Iranian opposition...and US interaction.

One of my frequent criticism's of the Obama regime was their embrace of the mullahs in Tehran. Obama had no issue with trying to destroy stability in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Israel, but the one nation he embraced was Iran. In exchange for one-hundred fifty billion in cash, we got...nothing.

Trump, for his many shortcomings, has put major pressure on Iran, the most dangerous nation in the Middle East, and one of the most dangerous in the world. The propaganda of Foreign Police not withstanding, the more pressure we up on the mullahs, the better. A majority of the nation had no memory of the shah, but they know the rest of the world thought the Internet or satalitte TV. It was primed for an insurgency in 2009, but Obama, for some reason, didn't stick his nose and ears into it, like he would do to allied or non-hostile nations in his term.

Is Restart the center of ridding Iran of the mullahs? Don't know. But at least we are not in direct opposition to the forces in Iran opposed to the mullahs.

QAnon Goes to Iran

Restart, a fringe Iranian dissident group, shows how conspiracy spreads—and what that means for U.S. politics.

Ariane TabatabaiJuly 15, 2020, 12:07 PM

QAnon entered the mainstream U.S. political lingo in 2017, when its followers propagated the conspiracy theory that the “deep state” was plotting against U.S. President Donald Trump. Since then, ideas put forth by QAnon have gained traction, thanks in part to U.S. President Donald Trump giving a platform to its followers on a number of occasions, including by retweeting messages from accounts linked to the group. Most recently, a number of individuals with apparent ties to QAnon have become Republican candidates for Congress.

Although QAnon’s raison d’être is largely rooted in domestic politics—and it has capitalized mainly on anxieties prevalent in U.S. society—the conspiracy theory has recently developed an unlikely group of adherents: an Iranian dissident group that calls itself Restart. Despite remaining a minor political force for now, Restart is a fascinating example of a broader trend: conspiracist thinking going global.

The Restarters are a fringe association in a larger web of Iranian opposition and conspiracy groups that wish to overthrow Iran’s current power brokers. Among them are the followers of Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of the deposed shah, and the Mujahideen–e–Khalq (MEK), a crypto-Shiite cultlike dissident group, to name a few. Such groups have enjoyed strong tailwinds in recent years. As BBC Monitoring reported in 2019, Iranian opposition factions have been able to increase their social-media reach and following since Trump took office—likely because of the perception that the Trump administration’s Iran policy favors them...

Good. As many as you can to opposed the current Iranian regime.

These state and nonstate actors have very little in common; they differ in their ideologies and the traction they have received both within and outside Iran. However, they are aligned in at least one important respect: They are all vying for influence not in their native Iran, but in the United States, where they try to shift U.S. policy to their liking...

...Like QAnon, which doesn’t “possess a physical location, but … has an infrastructure, a literature, a growing body of adherents, and a great deal of merchandising,” as writer Adrienne LaFrance recently wrote in the Atlantic, Restart exists in the Internet more than the real world. But unlike QAnon, which has more of a presence in mainstream U.S. politics (with some candidates for office even espousing their ideas), Restart remains small. Its leader has certainly encouraged violent dissent, but more than leading to an actual rise in protests, Restart’s activities illustrate how fringe movements and media outlets can push narratives and amplify messages that can come to dominate more mainstream political discussions in the United States and around the globe....

Thank God, the Iranian opposition has make more effort to coordinate and act against the Iranian government. And this time the opposition will not be opposed by the US administration. Hopefully it will collapse from inside.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer turd....

Back in my academy days, I was instructed on how to check someone via the NCIC, TCIC, etc. When you think of it, a cop has access to a large amount of data on others. And we were warned, don't be stupid with that access. Specific example, if we were to check on "Clinton, William Jefferson, date of birth August 19, 1946..." we would get the then president's driver's license number, etc. And within 15-20 minutes, the US Secret Service would be calling the Command Center, you will be called in, and likely fired by the end of the day, awaiting prosecution. Lesson learned, don't screw around with this, even if the Clintons got away themselves.

