Page 12«..11121314..2030..»

Category Archives: NSA

2023: NSA Puts Top Politicians On Watch List – – The Tide

Posted: May 21, 2022 at 6:26 pm

Ahead of the 2023 general elections and other off-season elections in the country, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) has placed politicians who exhibit tendencies to subvert the electoral process on the watch list.Accordingly, the ONSA said heads of security and law enforcement agencies have been tasked to step up close monitoring and profiling of political actors no matter how highly placed.The National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj. Gen. Babagana Monguno (rtd), disclosed this in his remarks at the meeting of the Inter Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja.Monguno said that his office had noted with utmost concern, the growing uncertainty heralding the conduct of party primaries for the 2023 general elections.This is in addition to the unabated spate of violence that threatened the upcoming off-cycle gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun states, arising from internal party wrangling, increasing acrimony and bickering among political actors as well as the inability of various contending political blocs to amicably resolve differences in line with democratic tenants, he said.Mungono who was represented by Sanusi Galadima, said the disturbing development had already culminated in intense power play capable of heightening unnecessary political tension across the country.More worrisome according to him is the unguarded utterances by some highly respected individuals and groups which, more often than not, amplify divisive narratives to the detriment of national security and stability.Accordingly, he said, Heads of security and law enforcement agencies have been tasked to step up close monitoring and profiling of political actors no matter highly placed who exhibit tendencies to subvert the electoral process, even as thugs and their sponsors would equally be trailed for possible arrest and prosecution.He emphasised the need for INEC to enjoin political parties to consistently abide by prescribed rules as outlined in their respective manifestoes.Earlier in his remarks, the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, lamented the general security situation in the country and its impact on the electoral process which according to him is a source of concern to the commission.Yakubu said the commission was however confident that with nine months to the 2023 general election, there was enough time to respond to the security challenges and secure the nation for elections to take place nationwide. He said the timetable for the election has also been released.Let us not wait until a few weeks to the election before we realise that time is not on our side and begin to seek for extension of timelines. The time to act is now.We wish to reassure the security agencies that we will continue to work cooperatively with you to ensure the success of all forthcoming elections and electoral activities, he said.

Here is the original post:
2023: NSA Puts Top Politicians On Watch List - - The Tide

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on 2023: NSA Puts Top Politicians On Watch List – – The Tide

Cow slaughter stirred up in Kanpur, police took meat sample… NSA will be imposed on the accused – News Track English

Posted: at 6:26 pm

Lucknow: Tension prevailed in the area after beef was allegedly found in a cowshed in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The Bithoor police, who reached the cowshed located in Bani village of Chaubepur block of Kanpur, came to know about the matter and started investigation. Meat was found in a sack in the room built inside the cowshed. Some remains were found in the drain. After getting the information, the Commissioner of Police, who reached the spot, said that the accused have been identified. Action will be taken against them under NSA.

According to the information, when the laborers digging the pond near the cowshed in Bithoor Kanpur, after the information went inside the cowshed, two unknown persons started running away from there. Both of them left the bike inside the cowshed in a hurry. After the meat was found in the cowshed, the villagers informed the Bithoor police about it. As soon as the information was received, the Bithoor police reached the spot and started investigation. The team of doctors reached the spot and sent the meat sample for examination and the remains were buried by digging a pit.

Bajrang Dal's district coordinator Naresh Tomar said that complaints of such incidents were being received for a long time. Today we have come here on the information of such incident and we demand strict action from the police against the accused. Police Commissioner Vijay Singh Meena, who reached the spot, said that we had got information about beef being found inside the cowshed. The two accused fled from the spot after seeing the villagers. Both have been identified. Meat sample has been taken for testing. NSA will be imposed against the accused, strict action will be taken against them.

Hackers blew three and a half lakh rupees from the bank account of the female judge of the sessions court

4 days after killing the married girlfriend, the lover committed suicide by jumping in front of the train

The bride who went to the parlor for make-up did not return..., the barati kept dancing at the door and then..."

