China-Based Executive At U.S. Telecommunications Company Charged with Disrupting Video Meetings Commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre: Defendant Coordinated With The People’s Republic Of China To Target Dissidents And Disrupt Meetings

 The U.S. Justice Department released the below information: 

A complaint and arrest warrant were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Xinjiang Jin, also known as “Julien Jin,” with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification.  

Jin, an employee of a U.S.-based telecommunications company (Company-1) who was based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), allegedly participated in a scheme to disrupt a series of meetings in May and June 2020 held to commemorate the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in the PRC.  The meetings were conducted using a videoconferencing program provided by Company-1, and were organized and hosted by U.S-based individuals, including individuals residing in the Eastern District of New York.  Jin is not in U.S. custody. 

“No company with significant business interests in China is immune from the coercive power of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers.  “The Chinese Communist Party will use those within its reach to sap the tree of liberty, stifling free speech in China, the United States and elsewhere about the Party’s repression of the Chinese people.  For companies with operations in China, like that here, this reality may mean executives being coopted to further repressive activity at odds with the values that have allowed that company to flourish here.” 

“The FBI remains committed to protecting the exercise of free speech for all Americans.  As this complaint alleges, that freedom was directly infringed upon by the pernicious activities of Communist China’s Intelligence Services, in support of a regime that neither reflects nor upholds our democratic values,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Americans should understand that the Chinese Government will not hesitate to exploit companies operating in China to further their international agenda, including repression of free speech.”  

“The allegations in the complaint lay bare the Faustian bargain that the PRC government demands of U.S. technology companies doing business within the PRC’s borders, and the insider threat that those companies face from their own employees in the PRC,” said Acting United States Attorney Seth D. DuCharme.  “As alleged, Jin worked closely with the PRC government and members of PRC intelligence services to help the PRC government silence the political and religious speech of users of the platform of a U.S. technology company.  Jin willingly committed crimes, and sought to mislead others at the company, to help PRC authorities censor and punish U.S. users’ core political speech merely for exercising their rights to free expression.  The charges announced today make clear that employees working in the PRC for U.S. technology companies make those companies—and their users—vulnerable to the malign influence of the PRC government.  This Office will continue working tirelessly to protect against threats to the free expression of political views and religious beliefs, regardless whether those threats come from inside or outside the United States.” 

Mr. DuCharme and Mr. Demers also extended their thanks and appreciation to Company-1 for its cooperation in the government’s ongoing investigation. 

According to the complaint, Jin served as Company-1’s primary liaison with PRC law enforcement and intelligence services.  In that capacity, he regularly responded to requests from the PRC government for information and to terminate video meetings hosted on Company-1’s video communications platform.  Part of Jin’s duties included providing information to the PRC government about Company-1’s users and meetings, and in some cases he provided information – such as Internet Protocol addresses, names and email addresses – of users located outside of the PRC.  Jin was also responsible for proactively monitoring Company-1’s video communications platform for what the PRC government considers to be “illegal” meetings to discuss political and religious subjects unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC government. 

As alleged in the complaint, between January 2019 to the present, Jin and others conspired to use Company-1’s systems in the United States to censor the political and religious speech of individuals located in the United States and around the world at the direction and under the control of officials of the PRC government.  Among other actions taken at the direction of the PRC government, Jin and others terminated at least four video meetings hosted on Company-1’s networks commemorating the thirty-first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, most of which were organized and attended by U.S.-based participants, such as dissidents who had participated in and survived the 1989 protests.  Some of the participants who were unable to attend these meetings were Company-1 customers in Queens and Long Island, New York who had purchased subscriptions to Company-1’s services, and therefore entered into service agreements with Company-1 governed by its Terms of Service (TOS).  

Jin, officials from the PRC government and others allegedly collaborated to identify meeting participants and to disrupt meetings hosted on Company-1’s U.S. servers, at times creating pretextual reasons to justify their actions to other employees and executives of Company-1, as well as Company-1’s users themselves.  In particular, in May and June 2020, Jin and others acted to disrupt meetings held on the Company-1 platform to discuss politically sensitive topics unacceptable to the PRC government by infiltrating the meetings to gather evidence about purported misconduct occurring in those meetings.  In fact, there was no misconduct; Jin and his co-conspirators fabricated evidence of TOS violations to provide justification for terminating the meetings, as well as certain participants’ accounts.  Jin then tasked a high-ranking employee of Company-1 in the United States to effect the termination of meetings and the suspension and cancellation of user accounts. 