So I don't have much sympathy for people who misuse their access to confidential information. I had access to Sensitive Compartmented Information for over two decades, and I knew if I misused that access, I would likely be a convicted felon. But even non-classified material is extremely sensitive. I handed clearance investigation packets for personnel that disclosed information on medical conditions, use of narcotics, going to a group like AA or a psychologist for personal issues, financial information. Very much "none of your business" stuff.

But this didn't seem to concern the young punk and his attempt at the latest high-tech lynching by the Democratic Party.

Democratic Staffer Gets 4 Years In Prison For Doxing GOP Senators

Washington, DC – A former Democratic aide who tried to disrupt U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by doxing Republican senators was sentenced to four years in prison on Wednesday.

Jackson Cosko, 27, pleaded guilty to five felonies in April, Politicoreported.

Cosko admitted that after he was fired from U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan’s (D-New Hampshire) office, he used a former colleague’s keys and computer system log-in information to install spy software and to access and steal a massive amount of data from U.S. Senate computer systems.

He also admitted that he used the stolen personal information about some senators to dox them on Wikipedia, releasing home addresses and phone numbers of the high-profile legislators because he was angry about how they were handling Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan said Cosko’s sentence was meant to send a message that criminal harassment inspired by political motives would face serious punishment, according to Politico.

“We have… a society that has become very vicious,” Hogan said. “It’s very concerning to the court and unfortunate that you played into that.”

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) submitted a victim impact statement at the sentencing that said that incident had caused fear to him and his family, Politico reported.

Cosko was busted for his illegal activities after a former co-worker spotted him in Hassan’s office, using a computer, late at night after he had been fired.

Police said he accessed the computer using another staffer’s login information.

After he was seen using a computer on Oct. 2, 2018, Cosko left the office building at 10:21 p.m. and headed toward Union Station, according to surveillance video.

Later, he sent a threatening email to the Hassan staffer who caught him, WTOP reported. The staffer contacted the police about the threat.

An affidavit from U.S. Capitol Police Captain Jason Bell said the subject line of Cosko’s email carried the header “I own EVERYTHING.”

“If you tell anyone I will leak it all. Emails signal conversations gmails. Senators children’s health information and socials,” the email read, according to charging documents.

“Signal conversations” refers to a messaging application. “Socials” refers to the children’s social security numbers, authorities said.

“It was a rather vicious offense,” Hogan said at Cosko’s sentencing. “That was totally unjustified….We need to send a message out there. We need to have some deterrent and community understanding...”

...Federal charges included making public restricted personal information, making threats in interstate commerce, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, and obstruction of justice/witness tampering.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia released a statement that said Cosko had also been charged with second-degree burglary and unlawful entry, WTOP reported...

I must admit I never heard the term "doxing," or what it meant before this article. I've heard of people's information being spilled for illegitimate purposes. And the Democrats have little beneath them, so whatever wins, they will do it.

Well little Jackson, enjoy your time in prison. You'll likely end up in club-fed, but fed time is at minimum 85%, so you're gone for over three years. And don't worry, the party will take care of you, you took one for the Mob, they won't forget. Remember, the Democratic party has no issue with felons serving.

The real inventor of the Internet is a little put off by what his invention has become...

Two decades ago then Vice President Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet on this CNN  interview. His exact words, at 00.52 of this video, is "...I took the initiative in inventing the Internet..." One of the many delusions this man has inflicted the American people with over the decades. To be more accurate, the Internet is the descendant of the ARPANet, a Department of Defense project to secure networks in case of a nuclear attack.

Time went on, the World Wide Web was invented 30 years ago Tuesday, and the inventiveness of mankind has been shown incredibly. Look at the changes in business, medicine, expanded education, etc. that have happened because of a free people took something and ran with it. The Internet, to a much greater degree of the space program, has revolutionized life in the modern world with spinoff technology, and the ingenuity of people literally around the world.

