Photo: Mathew Schwartz
What if there was something more insidious than hackers stealing data and crashing computers? For example, what if the hacking forced victims to lose faith in the reliability and security of digital tools, thus driving them to use analog alternatives that result in a massive slowdown of essential social processes - such as the nation s court system?
Enter the SolarWinds supply chain attack, in which suspected Russian spies successfully planted a backdoor in widely used Orion network monitoring software. Hundreds of organizations appear to have been hit with follow-on attacks that involved data exfiltration during the nine-month espionage campaign last year.
FISA Court Shamefully Protects the Swamp
Posted on
Wall Street Journal today:
Your editorial “A Pass for Kevin Clinesmith” (Jan. 30) condemning the slap on the wrist of former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who was sentenced only to probation by Obama-appointed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge James Boasberg for altering a CIA email to get a surveillance warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as an example of “two-tiered justice” It omits a more compelling example than how Gen. Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos were more harshly treated.
In our filing with Judge Boasberg, we pointed out how attorney Alex van der Zwaan, the first person sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, also pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement. Like Mr. Clinesmith, he asked for probation as a first offender and because his wife, too, was pregnant with their first child. Judge Amy Berman Jackson would hear none of it. In
It s a goose/gander kind of deal
By Dave Simpson
Not long ago, I wrote that we should show our new president all the courtesy, respect, good will and benefit of the doubt that was afforded to Donald J. Trump four years ago.
“Every. Stinking. Bit.”
Let s get started:
- Last week, President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone. According to news reports, they talked about arms control and the arrest of a politician who has challenged Putin, and almost died when he was poisoned.
I m waiting for the leaked transcript of that call to appear in the news. Surely some back-stabbing, traitorous scoundrel in the federal bureaucracy will leak the transcript to the Washington Post or the New York Times, as was done four years ago with newly-elected President Donald Trump s phone conversations with the presidents of Mexico and Australia.
US court system ditches electronic filing, goes paper-only for sensitive documents following SolarWinds hack theregister.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theregister.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On Friday, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith got a “slap on the wrist,” Debra Heine reports, for falsifying an email in the quest to gain a FISA warrant to spy on an American citizen, Carter Page. Clinesmith was facing a maximum five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, so twelve months probation, a $100 fine and 400 hours of community service, is indeed a slap on the wrist. Even so, it still falls short. Carter Page might expect the judge to lecture Clinesmith about the lawyer about sullying the reputation of the FBI and DOJ, and betraying the federal government that employed him to uphold the law. None of that for District of Columbia judge James Boasberg. He opted for leniency because the allegedly remorseful Clinesmith had suffered by losing his job and “standing in the eye of a media hurricane.” It was a curious choice of words for the Obama appointee.