Tag: threat

Three cases of defendants who threatened the life of political figures came to various stages of resolution in federal courtrooms last week. In one, an upstate New York man was convicted of threatening to kill former president Barack Obama and congresswoman Maxine Waters, the California Democrat. In another, a California man was sentenced for threatening the lives of Obama, former presidents George H.W. A Secret Service spokesman declined to say how many open threats they are investigating against the president and the other individuals the agency protects. He noted that in the weeks, months and years following the 9/11 attacks of 2001, there was a surge in prosecutions of defendants with links to Muslim-majority countries. “These arrests subsided in the Obama years as US strategy changed focus, and Obama shifted focus to extrajudicial assassinations overseas,” Loadenthal tells Quartz. It’s the highest rate in the past two years, but down 8% as compared to 2013. “You go backwards and look at past incidents—problems at work, behavioral problems, does this person have access to firearms?” Agents then assign a risk rating to each person who make a threat that is discovered. That’s when Trump fans began appearing at Harrigan’s San Diego, California home, threatening to kill him and his family. A few days later, the Secret Service showed up.

Theresa May was battling on Sunday night to save her Brexit deal and prolong her premiership, amid signs Eurosceptics could move against her if there is a delay to leaving the EU. The prime minister’s position looked precarious as she was unable to announce any progress in talks with the EU less than 48 hours before her House of Commons vote on the deal. Stopping Brexit will be on you, not Brexiteers. In an article for the Guardian, Sam Gyimah, a Conservative who resigned as a minister to back a people’s vote, warned his colleagues across the parties against voting for the deal under government pressure, suggesting bad policy decisions such as the Iraq war were made under similar circumstances. MPs are effectively being asked to choose between the frying pan and the fire, in the hope they will choose the former and that will somehow be declared as a victory.” The prime minister was poised to fly to Brussels in the early hours of Monday if there were signs of a breakthrough but she was still undecided late on Sunday night about whether to make a last-minute dash. If May fails to pass her deal, Labour said it was open to working with other parties to secure a better Brexit deal involving a customs union. Quick guide Tory leadership contenders Boris Johnson The former foreign secretary topped ConservativeHome’s latest poll of party members on 24%, not quite double the figures for his nearest challenger, Dominic Raab. Is the party ready to embrace a British Muslim as its leader? “If the votes go this week in a way which means that the prime minister’s policy as she has set out and stuck to rigidly over the course of the last two-and-a-bit years is taken away, dismantled slowly by parliament this week, I think it would be very difficult for the prime minister to stay in office for very much longer.” She suggested the cabinet would have to “take a role in saying potentially to the prime minister, ‘Actually, things have changed significantly. We think you should think about your position, prime minister.’”

Chandrababu Naidu blames the BJP's "inefficiency" for what he describes as a threat to national security in the wake of Pakistan's reaction to criticism for last week's terrorist attack in Pulwama. In comments published by ANI, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh accused BJP leaders of "belittling" India with their "petty" actions and "wrongdoing". He said he would not tolerate what he described as the "jeopardising" of national security for self-interest. Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu: Will not tolerate jeopardizing National security for self-interests. Tough action should be taken on terror attacks. It has said the presence of Jaish-e-Mohammed and its leader, Masood Azhar, in Pakistan should be sufficient proof for Islamabad to take action. "The prime minister of Pakistan has offered to investigate the matter if India provides proof. This is a lame excuse," the Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday. Likewise, on the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, there has been no progress." Meanwhile, the Indian Army has warned parents of Kashmiri terrorists that anyone who picks up a gun in the Valley will be killed, and urged them to ask their children to surrender.

