In Wake of Massive Hack, OPM Shuts Down Major System For Background Checks | Feds anger grows over data breach, amid fears that the number affected could rise | China crosses Obama’s cyber ‘red line’ | How an FBI agent who arrested drug addicts became one himself | Puerto Rico’s Bonds Drop on Governor’s Warning About Debt |
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- In Wake of Massive Hack, OPM Shuts Down Major System For Background Checks |
- Feds anger grows over data breach, amid fears that the number affected could rise |
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Anti-gay protesters try to tear a rainbow flag during an LGBT community rally in central Moscow, May 30, 2015. The rally wasn't sanctioned by the local government and ended in minutes, with police detaining both pro- and anti-LGBT activists. Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters
Russian officials mostly reacted as you might expect to last week’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, but one member of Parliament said it was time for Russia to stop gay-bashing and accept that equal rights were only a matter of time.
Konstantin Dobrynin, a little known legislator and former lawyer, suggested that Russia should pass legislation that would introduce measures like the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy used by the American military forces from 1993 to 2011.
Dobrynin, who was appointed to the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament, by the local government of the Arkhangelsk region, made his statement on Saturday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. His comments were remarkable in a country known for its homophobia. In 2013, a law against “homosexual propaganda” was passed in the country, and gay pride events have been repeatedly banned and dispersed in Moscow and other cities.
Dobrynin said it was important that “Russia doesn’t fall into crass gay-bashing, but try to find a legal way to provide a social balance between the conservative part of the society and all the rest, as far as this subject [gay rights] is concerned.
“The most important thing is to lower…the level of aggression toward minorities,” he added.
Dobrynin said there were too many politicians in Russia cynically engaging in “gay-bashing” for their own political advantage and introducing anti-gay laws like “legislative spam” to no purpose. “It is them who pose a direct threat to the national security, and it is them who we should fight, not gays,” he said.
His comments were in stark contrast to those of other Russian officials. Yelena Mizulina, a member of the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament) who authored the legislation against “homosexual propaganda” and supported an initiative to confiscate children from same-sex families, said Americans can do whatever they want on their own territory, but “shouldn’t impose their preferences on other countries.”
Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, condemned the Supreme Court's decision. “People who are into ‘the American democracy’ and try to reconcile it with traditional values should think twice after this decision,” he said to a Russian news agency. “You should remember that they want to take away your right to live a life of faith and your soul from you.”
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· · ·
GENEVA—
Israel has boycotted a day long debate in the U.N. Human Rights Council of the Commission of Inquiry’s report into the 2014 Gaza conflict, calling it biased and flawed. The report finds both Israel and armed Palestinian groups may have committed war crimes in Gaza.
The report documents serious violations of international law and human rights abuses committed during Gaza’s seven-week war last year. More than 2,200 people were killed, most of them Gazans.
In her presentation to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Chair of the Commission of Inquiry, Mary McGowan Davis, detailed indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces.
She also accused Palestinian armed groups of regularly conducting operations from densely populated areas, firing more than 4,500 rockets and mortars into Israel. In some cases, Davis said they fired from specially protected buildings, increasing the risk to the civilian population and civilian objects in Gaza.
“Throughout our inquiry, we were deeply moved by the immense suffering of Palestinian and Israeli victims, who have been subjected to repeated rounds of violence, which last summer resulted in an unprecedented number of casualties. The information we gathered points to serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law by Israel and by Palestinian armed groups, in some cases, these may amount to war crimes,” she said.
The Israeli delegation was not present at the meeting, so only Palestine used its right to speak. Palestinian Representative Ibrahim Khraishi called the report balanced, but he criticized it for not describing the conflict itself as imbalanced. He spoke through an interpreter.
“The report did not take into consideration the massive difference in military capacity and that one side is under occupation and siege and the other is an occupier. The losses are not equitable,” said Khraishi.
The United States, Canada, and most European Union countries did not participate in the debate.
Outside the Council chamber, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Eviator Manor called the Council a biased and morally flawed U.N. organ.
This is not the Human Rights Council. It is the Palestinian Human Rights Council. Two-thousand-six-hundred civilians have been killed in Yemen and a humanitarian catastrophe is taking place there. That is almost double the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Conflict, but the Council has yet to call for a special session or deal with the matter.”
Ambassador Manor notes the Council has adopted 61 Resolutions against Israel and only 55 Country Resolutions against the rest of the world.
He noted that all countries accused of human rights violations, including such serial offenders as North Korea and Sudan, are considered under the same agenda item, only Israel’s human rights record, he said, is debated under a permanent, separate item.