Read more:
Cow slaughter stirred up in Kanpur, police took meat sample... NSA will be imposed on the accused - News Track English

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Cow slaughter stirred up in Kanpur, police took meat sample… NSA will be imposed on the accused – News Track English

Allies Issue Cybersecurity Advisory on Weaknesses that Allow Initial Access – National Security Agency

Posted: May 17, 2022 at 6:47 pm

FORT MEADE, Md. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI, along with allied nations, published a Cybersecurity Advisory today to raise awareness about the poor security configurations, weak controls and other poor network hygiene practices malicious cyber actors use to gain initial access to a victims system.Weak Security Controls and Practices Routinely Exploited for Initial Access also includes best practices that can help organizations strengthen their defenses against this malicious activity.As long as these security holes exist, malicious cyber actors will continue to exploit them, said NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce. We encourage everyone to mitigate these weaknesses by implementing the recommended best practices.Some of the most common weaknesses include not enforcing multifactor authentication, incorrectly applying privileges or permissions and errors within access control lists and not keeping software up to date. The advisory recommends mitigations that control access, harden credentials, establish centralized log management and more.CISA produced the advisory with help from NSA and other partners. That includes the FBI, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ) and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT NZ), the Netherlands National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL), and the United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) on the advisory. Many of the same cybersecurity authorities collaborated to release a complementary advisory on 27 April, which highlighted the top routinely exploited vulnerabilities from 2021.Read the full report here. Visit our full library for more cybersecurity information and technical guidance.

Here is the original post:
Allies Issue Cybersecurity Advisory on Weaknesses that Allow Initial Access - National Security Agency

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Allies Issue Cybersecurity Advisory on Weaknesses that Allow Initial Access – National Security Agency

The NSA Swears It Has No Backdoors in Next-Gen Encryption – WIRED

Posted: at 6:47 pm

A group of human rights lawyers and investigators called on the Hague this week to bring what would be the first ever cyber war crimes charges. The group is urging the International Criminal Court to bring charges against the dangerous and destructive Russian hacking group known as Sandworm, which is run by Russias military intelligence agency GRU. Meanwhile, activists are working to block Russia from using satellites controlled by the French company Eutelsat to broadcast its state-run propaganda programming.

Researchers released findings this week that thousands of popular websites record data that users type into forms on the site before they hit the Submit buttoneven if the user closes the page without submitting anything. Google released a report on an in-depth security analysis it conducted with the chipmaker AMD to catch and fix flaws in specialty security processors used in Google Cloud infrastructure. The company also announced a slew of privacy and security features for its new Android 13 mobile operating system along with a vision for making them easier for people to understand and use.

The European Union is considering child protective legislation that would require scanning private chats, potentially undermining end-to-end encryption at a massive scale. Plus, defenders from the cybersecurity nonprofit BIO-ISAC are racing to protect the bioeconomy from digital threats, announcing a partnership this week with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab that will help fund pay-what-you-can incident response resources.

But wait, theres more. Each week we round up the news that we didnt break or cover in-depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

The United States is completing development of a new generation of high-security encryption standards that will be robust in the current technical climate and are designed to be resistant to circumvention in the age of quantum computing. And while the National Security Agency contributed to the new standards' creation, the agency says it has no special means of undermining the protections. Rob Joyce, the NSAs director of cybersecurity, told Bloomberg this week, There are no backdoors." The NSA has been implicated in schemes to backdoor encryption before, including in a situation in the early 2010s in which the US removed an NSA-developed algorithm as a federal standard over backdoor concerns.

An extensive investigation by Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy & Technology reveals a more detailed picture than ever of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency surveillance capabilities and practices. According to the report, published this week, ICE began developing its surveillance infrastructure at the end of the George W. Bush administration, years before it was previously thought to have begun these efforts. And researchers found that ICE spent $2.8 billion on surveillance technology, including face recognition, between 2008 and 2021. ICE was already known for its aggressive and invasive surveillance tactics during the Donald Trump administrations anti-immigration crackdowns, but the report also argues that ICE has played a key role in the federal governments larger push to amass as much information as possible about people in the United States.

Our two-year investigation, including hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests and a comprehensive review of ICEs contracting and procurement records, reveals that ICE now operates as a domestic surveillance agency, the report says. By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time.

