US Homeland Security claims that 21 states' election systems were targeted by hackers in 2016 election

The United States Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that hackers had targeted their election systems in 2016 but none of the systems were used for recording votes. Only a small number of networks were actually breached.

Scott McConnell spokesperson for Homeland Security said: "As part of our ongoing information sharing efforts, today DHS notified the Secretary of State or other chief election officer in each state of any potential targeting we were aware of in their state leading up to the 2016 election."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the US federal government. Its responsibilities include public security and its mission involves counter-terrorism, border security, immigration, customs, cybersecurity and disaster prevention and management. It was created as a response to the 9/11 terror attacks. As of 2017 it had 229,000 employees and an annual budget of $40.6 billion.

The vote counting systems were unaffected since they are not connected to the Internet. However, the news provides one more worry about the security of the U.S. voting system. The news also is released as Homeland Security is continuing its investigation into Russia's intervention in the U.S. election. Many U.S. intelligence agencies claim that Russia tried to intervene in the election in favor of Trump. Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that his organization would hand over to the U.S. Congress thousands of election-related ads believed to be paid for by Russian agents.

Attempts by foreign countries to influence elections is hardly new. The U.S. does it all the time and Russia often does as well. According to one study the U.S. intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000 while the USSR and then Russia intervened in 36. Often the US is even more involved in regime change as in the Ukraine.

There is the infamous tape of Victoria Nuland speaking with the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine about the way forward:

The situation ended up with a Ukrainian government favorable to the U.S. Natalie Jaresko a U.S. citizen was made Minister of Finance and served from December 2014 to April 2016. To serve she had to become a Ukrainian citizen which she did on the day she took office. However, the Ukraine does not permit dual citizenship so she had to renounce her U.S. citizenship within two years. She didn't. In March of 2016 President Obama appointed her Executive Director of the U.S. Federal Fiscal Control Board of Puerto Rico.

The U.S. has long been a country that has forced regime changes on other countries dating back into the 19th century. As Wikipedia notes:In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government undertook regime change actions mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, and included the Mexican-American, Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. At the onset of the 20th century the United States shaped or installed friendly governments in many countries including Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

This isn't the first time that hackers tried to get into state election systems before the 2016 presidential elections, which Donald Trump won amid fears of Russian influenc. According to reports from last September, the U.S. government informed election officials that hackers targeted the election systems of more than 20 states, and successfully infiltrated those of four unnamed states. McConnell didn't specify whether the hacking attempts reported today were different from the ones states heard about last year.

Perhaps, the new announcements are simply part of a propaganda campaign to boost the fortunes of those in and out of government who want to paint Russia as the enemy and see any attempt to improve relations with Russia as a betrayal. Trump campaigned on a promise to improve relations with Russia but as of now relations of the U.S. with Russia are as bad as they have ever been and Trump and his campaign are under investigation as perhaps colluding with Russia's attempts to influence the U.S. election.

Two Homeland Security memos ease way for crackdown on undocumented immigrants

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued two new memos that amount to a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The Middle East Eye claims that the new directives put "nearly all of the country's 11 million unauthorized foreigners in their crosshairs". However, the priority for deportation will remain, as it was with Obama, the deportation of those convicted of crimes. It will also include as a priority those who have been charged or potentially face charges. Those previously regarded as low priority by the Obama administration are no longer protected.

The two memos were issued by DHS Secretary John Kelly and order border patrol and immigration officers to deport as quickly as they can any undocumented immigrants found, with few exceptions mostly children. The memos come as Trump is said to be preparing new executive orders restricting immigration from a number of Muslim majority nations. The DHS said: "With extremely limited exceptions, DHS will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to enforcement proceedings, up to and including removal from the United States."

A draft memo obtained by the Associated Press 5 days ago showed that the Trump administration was considering using up to 100,000 National Guards to help speed up deportations. Trump's personal secretary denied the report. Perhaps, the memo represented a possible scenario that was never actually discussed. The draft includes National Guards in the four borders states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California but extends to seven other states. The governors in the eleven states would have the final say in whether the National Guard were used for the task. Kelly also ordered the hiring of another 5,000 officers for the Customs and Border Protection agency and 10,000 for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. No doubt this addition to the government payroll will be offset by job terminations in such areas as enforcement of regulations on companies as Trump reduces regulations to boost corporate profits. Trump has also ordered a wall built along the 2,000 mile long U.S. Mexican border. There are to be meetings this week between Kelly, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Enrique Pena Nieto President of Mexico, in Mexico. The two American officials will meet with other Mexican officials as well to discuss border security, law enforcement and trade.

