$2.1 Million Reward Paid in Bulger Case

$2.1 Million Reward Paid in Bulger Case

The Boston Division of the FBI last week received final authorization from the United States Department of Justice to pay the $2.1 million reward to those responsible for providing information which directly led to the arrest of former Top Ten Fugitive James “Whitey” Bulger and his companion, Catherine Greig. This information was generated as a direct result of the FBI’s public service announcement campaign, which was initiated on June 20, 2011.

The FBI offered $2 million for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Bulger, and $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of Ms. Greig. As of Friday, September 23, 2011, the FBI has paid this reward money to more than one individual.

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FBI busted tracking student, demands GPS spy gear return

FBI busted tracking student, demands GPS spy gear return
After Web uproar, feds reclaimed magnetic tracker found under car


Several days ago a 20-year-old student discovered a GPS tracking device hidden on his car. After his friend posted a picture of it online, speculating about its ties to a secret FBI investigation, the feds themselves came a-knockin', according to Wired.com. They wanted their toy back.

Based on the discussion with the six FBI agents who arrived at his doorstep, Yassir Afifi believes he'd been under surveillance for three to six months. When Wired asked an FBI spokesman about the case, he did not acknowledge ownership of the device, but said that there was an "ongoing investigation."

Afifi says that he cooperated with the FBI and, according to Wired, "did nothing to merit attention from authorities." He is a U.S. citizen who lives in Santa Clara, Calif., where he attends Mission College.

Afifi's father, an Islamic-American activist, died a year ago in Egypt. It is not clear what the circumstances of his death were, or if this was the reason for the FBI's investigation of Afifi.

The gadget itself — a GPS receiver identified as a police-issue-only Cobham Orion Guardian ST820 tracking system, connected to a battery pack and radio transmitter — was magnetically attached to the car. A shot of it made its way around the blogosphere on Monday, after appearing on the community news site Reddit. After Afifi spotted an antenna sticking out during an oil change, the garage owner offered to yank it out. It apparently popped off quite easily.

The question of whether or not sticking a GPS on a car is legal is actually in the middle of a hot debate right now. One federal court recently said that it was legal, while another said that tracking for an "extended period of time" would in fact require a warrant. (For more on this, here's a great piece in Time written by lawyer and tech journalist Adam Cohen.)

Legality aside, the tactic itself might have been carried out with something less than precision. Simply put, tracking devices shouldn't be so easy to find. Wired talked to an agent who said that not only is the tracking device out of date, but state-of-the-art snoops hardwire the stuff directly to the car's electrical system, avoiding the need for a battery.

What's impressive is how quickly Afifi got an identification of the gadget by crowdsourcing it on the Web. On the flipside, that kind of exposure isn't good PR for the FBI. Surely the revelation of the magnetic tracker will cause many people to check under their own cars. Like many noble efforts to keep us safe from terrorism, this one may be turning out to not be so effective. After all, those who already know they're involved in illegal activity probably check their cars every day, rain or shine.

This piece originally appeared on Technolog. For more details on the Afifi story, read the report at Wired.com.

Report: FBI informant might have fired first at Kent State

Report: FBI informant might have fired first at Kent State
By The Associated Press
Friday, October 8th, 2010 -- 10:29 am

Tape analysis: Pistol shots preceded 1970 Kent St. shooting deaths of 4 students

A forensic audio expert says a tape recording of the 1970 shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier.

The Plain Dealer reports Friday that the expert's review detected four shots matching the acoustic signature of a .38-caliber revolver.

Witnesses have previously reported a confrontation involving angry students and a paid FBI informant who was photographing protesters. The informant was carrying a .38-caliber pistol. Some witnesses say he fired it to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers could have mistook for sniper fire.

The FBI informant has denied firing warning shots.

The long-forgotten recording was found in a library archive in 2007.

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

Source: AP News

Probe: FBI Improperly Spied on Activist Groups

A Justice Department probe has found the FBI improperly monitored activist groups and individuals between 2001 and 2006. The investigation covered FBI spying on the Thomas Merton Center, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace, The Catholic Worker, and a Quaker peace activist. The FBI was found to have opened and extended the monitoring despite lacking grounds to suspect unlawful activity. Some Greenpeace members were placed on a terrorism watch list after agents wrongly designated their nonviolent civil disobedience as "Acts of Terrorism." In one case, FBI Director Robert Mueller was found to have provided Congress with false information in claiming a 2002 Pittsburgh antiwar rally was monitored because of intelligence that persons with links to international terrorism would be present. Investigators say Mueller’s false testimony was unintentional because he was wrongly informed.

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FBI probes were improper, Justice saysBy Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2010; 10:51 PM

The FBI improperly investigated some left-leaning U.S. advocacy groups after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department said Monday, citing cases in which agents put activists on terrorist watch lists even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience.

A report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine absolved the FBI of the most serious allegation: that domestic groups were targeted purely for their activism against the Iraq war and other political activity, which would have violated their First Amendment rights. Civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats had accused the FBI of employing such tactics during George W. Bush's administration.