In a legal settlement this week, the face recognition and surveillance startup Clearview AI agreed to a set of restrictions on its business in the US, including that it wont sell its faceprint database to businesses or individuals in the country. The company says it has more than 10 billion faceprints in its arsenal belonging to people around the world and collected through photos found online. The settlement comes after the American Civil Liberties Union accused Clearview of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The agreement also stipulates that the company wont be allowed to sell access to its database in Illinois for five years. This settlement demonstrates that strong privacy laws can provide real protections against abuse, Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project said in a statement. Despite the privacy win, Clearview may continue to sell its services to federal law enforcement, including ICE, and police departments outside of Illinois.

Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chavessaid on Sunday that the country was declaring a national emergency after the notorious Conti ransomware gang infected multiple government agencies with malware last week. Sunday was the first day of Chaves' presidency. Conti leaked some of a 672 GB trove of stolen data from multiple Costa Rican agencies. In April, the Costa Rican social security administration had announced that it was the victim of a Conti attack. At this time, a perimeter security review is being carried out on the Conti Ransomware, to verify and prevent possible attacks," the agency tweeted at the time.

Go here to see the original:
The NSA Swears It Has No Backdoors in Next-Gen Encryption - WIRED

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on The NSA Swears It Has No Backdoors in Next-Gen Encryption – WIRED

Data sharing and the Budapest Convention. NSA says new encryption standard won’t have backdoors. New York enacts measures to protect power grid. – The…

Posted: at 6:47 pm

At a glance.

The Council of Europe has announced that the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (also known as the Budapest Convention) was opened for signature at a conference of the Councils Committee of Ministers.. The protocols goal is to encourage the sharing of electronic evidence like subscriber info and traffic data among council member states through direct cooperation with service providers and registrars. Representatives from member states including Austria, Finland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden were present at the signing, as well as non-member states including the US and Japan. Secretary General Marija Pejinovi Buri explained, The Second Protocol brings the Budapest Convention up to date with current, technological challenges, so that it remains the most relevant and effective international framework for combating cybercrime in the years ahead. Justice Minister of Italy, Marta Cartabia, added, The use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) by organised crime in all sectors (sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, smuggling, terrorism) represents a further challenge for our judicial authorities and for our institutionsThe Second Additional Protocol, therefore, responds to the need for greater and more efficient co-operation between States and between the States and the private sector, clarifying the cases in which the service providers will be able to provide the data in their possession directly to the competent authorities of other countries. The Protocol is open for signature by Parties to the Convention and will be implemented once ratified by five States.

Ilia Kolochenko, Founder of ImmuniWeb, a member of Europol Data Protection Experts Network and EU CyberNet Member, commented on the importance of the Protocol:

As of today, The Budapest Convention remains the most comprehensive and the most important international treaty designed to combat cybercrime. The Convention, among other things, harmonizes the criminalization of computer offences, accelerates collaboration between law enforcement agencies and facilitates the preservation and seizure of digital evidence stored in a foreign country.

"The 20-year old Convention, however, certainly requires some updates to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving technology landscape and novel tactics deployed by sophisticated threat actors. Despite reasonable concerns expressed by the EU EDPB in relation to possible privacy risks created by the long-awaited Second Protocol, the Protocol brings several major improvements.

"Enhanced mutual assistance in emergency situations is probably the most crucial development. While procedurally its not yet crystal clear how the emergency assistance provisions will be implemented by signatory countries, the provisions definitely bring a sound legal framework to remove some bureaucratic barriers that have been hindering mutual legal assistance in cross-border investigations when time was of the essence.

"Other provisions, such as disclosure of domain name owners and subscriber information, will probably have a less palpable impact, as many countries have already established tenable processes and procedures related thereto. Novel provisions on joint investigation teams will undoubtedly boost multiagency and multijurisdictional cooperation, however, the recent success of numerous joint operations, conducted by national authorities led by Europol and Interpol, convincingly demonstrates that joint investigations work pretty well today.

