First immigrants OK'd for deportation deferral program

First immigrants OK'd for deportation deferral program

First approvals of deportation deferral program come just two months before presidential election in which Hispanic vote almost certain to prove pivotal

(AP) WASHINGTON — Less than two months before a presidential election in which both parties are fighting for the key Hispanic vote, the Obama administration has approved the first wave of applications from young illegal immigrants hoping to avoid deportation and get a work permit.

The Homeland Security Department is notifying a small group of people this week that they have been approved to stay in the country for two years as part of President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The first approvals come just three weeks after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services started accepting applications for the program Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano first announced June 15.

In an internal document obtained by The Associated Press, the government had estimated previously that it could take months for each application to be reviewed and approved. So far, about 72,000 people have applied to avoid deportation.

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Romney's Tax returns were 'Stolen'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Assuming it's not a hoax, the purported theft of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's tax returns has all the trappings of a high-tech whodunit: a politically themed burglary, a $1 million demand in hard-to-trace Internet currency, password-protected data and a threat to reveal everything in three more weeks. But can it be believed?

The Secret Service and FBI were investigating the case Thursday after someone claimed to have burglarized a PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting office in Franklin, Tenn., and stolen two decades' worth of Romney's tax returns.

The claimed theft, made in an anonymous letter sent to the accounting firm and political offices in Tennessee, has surfaced a critical moment during the 2012 presidential campaign amid the Republican and Democratic conventions. The ransom target in the case — Romney's tax returns — was carefully selected: Romney, worth an estimated $250 million, has steadfastly declined to make public more than one year's tax returns so far, and Democrats have sought to portray him as so wealthy he is out of touch with middle class voters.

Authorities are studying computer thumb drives that were delivered with an unusual demand: a $1 million payment in "Bitcoin" Internet currency. The letter said the tax returns delivered on the thumb drives were encrypted, and more copies would be sent to "all major news media outlets." It promised to reveal the password to unlock the tax returns on Sept. 28 if payment is not made.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has said there was no evidence that anything was stolen.

The alleged culprit suggested an insider helped in the burglary and theft from the firm's network file servers, knowingly or unwittingly: "We are sure that once you figure out where the security breach was, some people will probably get fired, but that is not our concern," the letter said.

The plot in this mystery has enough holes that it could be an elaborate hoax. But it comes at a critical moment during the 2012 presidential campaign. In its broadest outlines, the case might be compared to Watergate, the 1972 political break-in that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. But unlike
Watergate, which started with the arrest of bungling burglars traced to Republicans, the Tennessee case is a baffling mystery so far, without any clear suspects. There is no evidence Democrats were involved.

"I looked at the letter and thought, 'Who on earth thinks we're gullible enough to fall for this?'" said Peter Burr, chairman of the Williamson County Democratic Party, which received one of the thumb drives and a copy of the extortion letter last week. He kept the letter and data device, growing curious about them as days passed. He rightly feared the thumb drive might be infected with a computer virus.

"I had reached the point of seriously considering putting it in an old computer we have here in the office where we weren't worried if the hard drive got trashed or not," Burr said. "But by then we had received recommendations from our attorneys and word from the Secret Service. So we didn't look at it."

It was unclear even among experts whether the purported theft might be a hoax. The alleged culprit so far has provided no evidence that Romney's tax returns actually were stolen, such as a scan of a partial page from one of the documents. But for seasoned and committed hackers such a theft was described as entirely plausible, especially for someone who could gain physical access to a company's keyboards.

"So far, there's just zero proof. It's like every bad Hollywood plot, which makes me think this is fishy," said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer for BeyondTrust Software Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif. "But any
competent hacker, any good penetration-tester, if they wanted to get Mitt Romney's tax returns, it wouldn't be that hard to do. These breaches are absolutely possible. If you can sit at the computer it would take two minutes to bypass the log-in information."

"The only time you're going to hold something over someone's head is if they're trying to keep stuff secret," Maiffret said.

A former FBI cyber-crime expert, Michael J. Gibbons, said the unusual ransom demand sounded similar to popular email fraud scams.

"This sounds more like a Nigerian letter scam than an organized hacking attempt," said Gibbons, former chief of FBI computer crimes investigations and now a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal in Washington. "It doesn't pass the smell test."

