Tag Archives: fbi

The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country

by AlbaSpinelli Posted on August 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Nearly one-third of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States, a new study finds. Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, has released the first quantitative analysis of public mass shootings around the world between 1966 through 2012. Unsurprisingly, the United States came out on top—essentially in a league of its own.


What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?


16 Charts That Show the Shocking Cost of Gun Violence in America


This Is What It’s Like to Survive a Gunshot


Methodology: the Data Behind Our Investigation


Watch: The Total Cost of Gun Violenceâ&#128;&#148;in 90 Seconds

Over those five decades, the United States had 90 public mass shootings, defined as shootings that killed four or more victims. Of the 170 other countries examined in the study, only four even made it to double-digits: The Philippines had 18 public mass shootings, followed by Russia with 15, Yemen with 11, and France with 10.

Mass shooters in the United States stood out from those in other countries in a few ways. Compared with attackers abroad, Americans were more than three times as likely to use multiple weapons, and they tended to target schools, factories, and office buildings. (Shooters in other countries were more likely to strike at military bases and checkpoints.) But shootings in the United States often killed fewer people than attacks overseas: On average, 6.9 victims died in each mass shooting incident on American soil, compared with 8.8 victims for each shooting in other countries. That may be because American police officers have been trained to respond more quickly to these situations and are often heavily armed, Lankford suggests.

The study drew largely on data from the New York City Police Department and the FBI. It did not consider gang-related or drive-by shootings, as well as hostage-taking incidents, robberies, and shootings in domestic settings.

Lankford suggests America’s high rate of public mass shootings is connected with the number of guns circulating in the country. “A nation’s civilian firearm ownership rate is the strongest predictor of its number of public mass shooters,” he explained in a statement, noting that the United States, Yemen, Switzerland, Finland, and Serbia, which are among the top 15 countries for mass shooters per capita, also rank in the top five countries for firearms per capita, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey.

But the number of guns in circulation might be less important than ease of access to them. As my colleague Mark Follman has reported, most mass shooters in the United States obtained their weapons legally.

For more of Mother Jones’ reporting on guns in America, see all of our latest coverage here, and our award-winning special reports.

Excerpt from: 

The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country

Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

by HassanD97urycmei Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Bob Somerby on emailgate:

Yesterday, Candidate Clinton said it again, during a press avail:

“No matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are stubborn. What I did was legally permitted, number one, first and foremost, OK?”

It certainly wasn’t OK on today’s Morning Joe! In that program’s opening segment, everyone said that statement was false—without naming the law or regulation Clinton had violated.

Meanwhile, there’s that passage from the New York Times’ front page, two Sundays ago:

“When she took office in 2009, with ever more people doing government business through email, the State Department allowed the use of home computers as long as they were secure…There appears to have been no prohibition on the exclusive use of a private server.”

We never assume the Times is right concerning such matters. But as is always the case in these matters, the heated discussion of “emailgate” begs for clarification—a service the national press corps is rarely equipped to provide.

I’m perfectly willing to believe that Clinton’s use of a private server was unwise. It probably was, something that I think even she’s acknowledged. And Clinton has certainly provided some dodgy answers about what she did, which naturally raises suspicions that she might have something to hide. This kind of chary parsing on her part may be due to nothing more than her longstanding distrust of the press, but that only makes it understandable, not sensible.

That said, even when I do my best to take off my tribal hat and look at this affair dispassionately, I just don’t see anything:

Using a private server was allowed by the State Department when Clinton started doing it.
Removing personal emails before turning over official emails appears to be pretty standard practice.
None of the emails examined so far has contained anything that was classified at the time it was sent.
There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that Clinton used a private server for any nefarious purpose. Maybe she did. But if you want to make this case, you have make it based on more than just timeworn malice toward all things Clinton.

What am I missing? I don’t begrudge the press covering emailgate. Republicans are all over it, which makes it a newsworthy issue whether we like it or not. And there has been an inspector general’s investigation, as well as an ongoing FBI investigation. That makes it newsworthy too.