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Now that Congress has completed its cross-examination of Katherine Archuleta, at least for the moment, she’ll have more time to figure out what happened during the massive theft of federal employee records.
After four congressional hearings, including three last week, many questions remain for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director. Despite persistent interrogation by skeptical and angry senators and representatives, some of whom called for Archuleta’s replacement, the key question of how many people were affected has still not been resolved.
The answer started out bad and can get worse.
Social Security numbers, birthdates and other personally identifiable information of 4.2 million current and former federal employees were stolen during the cyberattack. That number does not cover a different breach of OPM systems that held the confidential information from the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal employees who needed security clearances. Archuleta said reports that the number could jump to 18 million were unverified, but an OPM statement leaves us with this caution: “It is important to note that this is an ongoing investigation that could reveal additional exposures.”
That provides no comfort for those whose information could end up in the hands of foreign agents or criminals planning bogus financial deals.
One federal employee, Robert Jones, was unhappy to learn from media reports, not OPM, that the attack hit files containing extremely personal and detailed information about employees and applicants seeking clearances.
“Quite a shock if you know anything about the level of disclosure required in those security investigation forms,” wrote Jones, one of a number who responded to online queries from the Federal Diary. “Someone literally has enough information to step into my life. They know my SSN, DL#, friends, family, address history, work history, criminal history, financial history, everything.
“Credit monitoring is nice,” Jones added, “but it doesn’t come close to making up for the violation of privacy that occurred on their watch.”
OPM offered 18 months of credit monitoring and identity theft insurance, but a common complaint is that that is not enough.
“I think the credit monitoring should be for life and not just 18 months,” said Ted Bergeron, who works at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and was in other ways impressed with OPM. “After all, I can’t cancel my SSN and get a new one like I could with a credit card.”
While some employees were understanding about OPM’s reaction to the hack — “I’m not sure what else OPM could have done once millions of records had been compromised,” said David Rochlin, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffer in Denver — anger and frustration were more common.
“OPM is supremely unqualified to handle this,” said Alicia Valentino, a National Credit Union Administration employee.
Members of Congress said similar things to Archuleta. OPM responded vigorously, with statements and reports on the agency’s efforts to protect its cyber treasures. A public affairs office that once seemed sleepy and averse to putting even benign information on the record, jumped to life with written statements attributable to Samuel Schumach, the press secretary. He placed the best light possible on Archuleta’s testimony after her congressional appearances.
“One of her first priorities was the development of a comprehensive IT Strategic Plan, which immediately identified security vulnerabilities in the agency’s aging legacy systems, and embarked our agency in an aggressive modernization and security overhaul of our network and its systems,” said his Thursday statement.
But it’s clear that cyber-protection technology can be beaten by cyber-theft technology — and not just at OPM.
OPM also issued a report on its “Actions to Strengthen Cybersecurity and Protect Critical IT Systems.” It listed “23 concrete steps to improve information security” that happened “under Director Archuleta’s leadership” and 15 “new actions” that Archuleta has directed “be carried out with all due speed.”
Unfortunately, “all due speed” is too slow if you are the victim of a hack attack.
Dispatches have suggested the Chinese hacked OPM’s files for intelligence purposes, and there have not been widespread reports of bogus financial transactions related to the cyber theft. But Hannah Branning, an EPA scientist in Dallas, said she has experienced one. “I had to change my checking account because it was hacked,” she said. “I had two of my credit cards numbers stolen and over $5,000 worth of bogus charges made.”
Something else, even more important than credit card numbers, was stolen by the cyber thieves — trust.
“This comes right after I received a letter about my CareFirst account being hacked,” said Jennifer Ford, a Social Security Administration worker in Severna Park. “And just a few months ago, both my checking and credit card accounts were fraudulently accessed and money was taken out. I’ve been considering taking everything offline.
“I cannot trust my bank, my health insurer, my employer, or my creditors with my data.”
Masuma Ahuja, a Washington Post deputy digital editor, contributed to this report.
Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about federal government and workplace issues that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.
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Of all the things an escaped convict might need — weapons, money, fake ID — condiments do not seem high on the list.
Yet one unusual detail stood out in the manhunt for two escaped New York prisoners after both were shot and one was captured alive this weekend: 35-year-old David Sweat was caught after his DNA was found on a pepper shaker near where his accomplice, Richard Matt, was killed by authorities.
