Crapaganda.com

Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old Arab-American student, is suing the FBI for placing a GPS tracking device on his car and then threatening him with charges when he tried to keep it.

The lawsuit, filed by by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Wednesday, accused Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller of violating Afifi’s constitutional rights.

The suit, obtained by Talking Points Memo, explained that Afifi, an American-born student at Mission College in Sara Clara who also works as a salesman, was concerned that the device found on his car might be a pipe bomb.

After posting photos of the device on Reddit.com, agents came to his apartment in a “bizarre mission to retrieve the device” and questioned him, according to the lawsuit.

“Even after requesting counsel, the FBI agents continued to make demands of Mr. Afifi and interrogate him,” the suit claimed. “They asked him whether he was a national security threat, whether he was excited about an upcoming (but undisclosed) trip abroad, whether he was having financial difficulties, whether he had been to Yemen, why he traveled overseas, and many other questions.”

Afifi eventually relented and turned over the device after being threatened with federal charges.

One agent named Jennifer Kanaan “made clear that she knew intimate, private details of Mr. Afifi’s life” like that he had recently gotten a new job. She also complimented his taste in restaurants, the suit said.

The lawsuit noted that an FBI report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) detailed statements he had made to the media.

The report also identified people he contacted, hospitals he went to, organizations he belong to and religious services he attended.

Afifi had no connections to terrorism and was not politically active, CAIR attorney Zahra Billoo told The San Francisco Chronicle.

“He fit the profile – an Arab American male, young, lives by himself, travels frequently to the Middle East to visit his family,” she said.

A call to Billoo was not returned at the time of publication.

The FBI had not disclosed why it was monitoring Afifi.

Source: Raw Story

Have a suspicious neighbor you want to snitch on? There’s an app for that.

A new app called the “PatriotApp” doesn’t come filled with powerful quotes from our founding fathers or even a digital copy of the Constitution but instead it comes with a graphical interface that allows patriots — of course – to report any suspicious activity to the appropriate government agency.

See someone trying to get on a plane that looks suspicious? Click on the suspicious activity icon on the app and report the person directly to the FBI. See someone polluting down a local storm drain? You can report them to directly to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The app plays on the popular uprising of the Tea Party. Although they already have a “very cool” and “state of the art” app of their own called the “Tea Party Finder.” The PatriotApp is available for both the iPhone and the iPad.

Regardless, be sure not to confuse the PatriotApp with the PATRIOT Act. The two are very different things.

In a case of life imitating art, the FBI has spent months going through the e-mails of an innocent man.

Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil follows Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a low-level government employee who has frequent daydreams of saving a beautiful maiden. One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, which caused it to misprint a file, which resulted in the incarceration and death during interrogation of Mr. Archibald Buttle instead of the suspected terrorist, Archibald “Harry” Tuttle (Robert De Niro).

A careless FBI agent investigating a notorious Russian spammer inadvertently rifled through the e-mail account of an innocent person due to a typo on a federal search warrant application, court records show.

As part of a probe into the malicious “Mega-D” botnet, FBI Special Agent Jason Pleming in late-July filed for a search warrant to seize Google records associated with two e-mail addresses reportedly used by suspect Oleg Nikolaenko. Pleming identified one of the addresses as ddarwin@ gmail.com.

Federal Magistrate Judge William Callahan approved Pleming’s request, and in mid-August Google turned over a CD containing e-mails from the ddarwin@ gmail.com account. The only problem was that Nikolaenko’s e-mail address was actually ddarwinn@ gmail.com. Pleming had dropped an ‘n’ from the address when he submitted a sworn affidavit to Callahan.

The disclosure of this embarrassing boner came three months later when Pleming, presumably with his badge between his legs, sought another search warrant from Judge Callahan. In an October 29 filing, Pleming noted that, “The email address ddarwin@ gmail.com is owned and used by someone other than Nikoalenko.”

The original warrant granted Pleming and fellow agents permission to seize highly personal account information, including “stored electronic communications (including retrieved and unretrieved e-mail for Gmail subscribers) and information concerning subscribers and their use of Gmail services, such as account access information, e-mail transaction information, and account application information.”

The identity of the owner of the ddarwin account is unknown, and they did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment about the FBI search of the account. In fact, it is not clear whether the individual was even apprised that that their Gmail account was searched by the FBI.

Upon realizing his mistake, Pleming reported that he “stopped reviewing the emails from ddarwin@ gmail.com and consulted with the prosecutor assigned to the case. We decided that to seal the emails from ddarwin@ gmail.com and to seek an new search warrant for the correct email address at a future date.”

Pleming, who did not return calls from a  reporter, does not detail how much time transpired before his gaffe was discovered. Though he did note that an “initial review” of the ddarwin account “reflected emails that appeared to be related to Nikolaenko.” Subsequently, a “more thorough review” revealed that “those emails were ones which were misdirected and intended for ddarwinn@ gmail.com and that the email address ddarwin@ gmail.com is owned and used by someone other than Nikolaenko.”

Nikolaenko, who was once reportedly responsible for a third of the spam clogging the Internet, was indicted last month on a federal felony charge. The owner of ddarwin@ gmail.com presumably remains at large.

Source: The Smoking Gun

An undercover law enforcement officer infiltrated a Christian militia group to gather evidence that led to FBI raids of the Michigan-based Hutaree group over the weekend.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet told U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Scheer this afternoon that the leader of the group, David B. Stone, 45, of Clayton wanted the undercover agent to prepare bombs to fight law enforcement officers, who the group regarded as enemies of the country.