As detailed in the complaint, Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography.  The fabricated evidence falsely asserted that the meetings included discussions of child abuse or exploitation, terrorism, racism or incitements to violence, and sometimes included screenshots of the purported participants’ user profiles featuring, for example, a masked person holding a flag resembling that of the Islamic State terrorist group.  Jin used the complaints as evidence to persuade Company-1 executives based in the United States to terminate meetings and suspend or terminate the user accounts of the meeting hosts.  

PRC authorities took advantage of information provided by Jin to retaliate against and intimidate participants residing in the PRC, or PRC-based family members of meeting participants.  PRC authorities temporarily detained at least one person who planned to speak during a commemoration meeting.  In another case, PRC authorities visited family members of a participant in the meetings and directed them to tell the participant to cease speaking out against the PRC government and rather to support socialism and the CCP. 

The charges in the complaint are allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.  If convicted of both charged conspiracies, Jin faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.  

The investigation into this matter was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.  The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s National Security and Cybercrime Section.  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander A. Solomon, Richard M. Tucker, David K. Kessler and Ian C. Richardson are in charge of the prosecution, with assistance from Trial Attorney Scott A. Claffee of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

What The Pandemic Christmas Of 1918 Looked Like: Concerns About The Safety Of Gift Shopping, Family Gatherings And Church Services Were On Americans’ Minds Then, Too

 Livia Gershon at Smithsonianmag.com offers a lookback to the 1918 flu pandemic. 

On December 21, 1918, the Ohio State Journal published a warning about the lingering flu pandemic from the state’s acting health commissioner: “Beware the mistletoe.” Not only should readers resist the temptation of a holiday kiss, but they shouldn’t even be at a social gathering where it might come up. 

“You will show your love for dad and mother, brother, sister and the rest of ‘em best this year by sticking to your own home instead of paying annual Christmas visits, holding family reunions, and parties generally,” the commissioner said. 

Christmas 1918 was not Christmas 2020. The pandemic had already peaked in the U.S. in the fall of 1918 as part of the disease’s second wave. Meanwhile, this week the deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S. are the highest they’ve ever been, showing no signs of waning as the holiday approaches. But the flu also killed far more people (675,000) than Covid-19 has to date, in a country that was much smaller, population-wise, at the time. And it wasn’t over by any means. In some cities, a third wave was already starting as Christmas approached, says Kenneth C. Davis, author of More Deadly than War, a history of the pandemic and World War I aimed at young readers. 

“There was an uptick, and it was a serious uptick in some,” he says. 

A century ago, the federal government held much less authority and power than it does today; the CDC, for instance, wouldn’t get its start until 1946. Decisions about how seriously to take the disease fell to states and, especially, municipalities. 

Davis says San Francisco took it quite seriously, implementing a strong mask mandate in the fall as well as measures that’d be described today as social distancing. After cases rose sharply in mid-October, the city locked down harshly; the measures worked to keep the flu at bay and, a month later, the city reopened and dropped the mask mandate. But the flu was not done with the city yet. Come Christmastime, Davis says, the cases were again on the rise, and residents, having finally escaped from the pandemic shutdown, were not eager to go back. 

“San Francisco wanted to institute the mask rule again but people resisted,” he says.

Davis said some anti-maskers of the day felt their rights were infringed on. Some Christian Scientists cited religious objections. And other people simply found masks too much trouble. It didn’t help that masks at the time were generally homemade, using several layers of cheesecloth and were supposed to be boiled for ten minutes every day to keep them clean. 

While it’s hard to tease out whether Christmas gatherings or shopping contributed, influenza case numbers did indeed rise again in San Francisco in early January. 

Lendol Calder, a historian at Augustana College in Illinois and author of Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit, says it wasn’t just the debate over masks that seems familiar today. In some places, residents complained that officials shut down churches but left saloons open. The closing of churches was a major issue in Milwaukee, a city that took the pandemic especially seriously—and that was also home to deeply observant German and Norwegian immigrant communities.

