Eideard

The U.S. government’s list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to the United States or within its borders has more than doubled over the past year, a counterterrorism official told CNN…

The “no fly” list produced by the FBI now has approximately 21,000 names on it, according to the official, who has knowledge of the government’s figures. One year ago about 10,000 individuals were on it.

Only about 500 people currently on the no-fly list are Americans, the official said…

The United States can now ban people from flying who are “deemed to be a threat to national security” or who had gone to terrorist training camps, said the official. The earlier standard was to block only those considered a specific threat to try to bring down a plane…

…Analysts can now use single-source information, if it’s considered credible, to recommend someone for one of the government’s terror watch lists, including the no-fly list…

The government also has a much larger list, called the Terrorist Screening Database, with approximately 510,000 names currently on it. The smaller no-fly list is a subset of that.

About 1,000 changes are made to the catalog of possible terrorists each day. Names are added and deleted, or more information is included on individuals.

If I ever intended to fly again, I’d probably take the time to harass the bureaucrats in charge of this crap to see if I made the list, yet.

Actually, I refuse to travel anywhere in the world I can’t drive to in my old pickup truck. Courtesy of George W. Bush, Homeland Insecurity and the TSA.

The FBI plans to step up the monitoring of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and has asked for help building an app to constantly monitor the sites.

Earlier this month the FBI quietly published a request for information looking for companies that might help it build a new social network monitoring system looking at “publicly available” information. Contractors have until 10 February to suggest solutions.

US enforcement agencies have increasingly been using social networks to track crime. Recently over 40 members of two feuding New York gangs were indicted in connection with a series of shootings and killings in Brooklyn after they boasted about their crimes on Twitter…

But the increasing monitoring of social networks has also alarmed privacy advocates. Last year, Twitter disclosed that the justice department had subpoenaed it to get personal records of Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks aide.

Lillie Coney, associate director of EPIC, a Washington-based privacy group, called the FBI request “ridiculous.”

“Get a warrant,” she said. “You don’t know half the people you communicate with on Twitter. They are going to launch investigations and start looking at all sorts of people that they have no right to be investigating. There is no accountability, no transparency and no oversight.”

The RFI calls on companies to develop a “secure, light weight web application” for the FBI’s strategic information and operations center. “The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”

The product must allow the FBI to keep hold of cached information as well as real time data, and allow that information to be linked to specific locations and easily shared…

The FBI did not return calls for comment.

I haven’t any beef with the premise of government recording, analyzing public data. In and of itself, that can be productive and useful. The concern is as old as the FBI. That is, what will they do with the information?

Geeks continue to admonish newbies to realize that everything they say online is out there for the world to see. There is no privacy on public parts of the Web. I would add another reminder to my fellow Americans. Since the first time I stood up publicly and opposed racist law and practice — in a demonstration 50 miles from the White House in 1960 — I have had a file on my activities in the FBI. That’s a fact of life for anyone in this land who dissents. It’s a badge of honor.

Authorities mistakenly arrested an Arab-American leader, but released him Saturday after realizing he was not the man they were looking for, his attorney and the FBI said.

Ali Hammoud, president of the Bint Jebail Cultural Center in Dearborn, was arrested at his Dearborn home Friday night by police, said attorney Majed Moughni. Police told Hammoud that they were acting on a warrant requested by the FBI involving alleged cigarette smuggling and Hizballah support with a man who has a similar name.

But Saturday morning, after he was questioned by FBI agents, Hammoud was released, Moughni said…So, he got to spend the night in custody. Terrific.

The arrest sparked concern among some in the region’s Arab-American community, already sensitive to being unfairly targeted by law enforcement, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Detroit FBI spokeswoman Special Agent Sandra Berchtold said Saturday via e-mail: “The individual fit the description/identifiers of an active warrant. It was later determined it was not the correct individual, and he was released.”

Berchtold said that “the individual was stopped by Dearborn (police) on a traffic violation.”

Moughni said that there was no traffic violation and that police came to Hammoud’s home Friday night to arrest him…

Face it. The coppers, the Feds, were trolling with a profile. Now, they lie about how the arrest happened.

After Hammoud was arrested, community leaders and others contacted Dearborn police and the FBI to find out what happened…Hammoud is well-known in Dearborn, and his arrest came as a surprise, said Hamad and Moughni…

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News, spoke Saturday with Dearborn police and the FBI about the case. “We will not rest until we find out what happened, and we want to make sure it will never happen again,” Siblani said. “This is a respected community leader. I never doubted his innocence.”

