Is an unexpected October Surprise on the way?
They think it’s a bad thing, but I give The Nation credit for reportorial digging. The hard left magazine has discovered that federal law enforcement agencies (though not the FBI) have been tracing who the mobs in Portland have been communicating with. The apparent lead role in utilizing hi tech and classified electronic means is being played by The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), while the US Marshal’s Service is dispatching street level personnel. This bypasses the FBI, whose Director William Wray is on the record in sworn testimony, dismissing any such superstructure:
“It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology,” he said, explaining that “folks who subscribe or identify” with antifa do not operate at a national level, but instead organize “regionally into small groups or nodes.”
The Nation reports:
A current DHS official described a colleague with expertise in electronic surveillance who was being deployed to Portland. But for what purpose? “Extracting information from protester’s phones,” the DHS official said. While in Portland, an interagency task force involving DHS and the Justice Department used a sophisticated cell phone cloning attack—the details of which remain classified—to intercept protesters’ phone communications, according to two former intelligence officers familiar with the matter.
Cell phone cloning involves stealing a phone’s unique identifiers and copying them to another device in order to intercept the communications received by the original device. The former intelligence officials described it as part of a “Low Level Voice Intercept” operation, declining to go into further detail—one of them citing the sensitive nature of the surveillance tool and the other an ongoing leak investigation within I&A.
“You’re getting an inside view into your targets, who they are, who they’re talking to—the hierarchy,” the former intelligence officer said, explaining that many within the DHS believe that antifa is an organized group—as opposed to the largely spontaneous, decentralized ideological tendency that most experts, including Trump’s own FBI director, believe it is. DHS intelligence has even found some limited evidence, which he considered thin, of foreign sponsorship. Attorney General William Barr, however, recently claimed that antifa is receiving foreign sponsorship—a necessary criterion to formally designating it a terror organization, which President Trump vowed to do in July. (The Nation recently reported on DHS intelligence’s attempts to tie antifa to Kurdish militant groups in Syria.)
“Signals intelligence collection would not be useful for preventing opportunistic looting or violent confrontations. It presumes the existence of coordinated, purposeful, and unlawful activity that is conducted through electronic means,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “The general concern is that DHS treated mass public protests—not just violent individuals—as suspicious and targets of investigation, or worse.” (snip)
read more:
Replies
Makes you think, why hasn't Trump designated antifa as domestic/foreign terrorists, unless the destruction they are doing is helping his campaign. How many more law officers have to be shot maimed, murdered before these depraved animals are put down?
What the he!! is the problem with dhs? They know obama was importing thousands of terrorists into the country in the dark of night using retrofited FEDEx jets. Who do they think they are shyting? Buses hauling them to strategic parts of the country awaiting obama's instructions, which I am sure they will make themselves known before the election.
that is so true it's time for the citizen of this county like myself need to vote this November Republican.
You will need a gun to protect yourself and family. The leftists are going to try and burn America down.
Soros is in too much with the dumbocrats and the Obama's and Clintons
They just ifound out that the UHAUL the protesters got their gear from was paid for by a George Soros foundation. So what are they going to do about it.
Nothing!
How about George Soros who is helping to fund these groups !
Subversion needs to be dealt with. No protection of our Constitution when they are trying to destroy the country that lives by it. Anarchists, subversives and outsiders that want to destroy our country should be stopped with every tool we have.
We will whack them over the knuckles with a limp wet noodle, that will fix them.
Are these prolonged "peaceful demonstrations" a great reason to eliminate welfare payments to these useful idiots too ?
The states govenors who allow these "peaceful protests" to continue should be arrested for treason.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next