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Attorney General Barr Speaks Uncomfortable Truths: Terrorism
It is refreshing to have the head of federal law enforcement clearly speak uncomfortable truths that are politically indelicate. Our good friends, the Saudis, sent us a group of their best and brightest with pro-jihadist, anti-American feelings strong enough to overcome any discretion in their social media habits. At the same time, the killer acted without the clear support of the other students, and the Saudi government recalled all the questionable officers, to be dealt with in their own military justice system.
The text of AG Barr’s remarks is posted on the Department of Justice website. This is where I would have left the event, yet the iPhone issue is not as AG Barr tells it. Bottom line: Barr wants an end to strong (virtually unbreakable) encryption for you and me. The only way to do what he claims he wants is to build the phone and every software system so they have “back doors” which every competent government and transnational criminal/terrorist group will swiftly acquire. This is what he meant by “data at rest” and “data in motion.”
It is not clear to me that Apple can decrypt the phone memory. If they could, it would be worthless. Apparently, an Israeli firm found a software or hardware attack system that successfully broke an earlier generation iPhone, running iOS 8.
Now, pair this recitation of the perennial FBI/DOJ line with the ugly news about the FBI Director and a newly appointed (by Chief Justice Roberts, a Bush the Second appointee) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court presiding judge. They are mutually in full cover-up mode. AG Barr is responsible for allowing Director Wray to spew the 15-page memo he submitted to the court. AG Barr is the man who should have objected to the appointment, by the FISA Court presiding judge, of an open and notorious Trump hater as the official reviewer of all “reforms.”
See PowerLine: “We now know: Mr. Wray Regrets:”
This past December 17 FISA Court Chief Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a four-page order taking notice of the egregious government misconduct committed in connection with the FISA warrants it approved on Carter Page. Like so many involved in the Russia hoax, Judge Collyer claimed only lately to have tumbled to the misconduct committed before her court, courtesy of the Department of Justice Inspector General report issued the previous week. I disparaged the four-page order and embedded a copy of it here. I further disparaged the order here. The whole thing reeks of Captain Renault’s profession of shock to discover gambling at Rick’s cafe in Casablanca as he pockets his winnings.
…I declared the FISA Court order a farce last month, but I was mistaken. Farce lacks the foul stench of this particular bit of theater.
See PowerLine: “We now know: The Kris Cross:”
David Kris served as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. He drew on his prestige as a former senior official in the Department of Justice to disparage Rep. Devin Nunes in his exposure of the FBI’s misconduct in the Russia haox and assure anyone who would listen to him that all was in order. He is an apologist for FBI misconduct who gives the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA misconduct the stupidly credulous reading that absolves the FBI of political bias in the matter.
Who better than Kris to serve as amicus curiae to the FISA court to help it assess the government’s response to Judge Collyer’s December 17 order. That is what new FISA court presiding judge James Baosberg did late yesterday afternoon in this order. As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not.
See PowerLine: “We now know: FISA Court must go:”
Kris’s appointment by the court is a bloody outrage. Consistent with my comment on Saturday, Rep. Nunes put it this way to Bartiromo: “The court must be trying to abolish itself.” The FISA Court has to go.
You can’t make this up! David Kris, a highly controversial former DOJ official, was just appointed by the FISA Court to oversee reforms to the FBI’s surveillance procedures. Zero credibility. THE SWAMP! @DevinNunes @MariaBartiromo @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2020
President Trump should not have been the one left to amplify what Representative Nunes said on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday show. It is on Attorney General Barr to engage the new presiding FISA Court judge, District Judge James E. Boasberg,* pointing out the obvious failure to run the most routine of conflict checks, something every first-year law school student learns as part of a basic legal ethics course. Failing immediate corrective action, firing the anti-Trump partisan lawyer, AG Barr must elevate the issue publicly to Chief Justice Roberts, in the name of protecting the public integrity of both the Article III court system and our national security, threatened by the misuse of the FISA process.
* How deep is the Swamp? See District Judge James E. Boasberg’s official biography [emphasis added]:
Published in GeneralJudge James E. “Jeb” Boasberg was appointed to the District Court in March 2011. Judge Boasberg is a native Washingtonian, having graduated from St. Albans School in 1981. He received a B.A., magna cum laude, in History in 1985 from Yale College, where he also played basketball. Judge Boasberg then received an M.St. in Modern European History from Oxford University in 1986 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990.
Judge Boasberg next served as a law clerk to Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following his clerkship, he was a litigation associate at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco from 1991 to 1994 and at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans in Washington from 1995 to 1996. In 1996 [during Clinton’s presidency] Judge Boasberg joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he served for 5½ years and specialized in homicide prosecutions.
