Author Archives: WalterHua9800982

Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?

by WalterHua9800982 Posted on December 14, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With the Washington Post‘s bombshell report that the CIA has assessed the Russian hacking of Democratic targets was done as part of a Kremlin operation to help Donald Trump win the election, here’s an intriguing question: has Russian intelligence spied on the president-elect and, if so, what private information has it collected on him? A counterintelligence veteran of a Western spy service in October told Mother Jones that he had uncovered information—and had sent it to the FBI—indicating Russian intelligence had mounted a years-long operation to cultivate or co-opt Trump and that this project included surveillance that gathered compromising material on the celebrity mogul. Yet there have been no indications from the FBI whether it has investigated this lead. Still, several intelligence professionals say that Trump would have indeed been a top priority for Russian intelligence surveillance—especially when he was in Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time.

To present the contest in the Russian capital, Trump, who had long tried to do real estate deals in Russia, had teamed up with Aras Agalarov, a billionaire oligarch close to Vladimir Putin (whose son is a popular pop singer). The glitzy event, which included a swanky after-party, drew various Russian notables, including a member of Putin’s inner circle and an alleged Russian mobster. Trump later boasted that he had mingled with “almost all of the oligarchs.” Trump had hoped that Putin would attend the pageant—tweeting months earlier, “if so, will he become my new best friend?”—but the Russian leader was a no-show.

During Trump’s stay in Moscow, US intelligence experts note, he would have been a natural and obvious target for Russian intelligence. At the time, Trump was a prominent American, an international businessman, and a celebrity. He was also deeply involved in US politics. He had almost run for president in 2000 and nearly did so again in 2012, and he had been a leading foe of President Barack Obama, having pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama had been born in Kenya.

A former high-ranking CIA official, who asked not to be identified, says in an email,

It is nearly certain that Russian intelligence would have done some sort of surveillance on him. Could have been low-key physical surveillance (following etc) or deeper surveillance, such as video/audio of hotel room and monitoring of electronics (your communications while in Moscow is on their network).

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out, “It’s safe to assume that high-profile public figures and billionaires attract the attention of the Russian security services, including bugging any hotel rooms.” And Malcolm Nance, a terrorism and intelligence expert and author of The Plot To Hack America, says that the Russian version of the National Security Agency, the Spetssvyaz, manages specialized technical teams that would have been all over Trump:

These communications intercept units are designated for high-importance personages of political and diplomatic standing, such as Donald Trump. These units would’ve employed the most advanced intelligence collection systems in the nation. Anything short of a highly encrypted communications suite using military-grade technology would be simple for Russian intelligence to exploit. Donald Trump’s mobile phone would be among the easiest to exploit. His mobile phone, Bluetooth, and laptops were most likely not shielded and could have been intercepted and exploited any number of ways. This means virtually everything he said, everything he texted, everything he wrote, and every communication he had in the electronic spectrum would be in the possession of Russian intelligence then and now. His guest rooms in Moscow could have had virtually undetectable voice and video communications intercept devices planted in such a way that nothing could be done by Trump in private and would defy detection. The Spetssvyaz would also employ Russian military intelligence subunits as well as Federal Security Service (FSB) surveillance units which could follow him anywhere that he goes with seemingly normal people and detect, document, and provide a record of anything and anyone he met.

Trump could have attempted to take counter-measures to defeat any surveillance. “About the only way to ensure against electronic surveillance,” the former CIA official says, “is to use a burner phone—one you’re not going to use again—stay off your normal personal email (use a one-time address you will not use again), and keep communications on that one to routine, non-sensitive messages… That was my practice in Moscow…during which all I sent were innocuous text messages on a phone I never used again.” And Lewis remarks, “If you used a mobile phone with an encrypted app and kept that phone in your possession for the entire trip, you could make it harder for them. A lot of people use Signal or Telegram for encrypted texting, but the Russians could still have many ways around this when you are in Moscow.”

Mother Jones asked Trump—through his transition team, his spokeswoman, and his lawyer—what he did to secure his communications and to thwart surveillance during his Moscow trip. Did he use secured phones and text services? Did he sweep his hotel room for surveillance devices? Trump’s representatives did not respond. Nor did the spokeswoman for Miss Universe when presented with a similar set of questions.

While he was in Moscow, Trump did continue his normal practice of tweeting often. Here are several tweets he sent out:

According to the Trump Twitter Archive, all the tweets Trump zapped out from Moscow came from an Android phone. A 2016 analysis found that Trump’s personal tweets—as opposed to those written by staffers on his account—were generated by an Android phone. (His staff-composed tweets came from an iPhone.)

The intelligence experts agree: Trump would have been in the sights of Russian intelligence. But what might Moscow’s spies have found? There is no telling. In the famous Access Hollywood video, Trump boasted of committing lewd (and illegal) action. Any intelligence operative would be delighted to catch Trump in such an act. Nance speculates:”That some of this would be salacious or information he would not want exposed to the public is without question. This unknown to the US intelligence community makes Donald Trump not just a national security threat but potentially a victim of blackmail by our oppositions intelligence agencies.” Nance also points out that if Russian intelligence penetrated Trump’s phone when he was in Moscow, its officers could have continued to intercept Trump’s conversations once he was back in the United States.