Before you say, "No kidding Sherlock," I was drawn to the statement of the real inventor of the Internet (the World Wide Web to be exact) on the Internet’s birthday, and how it shows bureaucratic-industrial complex thinking:

Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet’s 30th B-Day: ‘Whoops! The Web Is Not the Web We Wanted. The World Wide Web, now ubiquitously known as the internet, turns 30 today. And, just like most growing things, the technology infrastructure that powers almost every communication and work tool we use has changed beyond even its very inventor’s recognition. “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect,” said British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who built the first version of the World Wide Web in 1989, at the “Web@30” conference at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on Tuesday. For the past decade, Berners-Lee has published an open letter every March 12, taking the WWW’s anniversary as an opportunity to voice his opinions and concerns on the emerging issues facing our increasingly internet-reliant society. His past talking points included the dominating power of supersize tech companies, misinformation and intrusion to privacy. This year, outside his regular annual writing, the 63-year-old scientist made an onstage appearance at his old employer, CERN, to reiterate the idea of the “Contract for the Web,” a framework to govern the use of the internet he first proposed in November 2018. “The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘OK, let’s work out what this really means,'” Berners-Lee said. The Contract for the Web seeks a collaboration among governments, companies and citizens. Under the framework, governments are tasked to ensure the internet’s availability to every one and its respect to privacy; on the premise of privacy protection, companies are to make sure that the internet is affordable and prioritize the public good over profit when developing new technology; and finally, citizens should respect “civil discourse” when using it..."

Government’s should be “tasked to ensure the internet’s availability to every one and its respect to privacy…”  Mr. Berners-Lee, were you concerned when the previous presidential administration had the National Security Administration commence saturation monitoring of both the Internet and phone communications in the United States? You do know the US government is building a facility to store this information in Utah, with a reported five zettabytes of storage capacity? In more understandable English, that is five trillion gigabytes of storage. And that is just the start.

One of the facts of digital voice communications is a computer can scan countless communications, looking for words, phrases, or specific voices, which is the purpose of this facility. Even if it is used for the War on Terror, or other “legitimate” functions, can you be sure it will not be used for other, less legitimate, efforts?. Do you recall the FBI used a false affidavit to secure a warrant from the FISA court to conduct monitoring on the now President of the United States? If a president can be targeted by the intelligence bureaucracy, how can Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public stand against them?

“…on the premise of privacy protection, companies are to make sure that the internet is affordable and prioritize the public good over profit when developing new technology…”

Sir, profit drives the public good, in case you haven’t noticed recorded history. At the beginning of the Internet era, few companies offered access to it, and the cost were prohibitive. Remember CompuServe and AOL? In 1990, CompuServe was charging five dollars an hour for dial up Internet service! AOL came in and challenged them, offering service at 2.95 an hour. AOL later acquired CompuServe, offering package deals of $20.00 a month for unlimited dial up service. Did the US government need to do that Mr. Berners-Lee? No, the bureaucracy needed to get the living hell out of the way. If the FCC was in charge of the Internet in the late 80s (Say a “Net Neutrality” in an earlier form) we would still have dial up modems for our service.

Exaggeration? Slightly, but there is no question the government has hindered the use of the digital spectrum over the decades. May I recommend you read The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, by Thomas Winslow Hazlett. Question, when was the first mobile phone call made? Most people believe it was on April 3, 1973, when Motorola’s Marty Cooper called Bell Lab’s Joel Engle in New York. While it was the first time a handheld device was used, the first mobile call, or better put, car phone call, was made in 1946!

The General Mobile Telephone Service was an analog telecommunications system that would allow a person to make a call from inside an automobile, with a limited area to a tower. You needed to use an operator for any “long distance” call. Was this Verizon or ATT on an iPhone, no. But it was the first step. And it was killed largely by the lack of useable bandwidth being licensed by the FCC (Hazlett, 2017). Bag and hand held phones started to come into the limited use in the 1970s, more common use in the 1980s, but one can only speculate on how much sooner mobile phones would have come on the market without the great “assistance” of the Federal Communications Commission and other parts of the federal bureaucracy.

Finally sir, your comment on the content of the Internet is the most troubling, “…and finally, citizens should respect “civil discourse” when using it..." Mr. Berners-Lee, what is civil to you may be obscene to others. A member of the Black Lives Matter movement may accuses police officers of killing unarmed black males at an excessive rate compared to white males. Is it “uncivil” when another person points out most black males are murdered by other black males, and in a given year police shoot and kill 15-20 unarmed black males. While much social media is “civil,” some is a sewer of profanity and extremism (see Twitter). But I would never want to shut down the discussion. Sir, I suggest you remember the wisdom of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in Whitney v. California,1927, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." The proponents of “Net-Neutrality” should remember that.