"That being said, in 2022, the challenges remain pretty similar to 2001. First, countries like Russia, China, India and most African countries are not signatories of the Convention. It is impossible to effectively investigate and prosecute cybercriminals without frictionless cooperation with those states, representing over 3 billionInternet users. Second, the Convention does not create specific duties binding upon national law enforcement agencies, but rather encourages governments to adopt necessary legislation and implement the requisite infrastructure. Third, most law enforcement agencies are already overwhelmed with an avalanche of domestic cases and will unlikely prioritize external requests even if the law provides so. Thus, we will probably observe more countries passing national laws to authorized legal hacking by police to obtain digital evidence in a rapid, licit and straightforward manner.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is working on establishing quantum encryption standards for the nation, and some might be concerned the advanced technology might be used by another agency, NSA, for surveillance. NSAs director of cybersecurity Rob Joyce attempted to put such worries to rest by promising there will be no backdoors that could allow for spying. Joyce told Dark Reading, Those candidate algorithms that NIST is running the competitions on all appear strong, secure, and what we need for quantum resistance. Weve worked against all of them to make sure they are solid.

The Assembly of the US state of New York on Wednesday passed legislation aimed at securing the states energy grid against cyberattack. The bill was introduced by Assemblyman and chair of his chamber's Energy Committee Mike Cusick, who explained, "New York's energy grid is a prime target for hackers and cyber criminals across the globe...The passage of this legislation is a crucial step in our fight against cyber crime and our efforts to bolster the resiliency of our grid. GovTech notes that the bill will also provide a path for future legislation protecting infrastructure, and gives the state's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services the power to collaborate with state and federal agencies. Once passed by the Senate, the bill will be reviewed by Governor Kathy Hochul, who in February launched the "Joint Security Operations Center, a collaboration of federal and local partners offering a statewide view of the cyberactivity.

Read the original here:
Data sharing and the Budapest Convention. NSA says new encryption standard won't have backdoors. New York enacts measures to protect power grid. - The...

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Data sharing and the Budapest Convention. NSA says new encryption standard won’t have backdoors. New York enacts measures to protect power grid. – The…

NSA’s Rob Joyce: Even the good hactivists are problematic – The New Statesman

Posted: at 6:47 pm

Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, war on the ground has been brutal and catastrophic. Cyber warfare has been comparably insignificant, and projections about mass online shutdowns have not materialised.

However, there has been some intervention from hostile state actors. Just last week, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that Russia was almost certainly behind a major cyber operation targeting the US commercial communications and internet satellite company Viasat, which happened an hour before the invasion on 24 February.

After months of analysis, the UK governments National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has now attributed the hacks to the Russian state. While the primary target was the Ukrainian military, the attacks also impacted Ukrainian Viasat customers, and caused disruption to wind farms and internet users across central Europe. Additionally, the NCSC has ascertained that Russia was also behind an earlier attack on the Ukrainian government on 13 January, which involved defacing government websites and the deployment of destructive malware.

Interestingly, global sanctions on Russia have caused ransomware attacks to decrease since March, noted Rob Joyce, cyber security director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), at the NCSCs CyberUK conference in Wales this week. Sanctions have made it harder for criminals to organise attacks and move money in the West, he said.

But cyber threats do not only come from hostile states. Speaking in a panel discussion, Joyce highlighted the rise of cyber vigilantes lone actors on both sides of the conflict who are taking matters into their own hands to infiltrate and destroy their enemys systems.

While activism in support of Ukraine might seem commendable, Joyce warned that such an approach is not conducive to ethical behaviour. You want to sit back and root for the folks who are trying to do noble things but it is problematic, he said. We are trying to hold bad actors accountable in other nations [and] we have to be good international citizens in the cyber arena.

Abigail Bradshaw, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), said that roughly 300,000 hactivists related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been identified so far, and added that the extent of cyber vigilantism has taken [government] by surprise.

There is an extreme unpredictability associated with these exploits that make it difficult to attribute, contain and stop them, she said. Hactivism can also impact regular citizens quite significantly, due to spillover onto non-primary targets (such as with the Viasat campaign) and breaches on public tools like Google Maps, impeding peoples ability to travel and infiltrating personal location data.

Some hactivists do not act alone and have the advantage of an organisation behind them, making them even more of a threat. Perhaps the best-known is Anonymous, the pro-Ukraine collective that has vowed to keep attacking Russia until its aggression stops. The groups actions have caused Russia to become the most hacked country in the world in 2022 so far, with breaches affecting 3.5 million people, according to research from virtual private network (VPN) provider Surfshark.