There was no sign a thumb drive had been delivered to The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for the New York Times, Eileen Murphy, said the newspaper had not received one, either. The Wall Street Journal declined to comment.

Politicians previously have found themselves targets in burglaries, thefts and hacking. Candidates and political parties have reported dozens of break-ins across the U.S. In 2007, for example, Barack Obama's Iowa field office reported a burglary that netted two laptop computers and campaign literature. The next year, a University of Tennessee student was arrested for hacking into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal email account. He was later convicted of obstruction of justice and unauthorized access to a computer. He served an 11-month prison sentence.


"It's definitely harder than normal to uncover someone's financial identity," Maiffret said. "But our government, we find a lot of bad guys in the world in cyber-crime and terrorism cases by following the money trails."

Gibbons agreed: "It's an ineffective cloak of anonymity," he said.

Even if the latest case were a hoax, hackers have been alerted to intense public interest in Romney's personal finances.

"You've got every hacker in the world thinking, 'Wouldn't that be awesome to do?'" Maiffret said. "I have a feeling this is going to be a hoax, but you're going to have copycats who are going to try to do this."
While the extortionist's demand for $1 million appears to preclude political motivations, a prosecutor in the original Watergate burglary said motives aren't always apparent.

"In the Watergate case, it wasn't clear at the outset what the motivation was," said Earl J. Silbert, a former U.S attorney in the case. "Even today there are differences of opinion over what was behind it."
___
Associated Press writers Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn., and Ted Bridis in Washington contributed to this report.

Why Does The Department Of Homeland Security Need 450 MILLION Hollow Point Bullets?

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AUTHOR: THE AMERICAN DREAM

Somebody out there has decided that the Department of Homeland Security needs a whole lot of ammunition. Recently it was announced that ATK was awarded a contract to provide up to 450 MILLION hollow point bullets to the Department of Homeland Security over the next five years. Is it just me, or does that sound incredibly excessive? What in the world is the DHS going to do with 450 million rounds? What possible event would ever require that much ammunition? If the United States was ever invaded, it would be the job of the U.S. military to defend the country, so that can’t be it. So what are all of those bullets for? Who does the Department of Homeland Security plan to be shooting at? According to the U.S. Census, there are only about 311 million people living in the entire country. So why does the Department of Homeland Security need 450 million rounds of ammunition? Either this is an incredible waste or there is something that the Department of Homeland Security is not telling us.

I could understand if the U.S. military was ordering ammunition in this quantity. When you fight wars you can go through ammunition very rapidly.

But the Department of Homeland Security is only supposed to be shooting at people very rarely.

It simply does not make sense that they would need so much ammunition.

The following is an excerpt from the official press release about this deal between ATK and the Department of Homeland Security….

ATK announced that it is being awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) agreement from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS, ICE) for .40 caliber ammunition. This contract features a base of 12 months, includes four option years, and will have a maximum volume of 450 million rounds.

ATK was the incumbent and won the contract with its HST bullet, which has proven itself in the field. The special hollow point effectively passes through a variety of barriers and holds its jacket in the toughest conditions. HST is engineered for 100-percent weight retention, limits collateral damage, and avoids over-penetration.

“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS, ICE,” said Ron Johnson, President of ATK’s Security and Sporting group.

But this is not the only kind of ammo that the DHS is placing an order for.

Business Insider is also reporting that the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to buy 175 million rifle ammunition rounds….

We’ve also learned that the Department has an open bid for a stockpile of rifle ammo. Listed on the federal business opportunities network, they’re looking for up to 175 million rounds of .233 caliber ammo to be exact. The 223 is almost exactly the same round used by NATO forces, the 5.56 x 45mm.

This all comes at a time when gun sales are absolutely going through the roof in the United States.

Gun manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Co. recently announced that it would be suspending new orders until May because it received orders for more than one million guns during the months of January and February.

The following announcement about this suspension of sales comes from their official website….

The Company’s Retailer Programs that were offered from January 1, 2012 through February 29, 2012 were very successful and generated significant orders from retailers to independent wholesale distributors for Ruger firearms.
Year-to-date, the independent wholesale distributors placed orders with the Company for more than one million Ruger firearms.
Despite the Company’s continuing successful efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders. Consequently, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
The Company expects to resume the normal acceptance of orders by the end of May 2012.
Since Barack Obama first took office, gun sales in America have risen to extraordinary levels.