Leveraging the fact that more than 2 billion people around the world have Facebook accounts and allow the company to track their location and even realtime location through their IP addresses and smartphone app, Facebook uses this information to track users it believes pose a threat to the company, creating geofencing alerts when they come near Facebook facilities. Asked about the ethics of using user location data, the company noted that users consent to allow the company to do whatever it wishes with their realtime location information, per its Data Policy: “Data from device settings: information you allow us to receive through device settings you turn on, such as access to your GPS location, camera or photos.” It is worth noting that that the line above, which Facebook cited in defense of its location tracking program, also permits it to access the user’s camera and photos stored on their phone. Asked whether it has ever tracked journalists that have exposed confidential business practices or policymakers that have threatened legislation that would curtail the company’s business activities, a spokesperson reiterated that it has very specific policies governing how it decides to use location tracking and that location tracking is permitted for physical threats. Asked to state for the record that Facebook has never tracked the location of a journalist in order to determine their confidential sources or a policymaker to determine who they are meeting with, a company spokesperson responded that the company would not be commenting. Facebook’s ability to use user location data for its own purposes suggests governments are likely using the same capability to track dissidents and others they dislike. Asked whether Facebook has complied with lawful court orders from the US or foreign governments to track individuals around the world for any purpose, the company noted that it has an obligation to comply with legal requests and did not deny doing so. A dissident fleeing a repressive government can no longer escape surveillance, with their government able to turn to Facebook not only to track them around the world, but observe who they meet with. Even if the dissident does not use Facebook, anyone they meet with who does will be tracked. Putting this all together it is nothing short of extraordinary that Facebook not only is secretly mapping the locations of users it considers “threats” but that it refuses to deny on the record having used that capability to track journalists and policymakers that pose a threat to its business activities rather than a physical threat. With a flip of a switch, Facebook could create a map that tracks the location of every policymaker and their aides, every journalist and every business leader that has installed the Facebook app, tracking them worldwide in every country and watch them travel around the world, having a global intelligence map rivaling that of the NSA.

President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning that he's ordered FEMA to cut funding to California to prevent wildfires. The tweet read: "Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!" Politicians, firefighters and others responded to what can be seen as a very aggressive action from the president. Sen. Dianne Feinstein tweeted: "The Camp Fire killed 86 people, destroyed 14,000 homes & burned 150,000 acres. This empty threat is based on groundless complaints, and candidly isn't worth the time of day." California Assemblyman James Gallagher and Sen. Jim Nielsen released a statement saying: "This Twitter war, however, is not helpful. It will not solve the problem. There is no higher priority. Other officials: California Professional Firefighters tweeted: "President Trump's threat to cut off FEMA assistance to California is a deplorable attempt to play politics with the lives of tens of thousands of wildfire victims."

He couldn’t help himself. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” John Berman, an anchor on CNN, responded: “Let me tell you what the mainstream media has been doing this morning: We’ve been reporting on a bomb ... sent to either kill, threaten, or scare.” How Trump targeted his biggest critics before they were sent pipe bombs Read more After all, like all autocrats, Trump loves scapegoats and summoning the threat of “the other”. The hate part is manifest when he calls the media “fake news”, “absolute scum”, “disgusting” and “very dishonest”. Last week he praised a member of Congress who had criminally assaulted the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. Most infamously, the president has called the press “the enemy of the people”. The reality is that the mainstream media’s primary role has been holding the president to account for his lies. They have, if anything, been escalating in recent days as the midterm elections draw near. Fox News has been whipping up hysteria about the immigrant caravan for days. And Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs pushed a conspiracy theory about the mail bombs on Thursday. “Fake bombs,” Dobbs tweeted.

American politics have become more racialized over the last decade. Over the long term, that trend will probably help the Democrats — the party of the country’s growing demographic groups. First, a little history: The Obama presidency started the new era of racialized politics. But the mere fact that Obama was black made voters think more about race. And when white people are frequently reminded of their racial identity, they tend to become more politically conservative, as Ezra Klein explains in a new Vox piece, “White threat in a browning America.” I think the Democrats are favored to retake the House this year and the White House in 2020, as I wrote yesterday. Yet despite the risks of racialized politics for the Democratic Party, it often finds itself incapable of de-emphasizing the issue. “The Democratic Party will not be able to win elections without an excited, diverse coalition. So what should Democrats do? Manafort trial. The trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, is set to begin this morning in Virginia.