But hactivist collectives exist on both sides. Conti, a group of pro-Russia ransomware cyber criminals, have now restyled themselves as political activists, said Jonathan Hope, senior technology evangelist at cyber security firm Sophos, who spoke in another session at CyberUK on ransomware.

Vigilantes can be more ruthless and chaotic than other cyber criminals, he noted, as they destroy data for the sake of it rather than for financial gain, meaning victims are less likely to get their information back. Theyre hacking for Mother Russia with no checks, controls or balances, Hope said. Its a tool, a weapon to destroy data.

The rise in such sporadic hacking makes it ever more important that governments secure and stress-test their critical national infrastructure, said Juhan Lepassaar, executive director of the European Union Agency for Cyber Security.

He said that the UK has done great work in securing its telecoms sector, and other industries and countries need to follow suit. It pays off to build a framework where you stress-test the most critical sectors in society. [The sectors should be] incentivised to do it themselves.

There was consensus that both organisations and individuals need to be encouraged to undertake basic steps in cyber security. Joyce said that attitudes are changing, albeit a little late intelligence agencies have focused on counter-insurgency and terrorism for the past two decades, he said, which has caused cyber defence to fall by the wayside.

Weve not been investing in IT and now China is threatening those systems, he said. We will now do the things that we should have done ten or 20 years ago. The narrative has shifted.

Moving the onus of cyber security from response to prevention is key, added Lepassaar. In fact, Ukraines thorough preparations are what has helped the country stay online despite multiple setbacks and has even enabled them to host press conferences in besieged cities, he said. There has been a good deal of resilience from the Ukrainian state around maintaining connectivity. [This shows] the value of building partnerships early on and making sure you build distributed systems that are difficult to take down and attack.

Sign up for The New Statesmans newsletters Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. World Review The New Statesmans global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. The New Statesman Daily The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Green Times The New Statesmans weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. This Week in Business A handy, three-minute glance at the week ahead in companies, markets, regulation and investment, landing in your inbox every Monday morning. The Culture Edit Our weekly culture newsletter from books and art to pop culture and memes sent every Friday. Weekly Highlights A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. Ideas and Letters A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section and the NS archive, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. Events and Offers Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates.

Read more:
NSA's Rob Joyce: Even the good hactivists are problematic - The New Statesman

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on NSA’s Rob Joyce: Even the good hactivists are problematic – The New Statesman

Sirota: Biden administrations reported $10B deal with Amazon shrouded in secrecy – The Hill

Posted: at 6:47 pm

David Sirota, founder of The Lever news outlet, said he believes a reported $10 billion deal between the Biden administration and Amazon is hidden in secrecy.

In late April, the news outlet Nextgov reported that the National Security Agency had re-awarded Amazon a contract for cloud-computing services.

NSA recently awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services that delivers cloud computing services to support the agencys mission, an NSA official told Nextgov.

Sirota expressed concerns with the reported contract.

We dont actually know the details of this contract. Its shrouded in secrecy, theres a national security exemption for the details of the contract, but we know its a cloud computing contract, Sirota said while appearing on Hill.TVs Rising.

There is a privacy question about what the NSA needs with a $10 billion build out of cloud computing. The mind can run wild about what thats all about in terms of surveillance and data collection, he added.

Sirota said the size of the contract is huge.

Theres very few details about what that contract is and I think that people need to understand how big the contract is. Federal contracts go out all the time in the millions of dollars even hundred of millions of dollars. A $10 billion federal contract, even at the federal government level, that is a huge contract, Sirota said.

Sirota said the size of the contract can provide some answers to as why the Biden administration awarded it.

Whatever they are actually building out with that, whatever the NSA is doing with it, you can rest assured that it is a big thing, he added.