But I still want to know: what exactly is being investigated at this point? If you just want to argue that Clinton showed bad judgment, then go to town. That’s a legitimate knock on a presidential candidate. But actual malfeasance? Where is it?

Credit:

Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

Huckabee Says He’d Consider Using Federal Troops to Stop Abortions

by Elden8028teuc Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told supporters in Iowa on Thursday that if he were elected president he would consider using the FBI or National Guard to end abortion by force. Per the Topeka Capital-Journal:

“I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this,” Huckabee said at the event, where a Topeka Capital-Journal correspondent was present.

At his next stop, in Rockwell City, Huckabee answered follow-up questions from the correspondent, saying: “All American citizens should be protected.”

Asked by another reporter how he would stop abortion, and whether this would mean using the FBI or federal forces to accomplish this, Huckabee replied: “We’ll see if I get to be president.”

That’s crazy. The right to an abortion has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Huckabee is saying he might simply disregard the judicial branch and stop the practice unilaterally—that is, he’d remove the checks from “checks and balances.” It’s not the first time he’s proposed a constitutional crisis as an antidote to things he doesn’t like. Huckabee has also said states should practice civil disobedience by ignoring the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.

And to think, we’re still nearly a week away from the first primary debate.

See the original article here:  

Huckabee Says He’d Consider Using Federal Troops to Stop Abortions

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Huckabee Says He’d Consider Using Federal Troops to Stop Abortions

Anti-Abortion Hackers Claim to Have Stolen Data That Could Take Down Planned Parenthood

by MaurineDillion4 Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Update, July 27, 4:45 p.m. EST: Planned Parenthood released a statement confirming it has notified the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate the cyber attack. “Today Planned Parenthood has notified the Department of Justice and separately the FBI that extremists who oppose Planned Parenthood’s mission and services have launched an attack on our information systems, and have called on the world’s most sophisticated hackers to assist them in breaching our systems and threatening the privacy and safety of our staff members,” Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said. “We are working with top leaders in this field to manage these attacks. We treat matters of safety and security with the utmost importance, and are taking every measure possible to mitigate these criminal efforts to undermine our mission and services.”

A hacker group calling itself 3301 is claiming to have penetrated Planned Parenthood’s databases and is threatening to release the personal information of employees working for the non-profit organization, along with other sensitive data. The Daily Dot spoke to one of the alleged hackers, who denounced Planned Parenthood as an “atrocious monstrosity.” A senior Planned Parenthood executive tells Mother Jones that the group is investigating the alleged hack.

“Obviously what Planned Parenthood does is a very ominous practice,” the alleged hacker, going by the identity “E,” said. “It’ll be interesting to see what surfaces when Planned Parenthood is stripped naked and exposed to the public.”

The group—whose name, according to The Daily Dot, appears to be a nod to “a famous group of secretive cryptographers known as Cicada 3301″—claims it will release the names and addresses of employees “soon.”

The potential breach comes amid intense controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood after an anti-abortion group released hidden-camera footage appearing to show top Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses. Though the footage was heavily edited, pro-choice groups fear the ramifications that could potentially follow from the sting operation. A slew of anti-abortion politicians, including Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have used the videos to denounce the organization and justify defunding it.

“We’ve seen the claims around attempts to access our systems,” Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said in a statement to Mother Jones. “We take security very seriously and are investigating. It’s unsurprising that those opposed to safe and legal abortion are participating in this campaign of harassment against us and our patients, and claiming to stoop to this new low.”

More:  

Anti-Abortion Hackers Claim to Have Stolen Data That Could Take Down Planned Parenthood

Posted in alo, Anchor, Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Anti-Abortion Hackers Claim to Have Stolen Data That Could Take Down Planned Parenthood

Ex-Congressman Michael Grimm Gets Eight Months in Prison for Tax Crimes

by VallieCxe2495233 Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), the Staten Islander best known for threatening on-camera to “break” a reporter “in half—like a boy,” has been sentenced by a federal judge to eight months in prison for tax evasion.