One of the many quotes from General George Patton, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” The Internet is an incredible example of that. Mr. Berners-Lee, you are the legitimate inventor of it, if any man can make that claim. I suggest to use your considerable influence to insure it grows unmolested by the bureaucratic mindset that has hampered mankind’s progress for eternity. 

A solution that won't work to a problem that doesn't exist...

One of the many disasters of the B Hussein Obama regime was his attempt to seize the Internet thought "Net Neutrality" ("NN"). Of the many Orwellian terms to come out of the Obama years, that tops it. “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, Net Neutrality.” When the Trump administration came in, one of the first acts of the new FCC commissioner was to end this disaster. And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. Libtards actually said that the companies that provide this service would not want to provide it. Well...

More Americans Have High-Speed Internet Access Than Ever

Preliminary FCC report claims the number of Americans with high-speed connections grew by 20 percent in 2017.

For all the drama over the repeal of Net Neutrality and continuing fears about a "digital divide" between online haves and have-nots, the number of Americans with high-speed access to the Internet continues to grow, says a preliminary report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The report covers development in 2017, the latest year for which data are available. From an FCC press release:

The number of Americans lacking access to a fixed broadband connection meeting the FCC's benchmark speed of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps has dropped by over 25%, from 26.1 million Americans at the end of 2016 to 19.4 million at the end of 2017. Moreover, the majority of those gaining access to such high-speed connections, approximately 5.6 million, live in rural America, where broadband deployment has traditionally lagged.

The private sector has responded to FCC reforms by deploying fiber to 5.9 million new homes in 2018, the largest number ever recorded. And overall, capital expenditures by broadbandproviders increased in 2017, reversing declines that occurred in both 2015 and 2016...

Declines in 2015 and 2016. When did "NN" go into effect? April 2015. Who was president back then? Oh, yea, Barrack Hussein Obama, mmm mmm mmm! (Let's all chant like good communists). So when "NN" was in effect, people got less high speed Internet service. But when the Internet was unregulated, people got more service, and at less cost. Who would have thought that? Anyone who has any knowledge of history and free markets. More on that in a moment.

...Other key findings of the report include the following, based on data through the end of 2017:

The number of Americans with access to 100 Mbps/10Mpbs fixed broadband increased by nearly 20%, from 244.3 million to 290.9 million.

The number of Americans with access to 250 Mbps/50 Mbps fixed broadband grew by over 45%, to 205.2 million, and the number of rural Americans with access to such service more than doubled.

Back to economics. The more often you sell something, the less of a profit margin you need to make money. A gallon of milk, a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread, there is a small margin of profit there. You buy these things constantly, so there is a motivation to make them inexpensively, and you profit by volume. How often do you buy a diamond ring? Not often, so the profit margin is relatively large, seeing the jewelry store won't see you for another few years.

Internet service, like other services (e.g. telephone, electricity), is still in it's growing phases, but remember, these businesses want to do business. And the consumer will get better service, at lower cost, when the competition is cut throat.

Anyone remember the great old days of Ma Bell? One regulated phone company. I do, and for the young, allow me to tell you, it sucked. Or something many young people know of, Uber. Did you really enjoy only having one cab service in your city? Prior to 2011, that was all you had. Personally I like having an app so I can get a vehicle to my house in less than 10 minutes, getting a ride to where I want to go, at half the cost of a cab. Competition in electricy anyone? Cellular phones service?

Show me anything controlled by government, and I'll show you a 19th bureaucratic model with no motivation to enter the latter part of the 20th Century. USPS anyone? It's completely illogical to believe they only want to think they don't want to provide a service that makes them a profit. However, bureaucracies want control, even when there is no issue.

I've got my issues with Trump, but damn, he hit the ball out the park with killing "NN." Hopefully, after a Democrat gets into the Oval Office (it's will happen), they will leave the Internet alone. Forgive me if I have my doubts.

It's the end of the world....not?