“To have churches closed during the Advent-Christmas season was huge,” Calder says. “That was people’s social media, to go to church.” 

But, Calder adds, even Milwaukee allowed churches to hold services on Christmas Day. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-pandemic-christmas-1918-looked-180976541/?utm_source=smithsoniantopic&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20201220-weekender&spMailingID=44133907&spUserID=NzQwNDU4NTg2NjMS1&spJobID=1901640787&spReportId=MTkwMTY0MDc4NwS2

Rich Lowry: No, Edward Snowden Doesn’t Remotely Deserve A Pardon From President Trump

Rich Lowry offers his take on a pardon for Edward Snowden in his column at the New York Post. 

No one will ever accuse President Trump of being overly careful in his exercise of his pardon power. 

So it makes sense that advocates of Edward Snowden, the man responsible for the most damaging classified leak in US history, are mounting a last-minute push to get the president who pardoned Sheriff Joe and Roger Stone to issue his most outrageous and indefensible pardon yet.

It’s a transpartisan alliance. Glenn Greenwald, Snowden’s journalistic partner and foremost advocate, has, of course, been banging the drum. Rose McGowan has urged Trump to be “punk as f - - -” and pardon Snowden in defiance of “DC Cult Leaders a k a politicians” who “hate the truth.” 

Renegade Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is on board, as are libertarian Trump loyalists Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz. 

As Trump’s presidency winds down and his clout on Capitol Hill diminishes, his sweeping power to grant clemency will be even more alluring to him, and he said over the summer that he’s considering a Snowden pardon. 

If the pardon can be sold to Trump as a way to stick it to the Deep State on his way out the door, anything is possible. Why go to the trouble of firing CIA Director Gina Haspel or FBI Director Christopher Wray if he can signal his contempt for their ilk by bringing a bête noire of the US national-security apparatus in from the cold with a stroke of his pen? 

Working for a National Security Agency contractor, Snowden stole massive amounts of classified material and began sharing it with journalists in 2013. When the Justice Department filed criminal charges, he fled to Russia, which kindly provided him asylum and then permanent residency. 

Snowden is a self-styled whistle­blower. He says he was motivated by his constitutional qualms about an NSA bulk-data-collection program and his disgust with official deceptions about the program. 

None of this holds up. If Snowden wanted to be a genuine whistleblower, he could have pursued concerns about the NSA program through lawful avenues, instead of fleeing the country and purloining so many documents that authorities still can’t be sure how much he stole. 

…The Snowden disclosures were much more wide-ranging than the NSA program, in fact so wide-ranging that it’s almost impossible to keep track. 

It’s also naive to believe that Snowden was allowed to make a home in Vladimir Putin’s Russia without the government exploiting his trove of secrets. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

No, Edward Snowden doesn’t remotely deserve a pardon from President Trump (nypost.com) 

You can also read my Washington Times piece on Snowdon via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: Edward Snowden's True Permanent Record: My Washington Times Piece On NSA Leaker Edward Snowden 

My Crime Fiction: 'Twas A Crime Before Christmas: My Interview With Santa'

As the Christmas season is here once again, I'd like to offer once again my short story, Twas a Crime Before Christmas: My Interview With Santa, which originally appeared in The Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2009.   

 Twas a Crime Before Christmas: My Interview With Santa Claus

 By Paul Davis

As a crime reporter and columnist, I was compelled to look into a report of a burglary of an unemployed construction worker on Christmas Eve in South Philadelphia.

The burglar or burglars broke into the home early on the morning of the 24th. They stole the family’s TV and other household goods. They also took a dozen or so wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree that were intended for the family’s two children.

I interviewed the victim, who was so devastated by the burglary that he could hardly speak. I also spoke to a detective who said he presently had no leads on the case but he planned to keep working it, and I spoke to a local priest who told me that the church was collecting donations for the poor family.

Lastly, I spoke to a man of great wisdom and experience. The jolly old fella was kind enough to pause during his special night out to talk to me about crime.