The sentencing, by US District Judge Pamela Chen, comes seven months after Grimm pleaded guilty to his role in filing a false tax return. Grimm had been indicted in April 2014 on 20 counts related to accounting practices at Healthalicious, a Manhattan restaurant he owned before his time in Congress. The restaurant’s co-owner, Bennett Orfaly, has previously been accused of having ties to a convicted Gambino family mobster.

Despite his indictment, last year, Grimm ran for reelection to his third term in Congress—and won. It was not until December 30—seven days after entering his guilty plea—that he announced his intentions to resign his seat.

Before Grimm was the target of an investigation by the FBI, he served for two decades as one of its agents. It was during this time that Grimm reportedly pulled a gun in a Queens nightclub, and, after a bouncer ejected him, stormed the nightclub with another FBI agent and members of the NYPD. “I’m a fucking F.B.I. agent,” Grimm reportedly said. “Ain’t nobody gonna threaten me.”

Read More: 

Ex-Congressman Michael Grimm Gets Eight Months in Prison for Tax Crimes

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Hagen, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ex-Congressman Michael Grimm Gets Eight Months in Prison for Tax Crimes

Woman Alleges Dennis Hastert Sexually Abused Her Brother

by RobertaEbersbac Posted on June 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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

On Friday, an Illinois woman alleged in an interview with ABC News that Dennis Hastert sexually abused her late brother while the former House speaker worked as a teacher and wrestling coach at her brother’s high school.

Jolene Reinboldt, who contacted ABC and other news outlets with the same allegations nearly ten years ago, said she first learned about the abuse when her brother, Steve, revealed he was gay eight years after graduating high school in Yorkville, Illinois.

“I asked him, when was your first same sex experience,” she said in the interview. “He just looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert.’ I was stunned.”

Jolene said when she asked why he never told authorities about the abuse, Steve responded, “Who is ever going to believe me?” Steve passed away in 1999 of AIDS.

Last week, Hastert was indicted on federal charges for lying to the FBI and trying to conceal secret payments to cover up “past misconduct.” Soon after, the Los Angeles Times reported the misconduct was “about sex” and large payments to a former male student, identified only as Individual A, to stay silent about the alleged abuse.

Jolene said FBI officials showed up at her house two weeks ago to inform her of Hastert’s imminent indictment and to ask her about Steve.

Friday’s interview marks the first time a possible victim has been publicly named.

Watch the interview below:

ABC News Videos | ABC Entertainment News

Follow this link: 

Woman Alleges Dennis Hastert Sexually Abused Her Brother

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Woman Alleges Dennis Hastert Sexually Abused Her Brother

The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You

by MariZssppgvc Posted on May 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Last week, Jeb Bush, the all-but-announced GOP presidential candidate, stirred up a fuss when he privately told a group of Manhattan financiers that his top adviser on US-Israeli policy is George W. Bush. Given that Jeb has tried mightily to distance himself from his brother, whose administration used false assertions to launch the still highly unpopular Iraq War, this touting of W.—even at a behind-closed-doors session of Republican donors—seemed odd. But perhaps more noteworthy is that Jeb Bush has embraced much of his brother’s White House foreign policy team. In February, the Jeb Bush campaign released a list of 21 foreign policy advisers; 17 of them served in the George W. Bush administration. And one name stood out: Paul Wolfowitz, a top policy architect of the Iraq war—for the prospect of Wolfowitz whispering into Jeb’s ear ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who yearns for a rational national security policy.

Wolfowitz, who was deputy defense secretary under George W. Bush, was a prominent neocon cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. He was also the top conspiracy theorist in the Bush-Cheney crowd. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in our our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Wolfowitz, prior to the Iraq War, was a champion of a bizarre theory promoted by an eccentric academic named Laurie Mylroie: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, not Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda, was responsible for most of the world’s anti-United States terrorism.