During the ongoing detention hearing, which began around 1:15 p.m., for eight alleged members of the group, Waterstreet played an audiotape of Stone saying, “Now is the time to strike and take our nation back. … This war will come whether we are ready or not. We will fight alongside anyone that calls the new world order their enemy.”

Stone’s speech was clandestinely recorded on Feb. 6 in a vehicle as members of the group were headed to Kentucky for a meeting with other militia groups, the prosecutor said, adding that Stone’s remarks were part of a speech he planned to deliver at a gathering in Kentucky.

According to prosecutors, on the way back from Kentucky, Stone pointed out a Hudson, Mich., police officer who had pulled someone over and said: “We’re going to pop him, guaranteed.”

Someone else in the van mentioned the Hudson police department was a small force, prompting a reply from Stone: “We’ll pop every one of them.”

The new information about the group came out during the detention hearing at the federal courthouse in Detroit in which Scheer is to decide whether the eight are to remain jailed pending trial. A ninth member of the group appeared Tuesday in federal court in Indiana and was to be transferred to Michigan.

Several members of the group are charged with seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, and knowingly transferring arms used in violent crimes.

Newly court-appointed defense lawyers repeatedly objected to Waterstreet’s allegations made during the hearing. The defense lawyers said the government should be forced to put an agent on the witness stand, and subject to cross-examination, so the magistrate could more thoroughly weigh the credibility of the claims.

Scheer repeatedly overruled such objections.

Stone’s lawyer, William Swor, of Detroit sought to mitigate the government’s claims, arguing, “All they’re saying is my client has opinions and knows how to use his mouth.”

Swor argued that Waterstreet had presented no evidence of a crime or justification for the magistrate to conclude that the defendants represented a danger to the community or a risk of flight if they were released.

It is not yet clear who the agent was who infiltrated the group or how he apparently gained the group’s confidence.

During the weekend raids at Stone’s home, agents seized more than 300 pieces of evidence, including explosives, bomb components and shrapnel, Waterstone said.

Waterstreet said one defendant Kristopher Sickles, 27, of Sandusky, Ohio told the group in January that he shot his pet cat to determine “If I could kill something I had a feeling for.”

A theme that developed throughout today’s hearing from defense lawyers was that Hutaree members were big talkers, who were short on action.

“That’s all you have, is a lot of talk – guys who like to dress up in fatigues,” said Michael Rataj, who represents Tina Stone, the wife of David Stone. “Absolutely nothing illegal about any of it.”

David Stone’s lawyer, Swor, said in court: “He talked, he trained. So what?” He added, “What we heard is that Mr. Stone talked a lot and that Mr. Stone is angry.”

The detention hearings will resume at 1 p.m. Thursday.

After the hearing today, David Stone Sr.’s ex-wife, Donna Stone, angrily left the courthouse with Shannon Witt, who recently married Joshua Stone, and Brittany Bryant, the fiancée to David Stone Jr.

“I don’t have a comment; neither does anyone else,” Donna Stone said between profanities. “Leave us alone.”

Source: Freep.com

The Feds are on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who’s behind that “friend” request? Think again. Your new “friend” just might be the FBI.

The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects’ alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social networking sites to U.S. authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its Web site on Tuesday.

With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies in a strategy known as “deconfliction” to keep out of each other’s way.

“You could really mess up someone’s investigation because you’re investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing,” said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.

A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today’s social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos and audio clips — a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases of violent crime, financial fraud and much more.

The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.

“It doesn’t really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly,” said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the civil liberties foundation.

The group sued in Washington to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking sites in investigations, data collection and surveillance.

Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according toJustice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.

The Justice Department document raises a legal question about a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.

The woman, Lori Drew, helped create an account for a fictitious teen boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to a 13-year-old neighborhood girl in his name. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her.

A jury in California, where MySpace has its servers, convicted Drew of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization because she was accused of violating MySpace’s rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.

“If agents violate terms of service, is that ‘otherwise illegal activity’?” the document asks. It doesn’t provide an answer.

Facebook’s rules, for example, specify that users “will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” Twitter’s rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be “truthful and accurate.”

A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company’s rules. But there have to be limits, he said.

In the face-to-face world, agents can’t impersonate a suspect’s spouse, child, parent or best friend. But online, behind the guise of a social-networking account, they can.

“This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships,” said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.

Undercover operations aren’t necessary if the suspect is reckless. Federal authorities nabbed a man wanted on bank fraud charges after he started posting Facebook updates about the fun he was having in Mexico.

Maxi Sopo, a native of Cameroon living in the Seattle area, apparently slipped across the border into Mexico in a rented car last year after learning that federal agents were investigating the alleged scheme. The agents initially could find no trace of him on social media sites, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico. But they kept checking and eventually found Sopo on Facebook.

While Sopo’s online profile was private, his list of friends was not. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville began going through the list and was able to learn where Sopo was living. Mexican authorities arrested Sopo in September. He is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is “often cooperative with emergency requests,” the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter’s lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

“Will not preserve data without legal process,” the document says under the heading, “Getting Info From Twitter … the bad news.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn’t want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation.

“That said, we also want to make sure that our users’ privacy is protected and any data that’s disclosed is done under proper legal process,” Nigam said.

MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand “the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations.”

The Justice document includes sections about its own lawyers. For government attorneys taking cases to trial, social networks are a “valuable source of info on defense witnesses,” they said. “Knowledge is power. … Research all witnesses on social networking sites.”

But the government warned prosecutors to advise their own witnesses not to discuss cases on social mediasites and to “think carefully about what they post.”

It also cautioned federal law enforcement officials to think prudently before adding judges or defense counsel as “friends” on these services.

“Social networking and the courtroom can be a dangerous combination,” the government said.