17 Men Reportedly Heard Chanting, Firing Off Shots In Apple Valley Detained, Released

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losangeles.cbslocal.com

APPLE VALLEY (CBSLA.com) — Federal and local law enforcement authorities Tuesday are investigating after 17 men were detained for reportedly firing off hundreds of rounds in a remote part of Apple Valley.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent were among the units that detained the men – reportedly all of Middle Eastern descent – who were camping out in the Deep Creek Hot Springs area Sunday morning, authorities said.

Feds & local law enforcement investigating after 17 men, reportedly Middle Eastern, fired 100s of rounds in Apple Valley. @KNX1070

— Margaret Carrero (@KNXmargaret)March 29, 2016

A 911 caller reported hearing over 100 shots fired and seeing five to seven men wearing turbans and shooting “assault rifles, handguns, and shotguns,” according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.

A county sheriff’s helicopter located the men walking near a creek with backpacks “and other items”, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Officials say the men were cooperative as they were detained and searched.

Several handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun were found at the scene, but a records check found all the weapons were registered with the exception of the rifle, which reportedly didn’t have a serial number because it was purchased in parts, an FBI spokesperson told The Times.

Police scanner traffic posted online by the Victor Valley News Group described “a large group of subjects wearing turbans and chanting” at the scene.

“They were up all night chanting ‘Allah akbar’-type stuff,” an unidentified officer is heard saying on the audio recording.

None of the hikers interviewed by Sheriff’s investigators say they witnessed any shots being fired, according to Sheriff’s officials.

A photo of the arrests was posted by the Victor Valley News Group but were not immediately confirmed by authorities.

All 17 men were eventually released because Sheriff’s investigators say they had no outstanding warrants or criminal histories.

“There was no evidence found that a crime had been committed by any of the subjects who were detained and they were released,” a Sheriff’s spokesperson said.

The FBI may conduct further interviews with the men to determine if any crimes were committed, The Times reported.

COMMENTS

Who Is The Real Ted Cruz?

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4874047

Vladimir Lenin said, “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

I can’t think of a better description of Ted Cruz’s relationship with the DC-Wall Street Establishment – Cruz being the scoundrel of course. Cruz’s claim of not being a tool of the political elite is like Bill Clinton telling the world, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Webster’s definition of a scoundrel is a dishonest or unscrupulous person, and Cruz has become quite adroit at saying one thing while his history shows him doing the other. Rather than the outsider he claims to be, Ted Cruz is the ultimate insider, former top Bush 41 policy aide and globalist, Ivy Leaguer, and establishment insider.

Not many conservatives coming out of Princeton and Harvard. “I’m just sayin,'” Ted, as said in the debate.

There is no better example of this than Calgary Ted’s actions surrounding the big Wall Street banks and their secret funding of his political ascension. Cruz has been gorging at the table of the ultimate insider of all insiders – Goldman Sachs and Citibank .

You may recall in a recent Fox Business Network debate that Cruz, in Mr. Haney from Green Acres voice, declared to one of the moderators, “The opening question [moderator Jerry Seib] asked — would you bailout the big banks again — nobody gave you an answer to that. I will give you an answer — absolutely not.”

What else would you expect a scoundrel to say who had secretly secured big sweetheart loans from Goldman and Citibank — by leveraging his retirement accounts –– to fund his 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. Loans which the Calgary Ted conveniently forgot to disclose to the Federal Election Commission. These are the very retirement accounts that he said he and his wife said he cashed in to fund his senate race. In other words, Ted lied.

At the same time Ted’s bulging 2016 campaign accounts and supporting Super-PACs are stuffed with big oil and gas money. He knows how to play the game.

And perhaps the ultimate hypocrisy of the native born Canadian is that his spouse, Heidi, by all accounts a lovely wife and mother, has been employed by Goldman Sachs since 2005. She is on leave as managing director and regional head of private wealth management. Heidi is a proud member of the lefty Council on Foreign Relations, advocates of one world government and the New World Order.

Heidi is not a bit player in the Cruz campaign with those credentials but rather an integral part of the campaign’s fundraising efforts. As reported by CNN last year, “She works the phones the way she worked them when she was at Goldman,” said Chad Sweet, the Cruz campaign’s chairman, who recruited Heidi to work at the giant investment bank.”

Yet we are to believe that the big Wall Street banks have no leverage over Ted Cruz? Why didn’t Heidi Cruz resign from Goldman Sachs instead of taking a leave of absence? That’s like saying Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky have had no influence on Barack Obama.

The other inside connection that hits one like a baseball bat is the Bush connection.

Ted was George W.’s brain when he ran for President. A top policy adviser. Ted maneuvered for Solicitor General in Bush World but settled for a plum at the Federal Trade Commission. Ted’s a Bushman with deep ties to the political and financial establishment.

Ted and Heidi brag about being the first “Bush marriage” – they met as Bush staffers which ultimately led to marriage. Cruz was an adviser on legal affairs while Heidi was an adviser on economic policy and eventually director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice. Condi helped give us the phony war in Iraq.

