This blog is a part of my body of research that seeks to analyse civil society's and academia's understanding of national security models from an academic perspective with a focus on Canada, Israel and the UK.
Showing posts with label FBI and informants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI and informants. Show all posts
There’s an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: The FBI.
How? Why? In an eye-opening talk, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson reveals a disturbing FBI practice that breeds terrorist plots by exploiting Muslim-Americans with mental health problems.
In 2012, Sami Osmakac was 25 years old, broke and struggling with mental illness. His family wanted to get him help. The FBI wanted him to plot a terrorist attack.
(T)ERROR opens to footage of part-time school cook Saeed Torres cursing about being on camera. “I told you I didn’t want my face on this shit,” he tells filmmakers Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe. Minutes later, he’s showing off on the sidelines of the school basketball court.
That contradiction is the first of many 63-year-old Saeed demonstrates in the 90-minute documentary, which offers unprecedented access into the unsettling work of an FBI informant during an active operation.
A former Black Panther, Torres was arrested on larceny charges more than 20 years ago and has been working for “the agency” ever since. His biggest coup came in 2005 when he drew Brooklyn jazz musician Tarik Shah into an admission that would see him jailed for 13 years. Shah’s mother, who appears in the film, is still campaigning to have him released, 10 years into his sentence. Torres says he has "no feelings” for the POI, or “Person of Interest” he’s sent to ensnare. But later in the film he says of Shah: “I liked and trusted the brother.”
In Pittsburgh, where most of the film takes place, Torres is tasked with befriending a white Muslim convert who the FBI suspect of radicalisation. While Torres admits that Khalifa al-Akili “wouldn’t throw rice at a wedding,” he sets about drawing the 34-year-old into a terror plot that would allow the FBI to put him behind bars. “He’s not even a psuedo-terrorist,” Torres says, but continues to angle for a conviction that could fetch him up to $250,000.
Khalifa al-Akili, the "Person of Interest" or POI being tracked by informant Saeed Torres during the film.
Torres and his interactions with FBI agents (he shares his voicemail and text messages with the audience), reveal the dogged and clumsy workings of a programme which has targeted and jailed thousands of Muslims across the United States since the 9/11 attacks, a scheme which civil liberties advocates describe as an “indiscriminate monitoring” and “a violation of religious freedom”.
‘FBI know nothing, they just want to make an arrest’
Directors Cabral and Sutcliffe were drawn to the issue when a 16-year-old student at the Harlem arts college where they taught was arrested on fabricated terror charges, leading to the deportation of the girl’s father. Sutcliffe went on make a film about Adama Bah, who after five years saw her charges dropped and was reunited with her father. But she was one of a fortunate minority – in similar cases the federal conviction rate is 96%.
“The FBI is responding to the latest episode of a deeply embedded historic problem: it’s a response to an event which in itself is a response to power abusing those without power,” Sutcliffe told FRANCE 24 in an interview on Thursday. “We recognise that the threat of terrorism is very real, but to what extent have our own policies exacerbated that problem?”
For Saeed, the FBI is “who’s in control”. But he says they lack understanding of the situation on the ground. “They don’t know nothing, they’re just trying to make an arrest,” he says.
Cabral and Sutcliffe made a request for a statement from the FBI but never received a response.
“We would love to hear their thoughts,” Cabral told FRANCE 24. “I’m sure there are people within the FBI who are frustrated with the counter-terrorism strategy too. But we just get this wall of silence. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle.”
(T)ERROR won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was featured at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
(T)ERROR opens to footage of part-time school cook Saeed Torres cursing about being on camera. “I told you I didn’t want my face on this shit,” he tells filmmakers Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe. Minutes later, he’s showing off on the sidelines of the school basketball court.
That contradiction is the first of many 63-year-old Saeed demonstrates in the 90-minute documentary, which offers unprecedented access into the unsettling work of an FBI informant during an active operation.
A former Black Panther, Torres was arrested on larceny charges more than 20 years ago and has been working for “the agency” ever since. His biggest coup came in 2005 when he drew Brooklyn jazz musician Tarik Shah into an admission that would see him jailed for 13 years. Shah’s mother, who appears in the film, is still campaigning to have him released, 10 years into his sentence. Torres says he has "no feelings” for the POI, or “Person of Interest” he’s sent to ensnare. But later in the film he says of Shah: “I liked and trusted the brother.”
In Pittsburgh, where most of the film takes place, Torres is tasked with befriending a white Muslim convert who the FBI suspect of radicalisation. While Torres admits that Khalifa al-Akili “wouldn’t throw rice at a wedding,” he sets about drawing the 34-year-old into a terror plot that would allow the FBI to put him behind bars. “He’s not even a psuedo-terrorist,” Torres says, but continues to angle for a conviction that could fetch him up to $250,000.
Khalifa al-Akili, the "Person of Interest" or POI being tracked by informant Saeed Torres during the film.
Torres and his interactions with FBI agents (he shares his voicemail and text messages with the audience), reveal the dogged and clumsy workings of a programme which has targeted and jailed thousands of Muslims across the United States since the 9/11 attacks, a scheme which civil liberties advocates describe as an “indiscriminate monitoring” and “a violation of religious freedom”.
‘FBI know nothing, they just want to make an arrest’
Directors Cabral and Sutcliffe were drawn to the issue when a 16-year-old student at the Harlem arts college where they taught was arrested on fabricated terror charges, leading to the deportation of the girl’s father. Sutcliffe went on make a film about Adama Bah, who after five years saw her charges dropped and was reunited with her father. But she was one of a fortunate minority – in similar cases the federal conviction rate is 96%.