But the report cited what it called "troubling" FBI practices in the Bush administration's monitoring of domestic groups between 2001 and 2006. In one instance, the report said, FBI officials falsely said an agent photographed antiwar demonstrators as part of a terrorism investigation, which led FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to unintentionally give incorrect information about the incident to Congress.

In another, agents investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities "with little or no basis," the report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said.

The groups that were monitored, which also include a Catholic organization that advocates for peace, compared the FBI's actions to questionable domestic spying tactics the bureau usedagainst antiwar demonstrators and others in the 1960s under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover.

"The use of McCarthyite tactics against PETA and other groups that speak out against cruelty to animals and exploitative corporate and government practices is un-American, unconstitutional, and against the interests of a healthy democracy,'' said a statement from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights group that was among those monitored.

Ken Wainstein, former head of the Justice Department's national security division, said the investigations of the groups reflect the FBI's post-Sept. 11 challenge of transforming into an intelligence organization able to detect and dismantle terrorist plots.

"This isn't McCarthyism or the excesses of the 1960s,'' he said. "This is the Bureau developing the programs to be a fully functioning intelligence agency and trying not to step over the First Amendment lines in the process.''

FBI officials defended their tactics, saying they were trying to protect Americans. They noted that the express purpose of Fine's report was to determine whether agents targeted activists purely for their political beliefs.

"After more than four years of investigation and an exhaustive review of hundreds of investigative decisions the FBI made after the September 11 attacks," said FBI spokesman Michael P. Kortan, the report "did not uncover even a single instance where the FBI targeted any group or any individual based on the exercise of a First Amendment right.''

He added that although Fine had "disagreed with a handful of the FBI's investigative determinations over the course of six years,'' the inspector general "has not recommended any significant modifications to the FBI's authority to investigate criminal conduct or national security threats.''

The FBI's efforts to balance its fight against domestic terrorism with respect for the First Amendment have long been controversial. Under Hoover's COINTELPRO program, halted in 1971, the bureau sought to monitor and disrupt leftist antiwar and civil rights groups by such tactics as infiltrating them with informants.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, that balance has been tested further. Civil liberties groups have long accused the bureau of overreacting to the hijackings by improperly monitoring antiwar demonstrators and environmental groups.

Fine's investigation began in 2006 after the American Civil Liberties Union released documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that it said showed that the FBI was monitoring left-leaning groups.

Michael German, an ACLU senior policy counsel and former FBI agent, said Fine's report "clearly shows that the FBI was improperly spying on people's First Amendment-protected activity, and that the FBI didn't have enough internal controls to prevent abuse.''

Fine's report says that in some cases, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons. In others, the report said, the FBI extended probes "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files.

Much of the report is about a 2002 antiwar protest sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based organization dedicated to promoting peace.

Mark Berry, a probationary FBI agent with little anti-terrorism experience, attended the rally and photographed demonstrators distributing leaflets. An internal FBI document said the bureau was investigating "Pittsburgh anti-war activity,'' the report said.

After the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request, FBI officials seeking to respond produced an internal "routing slip" saying that Berry was monitoring a local Islamic leader and that his attendance was part of a terrorism probe.

Berry told Fine's investigators that the routing slip was false, and Fine concluded that it was an "after-the-fact reconstruction that was not corroborated by any witnesses or contemporaneous documents.'' Berry could not be located Monday night.

FBI Picks a Fight with Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

FBI Picks a Fight with Wikipedia
WebProNews - Chris Crum - Staff Writer

FBI: Take Down Our Seal, Wikimedia Foundation: No.

This week, the New York Times and BBC News both reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sent the Wikimedia Foundation a letter, ordering the removal of an image of the Bureau's seal from its Wikipedia entry. The Wikimedia Foundation's response thus far has basically been, "no."

The NYT provides copies of both the FBI's letter, and the Wikimedia Foundation's response. Pretty entertaining stuff.

FBI letter to WIKIMEDIA: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/20100803-wiki-LetterFromLarson.pdf

WIKIMEDIA Letter to FBI: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/20100803-wiki-LetterToLarson.pdf

Judge Orders FBI to Turn Over Thousands of Patriot Act Abuse Documents

Judge Orders FBI to Turn Over Thousands of Patriot Act Abuse Documents
By Ryan Singel

Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1,000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.

The order for monthly document releases commencing July 5 came in response to a government sunshine request by a civil liberties group, which sued in April over the FBI’s foot-dragging on its broad request.

The April request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the FBI to turn over documents related to its misuse of National Security Letters, self-issued subpoenas that don’t need a judge’s approval and which can get financial, phone and internet records. Recipients of the letters are forbidden by law from ever telling anyone other than their lawyer that they received the request. Though initially warned to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47,000 in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans. Information obtained from the requests, which need only be certified by the agency to be "relevant" to an investigation, are dumped into a data-mining warehouse for perpetuity.