Liberals, Democrats, libtards, and others with a mental condition. You can now come out of your safe space. It has been a year since Net "Neutrality" (like many of the Obama regime's efforts, it means the exact opposite of what it says, e.g. "Affordable" Care Act) was repealed, and the world has not ended. The wrath of God has not descended upon us. We have not suffered a holocaust to rival Mao's Great Leap Forward. Cats and dogs are not living together. No, things are pretty much...better off than last year.

The Internet Lives

One year after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai liberated broadband networks, doomsayers have been proven wrong.

When Trump-appointed reformers wisely sought to roll back this misguided rule and restore the freedom that had allowed the Internet to thrive in the first place, the reaction was intense.

Roslyn Layton of the American Enterprise Institute writes:

A year ago today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the harmful 2015 internet regulation dubiously titled the “Open Internet Order.” The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNET, Ars Technica, Recode, The Verge, and advocacy groups such as Free Press and Public Knowledge predictably forecasted apocalyptic consequences to the rollback of the regulation, mischaracterizing the Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIFO) which replaced it. CNN declared “the end of the internet as we know it,” and other media outlets said the RIFO was “gutting the rules that protect the internet,” and “that the internet has no oversight.” A year later, the internet is alive and well. The media and pundits are unlikely to issue corrections, but here are some facts to remember...

I wonder if these libtarded groups can add one plus one and get two. The seem to miss a big point. The Internet exploded from a nerd's fantasy to a central part of commerce, communications, and life in general without Net "Neutrality". So they actually believed the nine most frightening words in the English language, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"...When the media talks about the end of the internet, they are referring to the end of the price control that favored Silicon Valley at the expense of consumers... In 2015 the FCC claimed that its rules were underpinned by a “virtuous circle” and predicted increased investment in and deployment of networks, but the opposite happened. Chairman Ajit Pai testified in Congress that the rules depressed investment and that the RIFO reversed that trend.

But at least the proponents of Net "Neutrality" could admit they were wrong, right?

Mr. Pai was helping consumers by restoring the incentive to invest in new networks and better service. Outside the established media, the overreaction reached almost unimaginable extremes. This column reported in June:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai tends to dress down when he travels and often wears a hat to obscure his appearance. That’s because of the vitriol directed at him for reducing Washington’s control over the Internet.

On a visit to the Journal today, Mr. Pai wore a suit and tie and maintained his usual cheerful demeanor. But he also reported that the threats against him and his family did not end with the Commission’s December vote to restore the freedom that existed for the Internet’s entire history until 2015.

He notes that his in-laws have received angry phone calls at 3 a.m. at home and that his wife has received threatening phone calls at work. The threats... have included references to slitting the throats of his children.

Peaceful liberals. Right. I wonder if they will understand what has happened thanks to action.

The irrational fear was that service would be so “throttled’ and slowed by deregulation that the Internet would never be the same. A year later, give the website Recode credit for at least implicitly acknowledging that the “net neutrality” campaign was bunk.

“U.S. internet speeds rose nearly 40 percent this year,” reports Recode this week. Editor Rani Molla writes:

Finally some good news: The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.
The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy. As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase, though speeds vary widely by region depending on infrastructure and whether or not an area has fiber.
Thanks to the courageous Mr. Pai, consumers are enjoying the benefits of a free marketplace. And perhaps at least some of them are wondering what other Trump era outrages may not be exactly as reported.

OK, regressives, get this through your heads. Nothing, but nothing, is more plentiful, efficient, or of higher quality when the government runs it. See the Post Office vs Fedex. Or the VA vs a private hospital. Never forget the last time you were at the driver's license office. Remember the wisdom of one of the greatest economists of all time, Milton Friedman: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Being Net Neutral means being net slow....

I’ve been in a Facebook
debate over so-called “Net Neutrality,” where the FCC, using the 1934 Telecommunications Act (back when computers were the size of 18 wheelers), declared they had the statutory authority to regulate Internet service providers (ISPs). I believe this has been challenged in court, but fortunately the Trump administration is moving to end that lasted power grab by he Obama regime.

Looking through Facebook and found a good look at what happens when the federal government plan ISP service.