In September 2002 [during Bush the Second’s presidency], Judge Boasberg became an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court, where he served in the Civil and Criminal Divisions and the Domestic Violence Branch until his appointment to the federal bench in 2011.
Judge Boasberg also serves on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts [a Bush the Second appointee] in May 2014 [so he was already implicated in the court’s abuse or negligence], he was named Presiding Judge of the FISC on January 1, 2020. He is currently the President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and the past Chair of the Governing Board of St. Albans School.
I’ve always thought we should distance ourselves from the Saudis.
Even further, we should disallow their “contributions” to US schools and organizations as their spread of Islam is dangerous. I say this because their version Islam is not that much different from the version of ISIS, the difference being the level of cruelty . . .
When terrorism is obviously involved, Apple should have a policy about their phones that all bets are off. Why should they want to protect the phones of a terrorist? I understand that getting compliance to remove passwords to get access to the phones should be set at a high bar. But to protect everyone and anyone? No.
With something like the FISA system? Maybe after that system is cleaned up and made accountable.
I agree, but I would agree more readily if it didn’t look like our intelligence agencies have gone rogue.
It is not as AG Barr tells it. I did not address this issue, but will. Bottom line: Barr wants an end to strong (virtually unbreakable) encryption for you and me. The only way to do what he claims he wants is to build the phone and every software system so they have “back doors” which every competent government and transnational criminal/terrorist group will swiftly acquire. This is what he meant by “data at rest” and “data in motion.”
It is not clear to me that Apple can decrypt the phone memory. If they could, it would be worthless. Apparently, an Israeli firm found a software or hardware attack system that successfully broke an earlier generation iPhone.
Now, pair this recitation of the perennial FBI/DOJ line with the ugly news about the FBI Director and a newly appointed (by Chief Justice Roberts) FISA Court judge. They are mutually in full cover-up mode. AG Barr is responsible for allowing Director Wray to spew the 10 page memo he submitted to the court. AG Barr is the man who should have objected to the appointment, by the FISA Court judge, of a open and notorious Trump hater as the official reviewer of all “reforms.”
See PowerLine: “WE NOW KNOW: MR. WRAY REGRETS:”
See PowerLine: “WE NOW KNOW: THE KRIS CROSS:”
I’m speechless. I’d love for you to write a post about how you see the future of our country, Clifford. It all looks so dark.
I’d like to see AG Barr enforce conflict of interest rules. I keep seeing the same corrupt Obama-bots involved in seditious activities over and over.
I’ll try smaller stuff first. Meanwhile, I’ve updated the post text.
We faced this problem during the Clinton Administration, when Clinton and his minion Algore were demanding pass keys and back doors be built into computer software and internet appliances. I opposed it then and I oppose it now. The government has done nothing but get more intrusive since then. No, just no.
As a general principle I reject any formulation that begins, “The government won’t allow you to have ‘X’ because someone might do ‘Y’ with it.”
That is not a healthy relationship to have with your representative government.
Excellent point. I vaguely recall that.
Encryption control is no different from gun control. They both only regulate what good guys can do. And they both enable abuse of power by our not-always-so-enlightened government.
I think Apple’s assertion it cannot hack their own phones is connected with their marketing the iPhone as secure. It seems as our devices get tighter security, it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to hack them.
Concur
Who watches the watchers?
The Federal intelligence and justice agencies have given a demonstration – not yet concluded – that they are a more present danger to our liberties than Ukraine or Russia, including corrupt and politicized use of secret courts and intercepted communications. Asking for legalized access to all citizens’ communications after this tragi-comedy is nothing but hubris, and will hopefully be rewarded appropriately. Whom the gods would destroy…
I’d like to know what is and isn’t disinformation from Russia. What are we supposed to believe? Kimberly Strassel in her new book says that we never investigated the origin of the Steele dossier.
In a possibly related story, “Deborah Franklin” has a good summary piece on Q at American Thinker.
I hope that was sarcasm. The FISA system is the accountability. How’s that working out for us?
First, Rosemary Collyer slaps the FBI’s hand but ignores the fact that fewer than 1% of FISA applications were turned down by her own court. That court is the institution for accountability in the process. Since there is no adversarial due process in the FISC, only the integrity of law enforcement agencies and the FISC judges themselves stands between American citizens and abuse of power. The Deep State embeds in the Executive Branch and the FISC judges like Collyer violated their oaths. Congress can pass whatever laws it wants. The oathbreakers are there until they retire, and they hire and manage their successors.
Then Collyer resigns. OK, maybe. But no, the guy who is tasked with cleaning up FISA just told the American people to [expletive] off and bow down to their real masters.
My sister has made mention to me of Q before. My operating rule is if something can be explained without resorting to a conspiracy, that is the likelier explanation. (Not that there shouldn’t be consequences for bad actors, there should be.) And I always have to remember “Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you.”