Pepper? Just like “Cool Hand Luke”? Matt and Sweat were on the run for more than three weeks. Was something that’s given away at fast-food restaurants really an important part of this plan?
New York state said as much.
“We did have difficulty tracking, so it was fairly effective in that respect,” a New York police official said.
Wow. The consensus on pepper’s deliciousness when added to, say, soup or a salad is well-settled. On its effectiveness when trying to elude New York state authorities, however, the matter is somewhat of an open question.
First, there are the pro-pepper people — among them, survivalists or, as they are called, “preppers.” (Pro-pepper preppers, anyone?)
“I often refer to it as ‘Prepper-Spray,'” a post on the Prepper Project called “How To Evade Search Dogs — Your Survival Guide” reads. “If you have a rail mounted pepper spray, you’re always ready to repel an attack, or confuse their scent. Spray a square on the ground, and spray your feet. The scent is too painful for dogs to willingly choose to follow.”
Though it’s the Web site’s job to imagine a future where people are cold, hungry and afraid, the Prepper Project isn’t alone on this one.
“Leave a trail leading into: a garbage pile, or one of my favorites pepper trap!” Ninjutsu Training Online wrote. (Motto: “Using the powerful ancient Ninja strategies in real world modern applications!”) “Carry hot or black pepper and spread it along your trail and watch what happens when the dog takes a nice sniff of the pepper.”
Then there were the doubters. First among them: the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters.”
“A bloodhound’s olfactory sense is said to be about 1,000 times better than a human’s, which is why the canine is so good at sniffing out our odor-emitting skin cells,” the network wrote of a 2007 episode in which co-host Jamie Hyneman investigated the claim. More or less, Hyneman found there was nothing in the spice cabinet that would prove effective against a bloodhound that knew what it was after.
“In fact, that personal perfume is strong enough that none of Jamie’s bloodhound-busting tactics worked,” Discovery wrote. “He zigzagged and doubled back on his trail, ran through a river, washed and changed clothes, doused himself in coffee and cologne, and even covered his tracks in ground pepper — all to no avail. Each time, Morgan the bloodhound sniffed right through the ruse and found the hiding Hyneman. Up against centuries of top-notch breeding, the busted myth was no match for the bloodhound’s superior schnoz.”
Another author implied that pepper would just make a tracking dog more committed to the task at hand. And the only thing worse than being pursued by tracking dogs is being pursued by really dedicated tracking dogs.
“There are ways to slow down, confuse and even defeat tracker dogs,” Will Fowler wrote in “The Special Forces Guide to Escape and Evasion.” “However using distracting or irritating odors (for example, CS powder or pepper) bothers the dog for only three to five minutes. After the dog has recovered from this distraction, he can pick up a cold trail even quicker.”
One thing those contemplating escape from prison should remember about Cool Hand Luke: He died in the end.
More on the N.Y. prison escape:
Justin Wm. Moyer is a reporter for The Washington Post's Morning Mix. Follow him on Twitter:
@justinwmmoyer
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Former FBI agent Matthew Lowry is photographed at his home in Davidsonville, Md. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
Matthew Lowry was out of pills and getting desperate.
The doctor who prescribed pain medication to ease his chronic and painful inflammation of the intestines had disappeared. He went to clinics, but his wife had begun questioning the bills. He was shaking, sweating, tired.
It had been four years since Lowry graduated with honors from the FBI Academy, and he had just been assigned to an elite drug task force chasing the biggest narcotics dealers along the border shared by Maryland and the District.
He was also addicted to his pain medication and going through withdrawal that felt “like the worst flu you ever had.”
His wife, pregnant with their first child, suspected. He needed to find a new way to get through the day.
As he drove home from work one August evening in 2013, Lowry remembered a man he had interrogated months earlier. He, too, had a family, a profession and an addiction to pain pills. He told Lowry that snorting heroin was “just like taking a pain pill.”
The agent pulled over near the U Street corridor. Protected from curious eyes by the tinted glass of an unmarked FBI sedan, he pulled out a bag marked “FBI evidence.”
The heroin had been seized during one of the first drug busts Lowry had worked — operation “Midnight Hustle.”
Lowry carefully broke the red evidence seal and used his finger to remove roughly a quarter-gram of brownish, powdery heroin, and he made a line three inches long on the hard cover of an FBI notebook.
He rolled a piece of paper into a straw, put it to his nose and snorted.
“Within 15 minutes, I was fine,” Lowry said. “It gave me energy. It made me feel euphoric, like I had confidence. You feel like you can take on anything.”