Also conveniently missing from Heidi’s Wikipedia bio is her service as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative to USTR head Robert Zoellick. At USTR Heidi worked on U.S.-China trade policy- the one Donald Trump talks about so much.

And Chad Sweet, Ted Cruz’s campaign chairman, is a former CIA officer. Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush’s former Secretary of Homeland Security, hired Sweet from Goldman Sachs to restructure and optimize the flow of information between the CIA, FBI and other members of the national security community and DHS. Chertoff and Sweet co-founded the Chertoff Group upon leaving the administration.

A known tactic of the intelligence community is the use of strategic communications as a “soft power” weapon against it adversaries — the creation of false narratives by the effective use of all media — social, digital, newspaper, print, etc. Combined with denial and deception, it can be a potent force. Glenn Beck and Mark Levin are abetting this.

Despite his ability to lie with a straight face (sadly Nixonian) on his support for amnesty and TPP, he got nailed by Senator Marco Rubio on the debate. Acting like a prick in the U.S. Senate was the core of Ted’s disciplined effort to bury his old school ties and reinvent himself as a modern-day Jesse Helms and supposed Conservative outsider. It’s a ruse.

As we get closer to the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, Cruz and his establishment puppet masters are engaged in an aggressive strategy against Trump. The false narrative of course being that Cruz is the outsider while Trump is the insider. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In its most simplistic terms – the power elite have no leverage over Trump – nothing.

Cruz, on the other hand, is the establishments quisling, spawned by the Bushes and controlled by Wall Street, who became a strident “outsider” only four years ago.

The U.S. Constitution does not defined “native born” citizen, nor have the courts. That Ted was eligible  to run for office as a citizen only 15 months ago is weird. Trump’s right the Democrats would have a field day with Calgary Ted, the Manchurian, Canadian Candidate.

Don’t get me wrong. Ted Cruz is a smart, canny, talented guy who has run a great “long race” campaign. He aspires to be Reagan but trust me he’s Nixon. Right down the incredible discipline and smarts playing the political game. Ted Cruz is not who he appears to be. As the bible says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” In this case we must beware a Canadian bearing gifts.

COMMENTS

Apple Unlocked iPhones for the Feds 70 Times Before

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Think Different02.18.16 12:05 AM ETA 2015 court case shows that the tech giant has been willing to play ball with the government before—and is only stopping now because it might “tarnish the Apple brand.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook declared on Wednesday that his companywouldn’t comply with a government search warrant to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardinokillers, a significant escalation in a long-running debate between technology companies and the government over access to people’s electronically-stored private information.

But in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted to. And according to prosecutors in that case, Apple has unlocked phones for authorities at least 70 times since 2008. (Apple doesn’t dispute this figure.)

In other words, Apple’s stance in the San Bernardino case may not be quite the principled defense that Cook claims it is. In fact, it may have as much to do with public relations as it does with warding off what Cook called “an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.”

For its part, the government’s public position isn’t clear cut, either. U.S. officials insist that they cannot get past a security feature on the shooter’s iPhone that locks out anyone who doesn’t know its unique password—which even Apple doesn’t have. But in that New York case, a government attorney acknowledged that one U.S. law enforcement agency has already developed the technology to crack at least some iPhones, without the assistance from Apple that officials are demanding now.

The facts in the New York case, which involve a self-confessed methamphetamine dealer and not a notorious terrorist, tend to undermine some of the core claims being made by both Apple and the government in a dispute with profound implications for privacy and criminal investigations beyond the San Bernardino.

In New York, as in California, Apple is refusing to bypass the passcode feature now found on many iPhones.

But in a legal brief, Apple acknowledged that the phone in the meth case was running version 7 of the iPhone operating system, which means the company can access it. “For these devices, Apple has the technical ability to extract certain categories of unencrypted data from a passcode locked iOS device,” the company said in a court brief.

Whether the extraction would be successful depended on whether the phone was “in good working order,” Apple said, noting that the company hadn’t inspected the phone yet. But as a general matter, yes, Apple could crack the iPhone for the government. And, two technical experts told The Daily Beast, the company could do so with the phone used by deceased San Bernardino shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook, a model 5C. (It’s not clear what version of operating system the phone had installed.)

Still, Apple argued in the New York case, it shouldn’t have to, because “forcing Apple to extract data…absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand,” the company said, putting forth an argument that didn’t explain why it was willing to comply with court orders in other cases.

“This reputational harm could have a longer term economic impact beyond the mere cost of performing the single extraction at issue,” Apple said.

Apple’s argument in New York struck one former NSA lawyer as a telling admission: that its business reputation is now an essential factor in deciding whether to hand over customer information.

“I think Apple did itself a huge disservice,” Susan Hennessey, who was an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the NSA, told The Daily Beast. The company acknowledged that it had the technical capacity to unlock the phone, but “objected anyway on reputational grounds,” Hennessey said. Its arguments were at odds with each other, especially in light of Apple’s previous compliance with so many court orders.

