the message, the government asserts that Ullah’s “radicalization” began three years ago and consisted of “view[ing] pro-ISIS materials online.” In other words, the Internet is the culprit.

Of course, it is actually sharia-supremacist ideology that “radicalizes” young Muslims. Typically, they imbibe it not merely through the Internet but by immersing themselves at extremist mosques and in communities in which the ideology is prevalent. Regardless of how the ideology is conveyed, it is the fervor of religious obligation that it incorporates, not the fact that it is easily found online, that explains its power. To grasp this, it is necessary to face up to the fact that the ideology is drawn from Islamic scripture and supported by centuries of fundamentalist scholarship. It is a frightening construction of Islam, but a well-rooted one, which is why so many devout Muslims fall prey to it.

Alas, it remains verboten in the Justice Department to acknowledge the obvious. The complaint thus tells us that Ullah was taken in by “violent extremist ideology” — as if he could as easily have been “inspired” by Antifa as by ISIS.

Saudi influence on American administrations, and relationships between senior officials in both countries, is behind Washington’s ignoring Riyadh’s “well-established… involvement in supporting terrorism and terrorist groups.” — Report by the Institute for Gulf Affairs (IGA), released on June 1.

The IGA report, covering the three-year period since then and including extremely serious charges against both Saudi Arabia and previous U.S. administration and security officials, indicates the urgency with which the current administration needs to treat the issue and act upon it.

A new investigative report reveals that hundreds of Saudi and Kuwaiti nationals residing in the United States — some with dual citizenship, and most students subsisting on government scholarships — have joined ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq during the past three years.

Titled “From American Campuses to ISIS Camps: How Hundreds of Saudis Joined ISIS in the U.S.,” the report — released June 1 by the Washington-D.C.-based think tank, The Institute for Gulf Affairs (IGA) — provides details of the flow of students leaving American institutions of higher learning to fight in the Middle East.

According to a 2016 working paper produced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Saudi Arabia is the second-largest source of ISIS fighters from Muslim-majority countries, with an estimated 2,500. If the IGA report is accurate, a whopping 16% of these fighters were in the U.S. when they joined ISIS.

An equally disturbing finding of the report is that the Saudi government, which has been monitoring its nationals in the U.S., is fully aware that many of their own citizens are joining ISIS and not only has done little to stop them, but has kept information about the subject from American authorities.

This finding completely contradicts the 2014 State Department assertion that “Saudi Arabia has continued to cooperate with the United States to prevent acts of terrorism … through information exchange agreements with the United States.”

If the New York Times is correct, it looks like Akayed Ullah, the Bangladeshi jihadist whose bomb detonated prematurely at the Port Authority Bus Terminal near Times Square during the morning rush hour, is going to be charged with terrorism crimes in civilian federal court. He’ll be prosecuted by my former office, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan. The SDNY will be working the Joint Terrorism Task Force (mainly the FBI and the NYPD), just as these law-enforcement agencies are working together in the case of Saifullo Saipov, the West Side Highway jihadist who killed eight people and wounded a dozen others by ramming his rental truck into them a few weeks back.

Ultimately, this may be the right way to handle the case. But I do not understand the rush to bring Ullah into federal court.

Having been wounded by his improvised explosive device (likened to a pipe bomb, perhaps hidden in a vest), Ullah was taken into custody immediately after attempting the attack, a failed bombing in which a few people (other than Ullah) appear to have suffered minor injuries but, fortunately, no one was killed. He was no doubt grabbed by police from the NYPD and the Port Authority, with the feds coming in after the fact. Ullah apparently talked right after the attack, but it is not known (at least by me) whether he was read Miranda warnings. (I am betting he was not, since the “exigent circumstances” exception to Miranda would have permitted police to ask him whether there were any other explosives, and other questions along those lines, without advising him of his rights.)

Nevertheless, if he is going to be processed as a civilian defendant, police must have read him his rights in fairly short order — including his right not to speak to the police and to have an attorney present (i.e., to tell him not to say anything), on taxpayers’ dime, during any questioning. He will be presented in court, within a day or so, before a magistrate-judge on a complaint outlining the charges and probable cause supporting his arrest. He will be assigned counsel, and the court will advise him that he need not speak to government agents and probably should not say anything more if he has spoken to them already.

This is a foolish way to proceed.

A would-be Muslim suicide bomber’s attempt to kill morning rush hour commuters in Manhattan yesterday is throwing much-needed light on our disastrous “chain migration” immigration system that admits foreigners based merely on family connections.

Around 7:20 Monday morning what police called “an improvised, low-tech” pipe-bomb style device detonated prematurely while strapped to the body of jihadist immigrant and Brooklyn resident Akayed Ullah, 27, in a subway passageway between Times Square and the Port Authority, a massive bus terminal, in Manhattan. Another unexploded device was found on his person. As a result of the wardrobe malfunction, the bungling would-be bomber suffered serious burns and innocent lives were saved. Three or possibly four bystanders were injured but their wounds were not deemed life-threatening.

In 2011 Ullah lawfully moved to the United States from Bangladesh with an F-43 family immigrant visa, according to the White House. About 70 percent of new immigration to the U.S. is chain migration.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held up the attacker as a beneficiary of the chain migration system President Trump wants to get rid of. The Trump administration would reverse the systemic discrimination against well-rounded would-be immigrants who speak English. Trump wants the immigration system to emphasize merit and employability, as opposed to familial relationships.

After “diversity visa lottery” winner Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan seven years ago, killed eight people in a Manhattan park on Halloween, the Trump administration also unveiled plans to terminate games of chance as a method for selecting future Americans.