Lowry took heroin nearly every day for the next year, usually while in his car, usually once after work. The soothing high he felt that first day had quickly vanished, but the need for heroin never lessened.
He was taking it, Lowry told himself, “to feel normal again.”
A rise, then a fall
Lowry was using drugs when the District’s top prosecutor hailed his work helping to dismantle a coast-to-coast drug organization importing pounds of cocaine and heroin into the city. He was using drugs while living with his father, a seasoned cop with 40 years’ experience, and while his son, Luke, was born in February 2014.
Former FBI agent Matthew Lowry holds his niece as he chats with his dad, William, in Upper Marlboro, Md. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
For more than a year, Lowry, now 33, managed to steal heroin from his FBI office without anyone suspecting, taking advantage of lax rules for handling and tracking evidence.
He got caught only when he self-destructed and was found incoherent Sept. 29 on an empty construction lot at the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington. Lowry’s misconduct forced prosecutors todismiss cases against 28 drug defendants, many of them convicted, putting each one back on the streets.
Now, it is Lowry who could go to prison. He will be sentenced July 9 in federal court after having pleaded guilty in March to 64 criminal charges, including obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and possession of drugs. The FBI fired him.
“The hardest part is the unknown,” said Lowry, who spoke about his addiction and crimes during extensive interviews with The Washington Post.
“Where am I going to be a couple months from now?” the onetime agent said, holding Luke, now 16 months old. “How is my wife going to raise my son? How is she going to take care of the house? I spend as much time as I can with my wife, with my son, with my parents, because I don’t know when it’s going to stop, and I’m not going to be able to see them for an extended amount of time.”
A lifetime obsession
As far back as he can remember, Lowry wanted to be a cop. His mother sewed her young son a uniform from one of his father’s old police shirts. He liked to put on his father’s oversize police cap.
At age 7, given a day to do as he pleased, he chose to accompany his father to the annual police memorial in Washington, and he stood quietly for the solemn ceremony honoring officers killed in the line of duty. When a sergeant under his father’s command was fatally shot while arresting a drug suspect in 1988, a young Lowry watched as a procession of police cars passed for the funeral.
His father, William Lowry, is no less committed to policing. The elder Lowry got married on a Friday in 1973, and he joined the Prince George’s County police academy the following Tuesday. There was no honeymoon. He spent 27 years with the department, rising through the ranks, before leaving to head security for the Washington Redskins and later the Miami Dolphins and NASA. Now 62, he is a deacon and elder at the First Baptist Church in Upper Marlboro, Md.; his wife, Sylvia, teaches Sunday school.
Former FBI agent Matthew Lowry chats with his dad, William, at his parents’ home in Upper Marlboro, Md. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
Matthew Lowry, the middle child of three boys, graduated from a small private high school, Grace Brethren Christian, and sped through undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, earning a degree in criminal justice in three years. He had a 3.9 GPA and graduated magna cum laude. All as he interned with Prince George’s police, helping them find stolen cars and investigate homicides.
After school, he joined the FBI’s Washington field office as a civilian, working surveillance that often went through the night, earning a master’s degree along the way.
He met his wife, Shana, at the Front Page bar in 2008. They joked about who liked whom first, but Shana told him, “I liked you right way.” He told her he was working toward being a full-fledged agent.
“I loved it,” Shana said.
They married in 2011.
A familiar story
Matthew Lowry’s addiction to heroin began the way many do — with pain medication. He had struggled with colitis since 2007 and eventually found a doctor who helped him manage the gastrointestinal disease that causes frequent and bloody diarrhea and sharp abdominal pain.
But that doctor left private practice for research in 2010, a year after Lowry graduated from the FBI Academy. He went through four or five more doctors, and one prescribed hydrocodone, an opioid. Lowry was soon hooked on medication that eased his pain but didn’t attack his disease.
When he could no longer get the prescription meds, Lowry, like so many others, turned to heroin. Maryland’s governor has made treating heroin addicts a state priority. Last year in the state, 25 percent more people died from heroin overdoses than the year before, and double since 2010. It is a problem being felt across the country.
William Lowry knew his son struggled with his disease and with the medication he took to tame it. He had even watched him collapse in a seizure. But he did not see signs of addiction.
As a police officer, William Lowry had listened to the parents of countless addicts claim they didn’t know. Now, he was one of them.
“Now I’m looking at it through the eyes of a father,” he said. “You don’t want to see what you don’t want to see.”
By late 2012, Matthew Lowry was working drug cases. In 2013, his father left NASA and returned to policing after being named the assistant chief in Anne Arundel County.