It wasn’t until after the revelations of former-NSA contractor Edward Snowden did Apple begin to position itself so forcefully as a guardian of privacy protection in the face of a vast government surveillance apparatus. Perhaps Apple was taken aback by the scale of NSA spying that Snowden revealed. Or perhaps it was embarassed by its own role in it. The company, since 2012, had been providing its customers’ information to the FBI and the NSA via the so-called PRISM program, which operated pursuant to court orders.

Apple has also argued, then and now, that the government is overstepping the authority of the All Writs Act, an 18th Century statute that it claims forces Apple to conduct court-ordered iPhone searches. That’s where the “clear legal authority” question comes into play.

But that, too, is a subjective question which will have to be decided by higher courts. For now, Apple is resisting the government on multiple grounds, and putting its reputation as a bastion of consumer protection front and center in the fight.

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None of this has stopped the government from trying to crack the iPhone, a fact that emerged unexpectedly in the New York case. In a brief exchange with attorneys during a hearing in October, Judge James Orenstein said he’d found testimony in another case that the Homeland Security Department “is in possession of technology that would allow its forensic technicians to override the pass codes security feature on the subject iPhone and obtain the data contained therein.”

That revelation, which went unreported in the press at the time, seemed to undercut the government’s central argument that it needed Apple to unlock a protected iPhone.

“Even if [Homeland Security] agents did not have the defendant’s pass code, they would nevertheless have been able to obtain the records stored in the subject iPhone using specialized software,” the judge said. “Once the device is unlocked, all records in it can be accessed and copied.”

A government attorney affirmed that he was aware of the tool. However, it applied only to one update of version 8 of the iPhone operating system—specifically, 8.1.2. The government couldn’t unlock all iPhones, but just phones with that software running.

Still, it made the judge question whether other government agencies weren’t also trying to break the iPhone’s supposedly unbreakable protections. And if so, why should he order the company to help?

There was, the judge told the government lawyer, “the possibility that on the intel side, the Government has this capability. I would be surprised if you would say it in open court one way or the other.”

Orenstein was referring to the intelligence agencies, such as the NSA, which develop tools and techniques to hack popular operating systems, and have been particularly interested for years in trying to get into Apple products, according to documents leaked by Snowden.

There was no further explanation of how Homeland Security developed the tool, and whether it was widely used. A department spokesperson declined to comment “on specific law enforcement techniques.” But the case had nevertheless demonstrated that, at least in some cases, the government can, and has, managed to get around the very wall that it now claims impedes lawful criminal investigations.

The showdown between Apple and the FBI will almost certainly not be settled soon. The company is expected to file new legal briefs within days. And the question of whether the All Writs Act applies in such cases is destined for an appeals court decision, legal experts have said.

But for the moment, it appears that the only thing certainly standing in the way of Apple complying with the government is its decision not to. And for its part, the government must be presumed to be searching for new ways to get the information it wants.

Technically, Apple probably can find a way to extract the information that the government wants from the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Daily Beast.

“The question is does the law give the government the ability to force Apple to create new code?” he said. “Engineers have to sit down and create something that doesn’t exist” in order to meet the government’s demands. Soghoian noted that this would only be possible in the San Bernardino case because the shooter was using an iPhone model 5C, and that newer hardware versions would be much harder for Apple to bypass.

But even that’s in dispute, according to another expert’s analysis. Dan Guido, a self-described hacker and CEO of the cybersecurity company Trail of Bits, said that Apple can, in fact, eliminate the protections that keep law enforcement authorities from trying to break into the iPhone with a so-called “brute force attack,” using a computer to make millions of password guesses in a short period of time. New iPhones have a feature that stops users from making repeated incorrect guesses and can trigger a kind of self-destruct mechanism, erasing all the phone’s contents, after too many failed attempts.

In a detailed blog post, Guido described how Apple could workaround its own protections and effectively disarm the security protections. It wouldn’t be trivial. But it’s feasible, he said, even for the newest versions of the iPhone, which, unlike the ones in the New York and San Bernardino cases, Apple swears it cannot crack.

“The burden placed on Apple will be greater…but it will not be impossible,” Guido told The Daily Beast.

COMMENTS

Be Afraid be very afraid.....

Obama Reassures Americans There Is No Credible Threat of Terror

abcnews.go.com

Flanked by his national security team, President Obama reassured Americans that there was "no specific, credible threat" against the country ahead of the holidays.

"We do not have any specific and credible information about an attack on the homeland," Obama said today at the National Counterterrorism Center. "That said, we have to be vigilant."

Obama said security experts are constantly hard at work putting up safeguards to prevent terrorists from entering the country, while at the same time bringing the fight to terrorists plotting overseas.

Obama also urged “resilience” in the wake of the attack in San Bernardino, California, calling it “one of our greatest weapons” in the fight against terrorism.

“When Americans stand together, nothing can beat us,” Obama said. “We cannot give in to fear or change how we live our lives because that’s what terrorists want, that’s the only leverage they have.”

It's a similar message to one given in November by the president in the immediate wake of the terror attack in Paris, where he sought to reassure the American people that there was no "specific, credible threat" facing the homeland during the Thanksgiving holiday.

But following the attack in San Bernardino, an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Wednesday showed just 22 percent of Americans express confidence in the government’s ability to prevent lone-wolf terrorist attacks.