An Inspector General report in March found rampant errors in the small sample of NSLs examined and systemic underreporting of the powers usage to Congress. The report also found that agents issued more than 700 "expedited" letters, some containing materially false sworn statements. These letters had no legal basis and essentially asked companies to turn over data by pretending there was an emergency in order to get the data necessary to get a proper NSL. One former FBI agent says its clear the FBI violated the law.

Now the Justice Department must turn over 2,500 pages of documents a month to the EFF, including information on cozy surveillance contracts between the FBI and telephone companies and information on how data captured by NSLs were put into the FBI’s massive data mining warehouse.

The Justice Department told the court that there were more than 100,000 potentially responsive documents and that ten people are working full time on filling the request for documents. Look out for a run on thick, black magic markers in D.C.

THREAT LEVEL can’t wait to see:

1. All records discussing or reporting violations or potential violations of statutes, Attorney General guidelines, and internal FBI policies governing the use of NSLs, including, but not limited to:

A. Correspondence or communications between the FBI and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concerning violations or potential violations of statutes…

2. Guidelines, memoranda or communications addressing or discussing the integration of NSL data into the FBIís Investigative Data Warehouse; 3. Contracts between the FBI and three telephone companies [...] which were intended to allow the Counterterrorism Division to obtain telephone toll billing data from the communications industry as expeditiously as possible;

4. Any guidance, memoranda or communications discussing the FBI’s legal authority to issue exigent letters to telecommunications companies, and the relationship between such exigent letters and the FBI’s authority to issue NSLs under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act;

5. Any guidance, memoranda or communications discussing the application of the Fourth Amendment to NSLs issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act;

8. Copies of sample or model exigent letters used by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division;

9. Copies of sample or model NSL approval requests used by the FBIís Counterterrorism Division;

10. Records related to the Counterterrorism Divisionís Electronic Surveillance Operations and Sharing Unit (EOPS).



Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/06/judge_orders_fb/#ixzz0veoqoT9N

Serial killer Scott Kimball was sprung from prison after 8-minute hearing, according to newly unsealed documents

Serial killer Scott Kimball was sprung from prison after 8-minute hearing, according to newly unsealed documents
By John Aguilar Camera Staff Writer
Boulder Daily Camera
Posted:07/22/2010 08:06:40 PM MDT

It took only eight minutes and a judge's simple admonition against breaking the law to turn Scott Kimball from a federal prisoner into a free man -- free to contact his first victim within days of his release and launch a killing spree that wouldn't end for the next 20 months.

Details of a crucial 2002 bond hearing in which the Lafayette native was ordered released with no supervision came to light this week when a judge ruled that a transcript of the U.S. District Court proceeding be unsealed 7 1/2 years after it took place. The document was unsealed as a result of the Camera taking legal action.

The transcript, at only six pages long, may be more remarkable for its banal tone than for any new information it provides about what the government was hoping to gain from making Kimball an FBI informant. In fact, the judge never mentions the bureau or the reason for Kimball's release.

"So I'm going to order that you be released on the $10,000 unsecured bond without supervision or other conditions," U.S. Magistrate Boyd N. Boland said as Kimball stood in a federal courtroom in Denver on Dec. 18, 2002, without a lawyer. "The deputy will prepare that, and I'll have you review it, and, if it's acceptable, sign it."

The judge also said he would assign Kimball an attorney.

Kimball, who had been in federal prison for more than a year on check-fraud charges, responded: "Yes, your honor. Thank you."

The 43-year-old four-time felon then left FCI-Englewood federal penitentiary in Littleton and, a week later, made contact with his first victim, 24-year-old LeAnn Emry.

Emry, who would wind up dead in a desolate Utah canyon at the end of January 2003, would become one of three women last seen with Kimball.

Jennifer Marcum, whose body has never been found, would disappear the following month. She was the person Kimball used as his ticket out of prison, when he told the FBI that she was planning to kill a witness in a federal drug case and that he could inform on her.

Kaysi McLeod, the 19-year-old daughter of a Westminster woman Kimball later married, would die in August 2003 in the mountains near Walden.

Kimball pleaded guilty last year to killing all three women, as well as to the 2004 murder of his uncle. He was a paid informant for the FBI the entire time.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, whose office prosecuted Kimball's case and forged a plea agreement that put him away for 70 years, said he was bothered by what appeared to be a hasty decision by federal prosecutors to request Kimball's release.

Even though he didn't have a criminally violent past in late 2002, Garnett said, Kimball had accumulated several felonies and managed to pull off an escape from a halfway house in Montana.

"It's not clear what the rush was to release him into the public on Dec. 18," he said. "Obviously, it was unfortunate that he was released and released so quickly and with so little supervision; as we know he went into a violent phase."

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment Thursday, and a call to an FBI spokeswoman wasn't returned.

Howard Emry, LeAnn's father, thinks the FBI -- and by extension the U.S. Attorney's Office -- was so intent on using Kimball as an informant that the bureau chose to ignore Kimball's unsavory past.

"I think there was pressure from the FBI because they were sold on him being helpful to their cases," Emry said. "They were so desperate in trying to get Kimball to help them that they didn't do their homework."

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or aguilarj@dailycamera.com.