Father and son talked shop, immersed themselves in cop shows, debated big cases and dissected tactics. They texted each other every day to make sure the other was safe.
A look at how Agent Lowry affected the case of Earl Owens, who was eventually dismissed.
For a long time, Lowry hid his problem. Neither his colleagues nor his bosses suspected. He was lauded at an annual awards ceremony in September 2014 for narcotics cases and for the time he chased down a carjacking suspect after overhearing a D.C. police radio transmission.
Wary of the limelight, Lowry couldn’t help reveling in his accomplishments. There were 100 agents in the room. Some won one award. Most got none. He got four.
“I was good at what I did,” Lowry said.
His certificates were for drug cases “Midnight Hustle” and “Broken Cord.” Two of the cases from which he was stealing heroin.
World crashes down
Success brought added responsibilities and pressures.
Lowry was for the first time made lead agent on a drug case. By the end of September 2014, his squad was behind writing warrants to get wiretaps to listen in on drug dealers. The prosecutor was pushing.
Matthew and Shana had moved in with his parents in Upper Marlboro while they built a new house — a $1 million, 6,200-square-foot home between Annapolis and Washington — and the strain was beginning to show. They lived in an attached apartment, but there was little privacy. Their newborn kept them up at night. The couple were arguing.
Lowry was dragging at work, and he told fellow agents he was getting little sleep with his infant son. Shana suspected something else.
The night of Sept. 28, just weeks after the awards ceremony, the couple had a bitter fight. “The argument was based on her thinking I was taking something,” Lowry said. “She couldn’t prove anything, but she knew that I was, and that I was lying about it the entire time.”
Shana stormed out with Luke, and Lowry had to come up with a cover story for his parents. He told them his wife went to visit her mother. Shana texted Matthew that he wasn’t a good husband or father.
At work the next day, Lowry finished up paperwork and left at mid-afternoon. He turned his FBI Chevrolet toward the Navy Yard. At some point, he said he took heroin. He might have snorted more than usual, he said, but his memory is fuzzy. He hadn’t had food or water all day.
A photograph from FBI evidence files of the Chevrolet Impala in which heroin and other evidence was found. The car had been assigned to FBI special agent Matthew A. Lowry. (U.S. District Court)
His marriage, his family, his job, were crashing.
He remembers standing by his car, out of gas, in an empty construction lot across from the Marine Barracks, staring at a desperate text message from a colleague asking him where he was. He didn’t notice dozens of missed calls and texts.
Back at his home, William Lowry was getting worried. He had texted and called his son but got no response. He called his son’s colleagues, enlisting their help. When Matthew Lowry finally answered a colleague’s calls, he told him where he was. “We’ll be right there,” he recalls the agent telling him.
The agent called William Lowry. He had found his son but warned, “Bill, it doesn’t sound good.”
William Lowry panicked. “I have had two calls like that in the past, almost the exact words, almost verbatim,” he said. “One was when a member of my SWAT team was killed; the other was when a sergeant who worked for me took his own life.”
The assistant police chief for Anne Arundel County called his boss, then his pastor, preparing for the worst. He jumped in his unmarked Ford Explorer and raced, lights and siren blaring, the 20 miles into Southeast Washington, busting through red light after red light, heading to his son who he thought had been shot in the line of duty.
“I wanted to get there before he died.”
A new perspective
Matthew Lowry and his father rarely talk police work anymore. When “Cops” comes on TV and both are in the room, the father quietly turns the channel. The son notices but stays silent.
One wall of the bedroom where the son grew up is lined with police patches and crime scene tape, memories the mother wants to preserve. But at Matthew Lowry’s new home, the FBI honors are tucked in a drawer. He keeps only a coaster with the agency’s insignia on a bedside table.
Former FBI agent Matthew Lowry is photographed in his childhood bedroom at his parents’ home in Upper Marlboro, Md. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
Matthew Lowry didn’t tell his father he was addicted to heroin even after colleagues found him that September night. William Lowry learned only when federal investigators called days later.
“How do you tell someone you’ve idolized your entire life that you’re a heroin addict?” said the younger Lowry.
William Lowry wants to help his son, not dwell on the past.
“I have experienced the death of both of my parents, right in front of me,” the elder Lowry said. “Police officers have died in front of me. Nothing has torn at the fabric of my being as this. . . . I am not ashamed of my son. I’m proud of my son. I love him. But this has been the hardest thing that I have ever dealt with.”