At least this never got to a trial – and lucky he wasn’t in the hands of someone dedicated to current Republican ideology.

Think it’s an isolated incident? That profiling doesn’t continually embarrass the United States? Check out the latest incident leading to an apology to the former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam – for the 2nd time in two years.

Four elderly men from the US state of Georgia have appeared in court charged with plotting to murder officials using explosives and the lethal toxin ricin.

Court documents say the group scoped out federal buildings and asked a contact to produce ricin. The FBI used a confidential informant to record the group’s meetings. You have to wonder if this was the “usual” level of informant. Like, some drug dealer trying to get a reduced sentence.

The men were arrested on Tuesday days after a laboratory test found trace amounts of ricin in their possession, the authorities said.

The four were named as Frederick Thomas, Dan Roberts, Ray Adams, and Samuel Crump, all ranging in age from 65 to 73.

The bespectacled accused appeared to have trouble hearing the judge at the federal court in Gainesville, even though she was using a microphone…

Mr Thomas allegedly wanted to model the group’s actions on the online novel Absolved, which involves small groups of citizens attacking US officials.

The novel’s author, Mike Vanderboegh, wrote on his blog on Wednesday his book was fiction, and was sceptical the group could have ever carried out the attacks…He appears often enough on Fox News that he’ll probably make a bundle commenting on the case.

According to court documents, Mr Thomas told the group he had a “bucket list” of politicians, employees and others he felt needed to be “taken out”…

Mr Crump and Mr Adams were allegedly assigned to try to obtain or make ricin.

As a grayhead who has occasionally been accused of being a terrorist by the sort of dimwit who would be a willing volunteer in a Georgia militia, I will be following the case with the sort of skepticism an FBI sting involving “confidential informants” deserves.

Maybe the case is legit. Maybe not. It speaks volumes of how most folks disrespect official Washington that the only people enthusiastically covering the purported plot are TV talking heads.

Preet Bharara and Ray Kelly
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Five active and three retired officers of the New York Police Department are among 12 people charged Tuesday with conspiring to transport and distribute firearms and stolen goods…

“A group of crime fighters took to moonlighting as criminals,” Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a press conference.

The defendants are charged in an alleged conspiracy to transport and distribute untraceable firearms across state lines. and conspiracy to transport supposedly stolen and counterfeit goods including cigarettes from Virginia and slot machines from Atlantic City, New Jersey…

The current or former NYPD officers charged are William Masso, Eddie Goris, Ali Oklu, Gary Oritz, and John Mahony, all active-duty officers in Brooklyn; Joseph Trischitta and Marco Venezia, who were active-duty NYPD officers at the time of the alleged crimes but are now retired; and Richard Melnik, a retired NYPD officer. Also charged, federal authorities said, are Anthony Santiago, a New York City Department of Sanitation police officer; David Kanwisher, a New Jersey corrections officer; and Michael Gee and Eric Gomer, who court documents list as “associates” of Santiago…

Prosecutors said that while the defendants all believed the items they transported were stolen; they had in fact been provided by the FBI. The firearms were never a danger to the public, authorities said, as they had been rendered inoperable.

“These crimes are without question, reprehensible — particularly conspiring to import untraceable guns and assault rifles into New York,” said Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division. “The public trusts the police not only to enforce the law, but to obey it. These crimes, as alleged in the complaint, do nothing but undermine public trust and confidence in law enforcement.”

You got that right.

We’re fortunate to have someone like Preet Bharara operating in New York, nowadays. Seems like I get to note his name in a crime-busting case every couple of months.

He gives new meaning to the term “organized crime”. A bumbling Bonanno bad guy bizarrely listed all of his contacts — from capos to consiglieres — in a Rolodex, The Post has learned.

Not-so-wiseguy Mike “The Butcher” Virtuoso recorded every one of the names, numbers, nicknames and even mob titles in a file so complete that the FBI agents who stumbled on it felt like they’d discovered a gold mine. The treasure trove was discovered in “The Butcher’s’’ butcher shop, Graham Avenue Meats & Deli, in Williamsburg.

The meticulously detailed “Rolodexes” and “address books” listed contact information for “members and associates of organized crime,” according to the feds.

He didn’t even bother to code or otherwise try to disguise his entries.

“For example, a slip of paper within one Rolodex contained the handwritten entry ‘Capo Lucchese’ and the names ‘Johnny Sideburns Cerello’ and ‘Glenn the Wheel Guadagno,’ ” Assistant US Attorney Stephen Frank wrote to a judge.