The new rules will make it much easier for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol and Customs Service (CBP) to automatically expel undocumented immigrants rather than require mass detentions and judicial review that critics claim have overburdened the government. Giving people rights seems to becoming more and more a burden and "inefficient".

In one memo, Kelly said: "The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States. Thousands of aliens apprehended at the border, placed in removal proceedings, and released from custody have absconded and failed to appear at their removal hearings. Immigration courts are experiencing a historic backlog of removal cases."

The new guidelines could have a negative effect on the upcoming meeting with Mexico. Arturo Sarukhan, former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. said: "It does poison the general context in which the trip is taking place. It will create public opinion backlash and congressional backlash in Mexico." Angelica Salas of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights said: "Secretary Kelly has unleashed an unprecedented witch hunt on millions of immigrant families. These guidelines represent an unlawful, expedited process, a dragnet, to remove undocumented immigrants living and working in the U.S. This is a dastardly approach to a very human issue." Omar Jadwar of the ACLU said that the new memos will no doubt face legal challenges. Jadwar said: "These memos confirm that the Trump administration is willing to trample on due process, human decency, the well-being of our communities, and even protections for vulnerable children, in pursuit of a hyper-aggressive mass deportation policy."

The text of one memo can be found here and the other here. The new rules seem likely to worsen relations with Mexico making any amicable renegotiation of NAFTA quite unlikely.

Criminology professor claims in some US communities police have become "occupying armies"

Thomas Nolan, associate professor of criminology at Merrimack College, claims that the war on terror has resulted in the transformation of U.S. police forces so that they have become "occupying armies" in some American communities.

Nolan was also a policy analyst with the US Dept. of Homeland Security(DHS) and worked as a police officer in Boston during the 1980's and 1990's. Nolan said the focus of police has changed drastically since that time: “I remember it being drilled into me as a police officer, as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant: partnership, problem-solving, and prevention – the three Ps,” Police were trained to develop close relationships with the communities in which they served. He points out that now in places such as Ferguson Missouri those relationships did not exist.
Protests erupted in Ferguson after the shooting of Michael Brown an Afro-American on August 9, 2014. Protests and civil disorder began the following day. One cause was the desecration of a memorial set up the night of the shooting:On the evening of the shooting, residents had created a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles in the spot where Brown died. An unidentified officer reportedly allowed the dog under his control to urinate on the memorial. Police vehicles later crushed the memorial. These incidents inflamed tensions among bystanders, according to Missouri state Rep. Sharon Pace, who told Mother Jones, "That made people in the crowd mad and it made me mad." US Senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill said that "militarization of the police escalated the protesters' response". Instead of developing positive relationships with the mainly black community they were to protect, the majority white police force acted as if they were involved in a war.
 Many critics blame the war on drugs for the change in police departments. While that may have been a contributing factor to breaking down civil liberties and damaging police-community relations, Nolan places much of the blame on the "war on terror" emphasis:“In the early 2000s, particularly after 9/11, we saw a paradigm shift from community policing and problem-oriented principles to the war on terror, and we became Homeland Security police. I think what has happened as a direct result of that, is that those relationships that we forged, and worked so hard to attain and to maintain in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began to erode because the police were seen, particularly in communities of color, as an army of occupation" As Nolan points out, if police are dressed up like solders and travel around in military vehicles with military weapons they begin to think of themselves as warriors fighting an enemy the very communities they are meant to protect. This attitude can become particularly prevalent where the police are mainly white and the community people of color.
 The process of militarization has been accelerated by government policy that has funneled more and more military equipment to police forces around the country. The 1033 program is a good example of how this works: The 1033 Program is a part of the Disposition Services of the United States Government's Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). According to the program's informational website, the 1033 Program has transferred $5.1 billion in military hardware from the United States Army to local American law enforcement agencies since 1997.[1] The site states that $449 million was transferred in 2013, and that 8,000 local law enforcement agencies participate in the program.[1] The Department of Homeland Security(DHS) also facilitates militarization with grants. According to a 2011 Center for Investigative Reporting study published in the Daily Beast and cited in Salon gave grants of at least $34 billion to buy military-type equipment. Included in the purchases were drones, tanks, bomb-disarming robots, and tactical vests. While some of this equipment may indeed be useful the overall effect is to emphasize that policing is becoming much like military actions and the mindset of many police forces will change in the way described by Nolan.
  Nolan claims that police officers even make him feel unsafe in his own mixed neighborhood in Boston. He says: “I see the police conducting themselves in a highly militaristic fashion on routine patrol activities — and I know that’s what they’re doing because I come from that world. What I experience and what people on the street experience is a palpable, tangible sense of fear, and that is that we are unsafe if police need semiautomatic rifles to protect us and to keep us safe.” The emphasis on the war on terror can be seen in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. He claims that the response involved a unilateral suspension of the US Constitution. He notes that there were actually house-to-house searches. Yet he claims there were virtually no complaints in the media or by the public Security is trumping democracy but very few complain.