Continue Reading »

Read this article – 

The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You

Nude Parades, "Retard Olympics," And Other Twisted Prison Guard Games

by JulianE23bfftk Posted on March 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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

The San Francisco sheriff’s office is asking the Department of Justice to investigate allegations that officials at the county jail forced inmates to fight for hamburgers and other rewards during gladiator-style matches. Speaking at a press conference Thursday, city public defender Jeff Adachi accused four sheriff’s deputies of twice pairing off a 150-pound inmate against a 350-pound inmate and betting on the outcomes. “I can only describe this as an outrageously sadistic scenario that sounds like it’s out of Game of Thrones,” he said.

The smaller inmate claimed one of the deputies threatened him with violence if he didn’t fight. “He told me he was gonna mace me and cuff me if I didn’t…comply with what he wanted,” Ricardo Palikiko Garcia said in a statement, adding that three weeks later, he still has bruises on his back and suspects he fractured a rib.

However twisted this case may be, it’s not an isolated incident. Some other examples of prison guards being accused of organizing gladiator-style fights and other humiliating games for prisoners:

Human cockfights: In 1996, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times exposed how guards at California’s Corcoran State Prison, paired rival inmates “like roosters in a cockfight, complete with spectators and wagering.” Officers also allegedly organized a ritual known as “gladiator day” in which inmates in the most violent unit were sent to brawl in an empty yard, cheered on by an official who served as an announcer. Guards would break up some fights by firing gas guns that discharged wood blocks or, if that didn’t work, by firing a rifle. The FBI investigated after a 25-year-old was killed during one such shooting. In 2000, eight prison guards accused of orchestrating the matches were acquitted of federal civil rights abuses by a grand jury.

Out of Solitary: In August 2012, a federal civil lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven inmates at a St. Louis, Missouri, jail who said they were forced by guards to fight and to punish each other, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Thirty more inmates joined the lawsuit in 2013, saying they were also required to fight. At least one attack was captured on video. Daniel Brown, the attorney representing the inmates, said prisoners were even taken out of solitary confinement to brawl. “The guards were actually taking inmates out of the cells, placing them in cells with other inmates, and forcing them to fight each other,” he told a St. Louis radio station.

“Retard Olympics”: In 2013, three corrections officers at a prison in York County, Pennsylvania, were accused of organizing competitions dubbed the “Retard Olympics,” in which a prisoner with bipolar disorder and another inmate were forced to do stunts like drinking a gallon of milk in an hour, as well as water mixed with pepper spray foam. Other challenges included eating a spoonful of cinnamon and snorting a line of spicy vegetable powder, as well as licking a guard’s boots. The guards denied any wrongdoing and described the allegations as “fabrications.” York County paid a $40,000 settlement to avoid going to court.

Nude Lines: A class-action lawsuit filed March 19 on behalf of hundreds of Illinois inmates alleges that more than 230 officials from a state corrections unit called Orange Crush sexually abused and beat inmates during “shakedowns” last year. During a shakedown in April 2014, officials allegedly forced inmates to take off their clothes and stand in line with their backs at 90-degree angles so each person’s genitals rubbed against the behind of whomever was in front of him. (Orange Crush referred to this position as “Nuts to Butts”). They were told to walk like this to the gym and were allegedly beaten with batons if they failed to follow orders.

Original article: 

Nude Parades, "Retard Olympics," And Other Twisted Prison Guard Games

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Nude Parades, "Retard Olympics," And Other Twisted Prison Guard Games

A Zombie From the 90s Makes the Case For Demanding Strong Encryption

by NOQJulieta Posted on March 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Companies like Apple and Google have announced recently that they will start providing their customers with encryption that even Apple and Google don’t have the keys for. This means that even if law enforcement officers get a subpoena for data held by the companies, it won’t do any good. They couldn’t turn over decrypted data even if they wanted to.