More:
Sirota: Biden administrations reported $10B deal with Amazon shrouded in secrecy - The Hill

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Sirota: Biden administrations reported $10B deal with Amazon shrouded in secrecy – The Hill

Airsoft shooter at US military base in Italy receives discharge from Navy – Stars and Stripes

Posted: at 6:47 pm

An active-duty sailor who triggered a two-hour lockdown at Naval Support Activity Naples last year by firing an airsoft gun on base is being discharged from the Navy, a spokesman said May 17, 2022. (Erik Slavin/Stars and Stripes)

NAPLES, Italy An active-duty sailor who triggered a two-hour lockdown at Naval Support Activity Naples last year by firing an airsoft gun on base is being booted from the Navy following a monthslong inquiry.

A probe led by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service found that the unidentified 22-year-old seaman shot at or near a group of adolescents with an airsoft rifle from the balcony of his on-base housing, said Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Comer, a spokesman for Navy Region Europe Africa Central. One of the adolescents alleged that they were struck with a plastic pellet.

As is policy with nonjudicial punishments, the service is not naming the sailor, who was assigned to the Navy Computer and Telecommunications Station Naples, Comer said.

The Dec. 16, 2021, shooting happened on the bases Gricignano di Aversa site. It was not reported to base police and the person who reported being hit did not have any apparent injuries, the NCIS investigation found.

No subsequent shots were fired, but about 45 minutes later another minor reported seeing a man carrying a gun on base. That report caused the lockdown and hunt for the service member, who ultimately was found in his room, Comer said

The service member was compliant with police instructions and immediately turned over the airsoft gun, he said.

The sailor is in the process of leaving Italy and separating from the Navy, Comer said.

Airsoft guns often are realistically modeled to look like real weapons. They shoot nonmetallic soft pellets and frequently are used for target practice and military-style games.

Personal weapons, including airsoft guns, are prohibited on base, a Navy spokesperson said in December.

NSA Naples Gricignano di Aversa site includes schools, housing, a commercial center, a hospital and a hotel. It is about 13 miles from the bases Capodichino site, which includes administrative and support services and is home to U.S. 6th Fleet.

Approximately 8,500 people are assigned to the base, according to its website.

Read more here:
Airsoft shooter at US military base in Italy receives discharge from Navy - Stars and Stripes

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Airsoft shooter at US military base in Italy receives discharge from Navy – Stars and Stripes

Govt will simply slap UAPA or NSA on perceived dissenters even if sedition law is struck off statute – National Herald

Posted: at 6:47 pm

The court granted Central government time till May 10 to file its response, failing which it intended to decide the question of whether there was a requirement to refer the challenge to a seven-member bench.

Instead, the Central government filed an affidavit stating that it will reconsider the law and requested that the challenge proceedings be kept in abeyance.

It appears that the courts oral observations in the matter, where it disapproved of the misuse of the law, had a bearing on the governments decision.

The petition took objection to this approach mainly because such a proposal didnt factor in pending cases and continued misuse of the provision while the law would be under the governments consideration.

The Central government sought a days time to take instructions on interim measure to ally the petitioners fears.

On Wednesday, it proposed to establish a mechanism where sedition cases would be filed only after an officer of SP rank justified in writing and such a justification would be open to judicial review. The petitioners, on the other hand, insisted on suspension of law in totality.

In fact, Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan submitted proposed consequential directions of an absolute suspension of the law which inter alia included explicit stay of pending proceedings and bar on registration of new cases.

Continued here:
Govt will simply slap UAPA or NSA on perceived dissenters even if sedition law is struck off statute - National Herald

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Govt will simply slap UAPA or NSA on perceived dissenters even if sedition law is struck off statute – National Herald

Two agency inspectors general got salaries that busted legal limits on political employee pay – Federal News Network

Posted: at 6:47 pm

Editors Note: The NSA IG mentioned in the report and in this interview, Robert Storch, told Federal News Network that the day ofter he learned of the cost-of-living adjustments he received, he repaid them with a personal check for $17,595.13. Storch says he was not consulted on the increases, and declined to seek a waiver to keep them.

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drives daily audio interviews onApple PodcastsorPodcastOne.

The inspectors general for two intelligence agencies were each overpaid by tens of thousands of dollars between 2016 and 2020. Thats according to an internal Defense Department memo a whistleblower supplied to Empower Oversight, an outside watchdog group. Theres no clear evidence anyone intentionally did anything wrong. Theres also no evidence the moneys been repaid or whether the matter has been properly investigated. Jason Foster is founder and president of Empower Oversight. He spoke with Federal News Networks Jared Serbu on theFederal Drive with Tom Teminabout what we know and dont know.