“Both men are convicted felons associated with the Lucchese organized crime family, and John Cerrella, also known as ‘Johnny Sideburns,’ is a captain in that family,” Frank wrote…

Virtuoso also dabbled in something akin to “Mafia scrapbooking,” the feds say.

FBI agents found newspaper clippings in his shop about cases involving a variety of mobsters, including articles on the conviction of Bonanno boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano and another about acting boss Sal “The Iron Worker” Montagna, prosecutors say.

Har. The silly things people reveal on the Web really is nothing more than a continuation of the same foolish habits they’ve always had.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.

Inclusion on the watch list can keep terrorism suspects off planes, block noncitizens from entering the country and subject people to delays and greater scrutiny at airports, border crossings and traffic stops.

The database now has about 420,000 names, including about 8,000 Americans, according to the statistics released in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. About 16,000 people, including about 500 Americans, are barred from flying.

Timothy J. Healy, the director of the F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center, which vets requests to add or remove names from the list, said the documents showed that the government was balancing civil liberties with a careful, multilayered process for vetting who goes on it — and for making sure that names that no longer need to be on it came off…

Mr. Healey, true to the standards of the F.B.I., is a liar.

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It was the deathbed request from the mother of a longtime fugitive that finally led the FBI to William Walter Asher III.

For 36 years, Asher had been on the run — ever since he escaped from a prison camp in 1975 rather than serve time for a deadly robbery.

But last week, federal agents caught up to him. He had changed his name, worked for a trucking company and lived with a woman who had no idea about his criminal past…

For years, it seemed that the FBI would never nab Asher.
In 1966, he and three accomplices robbed a San Francisco bar, shooting and then beating the bartender to death, authorities said.

Asher was 20 at the time…He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The file would have closed there. But eight years into his sentence, Asher escaped from a prison in El Dorado County, California — aided by a female accomplice…

In 2005, shortly before she died, Asher’s mother asked relatives to get in touch with her son. “She asked various family members to assist her in using the ‘secret’ number to call ‘Billy,’” the FBI said. Agents had been tipped off about the conversation by a source.

Armed with that information, agents scoured phone records of people who they believed may have helped fulfill the mother’s request.

They found two phone calls made to a home in Salida, California, to a man named Garry Donald Webb. The calls had been made two days before the mother died…

Authorities placed the home under surveillance. They also kept a watch on a trucking business where he was said to work.

On Friday, agents saw Asher leaving the home and confronted him.

“After some initial discussion Asher admitted his true identity,” the FBI said.

Which illustrates more than anything else is that “unidentified sources” – someone who expected payment and got it – is still one of the most important constituents of modern police work.

The FBI released its first app for Apple’s iPhone on Friday, called Child ID.

The app can store photos and information on a child, such as height, weight, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, hair and eye color and whether or not they have pierced ears.

“Using a special tab on the app, you can also quickly and easily e-mail the information to authorities with a few clicks” in case a child goes missing or in other emergencies, the FBI said in announcing the app’s release.

Parents and guardians of a child can also call 911 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from within the app. Child ID also has a list of safety tips for parents and a checklist of things to do if an emergency arises.

The phone can store multiple entries for multiple children, but filing out information about a child doesn’t automatically send it to the FBI. Everything entered using the app stays on a parent’s device running Apple’s iOS software – which includes the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

The only time the information is shared with law enforcement is when a user emails an entry on a child to police or the FBI.

There is a flaw or two in the software. The concept is in the right part of our social lives.

It’s worth considering for all geeky parents – though I guess the iOS devices are now mainstream enough, I can leave off the geeky part.

Federal US officials are attempting to determine how a stun gun was brought onboard a JetBlue flight that landed at Newark airport in New Jersey.

Crew members at Liberty International Airport found the stun gun tucked into the back of a seat on the plane following the flight from Boston.

The FBI said on Monday that there was no indication the gun, found on Friday, was intended for an attack…

How do you determine the gun wasn’t intended for an attack? Because there wasn’t one?

Members of the airline’s crew were cleaning the JetBlue aircraft at 2220 local time on Friday evening when the gun was discovered…

Authorities said they gave the weapon to the Port Authority of New York, before it was handed over to the Transportation Security Administration, the body responsible for carrying out security screening of passengers.

The TSA can be counted on do as thorough a job at finding who brought it on board – as they did at preventing it from being brought on board. Right?