Both Lowrys said the ordeal has given them a new perspective on heroin.
“When I was in narcotics, I had very little compassion for people who were drug abusers,” William Lowry said. “As a cop, I never understood how you could take the things that were important to you, your family, your job, your integrity, your career, your life, and push all that to the side.”
His son now thinks back to his days in rehab. He met fellow law enforcement officers, a firefighter, health-care professionals. “It’s people with families,” he said. “Regular members of society. People like me.”
The younger Lowry is not alone, but he feels isolated.
His former FBI co-workers have dropped out of sight, now on the other side of a criminal case. He had lied to his friends, to his wife, to his parents. His mother put together a photo album of his life — not as a keepsake, but as an exhibit for a judge.
On July 9, William Lowry plans to stand up in federal court and plead for leniency for his son.
William Lowry goes through photographs of his son, former FBI agent Matthew Lowry, at his home in Upper Marlboro, Md. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
He will show the judge the photo album, his son in an oversize police cap, his son standing at attention to honor the dead. He will read letters from his friends. His lawyer will emphasize that the drugs weren’t taken for profit, but to feed a disease.
The prosecutor might point to more than two dozen drug dealers who walked out of prison because of one agent’s drug habit, upending the hard work of his colleagues.
“I worked so hard, and now it’s gone,” Lowry said. “This is all I wanted to do, and I lost it all because of an addiction.”
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· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
An Israeli naval battle ship sails in the Mediterranean sea back to Ashdod port in Israel, Monday, June 29, 2015. Israel’s navy intercepted a vessel attempting to breach a naval blockade of Gaza early Monday and was redirecting it to an Israeli port, the military and the activists said. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) (Ariel Schalit/AP)
JERUSALEM — Israeli naval commandos intercepted a protest ship at sea bound for the Gaza Strip on Monday and diverted the vessel toward a port in Israel. The Israelis said no one was injured in the operation.
The Swedish-registered Marianne of Gothenburg was attempting to enter Israeli-controlled waters in the Mediterranean Sea and deliver aid packages to Gaza. Aboard were crew members, journalists and activists, including Israeli Arab lawmaker Basel Ghattas and former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki.
The activists were protesting Israel’s maritime blockade of the coastal enclave.
Israel maintains a complete air and sea blockade of Gaza and a partial blockade of goods and people through two land crossings. Israel forbids Gaza from having an airport or a seaport, except a small fishing harbor. Gaza fishermen are allowed to venture no more than a few nautical miles from shore.
Other protest ships have attempted similar runs to beat the blockade, including a Turkish-organized vessel in 2010 that was intercepted at sea by Israeli commandos in a raid that left nine activists dead and soured once-close relations between Israel and Turkey.
Egypt also operates a crossing point to Gaza, which has been closed most of the year. The Egyptian military has destroyed most of the smuggling tunnels used by Gaza to import goods and contraband, including weapons.
Palestinians say the 1.8 million people in Gaza, many of them refugees from earlier wars with Israel,live under siege. Israel says it maintains the blockade because Hamas, the Islamist militant movement that controls the strip, is a terrorist organization that seeks to import arms and materials to build “offensive tunnels” — which are used to infiltrate Israel and stage attacks.
An Israeli military spokesman said Monday that the navy ordered the Marianne to turn back. When the vessel refused, navy commandos boarded and searched the ship. The spokesman said the “use of force was unnecessary” and “the process was uneventful.” Three other ships in the flotilla turned back earlier.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “This flotilla is nothing but a demonstration of hypocrisy and lies that is only assisting the Hamas terrorist organization and ignores all of the horrors in our region.”
In an earlier interview with The Washington Post, Ghattas said the protest was a nonviolent political act meant to highlight the misery in Gaza.
The member of parliament called the blockade “inhumane and illegal.”
“It is a collective punishment of Palestinians, who live in jail-like conditions” that have contributed tothe cycles of violence that have sparked three wars between Hamas and Israel in six years, Ghattas said.
The prime minister’s office issued a communique on Sunday evening intended for the Gaza-bound activists.
“Welcome to Israel!” the letter reads. “It appears you’ve made a mistake along the way. Perhaps you meant to sail somewhere not far from here — Syria. There, [President Bashar] Assad’s regime is massacring his own people every day with the help of the murderous Iranian regime. In contrast, here in Israel, we are dealing with a situation where terrorist organizations such as Hamas are trying to harm innocent civilians. In the face of these attempts, we are protecting the citizens of Israel in accordance with international law.”
