US Marshals Arrest Over 230 Fugitives, Including Rapists And Murderers, In Maryland Operation

The U.S. Marshals Service has announced the conclusion of “Operation Silver Shield,” a 90-day interagency operation that resulted in the arrest of 232 fugitives across Maryland, including individuals wanted for serious crimes such as rape and murder.

Baltimore, MD –The U.S. Marshals Service and task force partners in the District of Maryland conducted a large-scale, public safety initiative from May through August dubbed Operation Silver Shield. During the 90-day interagency operation, deputies from the District of Maryland prioritized the arrest of non-compliant sex offenders while the other members of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force focused on the apprehension of violent fugitives. The collective efforts of law enforcement resulted in the closure of 237 arrest warrants.

During Operation Silver Shield, the U.S. Marshals Service collaborated with federal, state, and local partners to arrest 232 fugitives, including 36 wanted for sex offender registration violations, 17 wanted for rape, four wanted for other sex offenses, 14 wanted for homicide, 45 wanted for aggravated assault, 27 wanted for robbery, five wanted for weapon offenses, five wanted for armed carjackings, and 12 wanted for drug offenses. Additionally, law enforcement partners seized seven firearms and assisted with locating/recovering four critically missing children.

“The arrest of these fugitives represents a step in the right direction to keep Maryland safe,” said Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

“During Operation Silver Shield, our Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force worked to arrest dozens of violent fugitives and non-compliant sex offenders,” said Clinton J. Fuchs, U.S. Marshal for the District of Maryland. “The results of this collaborative effort demonstrate our commitment to protecting citizens across the state of Maryland.”

“We created the District of Maryland’s Silver Shield Unit to strengthen interagency-community collaboration,” said Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal for the District of Maryland Mathew Silverman. “Throughout this operation, we worked hand-in-hand with local communities to take dangerous offenders off the streets. The results of Operation Silver Shield reflects the true power of our public safety partnership.”

The U.S. Marshals Service Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force began operations in June 2004 and has partnership agreements with more than 133 federal, state, and local agencies and operates in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force has apprehended more than 78,000 fugitives since its inception and is always striving to make communities safer.

Participating agencies included: U.S. Marshals Service; Annapolis Police Department; Anne Arundel County Police Department; Baltimore Police Department; Baltimore County Police Department; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Bowie Police Department; Carroll County Sheriff’s Office; Cecil County Sheriff’s Office Charles County Sheriff’s Office; Department of State – Diplomatic Security Services; D.C. Department of Corrections; D.C. Metro Police Department; D.C. Metro Transit Police Department; Fredrick County Sheriff’s Office; Fredrick City Police Department; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Forest Heights Police Department; Harford County Sheriff’s Office; Homeland Security Investigations; Howard County Police Department; Howard County Sheriff’s Office; Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services; Maryland State Police; Maryland Transportation Authority Police Department; Montgomery County Police Department; Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office; Prince George’s County Police Department; Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office; Washington – Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force; Washington, D.C. Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency; U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia – Criminal Investigations Unit; and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.

https://www.usmarshals.gov/news/press-release/us-marshals-announce-results-of-operation-silver-shield

FOIA Files: How Feds, Press, and Academia "Coordinate" on Speech

Digital content moderation was closer relationship than we've been led to expect.

In March 2023, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) put out an article asserting that the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) — comprised of the CIP, the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) — was not a “government cut-out” controlled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Racket has sent out numerous Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests about the Election Integrity Partnership. Recently, we received several new batches of results from the University of Washington that cast doubt on their earlier assertions. These disclosures, which have been added to the Racket FOIA Library, hint at a dynamic perhaps more intimate than reported. This is the first of a series of disclosures we’ll be publishing this week.

On March 4, 2021, Shira Ovide of The New York Times emailed the EIP to ask what government officials and social media platforms did to “stop disinformation from having a material effect on the [2020] election.”

The response came from Matthew Masterson, at the time a non-resident policy fellow at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Masterson then only just finished working as a senior cybersecurity advisor at CISA, a position he held from March 2018 to December 2020. He stayed at CISA through the 2020 election, then moved to Stanford just in time to receive Ovide’s inquiry as a private citizen. His response is humorous in its frankness (emphasis ours):

Happy to talk regarding the work we (the feds) did in coordination with social media companies to anticipate and respond to efforts to undermine the election.

Masterson’s choice of verb is interesting. For years, “anti-disinformation” activists have insisted that state actors merely contacted social media companies with helpful tips regarding troublesome accounts. Masterson’s response suggests CISA was in close contact with platforms like Twitter throughout the 2020 election cycle, though Ovide wasn’t told how close. (See the accompanying article by Matt Taibbi to learn more.) He’s explicit in his characterization of the EIP-CISA dynamic as a coordinated effort.

More

https://www.racket.news/p/foia-files-how-feds-press-and-academia

Trump’s interview with Elon Musk targeted by ‘massive DDoS attack’: LIVE UPDATES

The X owner has promised a “highly entertaining” conversation with the former US president

Former US President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk sat down for a free-flowing interview on Musk’s X platform on Monday. Three months out from the US presidential election, Trump’s campaign billed the talk as the “interview of the century.”

The “live conversation” with Trump will be “unscripted with no limits on subject matter,” Musk wrote on Sunday, adding it “should be highly entertaining” and encouraging users to post questions and comments.

Hours before the interview, Trump returned to X and posted a flurry of videos promoting his own campaign and attacking US vice president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Trump was banned from X (then known as Twitter) in 2021 by the platform’s previous management, and since his reinstatement by Musk in 2022, had only shared a single post – a photo of his mugshot following his arrest in Georgia last year.

The interview has generated significant attention, particularly from opponents of Trump and Musk. In a letter to Musk earlier on Monday, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton warned that X could be investigated and fined if so-called “harmful content” is spread on the platform during the live-streamed conversation.

13 August 2024

00:49 GMT

Musk opened the conversation by asking Trump about the attempt on his life in July, calling the former president’s resilience “inspiring.” Trump said that he knew instantly what was happening, and heard bullets flying overhead as he ducked behind the podium in Pennsylvania.

”It was about an eighth of a second where it would be good, and after that it would have been a disaster,” Trump said, referring to the split second head-tilt that likely saved his life.

00:43 GMT

“My apologies for the late start," Musk said after a delay of more than 40 minutes. The massive attack illustrates that there are “a lot of people in opposition to what Donald Trump has to say,” he added. The tech mogul said that he aims to have an open conversation with Trump, rather than a typical adversarial news interview.

00:41 GMT

After Musk announced that the interview would go ahead with a smaller number of concurrent listeners, nearly a million people have managed to tune in. Trump and Musk are visible as ‘host’ and ‘speaker’ respectively, although both still have their microphones muted.

00:30 GMT

In a follow-up post, Musk claimed that he “tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today.”

“We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter," he said.

00:26 GMT

“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X,” Musk has announced, adding that his team is “working on shutting it down.”

Should the problem persist, Musk said that he would “proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”

Short for Distributed Denial of Service, a DDOS attack is a form of cyberattack in which the perpetrator overwhelms a server with fake connection requests, slowing it or disabling it entirely.

https://www.rt.com/news/602520-trump-musk-big-interview/

Former Cornell Student Sentenced for Posting Online Threats Against Jewish Students on Campus

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-cornell-student-sentenced-posting-online-threats-against-jewish-students-campus