“The FBI is responding to the latest episode of a deeply embedded historic problem: it’s a response to an event which in itself is a response to power abusing those without power,” Sutcliffe told FRANCE 24 in an interview on Thursday. “We recognise that the threat of terrorism is very real, but to what extent have our own policies exacerbated that problem?”
For Saeed, the FBI is “who’s in control”. But he says they lack understanding of the situation on the ground. “They don’t know nothing, they’re just trying to make an arrest,” he says.
Cabral and Sutcliffe made a request for a statement from the FBI but never received a response.
“We would love to hear their thoughts,” Cabral told FRANCE 24. “I’m sure there are people within the FBI who are frustrated with the counter-terrorism strategy too. But we just get this wall of silence. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle.”
(T)ERROR won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was featured at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
A paid FBI informant posing as a terrorism supporter assisted in the arrests of three men allegedly planning to aid the Islamic State. But did the agent help foil their plot or help devise it? We debate the role of informants in counterterrorism.
Originally aired on March 2, 2015
Hosted by:
Josh Zepps
Guests:
Adam D. Perlmutter@ADP_Legal(New York, NY)Criminal Defense Attorney
Computer hacker
Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known by his screen name ‘Sabu,’ walks
out of Manhattan’s Federal Court after his sentencing in New YorkPhotograph: Getty Images
The FBI is facing questions over its role in a 2011 hacking attack
on Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in the UK after the publication of
chat logs showed that a man acting as an agency informant played a
substantial role in the operation.
In July 2011, a group of hackers known as Lulzsec – an offshoot of
Anonymous – posted a fake story about the death of Murdoch, penetrated
several News International (now News UK) corporate sites, and claimed to
have obtained gigabytes of material from the company’s servers.
The Sun website
after it was targeted by computer hackers, visitors to the website were
redirected to a hoax story about Rupert Murdoch’s suicide.Photograph: PA
The attack was so successful that the publisher took down the
websites of the Sun and the Times while technicians worked out the scale
of the hack.
Unsealed documents obtained by Motherboard,
the technology channel operated by Vice, and seen by the Guardian, show
Hector Xavier Monsegur – known widely online as “Sabu” and frequently
referred to as the leader of Lulzsec – played an active role in the
operation.
The chat records show Monsegur encouraging others to break further
into News International systems, claiming to have sources at the Sun,
and even apparently helping to break staff’s passwords and to source
files for stealing.
Monsegur was, however, at that time operating under the direction of
the FBI, who had arrested him weeks earlier and cut a deal that kept him
free if he helped to track down and secure the convictions of others in
the group.
The close involvement of an FBI asset working under extraordinarily
close supervision in a hacking attack on a media outlet ultimately owned
by a US-listed company is set to raise further questions about the
agency’s approach to tackling online crime.
Monsegur, who faced a maximum of 124 years in prison, was released earlier this year in exchange for his “extraordinary” cooperation
with the FBI. Monsegur, who is currently on a 12-month supervised
release programme, is believed to have cooperated with authorities
because of his role as sole carer for two young relatives. He has had no
contact with the media since his release.
The chat logs, which are more than 380 pages long, show the Lulzsec
group working together over several days to hack into the Sun, talking
in the relaxed (and often misspelled) manner of online conversations.
The chat, in a private channel aptly named “#sunnydays”, jumped
between talking through reasons to attack the newspaper, what to do when
in, and technical advice on how to operate the hacks.
“what up gentlemen,” said Sabu, opening the channel’s conversation, “lets do this.”
Some members of the group had already secured limited access to
servers owned by the Sun. Sabu immediately encouraged them to go
further, and obtain email records.
“good work on owning sun honestly speaking this is going to be good shit,” he wrote. “I want their mailspools … fuck the rest”
Sabu goaded the others on, telling them the Sun was planning to
fabricate a story saying Lulzsec had tried and failed to hack the
newspaper – a claim likely to enrage the group – and saying there were
likely to be internal communications to confirm his claim.
At the time, others in the channel were focusing on merely
embarrassing the Sun by running a false news story – which they did – or
replacing home pages with pictures of internet memes, such as Nyan cat.
After some login details were shared, Sabu claimed to be looking
around in the server, cautioning the others to “do this carefully”, and
helping them try to “root” – gain total access to – another server.
Later, another hacker obtained encrypted login details of multiple
News International staff, but was unable to decrypt them and thus obtain
the usernames and passwords. Sabu offered to assist at this point, and
later provided the password details.
The logs also show Sabu on multiple occasions offering detailed
technical help to find additional records on different servers, breaking
in to new servers, or obtaining more files – which could easily have
included those belonging to journalists at either the Sun or Times.
At various stages in the course of the conversation, Sabu claimed to have obtained mail records from HSBC bank, and details on the Qatari royal family.
The logs even show Sabu celebrating with the other hackers – whose
names are redacted – when CNN read out messages released by the group
when the websites were taken down to handle the hack. “THE GUY JUST SAID
WE HAVE JOY WE HAVE FUN WE HAVE MESSED UP MURDOCHS SUN,” he posted.
Less than 10 days after the attack on the Sun, several members of
Lulzsec were arrested, and later convicted, for activities in the group.
They included British citizens Jake Davis (known online as “Topiary”) and then-16-year-old schoolboy Mustafa Al-Bassam (“Tflow”).
The Sun, which is challenging the UK government over police accessing
the phone records of one of its reporters, declined to comment on the
apparent FBI involvement in attacks on its servers.
The FBI had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.