During the campaign, Trump and his supporters railed about Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of her private email server and claimed she had jeopardized US secrets. Her actions—while never shown to have led to any compromise of classified information—were troubling. A related but different set of issues faces Trump. Did he fail to take precautions that would prevent the Russians from gaining access to his private personal and professional information? If so, might the Russians possess secret information on the next president of the United States? Should that be true, Nance adds, it could pose “a monumental potential intelligence crisis never before seen in American history.”

This article: 

Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?

Posted in ATTRA, Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?

Big Labor has an identity crisis, and its name is Dakota Access

by WalterHua9800982 Posted on September 28, 2016

A growing rift has split the country’s biggest union federation, the AFL-CIO. Many labor activists and union members are outraged that Richard Trumka, the federation’s president, threw the AFL-CIO’s support behind the Dakota Access pipeline project earlier this month.

The AFL-CIO’s statement backing the pipeline was announced a week after the Obama administration put construction on hold. Trumka acknowledged “places of significance to Native Americans” but argued that the more than “4,500 high-quality, family supporting jobs” attached to the pipeline trumped environmental and other considerations.

That move rankled many in the AFL-CIO’s more progressive wing, highlighting strains within the federation of 56 unions representing 12 million workers. Recent tensions within the AFL-CIO have deepened a long-running divide between a more conservative, largely white, jobs-first faction and progressive union members who are friendly to environmental concerns and count more people of color among their ranks.

Grist interviewed five staffers at the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. Trumka’s public support for the pipeline caught these senior-level and mid-level staffers by surprise, they told Grist — especially because he had recently taken progressive positions on on Black Lives Matter, immigration, and criminal justice.

A call to Trumka’s office was not returned. The federation’s policy director, Damon Silvers, who is said to have helped write the statement, also did not respond to an interview request.

Union opponents of the pipeline project and their advocates quickly responded on social media with satire. One post on Twitter likened Trumka’s position to helping the wrong side in Star Wars.

Other frustrated union members and staffers placed calls to Climate Workers, an organization of union workers focused on climate justice, to vent. Brooke Anderson, an organizer at the group, says she fielded dozens of calls from members upset about the AFL-CIO’s position.

For those members, Anderson says, working in a federation means more than collecting a wage — it means being part of a broad movement for justice. Anderson says she thought that Trumka’s statement undermined efforts by groups like hers to protect the environment and jobs.

Trumka’s statement came out the day after one branch of the federation, the Building and Construction Trades, sent a private letter to Trumka complaining about AFL-CIO unions that opposed the pipeline.

In the weeks before Trumka’s public statement, four of the federation’s major unions – the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), National Nurses United (NNU), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) – came out in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s battle against the pipeline project. All four are part of the so-called Bernie Unions, given their support of former Democratic Presidential candidate Sanders. The AFL-CIO endorsed Hillary Clinton in June, shortly before Sanders had conceded his candidacy, marking another fissure in the federation.

In a five-page letter to Trumka provided to Grist by union sources, Sean McGarvey, president of the Building Trades, argued that these four unions were partly to blame for Obama’s suspension of the pipeline. He wrote that union workers employed to build the pipeline have had “their lives placed on hold, their employment prospects upended and have been subjected to intimidation, vandalism, confrontation, and violence both on their job sites and in the surrounding community.”

The letter offers an anecdote to support these allegations. One unnamed worker was reportedly scared for his or her life by protestors “coming towards us.” The workers jumped in their cars and fled, according to the account, but there’s no mention of anyone getting hurt or even touched. (The Standing Rock Sioux Nation has called for protests to remain peaceful as the movement to stop the pipeline has grown.)

McGarvey blames unions opposed to the pipeline for hastening “a very real split within the labor movement at a time that, should their ceaseless rhetoric be taken seriously, even they suggest we can least afford it.”

Progressives within the labor movement describe the Building Trades as being whiter and more conservative than their counterparts. McGarvey’s letter contains what some of them consider dog-whistles. It mentions “outside agitators,” “environmental extremists,” and takes a jab at “theories of the 21st century labor movement.”

McGarvey declined an interview request from Grist, writing in an email that “[The letter] was an internal communication and we don’t comment on those!”

AFL-CIO union members who oppose the pipeline are now making their frustration public. A handful of labor activists picketed the AFL-CIO’s office in Washington, D.C., last week. And the Labor Coalition for Community Action, an alliance of groups representing women, people of color, and LGBT union workers within the AFL-CIO, released a statement in solidarity with those opposed to the pipeline.

“As organizations dedicated to elevating the struggles of our respective constituencies, we stand together to support our Native American kinfolk – one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised groups in our nation’s history – in their fight to protect their communities from further displacement and exploitation,” it says.

Although the statement makes no direct mention of the AFL-CIO’s position on the pipeline, nor of McGarvey’s letter, it calls on “the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.”

Anderson from Climate Workers, who is a rank-and-file member of the CWA, says the dispute over the pipeline represents a historic moment for the AFL-CIO. Rather than issue a statement and ignore the fallout, she says Trumka needs to participate in a crucial conversation with a wide variety of people about how the federation will balance race, labor, and the environment.

“Some of the questions [in that conversation include]: Whose land? Whose water? Whose lungs are going to suffer first? It’s communities of color and lower paid workers of color – and they’re also our brothers and sisters.”

Originally posted here:  

Big Labor has an identity crisis, and its name is Dakota Access

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Sterling, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Big Labor has an identity crisis, and its name is Dakota Access