Overall, more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States during 2011.

And gun sales have continued to rise at a brisk pace in 2012. The following was recently posted on Yahoo News….

The NSSF said that 920,840 instant criminal background checks were made in January alone, a gain of 17.3% over the same month in 2011. This now makes it the 20th consecutive month of increases. While using the number of background checks is a good measurement of sales, it doesn’t paint the whole picture as some checks are used for the purchases of multiple firearms. Also, some private transfers and sales from gun shows are exempt, making the actual number of guns sold higher.

According to Gallup, 41 percent of all Americans said that they owned a gun in 2010. But when that question was asked again in 2011, that number had risen to 47 percent.

Clearly, a lot of Americans are feeling the need to arm themselves.

Unfortunately, they may find themselves short on ammunition for those guns considering how much ammo the government is buying up.

So what is causing everyone to buy so many guns?

Well, without a doubt we are likely to see a rise in crime as the U.S. economy continues to crumble. People want to be able to protect themselves and their families when everything falls apart. In fact, we are already starting to see some really violent home invasions in many parts of the nation. Many in the prepper movement are deeply concerned about the direction this country is headed and they want to be prepared for whatever happens.

Of course the rising gang problem in America is a major concern too. According to the FBI there are now 1.4 million gang members living in the United States, and that number has increased by 40 percent since 2009. Many urban communities have essentially been taken over by these gangs, and many of these gangs are definitely not shy about using violence. Average Americans that live in these communities want to be able to have a fighting chance against these gangs.

But that doesn’t explain why the DHS needs so much ammunition. Yes, our world is becoming increasingly unstable, but under what conditions does the DHS ever anticipate firing off 450 million rounds?

Something does not add up. If anyone has a possible explanation for why the DHS would need

San Jose meth bust: 750 lbs

A Palo Alto police investigation into stolen iPads has led to one of the largest methamphetamine busts in the country's history, federal investigators said Saturday.

Police and federal agents seized 750 pounds of methamphetamine, with an estimated street value of $34 million, from a San Jose apartment Thursday after Palo Alto investigators spotted the drugs while following up on stolen iPads, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The bust "is one of the largest we are aware of," DEA Special Agent Casey Rettig said.

Investigators found "boxes and boxes and boxes containing bags and bags and bags of methamphetamine" inside the apartment, Rettig said.

The 750 pounds, or 340 kilograms, of methamphetamine confiscated in San Jose is equal to about 16 percent of all methamphetamine seized across the country last year, according to figures on the U.S. Department of Justice website.

Three people were arrested on state drug violations after the raid on an apartment in the 4400 block of Woods Drive, authorities said. They have not released their identities. Rettig described the investigation as "very fluid" and said "there is definitely the potential for more arrests."

The home is part of the Woods, a subdivision in south San Jose that its website highlights as a "park-like setting of mature trees, formal landscaped gardens, greenbelts and tranquil ponds maintained to award-winning standards."

Palo Alto detectives pursuing the electronics theft conducted a preliminary search of the apartment and saw "a large quantity of methamphetamine," according to the DEA. They then called in help from San Jose police and the Santa Clara County district attorney, who called the DEA.

Investigators believe the home was being used both as a residence and as a laboratory where powdered methamphetamine was converted into a crystal form, also referred to as "ice." Such methamphetamine has an appearance often described as that of broken glass or shattered ice and is ingested by smoking, federal officials said.

Rettig said it was too early in the investigation to link the lab to known drug cartels or trafficking networks, but she indicated that the trend in large methamphetamine busts in Central and Northern California involves ice conversion labs for drugs primarily smuggled in from Mexico.

Last month, the Mexican army seized 15 tons of pure methamphetamine with an estimated U.S. street value of $4 billion. The sheer size of the haul from that raid in western Mexico "could potentially put a huge dent in the supply chain in the U.S," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said at the time.

Investigators in the San Jose raid also found stolen items that had initially led Palo Alto police there, Rettig said, including iPads.

Chronicle news services and San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker contributed to this report.

John Coté is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.