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William Booth is The Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.
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The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) building in Washington. (Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency)
By Marc A. Thiessen June 29 at 10:16 AM
Remember how President Obama failed to enforce his “red line” in Syria? Well, it’s happening again — this time in cyberspace.
On April 1, Obama drew a cyber “red line” in the sand when he signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against individuals or entities who carry out cyberattacks or cyberespionage against the United States. “Starting today,” Obama declared, “we’re giving notice to those who pose significant threats to our security or economy by damaging our critical infrastructure, disrupting or hijacking our computer networks, or stealing the trade secrets of American companies or the personal information of American citizens for profit.”
A senior administration official told The Post that the new order would put our enemies in cyberspace on notice that “if you think you can just hide behind borders . . . that’s just not going to be the case. . . . [W]e can hit where it hurts in terms of a financial impact.” The order authorizes the treasury secretary to freeze financial assets, bar commercial transactions and impose a visa ban on those involved in significant cyberattacks.
“As of today, the United States has a new tool to protect our nation, our companies, and our citizens ,” Obama declared, “and in the days and years ahead, we will use it.”
Except he’s not using it. In the days after he spoke those words, the United States discovered that Chinese government hackers had broken into the computer networks of the Office of Personnel Management — stealing the personnel records of as many as 18 million Americans.
Experts told me it was the most devastating cyberattack in the history of our country. One retired four-star general and cybersecurity expert described the OPM hack as a “Cyber 9/11.”
So how has the Obama administration responded? Did it follow through on Obama’s threat and impose sanctions on those responsible? Not even close. For weeks, the administration would not even acknowledge that China was behind the attack. Then, last Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper finally admitted China was to blame, telling an intelligence conference “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did.”
Salute them? No, you don’t. You have to sanction the Chinese for what they did.
The OPM breach is catastrophic, both for our national security and for the individuals whose information has been compromised. China has stolen the personal data on countless Americans with top-secret security clearances. The regime in Beijing now possesses their Social Security and passport numbers; the names and addresses of relatives; every place they have ever lived, worked or went to school; details of their military service (including whether they worked in intelligence); all the people they “know well,” including their “foreign contacts,” and details on their “foreign activities” and “foreign travel”; all the details of their “psychological and emotional health,” including any mental health treatment; any police records “regardless of whether the record . . . has been sealed, expunged, or otherwise stricken from the court record, or dismissed”; details of any “illegal use of drugs and drug activity” and “use of alcohol”; as well as detailed financial records, including any past bankruptcies and “non-criminal court actions.” In other words, Beijing now possesses everything a foreign intelligence service could possibly need to blackmail those holding some of the United States’ most sensitive secrets.
Not only can this information be used to undermine national security, it can also be used to retaliate against those who criticized China — for example, people working for U.S. government “freedom radio” stations, such as Radio Free Asia, who use aliases to protect themselves and their relatives back home. Beijing now may have the real identities of those broadcasters and those of their family members in China.
Stolen OPM data reportedly has been found for sale on the “dark net ” — the online network used by criminals and terrorists across the globe. This is unsurprising, considering that the Obama administration discovered the breach in April but did not announce it until June 4 — giving cybercriminals a running head start to exploit stolen data while keeping those affected in the dark. And what is the administration doing now to protect those whose personal information they failed to protect? They are offering — get this — 18 months of “free” credit monitoring service and identity theft insurance. Eighteen months? The loss of personal information lasts a lifetime — and sometimes longer for family members and others whose personal information was included in the stolen data.
The failure to protect this information is appalling. But the failure to respond to an attack of this magnitude is inexcusable. In April, Obama warned that “from now on” his administration would “go after bad actors” who carry out cyberattacks on the United States. China responded by launching the most audacious attack in history.
So, Mr. President, what are you going to do about it?
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The price of Puerto Rico’s bonds dropped on Monday after the island’s governor said that his government could not pay its $72 billion in debts. At least one lawmaker called for Congress to allow Puerto Rico’s public corporations to declare bankruptcy.
Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced in an interview that was published in The New York Times on Monday that the island’s debt was “not payable” and suggested that he would seek significant concessions from many of the island’s creditors and perhaps all of them.
While investors have been expecting some kind of restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt in the coming months, the governor’s statement indicated that even general obligation bonds, whose repayment is guaranteed in the island’s constitution, could be cut
On Monday morning, the price of some Puerto Rico general obligation bonds declined as much as 12 percent, to about 68 cents on the dollar, one of the largest declines in recent months, traders and analysts said.