Jason Foster: The memo was provided to the DoD inspector generals office and it walks through the relevant legal authorities for inspector general pay because inspector general pay is set by statute. And inspectors general are senior officials who are subject to a pay freeze and so the memo went through and concluded and reported findings to the DoD IG that these two inspectors general at NSA and NRO had been, according to this official at DoD, overpaid the amounts of approximately $18,000 total for one of the IGs and approximately $150,000 total for the other IG. And this is over a multiple-year timeframe.

Jared Serbu: And youre fairly confident at this point that that memo is authentic, even though it was not provided to you from an official source of any kind?

Jason Foster: Yes, so we attached a copy of the memo to our FOIA requests to all the agencies that we asked about it. And in our FOIA request, we explicitly said that we had received it from an anonymous source and couldnt independently authenticate it. However, since we sent those FOIA requests we were contacted by multiple other sources, who did authenticate the memo who we know who they are, and they are in a position to know that its an authentic memo.

Jared Serbu:And I believe youve seen a response from the NSA IG that basically just indicates this was a clerical error that he knew nothing about at the time. Anything similar from NRO, so far?

Jason Foster: No, weve had no contact from NRO. And I would note just that the amount for the NRO IG, the total amount of the alleged overpayments is much higher, its much more significant than with the, in one case, it was just the NSA IG got a cost of living increase that the DoD memo says he wasnt entitled to. However, with the NRO IG, youre talking about overpayments of over $40,000 a year for several years totaling about $150,000.

Jared Serbu:Yeah, can you unpack that one, maybe a little bit more? Because that one, it looks as, for one thing it spans over more years than the NSA IG overpayments did. But also it looks in that case as though the official started at a higher salary than would have been entitled to under law and then continue to get increases year after year after that.

Jason Foster: Yeah, thats exactly correct. So we lay out the numbers from the memo in our FOIA request. And, you know, this is, again, the these are approximate and we dont have access to the underlying records. We just have the summary memo that the DoD provided to the DoD IG. And you know, according to that memo, the overpayments were about $5,000 in 2016; about $20,000 in 2017; about $38,000 in 2018; about $40,000 in 2019; and about $45,000 in 2020. I mean, this is significantly above the level at what an executive level, I think its executive level three, I think is the pay cap for a presidentially appointed inspector general.

Jared Serbu:I know you said youve not gotten any official responses from NRO yet, but is there any document in your possession or anything that youve seen that would lead you to come up with some reason why this might have happened in that case?

Jason Foster: I mean, I have a little bit of insight, again, from sources who contacted me after we sent the FOIA request as sort of what the backstory was. When this memo came over to the DoD OIG, they then referred it to the Council of Inspectors General Integrity Committee (CIGIE), which is sort of the self-policing body for inspectors general, to see if there was any potential investigation that body ought to do. I dont know whether they also informed the White House or Congress or anyone else, but its because the DoD IG is the one who referred it to the integrity committee, there were concerns about potential retaliation if, because the NSA IG is the nominee to be the new DoD IG, right? And so its the office that he would be taking over where people had, just doing what they thought was their duty, referred it for potential inquiry. And we raised questions about why the integrity committee didnt look at it, and how can this not have been elevated to responsible people in the political branches, either in Congress or the White House and sort of how, its just sort of perplexing, like, how could this happen without anybody knowing, and without it being public? You dont have accidental pay raises going to other IGs and I dont know if its because theyre national security components. And so theres just not as much transparency or what the explanation is.

Jared Serbu:Lets unpack that CIGIE piece a little bit, I think the allegation in your original whistleblower communication was not only was CIGIE aware that these overpayments had happened and didnt really do any kind of investigation, but may have also alerted the people who would have been the subjects of the investigation. Is that right?

Jason Foster: Thats correct. So the source who provided the memo to us also alleged that in CIGIE meetings, there was essentially a heads up to the other IGs and said, Hey, this is something that came in to the integrity committee, and you should double check and make sure your houses there in order, right? Basically, theres going to be scrutiny on this. So there was, like I said, essentially, a heads up to everyone to make sure that they werent in a similar position.