There’s another issue here, staring us in the face, but not acknowledged:
Last week there were several good articles pointing out that Trump’s destruction of Soleimani had ended a 40 year long fiction that Iran was not at war with the US, that led us to shrug off numerous killing of Americans with no effective retaliation, and eventually hand the ayatollahs hundreds of billions of dollars.
There’s another, even longer, fiction right here: That Saudi Arabia can promote and export the intolerant Wahhabi strain of Islam, and be a friend and ally of the United States. Over and over, that philosophy and those who promote it are found as the root cause in actual and attempted acts of terrorism. Rather than confront that cause, we’ve given the Saudis a pass, just as the Iranians. Instead we’ve encroached on the liberties of our citizens and parroted the piety of ‘religion of peace’, when at least the Wahhabi version is anything but. An appropriate act at this time is not to toss out just a few dubious Saudi military, and propose further infringements of our freedom, but rather to eject any Saudis in the US preaching Wahhabism, cut off the flow of Saudi money to religious and other establishments here, and let them know we will regard promotion and export of Wahhabism in other parts of the globe as support of terrorism.
Fracking and a president willing to call out obvious truths are giving us an opportunity to end another corrosive lie.
I suspect cracking an iPhone is well within the capabilities of the NSA.
This is a summary of what I currently understand with regard to disinformation from Russia.
2016 – Russia bought facebook ads, with a buy measured in the $100K. The total media (bought and earned media) for the presidential campaign was about $8- 10B. Meaning that Russian disinformation via advertising was less than 1/100,000 – so not much.
However, according to the Venona Project, most of the peace movement of the 1960’s (up to the present) was funded in part by the Soviets. See the books, The Sword and the Shield as well as The Venona Secrets.
So I suspect disinformation whenever the following are present.
Anti-war movement
Green Movement
PETA – remember, less than 1% of PETA donatives go toward actually treating animals ethically. PETA kills animals
The Democrat Party and news media (but I repeat myself)
Woke Culture.
For more reading please take a look at this blog post detailing Gramsician damage. Yes, it is 14 years old, but it is the best and most concise description of how ideological war is fought and how it permeates.
I would say generally about Barr that I get a feeling he is trying to get the DOJ/FBI to ‘right the ship’ themselves – or at least getting the good guys to step up and put the political guys in the back seat. He can’t get rid of everyone so I think he doesn’t slap people around as much as we would like. Also perhaps, as with the FISC, he’s letting them hang themselves and take the heat for what they have and have not been doing. If he says something it becomes all political. If he doesn’t say something, for instance in the appointment of Kris, then FISC and Roberts have to take the heat. I may be out on a limb here.
I like Barr a lot, but I’m very uncomfortable with his praise of Christopher Wray. I think Wray is not a good guy, and is more interested in creating the illusion “mistakes” being made by his FBI, than the blatant abuse of power. I wish I knew why Barr thinks so highly of him–or at least seems to. Maybe it keeps that line of communication open until Durham finishes his work.
Any procedure that can unlock a phone for law enforcement can be used to unlock a phone for Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the DNC, and other enemies of humanity.
Actually, they evidently needed to infiltrate Apple to insinuate a very serious security flaw shortly after Jobs died to get the job done. Apple found it and fixed it, but it took way longer (years) than it should have. Prior to that, Wikileaks had NSA correspondence where they were melting down over their iPhone problem.
The NSA puts their pants on one leg at a time, like everyone else.
I have an acquaintance who works for Wray and likes him a lot. I don’t know him well enough/see him often enough to ask if he still likes Wray. I feel like someone like Wray should be working much harder to assure the American people that the FBI is doing the right thing and cleaning up their act. This would be my top priority if I were head of the FBI. Again is Barr trying to get Wray and the FBI to step up to the plate since he doesn’t want to get rid of them all?
I agree with your operating rule.
That’s why I was reluctant to believe that the Director of the CIA fed the Director of the FBI a false story to induce the DOJ and FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation of a candidate for President based on a spurious “dossier” written by the opposing candidate’s team, and when there turned out to nothing there, used the dossier to open a criminal investigation to further derail Trump’s campaign, and once he won the election, begin planning for impeachment because by then the upper echelons of the FBI were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to nullify the election of the President of the United States.
But that’s how Occam’s razor is slicing these days.
Once you are convinced that a preposterous sounding conspiracy theory has been confirmed, and along with it the thesis that the Justice Department, FBI, and the Federal courts have all been compromised and that high ranking Federal judges and law enforcement officers will violate their oaths of office to undo the results of an election and the best construction you can place on their actions is a willingness to destroy the Constitution in order to save it…
I’m a tad more willing to entertain the possibility of a conspiracy. Especially since Epstein didn’t hang himself.