What do you get when you have an individual who was acquainted with the founders of al-Qaeda and recruited into a terrorist cell by one of them; who was sentenced to death for the murder of an Egyptian policeman; who is consistently leveling threats at world leaders; and who is currently living in the United States? The answer can be nothing short of ‘Trouble.’ The individual in question is Muslim Brotherhood operative and Chairman of the March for Justice, Nidal Sakr. Recently, Sakr took to social media to call for the execution of President Trump. He is yet to be punished for his alleged murder. Will he be punished for this crime?

On October 19th, from a location in Huntington Beach, California, Nidal Mohamed Sakr issued the following in a tweet about Donald Trump: “GET RID OF SOB. IMPEACH OR ELSE!!!!!” The next day, Sakr reiterated his threat with even more obscenity. He tweeted, “GET RID OF THE MF. IMPEACH OR ELSE!!!!!” Ten days later, on October 30th, Sakr dropped the warning and outright called for the death of President Trump. He tweeted, “EXECUTE SOB TRAITOR Donald Trump.” And the same day, he tweeted, “Donald Trump, You Are TOAST… I GUARANTEE IT.”

To issue a threat against the President of the United States is a federal crime. As stated in US Code Title 18, Section 871: “Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President… or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President… shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

This was not the first time that Sakr has used threatening language against the President. In September, he wrote on Facebook: “FACTS ARE FACTS. Patriotic Americans Will Keep After SOB Donald Trump Until We Nail His ass. YOU WATCH!!” On innumerable occasions, Sakr has stated that Trump must be “sacked.” In August, he said the same for Trump’s family. He posted on his Facebook page, “Ivanka Trump, RUSSIAN BACKDOOR SAUDI/UAE/Israeli PRETTY BOY Jared Kushner MUST ALL BE SACKED. SACK’M ALL.”

In July, Sakr referred to Trump as an “enemy of God” and, in February, he warned Trump, “U come to ISLAM Or ISLAM WILL COME TO YOU.”

Of course, Sakr was furious, when President Trump said the United States was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. For over two decades, US Presidents would sign waivers of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which mandated that the US Embassy in Israel would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Sakr took to Facebook and Twitter and took out his rage on both Israel and the United States.

The Islamic State has once again zeroed in on devastating wildfires in California in a section of their weekly al-Naba newsletter usually dedicated to news briefs collected from around ISIS territories.

Several Santa Ana wind-whipped fires have raced through Southern California from San Diego to Ventura counties over the past week. Four thousand firefighters are trying to gain control of the Thomas Fire, the largest blaze that has chewed through 173,000 acres since Dec. 4, destroyed more than 750 structures and is only 15 percent contained; new mandatory evacuations were ordered this morning for portions of eastern coastal Santa Barbara County. The cause of that blaze and others, including the Creek Fire east of Sylmar that is now 90 percent contained after destroying 60 homes, remains under investigation.

Authorities said a 70-year-old woman from Santa Paula died in a car crash while fleeing the Thomas Fire.

The ISIS article noted that “a rapid fire destroyed forests and hundreds of houses in and around Ventura in the state of California” and “the fire broke out in the evening at the foot of the hills near the city” before being “driven swiftly by the wind toward the northwest.”

ISIS noted blazes that were still out of control as well as California’s governor declaring a state of emergency to make available “funds and resources needed to assist more than 1,000 people.” They also included the woman’s death along the evacuation route.

ISIS, which has repeatedly encouraged followers to try arson as a terror tactic, did not take credit for starting any of the blazes.

This past January, ISIS’ Rumiyah magazine — which is published in multiple languages including English — stressed to would-be jihadists that “incendiary attacks have played a significant role in modern and guerrilla warfare, as well as in ‘lone wolf’ terrorism,” claiming a November fire at a furniture factory in Losino-Petrovsky, Russia, and highlighting scores of wildfires around Israel that month as incidents that “demonstrated the lethality of such an effortless operation.”

Suggested target locations for arson attacks, the magazine stated, “include houses and apartment buildings, forest areas adjacent to residential areas, factories that produce cars, furniture, clothing, flammable substances, etc., gas stations, hospitals, bars, dance clubs, night clubs, banks, car showrooms, schools, universities, as well as churches, Rafidi [Shiite] temples, and so forth. The options are vast, leaving no excuse for delay.”

The Islamic State notably highlighted an Australian New Year’s Eve terror plot in their weekly newsletter, noting that the would-be attacker would have caused “catastrophic” casualties in “one of the most important centers where Christians meet” to ring in the holiday.

The focus on New Year’s by an official ISIS publication follows several Christmas threats circulated by ISIS supporters.

Ali Khalif Shire Ali, 20, of Werribee was arrested Nov. 27 in southwest Melbourne and charged with preparing to commit a terrorist attack and gathering documents to facilitate a terrorist act.

According to police, the Australian citizen and computer company employee started planning an attack back in March and was arrested when he moved to the stage of face-to-face meetings about acquiring a gun. His intended target was reportedly Melbourne’s Federation Square when it would be packed with New Year’s Eve revelers.

Police said he was using attack instructional guides produced by al-Qaeda. He had been under scrutiny by counter-terrorism officials for at least two years, though did not attend a specific mosque.

“This is a person who would become particularly energized, for a lack of a better word, when overseas events occurred and would express a great deal of interest in committing an attack himself,” Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said. “…This is a person who’s expressed an intention to try and kill as many people as he could through shooting them in the Federation Square area on New Year’s Eve. Horrendous.”

Just a few days after his arrest, in ISIS’ weekly al-Naba newsletter, the Aussie arrest was included in the terror group’s news briefs — a section where they’ve previously updated ISIS followers on the Las Vegas mass shooting and California wildfires.

The ISIS article noted that “the young man” was planning “to carry out a major attack on a gathering of Christian communities to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Melbourne.” CONTINUE AT SITE