Jared Serbu:I want to stress I dont think theres really any hard evidence at this point that there was any impropriety on the part of CIGIE or, frankly, anyone else at this point because we just havent seen the documents yet. But does this kind of structure give you any kind of pause just in terms of how inspectors general are overseen? It is really, as you said, really just a self policing body where the inspectors general themselves are really the only oversight they have other than each of their respective agency directors, or am I missing something?

Jason Foster: Right, and Congress, right. I mean, and technically CIGIE, theres an OMB official who is part of CIGIE by statute. So thats supposed to be the line of oversight to the White House. But again, with my background and working years and years on issues around the IG community from Capitol Hill, my concern is there needs to be transparency and oversight and questions being asked from Capitol Hill about these things. I mean, this is ultimately, the structure, as you said, it is largely a self-policing structure. The integrity committee itself, the NSA IG was the vice chair of the integrity committee at the time this report came in and so had to recuse himself. My understanding is he did properly as I would expect, he recused himself from any consideration of this particular matter. But the standards are very opaque and vague as to what the integrity committee will open an investigation on and what it wont open an investigation on. And there has been a lot of dissatisfaction on Capitol Hill over the years with the integrity committees performance. It seems to be either too aggressive in some cases for some reasons and not aggressive enough in other cases. And theres no sort of coherent explanation for why they will open up an investigation on some and not open investigations on others. And my argument from the time even from when I was on Capitol Hill as a staffer dealing with CIGIE and its leadership was you need to manage this situation, when you have a problem like this, that has the potential to tarnish the reputation of the inspector general community writ large. You need to show some leadership and and make sure that its raised to the political branches to deal with, and that folks on the Hill and the folks in the White House know when theres an issue and can step in and resolve it one way or the other.

Jared Serbu:To the best of your knowledge, is anyone on the Hill actively looking into this?

Jason Foster: We published an update to our press release that included questions for the record from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who had asked the NSA IG about the overpayments in the course of his confirmation proceedings, because hes the nominee to be the new DoD inspector general. And so thats the only one where I know we were provided a copy of the answer that the NSA inspector general provided to Sen. Hawleys office in response to that question for the record. But I know that that nomination hasnt moved forward in the last several weeks and that there were attempts to hotline it, and to have it passed by UC and that that hasnt occurred yet.

Jared Serbu:Just one more question on transparency. Beyond transparency around policy, is what you call it opaque a second ago, what else could or should CIGIE be doing to make the whole process that they run more transparent, and as you said, increase that or maintain that level of trust that everybody needs to have in the IG community?

Jason Foster: Well, we tried to impose some of that transparency back in 2016, when I worked on the IG empowerment act, and we had, there were dissatisfaction then on both sides of the aisle about the speed with which integrity committee investigations were being completed. And we passed at that time, a reporting requirement that said that when the integrity committee has an investigation on an IG thats open for more than 180 days, that then you have to send a report up to Congress with an explanation. Well, since Ive been off the Hill and Im now in this role in an outside watchdog organization, we actually FOIAd a whole bunch of those reports. Theyre not routinely made public. The statute didnt require them to make public so if Congress doesnt post them or put them out, then nobody sees them. And when we got them, we were sort of shocked by how little information is actually in them. So theyre constantly punting on these investigations. They stay open for extremely long periods of time, and then they send these perfunctory reports up to Congress technically satisfying the statute, but really not telling you much about why its taking so long. There were some people who wanted, who had argued for actual caps with requirements that look, you got to finish this investigation within X amount of time or something, some kind of consequence occurs. But they fought that, and we sort of had this compromise of the reporting requirement. But it doesnt seem to be doing much. So I know that theres talk among good government groups on the outside across the ideological spectrum about readdressing integrity committee reforms, because nobody seems to be happy with the progress on either side.

See more here:
Two agency inspectors general got salaries that busted legal limits on political employee pay - Federal News Network

Posted in NSA | Comments Off on Two agency inspectors general got salaries that busted legal limits on political employee pay – Federal News Network

Page 12«..11121314..2030..»