Americans Taxed $400 Billion For Fiber Optic Internet That Doesn’t Exist

America's rate of fiber optic penetration is half the OECD average
Americans Paid $400 Billion in Taxes & Internet Surcharges for Fiber Optic Upgrades that Never Came

South Korea is the poster child for high-speed internet: its fixed-connection and mobile download speeds are consistently among the fastest in the world, and its capital city, Seoul, is completely saturated with Wi-Fi. How did they do it?

Being densely populated helped: it’s easier and cheaper to wire-up crowded cities than empty countrysides. But the key element was the government’s pro-broadband policies. Not only did they open up the market for competition among internet service providers, but they also invested in hard infrastructure.

Back in 2011 the New York Times reported that the South Korean planned investments of $24.6 billion in digital infrastructure. It paid off: South Korea’s internet remains among the world’s fastest, according to testing done by Speedtest—and this is in spite of massive recent gains and investments made by other countries.

Meanwhile, America’s internet connections are slow. This summer Forbes Magazine reported:

The US ranks 9th in the world in fixed broadband speed at 70.75 Mbps average download and 27.64 Mbps average upload. Ranking in the top ten is good but the US’s average download speed is less than half top-ranked Singapore’s 154.38 Mbps. Both upload and download speeds increased steadily from July 2016 to July 2017 and the US’s rank increased from 11 to 9.

...
The picture for the US is not nearly as good when you look at mobile internet speed where the US ranks 46th, just ahead of Albania and behind Oman. Average download speed in the US is 23.05 Mbps which is less than half the average download speeds in Norway, the Netherlands and Hungary. Average upload speed in the US is 8.26 Mbps. While mobile download speed increased by almost 20% from July 2016 to July 2017, the US’s world ranking fell from 44th to 46th. Not good.

Since then America’s fallen down to 11th place in terms of fixed connection download speed, and 47th in terms of mobile download speed. Basically, America’s internet is slow, and it’s getting relatively slower. This will have big economic consequences down the road as the world grows increasingly digital.


But that’s not the real story here. More important is America’s failure to keep pace with countries like South Korea despite absolutely astronomical investments in broadband technology.

According to a fairly recent book (2015) called The Book of Broken Promises, the American people have been charged some $400 billion by telecom companies (at the instance of government) for fiber optic upgrades that have not materialized. The author writes:

By the end of 2014, America will have been charged about $400 billion by the local phone incumbents, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, for a fiber optic future that never showed up. And though it varies by state, counting the taxes, fees and surcharges that you have paid every month (many of these fees are actually revenues to the company or taxes on the company that you paid), it comes to about $4000-$5000.00 per household from 1992-2014, and that’s the low number.

You were also charged about nine times to wire the schools and libraries via state and federal plans designed to help the phone and cable companies...

I’ll turn 53 in January. I have lived through he Oil Crisis on the 1970s, the breakup of Ma Bell in the 80s, the seizure of the health insurance market in 2010. Reagan deregulated oil, and now were are independent in oil production. After some initial growing pains we have practically free telecommunications (Really, when is the last time you paid for a call from Houston to Dallas, or Denver?). But with the federal government in charge of health insurance, choice, and quality have gone down, and cost have skyrocketed.

Lesson learned, keep the federal government out of the market.

Security Weekly: The Jihadist Threat Is Not Novel, Not New, November 27, 2014

By Scott Stewart

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Overseas Security Advisory Council's annual briefing, which was attended by some 1,500 security managers from corporations, non-governmental organizations and academic institutions. The meetings are always a great chance to catch up with friends, colleagues, Stratfor customers and business contacts. But the briefing is more than just a chance to network and socialize; it is also an opportunity to listen and learn from an impressive lineup of prominent speakers.

One of the keynote speakers this year was Jeh Johnson, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security since December 2013. Johnson has had a long and distinguished career in government. He is also an engaging speaker and is obviously a very intelligent man. But during Johnson's presentation he made three assertions that I found quite shocking to hear from the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, namely, that the threat of foreign jihadists returning from fighting overseas is new, that the threat posed by lone wolf extremists is new and that the extremist use of social media is relatively new.

I am not sure if these three assertions were merely a result of a speechwriter who was misled by bad analysis or by too much consumption of mainstream media, or if Johnson himself actually believes these things. However, in light of last week's column highlighting how important it is that security managers and government officials present a rational and honest assessment of threats, I feel compelled to take issue with these three claims.