The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph each produced similar front pages for their Thursday editions attacking the Labour party’s decision not to fully absorb an internationally accepted definition of antisemitism into its code of conduct, and its wider record on the issue since Corbyn became leader in 2015. The papers said: “The stain and shame of antisemitism has coursed through her majesty’s opposition since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.” They produced the joint editorial “because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government. “With the government in Brexit disarray, there is a clear and present danger that a man with a default blindness to the Jewish community’s fears, a man who has a problem seeing that hateful rhetoric aimed at Israel can easily step into antisemitism, could be our next prime minister.” Marcus Dysch (@MarcusDysch) This is the single most astonishing front page we’ve run at @JewishChron in my decade here. Concern has been expressed about the refusal of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to accept the full text of the working definition of antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). There was support for the three newspapers’ view within the Labour party on Wednesday evening. Starting with the NEC accepting the IHRA definition. https://t.co/qY6vcIkqQ6 July 25, 2018 The Labour MP Ian Austin tweeted that the move by the newspapers was unprecedented and that every member of the party “should be ashamed. Now the three mainstream community papers unite.” The three papers’ editorial said Labour faced a “binary choice: implement IHRA in full or be seen by all decent people as an institutionally racist, antisemitic party”. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, suggested on Wednesday that Corbyn had asked party officials to resolve the complaint about Hodge amicably. He also suggested Hodge’s anger had been based on a “complete misinterpretation” of Labour’s new code of conduct on the issue.

The indictment of thirteen Russians and three companies by U.S. Special Counsel Mueller exposed a “sophisticated network designed to subvert the 2016 elections,” according to The New York Times, one that “…stretched from an office in St. Petersburg, Russia into the social feeds of Americans and ultimately reached the streets of election battleground states.” Russian hackers have intervened in many European countries, including Catalonia, Spain; France; UK; Germany; Poland; Sweden and elsewhere, allegedly supporting separatism, withdrawal from the EU, amidst widely anti-European political forces. Ad Stanton Daily View Now Social media sites know a user’s geo-location, patterns of behavior, interests and preferences, and place tags to sell to advertisers. I want to tell a bit more about the Ukrainian case, because this is a great example for many developing nations in Africa and from all over the world, which may oppose Russia, China or any other cyber aggressive country, such as Iran or North Korea. Ad Stanton Daily View Now You have mentioned these “traffic agencies” that manipulate people’s opinions and illegally collect and sell personal data of users to third parties- how this happens? These piracy hubs are especially popular in Nigeria, Ghana, and other African and Post-Communist countries, such as Ukraine and Russia, because internet users often want to have access to free pirated movies and games, but this comes with a great price. Companies that monetize Internet traffic, such as Adwise Agency, may earn a surcharge on advertising from their clients on various sites. One of the purposes of such agencies may be the collection of information about visitors to the sites with pirated content and sell it to special arbitrators who can later use it for political campaigns, business advertising and other illegal purposes. But certain governments may be several steps ahead of the game and that is why the Ukraine attracts great attention due to its cyber successes. For example, an illegal online gambling business was forcibly closed down in Ukraine. Why is this case so important to the international community?

Washington (CNN)The Arizona Republican Party is calling on a Republican state lawmaker to resign after he said that "immigration today represents an existential threat to the United States" and "there aren't enough white kids to go around." David Stringer, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, can be seen criticizing immigration in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday that has since gone viral. The video shows him saying, "There aren't enough white kids to go around ... immigration is politically destabilizing ... immigration today represents an existential threat to the United States. If we don't do something about immigration very, very soon the demographics of our country will be irrevocably changed and we will be a very different country." "In light of today's reports detailing Representative David Stringer's comments, I am calling on him to resign immediately," Arizona GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines said. In response to a request for comment, Stringer emailed a statement to CNN accusing his political opponents of attempting to "distort" what he had to say. "My political opponents have taken 51 seconds out of a 16-minute speech to try to distort my message and mislead voters. We recognize the tactic. I'm not interested in taking the fake news bait," he said in the statement. The statement said his remarks touched on a number of issues, "including immigration -- both legal and illegal -- and the challenge of successfully assimilating large numbers of immigrants over a short period of time."