Acting AG and Five Country Statement on the Temporary Derogation to the ePrivacy Directive to Combat Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/acting-ag-and-five-country-statement-temporary-derogation-eprivacy-directive-combat-child

The US Sanctions 7 Ukrainians for Election Meddling

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned seven Ukranians and four Ukraninan entities Monday, that it said were part of a Russian disinformation campaign targeting the 2020 presidential election.

The individuals were linked to Andrii Derkach, a Ukranian lawmaker the Treasury said is a longtime Russian agent who used social media, edited audio recordings and his relationship with President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to implicate then-presidential nominee Joe Biden in Ukranian money laundering and corruption schemes.

“The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

While Derkach was similarly sanctioned in September of 2020, this new action “targets Derkach’s inner circle,” according to a Treasury Department press release. Four of the individuals named are current or former Ukrainian Government officials who participated - directly or indirectly - in Derkach’s smear campaign against Biden.

“Former Ukrainian Government officials Konstantin Kulyk, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Andriy Telizhenko, and current Ukraine Member of ParliamentOleksandr Dubinskyhave publicly appeared or affiliated themselves with Derkach through the coordinated dissemination and promotion of fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations involving a U.S. political candidate,” the department said.

The statement claimed ex-politician and fugitive Oleksandr Onyshchenko provided the edited audio recordings of Joe Biden and former Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko that Derkach released in May and July of 2020. The Treasury asserted that these tapes were part of the larger Russian-backed effort to sow discord in the 2020 presidential election.

Former Ukranian prosecutor Konstantin Kulyk, pursued the investigation into Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine in what the Treasury Department referred to as “an alliance with Derkach to spread false accusations of international corruption.”

Monday’s action also designated Derkach’s assistant and members of his media team, Anton Simonenko, Dmytro Kovalchuk, and Petro Zhuravel for sanctions for their roles in spreading the disinformation.

The Treasury additionally marked four Ukraninan media firms it called “front companies,” for sanctions saying they spread these false claims. NabuLeaks and Era-Media TOV are both owned by Derkach, while Only News and Skeptik TOV are owned by his media manager, Zhuravel.

Due to these sanctions, the U.S. will block all assets and property of the designated persons and prevent them, or their companies, from doing business in the U.S.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/13610-the-us-sanctions-7-ukrainians-for-election-meddling

FBI holds update on Capitol riot investigation as House moves toward impeachment

The riots hit the Capitol last Wednesday.

The House of Representatives is moving toward a second impeachment vote in the coming days as outrage about the president's role in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters last week continues to reverberate throughout Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will take two major steps toward impeaching Trump, which would make him the only president to be impeached twice.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/live-updates-biden-transition-1-12-2021

Forget WhatsApp, CIA Has Tools To Hack Almost All Social Media Platforms

Recently, after WhatsApp updated its terms of use and privacy policy users have been migrating to other social media and messaging platforms due to concerns of their privacy. However, what is not being reported by media is that CIA has developed tools which can hack not just WhatsApp, but bypass the encryption of Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking your smartphones itself.

Forget WhatsApp, CIA Has Tools To Hack Almost All Social Media Platforms

On March 7th, 2017, Wikileaks released a giant file of 8,761 documents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) codenamed Vault 7. Wikileaks called the leak the “first full part of the series “Year Zero”. The documents were stolen from a network that supposedly was “isolated” within the CIA itself.

The files include details on CIA’s software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smartphones, as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. A CIA internal audit identified 91 malware tools out of more than 500 tools in use in 2016 being compromised by the release.

The leaks outlined how the CIA could pretty much hack into any device with a suite of tools designed to read and copy data from electronic devices. The documents detailed how, for example, authorities found a way to bypass encryption in a host of secure messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

The CIA’s covert hacking division, had found a way to bypass vastly popular end-to-end encryption apps used on phones to prevent hacking and spying. This was accomplished by hacking the smartphone first. The code would run in the background and collect audio and text message traffic before encryption was applied through the apps.

Structure of CIA Cyber Weapons development according to Wikileaks

What this means is that apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram — hugely popular because of their security features — were vulnerable. People using these apps could still be spied on by the CIA.

By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5,000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

According to WikiLeaks, once an Android smartphone is penetrated CIA can collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied”. Some of CIA’s software is reportedly able to gain access to messages sent by instant messaging services.

This method of accessing messages differs from obtaining access by decrypting an already encrypted message. While the encryption of messengers that offer end-to-end encryption, such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, wasn’t reported to be cracked, their encryption can be bypassed by capturing input before their encryption is applied, by methods such as keylogging and recording the touch input from the user.

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/79006/forget-whatsapp-cia-has-tools-to-hack-almost-all-social-media.html

MSM Australia

This is the NARRATIVE