Foreign Fighters

Certainly, the amount of press coverage given to the threat posed by jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq is unprecedented, but the actual threat posed by such individuals is far from new. As we noted in a Security Weekly on this last April, since 1979, tens of thousands of foreign fighters have received training at camps run by jihadists in places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Syria.

Indeed, when Johnson was an assistant U.S. attorney in New York's Southern District (1989-1991), that office was overseeing the investigation of a group of men involved with the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, aka the Brooklyn Jihadi Office. The Al Kifah Refugee Center has been linked to prominent jihadists such as Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.

Al Kifah was established for the purpose of recruiting men and raising funds for jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere. After a man associated with the center, El Sayyid Nosair, assassinated the founder of the Jewish Defense League in New York in November 1990, the FBI managed to insert an informant into the group. According to Willful Blindness, a book written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, assistant U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of New York — Johnson's colleagues — oversaw the operation.

The operation to monitor the cell was dropped after the FBI's informant became difficult to control and the cell was judged not to pose a real threat. In hindsight, this assessment proved to be incorrect, and many men associated with Al Kifah were later convicted for participating in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and for plotting to attack a number of other high-profile targets in New York. Other Afghan jihad veterans involved with the case, including Ali Mohammed and Wadih el-Hage, were later convicted for their participation in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

In the 13 years since the 9/11 attacks, there have been many plots in the United States and in Europe involving jihadists who fought or who were trained in camps overseas. A partial list of them includes:

Richard Reid, who failed to destroy American Airlines flight 63 over the Atlantic Ocean using a shoe bomb in December 2001.
Jose Padilla, who was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and convicted for plotting terrorist attacks inside the United States.
Mohammad Sidique Khan and the three other suicide bombers, who attacked the London mass transportation system July 7, 2005.
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, also known as Carlos Bledsoe, who is serving a life sentence for shooting and killing one U.S. Army recruit and wounding another outside a U.S. Armed Forces recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in June 2009.
Daniel Boyd, who was arrested in August 2009 and who pled guilty to terrorism charges in September 2011.
Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested in September 2009 and who pled guilty of plotting to bomb the New York subway system.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted and failed to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 over Detroit in December 2009.
Faisal Shahzad, who attempted and failed to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.
But returning jihadists have been a problem outside of the United States and Europe, too. For decades now, Egyptian, Libyan and jihadists of other nationalities have fought abroad and sought to bring their fight home with them. High-profile figures such as Nasir al-Wahayshi, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's founder, and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the founder of the group Al-Mourabitoun in the Sahel, also received training and combat experience in Afghanistan before returning to their home countries to lead jihadist groups.

In Asia, Indonesian jihadists, including Hambali and Dulmatin, and Filipino jihadists, including Abu Sayyaf's founder, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, also received training and experience in Afghanistan and brought it home to wreak havoc in their home countries.

Clearly, returning jihadists are not a new threat by any means.

The Lone Wolf Threat

We did see a brief spike in lone wolf attacks in October following the Islamic State's plea for jihadists living in the West to undertake such attacks. However, as I discussed in the Oct. 20 Security Weekly, this type of leaderless resistance operational model is not new.

White supremacists and anarchists have been encouraging people to follow this strategy for decades now, as seen by famous lone wolf attackers such as Joseph Paul Franklin, Eric Rudolph and Ted Kaczynski.

Ideologues, such as Abu Musab al-Suri, have been promoting the leaderless resistance approach for jihadists living in the West since 2004. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula began promoting al-Suri's theories in 2009, most notably through the creation of Inspire magazine, and the al Qaeda core hopped on the leaderless resistance bandwagon in 2010.

The Role of Social Media

Jihadists have always used media to promote their cause. In the 1970s and 1980s they produced bulletins, magazines, and VHS and audio tapes to raise funds, draw people to their cause and convince them to migrate to fight jihad abroad.

Jihadists and other militant groups — including anarchists and white supremacists — were early adopters of the Internet. I have followed this progression since the early 1990s, and, by and large, militant groups have been slightly ahead of the rest of us when it comes to social media.