“The market is taking what Garcia Padilla said in the article to heart,” said Hugh McGuirk, a vice president and portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price, who oversees $22 billion in municipal bond assets. “It wasn’t that long ago that they were still beating the drum that debt service was the highest priority and we will never default. This is really a change in the narrative coming out of Puerto Rico.”
Despite the deepening of Puerto Rico’s troubles, the broader municipal market rose on Monday morning as prices mirrored a rally in United States Treasury prices related to the instability in Greece, investors said. Municipal bond values often tend to track Treasury prices.
Mr. Garcia Padilla’s call for a vast restructuring, which he will outline in a speech to the Puerto Rico people on Monday evening, also seemed aimed at political leaders in Congress and the Obama administration.
Puerto Rico has been pushing in Congress for a bill that would allow the island’s public corporations, which owe about $25 billion in debt, to declare bankruptcy. As a commonwealth, Puerto Rico cannot use the Chapter 9 code of the federal bankruptcy law. But the island’s push for bankruptcy authorization has stalled in Congress.
In a statement on Monday, Representative Nydia M. Velazquez, Democrat of New York, praised Mr. Garcia Padilla’s strategy and called for Congress to authorize Chapter 9 for Puerto Rico.
“Puerto Rican families deserve a fair shot, and we must cut through Washington’s gridlock to create a comprehensive solution,” she said in the statement.
Despite the rising risks in Puerto Rico, the Obama administration has made it clear there will be no federal rescue of any kind.
“There’s no one in the administration or in D.C. that’s contemplating a federal bailout of Puerto Rico,” the White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday.”But we do remain committed to working with Puerto Rico and their leaders as they face serious challenges.”
Mr. Earnest noted that Treasury officials had been sharing their expertise with Puerto Rico officials over the last few years as they try to address the debt problem.
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Three weeks after U.S. authorities determined foreign hackers may have stolen sensitive government records tied to tens of millions of people, the Office of Personnel Management has now shut down the system at the center of that breach, essentially bringing to a halt the way federal agencies have conducted background checks for years.
According to an "alert" posted on OPM's website today, the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing system -- or “e-QIP” -- "will be down for an extended period of time for security enhancements.”
Through the e-QIP system, OPM conducts more than 90 percent of the U.S. government’s background investigations – spanning 100 federal agencies from the FBI to the Department of Agriculture.
“e-QIP allows the user to electronically enter, update and transmit their personal investigative data over a secure internet connection,” OPM’s website says.
It’s unclear how the move to shut down the online system will now affect that work.
The shutdown comes after at least 18 million people - and potentially tens of millions more around the world, including relatives, friends and associates of those who had background checks conducted by the U.S. government – likely had their personal information stolen by hackers who infiltrated e-QIP and other OPM systems, sources have said.
The nation’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, said Friday that China is “the leading suspect” in the massive hack.
After breaking into e-QIP, hackers likely stole forms -- known as “SF-86” forms -- submitted by government employees, contractors, certain military personnel, and others seeking security clearances, sources have told ABC News.
The forms require applicants to provide personal information not only about themselves but also relatives, friends and “associates” spanning several years.
The forms ask applicants about past drug use, financial history, mental health history and personal relationships.
That type of information could be exploited to pressure or trick employees into further compromising their agencies, sources said.
On Wednesday, a top lawmaker called the breach a “significant” threat to national security.
“Only the imagination limits what a foreign adversary could do with detailed information about a federal employee's education, career, health, family, friends, neighbors and personal habits,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The attack on OPM began in 2013, when hackers entered the systems of a government contractor, KeyPoint Government Solutions, and stole the “credentials” of an employee working on an project, according to recent testimony on Capitol Hill.
Last year, OPM’s inspector general warned the agency’s two systems covering background investigations and security clearances were not sufficiently protected against cyber-intruders.
Calling them among “the most critical and sensitive applications owned by the agency,” the inspector general said in a November audit that “any weaknesses ... could potentially have national security implications.”
The inspector general recommended OPM shut down those two systems and nine others found to be lacking sufficient security measures. But OPM director Katherine Archuleta decided against doing so.
“I had to make [a] very conscious and deliberate decision as to the impact of the shutdown of those systems,” Archuleta told lawmakers last week, as they pressed her on the issue.
She said a move like that would have “shut down the processing of annuity checks to retirees,” and it would have halted background investigations for new employees at agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration.
“I made a conscious decision that we would move forward with this but would make improvements as rapidly as possible, and we have done that,” she said.
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