I interviewed Santa Claus as he was packing up his sleigh and getting ready to head off on his magical trip, bringing toys and goodies to good children around the world.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard on his chin was white as snow. His eyes twinkled and his dimples were merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. He looked like a candidate for a heart attack.

And he smoked. 

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke encircled his head like a wreath (the Surgeon General would not approve). He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot (PETA would not approve) and his clothes were tarnished with ashes and soot (Mrs. Santa would not approve). With a lumpy sack over his shoulder, he looked like a homeless person.

I asked Santa Claus if the public’s fear of crime had changed how he did his job.

“The increased use of car and home burglar alarms makes my journey tougher, I must say,” Santa said. “As you know, my miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer make such a clatter, they set off every car alarm on the block.”

Santa also said that home burglar alarms has made his surreptitious entry, via the fireplace, most difficult. When he slides down the chimney, he sets off alarms, which wakes the household and brings the police.

Santa went on to say that the alarms ruin the surprise for the children and he is often detained by the responding police officers, who demand identification and administer alcohol tests.

Fortunately, Santa looks like a right jolly old elf, so the police officers have to laugh, in spite of themselves. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head give the people who thought they were being robbed the knowledge that they had nothing to dread.

“I once had my sleigh and reindeer stolen while I was in a home setting up the toys, and I must admit that I paused to enjoy the milk and cookies that a child left me,” Santa said. “But with some kindly police officer’s help, I was able to recover the sleigh and reindeer rather quickly. You see my lead reindeer has a bright red nose and we were able to spot him from about three blocks away.”

Santa said his brush with crime made him understand why families were installing burglar alarms and why they were more concerned about a strange old fat man in red entering their home in the middle of the night. He told me that he was looking into some kind of security system for his sleigh as well.

I asked him about the burglary that occurred that morning in South Philly and he replied he was well aware of the sad incident.

“I plan to visit the house tonight on my rounds and with a little magic I’ll leave them some special gifts under their tree,” Santa explained. “I also did a little investigative work to find the crooks, as I have powers the police lack."

Santa said he discovered who the crooks were and he tipped the police off. He also plans to leave the crooks lumps of coal in their stockings, which will be hung with care in the local jail.

“Don’t they know I’m watching?” Santa asked. ”I know when they have been naughty or good. My surveillance techniques are finer than the FBI’s.”

“This should be a joyful time of year as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ,” Santa said. “This should be a time of love, charity and good cheer.”

The interview concluded, he sprang to his sleigh and to his team gave a whistle and away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

(With apologies to Clement C. Moore and my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all)

Christmas Carols Still Defy Secularism

Back in 2005 I wrote a piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer about Christmas carols. 

I love Christmas carols and I noted in the piece that the most popular Christmas songs were written and performed by the best composers, singers and musicians in the business.

"The songs are also perhaps the last public medium for a politically incorrect true Christmas celebration,' I wrote in the piece. "I'm referring to the unabashed artistic celebration of the birth and life and Jesus Christ."

You can read the piece below:  

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

Senator Rubio Says America Needs To Retaliate For Cyberattack

Caitlin McFall at FoxNews.com offers a piece on U.S. Senator Rubio calls for retaliation for massive security breech. 

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio took to twitter to Friday to encourage U.S. retaliation against foreign hackers responsible for the massive cyber security breach at top federal agencies.

He said the U.S. should do more than just enforce sanctions. 

"The methods used to carry out the cyberhack are consistent with Russian cyber operations," Rubio, acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a tweet. "But it’s crucial we have complete certainty about who is behind this. We can’t afford to be wrong on attribution, because America must retaliate, and not just with sanctions." 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Rubio says America needs to retaliate for cyberattack | Fox News 

Nuclear Weapons Agency Breached Amid Massive Cyber Onslaught

Politico offers a piece on the reported massive hack of U.S. computer systems.

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.

They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.

The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.

The officials said that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been helping to manage the federal response to the broad hacking campaign, indicated to FERC this week that CISA was overwhelmed and might not be able to allocate the necessary resources to respond. DOE will therefore be allocating extra resources to FERC to help investigate the hack, even though FERC is a semi-autonomous agency, the officials said.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught - POLITICO