Jihadists were active on Internet Relay Chat boards in the mid-1990s and then in Usenet newsgroups in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They also became very active with websites such as azzam.com, which became one of the most popular jihadist web sites. Azzam.com was established in 1996 by Babar Ahmed, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, who traveled to fight jihad in Bosnia.

Azzam.com went offline in 2002 because of pressure following the 9/11 attacks, but the 9/11 attacks led to a veritable explosion of jihadist activity on the Internet. While many jihadists and jihadist cheerleaders started websites, others opted for Internet forums, rather than static websites that are easier to shut down. There are a wide variety of jihadist forums. Some are open to the public, others are password protected. Even today, these forums remain an important source of propaganda, networking, recruitment and radicalization.

In recent years, sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become more popular among jihadists, as they have with the rest of us. I do agree with Johnson that the Islamic State's use of social media is masterful and more sophisticated than that of groups in the past. However, the jihadists' use of social media is not new.

Why It Matters

Portraying a longtime issue as something new and daunting may be a way to excuse the inability of the government to stop lone attackers and grassroots jihadists, but in reality, the government's inability to abate these threats stems more from their nature and not their novelty. Indeed, the United States and Europe have lived with the threats of returning jihadists and lone wolf attackers for decades now, and while such operators have been able to conduct occasional attacks, their impact has been quite limited when considered as part of the big picture. This is not to downplay the individual tragedies that happen when such operatives are able to kill and injure people in their terrorist attacks, but, quite frankly, the casualties produced by these attacks are dwarfed by those caused by other things, including car accidents, natural disasters and even the seasonal flu.

Terrorism has been a part of life for decades now, and it will continue to be, but it does not have to be a source of paranoia, fear and dread. It must instead be kept in proper perspective, as should any other problem, so it may be responded to appropriately.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

FCC wants to tax the Internet to "expand coverage"

Whatever you tax, you get less of.
Alan Greenspan

I head the words of some some men and I know they are right. Great example is above. So why is it the bureaucracy wants less internet service.

FCC eyes tax on Internet service - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

The Federal Communications Commission is eyeing a proposal to tax broadband Internet service.

The move would funnel money to the Connect America Fund, a subsidy the agency created last year to expand Internet access...

"If members of Congress understood that the FCC is contemplating a broadband tax, they'd sit up and take notice," said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a consumer advocacy group that opposes the tax.

Numerous companies, including AT&T, Sprint and even Google have expressed support for the idea.

Consumers already pay a fee on their landline and cellular phone bills to support the FCC's Universal Service Fund. The fund was created to ensure that everyone in the country has access to telephone service, even if they live in remote areas.

Last year, the FCC overhauled a $4.5 billion portion of the Universal Service Fund and converted it into a broadband Internet subsidy, called the Connect America Fund. The new fund aims to subsidize the construction of high-speed Internet networks to the estimated 19 million Americans who currently lack access...

OK, a temporary service charge, the Universal Service Fund, was supposed to fund expansion of telephone service to under serviced areas and then end. I think it's still ongoing. And can anyone tell me people in Ten Buck Nowhere cannot get phone service. Now we have the internet stage of this.

Now here is another issue that is tied to this:

Republicans could soon champion the protection of Internet Freedom as an official party issue, The Daily Caller has learned. Language in the final draft of the Internet freedom proposal was obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller.

The language was finalized on Tuesday, a source in the Republican Party told The Daily Caller, but it awaits party approval next week at the upcoming Republican National Convention.

Approval of the newly finalized draft language, however, would make the party the first of the two dominant political parties to fully and officially embrace Internet freedom. It also signals what Republicans view as important and necessary to keep the Internet open and free.

“Internet Freedom”, according to the finalized draft language, would entail the removal of “regulatory barriers” for technology businesses, resistance to international governance of the Internet and the “constitutional protection” of personal data.

“We will remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies and business plans from innovation and competition, while preventing legacy regulation from interfering with new technologies such as mobile delivery of voice and video data as they become crucial components of the Internet ecosystem,” said the finalized draft...

We do know DHS likes to monitor the internet. Remember, ever paranoids have enemies.