Fox news commentator Stephen Hayes on DHS terror watch list

Stephen Hayes is an unlikely candidate to be on the Department of Homeland Security's Terrorist Watchlist. As a senior writer for the conservative Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on Fox news he seems an unlikely terrorist sympathizer.

Hayes, as well as contributing to conservative media, has been on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, even C-Span as well. His conservative neo-con credentials include being picked as the official biographer of former vice-president Dick Cheney. The Weekly Standard could be called the home base of the neo-cons. The Weekly Standard has never made money but depended upon subsidies from prominent conservatives and the owner billionaire media magnate Rupert Murdoch until 2009 when it was sold to the Clarity Media Group. That company is also owned by a billionaire entrepreneur Philip Anschutz ranked by Forbes at 38th richest person in the US worth about $11 billion in 2014. Murdoch claimed he was not interested in selling the Weekly Standard but after he purchased the Wall Street Journal he seemed less interested in the Standard. Since the Anschutz group has taken over paid subscriptions are said to have increased by 39 percent between 2009 and 2010.
 The Standard is described in Wikipedia: The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neo-con bible."
 Given Hayes' stellar credentials as being a bona fide conservative rather than a potential terrorist how is it that he ended up on a DHS terror watch list? Apparently, it is easy to get on the list. Hayes' big mistake was to buy a one way ticket to Turkey. Everyone should know that the DHS probably thinks that anyone who buys a one way ticket to Turkey is on the way to join the Islamic State or the Nusra Front rebels in Syria. Both groups are on the US terror list.
Hayes' describes his experiences in a podcast at the Weekly Standard. Hayes and his wife booked a one-way trip to Istanbul. However, they then went on a cruise and ended up in Athens. They flew back to the US from Athens. Hayes thinks that his being placed on the watch list resulted from his purchase of the one-way ticket to Istanbul. He told POLITICO: "I'd be concerned if it was anything more than that." I find it strange that he is not concerned about that. Should buying a one-way ticket to Turkey be sufficient grounds for placing a person on a terror watch list? There could be countless reasons for buying a one-way ticket to Turkey as his own case shows.
  Hayes describes what happened when he tried to check in for a flight from Minneapolis a few weeks later: "When I went online to check in with Southwest, they wouldn't let me. I figured it was some glitch. Then I got to the airport and went to check in. The woman had a concerned look on her face. She brought over her supervisor and a few other people. Then they shut down the lane I was in, took me to the side, told me I was a selectee and scrawled [something] on my ticket. On my way back. the same thing happened. I got pulled out, they closed down the lane, and did a full pat-down and looked in all parts of my luggage." Hayes later contacted Southwest. A customer service representative told him he was on the watch list.
 At the time Hayes talked to POLITICO he was attempting to fill out forms on the DHS website in an attempt to clear his name. He is finding out that the process has built in snags. Hayes reports: "Not surprisingly, it's confusing. The first time I did it, the whole site froze. Now it's asking me for my passport number and a bunch of other information. Then I think I'm supposed to submit an actual copy of my passport, which I obviously can't do electronically."
 Perhaps some enterprising terrorist came across the biography of Stephen Hayes and decided that "Stephen Hayes" would make a great alias and now the rest is history with Hayes being the victim. Then again, maybe this is all Obama's fault along with everything else bad that happens. Actually, in this case, Obama may be partly to blame since both the no-fly list and watchlist have expanded during his time in office.