fbi – Moe Lane

An interesting article on the FBI/TOR Raid…

…which is kind of a misnomer, since the FBI went after a prominent Deep Web host that used TOR. The short version: the FBI definitely took down a site that pretty brazenly hosted child porn sites and MAY have salted the earth with malware. A somewhat less sympathetic take on this can be found here: nobody decent gives a crud about child porn users getting hammered, but there are more savory groups and individuals affected.

As for myself… speaking as an individual, I recognize the utility of anonymity. Speaking as a victim of TOR-fueled shenanigans – EVERY person involved with any political website with an open comments section has been victimized by TOR-using trolls at some point, which is why everybody makes you register for comments these days – well. That sure is a real shame, there. What’s for lunch?

Moe Lane

Boston Marathon aftermath: feds warned by Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

Let me just put this FBI press release out there for you. It’s dated April 19, 2013, by the way: this will be important later.

2011 Request for Information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev from Foreign Government

The two individuals believed to be responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday have been positively identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now deceased, and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, now in custody. These individuals are brothers and residents of Massachusetts. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a legal permanent resident and Dzhokar Tsarnaev is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Charges have not yet been filed against Dzhokar Tsarnaev and he is presumed innocent. Continue reading Boston Marathon aftermath: feds warned by Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

FBI arrest one Matthew Aaron Llaneza for trying to blow up San Francisco bank.

Short version: the feds arrested one Matthew Aaron Llaneza for attempting to blow up a bank for the Taliban; as is the FBI’s wont, they got him via a sting operation that was kept up right up to the moment where Llaneza pulled the remote trigger on the ‘bomb.’ Which is, obviously, fine by me: I want the FBI out there actively trolling the fringes for people who really, really want to blow up Americans. It saves a lot of time – and, of course, lives.

OK, do we all understand each other on the basics? Yes? Great. Moving on then… well, isn’t this just spiffy.

According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, on November 30, 2012, Llaneza met with a man who led him to believe he was connected with the Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan. In reality, this man was an undercover FBI agent. At this initial meeting, Llaneza proposed conducting a car-bomb attack against a bank in the San Francisco Bay Area. He proposed structuring the attack to make it appear that the responsible party was an umbrella organization for a loose collection of anti-government militias and their sympathizers. Llaneza’s stated goal was to trigger a governmental crackdown, which he expected would trigger a right-wing counter-response against the government followed by, he hoped, civil war.

Continue reading FBI arrest one Matthew Aaron Llaneza for trying to blow up San Francisco bank.

#rsrh Massive DoJ Online Poker raid.

I personally don’t give a flying leap about online poker one way or the other, although I thought that banning it in 2006 was kind of counterproductive and gave enemies of the GOP yet one more weapon to use against us with regard to libertarians. So the news that the FBI went after three of the biggest online poker websites hammer and tongs doesn’t have any real personal significance for me.

But watching libertarians get reminded that there is “bad,” and then there is “worse?” …Well. Let me simply note that yes, indeed, the Democrats were trying to make themselves look better on this issue than they have apparently turned out to be. I will also note that while libertarians and conservatives are often at loggerheads with each other, the true opposite of a libertarian viewpoint is always going to be a liberal one…

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit.)

JSOC analyst arrested in FBI spy sting.

‘JSOC’ being short for the ‘Joint Special [Operations] Command,’ which is known to normal people as a group that coordinates communications and operations among various American Special Forces organizations*. The alleged would-be spy Bryan Martin allegedly traded secret documents to an FBI operative in exchange for roughly $3,500; there’s no indication as of yet that he was working with anyone else, but between this and the Wikileaks Manning case it looks like the US intelligence community is on heightened alert for potential espionage problems. Looks like it’s not the end of history, after all.

Moving along, the confusion of Hot Air over how cheap this transaction was is why I’m bringing it up. You see, this kind of money is the rule, not the exception. Hollywood aside, foreign governments do not pay out large amounts of cash to would-be spies. They are, in fact, usually very cheap about it: for every Aldrich Ames there’s there’s a dozen Markus Hess’s. However, the exception is generally found among American intelligence groups; the CIA in particular supposedly has a policy of paying very well for this kind of information. It’s not like the Cold War, where we could get highly trained and educated foreign professionals to crawl across broken glass in exchange for a green card and a retail franchise in Terra Haute, Indiana – but if you’re a disaffected member of the repressive and shortsighted regime currently running your country, by all means: give Uncle Sam a call.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading JSOC analyst arrested in FBI spy sting.

Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…

…actually, that’s a bit of a fib; being mean to Kevin Drum (and any other Mother Jones flunky) is a bit of a social and civic responsibility these days. Anyway, he was just found whining “You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him” in response to the White House’s desire to expand the ability of law enforcement to read email headers without a court order. Folks can determine where they sit on that particular issue, but I’d like to remind Kevin, as from one old school blogger to another: it’s funny that you should say that, Sparky. Continue reading Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…

What were Rahm Emanuel’s (D) links to Tim Mahoney (D), anyway?

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

No, I don’t have any updates to the FBI investigation of former Congressman Mahoney (D, FL-16) and whether he used campaign funds to pay off one of his mistresses, sorry. That’s going to be a quiet kind of story until the FBI finishes said investigation; after all, Mahoney was brutally sacrificed to the media gods by the Democratic Party desperate to have that story not derail their 2008 Congressional campaign. People who may find themselves accused of anything similar, please note: don’t count on a payback for your loyalty – even if you happen to be innocent, which Mahoney was almost certainly not.

Which brings me to my next point. Rahm Emanuel. Name was linked to Mahoney’s back then – something about sanitizing the record – but nobody in the media was interested in pushing on that for very long. But now that Rep. Emanuel is COS Emanuel, and now that we’re reminded that Emanuel’s a Freddie Mac guy who entered into lucrative contracts on the DCCC’s behalf with his landlord’s polling firm (it’s claimed that it was a complete coincidence that he wasn’t paying rent), one does have to ask: what, exactly, did Rahm Emanuel have to do with Tim Mahoney’s little payoff problem?

And can we get an answer under oath? I only ask because there’s been an awful lot of Democrats Behaving Badly stories in the news lately.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.