This has led to calls from the FBI and elsewhere to provide “backdoors” of some kind for use by law enforcement. This would be a kind of master key available only under court order. But security experts argue that this makes encryption fundamentally useless. If you deliberately build in a weakness, you simply can never guarantee that it won’t be exploited by hackers. Encryption is either secure or it’s not, full stop.

Over at The Switch, Craig Timberg provides an interesting recent example of this. Back in the 90s, we were fighting this same fight, and one temporary result was the government’s mandate that only a weak form of encryption could be exported outside the U.S. This mandate didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough to get incorporated into quite a few products. Still, that was 20 years ago. What harm could it be doing today?

The weaker encryption got baked into widely used software that proliferated around the world and back into the United States, apparently unnoticed until this year.

Researchers discovered in recent weeks that they could force browsers to use the old export-grade encryption then crack it over the course of just a few hours. Once cracked, hackers could steal passwords and other personal information and potentially launch a broader attack on the Web sites themselves by taking over elements on a page, such as a Facebook “Like” button.

….The existence of the problem with export-grade encryption amazed the researchers, who have dubbed the flaw “FREAK” for Factoring attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys….Nadia Heninger, a University of Pennsylvania cryptographer, said, “This is basically a zombie from the ‘90s… I don’t think anybody really realized anybody was still supporting these export suites.”

For vulnerable sites, Heninger found that she could crack the export-grade encryption key in about seven hours, using computers on Amazon Web services….More than one third of encrypted Web sites — including those bearing the “lock” icon that signifies a connection secured by SSL technology — proved vulnerable to attack in recent tests conducted by University of Michigan researchers J. Alex Halderman and Zakir Durumeric. The list includes news organizations, retailers and financial services sites such as americanexpress.com. Of the 14 million Web sites worldwide that offer encryption, more than 5 million remained vulnerable as of Tuesday morning, Halderman said.

This is an object lesson in deliberately building vulnerabilities into encryption technology. Maybe you think you’ve done it perfectly. Maybe you think nobody but the proper authorities can ever exploit the vulnerability. But the chances are good that you’re wrong. In the case of FREAK, we were wrong for nearly 20 years before we figured out what was going on. There’s no telling how long we might be wrong if we deliberately do this again.

More:

A Zombie From the 90s Makes the Case For Demanding Strong Encryption

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Zombie From the 90s Makes the Case For Demanding Strong Encryption

Barrett Brown Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison

by MohamedPadgett Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Today, Barrett Brown, a journalist and activist accused of working with Anonymous, was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison and fined $890,000. Brown has been in custody since September 2012, when he was arrested for threatening an FBI agent on YouTube. Additional charges followed, including allegedly hindering the arrest of Jeremy Hammond—who was convicted in 2013 of hacking the intelligence firm Statfor—and trafficking in stolen credit card information after he posted a link to the hacked Stratfor files. The original slate of charges against Brown could have resulted in more than 100 years in prison.

Many of the original charges against Brown were dropped. Today’s sentencing followed his pleading guilty to obstructing Hammond’s arrest and hiding a laptop during an FBI search of his mother’s home. He will likely spend somewhere between one and three years behind bars due to time served and a potential supervised release.

Brown’s case spawned a campaign to free him that focused on the First Amendment issues raised by the feds’ aggressive prosecution. As Kevin Drum wrote about the case in 2013, “This is almost a textbook case of prosecutorial overreach…The government considers him a thorn in their side and wants to send a message to anyone else planning to follow in Brown’s footsteps. That just ain’t right.”

Brown addressed these issues in the statement he made prior to his sentencing this morning. “This is not the rule of law, Your Honor,” Brown said, “it is the rule of Law Enforcement, and it is very dangerous.”

See the original post: 

Barrett Brown Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Barrett Brown Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison