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Category: Security Intelligence

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Keynote Address on Counterterrorism and International Cooperation

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Dr. [Robin] Niblett, for that kind introduction; for your leadership here at the Royal Institute of International Affairs; and for your lifetime of dedicated work in the service of international cooperation and global security.  I also want to thank Prime Minister [David] Cameron and the members of Her Majesty’s government for their hospitality during my visit to the United Kingdom.  And I’d like to thank this group of distinguished colleagues, inspiring leaders and devoted public servants for participating in this important conversation.  It’s a privilege to join you here today as we honor the unique bond between our nations; as we reaffirm the cherished values and ideals that we share; and as we rededicate ourselves to building the stronger, safer, and more united world for which we have fought together in the past, and toward which we continue to strive today.

    The United Kingdom and the United States have long been close partners and staunch allies and the connection between us – which Winston Churchill referred to as our “special relationship” – is one with deep roots and a rich history.  Almost all of America’s founders proudly considered themselves Englishmen and many were hesitant to shed that honorable title, even after the start of the American Revolution.  And the revolution itself – though it pitted us against one another in armed conflict – was inspired by the ideals of the British Enlightenment: responsive government, robust rights and liberties, and the fundamental equality of all people.      

    Those ideals have been a source of mutual understanding and shared strength ever since – and while they have been threatened by injustice within our nations and hostility from beyond our shores, they have continued not only to endure, but to expand.  Through the courageous struggles of prominent leaders and humble citizens; of freed slaves and former colonial subjects; of suffragists, ethnic minorities, religious dissenters and gay and lesbian advocates – we have extended the rights of liberty, equality and justice.  Through the tremendous courage and sacrifice of our countrymen –in two World Wars, in battlefields of Korea and today in the skies over Syria and Iraq– we have defended our beliefs against tyranny and oppression.  And together, we have come to the aid of others inspired by the principles that we share.

    Today, the values that have guided and defined us for centuries are facing a persistent threat: the rise of global terrorism and extremism – a scourge that has inflicted its pain on both of our nations in the recent past.  Ten years ago, this great city endured devastating attacks on its public transportation system, and you suffered another attack in the Underground only this week.  In the United States, as you know, we have also suffered terrorist attacks and we are currently investigating last week’s tragic shootings in California as an act of terror.  And as recent events in Paris, Beirut, and Mali remind us, we are far from alone in being targeted by these agents of violence.  These attacks are carried out with a single, repugnant purpose: to harm, frighten and intimidate anyone who believes in open and tolerant societies; in free and democratic governments; and in the right of every human being to live in peace, security and freedom.  As two nations who serve as beacons of those ideals to people around the world, we have a special responsibility to take on this terrorist threat, and to prevent it from causing the destruction it is so desperate to inflict.

    As Attorney General of the United States, my highest priorities are the security of our country and the safety of the American people.  At the Department of Justice, we are working tirelessly to uncover and disrupt plots that take aim not only at the United States, but at nations around the world.  We are acting aggressively to defuse threats as they emerge.  And we are vigorously investigating and prosecuting individuals who seek to harm innocent people.  To stop plots before they can be brought to fruition, we are going after individuals engaged in preparatory activities like fundraising, recruitment, planning and training.  Our approach has yielded important results: since 2013, we have charged more than 70 individuals for conduct related to foreign terrorist fighter interests and homegrown violent extremism and we continue to take action designed to monitor and thwart potential extremist activity. 

    But no nation can fight terrorism alone.  As our world continues to grow more interconnected and interdependent, cooperation and joint action are more essential than ever to combating cross-border threats like terrorism, cybercrime, corruption and human trafficking.  And while modern technology has helped to widen the circle of opportunity for so many citizens around the globe, it has also provided new channels that criminals can exploit for their own ends.  Online, violent ideologies can rapidly proliferate and spread and threats can leap borders and oceans in an instant.  No nation can exist in a bubble of isolation; no country can imagine themselves immune from world events; and the security of each state increasingly depends on the security of all states.  The words of four centuries past ring ever true today, “no man is an island entire of itself.”  In this environment, our strategic understanding and our common humanity demand that we supplement nationwide vigilance with international cooperation.

    That is why the United States is working with organizations like INTERPOL and EUROPOL to share information on foreign fighters.  It’s why we have provided resources, including FBI agents, to support INTERPOL’s Fusion Cell, which investigates the training, financing, methods and motives of terrorist groups around the world.  And it is why we have crafted information-sharing agreements with more than 45 international partners to identify and track suspected terrorists – a partnership that has now provided INTERPOL with approximately 4,000 profiles on foreign terrorist fighters.  From efforts to degrade terrorist capabilities, to building cooperative networks that help to preserve and share information and evidence after an attack, we are demonstrating our deep commitment to collaboration worldwide. 

    Let me give one example of how critical it is that we work together.  Terrorists, like other criminals, count on the difficulties that law enforcement agencies have in sharing information across borders – difficulties that are magnified now that electronic information may be stored in many different countries and may quickly disappear.  But starting some years ago, criminal justice experts from the U.S., the UK, France and the other G7 countries created the 24/7 cyber network – a rapid reaction system that now links approximately 70 countries.  Thanks to that system, after the recent horrific attacks in Paris, French investigators were able to work immediately with the U.S. Department of Justice and with U.S. Internet Service Providers, to preserve data from social media accounts and webpages identified as connected to the attacks, and to seek emergency disclosures to protect lives.  It is this kind of innovative thinking about international information sharing that we need to increase.

    Of course, it is also important to emphasize that our efforts to fight terrorism must always be compatible with safeguarding privacy and civil liberties – exactly as the 24/7 cyber system is designed to be.  Often, in conversations like this one, there is an implicit assumption that our safety must be balanced against our rights and our values; that there is a necessary trade-off between the hopeful optimism of our ideals and the cold reality of our national security.  But the view that we must abdicate our values to maintain our security presents a false choice.  Rather, our security exists to protect our values, because they are the wellspring of all that we are.  Progress within our nations has always been driven by our desire to live up to our ideals – of inclusiveness and opportunity, of equal rights and equal justice – and if we curb those rights in a misguided bid for short-term security, we betray not only our ancestors; not only ourselves; and not only our children – but all those for whom the United States and the United Kingdom represent the possibility of a better, freer future.

    In this regard, I am proud to say that the Obama Administration, with the support of Congress, has made the protection of civil liberties and privacy a priority in the fight against terrorism.  The record is a remarkable one: President Obama has created unprecedented transparency regarding our guidelines for collection and use of signals intelligence, including signals intelligence collected in bulk.  The President nominated and the senate has confirmed, an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, as envisioned by Congress.  And just last week, independent public advocates were appointed to advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as called for by the USA Freedom Act.  

    Moreover, in all of these efforts, as President Obama has made clear, our goal is to extend privacy protections not only to U.S. citizens, but to foreign nationals as well.  That is why, after years of negotiation, I am very happy to say that we were able to initial in September the U.S./EU “Umbrella” Data Privacy and Protection Agreement regarding law enforcement information.  And it is why – in a truly unprecedented step – the Administration has supported legislation to extend judicial redress rights to foreign nationals for privacy breaches regarding law enforcement information – legislation that, thanks to strong Congressional support, already has passed our House of Representatives, and is now pending in the Senate.  

    These actions are not only unprecedented, but reflective of the United States’ deep commitment to the principles they protect, as well as the importance of our relationship with our European partners in this struggle.  That is why it is particularly disappointing that the European Court of Justice – in a case based on inaccurate and outdated media reports – recently struck down the Safe Harbor Agreement in the Schrems decision.  And it is highly concerning to us that data privacy legislation advancing in the European Parliament might further restrict transatlantic information sharing – a step that not only ignores the critical need for that information sharing to fight terrorism and transnational crime, but also overlooks the enormous steps forward that the Obama Administration and Congress have taken to protect privacy.  It is important that all of us – on both sides of the Atlantic – work to set the record straight regarding our commitment to protect not only the safety of our citizens, but also their civil liberties and privacy.

    But one thing I am confident of in our work on these issues and in the larger fight against terrorism – we will not lose ourselves to fear.  We will respond to this and other threats the way we know best – by reaffirming the very ideals that distinguish us from those who wish us harm: freedom of speech; religious tolerance; the open exchange of ideas; and government that represents the will of its people.  These are the principles of Runnymede and Philadelphia, of the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution – the principles that we have risen to defend time and again and emerged victorious.  For centuries, these ideals have inspired countless men and women around the world to seek the better life that is the promise of humanity and to demand that the elemental dignity of all mankind be recognized and respected.  And we must keep their promise alive.  

    There is no doubt that we come together at a time of uncertainty, facing dangerous threats and determined adversaries.  But in this moment of global challenge, we remain dedicated to the task that remains before us and to the work that so many have given their last full measure of devotion to fulfill.  Our nations may have been bloodied, but we will remain unbowed – in defense of our citizens, in solidarity with our allies and in allegiance to the values that make us who we are. 

    The road ahead will not always be easy.  We will encounter more times of uncertainty and setbacks.  But as we move forward in the work that will secure our homelands and prove our principles once more, we are fortified with the strength of our time-tested traditions, by the partnership of our longstanding allies and by the legacies of the brave men and women who fought to make our nations everything they are today.  I am confident about the road ahead.  I know that our promise will endure.  And if we can lean on our faith in our enduring values – and hold fast to our unshakeable belief in the cause of justice and the rule of law – then I have no doubt that out of a long and difficult night of challenge, a brighter day will come.

    Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Second Chance Act – Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program National Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Karol [Mason], for that kind introduction and for your outstanding leadership as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.  I also want to thank Valerie Jarrett for her tireless work on so many important issues relating to criminal justice reform.  It’s a pleasure to be here today and it’s a privilege to join such a distinguished group of inspiring leaders, passionate advocates and eminent experts for this important convening about how we can continue working together to reduce recidivism, improve reentry outcomes and help every American exiting prison and jail lead a meaningful and productive life.

    This conversation is taking place at a particularly significant time.  Over the last few years, we have gained a deeper understanding of how a variety of factors can undermine basic equality and distort the arc of justice.  As a result, Americans from a range of backgrounds and beliefs have come to agree that our criminal justice system can and must be made more efficient, more effective and more fair.  And thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like you, we have arrived at a critical moment of consensus around the urgency of ensuring that each component of our justice system – from bail to fines and fees; from policing to indigent defense; and from sentencing guidelines to incarceration – is more closely aligned with our fundamental belief in opportunity and justice for all.

    A vital part of that task is examining what happens to our fellow Americans when they exit the justice system.  With our criminal justice system impacting one in four Americans in some way, the sheer human capital represented by that number is too important to our future to be written off and thrown away.   Their families cannot afford to lose their influence.  Their communities cannot afford to lose their contributions.  And we cannot afford to lose their potential.  But what happens when our fellow Americans finish paying their debt to society and return home, pockets empty?  Do they have opportunities to further their education?  Can they find jobs that allow them to grow and succeed?  Can they access mentoring programs and counseling services?  Do they have what they need to stay on the right path?  Do they have, in fact, a second chance?  These are crucial questions with profound implications, not only for the individuals returning to society, but for every American in every community.  If we let the cycle of incarceration and recidivism continue, too many Americans will be denied the chance to fulfill their potential and contribute their skills and talents to their communities.  If we allow those who have done their time to be further punished upon release by collateral consequences brought on by prejudice and neglect, too many of our neighborhoods will continue to struggle under the burden of division and mistrust.  And if we don’t prepare incarcerated individuals to re-enter society, public safety is harmed; taxpayer dollars are wasted; and we as a country will fall short of our promise. 

    That’s why the work you do is so important.  Whether you conduct job training for individuals looking for their next step, or counsel those grappling with addiction or mental illness, you make it clear to reentering Americans that they are not alone.  You walk alongside them as they navigate the difficult path forward.  And you give them the tools and help them hone the skills they need to make the most of their second chance.  Your work is having a broader impact, too – because of your successes, a growing number of states and municipalities throughout the U.S. are implementing evidence-based programs to help reduce recidivism; improve the prospects of the formerly incarcerated; and create stronger, safer, and more prosperous communities for all. 

    The Department of Justice is committed to doing our part to advance that mission.  Since Congress passed the Second Chance Act in 2007, our Office of Justice Programs has made nearly 750 Second Chance Act grants totaling more than $400 million – including $53 million in FY 2015 to 45 jurisdictions.  With the help of these funds, our grantees have offered critical assistance to populations at moderate and high risk of recidivism.  They have introduced comprehensive reentry programs for justice-involved youth; helped people with diagnosed mental illnesses find stable housing and avoid rearrest; offered college credit to incarcerated individuals; and established a variety of metrics for tracking progress so that we know what works.  These are just a few examples of the initiatives that you and your partners have launched in 49 states with SCA funding and we at the Justice Department could not be more proud to support your work.

    In addition to our partnerships with you, we are working with a number of cabinet-level agencies through the Federal Interagency Reentry Council.  This unique body, which I am proud to chair, is designed to reduce federal barriers to reentry and promote innovative approaches to reintegration.  For instance, under the council’s auspices, we’ve launched a pilot program with the Department of Education that makes some inmates eligible for federal Pell grants, opening doors through postsecondary education or training.  We’ve joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development to explore ways to address homelessness among the justice-involved publication.  And in the coming weeks, the Departments of Justice and Labor will establish a National Clean Slate Clearinghouse to provide local jurisdictions technical assistance with record-cleaning and expungement – an appropriate follow-up to President Obama’s recent announcement that federal employers would “ban the box” and no longer ask applicants about their criminal histories at the initial hiring stage. 

    The scope and pace of these efforts is a reminder of the real and remarkable progress that the United States has made in helping incarcerated citizens succeed after prison.  But though we have made an encouraging start, as you know, our work is far from finished.  At this critical juncture – this moment of rare bipartisan agreement – it is more important than ever that we harness this momentum and continue to push forward, so that every American returning from prison can find dignified work and adequate shelter; so that they can receive fair treatment and full opportunity; so that they return to a society that values them as fellow citizens; so that they can, in fact, truly return home.

    I have no illusions that the road ahead will be easy.  But with the help of extraordinary partners like all of you here today, I am not only hopeful, but confident, about where our nation is headed.  After all, you were calling for change long before criminal justice reform led the news broadcasts and earned headlines.  Now that change is within sight, I know that your conviction has only deepened, your resolve has only strengthened, and that our fight for progress will continue to bear fruit.  Thank you once again for all that you’ve done.  Thank you for your faith in our mission and our work.  I look forward to all that we will achieve together in the days and months to come. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin Delivers Remarks at Practising Law Institute’s Coping with U.S. Export Controls and Sanctions 2015 Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you for that introduction, and for the opportunity to be a part of this important discussion. 

    As you all know, foreign governments and other non-state adversaries of the United States are engaged in an aggressive campaign to evade U.S. sanctions regimes and acquire sensitive U.S. technology.  In so doing, they threaten our economy, our prosperity and, most importantly, our national security.  Disrupting these national security threats is among the highest priorities of the Department of Justice, and the National Security Division. 

    But the responsibility of protecting our nation from these threats is a shared one.  Your clients – the companies you represent – and thus, you, have a critical role to play. 

    Because our companies have our nation’s crown jewels in their possession.  They house information targeted by thieves ranging from foreign powers bent on economic and military superiority, to individual criminals who know the market demand for this information, to terrorists who wish to create weapons of mass destruction. 

    Of course, companies have a responsibility to comply with the export control and sanctions regime.  We must also recognize that our companies are not immune from becoming unwitting victims of thieves and spies.  We live in an age where the threats we face are not limited to unlawful shipments and deliveries of goods.  Threats are also posed by insiders and through cyberspace.  Therefore, to protect what we value, our national assets, companies must learn how to comply with the law and how to protect themselves. 

    That is why it is good to see such a strong turnout.  Lawyers are on the front line helping clients adapt to an ever evolving export control regime.  Lawyers shape strategy – hardening collective defenses and counseling companies on best practices. 

    For example, sitting here today, you know to help your clients comply with export controls and sanctions.   Regimes designed to keep export controlled data and trade secrets out of the hands of rogue nations or terrorists.

    But have you had the chance to counsel those same clients when a cyber-hacker exfiltrated that information?  If you have not, unfortunately, it may only be a matter of time.  Cases involving the theft of export-controlled information via hacking are no longer uncommon. 

    Recently, we’ve brought cases where hackers targeted cleared U.S. defense contractors and stole massive amounts of sensitive data related to military technology, including export-controlled software.  These cases are not the first of their kind, and they will almost certainly not be the last.

    You have the power to help your clients protect themselves.  In a modern, interconnected world, there is quickly emerging a blending of practice areas.  Trade controls blends with data privacy, and export controls and sanctions trigger questions not only of compliance but of cybersecurity. 

    It is a fascinating time to be a practicing lawyer in this area, but one that brings with it grave responsibility. 

    Today, we’ll talk about a broad range of issues that go into being a modern export control practitioner. 

    National Security Division

    But first, I can explain a bit about the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. 

    The National Security Division was created in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, in part in response to a specific recommendation from the WMD Commission.

    The Commission identified intelligence failures that contributed to the attacks.  It highlighted the danger of the so-called wall between foreign intelligence and law enforcement.  We needed to be able to connect the dots.  We needed to change.

    So in 2006, Congress created the National Security Division, creating the first new litigating division in the Department in almost half a century.  The National Security Division brings all of the department’s resources to bear.  We bring down the wall, uniting prosecutors and law enforcement officials with intelligence attorneys and the Intelligence Community.

    We are responsible for executing the highest priority of the Department of Justice – to protect this nation from the full range of national security threats we face.  We are proud to have this essential mission. 

    At the top of our priority list is protecting our nation from terrorist threats.  In recent days, you’ve heard everyone from the president to the attorney general and the director of the FBI speaking at length about the steps we are taking to combat that threat each and every day.

    Just yesterday, we arrested Jalil Ibn Ameer Aziz, 19, a U.S. citizen and resident of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on charges of conspiring to provide, and attempting to provide, material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  Aziz is alleged to have served as an intermediary between ISIL supporters.  Passing location information, including maps and a phone number, to assist persons seeking to travel and travel to and wage jihad with ISIL.

    Although it may not seem so at first, fighting terrorism and preventing the illegal export of U.S. technology are interrelated goals.  Take the case of Feras Diri.  Diri is indicted in the very same district as Aziz.  We allege he was involved in a scheme to illegally export U.S. goods to Syria in violation of U.S. sanctions.  Some of these good were dual-use items.  It doesn’t take much to imagine the consequences of those items falling into the wrong hands once it reaches Syria. 

    One of the most significant national security threats we face, is the protection of our nation’s assets – including export controlled information, as well as other sensitive information that may be targeted by nation states and terrorists.  In so doing, we take an intelligence-driven, threat-based approach.

    We have an entire section devoted to this work – the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, or simply CES.  We changed the name as part of a restructure to reflect the significance of export control and sanctions enforcement.  This year, CES also finalized a new Strategic Plan, setting forth an aggressive, comprehensive approach.  We know from experience that those seeking to do us harm will look for any available vulnerability to exploit.  They use all tools against us; it is our responsibility to do the same.  Our strategy is driven by the intelligence picture we see, which helps us prioritize and focus on the areas of most significant threat.

    Our Priorities and Our Regime

    Two of our highest priority areas involve China and WMDs.  Both are subject to export controls and regulations.

    Our economy profits from exports, and we support the flow of goods across borders.  But we must balance economic gain with the real threat to national security posed by certain technologies falling into the wrong hands. 

    That is why our export control regime is so important.  It is the best way to keep sensitive military and dual-use technologies, or even information that could be used in weapons of mass destruction, from ending up in the hands of terrorists and other adversaries.  They protect our innovation from being turned against us.

    With an ever-growing and evolving set of threats targeting our sensitive technologies and information, we must be vigilant. We must look at how transactions could make us more vulnerable, and do everything in our power to mitigate those vulnerabilities.

    Take China – despite a long-standing U.S. arms embargo, China continues to surge efforts to acquire advanced U.S. military technology.   China seeks U.S. persons with expertise to illegally provide services and know-how related to sensitive, export-controlled U.S. technology for military gain.  As an example, they targeted U.S. experts on jet engines to assist in developing Chinese-made engines.  If successful, our military edge over China is reduced; our country is put at greater risk.  Knowing what China seeks and why is essential to any sound export compliance and training program. 

    Iranian Sanctions

    Likewise, a high priority remains Iran.

    Earlier this year, the United States, Iran, the E.U. and five other nations reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

    The sanctions relief specified in the JCPOA does not go into effect until Implementation Day – which does not occur until after Iran has completed all necessary nuclear steps, as verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    Even after Implementation Day, sanctions relief will not affect most laws and regulations enforced by the Department of Justice. 

    With few exceptions, U.S. or foreign persons involved in the export or re-export of U.S. goods or services to Iran remain subject to prosecution under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, as do U.S. persons involved in Iranian transactions.

    The only sanctions relief relates to:

    • the export, re-export, sale, lease or transfer to Iran of commercial passenger aircraft, parts and services for civil end-uses;
    • the import of Iranian-origin carpets and foodstuffs; and
    • certain transactions involving Iran by foreign entities owned or controlled by a U.S. person.

    Looking beyond the sanctions to other U.S. export regulations, the JCPOA will have no effect on the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR).  Likewise, our commitment to prosecuting cases where defense articles on the U.S. Munitions List (USML), defense services and items subject to the EAR are exported to Iran remains as strong as ever.

    So as a practical matter, what does this mean?  Bottom line, companies and individuals, whether U.S. or foreign, need to remain vigilant when it comes to any possible commercial or financial interactions with Iran.  We will continue to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute U.S. export control and sanctions cases involving Iran under our domestic authorities.  Because anything else is simply unacceptable. 

    The export control and sanctions regime in place exists to protect this nation from the proliferation threat.  From sensitive information and technology that could pose a grave danger in the wrong hands making its way to terrorists.  From our innovation being used to develop weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles. 

    Iran remains a designated state sponsor of terrorism, and we will not take our eye off of countering Iran’s efforts to support international terrorism and other destabilizing activities in the region.

    Corporate Misconduct

    U.S. companies – particularly in large international corporate structures, must understand this reality. 

    The risks – not only compliance-based risks, but security risks – must be front of mind, and we hope that as the lawyers who counsel, advise and represent these companies, you will talk frankly about them.  

    At the Department of Justice, we continue to prioritize corporate misconduct related to export control and sanctions violations.  The deputy attorney general issued guidance and directed changes to the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual to reflect the department’s sharpened focus in this area including on individual corporate defendants.

    To provide you clarity as you advise clients, we will provide guidance to make clear our current practices on voluntary self-disclosure of export and sanctions criminal violations.  We want to be transparent about our process and the factors we consider when assessing voluntary self-disclosures.  That way, the benefits for your clients are clear, and you can provide clear counsel.

    Because when a company voluntarily self-discloses export control and sanctions misconduct, fully cooperates and appropriately remediates, we will grant the company a significantly reduced penalty.  That can include a non-prosecution agreement (NPA), a reduced period of supervised compliance, a reduced fine and forfeiture and no requirement for a monitor. 

    If one or more aggravating factors are present to a substantial degree – like numerous willful shipments of defense articles to a foreign terrorist organization – a more stringent resolution might be necessary.  In all cases, however, the company that voluntary discloses will find itself in a better position one that does not.

    We are also discussing these issues with our regulatory partners to help you understand how the Department of Justice fits in to the broader regime.  The Department of Justice guidance we ultimately issue on VSDs will not supplant or supersede obligations to regulators.  Our ultimate goal is to be more transparent, so that companies will have more certainty about the benefits of self-disclosure are when dealing with prosecutors.  In the end, we think this is good for our national security mission and good for business.

    Voluntary self-disclosure is responsible.  But even if you choose not to pursue the route of voluntary self-disclosure and cooperation, your corporate clients need to remain vigilant or they may suffer serious consequences.

    Time and again, we have shown that willfully facilitating illegal transactions will not go unpunished. 

    Earlier this year, Schlumberger Oilfield Holdings Ltd. (SOHL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Schlumberger Ltd., one of the largest oil and gas services companies in the world, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a penalty of over $232 million for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) by willfully facilitating illegal transactions and engaging in trade with Iran and Sudan.

    What it ultimately came down to, was that one subsidiary failed to adequately train its employees to ensure that all U.S. persons, including non-U.S. citizens who resided in the United States, complied with Schlumberger Ltd.’s sanctions policies and compliance procedures. 

    We will not hesitate to prosecute individuals and entities that facilitate illegal transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions.     

    Vigilance is essential.  Policies and procedures are simply not enough.  They must be fully executed and reinforced.  Simply “checking the box” by implementing an export control and sanctions compliance program without the proper support or follow through will not insulate a company from prosecution.

    Another point to keep in mind is the need to know your markets and your people.  When you’re part of a large corporate family with many segments located overseas, some subject to very different export control laws in foreign countries, you have be careful to ensure that conduct illegal in the U.S. does not become practice here.  If you have doubts, check with your regulator.  Something a foreign national employee does overseas may have been entirely legal there, but once transferred here, is a crime.

    When working with your clients on these and other difficult issues, implore them to be vigilant.  These are complicated areas, and it takes sound advice and a high level of scrutiny to ensure compliance.  

    Insider Threats

    Unfortunately, compliance is only one piece of the puzzle.  Because, in addition to the compliance risks that are common in global operations, your corporate clients – and, in fact, even potentially their outside counsel –also are vulnerable to the threats from insiders and hackers. 

    Insider threats – threats from trusted employees and contractors – is now a significant problem.  And they are threat to national security when they steal sensitive export-controlled technology.

    For instance, Mozaffar Khazaee stole materials from each of three defense contractors who employed him, including materials relating to the F35 Joint Strike Fighter.  He attempted to illegally export a shipping container’s worth of those proprietary, export-controlled materials to Iran in order to gain employment there.  After pleading guilty, he received 97 months in prison. 

    Although that sentence sends a strong message to any insider who would consider violating the trust of his or her employer, deterrence alone is not enough. 

    So what can you do to address this problem?  Report incidents of suspected insider theft as soon as they are detected.  Create detailed internal training and compliance programs designed to neutralize threats before they even occur, and provide evidence of willful or knowing conduct in the event an insider is not deterred. 

    Cyber-Enabled Export Violations

    That helps with threats from within our perimeters.  But unfortunately, we also face them from outside our borders.  That is why another of our export control enforcement priorities is to combat cyber exfiltration of sensitive U.S. technologies, including ITAR-controlled technical data.

    In the digital age, foreign nations and their agents can now steal information, including export-controlled technical data and technology, without setting foot on American soil.  Left unchecked, cyber espionage can erode our strategic advantages across commercial and military spectrums.

    When possible, we will use investigations, arrests and prosecutions, to disrupt efforts to steal from you and your clients.  We will also look to use all other legally available tools to deter, like sanctions, designations, diplomacy and other tactics. 

    But your partnership is critical.  You can harden your defenses, create resilient systems, evaluate your cyber hygiene and cooperate with law enforcement when your defenses simply aren’t enough.

    That is why we at the National Security Division and others throughout the U.S. government, including the FBI, have made cooperation with the private sector a key component of our export control strategy. 

    Outreach

    We work with U.S. companies, across all industry sectors, to ensure that our national security interests are protected.  We have spent time and energy in face-to-face sit downs so that we may better understand the concerns and challenges faced by U.S. companies, share guidance and information, and be there to help with protection, detection, attribution and response.  We can warn our companies that manufacture or sell targeted U.S. parts and technology when certain bad actors are seeking the particular parts and technology they make.

    Corporate outreach helps sensitize industry to the threat and thereby maximizes the prevention of export control and sanctions violations.  We believe that through such efforts we can help stem the flow of those sensitive goods out of the U.S. to malicious end-users that would use them to threaten our national security interests and the safety of our warfighters. 

    It’s likely that many of you here today have clients that we’ve already met with recently to discuss these types of issues.  If you do not, we would certainly welcome the opportunity to do so in the future.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, we recognize that our export control laws and sanctions regimes are complex and have a significant impact on the U.S. economy.  But they are there to protect against the many threats we face.

    And you play a critical role in that effort.  You and your clients can successfully negotiate the current export control and sanctions regimes and help keep America safe.

    Scrutinize closely each and every transaction undertaken with a foreign counterparty, whether a good or a financial transaction.

    Make sure that you understand the relevant compliance and sanctions regimes and how they apply.

    Make a voluntary self-disclosure to the National Security Division when you discover a willful violation of U.S. export control laws.

    Develop robust training and compliance programs.

    Focus not only on internal compliance, but on the threats posed by insiders and through cyberspace.

    Harden your cyber defenses.

    Develop a relationship with law enforcement, so that we may share valuable information with you to help you protect yourself, and be there to help you respond when your defense may simply not be enough.

    Profits may be the lifeblood of our corporations, but cutting corners here in the interest of the bottom line, is potentially catastrophic.  You and your clients risk enforcement actions, financial penalties and prison time.  But perhaps more significantly, doing so can provide a dangerous capability to an adversary who wishes to bring about damage, destruction or death to many.  So understanding and addressing how to comply with these regimes and neutralize these threats is not only the responsible thing to do, but the only thing to do. 

    The National Security Division will continue to approach export controls and sanctions with a broad and varied toolkit.  We will continue to vigorously pursue and prosecute those who violate our nation’s export control laws, but that is not how we define success.  Success is working with you to increase education and compliance and to prevent sensitive controlled technologies from falling into the wrong hands.  We will combat threats posed by insiders and through cyberspace.  And we will coordinate with our colleagues throughout the federal government to use an all tools approach – prosecution, listing, sanctions and other means of disruption – to combat national security threats.

    With the careful calibration of these tools and with an eye toward mitigating vulnerabilities and defending against threats, we can protect the national security while simultaneously fostering economic growth and job creation.

    Thank you for inviting me here this morning, and for your interest in these issues.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at the National Action Network’s Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Reverend [Al] Sharpton, for that kind introduction and for your tireless efforts to shine a light in dark places and to draw attention to our nation’s unfulfilled promises.  For more than 20 years, the National Action Network has been part of the vanguard of this country’s ongoing movement for progressive change through expanded equality and opportunity.  Together, you have spoken out to ensure that our criminal justice system is fair and effective.  You have stood up for every eligible citizen’s right to vote.  And on issues as diverse as job access, corporate responsibility, education, and nonviolence, you have driven important conversations and prompted meaningful action to help create the more perfect Union to which we continue to aspire. 

    I want to thank my colleague, Acting Secretary [John] King of the Department of Education, for his service in that mission.  I also want to thank Jennifer Pinckney for being a part of this gathering and for her extraordinary example of charity and grace – not only in the last few months, but throughout her life.  And I want to acknowledge my predecessor at the Department of Justice – Attorney General Eric Holder, who richly deserves the honor you bestow on him today.  Attorney General Holder is a powerful advocate, a visionary leader and a devoted public servant who feels deeply the “fierce urgency of now” that fueled Dr. King’s extraordinary work.  I am proud to lead an institution that bears his indelible imprint and I am indebted to – and inspired by – his legacy there.  Finally, I want to thank all of you for being here today and for the work that you do every day across the country.  It is a pleasure – and a tremendous honor – to join you here this morning as we come together to celebrate the life and enduring legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – and to rally the next generation of leaders and advocates behind the cause of his life’s work: civil rights, social justice and opportunity for all.

    Every year, our nation pauses on this day to reflect on the immeasurable contributions and extraordinary sacrifices of a transformational leader.  From a remarkably early age, Dr. King was an unwavering champion of liberty and opportunity and a tireless proponent of unity and progress.  He spoke out for those who were silenced.  He stood up for those who were oppressed.  Most importantly, he took action, over and over again, in the face of clear threats and grave violence.  His words and deeds prodded the conscience of a nation that had long failed to deliver on the promises set forth in its founding documents.  And In the midst of what he had called a “long night of racial injustice,” he and countless other brave men, women, and children swept away Jim Crow, tore down barriers to the ballot box and enshrined new protections of freedom and dignity in our codes of law.  The victories of the Civil Rights Movement were extraordinary achievements and it is fitting that we celebrate them today.  But even more than celebrate, it is fitting that we act.  Dr. King knew that complacency and apathy were as dangerous to the mind as a billy club or fire hose to the body.  He knew that progress was not inevitable, but belonged instead to those willing to seize the moment, and that, as he stated so eloquently in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”   

    Dr. King’s words and deeds – and those of the millions who stood with him – are not vestiges of history, but timeless calls to action. 

    That call – that mission – has animated the Department of Justice since the inception of this Administration and it fuels our ongoing work to ensure that everyone in this country can achieve the full blessings of American life.  Our revitalized Civil Rights Division – the conscience of the department, led by the outstanding Vanita Gupta – is committed to ensuring that access to the ballot box is as fair and unencumbered as Dr. King dreamed it would be.  Wherever the franchise is being diminished – whether through historical barriers or newly erected ones – we stand prepared to use every tool at our disposal to protect the sacred American right to vote.  The Civil Rights Division is making significant progress bringing criminal civil rights cases, as well.  Over the course of this Administration, we have filed more criminal civil rights cases and prosecuted and convicted more defendants on hate crimes charges than at any other point in the Justice Department’s history.  And we’re working to protect civil rights within criminal justice, in part by strengthening relationships between law enforcement and the communities we serve and ensuring constitutional policing across the country.  We have launched a variety of new programs and innovative efforts at the local level – including my own six-city listening tour – to promote community policing and to build the relationships of trust that are so vital to effective law enforcement. 

    More broadly, we are working to ensure the fundamental fairness of the criminal justice system.  At the federal level, we are continuing to implement the “Smart on Crime” initiative – a bold reorientation of our prosecutorial approach that Attorney General Holder initiated in 2013.  In its first two years, Smart on Crime has not only been a bipartisan rallying point, but also a resounding success, with federal prosecutors using their resources conscientiously to bring the most serious wrongdoers to justice and with the overall crime rate declining in tandem with the overall incarceration rate for the first time in four decades.  But for fairness to be consistent and to have meaning, we have to look at every stage of the criminal justice process.  That is why we are working to end the school-to-prison pipeline to keep our children on the right path and out of the criminal justice system.  That is why we are investing in diversion and treatment programs that take an evidence-based approach to public health and criminal justice.  And that is why we are making sure that formerly incarcerated individuals have the tools and resources they need to successfully rejoin society and contribute to their communities.  We recently partnered with the Department of Education to extend Pell Grant support to some incarcerated individuals so that they can pursue an education that will not only reduce their likelihood of recidivism, but also throw open doors to opportunity.

    This is vital and in some cases life-changing work, but as you know all too well, we still have a long way to go.  Even today, with the progress we have made, we hear concerns so strikingly similar to the early days of the civil rights movement.  As I travel this great nation of ours I speak to people afraid to turn to law enforcement for help and thus stranded between fear and violence.  I hear from people who see the right to vote – the fundamental way in which we determine our destiny – becoming part of an elusive shell game and held just out of reach.  I hear from those who worry that a country founded on the freedom of all religions may devolve into one diminished by a fear of some religions.  And I hear the question – how far, in fact, have we actually come? 

    Yes, these are difficult times.  But my friends, these issues have always been hard.  We have always had to move forward, with no guarantees of success.  And we have always faced resistance.  That too, is the human condition.  But we have prevailed before and will prevail again.  And it is the challenge of every generation to learn this lesson and follow the path that keeps the dream alive.  

    That is why it is so fitting that on a day dedicated to justice, decency and equal opportunity, we are gathered by an organization called the National Action Network – because progress is never passive.  Progress does not simply arrive.  Instead, in this extraordinary nation created by and for the people, it is the product of a steady drumbeat of marching feet.  It is the result of a sustained campaign through hardship and oppression.  As President Obama said in his final State of the Union address last week, “Progress is not inevitable.  It is the result of choices we make together.”

    At a time when nothing about their success seemed foreordained, the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement chose to keep going.  After each night in jail; after each thud of a billy club; after each cross burning and church bombing, Dr. King and his followers confronted their doubts and fears and chose to march on.  Rosa Parks chose to take her seat on a segregated bus.  John Lewis chose to take that first step onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Time and time again, no matter how tired or bloodied they were, the men and women of the Civil Rights Movement summoned their courage, invoked their faith, and chose to take that next step, no matter what lay ahead.  

    And so, as we come together to celebrate the life of Dr. King, and as we seek to apply his lessons to the challenges we face today, here is the question facing all of us: what will we choose?  When we witness discrimination against others, what will we choose?  When we see the right to vote rolled back, what will we choose?  When we hear voices saying that we should be satisfied with the progress we have already made – that we have achieved enough – what will we choose?  Will we choose to remain silent?  Will we choose to stand aside and quietly acquiesce to the forces of apathy and inertia?  Or will we choose to remember that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”?  Will we choose to keep this country marching towards freedom?  Will we choose to stand up and speak out against the voices of bigotry and prejudice?  Will we choose love over hate?

    I commit to you now that this Department of Justice will always choose to act.  We choose to act to ensure that the promise of America – the equality and opportunity of America – is within the grasp of all Americans.  We choose to act to lift up the essential humanity and equal rights of every American, regardless of what they look like, where they live, whom they love or the God they worship.  We choose to act – on behalf of those who have been left out and left behind. 

    This does not mean that the road ahead will be easy for any of us.  I wish that I could bring tolerance to every heart and humanity to every soul.  But while I cannot guarantee the absence of prejudice – I can guarantee the presence of justice.

    As I stand here in the company of so many determined advocates and foot soldiers of justice, I am optimistic about all that we will achieve, and I am excited about the road ahead that we will travel together.  Thank you for your dedication to this mission.  Thank you for your partnership in this cause.  And thank you for all that you have done, and all that you will continue to do, to make that dream – our dream; Dr. King’s dream – a reality for all. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Testifies Before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, Chairman Shelby, Vice Chairwoman Mikulski and distinguished members of the Subcommittee.  I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today to discuss steps the Department of Justice is taking to reduce gun violence and ensure smart and effective enforcement of our nation’s gun laws.

    As this Subcommittee well knows, our nation faces an epidemic of gun violence that has taken a devastating toll on communities throughout the country.  Each and every year, tens of thousands of Americans are injured or killed by firearms – in armed robberies, domestic disputes, suicides, accidents, shootouts and heinous acts of mass violence.  From law enforcement officers shot down while defending their communities, to children killed in tragic accidents, our friends and family members, neighbors and fellow citizens are being taken from us – day after day after day.

    As the list of tragedies involving firearms has grown, so has the American people’s belief that we must do more to stem the tide of gun violence – and this administration is committed to doing our part.  The executive actions that the President announced two weeks ago, including the measures I recommended to him, are essential components of our effort.  They are important steps that are within the Executive’s power to clarify existing legal provisions, focus enforcement efforts and spur innovation.

    I have complete confidence that the common sense steps announced by the President are lawful.  They are consistent with the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court and the laws passed by Congress.  For example, the Gun Control Act lists the people who are not allowed to have firearms – such as felons, domestic abusers and others.  Congress has also required that background checks be conducted as part of sales made by federally licensed firearms dealers to make sure guns stay out of the wrong hands.  The actions announced by the President, which focus on background checks and keeping guns out of the wrong hands, are fully consistent with the laws passed by Congress.

    Taken together, the new executive actions will bring progress on a number of fronts.  By clarifying what it means to be “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, we raise awareness of and enhance compliance with laws that are already on the books.  By issuing new regulations, we ensure that licensed dealers who ship weapons will report them if they are lost or stolen in transit and that those trying to acquire some of the most dangerous weapons through trusts or corporations undergo background checks.  By enhancing our national system of background checks, we will be better prepared to keep guns out of the wrong hands in the first place.  By increasing access to mental health care treatment with a proposed $500 million investment to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we will not only be helping those in need, but also curbing gun deaths – the majority of which result from suicide.  And by supporting research on gun safety technology, we will be laying the groundwork for a safer future and drawing on our strength as the most technologically advanced nation on Earth.

    The steps that I have outlined – and the actions that President Obama has described – are all well-reasoned measures, well within existing legal authorities, built on work that’s already underway.  They clarify laws that are already on the books – because clear notice will help ensure that those laws are followed.  They direct important resources to our law enforcement agents – because these men and women deserve to have the support they need to do their difficult jobs effectively.  They lay the groundwork for state governments to more easily provide information to our background check system and for helping people with mental illnesses gain access to care – because in addition to helping people get the treatment they need, we must make sure we keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited by law from having them.  And they invest in research and promising technology that will make weapons safer – because problem-solving through innovation has always been one of our country’s greatest strengths.

    I am confident that these actions will help to make our people safer, our communities more secure and our law enforcement more effective.  But I also have no illusions that these measures by themselves will end gun violence in America.  At a time when there is so much work to be done and so much capacity for progress, there are many areas where only Congress can act.  We would welcome the opportunity to work with you to further these goals.  That’s why I am so grateful to have this opportunity to speak with you today about how we can work together to reduce gun violence in this country.  And I look forward to continuing this conversation in the days ahead as we discuss how to keep our promise to protect and defend every American’s right to safety and security and to life and liberty.

    At this time, I’d be glad to answer any questions you may have.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell Delivers Remarks at the 12th Annual State of the Net Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good morning. The Attorney General apologizes for not being able to be here today.  She was at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland – addressing cybercrime issues – and, unfortunately, unable to get back to D.C. in time for this because of the snowstorm.

    Thank you, Tim [Lordan], for that warm welcome, and for your leadership of the Internet Education Foundation (IEF).  I also want to thank the IEF for the invaluable services you have provided since your organization was founded nearly two decades ago – and that you continue to provide today.  Through this conference series, you bring together industry leaders, dedicated experts and devoted public servants to explore how we can harness new technologies to build more empowered communities and a stronger nation.

    As the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, my foremost task in the cyber area is the vigorous, fair and effective enforcement of our cyber laws.  The Justice Department does that by finding ways to protect our networks against evolving threats, by thwarting bad actors online, and by ensuring that both our security and our liberties remain as strong in the digital age as they have been throughout our history. 

    Essentially, we are focused on a question that President Obama posed in his State of the Union address a few weeks ago: How do we make technology work for us, and not against us? 

    In our age of rapid change and constant disruption, that question is relevant to almost every aspect of our lives, including law enforcement and national security.

    There is no doubt that technology has both expanded and complicated our capacity to detect, investigate and prosecute crimes.  Today, by using new technologies, we can analyze some types of evidence with unprecedented speed and accuracy, and coordinate with partners around the world in real time. 

    But as law enforcers have become better equipped, so have the law breakers we’re working to disrupt.  Digital technology has transformed how police and prosecutors do our jobs, but it has also transformed how wrongdoers commit their crimes.  Our bank accounts and personal information now exist online, tempting thieves and fraudsters. 

    The greater anonymity of cyberspace gives cover to drug dealers and arms traffickers.  Dark websites are used to circulate illicit content, like images of child sexual exploitation and stolen credit cards. 

    Communication is frequently by instant message and email, so there are no actual paper trails, but rather virtual ones in data stored on digital devices, hard drives and in the cloud.  And it isn’t just criminals who exploit the Internet for nefarious purposes. 

    The web also hosts groups and individuals who seek to harm our core security interests – from state-sponsored hackers conducting economic espionage; to rogue militants and official cyber warfare units targeting our infrastructure; to terrorist groups plotting attacks, radicalizing recruits and spreading hateful ideologies.

    These emerging threats require nimble, innovative and adaptive responses, and at the Department of Justice, we are committed to doing our part to ensure that law enforcement stays a step ahead of bad actors. 

    The FBI continues to investigate cyber intrusions and national security threats while monitoring individuals, organized groups and state actors who might attempt to steal sensitive data or inflict harm.  We recently created a Cybersecurity Unit within our Criminal Division, staffed with experienced prosecutors fluent in the law, policy and practice of cybercrime prevention. 

    And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has established an Internet Investigations Center (known as IIC) where federal agents, legal counsel and investigators track and counter illegal online firearms trafficking.  The IIC – which was highlighted in the president’s recent recommendations to curb gun violence – has already identified a number of significant traffickers operating over the Internet, and their work has led to prosecutions against individuals and groups using the “dark net” to traffic guns to criminals or attempting to buy firearms illegally online. 

    Of course, the Department of Justice’s work to combat cybercrime is enhanced through our collaboration with law enforcement partners in other agencies, such as the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.  And we are working to enhance cybersecurity and information sharing through our work with the Department of Homeland Security.

    These are important steps to protect our online information and to combat crime here at home – but with an entity as vast and complex as the Internet, we must also reach beyond our own borders to partner with other countries.  And that’s exactly what we’ve done. 

    In the last fiscal year, the FBI’s Cyber Division embedded three permanent Cyber Assistant Legal Attachés in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to help facilitate information-sharing, improve cooperation on investigations and build even stronger relationships with our allies. 

    We recently placed a Criminal Division prosecutor with Eurojust in The Hague and one in Southeast Asia.  These positions will help to facilitate information-sharing, improve cooperation on investigations and build even stronger relationships with our law enforcement partners in other countries.

    We’ve also created a cyber unit in our Office of International Affairs (OIA) dedicated to responding to and executing requests for electronic evidence from foreign authorities – requests that have increased by 1,000 percent over the last decade. 

    To help manage that significant growth, we have been actively hiring additional attorneys and professional staff for OIA’s Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty Modernization Project, and we hope to continue expanding our ability to help our overseas counterparts.  And we are providing critical, real-time assistance to foreign counterparts through the 24/7 Points of Contact Network established by the Group of Seven Nations and by the Budapest Cybercrime Convention – a convention that, I am pleased to note, continues to be joined by countries around the world committed to fighting cybercrime.

    Partnerships like these don’t just cultivate closer connections with our friends and allies – they also get results.  In 2012, we participated in a multinational sweep of child-pornography websites, ultimately dismantling more than 200 websites that sexually exploited children. 

    In November 2014, we joined more than 15 countries under the auspices of the European Cybercrime Centre – or EC3 – to launch Operation Onymous, which shuttered a number of so-called “dark market websites” peddling drugs, weapons, stolen credit card data, fake passports and computer-hacking tools. 

    And this past July, our joint effort with EC3 shut down the Darkode hacking forum – an underground site where hackers convened to buy, sell and trade malicious software, botnets, intrusion tools and stolen personal information.  That operation involved a coalition of 20 nations, led by the U.S. Department of Justice and EC3, and allowed us to charge, arrest or search 70 Darkode members and associates around the world. 

    The Justice Department will continue to work with foreign law enforcement agencies to prevent and prosecute groups and individuals that illegally use the Internet for crime and exploitation.  Of course, as we seek to ensure the safety and integrity of our devices, databases and networks, it is crucial that we work closely not only with other law enforcement officers, but also with the people who create and design these products themselves – the executives, entrepreneurs and engineers who make America’s tech sector the envy of the world. 

    Our collaboration has been instrumental in a range of important victories, including the takedown of the GameOver Zeus Botnet, an operation in which technology and data-security companies played an invaluable role.  We are committed to building on those successes by maintaining strong partnerships with the private sector. 

    That’s why the department has placed a high priority on entities like the FBI’s National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, which enables collaboration across government to respond to computer intrusions and attacks, and the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, which brings together law enforcement, private partners and experts in academia to address the cyber threats we face together. 

    And it’s why the Attorney General and I have been meeting regularly with industry leaders to foster cooperation and discuss urgent issues – including last week at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where the Attorney General joined with industry leaders to endorse five recommendations for enhancing public/private partnerships to fight cybercrime.  We will continue to reach out to representatives of the tech industry, and our door is always open to new ideas for combatting cybercrime and online extremism. 

    One area where cooperation between the government and the private sector is especially important is in addressing the growing problem of the government’s inability to obtain critical information in electronic form even when we have court authorization to do so.  This is the problem known as “going dark.” 

    While investigations used to rely on physical evidence – like handwritten notes, or documents stored in filing cabinets – as you can imagine, in the 21st century that kind of evidence is growing scarce.  Our ability to track and prosecute criminals now often depends on instant messages, emails and other forms of digital information.  In fact, nearly every criminal investigation we undertake at the federal level relies on electronic evidence. 

    But as new ways of using encryption become an increasingly standard feature of personal electronic devices and messaging platforms, companies are losing the ability to respond to lawful processes.  Those materials are increasingly inaccessible to law enforcement officers, even when we have a warrant to examine them.  And we find ourselves facing obstacles which can stop our investigations and prosecutions in their tracks.

    The security of our online information is critically important, and so is the legal process that protects our values and our safety.  These are complementary, not competing priorities.  After all, digital security is a vital tool, but it is not a cure-all – especially when it impedes our ability to protect ourselves and each other in the physical world. 

    The Department of Justice is completely committed to seeking and obtaining judicial authorization for electronic evidence collection in all appropriate circumstances.  But once that authorization is obtained, we need to be able to act on it if we are to keep our communities safe and our country secure. 

    From gang activity to child abductions to national security threats, the ability to access electronic evidence in a timely manner is often essential to successfully conducting lawful investigations and preventing harm to potential victims. 

    As FBI Director [James] Comey recently said, in May, two terrorists attempted to kill a lot of people.  One of the terrorists exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist.  We have no idea what he said because it was encrypted.  That is a big problem.  We have to grapple with it.

    That’s why the Justice Department and organizations like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National District Attorneys Association and the Major Cities Chiefs Association feel strongly that there needs to be a way for law enforcement to retrieve critical information in cases where it’s necessary and authorized.  We are committed to working with innovators, leaders and problem-solvers like you to figure out how we can best meet this public need together.

    Of course, our interest in working together with you extends beyond this particular issue.  The Internet has so fundamentally changed the way we live our lives that there are times when institutions like law enforcement must evolve.  And as we seek to adapt to this new reality in a wide variety of ways, your creativity, your expertise and your leadership can help us ensure that the innovations we enjoy will benefit and protect the American people – and not those who would harm them or their liberties and rights.

    We understand that this is no easy task.  These are novel and difficult challenges.  But what makes us confident about our ability to succeed is that, throughout our history, this country has always found a way to move forward while retaining the values that make us who we are.  We are certain that we will do the same in the digital age.  And together, we will build a brighter, safer and more prosperous future for all.

    Thank you for your ongoing cooperation in that effort, and for your commitment to our shared goals.  I look forward to all that we will accomplish – together – in the weeks and months ahead.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at the American Correctional Association Winter Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon and thank you for that warm welcome.  I want to thank Governor [John Bel] Edwards for that very kind introduction; for his lifelong commitment to law enforcement; and for his thoughtful leadership in promoting evidence-based, proven strategies for strengthening the work that we are here to discuss.  I also want to thank Executive Director [Jim] Gondles for inviting me to address you and for his decades of outstanding work in law enforcement and corrections. Thanks to all of the distinguished experts and passionate advocates who are here with us today.  And I want to take a moment to thank our extraordinary correctional staff and to recognize the outstanding and challenging work that they perform every day.  Your efforts may not often make headlines and they rarely receive the praise they deserve.  But I know, as you do, that your work as law enforcement officers – and you are law enforcement officers in the clearest sense – is profoundly important, deeply necessary and essential to fulfilling the Justice Department’s sacred mission.  You defend the American people and protect our values; you build safer communities and reduce crime and exploitation.  I am proud to serve alongside you in that effort. 

    It’s a pleasure to join you all here in New Orleans as we explore new ways to protect public safety and promote justice throughout the United States.  That effort is an essential part of this country’s founding mission to provide liberty, justice and equality for all – and for more than 140 years, the American Correctional Association (ACA) has been devoted to holding our correctional institutions to those ideals.  By maintaining the highest ethical standards among correctional workers and administrators at all levels, you ensure that incarcerated people are treated fairly, with decency and with respect for their humanity.  By advancing research, you help the public and policymakers understand where our system falls short and how it can be made stronger.  And by promoting rehabilitation and reentry, you stand for the principle that those who have done their time deserve a meaningful second chance at a better life; that all of us are more than the worst thing we have ever done.  As your founders wrote a century and a half ago in the ACA’s Declaration of Principles: “The state has not discharged its whole duty to the criminal when it has punished him, nor even when it has reformed him.  Having raised him up, it has further duty to aid in holding him up.”  You have always been at the forefront of corrections policy in the United States and as a result of your efforts, our society is fairer, safer and stronger today.

    It is essential that we recognize and celebrate the progress made by organizations like the ACA – but we must also leverage that progress to propel us forward.  The criminal justice system as a whole still faces real and important challenges.  A cycle of poverty and incarceration cuts through too many of our communities.  Harsh mandatory sentences continue to strain our prisons and jails with too many individuals who have committed nonviolent, low-level drug crimes, making it difficult to allocate scarce resources effectively.  Funding for rehabilitation is hard to come by, denying too many inmates the programs and skills they need to successfully return home.  And even those who do receive training are released into a society filled with unnecessary roadblocks to getting a job and finding a place to live – a counterproductive system that makes it easier for them to slip back into the patterns that landed them in jail in the first place. 

    Addressing these issues is central to the mission of the ACA.  It is also central to the work of the Justice Department and the Obama Administration.  In 2013, my predecessor, Attorney General Eric Holder, launched the Smart on Crime initiative – a landmark effort to make federal law enforcement more efficient, more effective and more fair.  We shifted our approach away from harsh mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenses, which enabled us to focus on more dangerous defendants and more violent crimes.  We also placed an emphasis on rehabilitation and reentry programs that can reduce recidivism and promote public safety.  And I am pleased to say that, during the time that Smart on Crime has been in effect, we have seen a reduction in crowding, making our prisons safer while allowing for the delivery of reentry and rehabilitative programs that are so critical to changing lives. 

    Improving rehabilitation programs and smoothing reentry isn’t just good for inmates; it’s also good for correctional staff and for our communities as a whole.  More than 600,000 people are released from federal, state and local prisons every year.  These are 600,000 people who are someone’s father, someone’s mother; someone’s brother or sister and someone’s child.  Preparing them to find good housing, to be reliable employees, to contribute to their communities and to abide by the law is a critical component of our responsibilities and it has tremendous implications for the safety of our neighborhoods, the health of our economy and the strength of our nation.  If we can reduce recidivism by helping motivated individuals successfully reenter society, we can reduce crime across the country – and make our neighborhoods better places to live, work and raise our children. 

    At the Department of Justice, we are taking our efforts even further.  In the last fiscal year alone, our Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has disbursed $53 million in Second Chance Act grants to promising state and local reentry efforts, with a particular focus on populations at the greatest risk of recidivism, including justice-involved youth and people with mental illness.  Last year, the Department hired its first-ever Second Chance Fellow, Daryl Atkinson – a formerly incarcerated individual who went on to earn a law degree and who now advises the Justice Department on issues related to reentry.  And through the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, which I have the privilege of chairing, the department is working closely with a number of Cabinet-level agencies to promote innovative approaches to reintegration – from expanding Pell Grant eligibility with the Department of Education; to studying ways to reduce homelessness with the Department of Health and Human Services; to assisting municipalities with record-cleaning and expungement alongside the Department of Labor.

    Of course, we recognize that the work of helping incarcerated individuals succeed outside prison must begin inside prison.  That not only involves ensuring humane and safe conditions for inmates and staff – an area in which our Civil Rights Division has collaborated closely with correctional leaders around the country.  It also requires commitment to a correctional philosophy that promotes rehabilitation from day one.  For decades, the heart of that commitment has been Federal Prison Industries (FPI), which President Franklin Roosevelt established in 1934 to employ thousands of incarcerated people.  Today, FPI remains the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) largest and most successful reentry program, helping men and women find a new sense of purpose and develop concrete skills that they can bring back to their communities.  I am proud of the work that FPI is doing.  My dedication to its continued success is unwavering.  And I am pleased to welcome its new CEO, Gary Simpson – an expert in manufacturing operations with 28 years of experience.  Over the next few years, Gary will spearhead a business transformation plan to expand FPI’s activities – using a business model that results in no costs to the taxpayers – to ensure that more incarcerated individuals can take advantage of this vital program.  I am excited about where his work will take us.

    In addition to reinforcing tried-and-true programs like FPI, the Department of Justice is also forging new pathways to better reentry outcomes.  This administration took a major step when the Bureau of Prisons created the Reentry Services Division, which has expanded mental health resources, supported substance abuse treatment programs and improved work and educational opportunities that prepare inmates for success after release.  BOP also launched a comprehensive assessment of its educational offerings, identifying opportunities for improvement across its correctional institutions.  You will hear more about our innovative approach to prison education and adult literacy in the weeks to come.  But so far, BOP is more effectively serving inmates between the ages of 18 and 21 who require special learning accommodations and it has also inspired a specialized pilot curriculum for inmates who need instruction at the Pre-K through fifth-grade levels.

    Beyond these advances, we are determined to reform areas of longstanding correctional policy that aren’t effective.  For decades, prison systems have sought to better manage their facilities by removing certain inmates from the general population – placing them in “restrictive housing” and solitary confinement.  While there are times when this practice is necessary for the protection of inmates, personnel, or the public, there is little doubt that has sometimes been used without due consideration and without good cause.  We also know that it is possible to reduce the use of restrictive housing while also enhancing staff safety – creating better conditions for inmates and for the brave and hardworking officers charged with their protection.  Since January 2012, the federal Bureau of Prisons – under the outstanding leadership of former Director Charles Samuels – has cut its restrictive housing population by 25 percent while achieving significant reductions in staff assaults at the same time.  This only serves to underscore that we can change our practices without compromising a bedrock principle of corrections: that the safety of our officers and our inmates comes first. 

    Last July, in order to examine our own practices further and identify areas for improvement, President Obama directed me to lead a review of restrictive housing across American prisons. I am pleased to say that we have completed our review and delivered our report to the President.  And the President has directed the department to implement our recommendations.

    In conducting this review, the Department of Justice drew on the extensive experience and collective wisdom of BOP under the leadership of former Director Charles Samuels, advocates and stakeholders who are invested in this issue and, of course, the ACA itself.  We developed a series of guiding principles that reflect our values and our goals.  For example, we believe that inmates should be housed in the least restrictive setting necessary to ensure their own safety, as well as the safety of staff, other inmates and the public.  Correctional systems should always be able to clearly articulate why an inmate is in restrictive housing and those reasons should be supported by objective evidence.  And restrictive housing should always serve a specific purpose – with a “step-down” program in place to ultimately return the inmate involved to less restrictive conditions. As you all know, one of the challenges in trying to improve restrictive housing practices is that it currently serves multiple purposes: it is used to address inmates who violate disciplinary rules; to protect inmates who face threats within the prison system; and to isolate inmates who can’t function safely in the general population.  And so, in order to make lasting reforms and ensure restrictive housing is used in accordance with these principles, we need a multi-pronged strategy.

    To that end, in addition to the guiding principles, the report identifies several specific steps that we must take: We must put reasonable limits on when, why and for how long an inmate can be placed in restrictive housing.  We must enhance our efforts to divert high-risk, high-needs inmates – such as those with serious mental illness, or verified security threats – to alternative forms of housing, where they can receive specialized services in less restrictive conditions.  We must conduct regular, multidisciplinary staff reviews of inmates’ placement in restrictive housing.  We must improve the conditions within restrictive housing to ensure that individuals have more time out of their cells and receive needed programming.  We must focus on reentry and make special efforts to ensure that inmates are not placed in restrictive housing during the final months of their prison terms.  And we must enhance protections for vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women; gay, lesbian and transgender inmates; and especially young people. 

    Among the actions I will direct BOP to take to meet these goals is an across-the-board reduction of maximum penalties for punitive segregation to curb excessive use of restrictive housing and solitary confinement as punishment – including a ban on restrictive housing as discipline for low-level offenses.  I will direct the Bureau to establish new protective custody units so that inmates who need protective custody won’t be unnecessarily placed in solitary confinement.  I will direct wardens to increase out-of-cell time in restrictive housing.  I will direct the Bureau to allocate $24 million in additional mental health services for federal restrictive housing inmates – a request that will be included in the President’s budget for Fiscal Year 2017.  And I am proud to say that, in line with this report’s recommendation, I will direct the Bureau of Prisons to terminate the practice of placing children and juveniles in restrictive housing.  In the interest of our children’s safety; in the interest of their development; and in the interest of ensuring their ability to succeed, we are ending this practice once and for all. 

    I am confident that these policies will help all of us move towards greater transparency, efficiency and effectiveness and they will serve as a valuable roadmap for future reforms in the federal system and in correctional facilities across the country.  I know that the ACA is preparing its own recommendations for reducing our reliance on restrictive housing – many of which are in line with our own guiding principles – and I want to applaud you for your leadership and your commitment to this vital issue.  I look forward to drawing on your wisdom and experience and collaborating with all of you as we move ahead together.

    At the federal level, we’re already addressing one of the main reasons we rely on restrictive housing: the unprecedented growth in the federal prison population over the last three decades.  The swelling number of inmates has maxed out our facilities, jeopardized our rehabilitation efforts and made it harder for correctional officers to safely and effectively do their jobs – which are already among the most difficult in law enforcement.  To address this problem, Congress established the bipartisan Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections – an independent working group that for the past year has studied overcrowding in federal prisons – and this week, I received the task force’s recommendations.  They describe a series of concrete steps that we can take in some of the areas we’ve discussed today.  They call for a reassessment of whom we incarcerate and for how long, so that we can be sure that we’re using our system wisely and effectively.  They advocate for a culture of safety and rehabilitation in our prisons, including through the use of risk-reduction programming.  They augment our reintegration practices by emphasizing supervision and support.  And they bolster transparency and accountability to ensure that these goals are being met.  The task force also requests federal funding to support these reforms and I urge Congress to take appropriate action.  I further call on Congress to pass the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, a bill that was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a strong bipartisan basis, as soon as possible. That bill would represent an important step forward on many of these critical issues – and will help us put federal prisons on a path that is more fair and more sustainable for inmates, correctional officers and taxpayers alike. 

    These are all important steps forward and I am personally committed to expanding on this work in the days and months ahead, while ensuring that we continue to protect our hardworking correctional workers from harm.  I am always mindful of the fact that, in performing your duties, you and your colleagues risk your personal safety – and even your lives – every day.  And while the Bureau of Prisons took some major steps to bolster protections over the past couple of years, we intend to continue exploring new technologies and new strategies to make your difficult jobs as safe as possible.

    It is encouraging that, as a result of the renewed attention these matters are receiving in research, advocacy and media coverage, a growing number of Americans have begun to join our shared call for progress in criminal justice.  Particularly in the last few years, thanks in no small part to the leadership and dedication of the people in this room, that chorus has expanded to encompass people from across the political spectrum and from all walks of life.  At this critical moment of rare bipartisan agreement, it is more important than ever that we harness this momentum and continue to push forward.  With the help of extraordinary partners like you and with the determination and fortitude that you have always shown, I believe that we will make the most of this unique moment of consensus.  I believe that we will give every American their chance to lead lives of meaning and purpose.  And I believe that when we are finished, we will have left our children a society that is safer, more prosperous and more just.

    Thank you for your enduring commitment to this important issue.  Thank you for all that you’ve done and continue to do on behalf of the safety and well-being of the American people.  And thank you for your steadfast partnership in holding this nation to its own timeless principles.  I look forward to all that we will accomplish – together – in the days ahead.  

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Bradenton Man Sentenced To More Than 15 Years For Production And Receipt Of Child Sexual Abuse Material

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    Tampa, Florida – U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven has sentenced Buddy Allen Travis (42, Bradenton) to 15 years and 8 months in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for the production and receipt of child sexual abuse material. Travis pled guilty on October 1, 2024.

    According to court documents, Travis persuaded a 14-year-old minor victim to engage in sexual activity with him using Facebook. Travis engaged in sexual conversations with the minor victim and asked her to produce and send sexually explicit images of herself to him. Travis also sent obscene images of himself to the minor victim.

    This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Courtney Derry.

    This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks at Second International Conference on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Jennifer [Smith of the International Legal Foundation] for your kind words. 

    I want to thank Minister of Justice [German] Garavano, Vice-Minister of Justice [Santiago] Otamendi and Chief Federal Public Defender General Stella Maris Martinez of the Government of the Republic of Argentina, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Legal Foundation, for coordinating this important gathering so that we may, together, explore how to strengthen and improve access to criminal legal aid globally.

    And equally important, I want to thank all of you – the gathered Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Attorneys General, Supreme Court Justices and criminal legal aid providers and experts – for participating in this conference.  All of the leaders in this room – and so many others across the globe – are indispensable partners in our efforts to fulfill the promise of access to criminal legal aid.  Your work is moving us closer to the ideals of equality, opportunity and justice under law.

    The United States participated with enthusiasm at the historic first international convening on criminal legal aid, held in Johannesburg, and it is a privilege to join you in Buenos Aires at the second biannual conference.

    Today, with our Presidential election just concluded, I address you not only as an official of the United States Department of Justice, but also as a representative of American democracy.  Since George Washington first relinquished his office to incoming President John Adams in 1797, a peaceful transition of power has symbolized the stability of the United States government.  On January 20, for the 44th time, a President will transfer his authority and responsibilities to his democratically elected successor.  With that transition may come changes in policies and priorities.  That is normal and in the natural course.  But what will not change – what has not changed for over 200 years, from Administration to Administration – is the promise that all people – regardless of wealth or want, status or stature, color or creed – are entitled to a set of undeniable rights:  equal protection, fundamental fairness and impartial justice.

    This commitment to equal justice is rooted in the founding ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.   It has been enshrined by our Supreme Court in milestone decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down racial segregation in schools, and Gideon v. Wainwright, which guaranteed that a defendant in a criminal case has the right to a lawyer whether or not that person can afford one.  It has been embraced by Presidents of both parties, as exemplified by the creation of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans, by President Richard Nixon and President Bill Clinton’s signing of the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which provides legal aid for victims of domestic violence.  And it is embodied in the renewed debate on the criminal justice system, in which Americans from a range of backgrounds and political beliefs have come to agree on the need to address persistent inequities and inefficiencies in our criminal justice system, from the fairness of our sentencing laws, to the injustice in imposing fines and fees against those unable to pay, to how we reintegrate into civic and economic life those individuals convicted of crimes who have paid their debt to society.

    Our progress towards fulfilling these promises has not been uninterrupted.  At times, we have made great strides, dedicating resources, energy and ideas to the task.  At other times, we have fallen short of our own ideals.  But with each triumph and setback, we have been reminded that justice is as much a journey as it is a destination – as much a process as it is an outcome – and that the fairest criminal justice system gives equal attention to both.

    Addressing this challenge has been a priority of the Department of Justice in the eight years of the Obama Administration.  In 2010, the department launched the Office of Access to Justice – which I oversee and which seeks to improve access to legal aid to everyone in the United States who needs it.  Much of the Office’s work is directed at strengthening criminal defense for the poor by focusing on many of the same values outlined in the 2012 U.N. Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems.

    Among our most significant accomplishments has been to ensure the reality of Gideon’s promise, for the right to counsel is not only a constitutional imperative but vital to the effective functioning – and legitimacy – of the U.S. criminal justice system.  Fulfilling this promise is not easy.  Between 1999 and 2007, the number of public defenders – the front-line lawyers in our country who provide legal aid to indigent criminal defendants – increased by only four percent while their caseload increased by 20 percent.  When managing such huge caseloads, it is difficult and often times impossible, for public defenders to carry out their legal and ethical duties to their clients.  To help alleviate that problem, the Department of Justice has awarded millions of dollars to cities, states and defense advocacy organizations to support their indigent defense work.  These awards expanded the number of cities that participate in the department’s “Smart Defense” program, where cities use data, research and research partnerships to enhance criminal justice systems and programs.  These funds have also been invested in bringing risk assessment to the pre-trial detention stage, so that judges are making informed pre-trial release decisions that improve cost-effectiveness while protecting public safety and defendants’ due process, and to ensure that our public defenders have the skills necessary to be effective pretrial advocates.   And where states have proven unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources to public defender services, the department has filed amicus briefs in our courts arguing that it is a constructive denial of the constitutional right to counsel for a public defender system to be so under-resourced, so understaffed and so underfunded that an indigent defendant has access to counsel in name only. 
     
    The priority on access to criminal legal aid has extended to forging partnerships with American Indian tribes – our nation’s indigenous communities.  As Robert Kennedy rightly noted when he served as Attorney General, it is a tragic irony that the first Americans have endured a long and painful history of broken promises, deferred action and denied rights at the hands of the United States Government.  As one of many steps taken by the Justice Department to right these injustices, we have authored and supported landmark legislation to expand American Indian tribal governments’ criminal jurisdiction and sentencing authority while at the same time enhancing protections for criminal defendants in tribal courts.  To further that effort, the department has worked hard to support tribes through funding and training that improves the trial skills of tribal public defenders as well judges and prosecutors. 

    Of course, advancing access to justice for all also requires that we look critically at the Justice Department’s own role – and its own responsibility – as a central player in the federal criminal justice system.  Three years ago, the department launched the Smart on Crime initiative – a groundbreaking effort designed to reorient the way we approach criminal justice issues by diminishing the use of harsh mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenses; investing in rehabilitation and reentry programs that can reduce the likelihood of recidivism; and supporting vulnerable communities to prevent them from being caught up in the criminal justice system in the first place.  Additionally, we have embarked on an historic clemency initiative, allowing the President to commute sentences for more individuals than the last 11 Presidents combined.  And we have worked hard to get the incentives right in ensuring access to counsel in the federal system, including no longer requiring defendants in plea deals to waive future claims about whether their counsel was effective, and no longer allowing an immigrant convicted of a crime to be found deportable on the basis of alleged facts never established in the criminal case – a process unfair to immigrants who lack counsel and who may have agreed to plead guilty specifically to avoid immigration consequences. 

    Internationally, we have been proud partners with you on promoting equal access to justice, both in the criminal and civil arenas.  Since the U.N.’s unanimous adoption, just over a year ago, of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, we have been working with the international community to breathe life into Global Goal 16, which calls on countries – including the United States – to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”  To that end, the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR) was formally established. 

    The Roundtable works to identify how and when legal aid can improve federal programs that serve our nation’s vulnerable and underserved populations. By integrating civil legal aid into a wide array of federal programs designed to improve access to housing, health care services, employment and education, and enhance family stability and public safety, the programs are strengthened and objectives better met.  This month, the Roundtable will issue its first annual report to the President.  This report will detail the history of this interagency effort and provide concrete examples of how civil legal aid has been integrated into federal programs that support the poor and vulnerable.

    The Roundtable’s report will not be our only effort to track the progress toward fulfilling Goal 16 – and specifically Target 16.3, which calls on countries to “promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.”  In September, I announced the United States’ commitment to identifying national indicators for Target 16.3, joining other nations around the world, including in the Americas, who have started regional efforts to identify indicators. The United States’ effort, which is being led by the Department of Justice, and includes experts from across the federal government, will help develop national criminal and civil access to justice indicators so that we can rigorously gauge our progress towards the goal of equal justice for all Americans.   While we are still assessing what these indicators might be, we are exploring whether we can track the impact of criminal and civil legal aid on myriad aspects of the justice system.

    And because the United States is so strongly supportive of ensuring quality and effective criminal defense, we introduced the groundbreaking resolution at this year’s United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (UN Crime Commission) that you heard about yesterday to promote access to indigent defense, including through the creation of national, regional and international networks of legal aid providers.  Resolution 25/2: Promoting legal aid builds on past international activity, including the 2012 U.N.  Principles and Guidelines, and on the common sense idea that the best way to improve defense services across the globe is through peer-to-peer exchanges and learning.  The United States stands ready to share its experiences in promoting indigent defense and to learn from yours.

    Let me end where I began:  by thanking all of you for your participation in this conference, and for your commitment and perseverance to the work of promoting equal access to justice.  When my predecessor Tony West spoke at the inaugural gathering in South Africa, he was clear-eyed about both the progress that had been made in the provision of the right to counsel and the hard work that remained to be done.  Two years later, I echo Tony’s message.  Global efforts to support the right to counsel have never been stronger.  But we have much left to do. 

    Conferences like this one are a beginning not an end.   Long after this conference concludes, after all of us have returned home, after all the keynote speeches have been given and outcome documents adopted, there will remain the work of continuing to build criminal and civil legal systems that deliver the promise of equal justice under law for every individual, regardless of where they were born, their color or class, their religious faith or their sexual orientation.  That work will not be easy.  The progress will not always be uninterrupted.  But rest assured that the United States stands with you in this mutual endeavor.  We will remain an outspoken advocate on the importance of access to criminal legal aid at home and abroad.   We will continue to be a staunch ally in the fight for justice.  And we will remain a steadfast partner in the endeavor to build legal systems that are fair and effective for all.  I look forward to all that we will achieve – together – in the years ahead.  Thank you.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse of the Antitrust Division Delivers Remarks at the American Bar Association Fall Forum

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Protecting Competition Across 50 United States: Advocacy and Cooperation in Antitrust Enforcement

    Good morning and thank you for that introduction.  It was an honor to be invited to speak to you all this morning.  Getting to speak to folks like you is one of the benefits of serving as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Department of Justice, which is both a challenging and rewarding role.  Wow, have we been busy lately.  In addition to an unprecedented litigation and investigation caseload, with the FTC last month we issued new guidelines for human resources professionals, two weeks ago we proposed revisions to our international guidelines and we’re finalizing revisions to our intellectual property guidelines.  It’s an incredible time at the Antitrust Division.  

    On top of all that, I’ve had a fair number of these speaking opportunities lately, and I’ve been using them to discuss the great work the Antitrust Division has been doing.  A few months ago I spoke about our successes in civil enforcement, and more recently I’ve talked about the tremendous work of our criminal enforcers and the successes we’ve had in building relationships with our international counterparts.  I’ve intended these speeches not as exercises in chest-beating, but instead to be thoughtful assessments of where we are today, looking back over several decades of enforcement as we also look forward to the coming transition.  With this speech, I’d like to complete that retrospective by focusing on two particularly important, related areas of the Antitrust Division’s work: cooperation with our counterpart state enforcers and competition advocacy at the state level.  

    I say state cooperation and competition advocacy are related because they both incorporate the recognition that, notwithstanding the hard work of the Antitrust Division and the FTC, protecting competition is not a job the federal government can or should do alone.  Even as concentration has increased by certain metrics, our economy remains relatively disaggregated and threats to competition come in all shapes and sizes across our country. 

     Instead of just relying on prosecutorial work at the state and federal level, we combine enforcement with advocacy, and we partner with the states, other agencies and the business community to promote a competitive economy.  The states feature prominently in that mission.  As Alexander Hamilton told the New York Ratifying Convention:  The “states must…be considered as essential component parts of the union.”   That’s certainly true in antitrust enforcement, where they are essential component parts of the worthy effort to protect and promote competition throughout the American economy.  

    By the way I was going to do my best Lin Manuel Miranda impression for that Hamilton quote, but Bill MacCleod told me we weren’t allowed to rap at the Fall Forum.  

    Cooperative federalism works best on issues where the state and federal governments have a mutuality of interest, and that is certainly the case for antitrust enforcement.  The states and the federal government each hope to preserve and promote the competitive process that is the central organizing principle of our free market economy—our mutual economic strength relies on competition playing out across connected local and national markets.  While there may be some issues where state and federal goals diverge, antitrust is generally not one of them.  

    Then and Now – Antitrust Division Cooperation with State Antitrust Enforcers

    Although we are united in our goal of promoting competition, I cannot say there are never disagreements on how to achieve that goal.  As I’m sure you’ll hear today there are many perspectives on antitrust policy, and state enforcers share in that debate.  There have been times in the past where those policy disagreements were stark.  At the start of my career at the division, federal and state enforcers sometimes had very different views on how to apply the antitrust laws to promote competition.  In that environment cooperation between state and federal enforcers was less common, and tensions occasionally arose from differing perspectives on how to approach important enforcement decisions.  

    More recently, however, agreement has been much more common than disagreement, and the cooperation between state and federal antitrust enforcers has been excellent.  That success is no accident.  Constant nurturing from a great many hardworking people in state and federal government – and attention at all levels, from our career staffs right up to the top of our organizations – have helped foster the productive working relationships we enjoy today.  

    Christine Varney set a great tone in her 2009 speech on state cooperation, and she advanced that cause when she brought on Mark Tobey as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for State Relations and Agriculture.  I have to give credit to Mark for his tireless efforts to make the partnership work well for the benefit of competition and the American consumer.  I know Edith Ramirez has also helped drive the federal side of the partnership in her role at the FTC.  

    Meanwhile the state attorneys general have contributed to the relationship with a number of important advocates.  I’d like to recognize the contributions of Vic Domen and Kathleen Foote, the current and immediately prior leaders of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Multistate Antitrust Task Force, who are both here today, along with many others working through the Task Force and in the antitrust sections of State Attorneys General throughout the country.    

    Successful Cooperation in Civil Antitrust Enforcement  

    These consistent efforts to nurture the federal-state relationship have paid real enforcement dividends.  We’re proud at the division of our record of success.  As I’ve talked about before, our civil program is going strong, blocking 43 anticompetitive deals in important consumer industries like wireless, broadband, software, and appliances.  And we’ve brought a number of conduct cases in industries from publishing to high tech hiring to health care.  Our state partners have featured prominently in many of those cases.  I can fairly say that if you’ve recently used a health insurer, flown on a commercial airline, or paid a cell phone bill, then you’ve directly benefitted from cases where state cooperation played an important role.     

    The numbers bear out the level of cooperation we’ve enjoyed with our state partners.  Each of the six civil trial sections in the division has worked on enforcement matters with the states; collectively we have worked with all 50 States plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.  In the last seven years we have brought 25 cases with the states resulting in settlement or final disposition after trial.  Five others are pending.

    The Apple e-books case is a remarkable example of effective federal-state cooperation.  The Texas Attorney General’s Office opened the original investigation into the conduct of the e-book publishers and Apple and investigated for a period of time before calling the Antitrust Division.  Early fact investigation work by Texas and Connecticut enabled the division to get up to speed quickly about the nature of the industry and the anticompetitive conduct that occurred.  In fact, some testimony from early depositions taken by Texas and Connecticut proved to be very important in the liability phase of the trial.  And, as a further result of productive coordination, the states’ economist testified at trial about price and output effects of the alleged conspiracy, testimony which worked in tandem with expert testimony from the division’s retained economist to tell a compelling economic story.

    A short anecdote from that case illustrates quite concretely the benefits of federal-state cooperation.  One of the best documents that provided evidence of the conspiracy to raise e-book prices – a document that wound up being featured in the opening paragraph of the Government’s Trial Brief – was found during document review by a staff attorney from the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.  

    No less significant in e-books, the states, using their parens patriae authority, along with private class counsel, negotiated monetary relief totaling over $500 million from the publishers and Apple, returning over 200% of overcharges to e-book buyers.  A novel feature of the relief is that consumers who purchased e-books during the damages period could opt to have their payouts transferred directly to customer accounts at the various online e-book stores.

    The New York City tour buses case is another noteworthy example of federal-state cooperation.  In that case, the division teamed up with the New York Attorney General’s Antitrust Bureau to examine the combination of the two largest hop-on, hop-off sightseeing tour bus companies in New York City at the time – the red buses and the blue buses.  The merged entity, called Twin America, had an effective monopoly and seemed determined to try to evade antitrust scrutiny.  At various points in time over a period of nearly three years Twin America tried to maneuver the case away from the New York Antitrust Bureau, such as by filing an application for transfer of federal licenses which would be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Surface Transportation Board.  The New York Antitrust Bureau kept the matter alive over the course of these gyrations by filing opposition papers every step of the way.  

    Because of the New York Antitrust Bureau’s work, after the parties removed the jurisdictional impediment, our teams were in a position to conduct a brief investigation and then file a lawsuit in 2012 to unwind the combination and obtain disgorgement of profits obtained from a ticket price increase imposed on consumers by the merged firm.  As it happens, that was one of my first matters in my first stint as Acting Assistant Attorney General, back before Bill Baer arrived in 2012.  In 2015, after nearly three years of litigation, the parties entered into a joint federal-state settlement that provided substantial disgorgement under state and federal law and forced the parties to give up scarce tour bus stop authorizations from the City so that other firms could compete in the market.    

    A further illustration of how the division has opened up new and productive relationships with the states, in order to take advantage of unique state statutory powers, involves an initiative one of our Washington, D.C. criminal sections is now taking with the Georgia Department of Law.  Under this plan, the division will work with the Consumer Protection Unit of the Georgia Department of Law to distribute nearly $1 million in restitution funds to victims of the real estate foreclosure auction bid-rigging cases brought in the Atlanta area.  The Consumer Protection Unit has a long and successful record of returning overcharge damages to victims of all manner of consumer fraud cases and we sought to take advantage of those capabilities by partnering with them.  A joint letter from the division and the Department of Law will soon go out to the first group of victims.  

    Formal Guidance to Shape Conduct and Foster Cooperation 

    Our cooperation on civil enforcement is bolstered by the formal and informal guidance the division provides through guidelines, workshops, and speeches, to name a few examples.  This guidance helps illuminate our current practices and our thinking about critical issues of law and economics, and fosters communication between the division and our state counterparts.  Plus, we think it’s just good government to be as transparent and predictable in our approach as possible—it’s the right thing to do.     

    Over the past several years, our non-litigating sections have been busy updating guidelines and developing new guidance to help educate and inform industry and fellow antitrust enforcers.  

    Two weeks ago, we released proposed updates to the International Guidelines.  We added a chapter on international cooperation to reflect the growing importance of antitrust enforcement in the globalized economy, updated the discussion of the application of U.S. antitrust law to conduct involving foreign commerce, and provided examples that address the issues we most commonly encounter in our international efforts.  We’re also updating our IP Guidelines, and are in the process of finalizing them based on the feedback we received through a public comment process.  

    About a month ago, we released new guidance for human resource professionals to educate them about how the antitrust laws apply to their job responsibilities and inform them of the division’s recent enforcement actions.  As part of this guidance, we made clear that going forward employers who conspire to hold down wages or restrict hiring of each other’s workers will be investigated criminally and, if appropriate, prosecuted criminally.  Naked “no-poaching” agreements or agreements to fix wages stamp out competition just like agreements to allocate customers or to fix product prices, violations of the law that the division has traditionally investigated criminally and prosecuted as hardcore cartel conduct.  We hope this guidance will help HR professionals implement safeguards to prevent inappropriate discussions or agreements with other firms seeking to hire similar employees.   

    We expect these updates will facilitate even greater coordination with state enforcers in our efforts to protect competition.

    State Legislative Efforts and Competition Advocacy 

    In addition to working with our counterpart antitrust enforcers in the offices of the State Attorneys General, we also work productively with state legislatures and regulatory bodies.  Later today I understand there will be discussion about how state law and regulation can work to open, and unfortunately sometimes close, markets.  It is important that state lawmakers are mindful of the consequences on competition of their actions and understand how legislation or policies can enhance or cripple competition. 

    The landscape within which state enforcers operate is different from the federal environment.  State attorneys general face the challenge of balancing their role as enforcers of state and federal competition law with the obligation to counsel professional licensing and regulatory agencies about the potential to displace competition.  They must balance their institutional role as advocates for free and fair markets with occasional pressure from state lawmakers to restrict markets and insulate local firms from emerging technologies and non-traditional competitors.  Recognizing this tension, it can be helpful for the federal antitrust agencies to weigh in regarding proposed state and local legislation to seek to vindicate competition principles.  

    State officials sometimes seek our views on the competitive significance of state legislation and policies.  We welcome those requests and are eager to share our expertise in a way that can help advance both legal frameworks and policies in the direction of more efficient and well-functioning markets, or to shape corporate behavior away from harmful anticompetitive conduct.  Additionally, inherent in these competition advocacy efforts is fruitful dialogue and learning that advances the division’s expertise.  

    States can play a critical role in addressing and preventing anticompetitive conduct through their own legislative efforts.  For example, in 2010 the Division sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan alleging that “most favored nation” provisions in its agreements with hospitals raised prices, discouraged discounts, and prevented competitive insurers from entering the market.  About two years later, Michigan enacted a law that banned these harmful clauses.  This move alleviated our concerns and now benefits competition and consumers throughout the state of Michigan.  Several other states have also enacted similar legislation. 

    We have also weighed in over the years on how state regulatory or legislative actions can sometimes close markets off from competition.  For example, the division, together with the FTC, has long supported repealing or scaling back state certificate of need laws.  These laws typically require certain health care providers to obtain state approval before establishing new facilities, providing new services or making certain large capital expenditures.  This can create barriers to competition by delaying or prohibiting entry and, as a result, can limit consumer choice and stifle innovation.  We’ve shared these views most recently with officials in South Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois and Florida. 

    The division, often with the FTC, has also been active in educating legislatures about how scope of practice laws, which define the set of professionals allowed to perform particular services, can limit competition for consumer services.  For example: 

    • In Massachusetts and Puerto Rico we advocated for legislation expanding the scope of practice laws to permit optometrists to provide certain treatments for glaucoma, thereby expanding competition and access to care.  
    • In the legal services realm, we have discouraged overly broad practice of law definitions that limit competition from non-lawyers for services that are not necessary to address legitimate and substantiated harms.  In July, the division and the FTC encouraged the adoption of legislation in North Carolina that would provide consumers with the ability to use interactive software programs to fill out legal forms.  
    • Similarly in the real estate industry, we’ve weighed in on the benefits of competition from brokers who offer “fee-for-service” options for consumers and have cautioned against restricting these new consumer-friendly competitive choices.  

    The division also recently submitted a statement on the potential anticompetitive effects of certain legislative proposals in California that would ban or limit contracts between court reporters or service firms and third parties, such as insurance companies, for multi-case contracts.

    Whether advocating in favor of state laws that help keep markets open, or working to help state legislatures understand the negative impacts on competition their laws might cause, we have great respect for the state legislative process.  While we as antitrust enforcers have a singular goal of competition, legislatures have to balance a host of potentially competing public policy goals that aren’t squarely in our purview.  All we can hope to do is foster an increased understanding and a deeper appreciation for the competition dimension of those decisions.  That’s the same approach we take in all the advocacy we do with other federal agencies and international enforcers as well.  
     
    Looking forward

    I hope that what you’ve heard in these remarks is that the Antitrust Division works hard to promote competition not only in our own cases, but also through our cooperation with and advocacy before our state counterparts.  And I also hope you’ve gotten some sense for the sustained commitment that this work requires from a great many talented people.  

    Our work advocating for competition with our state partners is never done.  In just four days, trial will start in the Anthem/Cigna merger challenge brought by the division alongside 11 states and Washington, D.C.  I won’t comment on pending cases, but we look forward to working with the states as that important matter proceeds.  

    With an eye toward the future, allow me to conclude with some suggestions on federal-state cooperation in the cases to come.

    For practitioners, I suggest embracing federal-state cooperation.  It’s not in anyone’s interest to have divergent federal and state investigations and enforcement outcomes.  Grant waivers early in investigations, and encourage state participation in Civil Investigative Demand (CID) depositions and party meetings.  These steps will often reduce the investigative burdens on your clients and foster a dialogue that will simplify resolution or settlement if possible under the circumstances.    

    For the federal and state enforcement agencies, I’d encourage continued investment in the relationships that make cooperation work.  As I mentioned earlier, those relationships were not always as strong as they are today, and I really believe they benefit from constant nurturing.  Today’s event provides a perfect opportunity for the kind of engagement that keeps our organizations connected, and I see many of our state counterparts out in the audience.  I look forward to catching up with you all today—enjoy the Fall Forum.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at a Naturalization Ceremony Held at the Department of Justice

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you for that kind introduction, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez.  And thank you, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, for your wonderful remarks and for your extraordinary service at the helm of our Civil Rights Division.  I am so thrilled to welcome so many Justice Department colleagues and honored guests to the Great Hall.  And I want to extend my warmest welcome to all of you, our newest American citizens.  It is a true honor to be among the first to congratulate you on taking the oath of allegiance.  You come to us from 40 nations around the world, from Sierra Leone to South Korea, from Pakistan to Portugal, from Mexico to Malaysia.  From so many places and through so many paths you have come here to be with all of us – illustrating this country’s motto of “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one.  You come to us with hopes and dreams as diverse as the paths you took to get here: hopes for economic and professional possibility, dreams of a better life for your children, and expectations about the freedoms and privileges of citizenship.  And in turn, we look to you with gratitude.  We are so glad you are here.  In joining us, you sustain one of the richest traditions of our nation, which is indeed a nation of immigrants. 

    To say that immigrants have been a core part of our American narrative would be a great understatement.  Immigrants played a critical role in the founding of our country; many of our roads and buildings and businesses were built by immigrants; and our society continues to be powered by the ingenuity, diligence and drive of immigrants.  Sometimes, it even seems as if we have taken more than we have given, as immigrants have fought and died to preserve our freedoms, and they have toiled and struggled to enrich our society.  From the military to government; from academia to the arts – in every sector of every industry, we are stronger because of the diversity and talent of Americans with immigrant roots.  And so we celebrate all of the richness you bring to our tapestry.  We celebrate the foods you eat, the languages you dream in, and the religions you practice.  We celebrate the wealth of skills and perspectives you have chosen to bring to our shores – attributes that have always made us a stronger, wiser and better people. 

    We are also humbled by your careful study of our institutions and our government – and your deliberate choice of our systems and our values.  I know that the process has not been easy, quick, or casual.  Some of you have waited and worked for years to achieve this goal.  You have learned about American history and you have internalized the civic responsibilities that accompany citizenship.  And in doing so, you have learned that ours is a nation that upholds liberty and equality for all; that defends the freedoms of religion, press and assembly; and that strives against prejudice and discrimination. 

    Of course, observing actual democracy in action reveals it to be a tumultuous process, as our recent election has shown.  The rhetoric and the tone around so many issues can lead to fear and uncertainty and may have caused some of you to question whether the country you have seen over recent weeks and months is indeed the same one whose founding principles you’ve been studying so diligently.  Yet the history you learned gives us the answer to that question.  Over 200 years ago, we decided what kind of a country we wanted to be.  We’re not there yet and we have had challenges at many points along the way.  Our path forward to realizing our founding ideals has had twists and turns and outright reversals, yet we have continued to push ever onwards towards them. 

    And the lesson for every generation of Americans is the need and the obligation to pick up the challenge of making the American dream real for our own time and beyond.  That is why it is so wonderful, so vital and so important that you are all here today.  Joining this young, opinionated, vibrant country, because we need your vision and your voice, your tenacity and your resolve.  Some of you have lived in nations that do not enjoy our rights and liberties; we need you to help remind us of how precious our freedom is.  Some of you have felt the sting of discrimination; we need you to show us the value of tolerance.  And some of you have lived in societies that did not allow citizens a voice in their government; we need you to help bolster our participatory democracy.

    And so as we conclude today, I ask that you give your voice, your passion, and your energy to the work of building a country that keeps faith with our founding promises.  I hope you will choose to vote in every election.  I hope we will see and hear you in a range of settings – from school board meetings to charity fundraisers, from Little League games to political debates.  I hope that you will share your rich perspectives and talents with those in your communities.  And I hope you will never lose sight of the ideals of this country and the way ordinary citizens have, throughout our history, been the ones who have made them real for all.  These are the ways we shape the country we leave for our children.  We depend on you – as we depend on all of our citizens – to help safeguard our shared values.  I am confident that you will rise to this challenge, as you have already risen to so many, and I look forward to all of your wonderful contributions.

    In a moment you will take the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as citizens of this great country.  I want you to truly listen to those words as you make that pledge.  Your allegiance, your commitment and your drive is pledged not to any one person or agency of our government, but instead to the symbol of our country’s perseverance in the face of challenge and struggle — “the flag of the United States of America.”  And even more than that, “to the Republic for which it stands,” that brave, wonderful experiment we began over 200 years ago.  And the simple yet eloquent words, describing us as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” are both the challenge and the commitment for every citizen of this great country.  And now, my fellow Americans, let us ever work together to make it so.

    Congratulations on this great achievement. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks at 2016 American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month Observance Program

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Tracy [Toulou], for your kind words and for the contributions you and your dedicated team at the Office of Tribal Justice (OTJ) have made to promote tribal justice and public safety in Indian country.  And thank you to Director Richard Toscano and the Justice Management Division (JMD) Equal Employment Opportunity Staff (EEOS) for organizing today’s observance program and to Gina Allery and the DOJ Native American Association for their support as well.  

    In the month of November, we honor the history and traditions of America’s indigenous peoples.  We join together today to celebrate American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month and to welcome our keynote speaker, Tracy Canard Goodluck, to the department. 

    The theme this year – “Serving Our Nations” – captures the work that we together are doing here at the department.  That shared commitment to improving the daily lives of tribal communities has made and will continue to make a difference.  Here are just a few highlights: 

    • We worked across components to secure passage of landmark legislation with the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA), which reaffirmed our commitment to building and sustaining healthier, safer tribal communities and renewed our enduring promise to respect sovereignty and self-determination.  Our efforts also helped secure passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization, which recognizes tribes’ inherent power to exercise “special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction” over certain defendants regardless of their Indian or non-Indian status.
    • We built and began implementing the Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information (TAP), which provides federally recognized tribes access to national crime information databases for both civil and criminal purposes.  Just last month, we announced an expansion of TAP incorporating feedback from participating tribes who identified and shared best practices to further strengthen tribal institutions’ ability to keep communities safe.
    • Over the past seven years, the department has awarded over 1,650 Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) grant awards to American Indian tribes, Alaska Native villages, tribal consortia and tribal designees to improve public safety in Tribal communities and to strengthen tribal justice systems.  These figures include 236 CTAS grants totaling more than $102 million that were awarded in the recently completed 2016 grant cycle.
    • We established the Gaye Tenoso Indian Country Fellowship.  The program honors a former 30-year Department of Justice attorney by creating public service opportunities in Indian country for young lawyers with expertise and a commitment to federal Indian law, tribal law, and Indian country issues.
    • We published the Department of Justice Consultation Policy and the Attorney General’s Statement of Principles for Working with Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, both of which are intended to guide the work of this department in Indian country going forward.
    • We created the Tribal National Leadership Council, a democratically-elected group of tribal leaders responsible for advising the Attorney General.
    • We established the National Indian Country Training Initiative to ensure that the department prosecutors, as well as state and tribal criminal justice personnel, receive the training and support needed to address the particular challenges relevant to Indian country. 
    • And we built law enforcement partnerships between the FBI and sister agencies and identified tribal liaisons within each U.S. Attorney’s Office that has Indian country within its jurisdiction.  Indeed, I was privileged to meet many of these dedicated Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs) in a recent visit to the Flathead Reservation in Montana.
    • We have shown that we can collaborate effectively across the department and across the federal government to better serve Indian country.  The department’s work on the Indian Child Welfare Act—involving the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Office of Tribal Justice, the Civil Rights Division, and the Office of Justice Programs, as well as the Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services—is just one example.  Our efforts have promoted compliance with this important federal law that seeks to keep Indian children with their parents, extended families, and tribal communities. 

    We can point with pride to the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s (ENRD) work to protect tribal resources, water rights and treaty hunting and fishing rights and to its defense of the Department of the Interior’s authority to acquire land into trust for tribes.  Recent victories in both the district court and the court of appeals helped preserve the treaty fishing rights of Pacific Northwest Tribes by removing barriers to salmon passage.  ENRD’s efforts recognize the importance of protecting the environment and natural resources of the First Nations, who were also the first environmental stewards of this great land and from whom we still have much to learn.

    I am pleased to report that the department has continued to make progress in resolving long-standing tribal trust cases.  In 2016 alone, we reached settlements with 17 tribes for almost $493 million.  Since the start of the Obama Administration, the department has settled the claims of 104 tribes for a total of $3.35 billion.  These settlements represent a significant milestone in improving the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes, and allow the federal government and the tribal nations to move beyond tensions that were exacerbated by litigation.

    Even as we celebrate the progress we have made, we must acknowledge that our work is far from finished.  We have all been watching events in North Dakota over the weekend.  History teaches that we make progress in the face of conflicting views where we honor the right to disagree peacefully with one another.  The Justice Department has been in communication with local law enforcement, as well as tribal representatives and protesters, to promote communication and lower tensions.  We will continue those efforts. 

    There are a lot of challenges in Indian country, and it continues to be the responsibility of those of us at the department to identify and correct the injustices that persist.  I am proud to be affiliated with a department that does not shy away from tackling those challenges, and embraces the opportunity to work directly with Tribes across the country.

    Before we move on to the next part of our program, I would like to recognize the work of Lorraine Edmo, the Deputy Director for Tribal Affairs at the Office on Violence Against Women and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.  She has dedicated her decades-long career to seeking out and correcting injustice in Tribal communities. 

    Lorraine is retiring soon and will be greatly missed.  Her sustained dedication to supporting Tribal communities has been an inspiration.  Thank you, Lorraine, for your tremendous service.  We are grateful that your husband, Jerry Cordova of the Department of the Interior, is also participating here today.  We especially respect public service when it’s a family affair, and we wish you both well.  

    I now turn to the privilege of introducing our keynote speaker, Tracy Canard Goodluck of the Oneida and Mvskoke Creek Nations.  Her passion for education and improving outcomes for students in tribal communities has made her a role model to many.  In her current role of Senior Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, Tracy serves as a key liaison to tribal communities for the Administration.  Previously, she was a policy advisor at the Domestic Policy Council and, as a Presidential Management Fellow, handled the legislative portfolio for Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior.  We are honored to have her here today.  Please join me in welcoming Tracy Canard Goodluck.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Funeral for U.S. Marshals Service Deputy Commander Patrick Carothers

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon, everyone. To the pastor and members of the Buford Church of God – the spiritual home of the Carothers family; to the President and staff of the Greater Atlanta Christian Academy – the educational home of the Carothers family, who have come together and given us this beautiful service in this special place; Deputy Attorney General [Sally] Yates; Director [David] Harlow; distinguished guests; family and friends; and, most importantly, Terry, Michael, Matthew, Paul, Jessica, and Connor: 

    I bring you condolences from the entire Department of Justice family, of which Patrick Carothers was a beloved member. And I also bring you condolences from the President and First Lady of the United States, which I will share with you now.

    We gather here today with bruised spirits and broken hearts. Whether we knew Patrick Carothers as a colleague, a friend, a father – even if we did not have the privilege of knowing him personally – we feel his loss deeply. And we feel his presence still. I did not have the privilege of meeting Deputy Commander Carothers, but after meeting with his teammates and family today, I feel as if I knew him.  

    I see him in the heartfelt regard and honor and loyalty of his colleagues; I see him not just in the faces but the faith, the fortitude, and the light in the children he was raising and the family he loved so much. And we all see him in the respect and regard and love of the people whose lives he touched, so many of whom are here today to honor him.

    For he was the kind of person we hope our children will grow up to become. He was a person of integrity, who loved his family, strengthened his community, and served his country.  He was a person of strength, possessed of quiet courage and deep compassion. And he was a person of action, who chose a career in law enforcement in order to protect the vulnerable and help those who cannot help themselves.  

    Deputy Commander Carothers represented the very best that our country has to offer. That someone like him should be taken from us in such a senseless way shocks our conscience. It chills our hearts. And it can shake our faith.  

    I do not claim to have any answers for why this horrible deed happened. Nor do I pretend that our pain can be erased with a few words; true comfort comes only through time and the grace of God. But I do know that Deputy Commander Carothers did not die in vain. For he served the cause of justice. Where justice is present, we glimpse a gentler and more peaceful world, one where every person lives in safety and dignity. Justice challenges us to do our part to bring that world into being. It challenges us to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. It calls each of us to devote our lives to something larger than ourselves.  

    Patrick Carothers accepted that challenge. For 26 years, he answered that call. He pledged his energy, his talent – and, if necessary, his life – to the safety and well-being of the American people. Taking that pledge made him a U.S. Marshal – a proud member of the nation’s oldest law enforcement agency. Keeping that pledge until his last breath made him a hero. He can stand before his maker and echo Paul’s words to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

    To Deputy Commander Carothers’ fellow Marshals: I want you to know that as your Attorney General, there is nothing more difficult than burying a member of our department – our family. The dangers that you and your fellow law enforcement officers face; the sacrifices that you make; the hazards that you accept: these are never far from my mind and I want you to know how humbled I am by your valor and dedication.

    To Deputy Commander Carothers’s relatives and loved ones: my heart aches for you. I can only imagine the depth of your sorrow and the intensity of your pain. Terry, you were clearly Patrick’s light and his strength. And the children that you raised together are a testament to the bond you shared. I especially want to say to Michael, Matthew, Paul, Jessica, and Connor that your father lives on in you. You have clearly inherited his spirit, his strength and his compassion, and he will continue to shape and improve our world through your lives. Please know that the entire Department of Justice family grieves with you and is here for you. In the days ahead, we will strive to honor his legacy not only with our words, but with our deeds; not only by remembering his name, but by continuing his work – his work for a stronger, a safer and a more just United States.

    May God bless the memory of Deputy Commander Patrick Carothers, and may He grant him eternal rest and peace.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates Delivers Remarks at Funeral for U.S. Marshals Service Deputy Commander Patrick Carothers

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon, everyone. As I look out across this vast room filled with Pat Carothers’ friends, colleagues, fellow law enforcement officers, and most importantly, his family, it’s clear to me that I don’t have the words to adequately capture the depth of your loss or the height of his valor. The overwhelming swirl of pain, anger, loss, and disbelief combined with admiration, reverence and love defies prose. But we gather here together today to comfort his family and one another and to pay tribute to Pat’s legacy of honor, patriotism and sacrifice.

    As a former AUSA and U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, I was privileged to work in the Northern District of Georgia with Pat for many years. I can tell you that Pat Carothers was the personification of all that is good about law enforcement.

    Pat was known all across this state as a “can-do” kind of guy – the person you called when you needed help, when you were looking for advice, or sometimes when you really needed a laugh.

    In the U.S. Attorney’s office, Pat is remembered as the calm in the middle of every storm. No matter what the challenge, Pat was famous for saying that he would “take care” of it. And take care of it, and all of us, he did. Gentry Shelnutt, the Criminal Chief in the U.S. Attorney’s office, said he had thought Pat was only that way with him, but it turned out he was that way with everyone, and in Gentry’s words, “that’s what made him special.”

    And he was special to his colleagues in the Marshals Service, as well. One of his fellow deputies told me that he was the best supervisor that any new deputy could have – that, in a fatherly way, he would let you know if you messed up, and then teach you by example how to do it right. He was always encouraging them, motivating them and looking out for them in ways large and small. In fact, one deputy said she had a tendency to leave her car lights on when she parked, so after a few instances of this, Pat started waiting for her by the door just to make sure that she had turned her lights off.

    To Pat’s colleagues in the U.S. Marshals Service, many of whom are here with us today, I know that this is a particularly difficult shock to absorb. But the U.S. Marshals Service is nothing if not resilient. Every day, with every warrant, you perform some of the Department’s most dangerous work, and you have a history of persevering through adversity that would overwhelm others. I know that you will honor Pat’s memory by carrying on your critical mission with the wise and generous spirit that defined Pat Carothers.

    As committed as Pat was to the Marshals Service, as one of his colleagues told me this week, he was first and foremost a family man. He adored his wife, Terry, and their five children and he lived every day totally devoted to them. It wasn’t just his badge that marked Pat Carothers as a hero, but rather the way he lived his life, day in and day out, committed to family, friends, and country. It was his willingness, in moments of crisis, to go where he needed to go and do what he needed to do, confronting difficulty and danger, placing the safety of others above his own. And now, just as Pat, in his fatherly way, was always taking care of his colleagues, those colleagues now wrap Pat’s family in their collective arms to protect and comfort them. That’s what the law enforcement family is all about.

    Pat will be dearly missed, and each of us and our country will be forever in his debt. We can help to make certain that his commitment – to holding accountable those who break our laws, and to ensuring justice for all people – will guide us forward and will continue to inspire acts of service, of selflessness, and of courage among his colleagues and peers. And his abiding love – for his wife and children; for his family and friends; and for the community that has come together to bid him farewell – will always be with us.

    So today – as we mourn one of our own, and say goodbye to one of our very best – let us honor Pat Carothers’ memory with our own deeds. Let us rally around the relatives, friends, and colleagues he leaves behind. Let us stand vigilant against the violence that too many of our law enforcement officers face. And let us resolve – here and now – that we will live our lives, as he did, focused on what we “can do” for others; that his cause will become our own; and that Pat, his story, his bravery – and his shining example – will never be forgotten.

    May he rest in peace.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks Highlighting Elder Justice at the State Of Financial Fraud in America Event

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you Robert for that kind introduction and for your leadership and dedication as CEO of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).  And thank you to the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, for hosting this conference and for the great work that you do.  It is an honor to join with the many people in this audience who dedicate their lives to combatting financial fraud and protecting elderly Americans.  This is a noble and enduring effort.   

    As many people here know, financial fraud targeted at the elderly is a serious problem.  At the beginning of 2011, the first Baby Boomers reached the age of 65.  I reached that milestone myself just last year.  Indeed, 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, and the percentage of Americas over 65 is growing.  5.8 percent of this group experiences identity theft in a given year.  I had that ugly experience just last month. 13.8 percent experiences consumer fraud in a given year.  4.5 percent of people over 50 experience financial fraud in a five-year period.  While there are varying accounts about how much the overall financial loss is, it is well into the billions of dollars.  

    Statistics aside, we are here together because we know all too well that this is a problem that takes a personal toll.  Almost all of us know someone who has been the victim of financial fraud.  And while it affects people of all ages, it can be especially devastating for elderly people, many of whom are dependent on their savings and are concerned about their own mental decline or other people’s perception of their mental decline.  

    I recently saw letters written by the victims of a set of schemes that we took action against.  One described having sent “hundreds of checks” for a company’s “great offers” and tried to explain to the fraudster that “due to bad eyes, [he] has to use magnifying glasses to read” and had “been caught paying many times for th[e] very same offer.”  Another, believing that the con men would send him a promised gift, tried to explain that he had sent his prior payments by money order and was now enclosing cash, “all [he] can send.”  Another explained that when she gets the vast inheritance she’d been promised, she would use it to help her family, the homeless and needy children.   

    The nature and scope of elder fraud varies tremendously.  At the Department of Justice, we see small, family based schemes, such as caregivers tricking elderly victims out of their savings or abusing powers of attorney.  We see institutional schemes, such as nursing homes that provide unnecessary services or bill for services never provided.  And we see global fraud networks that are—quite literally—organized crime.  These schemes involve networks of businesses with careful divisions of labor.  They target millions of Americans, maintain lists of victims, and, once someone has been duped, target those people again and again. One recent victim wrote a letter explaining: “Each day I keep getting more and more offers and it’s almost impossible for me to keep up with them.” 

    Large and diverse problems like this require broad based solutions.  We at the Department of Justice know we can’t solve this problem alone.  Coordination is essential not only with our federal partners, but with local, state and international authorities.  And public and private partnerships are key to our understanding of the scope of the problem and to the lasting success of any solution.

    Research into basic questions, such as why are elderly people vulnerable, and how can we detect fraud and abuse, is critical to attacking the problem.  The FINRA Foundation and Stanford Center on Longevity launched the Financial Fraud Research Center five years ago.  As some of your ongoing research has demonstrated, there is a natural decline in cognition as people age, especially ability to think fast and process new information.  The elderly are sometimes lonely or otherwise socially isolated. Some are uncomfortable with technology.  Many have pools of relatively liquid retirement assets.  Some are dependent on caregivers.  All of these factors make the elderly particularly susceptible to certain schemes. 

    There is much more to learn.  The Department of Justice has invested in partnerships to help us all better understand the causes and risk factors associated with elder financial exploitation.  For example, just a few weeks ago, we announced an award of nearly $800,000 to the Urban Institute and the University of Southern California to develop and test prevention programs that will address elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation.  To enhance our understanding of financial exploitation by conservators and guardians, last year our Office for Victims of Crime funded a project to search for innovative, evidence-based programs and practices that successfully detect and remedy conservator fraud.  And people like you are furthering our understanding.  This conference is highlighting emerging research on susceptibility to fraud and fraud prevention.

    Beyond efforts to understand how and why elder fraud occurs, continuing dedication to enforcement is required to stop it.   This is not a partisan issue.  We have seen Democratic and Republican administrations alike express a shared commitment to using all tools in the Department of Justice’s enforcement arsenal.  Back in the 1990s, under Attorney General Reno, the Department of Justice created the Elder Justice Initiative to centralize information, facilitate training, and coordinate within the Department and across the federal government.  During the Bush Administration, the Department of Justice initiated an elder mistreatment research grant program, funding cutting edge research on elder abuse and financial exploitation that continues today.

    During this Administration, Congress created the Elder Justice Coordinating Council as part of the Affordable Care Act to facilitate interagency cooperation at the highest of levels.  At the Department of Justice, we formed the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee’s Elder Justice Working Group, which is comprised of U.S. Attorneys from across the country who are dedicated to improving our information sharing on financial scams targeting the elderly.  And just this year, we created ten regional Elder Justice Task Forces that operate throughout the country, partnering with state and local law enforcement and prosecutors to enhance our collective response to elder financial fraud and abuse. 

    Our Elder Justice Initiative has also been assisting with community capacity building.  This includes supporting the training of local law enforcement and prosecutors.  And to enhance civil legal aid to seniors, in June 2016, the Department of Justice, in collaboration with the Corporation for National and Community Service, launched the Elder Justice AmeriCorps, the first-ever army of lawyers and paralegals to help elderly victims of abuse and exploitation.  The program will support 300 AmeriCorps members throughout the country and is expected to reach over 8,000 older adults over the next two years.

    A multi-faceted problem requires coordination between different federal agencies; it demands a whole of government approach.  Mail is involved; we must coordinate with the Postal Inspection Service.  Money is involved; we must coordinate with the Treasury Department.  People target the elderly; we must coordinate with agencies that serve the elderly, such as the Social Security Administration.  

    And more and more, we are seeing schemes that are highly complex and global.  Stopping these schemes require extensive cooperation—not just with state and local authorities, but also across the federal government and with our international counterparts.  For example, the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Branch co-chairs the International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group, a network of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Europol, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.  

    We can point to meaningful progress.  In the past several years, we have successfully shut down several international lottery scams where con men and women have contacted elderly victims in the United States, told the victims they won cash and prizes, and persuaded them to send thousands of dollars in fees to release the money.  Of course, the victims never received cash or prizes in return.  In a series of cases, perpetrators made calls from Jamaica using Voice Over Internet Protocol technology that made it appear as if the calls were coming from the United States.  They convinced victims to send money to middlemen in South Florida and North Carolina, who forwarded the money to Jamaica.  We have had great success breaking up these networks through joint efforts between Jamaican law enforcement and U.S. agencies including the Postal Inspection Service, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Trade Commission and Internal Revenue Service.  Since 2009, the Department of Justice has prosecuted or is prosecuting over 100 individuals linked to such lottery schemes, and has convicted and sentenced over 40 defendants.

    We have had similar success going after global “psychic schemes.”  Con men and women send letters purportedly written by “world-renowned psychics” stating that they had a vision revealing that the recipient has the opportunity to obtain great wealth.  The letters appear personalized, refer to the recipient by name, and often contain portions that appear handwritten.  The solicitations urge victims to purchase products and services that will ensure this good fortune.  Investigations by the Department of Justice and Postal Inspection Service, among others, revealed the complexity of these schemes.  Not only were there the fraudsters themselves, but there were separate companies performing different roles, such as processing victim payments and maintaining databases of consumers who responded to solicitations.  In a two-week period, one company in the United States processed as much as $500,000 in payments for just one psychic scheme.  We have discovered similar companies in Quebec, Hong Kong, Switzerland and France.  

    Perhaps the most significant example of cooperation to date were our wide-ranging enforcement actions taken in September of this year to dismantle a global network of mass mailing schemes targeting elderly and vulnerable victims.  The schemes involved a network with components in Canada, France, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.   The network included an India-based printer that manufactured solicitations and arranged for bulk shipment to U.S. victims; a mailer in Switzerland; list brokers in the United States who bought and sold lists of victims so that once victims had fallen prey, others could target them; a “caging” service in the Netherlands that collected money; and a Canadian payment processor that, for more than 20 years, helped dozens of international fraudsters gain access to U.S. banks and take money from Americans.  Stopping this network involved coordination between the Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, Postal Inspection Service, Federal Trade Commission, Iowa Attorney General’s office and counterparts in other countries.  Just to give you a sample of the coordinated actions, on Sept. 22, 2016: 

    • The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked assets from the Canadian payment processor and a network of individuals and entities across 18 countries.
    • The Justice Department filed criminal charges and a civil injunction against a Turkish mass mailer. 
    • The Justice Department brought a series of civil actions to shut down companies based in the United States, India, Switzerland and Singapore.  These companies were responsible for mailing millions of multi-piece solicitations to potential victims throughout the United States.  
    • The Justice Department entered into a consent decree with two Dutch “caging” businesses that collected and forward money.  Our efforts were coordinated with Dutch authorities who executed search warrants on the businesses and took control of the Dutch post office boxes used to receive victims’ funds.   
    • The Federal Trade Commission filed a case against a related mass-mailer, printer, and list broker.  
    • The Iowa Attorney General negotiated a compliance agreement with two firms that brokered victim lists.

    Of course, what matters even more than going after these schemes is preventing people from falling prey in the first place.  Here too, federal agencies are working in cooperation and dedicated to the effort.   The Department of Justice has distributed educational materials about these kinds of scams, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has developed an electronic press kit for media outlets, my former colleagues at the Federal Trade Commission operate a “Pass It On” campaign that encourages people to share information about frauds that affect older Americans, the Social Security Administration is educating beneficiaries through its network of over 1,200 field offices nationwide, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has produced a mail fraud alert placemat in coordination with Meals on Wheels America to distribute to seniors nationwide.  Similarly, private organizations that work in the area of elder justice and consumer protection are doing their part.  For example, AARP will be posting information through its Fraud Watch Network.  And the Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, is alerting consumers about a variety of elder scams.  

    Going forward, the Department of Justice will continue to work with private, local, state, federal and global partners.   And we urge all of you to tell us where the Department can do more.  The federal government’s work on behalf of the elderly began long before this Administration, and it will continue long after.  I expect that my successors, and my successors’ successors, will share our commitment to making sure our parents, grandparents and friends age with grace and dignity.  And I look forward to all of you, who have worked so hard in this area, working with the next Administration to combat financial fraud and protect elderly Americans.  Thank you again for having me here today.  

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at United States Military Academy

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for that warm welcome.  I am so grateful to be here today.  I also want to thank Lieutenant General [Robert] Caslen and Brigadier General [Diana] Holland for their tremendous leadership here at West Point, and for their gracious invitation to address the Cow Class of the Corps of Cadets.  And I want to acknowledge my colleague, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General [Bill] Baer, who is here with me today.  Bill does a tremendous job of leading the Justice Department’s Servicemembers and Veterans Initiative, which is our most important program to secure the rights of our men and women in uniform.

    What an honor it is to stand before you today in this venerable place.  This campus is unlike any other in the United States – and not just because it’s the only one that Benedict Arnold once tried to sell to the British.  Few institutions have had a greater hand in molding the United States into the nation it is today than West Point.  Your fellow alumni include two distinguished presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, who I believe said that failing to make the West Point baseball team was one of his life’s greatest disappointments, and Ulysses S. Grant, who wrote in his memoirs that each year at West Point “seemed about five times as long” as a year back home.  They may have grumbled about their time here by the Hudson – something I am sure you have never done – but this much is clear: the path that led them to the highest office in public service began right here at West Point.

    There is no doubt that this institution has a proud and rich history.  But West Point is not simply a monument to the past.  It is a gateway to our future.  And that is why I look on each of you with such great pride and excitement.  Because each of you has taken that future into your hands.  When you were not yet 18, you made a choice.  You chose to embark on an education that demands more of you than almost any other institution demands of students your age. You made a choice to forego many of the traditional comforts of college for a more challenging path.  Before you could even vote, you made a choice that for at least the next nine years, the watchwords of your life would be “Duty, Honor, Country.”  That is an enormous testament to your character.  And that is a tremendous gift to our nation.

    I am moved by the sacrifices that you have made, and that you will make.  The conflict of my childhood was Vietnam, a place that meant nothing to me until it reached into my world and took my family members away.  It’s a history lesson now, but I still vividly remember my cousins and uncle going off to Vietnam, when I was a young girl.  My father, a minister, had a family prayer service for them the night before they left.  I remember being struck by the magnitude of their sacrifice.  It was the first time I ever really knew someone who was prepared to give his or her life for an ideal – for someone else’s freedom.  Their country had called and they had answered, and that was more important than their own comfort or safety.  Over the years I watched as other family members, including my own brother, made the choice to serve their country in the armed forces.  Their example has stayed with me throughout my life, and it has never been far from my mind during my years with the Department of Justice.   That sense of sacrifice and devotion to a greater mission – which was instinctive to my family members who served, and which has brought all of you to West Point – is perhaps the most important ingredient I can think of in the creation of a leader.  As a famous graduate of this school, General [Norman] Schwarzkopf, once said: “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character.  But if you must be without one, be without strategy.”

    And that is what I want to talk to you about today: why we need your character more than ever.  It seems that our news cycles too frequently feature stories of rancor and division.  Many of those stories give voice to those raising the question of what kind of leadership we want for our nation.  I believe the answer to that question can be found here at West Point.  And not simply because of your substantive knowledge, or your training to lead one of our most vital institutions in the most difficult of situations.  Rather, it is because a West Point education is concerned not only with what you know, but with who you are.  It is concerned not only with your mastery of strategy, but with your empathy and ability to understand those who are starkly different from you – whether they serve in your platoon or sit across from you at the negotiation table.  It is concerned not only with your physical prowess, but with the resilience of your moral core.  It is concerned not just with your sterling credentials, but your resolve to use those abilities to serve others.  In short, I believe that your West Point education is giving you the very tools we need in all walks of life, military and civilian alike: the ability – and the responsibility – to bridge the gap among our fellow Americans.  

    It is clear why you are receiving this important and rigorous education.  You will lead men and women through the most trying of circumstances.  It will be up to you to show those in your command that their common goals transcend their individual differences.  It will be up to you to ask them to do things they may not believe themselves capable of doing.  It will be up to you to bring out the best in those you lead.  And you will only be able to convince them to do those things if you do them yourself – exactly as you are learning to do here.  And when you do that – when you realize that leadership is the ultimate form of service to and for others – then those in your command will surprise you, and themselves, with their selflessness, with their decency, and with their ability to join in a common cause.  This is precisely the leadership that we also need, at this moment, in our national discourse, in our communities, and in our homes.  Because as challenging as your military career will be, some of your greatest leadership challenges will come when you are out of uniform, in a world that doesn’t always exemplify the lessons you have learned here.  How will you lead when a child you know is being bullied for being of a different race or religion?  How will you lead when someone with whom you disagree needs your help?  How will you lead when someone feels ignored or even targeted by the very government we are all sworn to serve?  People will listen and look up to you.  What will you say to them?  Those are the times when you will truly lean on the lessons of this great institution – that true leaders speak up for those whose voice cannot be heard, protect the weak from the strong, and always focus on the common goals and principles that overcome our differences. 

    Being a leader often brings fulfillment, recognition and rewards.  But it also brings unexpected moments.  People once your peers may surprise themselves and you by not being completely happy for you, and that will hurt.  Along with the acclaim you will also receive criticism, questioning your decisions, your motives, even your integrity, and that will sting.  And, although it may be hard to believe – especially for you engineers out there – there will come a time when you will make mistakes, and disappoint others and yourself.  We all fall down.  It’s how you get up that tells the world who you are, even more than the rank on your sleeve.  And how you respond to these challenges will confirm or deny everything that you have said about leadership in less fraught times.  Because these are the times you show the content of your character.  These are the times you must summon what is best in you – your courage, your integrity and your honor.  These are the moments that count.  These are the moments when you realize that true leadership focuses not on you, but on the institution you lead and the mission it serves.  

    In my life, I have been fortunate that that institution is the Department of Justice, and the mission is the protection of the American people and the upholding of the rule of law.  And in my most difficult moments, first as a U.S. Attorney, and now as Attorney General of the United States, I have always been well served by reminding myself that my first responsibility is not to what others think of me, but to what my institution can do for others.

    You have also committed to serving an institution: the U.S. military.  I have no doubt that you will use your talents to uphold its proud traditions and to leave it an even stronger institution than you found it.  We will be a safer and better people for your service defending our country and its values.  But I also ask you to consider yourselves servants of these United States.  The motto of this institution is not “Duty, Honor, Army” – although it will be, for a brief moment, on December 10.  The motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.”  And I want you to take that motto seriously.  Because the division and disunity that we now see too often is symptomatic of a deeper pain in our people – pain that we must learn to heal. At a time when rhetoric and ideology divide us, and bitterness and mistrust tear at the fabric of our democracy, we need you to model service to a larger cause.  We need you to remind us that our responsibility as Americans is to promote the welfare of all our people; to protect the vulnerable and the weak; and to ensure that the nation we leave for our children is better than the one our parents inherited.   We need you to bring us back to the heart of our greatness, the beauty of our different voices, paths and faces coming together as one people.  We need you to remind us of what we have achieved together, in the early motto of this great country:  E pluribus unum.  Out of many, one.

    That is my challenge to you today: be leaders not just of our military, but of our country.  Wherever life takes you beyond West Point – whether you stay in the armed forces for life, or whether you choose a different path – I challenge you to continue to be servant leaders.  Inspire others to serve causes larger than themselves.  Bring the lessons of sacrifice and selflessness that you have learned to our boardrooms, our classrooms, to the halls of Congress.  Show the American people that “Duty, Honor, Country,” is a motto not only for the proud few who pass through West Point, but for every person, in every community.  You are uniquely positioned to perform this essential work, and as I look out over this exemplary group of men and women, I am filled with hope: hope that we will continue marching together toward a brighter future; hope that we will transcend our divisions and bridge our divides; and hope that our nation’s best days still lie ahead. 

    I want to thank you all for having me here.  I look forward to seeing everything you will achieve as you assume the heavy – and honorable – mantle of leadership. 

    May God bless you all, and shelter your dreams with his everlasting grace.  May God bless all of our men and women in uniform, and hold their safety in the palm of his hand.  And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

    Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Head of the Civil Rights Division Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Ted [Shaw], for that warm welcome.  I want to thank the University of North Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights for organizing this energizing conference and inviting me to join you today.  It’s humbling to be part of a program with such a distinguished group of civil rights leaders.  I see many dear friends and colleagues in this room.  Through advocacy and academia, through service and leadership – you have devoted your careers to the cause of justice and the fight for equality.                                                                                                                                    

    For just over two years, I’ve had the enormous privilege and great honor to lead the Civil Rights Division’s work in that fight.  At times, my tenure has been filled with moments of tragedy and anguish.  And there is no doubt that events in recent years have exposed and exacerbated stark divisions of ideology and open wounds of racial tension across America.  I’ve sat with grieving families who lost their loved ones in officer-involved shootings.  I’ve attended funerals of officers killed in the line of duty.  I’ve seen how the inequities in our criminal justice system can destroy lives and derail futures.  And I’ve been all too aware of how some of the most vulnerable among us encounter a real gap between what the law guarantees, on one hand, and what they experience in their daily lives, on the other – from courtrooms, to voting precincts, to public bathrooms.

    Yet I firmly believe that these are also times of possibility, of opportunity and of hope.  Because amidst the tragedies and divisions, I’ve seen police officers and residents working together to promote community-oriented policing strategies.  I’ve seen firsthand these past two years – in meetings, conferences and roundtables around the country – law enforcement leaders stand up and speak out to transform the profession, embracing de-escalation tactics, procedural justice and a smart-on-crime approach.  And I’ve seen how people from different walks of life can come together to engage in America’s imperfect, but unyielding journey of progress towards a more inclusive country and a more just union.

    For nearly six decades – from prosecuting the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi; to combating segregation in education; to enforcing the Fair Housing Act; to preventing discrimination in lending, whether in redlining or underwriting; to defending the civil rights of LGBT men and women here in North Carolina – the division’s career lawyers have played a pivotal role in our country’s quest for justice.  The division vigorously enforces civil rights laws to make the promises of equal justice, equal protection and equal opportunity real for all.  We work to restore faith in the legitimacy of our justice system.  And we work to defend the integrity of our democracy.  Because discrimination, inequality and injustice don’t only harm individuals.  They threaten entire communities.  They breed cynicism and despair.  And they erode trust in our public institutions – trust essential to upholding the rule of law, to advancing public safety and to engaging in our centuries-old democratic experiment of effective self-governance.

    In stark terms and in real time, we’ve seen this connection between discrimination and distrust play out around the country through the lens of community-police relations.  Sometimes, a particular incident ignites public outrage and unrest.  And let be me clear: when law enforcement officials flout the law, the Civil Rights Division works to prosecute criminal misconduct and hold them accountable.  But I’ll be honest with you, the federal statute that applies is narrow.  In use-of-force cases, federal law requires us to prove both that the officer used “objectively unreasonable” force and that she or he acted willfully – “for the specific purpose of violating the law” – the highest standard of criminal intent in the federal code.  Mistake, misperception, negligence and poor judgment are not prosecutable at the federal level.  That said, during this administration, we have charged more than 580 law enforcement officials for committing willful violations of civil rights and related crimes.

    But we know that the true causes – the real reasons – for unrest run far deeper than any individual incident.  And we know that while public attention to these issues might be new, these causes are long-standing and systemic.  We’ve found these causes time and again through several of the 23 civil pattern-or-practice investigations we’ve opened into local police departments during this administration.  These cases focus not on individuals but on systems.  Broken systems – plagued by unlawful practices and tainted by bias – can devastate a community and corrode public trust, letting down not just the victims of police misconduct but the officers who seek to proudly wear the badge.

    We saw the impact of broken systems in Baltimore, where a “zero tolerance” street enforcement strategy became a quest to produce numbers – pedestrian stops of African Americans in particular – regardless of their limited impact on solving crime and the damage they did to community relationships.  Officers routinely arrested people for loitering or trespassing if they could not provide a “valid reason” for standing on the sidewalk or near a public housing development.  In one instance, a shift commander emailed a template for describing such trespassing arrests.  The template had blank fields.  Except that it had the words “black male” pre-filled for the suspect description.  Blanket assumptions and stereotypes about certain neighborhoods and certain communities led many residents to see the justice system as illegitimate and authorities as corrupt. 

    We saw the impact of broken systems in Ferguson, where the criminalization of poverty – and intentional racial bias in police and court practices – eroded public trust.  The city relied on enforcement strategies “to fill the revenue pipeline” without due consideration for whether officers could better protect the city by focusing on neighborhood policing, rather than debt collection.  We found the city issuing multiple citations with excessive fines and fees for minor violations – $302 for jaywalking, $427 for disturbing the peace and $531 for allowing high grass and weeds to grow on your lawn – and then arresting and even jailing residents when they couldn’t afford to pay.

    We saw the impact of broken systems in New Orleans as well, where officers lacked the ability to effectively communicate with immigrant communities.  At the time of our investigation, the New Orleans Police Department relied primarily on just two officers – one fluent in Spanish and one fluent in Vietnamese – to assist on all service calls and investigations involving limited English proficient residents.  As one Spanish-speaking immigrant testified, “[W]e don’t feel safe, we don’t feel supported.  We, the immigrants don’t feel support from them [the police].  We cannot call them for any kind of problem for help.”

    And we saw the impact of broken systems in Seattle, where the use of excessive force against individuals in crisis left families dealing with mental illness or addiction with nowhere to turn for help, without access to services and too fearful to call the police when the denial of treatment created dangerous situations for themselves and their loved ones.

    While each of these communities struggled with unique problems, the broken systems and police misconduct caused residents to view the police, the courts or even government itself as arbitrary, biased and unfair.  And when residents didn’t trust law enforcement, they became less willing to share information – information critical to solving and preventing crimes.  Entire communities felt that the justice system was not protecting or serving them, perpetuating disillusionment and exacerbating tensions.  Simply put, unconstitutional policing threatens the security and well-being of our communities.  And that hurts us all. 

    Of course, broken systems and unconstitutional policing practices don’t operate in isolation from other inequities in our justice system.  Indeed, throughout the justice system – from arraignment to sentencing – when people experience a two-tiered system of justice that stacks the deck against those living in poverty, these broader failures erodes trust, too.  The entire Department of Justice – including our team at the Office for Access to Justice, led by Director Lisa Foster – has helped lead the charge against criminal justice policies that punish poverty.  We’ve sent a dear colleague letter to state and local judges to help end unlawful fine and fee practices that result in inescapable cycles of debt and incarceration.  We’ve shined a light on the right-to-counsel crisis by filing briefs around the country – arguing that if due to underfunding and high workloads, public defenders can’t meaningfully test the prosecution’s case, that violates the Sixth Amendment.  We’ve taken on the criminalization of homelessness, arguing that because every human being must sleep at some time and in some place, arresting and punishing a person for sleeping in public – when there aren’t enough shelter beds in the city and she has nowhere else to go – criminalizes the status of being homeless.  We’ve addressed unlawful bail practices that result in jailing presumptively innocent people solely because of their poverty, without consideration of their ability to pay or alternatives to incarceration, causing people to lose their jobs, their health benefits or their homes without any benefit to public safety.  As with the issue of systemic police misconduct, addressing these issues – by preventing the punishment of poverty and by ensuring access to justice for all – is critical to restoring and maintaining the public’s faith in the legitimacy of our institutions and the integrity of our democracy.

    The integrity of our democracy also depends on ensuring that every eligible voter can participate in the electoral process.  Voting forms the bedrock of our democracy.  In our democracy, no matter what policy issue we care about most, we get closer to these goals through the ballot box.  The Justice Department works to ensure that every eligible voter enjoys the full range of voting rights protected by federal law.  It makes no difference to us what candidate a voter selects or what party she supports.  But we fight day-in and day-out, in elections big and small, not just in November but throughout the year, to protect her right to have a say.  Even with the severe setback of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, we’ve continued to use every tool at our disposal, including the Voting Rights Act, to protect voters from discrimination and provide the opportunities federal law guarantees.  And when it comes to protecting the process, we have been winning.

    This year, courts around the country issued pivotal rulings to protect the franchise, including in landmark cases brought by the Justice Department and private plaintiffs in North Carolina and Texas.  In July, a federal appeals court ruled that “because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” striking down a law that “target[s] African Americans with almost surgical precision.”  And after years of litigation prolonged by Shelby County, in July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down a Texas voter ID law for violating the Voting Rights Act.  Roughly half a million Texans lacked the form of ID needed to vote.  As Sammie Louise Bates – an elderly African American woman living on a fixed income of $321 per month, who lacked the birth certificate she needed to get a Texas ID – testified, “I had to put the $42 [I needed to get the birth certificate] where it was doing the most good … because we couldn’t eat the birth certificate … and we couldn’t pay rent with the birth certificate.”  From Alabama to Connecticut, we’ve also reached critical settlements to ensure that eligible voters can register with the ease and access that federal law requires.

    In the general election last month, the Justice Department sent more than 500 personnel to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states to monitor polling places in the field.  Of course, no matter how vigorously and effectively we protect this most fundamental right – through enforcement and monitoring, with government action and support from private plaintiffs – eligible voters need to go out and exercise it.  Democracy requires active participation.  Self-government, after all, doesn’t happen by chance.  But I recognize that people need to believe in the legitimacy of government – in the guarantee that government will treat them fairly, with dignity and decency – in order to participate in the process.

    Defending the integrity of our democracy also requires protecting all people – no matter who they are, what they look like, whom they love or where they worship – from harm.  Violence against people based on their identity not only violates the law and harms individuals.  It also denies entire communities the promises of equal protection and true freedom.  Following recent heinous acts of terrorism and divisive rhetoric – we’re combating a backlash of religious discrimination targeting Muslim communities and others perceived to be Muslim.  Just two days ago, we convicted a Minneapolis man of a hate crime for writing and mailing a threatening letter to a local Islamic Center, where he threatened to “blow up your building with all you immigrants in it.”  Beyond hate crimes, this discriminatory backlash also includes bullying in schools and unlawful barriers to building houses of worship.

    For the past eight years, the Civil Rights Division has also worked tirelessly to make the promise of equal protection real for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.  Just last month, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  This law expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation.  It marked the first time that the words, “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” appeared in the United States Code.  It enhanced the legal toolkit available to prosecutors.  And it increased the ability of federal law enforcement to support our state and local partners.  In the years since, the Civil Rights Division has vigorously enforced this landmark statute.  And we continue to work with our partners on the federal, state and local levels to ensure the robust enforcement of hate crime statutes.

    Hate violence may mark the most severe form, but discrimination anywhere – and in any form – offends the Constitution and corrodes the ideals of our democracy.  In United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Justice Department argued successfully that our Constitution guarantees the equal protection of the law to all people.  In citing the Supreme Court’s previous decisions – and in recounting America’s painful history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals – we explained that bans on same-sex marriage “exclude a long-mistreated class of human beings from a legal and social status of tremendous import” and are “incompatible with the Constitution.”  And then in June 2015, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that here in America, our Constitution guarantees all people “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”  The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell stands as a beacon of light – not only for gay and lesbian individuals but for the cause of justice itself.

    The cause of justice is never static.  It is always searching for the next barrier to dismantle, for the next right to vindicate and for the next freedom to secure.  Earlier this year, I joined Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch to announce our lawsuit against North Carolina for violating the civil rights of transgender individuals.  Just like Obergefell was about more than just marriage, our challenge to H.B. 2 was about more than just bathrooms.  Justice [Anthony] Kennedy wrote in Obergefell that gay men and women have a right to “dignity in their own distinct identity.”  And, in 1964, in a case vindicating the Justice Department’s efforts to enforce the Civil Rights Act against the Heart of Atlanta Motel, which refused to let African Americans use its facilities, Justice [Arthur] Goldberg wrote that the “primary purpose” of our nation’s antidiscrimination laws “is the vindication of human dignity.”  Laws like H.B. 2 force transgender people to choose between their dignity and basic participation in public life.  The humiliation, frustration and embarrassment transgender people feel when they are denied access to a facility others of their gender are free to use – when they receive the message that they are less worthy of equal status and dignity than their peers – is the pain of discrimination and always has been.  Fighting discrimination is the mission of the Civil Rights Division, and it always has been. 

    In all of the areas I spoke about today, we – as a nation and as a people – have far more work to do.  Whether it’s in North Carolina or in countless other places across America – from rural towns to large states – this fight is centered around the cause of hope.  To me, civil rights work has always been built upon a foundation of hope.  It’s the hope that despite the zigs and the zags of our nation’s history, we have been marching forward, imperfectly yet inexorably.  The long struggle for equal justice and equal opportunity in this country has always required a deep and abiding reservoir of hope.  Hope gives us the struggle and the struggle gives us hope.  It’s the hope that this work transforms the nation, fulfills dreams and changes lives.

    While we will face new and emerging challenges to equality in the days ahead – just as we always have – civil rights work has always been designed to endure, to build new, infectious momentum in both public and private action.  And when I look at the distinguished leaders in this room, I know that with your determination, your creativity and your compassion, together we will continue to advance America’s march for progress and quest for justice.  Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at the Dedication of Ariel Rios Federal Building

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Deputy Director Thomas Brandon, for that kind introduction, and for your outstanding leadership of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).  I also want to acknowledge my colleagues from across the Department of Justice who are here today, as well as the many current and former federal and local law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces who have taken the time to join us.  And, of course, I want to thank the family of Special Agent Ariel Rios – especially his wife, Elsie, his son Frank and so many other members of the Rios family.  You honor us all with your presence.

    We are here today to rename a building.  But more importantly, we are here to honor a man.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of lawmakers, law enforcement officers, and members of the public, the headquarters of ATF will once again bear the name of Special Agent Ariel Rios. 

    This is as it should be.  In an agency known for bravery and dedication – and in the rich history of the Department of Justice – Special Agent Rios stands out for his intrepid courage, total selflessness, and steadfast integrity.  At the age of just 27, he accepted an assignment as an undercover narcotics agent in south Florida, subjecting himself to extreme stress and harrowing danger on a daily basis.  Those of you who have done undercover work know the stress, the danger, the loneliness of the work as well as the strain it places on one’s family.  Ariel Rios did that work and did it well.  He did not do it for reward or recognition – or even to have a building named after him, but because he believed in the cause of justice, a cause that he served with commitment and skill.  When he saw the challenges facing South Florida at that time and learned the task force was seeking agents, he joined, because he knew he had the skill, the experience and the judgment needed – but more importantly because he knew that he could help.  It is especially fitting that we are here on Dec. 2, because it was 34 years ago today that Special Agent Rios gave his life for that cause, when he and his partner, Special Agent Alex D’Atri, were executing an undercover operation in Miami.  Special Agent D’Atri suffered serious wounds in that operation, but he survived.  He is here with us today, and I ask all of you to join me in recognizing his valor and heroism. 

    This is the second ATF headquarters building to be named for Special Agent Rios.  By consecrating this site in his memory, we give public expression to our private feelings: our gratitude for his service; our admiration for his bravery; and our awe at his sacrifice.  The granite and steel within this foundation symbolizes his strength and determination.  The soaring glass of the atrium echoes his open heart and generous soul.  And the public-facing sign we will soon dedicate illustrates his commitment to the protection of the American people.  With this building naming today, we ensure that future generations of ATF agents and employees will be inspired by the life and example of Special Agent Ariel Rios.  And we show our determination to continue the work for which he gave his life. 

    Ultimately, that work is the most fitting memorial we can offer to the memory of Ariel Rios.  Naming this building in his honor is indeed a high tribute, but the memory of Ariel Rios lives on not simply in a structure, but in his enduring spirit – a spirit of devotion to duty; service to others; and fidelity to the law.  That spirit animated Ariel Rios in life, and it led him to keep his oath unto death.  It represents the highest aspiration of our profession – the standard by which law enforcement officers measure themselves each and every day.  And so, on this solemn occasion, let we who are gathered here today resolve to honor the memory of Special Agent Rios not only by bestowing his name upon this building, but by emulating his spirit in our work.  Let us reaffirm our commitment to the ideals he served so well.  And let us continue to build the more just, the more peaceful – the more perfect – union for which he gave his life.

    May God bless the memory of Special Agent Ariel Rios, and shelter his family in his everlasting grace.  May He bless all the fallen in our law enforcement family and protect all those who continue to serve.  And may He continue to bless the United States of America.    

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Head of the Civil Rights Division Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at the Civil Rights Division’s Annual Awards Ceremony

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon, everyone.  I want to start by thanking Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General [Bill] Baer and Deputy Attorney General [Sally Q.] Yates for joining us today and for their wise counsel and outstanding support of the Civil Rights Division.  I also want to thank Attorney General [Loretta E.] Lynch – who I know wanted to be here today and sends her regards – for her unwavering support of the division’s work.  And I want to thank all of you – the men and women who carry out the division’s work, day-in and day-out, with the utmost integrity.  For nearly six decades – during Democratic and Republican administrations, with resilience and resolve, in times of tumult and triumph, against threats of billy clubs and bullets – the Civil Rights Division has advanced America’s highest ideals of freedom, justice and equality for all.   

    In 1957 – in an era with open wounds of racism and hate, against fierce opposition and after a more than 24-hour filibuster by Senator Strom Thurmond – Congress passed the first piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.  Focused almost exclusively on voting rights, the legislation didn’t provide the tools to address widespread discrimination in employment, housing, education and other important areas.  But it did create a framework to enforce the protections that Congress would pass, that courts would defend and that America would support in the years to come.  That framework was the Civil Rights Division.  And over time those protections went into law – protections centered around the most fundamental of human aspirations: the notion that all people deserve to be treated fairly, with dignity and with decency.  They were protections designed to advance the cause of justice. 

    The cause of justice is never static.  It is always searching for the next barrier to dismantle, for the next right to vindicate and for the next freedom to secure.  That’s what President [Lyndon B.] Johnson meant when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and said, “those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning.”  That’s what President [George H.W.] Bush meant when he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and declared: “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”  And that’s what Justice [Anthony] Kennedy meant when he wrote last year in Obergefell v. Hodges that our Constitution guarantees all people “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

    For the past eight years, this Civil Rights Division has answered that same call to make the promise of justice real for every person in every community.  During a time when civil rights are at the forefront of our national public discourse, you have made extraordinary contributions.  From policing and criminal justice reform, to LGBT rights and voting, you have fought discriminatory barriers and opened doors of opportunity for some of the most vulnerable among us: people with disabilities, people of color, people living in poverty and people who speak English as a second language.  Your work has transformed the nation, fulfilled dreams and changed lives.  And in doing this work, from Appellate to Policy, you’ve showed an amazing capacity to work across section boundaries.

    You helped Hugo Ramirez – who lost his job, and then his savings and his car, because of an error with E-Verify – resolve the issue and find a new job as director of business development for a California health care provider.  In his words, you “gave me my livelihood back.”

    After Police Officer Lyndi Trischler suffered complications from a high-risk pregnancy and the city of Florence, Kentucky, denied her request for light duty, you brought a case, reached a critical settlement, won her thousands of dollars in relief and changed the policies and training for protecting future female employees of the city. 

    In a case that captured the attention of people all over the world, you brought a groundbreaking lawsuit against the state of North Carolina over H.B. 2 to vindicate the rights and defend the dignity of transgender individuals. 

    Your Olmstead enforcement helped Gabrielle – who dreamed of buying a home – find work as a grooming assistant at a dog day care and boutique, earning more than $9 per hour.  As she said, “I feel better about my life and … I ended up buying that house.”  

    A consent decree you reached with Wells Fargo created a program called CityLIFT that changed Monica’s life.  After she couldn’t buy a home for her family and lost her deposit, she felt like she “had lost everything.”  But once she learned about CityLIFT, which provides down payment assistance grants, she used the program to fulfill her dream and buy a home.  As Monica explained, “I needed for my children to know they can do anything, and for my mother to know she’s done well.”

    You changed norms in our justice system by advancing language access in state courts around the country.  Because of your work, a low-income LEP woman in Michigan no longer needs to struggle through her child custody hearing or use her son as the court interpreter.  
                                                                                               
    You won two landmark voting rights cases in Texas and North Carolina.  In Texas, Sammie Louise Bates was one of roughly half a million Texans who lacked the form of ID needed to vote.  Bates – an elderly African-American woman living on a fixed income of $321 per month – lacked the $42 for a birth certificate she needed for a Texas ID.  As she testified, “I had to put the $42 where it was doing the most good … because we couldn’t eat the birth certificate … and we couldn’t pay rent with the birth certificate.”  Now, thanks to you, Bates can vote without paying money she doesn’t have for a card she can’t afford.  
                                                                                                                        
    You supported and implemented an election monitoring program that mobilized the division and department to make sure we didn’t miss a beat – and based on your effort, we sent more than 500 personnel to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states during last month’s general election. 

    You reached a settlement agreement so that thousands of kindergarteners in Arizona will have the chance to learn English and reach their full potential.

    You negotiated a consent decree with Ferguson and released our findings letter on Baltimore – two cases that shaped a national dialogue around the devastating connections among race, poverty and injustice in policing.

    Your work brought transformative change to Ohio’s juvenile corrections system.  One young person explained the system’s “drastic change” that helped transform her from one of the worst-behaved kids to one of the best.  She went on to describe the powerful lesson of self-confidence: “When I get home I know I’m going to be able to use my new thought process because it feels so much better than doing what I used to do, being in trouble.”  

    From filings on bail reform and the criminalization of homelessness to a letter to state and local judges about the unlawful imposition of fines and fees, you have sought to ensure that no one is punished for their poverty.

    You stood up for a black gay man in Corpus Christi, Texas, who was viciously beaten because of his race and sexual orientation.  You prosecuted hate crimes targeting Muslim Americans and other vulnerable groups.  You convicted a defendant for recruiting foreign students from Kazakhstan by falsely promising clerical jobs at a made-up yoga studio and then forcing them into prostitution.  And you vindicated the rights of inmates and civilians abused and assaulted by officers who flouted the law. 
                                               
    You did extensive outreach to combat religious discrimination.  And you helped advance diversity in law enforcement by identifying common barriers and promising practices to employment in the profession.

    For just a few minutes, I want to talk about what your work has meant to me, and I want to emphasize that for the next several weeks, we still have work to do together.  During the past two plus years, you have given me the experience of a lifetime – the privilege to advance the cause of justice, to lift up the amazing work of the outstanding career men and women in the division.  It has been the most incredible two years of my life.  I cannot thank you enough – for your leadership, for your friendship and for your service to our country.  You have transformed the landscape of civil rights work in America irrevocably.  And you have done it all with grace and resolve, with compassion and empathy, with unyielding drive and relentless focus.  

    You have also given me hope.  This work is never easy.  And I know that we – as a nation and as a people – have far more work to do.  Congress didn’t create the Civil Rights Division in 1957 to solve the easy problems.  Congress created this division to tackle the toughest issues, to serve as an independent and forceful agency of justice and hope.  You cannot be an agent of change without a deep reservoir of hope.  It’s the hope that men and women today can build a more just, more inclusive and more free future for the children of tomorrow.  It’s the hope that thanks to all of you in the Civil Rights Division, people will reap the benefits of this work for generations to come – in safer streets, in desegregated schools, in fair markets and in stronger communities.  It’s the hope that despite the zigs and the zags of our nation’s history, you will continue to ensure that America marches forward, imperfectly yet inexorably.  Hope fuels the struggle and the struggle fills us with hope.

    While we will always face new and emerging challenges to equality, civil rights work is designed to endure and build momentum.  It is ironic but true that we learn the depth of our resiliency when tackling the greatest challenges.  The nation needs the Civil Rights Division and all of you to continue to make equal justice and equal opportunity a reality for all who live in the country.  Thank you for driving progress in our country.  It has been such an incredible privilege to lead this division that I love so very much working alongside such a distinguished and exemplary team of colleagues. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates Delivers Remarks at Civil Rights Division Awards Ceremony

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Vanita [Gupta], for that kind introduction – and for your extraordinary leadership of the Civil Rights Division. I so admire your confidence and clear vision for what the Division is and should be, and you’ve made the last two years some of the most impactful in the Division’s long history.

    It’s a privilege to stand with you today, and it’s a pleasure to welcome all of you to the Department of Justice – not only today’s honorees, but also the many proud friends, family members and colleagues who have joined us to celebrate this special occasion. You know better than anyone what this job entails – both the passion it inspires and the dedication it demands. Your loved ones have accepted the formidable challenge of defending – and expanding – the civil and constitutional rights of everyone who calls this nation home. Thank you for sharing them with us as they pursue that vital mission and thank you for joining us today to help honor this outstanding group of attorneys, investigators and support staff.

    Today’s awardees stood out in a crowded field of accomplishment in the Division this year – a level of accomplishment that is both wildly impressive and precisely what we have come to expect from the Civil Rights Division. I am incredibly proud of what this Division has achieved, not just in 2016, but from the earliest days of the Obama Administration. In fact, since this will be my last opportunity to speak to all of you as a group, if you’ll indulge me for a few minutes, I’d like to take a step back, and take stock of some of the many ways that this Division has used its inimitable strengths and boundless talent to write a new chapter in our nation’s history. This was already a storied Division. But these last eight years have added to that story in once-unimaginable ways.

    When former Attorney General [Eric] Holder and former Assistant Attorney General [Tom] Perez arrived in 2009, they came ready to rev up the engine of the Civil Rights Division – and many of you were ready to be empowered, too. It took a serious commitment to restoring this Division’s traditional role as the conscience of the Justice Department. AG Holder liked to refer to the Civil Rights Division as the “crown jewel” of the Department, but you all know that that reputation didn’t come easily. It was hard-earned and painstakingly built by many of the people sitting in this hall today.

    In 2009, it was impossible to imagine just how far we’d come, just how far you would take us, in eight short years. For example, at the dawn of this Administration, only two states – Massachusetts and Connecticut – allowed same-sex couples to marry. But in the years that followed, thanks to the courage and struggle of leaders both within and far beyond these walls, we saw that number climb rapidly to 50 – and 50 is where it will stay.

    Building on that success, the Civil Rights Division took a groundbreaking stance this year in support of the fundamental equality and dignity of the transgender community. That’s exactly what the Civil Rights Division was created to do. And if you ask me, in the not-too-distant future, the nation will look back on our position and wonder how this issue could ever have been so fiercely contested.

    Of course, adversity often comes with the job. On voting rights, we all remember the day in 2013 when the Division and the country suffered a major setback in the protection of the most fundamental of all rights in the Shelby County case. While the Supreme Court eliminated our most powerful tool to combat discrimination in our voting laws, true to the spirit of this Division, you absorbed the blow, sharpened our remaining tools and stood ready the next day to fight even harder to combat voter suppression. And with what feels like new assaults every day to the voting rights that are at the very foundation of our democracy, the potentially disenfranchised need you now more than ever.

    In recent years, as the interaction between the police and the communities they serve has revealed a festering distrust that threatens the safety of those communities and our police officers and undermines confidence in law enforcement, the nation has looked to the Civil Rights Division for leadership born of experience, and guidance born of expertise. You have taken up the charge and while there is still much to be done, you have offered a blueprint for moving forward with mutual trust and respect.

    And, when it comes to our nation’s criminal justice system, this Division has done vital work to ensure that we treat all our citizens with the fairness and compassion they deserve. Whether it’s scrutinizing bail practices, making our legal views known in local courts, or giving guidance on courthouse fines and fees, you are lighting a path forward for courts and law enforcement bodies nationwide and demonstrating how critical it is that we end the criminalization of poverty once and for all.

    In these and so many other ways, this Division has made a powerful difference by fighting for the core rights and freedoms of every individual – no matter where they live, who they are, or how much money they make. These are not just theoretical concepts. In every corner of our country, from schools to mosques, in housing and lending markets, from border areas to boardrooms, you have made real – and lasting – differences in the lives of the people of our country.

    Recounting these past victories, I know that many of you are thinking of the future, as well. With change on the horizon, you might be uncertain about whether these accomplishments will last. But I don’t believe that these achievements are as precarious as you might assume. The progress that you have forged is now woven into the fabric of our country. The Supreme Court has held that the right to marry the person you love is protected within the timeless words of our nation’s founding document. The injustices of poverty that you’ve brought to the nation’s attention will not be soon forgotten. Transgender Americans will always remember the recognition and validation they felt when the Department of Justice stood with them. And the citizens of this country will demand that every American’s right to vote is not something merely recited in our Constitution, but rather that this cornerstone of our democracy lives and breathes in every community.

    One of the promises we make to young people who come to the Department – whether as interns, paralegals, assistants, or attorneys – is that, if they’re here long enough, they’ll get their chance to touch history. It’s no secret that, in the Civil Rights Division, that chance can come around more often than elsewhere. But what distinguishes all of you is not that you had a chance to touch history – but that, when you did, you grabbed hold of it with confidence and bent it, inexorably, toward justice.

    Not long ago, I was drawn to visit the Lincoln Memorial again. I stood on that step where Dr. King stood for the March on Washington and looked out over the reflecting pool. And I thought about all of you. You are civil rights leaders in our day; you are trailblazers. You open minds and change hearts through your unshakable commitment to fairness and justice, to opportunity and equality. That commitment is contagious – and your voice  as the protectors of our fundamental rights is every bit as potent now and in the years to come as it has been over the years that have passed.

    Come January 20th, political appointees like Vanita and I will be private citizens. But the fact of the matter is that political appointees are just a tiny fraction of this legendary workforce. It’s you, the career men and women of the Department of Justice, who have always defined this Department –  defined who we are and what we stand for. So even though I will no longer be a part of this Department, I, like millions of your fellow citizens, will be counting on you going forward – counting on you to continue to bend the arc toward justice. And I know that responsibility couldn’t be in better hands. I take heart in that. And you should take heart in yourselves. 

    I know that you have fought hard battles. But progress without resistance is just inevitability – simple and easy.  But nothing you have achieved in these eight years was simple or easy. None of it was inevitable. It happened because you made it happen. Because you made it happen.

    Thank you once again for allowing me to join you on this important occasion and for allowing me the privilege, for a moment in our nation’s history, of standing shoulder to shoulder with you. It’s an honor to count you as colleagues and friends.

    At this time, I’ll turn things over to your truly fearless leader, Vanita Gupta.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell Delivers Remarks Highlighting Cybercrime Enforcement at Center for Strategic and International Studies

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, and thank you, Jim [Lewis], for that kind introduction.  I am pleased to be here speaking to you today, and I want to thank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) for having me.  

    Over the past two and a half years, I have had the honor of serving as the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division – and with that, the responsibility of ensuring that the division and its over 700 prosecutors have the support and authorities they need to fulfill their responsibilities to the American people.  I have also had the opportunity to see first-hand the dedication, rigor, intelligence and respect that America’s prosecutors bring to their work every day.  As my time as the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division comes to a close, I am incredibly proud of where the division stands today and all that we have accomplished together.

    One constant truth about investigating and prosecuting crime is that it is never without its challenges, although the precise nature of the difficulties and obstacles we face changes with the times.  Today, some of the most significant hurdles we encounter relate to technology and the Internet.  

    Innovation in computing, the Internet, and related services has had tremendous benefits for our economy, our ability to connect with others, and the convenience, efficiency, and security of our everyday lives.  It has also transformed how we in law enforcement do our jobs by expanding our ability to detect, investigate and prosecute criminal activity.  

    However, these same innovations permit criminals to more easily victimize Americans, including from afar, while concealing their identities and enabling destruction of evidence.  We face an enormous task in responding to these new threats – ranging from botnets and ransomware to online child sexual exploitation and firearms trafficking, to name just a few – and that task is not getting any easier.  This morning I will focus on four challenges that have been and must continue to be the center of our work if we intend to succeed: 
    •    First, the growth of sophisticated, global cyber threats; 
    •    Second, dangerous loopholes in our legal authorities; 
    •    Third, the widespread use of warrant-proof encryption; and, 
    •    Fourth, inefficient cross-border access to electronic evidence.

    As I will explain in more detail, the past few years have marked some significant progress in some of these areas.  We have grown more nimble and effective in cooperative international law enforcement efforts to bring cyber criminals to justice and remediate cybercrime.  And we have managed to effect some targeted and common-sense improvements in legal authorities.  But in other areas, the challenges remain, and in some cases have become more prominent.  Let me begin with the threat.  The global nature of the Internet means that criminals now can easily victimize more people within the United States in more dangerous ways, all without ever setting foot here.  Some of the most significant criminal activity in recent years is the result of sophisticated criminal groups reaching across our borders from perceived safe harbors.  As we rely more and more on network communications to handle virtually every aspect of our lives, the cost of cybercrime will only rise – to over two trillion globally by 2019, according to some estimates – and the United States is a uniquely attractive target.

    We have responded first and foremost by aggressively identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting offenders.  This past October, for example, the Russian cybercriminal Roman Seleznev was convicted by a jury in Seattle.  Seleznev was a hacker who, from the other side of the world, pilfered data for millions of payment cards from the computer systems of small business owners across America – a crime that strikes at the trust and security of our everyday financial transactions.  Seleznev was the son of a member of the Russian parliament, and the Russian government filed diplomatic protests and tried to pressure us into releasing him.  But that’s not how justice in America works, and he is now in an American prison.

    We recognize that we cannot prosecute our way out of cybercrime, but prosecution must remain an integral component of our response to global cyber threats.  That is why foreign hackers like “Guccifer” – who hacked into the email and social media accounts of about a hundred Americans, including two former U.S. presidents – as well as Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitriy Smilianets – who, along with co-conspirators, conducted a worldwide hacking scheme that compromised more than 160 million credit card numbers – have likewise found themselves within the reach of American law enforcement.  Thanks to the work of our colleagues in the National Security Division, the same holds true for individuals like Su Bin – who conspired with Chinese military hackers to steal cutting-edge U.S. aircraft designs – and Ardit Ferizi – who shared stolen PII belonging to 1,300 U.S. military and government personnel with a member of ISIL, for publication on a hit list.  All have now been brought to the United States to face justice.  

    The department’s strong track record in this area is a critical deterrent to would-be attackers.  Over the last twenty years, for example, our Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) – the centerpiece of our prosecutorial response to criminal cyber threats – has successfully prosecuted cases involving more than one billion stolen pieces of information, including payment card data, email addresses and social security numbers – more than three pieces of data for every American alive today.

    Our international partnerships make this work possible.  And they have been key in another way as well.  Even when prosecution is not yet an option – for example, because we have been unable to identify or apprehend a criminal target – we have developed operational expertise in disrupting cybercriminal infrastructure in the United States and abroad.  For example, we have worked hand-in-hand with our foreign partners to address technical threats like botnets, so-called “bulletproof” hosts, Darknet markets and international hacking forums.  

    Indeed, just last week, the department led a multinational operation to dismantle a vast network of dedicated criminal servers known as “Avalanche,” which allegedly hosted more than two dozen of the world’s most dangerous and persistent malware campaigns.  The Avalanche network served clients operating as many as 500,000 infected computers on a daily basis and is associated with monetary losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.  We were joined in this effort by investigators and prosecutors from more than 40 jurisdictions across the globe.  We must maintain existing international law enforcement cooperation – and develop new mechanisms to work with foreign partners – if we hope to continue these successes.

    These efforts have also benefitted from growth in our technical and investigative capacity.  The Criminal Division has steadily increased resources for CCIPS, along with its in-house Cybercrime Lab, over the last two years.  The Cybercrime Lab has become the go-to resource across U.S. law enforcement for intractable problems in accessing and understanding digital evidence, whether that means uncovering evidence that a defendant accessed online terrorist radicalization materials to rebut a claim of entrapment, or cracking passwords to dozens of devices that hold key evidence of serious crimes.

    We have also found that augmenting our own expertise and legal authorities with insight from private sector institutions allows us to identify and develop new, creative responses.  For example, in 2014, the FBI, in conjunction with a coalition of nearly a dozen foreign countries and a group of elite computer security firms, dismantled the Gameover Zeus botnet.  That botnet, which infected more than one million computers around the world, inflicted over $100 million in losses on American victims alone, and was responsible for the spread of the Cryptolocker ransomware.  The Gameover Zeus operation represents what we can achieve when law enforcement agencies collaborate with private sector experts, and indeed, many private organizations provided similar assistance in the recent Avalanche take-down.  I hope that it will continue to serve as a model for the department’s future work.

    This relationship works in both directions.  The investigative experience of our CCIPS prosecutors can offer important lessons for private sector entities.  In addition, navigating the federal laws that govern network monitoring practices – laws in which CCIPS specializes – can be fraught for organizations seeking to improve their cybersecurity.  That is why, two years ago, we created the Cybersecurity Unit, a group of CCIPS prosecutors who can leverage their case-related experience to develop and share practical cybersecurity advice with the private sector.  The Unit has also played an integral role in implementation of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).  So not only have we benefitted from private sector experts for our operational needs, but we have made a practice of sharing our knowledge base as well.

    Even as the department addresses technical obstacles to preventing and prosecuting cybercrime, however, we confront a second challenge: arbitrary gaps in the law that frustrate some of our most pressing investigations.  One example of such a loophole was the venue provision of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. 

    As that Rule existed prior to Dec. 1, 2016, when law enforcement sought court approval for a search warrant, it generally was required to seek authorization from a court sitting in the same geographic district where the property to be searched was located.   This Rule made perfect sense in dealing with the physical world.  But in the cyber-world, we increasingly face scenarios where criminals use technology to hide the location of their computers, meaning that we could not know where the computers were located.  In those circumstances, federal law did not clearly identify which judge could authorize a search.   

    Similarly, we regularly encounter crimes like mass hacking through botnets that are carried out in multiple districts at once, all across the country.  But in order to respond in a timely, comprehensive manner, the prior version of the Rule arguably required authorities to obtain a warrant in each district – up to 94 in all, across 9 time zones, ranging from the Virgin Islands to Guam.  

    Last week, a three year effort, spearheaded by the Criminal Division, and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, culminated in a targeted, procedural fix to the venue provisions of the Rule to ensure that technology does not render our investigative abilities obsolete.  The update to the Rule does not alter the probable cause or other standards we must meet to obtain a search warrant.   What the Rule does change is that now, when criminals hide the location of their computers through anonymizing technology, we don’t have to figure out in which federal district the computers are physically located before we can act to stop criminal activity.  Likewise, when a criminal deploys a botnet that indiscriminately infects computers nationwide – as many botnets now do – we don’t have to go to as many as 94 different judges. 

    The need to update Rule 41 was not theoretical.  Today, dozens of websites on Tor – a proxy network – openly distribute images of child rape and sexual exploitation, where they are frequented by tens of thousands of pedophiles.  These sites can thrive in the open because proxy networks, like Tor, hide the locations of the criminals’ servers and the identities of their administrators and users.  While law enforcement – and the general public – can easily find images of child sexual exploitation by visiting one of these sites, we often cannot locate and shut down the websites or identify and apprehend the abusers.  More troubling, the child victims stand little chance of rescue.

    The recent investigation of “Playpen,” a Tor site used by more than 100,000 pedophiles to encourage child sexual abuse and trade sexually explicit images of that abuse, illustrates why a Rule 41 fix was necessary.  In that case, authorities were able to wrest control of the site from the administrators, and then obtained court approval to use a remote search tool to retrieve limited information, including the user’s IP address, only if a user accessed child pornography on the site.  This enabled a traditional, real-world investigation, leading to more than 200 active prosecutions and the identification or rescue of at least 49 American children who were subject to sexual abuse.  

    Yet in some of the resulting cases, federal courts relying on the language of the prior version of Rule 41 found that even though the probable cause and other standards for obtaining a warrant were satisfied, evidence obtained in searches nevertheless had to be excluded because the judges who issued warrants lacked venue over the computers, which turned out to be physically located outside their geographic districts.  This is a perverse result, as it would mean that criminals who are savvy enough to hide their locations – which is not difficult given current technologies – could place themselves beyond the reach of law enforcement.  

    This is a good example of why the amendments to Rule 41 are such a crucial step forward.  They make clear which courts are available to consider whether a particular warrant application comports with the Fourth Amendment, without altering in any way the substantive requirements for – or privacy protections provided by – a warrant.  This will ensure that criminals who use anonymizing technologies are not immune from justice, and that threats like botnets are not too big to investigate and remediate effectively.

    This fix is a not a cure-all, however.  Our response to cyber threats requires revisiting laws that simply did not anticipate and cannot adjust to modern technology.  We must continue to move forward – not backward – to ensure that our laws protect Americans from criminals, and not the other way around.

    I now want to turn to some challenges that, despite the best efforts of many, will continue to confront policymakers in the years to come.  As society’s use of computers and the Internet has grown, so too has the importance of digital evidence in criminal investigations.  In nearly every criminal investigation we undertake at the federal level – from homicides and kidnappings to drug trafficking, organized crime, financial fraud and child exploitation – critical information comes from smart phones, computers and online communications, often instead of physical evidence.  Yet, these materials are increasingly unavailable to law enforcement as a result of certain implementations of encryption, even when we have a warrant to examine them.

    This is because, in an attempt to market products and services as protective of personal privacy and data security, companies increasingly are offering products with built-in encryption technologies that preclude access to data even when a court has issued a search warrant.  Service providers with more than a billion user accounts, that transmit tens of billions of messages per day around the world, now advertise themselves as unable to comply with warrants.  And device manufacturers that have placed hundreds of millions of products in the market have embraced the same principle.  We in law enforcement often describe this sort of encryption as “warrant-proof encryption.”  

    Let me be clear: the Criminal Division is on the front lines of the fight against cybercrime.  We recognize that the development and adoption of strong encryption is essential to counteracting cyber threats and to promote our overall safety and privacy.  But certain implementations of encryption pose an undeniable and growing threat to our ability to protect the American people.  Our inability to access such data can stop our investigations and prosecutions in their tracks.

    Inaction is not a suitable response.  Our occasional success in accessing information protected by seemingly “warrant-proof encryption” is unpredictable and inadequate.  There are devices in evidence lockers across the country that remain locked.  

    As the President reminded us recently, the Government has different responsibilities – a different “balance sheet” and different “stakeholders” – than a corporation.  There is nothing wrong with companies pursuing profits and marketing strategies, but no one should expect that they will take into account all of the societal interests that are at stake.  And that is especially true for our public safety mission.  Our ability to protect Americans from crime has become dependent, in thousands of cases, on the business decisions of for-profit corporations.  More troublingly, even when companies have the technical ability to reasonably assist us in accessing encrypted information, they have refused to do so for fear of “tarnishing” their image.  Regardless of which side of this issue you are on, we can all agree that market-driven decisions are not and have never been a substitute for sound public safety policies. 

    Business decisions made by for-profit companies have had enormous effects on our public safety in other ways as well.  Data held by major Internet service providers can be crucial to identifying and holding accountable the perpetrators of virtually every federal crime we handle.  Increasingly, however, American providers and other providers subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are storing such information outside the United States, and not always at rest and in the same location.  The data can be partitioned and stored in multiple locations, or moved about on an ongoing basis, and some providers may not even know where all data relating to a particular user is at a given time.  

    It is this last challenge – foreign-stored digital evidence – that I will close with today.  The department has worked diligently to increase the cross-border availability of data, through mechanisms like the 24/7 Network, which facilitates the preservation of digital evidence, as well as mutual legal assistance treaties and the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which enhance international cooperation in obtaining that evidence.  The Criminal Division has also directed additional resources toward a dedicated cyber mutual legal assistance unit in our Office of International Affairs, which has seen a 1,000 percent increase in incoming requests for computer records since 2000.

    But while these are important crime-fighting tools, they have significant shortcomings.  The United States has mutual legal assistance treaties with less than half the countries in the world, some of which place limitations on when assistance is available or the types of evidence that can be obtained.  Even then, obtaining evidence can take months, if not years.  Ireland, for example, reports that in routine cases it takes 15 to 18 months to execute a request for assistance from a foreign country.  In less experienced or less cooperative countries, the process can take even longer.  Sometimes we never receive a response at all.  

    Recently, the difficulties caused by foreign-stored data for public safety have become more acute.  In July, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in the so-called “Microsoft Ireland” case, held that U.S. authorities cannot use a search warrant issued by a U.S. court pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (SCA) to compel a U.S. service provider, such as Microsoft, to produce data that it chooses to store for its own business purposes (and typically without the knowledge or input of its subscribers) outside the United States.

    So, what is already a difficult and time-consuming process of gathering electronic evidence may now also become an impossible one, for both the United States and our partners.  Since the Microsoft decision was handed down, U.S. providers such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have refused to produce information that they have chosen to store abroad in response to search warrants issued by courts even outside the Second Circuit.  This has been the case even in instances where the account-holder was an American citizen residing in the United States, and when the crime under investigation is carried out on American soil.  And this includes warrants obtained on behalf of foreign countries pursuant to mutual legal assistant requests.

    U.S. law generally does not require our providers to store this data in a particular location or make it accessible in any particular way.  But as a result, the ability of law enforcement to effectively investigate serious crime may now be determined entirely by a provider’s data management practices, well-intentioned or not.  One major American provider, for example, is unable to determine the country in which foreign-stored data is located; and even if it could, the data is frequently moved and may not be in the same country from day to day.  Under the Second Circuit’s decision, a SCA warrant is not available.  But sending an MLAT request to a foreign country could result – after months of delay – in a notification that the relevant data is no longer there.

    It is for this reason that, in October, the department filed a petition for the case to be reheard by the entire Second Circuit en banc.  It is also why we intend to submit legislation to Congress to address the decision’s significant public safety implications.  This issue must be resolved before we move to other important initiatives, such as legislation to implement a cross-border data agreement with the United Kingdom.

    Looking forward, I cannot predict how the rehearing petition, or the broader concerns implicated by the Microsoft decision, will play out.  And I suspect that, whether the issue relates to warrant-proof encryption or cross-border access to evidence, reaching a resolution will be challenging.  But these decisions must be made in the policy arena, not by the private sector alone.  We cannot allow changing technologies or the economic interests of the private sector to overwhelm larger policy issues relating to the needs of public safety and national security.  And we must let government fulfill its fundamental responsibilities to protect the American people.

    I know that the panel to follow will focus on some of these challenges for the future, but let me offer my own thoughts here.  In each of these areas, we must proceed thoughtfully and balance multiple different legitimate interests.  Yet several basic principles should be obvious.  First, sitting back and doing nothing is not an acceptable option.  The world is changing around us, and those seeking to do harm are evolving with it; if those responsible for ensuring public safety do not have the same ability to adapt, public safety will suffer.  Second, these changes pose policy challenges, and we need to develop policy responses.  Rather than let evolutions in technology dictate our responses, we must think ahead as a society and develop appropriate frameworks to address new and upcoming challenges before they become crises.  And finally, when there are multiple interests at stake – public safety, cybersecurity, international comity and civil rights and civil liberties – we cannot allow the most consequential decisions to be made by a single stakeholder, or leave them to the whim of the commercial marketplace.  We would never tolerate that approach in other areas of importance to society, and we should not do so here.  Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Memorial Service for Former Attorney General Janet Reno

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, everyone. To President [Bill] Clinton; Sandy D’Alemberte; distinguished guests; and most importantly Maggy [Reno Hurchalla], Hunter [Reno] and all of Ms. Reno’s family: I bring you greetings and remembrances from her Department of Justice family.

    Early in her career, someone famously told Janet Reno that “ladies don’t become lawyers.” This being free advice, she took it for exactly what it was worth. And I am so grateful – as is our nation – that she did. Further, it is absolutely fitting that history books will pay no notice to whoever uttered that pithy absurdity, but they will certainly pay tribute to Janet Reno. In so many ways – as the first woman to serve as Attorney General in American history; as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer in a tumultuous and eventful time; and as a straight-talking, no-nonsense public servant of the highest integrity – Ms. Reno was a historic figure. She broke barriers and defied expectations. The Department of Justice she left was one that was stronger, wiser, and more compassionate than the one she had inherited.

    Janet Reno was undoubtedly aware of her historic role. But she never let her place in history – or anyone for that matter – define her. The weight of her responsibilities never got in the way of her fundamental kindness, a fact that so many department employees still recall. And in a life filled with achievement, one of her proudest was that she cared for her mother as she was dying of cancer, and ensured that her final days were spent in comfort, peace and love. Because she always knew that what really mattered in this life were the connections we have with one another. That acknowledgement of those connections – the blessed ties that bind all of us, as caretaker of our loved ones, as stewards of this land and of the law, as Americans – was at the core of her strength.

    When I was thinking of my remarks for today – in the five-minute time frame Maggy so generously gave me – I thought about focusing on the meetings I had with Ms. Reno around her conference room table, now mine. I thought about focusing on the many consequential matters I saw her consider with wisdom and grace. But what kept coming to my mind and to my heart were the first time I met her and the last time I saw her.

    When Janet Reno became Attorney General, I was a young federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. A few years into a job that I loved, I must confess that to me and so many of my colleagues, especially the women, Main Justice was a somewhat mysterious place down I-95 populated mostly by dark-suited men whose main distinguishing characteristic seemed to be whether they were grey or whether they were balding. When Janet Reno came onto the scene – a woman, a Southerner, an original who famously “didn’t do spin” – we were electrified. I was inspired by her. I wanted to be like her. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to achieve 6’2”.  I had to settle for being Attorney General instead. It has not been a bad trade.

    I first met Janet Reno at the National Black Prosecutors Conference, being held in Washington in her first year in office. She spoke to us about the importance of having prosecutors who based their decisions on what was best for the country, not what was best for their careers. She told us never to forget the many experiences and backgrounds that had brought us there, because that would be our strength as prosecutors. After her talk, she was swarmed with well-wishers. We wanted to shake her hand, to take a photo, to just be near her. And she stayed and spoke with every person who wanted her attention. She posed for pictures, and she asked each of us, thoughtfully and seriously, about ourselves. Maya Angelou once said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Even today, no one in that room has forgotten how Ms. Reno made us feel – she made us feel valued, she made us feel heard, she made us feel that we could do anything.

    That was one of her great gifts. She was one of the best listeners you’ll ever meet. The last time I saw her was earlier this year, in the house her mother had built. She was dealing with difficult health challenges, but she didn’t want to discuss her own health or make idle chitchat. She wanted to hear about the Department of Justice. She wanted to hear about our work in civil rights and in community policing. She wanted to hear about the tough decisions before our department – the kind of tough decisions she had faced every day. And as I spoke, she listened – with that same patient, intent gaze I remembered from so many years ago. And because it was a good day for her, we were able to speak together as well. And as she had so many years ago, she made me feel that I could do anything.

    I know that all of us here today have similar stories of how she inspired us in ways large and small. We’re here to honor and remember her. And both the lesson and the challenge she has left for all of us is to decide – how will our actions make others feel? So, as we leave here today with our hearts still full, let us do so with a mission. A mission to carry Janet Reno’s legacy with us, and make the people in our lives feel valued, feel heard, and feel that they, too, can do anything.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Interfaith Event on the Justice Department’s Commitment to Combatting Hate Crimes

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Imam [Mohamed] Magid, for your kind words; for your hospitality in welcoming me today; and for your outstanding leadership of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, especially during what I know has been a difficult time for many Muslim Americans.  I am proud to stand beside you today.  I also want to thank all of the inspiring faith leaders that we just heard from for their moving words.  And I want to thank all of you – faith leaders and community leaders; activists and advocates – for all that you do, each and every day, to strengthen, empower and unite our communities.

    It is truly inspiring to stand in this space, in front of this audience.  This morning, we have gathered under this roof, in this mosque, as men and women of all races, creeds and colors.  Some of us were born in the United States, our immigration status having been resolved several generations ago; some of us came here more recently in search of a better life.  We may speak different languages; we may read from different books of scripture; we may call our God by different names.  But we all love this country and the ideals for which it stands.  We all want our children to lead lives of safety and opportunity.   We all proudly claim the title of American.  And we all hold, as Justice Brandeis proclaimed, “the most important political office … that of the private citizen.”  In this assembly, I see a living expression of the American promise: the conviction that every person’s dignity is inherent and equal. 

    That promise is as old as our nation itself.  Twelve score years ago, our forefathers boldly proclaimed that “all men are created equal.”  But of course, when those words were written, a large gap existed between America’s founding ideals and America’s founding reality.  The very hand that put those words on parchment had also signed the deeds for the sale and purchase of other human beings.  For many of our ancestors – for women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants and countless others – the promise of American life rang hollow. 

    But the declaration’s revolutionary statement of equality was too plain and powerful – too “self-evident”, in Jefferson’s words – for that state of affairs to endure.  Generation after generation of Americans heard the promise set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and they demanded that it be fulfilled: women who endured ridicule and condescension for seeking the ballot; black soldiers who defended freedom overseas, only to return home to a nation that wouldn’t let them vote, and that sometimes repaid their service with angry violence; marchers who braved the jaws of police dogs at Birmingham, and the sting of cattle prods at Selma; LGBTQ individuals who fought for their civil rights at the Stonewall Inn – through the courage and determination of these and countless others who have gone before us, we have slowly built a society that more fully reflects our founding creed of liberty and justice for all.

    That does not mean our work is finished; as you are all well aware, the opposite is true.  We all know this work is never finished.   Just last month, the FBI released its statistics on the number of hate crimes committed in 2015.  The report was a sobering indication of how much work remains to be done.  Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased six percent from 2014.  That figure includes increases in hate crimes committed against Jewish Americans, African Americans, and LGBTQ Americans.  And, perhaps most troublingly of all, it showed a 67 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Muslim Americans, and the highest total of anti-Muslim incidents since 2001, when 9/11 spurred so many reprehensible acts.  And we know that there are many more hate crimes in communities across the country that go unreported.  

    In addition, all of us have seen the flurry of recent news reports about alleged hate crimes and harassment – from hijabs yanked off of women’s heads; to swastikas sprayed on the sides of synagogues; to slurs and epithets hurled in classrooms.  The FBI is working with local authorities to review multiple incidents, and our agents and prosecutors are working to assess whether particular cases constitute violations of federal law.  

    These incidents – and these statistics – should be of the deepest concern to every American.  Because hate crimes don’t just target individuals.  They tear at the fabric of our communities, and they also stain our dearest ideals and our nation’s very soul.  There is a pernicious thread that connects the act of violence against a woman wearing a hijab to the assault on a transgender man to the tragic deaths of nine innocent African Americans during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina.  As President Obama has said, it is “the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity – the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same hopes and fears, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.”  The reason we have a cross-section of so many leaders from different faiths here today is because we believe so deeply in certain common values.  Regardless of our faith, we believe that we must treat others as we would wish to be treated.  Regardless of our faith, we believe that every individual is precious.  Regardless of our faith, we believe in our common humanity, and we believe that, in the famous words of Martin Luther King Jr., “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  That is why the Department of Justice – and the entire Obama Administration – regards hate crimes with the utmost seriousness, whether they target individuals because of their race, their religion, their gender or their sexual orientation.  And that is why we have worked tirelessly over the last several years to bring those who perpetrate these heinous deeds to justice.

    A cornerstone of that work is investigating and prosecuting hate crimes against Muslim Americans, as well as those perceived to be Muslim.  Muslim Americans are our friends and family members, our doctors and nurses, our police officers and firefighters.  They own businesses and teach in classrooms.  Thousands of them have fought for the American flag.  Many have died defending it.  And yet, too often – especially in the last year, following a number of tragic terrorist incidents, and amidst an increase in divisive and fearful rhetoric – we have seen Muslim Americans targeted and demonized simply because of their faith.  And to impose a blanket stereotype on all members of any faith because of the actions of those who pervert that faith is to go backwards in our thinking and our discourse, and to repudiate the founding ideals of this country.  This is unacceptable in a nation whose Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of religion in its very first clause, and the Department of Justice has vigorously prosecuted a number of these repugnant acts.   

    In recent months, our Civil Rights Division – led by Vanita Gupta, who is here with us today – along with our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, have convicted a Connecticut man for firing a high-powered rifle at a mosque; a Florida man for threatening to firebomb two mosques and shoot their congregants; a Missouri man for the arson of a local mosque; and a North Carolina man who yelled at a woman and ripped off her hijab on an airplane.  And in October, our National Security Division and the U.S Attorney’s Office in Kansas charged three men in connection with their plot to detonate bombs at an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, which included a mosque where many members of the local Somali immigrant community gather to pray.  These are only a few examples of the Justice Department’s recent prosecutions.  There are many more matters that we, often in close partnership with our state and local law enforcement partners, are investigating.  

    The Justice Department is also working to protect the rights of religious communities to build houses of worship without unlawful interference or harassment.  Unfortunately, that task has only become more urgent in recent years.  Members of the Civil Rights Division have heard repeatedly about more overt discrimination in both the tone and framing of objections to planned religious institutions, especially mosques and Islamic centers.  Our primary tool to combat such discrimination is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA.  Since September 2010, the department has opened 50 RLUIPA land-use investigations, filed ten lawsuits involving land use, and filed eight amicus briefs in private parties’ RLUIPA cases to inform courts about the law’s provisions and requirements.  In the last six years, 38 percent of the Civil Rights Division’s RLUIPA land use cases involved mosques or Islamic schools – a dramatic increase over the percentage of such cases brought during the previous decade. 

    Religious institutions aren’t the only vulnerable spaces we are determined to keep free of hatred and bias.  We all know that in order for our children to learn and thrive, they need access to safe and inclusive classrooms.  Earlier this year, the Civil Rights Division launched a new initiative with our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices that will significantly advance our ability to address religious discrimination in schools.  And our Community Relations Service, or CRS – led by Paul Monteiro, who is also here with us today – works to ease tensions and promote understanding in communities and schools that have been rocked by traumatic incidents.  For example, after a student was allegedly forced to remove her hijab in a school in Massachusetts, the school invited CRS to present its Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Cultural Awareness Program to the school’s staff.  CRS also recently appointed its first ever National Program Manager for Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian Communities, and I am so pleased that Harpreet Singh Mokha has joined us here today.   

    We are also concerned with crimes against our LGBT brothers and sisters.  In October, we commemorated the seventh anniversary of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to included crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  Here, too, we have been active, bringing hate crimes cases in a number of states around the country.  Tomorrow, I am traveling to New York to meet with LGBT youth, and to reaffirm the department’s steadfast commitment to the rights and well-being of all LGBTQ Americans.

    These are all important efforts, and their impact has been amplified by our efforts to train local and federal law enforcement agencies in how to recognize and investigate hate crimes; how to engage with communities; and how to encourage better hate crime reporting and data collection.  These initiatives have helped us to build stronger partnerships between law enforcement officers and the communities we serve, and I am hopeful that those partnerships will stand as a bulwark against hate crimes for years to come.

    I am encouraged by what we have accomplished together over the last eight years.  But I also know that we face many challenges in the years ahead – challenges that will require the Department of Justice to remain an active force for good in communities from coast to coast.  Our federal hate crimes laws are among the most powerful tools we have for creating a more just and equal nation, and career Justice Department prosecutors will continue to enforce them.

    Nevertheless, I know that many Americans are feeling uncertainty and anxiety as we witness the recent eruption of divisive rhetoric and hateful deeds.  I know that many Americans are wondering if they are in danger simply because of what they look like or where they pray.  I know that some are wondering whether the progress we have made at such great cost, and over so many years, is in danger of sliding backwards.  

    I understand those feelings.  I know that as we continue to demand a nation where all people are truly treated equally, we will be met with prejudice, bigotry and condemnation.  

    It is true that there is nothing foreordained about our march towards a more just and peaceful future.  There never has been.  Our centuries-long project of creating a more perfect union was not the product of fate, or destiny.  It was the result of countless individuals making the choice to stand up, to demand recognition, to refuse to rest until they knew that their children were inheriting a nation that was more tolerant, more inclusive and more equal.  That is why it is so fitting that we are here today in this beautiful house of worship, this place of deep and abiding faith.  It has been faith that has sustained this fight since the beginning.  

    Faith – a small band of colonies could separate from the most powerful nation on earth and chart a course of freedom and equality.

    Faith – a new nation and its ideas could survive a bloody and divisive civil war that arose from its original sin of slavery.  And not just faith – the works that made it so when there was no guarantee of success. 

    I have been fortunate to have such people in my life.  Two of them happen to be faith leaders: my grandfather and my father.  They both lived at a time when their country regarded them as less than fully human, simply because of the color of their skin.  And they both did their part to make the United States just a little more free and a little more fair.  In 1930s North Carolina – where the law offered little protection to people of color – my grandfather used to hide neighbors in trouble under the floorboards of his house.  My own father let civil rights activists meet in the basement of his church in Greensboro, North Carolina.  

    These were acts of enormous courage.  But they were also acts of enormous faith and hope.  Here were two men living in a country that put obstacles in their path to prevent them from voting; that told them they could only use certain drinking fountains; that told them that when the Declaration of Independence said, “All men are created equal,” it wasn’t referring to them.  But they knew what those words meant, and they chose to act accordingly.  They knew their portion of fear.  They knew their portion of anger.  And yet they never lost their hope that although their country was far from perfect, it was certainly capable of perfection.  They both risked a great deal for that faith – never knowing if would work out or not – never imagining that the daughter of one and the granddaughter of the other would one day become the chief law enforcement officer of the united states.

    My friends, that hope is still alive in our country.  You and I know what the declaration means when it says, “All men are created equal.”  You and I know what the Constitution means when it says, “We, the people.”  So let us leave here united in our confidence, inspired by our faith and strengthened by our courage.  Let us leave here with a renewed commitment to demanding nothing less than a country that is true to its founding promises.  And let us leave here in hope – the hope that has brought the United States so far in the last 240 years; the hope that I am confident will carry us even further in the days to come.

    Will this work be hard?  It has always been hard. 

    Will there be challenges ahead?  We have always known that “the price of freedom is constant vigilance.”  

    Will we persevere?  We always do.

    Let me recall a song from my faith, made famous by Mahalia Jackson: “Lord, don’t move the mountain, but give me the strength to climb.”

    I want to thank you for allowing me to spend a few moments with you today to talk about the country we all love, and the future we all cherish.  Thank you for all that you do in your congregations and your communities to vindicate the promise of American life.  And let me assure you that long after I leave the Attorney General’s seat, I will continue to stand beside you in the cause of liberty and justice for all.  Thank you.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: New Carrollton Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Kidnapping Minors, Producing Child Sexual Abuse Material

    Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime News

    Greenbelt, Maryland – On January 31, 2025, U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman sentenced Julian Everett, 41, of New Carrollton, Maryland, to 20 years in federal prison and 20 years of supervised release, for kidnapping minors and producing child sexual abuse material.

    Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, announced the sentence with Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office; Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha N. Braveboy; and Chief Malik Aziz, Prince George’s County Police Department.

    According to the guilty plea, in 2005, 2015 and 2016, Everett acknowledged sexually abusing and capturing sexual abuse material of several victims at his New Carrollton home – four were minors.

    On July 11, 2005, Everett drove Victim 2 — who was16 at the time — from the Commonwealth of Virginia to his New Carrollton residence.  While at his residence, Everett provided Victim 2 with a beverage, before engaging in sexual intercourse without her consent. Everett also took nude photographs of the victim without her consent.

    Additionally, on August 23, 2015, Everett drove another victim — who was 18 at the time — from a Washington, D.C. night club to a gas station. While there, Everett created and provided Victim 3 with a beverage before driving her to his New Carrollton residence. Everett then engaged in sexual acts with Victim 3 without her consent.

    Then on August 21, 2016, Everett drove Victim 1 — who was then 17 at the time — from her Washington, D.C. residence to a Northwest D.C. barbershop where he worked. While at the barbershop, Everett created and provided Victim 1 with a beverage. Victim 1 drank it and eventually lost consciousness before waking up at Everett’s home while he was performing a sexual act on her. Additionally, Everett recorded the sexual encounter and took naked pictures of the victim without her consent.

    Authorities arrested Everett in Prince George’s County on March 21, 2019. Federal law enforcement obtained a search warrant for Everett’s electronic devices, revealing images of child sexual abuse material, including a video of Everett engaging in sexual intercourse with an unidentified fifth female victim. During the video, Victim 5 can be heard mumbling and is physically unresponsive with her eyes closed.

    On March 26, 2019, a fourth victim reported a sexual-assault incident to the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division. Between March and April 2015, Everett transported Victim 4 — who was16 at the time — from her Washington D.C. residence to his New Carrollton home.  After arriving at his house, Everett mixed a drink for Victim 4 who drank it and became lightheaded. Everett then engaged in multiple sexual acts with Victim 4 without her consent, which he also digitally recorded. He also took nude photos of her. 

    This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.justice.gov/psc and click on the “Resources” tab on the left of the page.

    U.S. Attorney Barron commended the FBI, Office of State’s Attorney for Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the Prince George’s County Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Barron also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Timothy Hagan and Thomas Sullivan who prosecuted the federal case.

    For more information about the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to help the community, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks Before the National Asian American Coalition and National Diversity Coalition

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you Faith for those kind words and for your outstanding leadership of the National Asian American Coalition (NAAC).  The NAAC and its partners in the National Diversity Coalition have become important voices and strong advocates for communities – in particular, minority and poor communities – that far too often go unheard in our society.  Day in and day out, you provide hope and a helping hand to many hardworking Americans struggling to attain the American dream.  In my three years in this job, one highlight is meeting regularly with your coalition.  You are always informed and effective advocates on behalf of your communities.

    But I appreciate that advocating on behalf of consumers when you visit D.C. is only a small part of what the NAAC and the National Diversity Coalition do.  You provide training to the laid-off father searching for a job that will put food on the table and a roof over his family’s head.  You provide financial advice and resources to the mother hoping to start her own business.  You help families purchase their first home or refinance their mortgage so they can hold onto the home they purchased with their life savings.  You inspire countless young people to dream big and to strive for excellence by providing them with mentoring, after-school programs and scholarships.  I spoke with some of these students this morning.  I believe, as President Obama has noted, that “[t]here is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.”

    The mission of the Antitrust Division also involves ensuring economic opportunity for all consumers.  Our antitrust laws seek to promote fairness in our marketplaces, safeguard the economic freedom of our citizens and strengthen our economy through vigorous competition.  Our first antitrust law – the Sherman Act – was passed 125 years ago.  That law seeks to protect American consumers and businesses from the harm to competition that results when too much economic power is held by only a few corporations and individuals.  The Sherman Act became a vital tool under President Theodore Roosevelt – a progressive reformer often referred to as the “trust buster” – as he spearheaded the movement to bring fairness to the marketplace and to ensure that consumers benefit from healthy competition for their hard earned dollars.  Some years later, his distant cousin – President Franklin D. Roosevelt – established the Antitrust Division at the Justice Department to help continue the fight to protect hardworking Americans from the higher prices and reduced innovation that can result from the consolidation of economic power in a few hands.

    Here are a couple of examples of the Antitrust Division’s work.  Earlier this year, I stood with Attorney General Loretta Lynch when she announced the criminal guilty pleas of five of the world’s largest and most influential financial institutions – Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, UBS and The Royal Bank of Scotland – for manipulating the massive foreign currency exchange market.  As part of their guilty pleas, these institutions were required to pay almost $3 billion in criminal fines, including the largest antitrust fines ever obtained in the Justice Department’s 145-year history.

    A few years ago, we uncovered international conspiracies to fix the prices for all kinds of automobile parts, including seatbelts, airbags and antilock brake systems.  This illegal conduct made it more costly for companies like General Motors, Ford and Toyota to manufacture cars.  At the end of the day, we all know who paid the price for these cartels – the American consumer.  As of today, we have charged 58 corporate executives and 37 companies and obtained more than $2.6 billion in criminal fines.  And we are not done yet.

    Sometimes antitrust crimes are local.  Here in Northern California, our San Francisco office has spent the last several years prosecuting individuals who rigged the bids on foreclosed homes being sold at public auctions.  As you know, many Californians lost their homes during the Great Recession because they could not afford to pay their mortgages.  Some real estate investors saw the misfortune of these homeowners as an opportunity to line their pockets by agreeing not to bid against each other when these homes were auctioned.  They took turns winning these auctions at suppressed prices and deprived the banks and homeowners of the benefits of a competitive auction.  Thus far, we have charged more than 110 individuals who engaged in this type of bid rigging here in Northern California and other parts of the country.  Our San Francisco office also successfully prosecuted a conspiracy to fix the prices of liquid display panels sold worldwide.  LCDs are used in all kinds of electronic products, including flat screen televisions, computer monitors and tablets.  This conspiracy made it more expensive for companies to manufacture electronics, which, in turn, caused millions of Americans to pay higher prices.

    These cases showcase the Antitrust Division’s strong record of criminal antitrust enforcement during the Obama Administration.  Since President Obama took office, we have charged over 400 individuals and 140 corporations with criminal misconduct.  We obtained over $8.5 billion in criminal fines and penalties.  These large criminal fines and penalties serve an important deterrent effect because they directly affect something that corporate executives and investors care deeply about: a company’s bottom line.  But another thing to note: the criminal fines obtained by the Antitrust Division provide funding for the Justice Department’s Crime Victim’s Fund, which helps victims of all types of crime obtain the medical, legal and financial services that they need to move forward with their lives.  In California, this fund has helped victims of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault.

    We challenge other misconduct that raises – or threatens to raise – the prices that you as a consumer pay.  Here are some recent examples.

    Think about e-books, a popular alternative to hard copies.  Because they cost less to produce, they should be cheaper.  And until early 2010 they were.  Suddenly, prices shot up.  Why?  Because certain book publishers and Apple entered into an illegal agreement to raise prices.  We sued Apple and the publishers to put an end to their unlawful coordination.

    What happened to e-book prices when the publishers and Apple were forced to compete?  Prices for e-books fell.  In 2010, when the price fixing conspiracy was in place, you often had to pay $12.99 or $14.99 for a best-seller.  After we obtained judgments against Apple and the publishers, prices for best-sellers fell significantly, with many available for $9.99 or less.  Thus, competition, once restored, worked to benefit you and other consumers.

    But what about those who were victims of higher prices during the e-books conspiracy?  Based on the facts we developed, state attorneys general and private plaintiffs have thus far secured over $160 million in refunds for the victims of this conspiracy.  These refunds were directly credited to the consumers’ accounts with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.

    At the Antitrust Division we also worry about mergers between competitors that put the American public at risk of higher prices and lower quality products.  That was our concern a few years ago when AT&T wanted to buy its rival, T-Mobile.  AT&T claimed that by eliminating T-Mobile as a competitor, you, as a consumer, would be better off.  Our job at the Antitrust Division is to kick the tires on those claims and make sure they are accurate.  Here, the facts we uncovered told us that the elimination of T-Mobile as a competitor risked having you pay higher prices and receiving worse contract terms for mobile service.  We challenged the deal and AT&T ended up abandoning it.

    And guess what happened next?  Just like e-books, when the antitrust laws are enforced, competition flourishes.  T-Mobile went back to competing to win your business.  It spent billions of dollars improving the products it offers; it fought to woo customers by offering lower prices and better services; and it gave customers freedom of choice by offering to pay the early termination fees for those who switched to T-Mobile.

    And T-Mobile’s competitors were compelled to respond.  Sprint began offering lower prices and better plans.  AT&T targeted T-Mobile customers with a $200 credit, plus money for smartphone trade-ins, if they switched to AT&T.  T-Mobile responded by offering plans that allow customers to upgrade their phones twice a year.  AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all felt compelled to match these plans.

    A couple of months ago, in one of his final speeches as the lawyer for the American people, former Attorney General Holder summed up the role and purpose of antitrust enforcement.  He said: “In the appropriate enforcement of the antitrust laws we make real the promise of our democracy and our founding documents.  Vigorous competition in all spheres is what makes this nation exceptional.  It makes progress more likely and promotes the general welfare.”

    The hardworking men and women of the Antitrust Division remain true to this mission.  We should be proud of them and grateful to them.  They make the economy work for all of us.

    Similarly, we are grateful for the work that the NAAC and the National Diversity Coalition do on a daily basis to help some of our most vulnerable citizens and communities.  Together we can help to promote marketplaces where companies compete on price and quality for the hard earned dollars of American consumers.

    Thank you for your time today and congratulations on organizing another great conference.

    AAG Baer Remarks to NAAC 10-23-15 (53.39 KB)

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates Delivers Keynote Address at the 10th National Prosecution Summit

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Karol [Mason], for that warm introduction and for everything you do at the Office of Justice Programs (OJP). 

    I am continually amazed by how much good work happens at OJP – and especially within the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).  BJA serves as a vital link between the Department of Justice and our friends in state, local and tribal government – a link that’s as important now as ever before.  So a special thank you to BJA’s director, Denise O’Donnell, for cultivating this very important bond, today and every day. 

    I’d also like to recognize all of the law enforcement officers here in the room, including our exceptional Acting Director of ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), Thomas Brandon.  I’ve worked with a lot of great agents and officers during my career and I know how hard you all work and how deeply you care about the cause of justice.  As a career prosecutor, it’s easy enough to draft a search warrant.  The tough part is executing that warrant – at 6:00 a.m., in the dark, not knowing what’s on the other side of that door.  I think I speak for all the prosecutors in the room when I say, thank you – for your courage, your commitment and so much more. 

    And finally, the prosecutors.  My fellow prosecutors.  It’s a privilege to be here with you.  In my new capacity as Deputy Attorney General, I give a lot of speeches now to a lot of groups.  But here, with you, I feel like I am with “my people.”  And I’m particularly grateful to the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, who for 10 years have brought “my people” together for this important summit.  And it’s actually you – the prosecutors – who I want to speak about today – about the critical work prosecutors do and why we’re all so proud to do it.

    As Karol mentioned, I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time.  But I didn’t set out to be a prosecutor.  In fact, I would imagine that contrary to many of you, I didn’t feel the calling in law school.  I started my legal career in a big firm in Atlanta.  I was there for a few years and I had a good experience there.  But I didn’t find the work as satisfying as I had hoped, so I thought I would give the U.S. Attorney’s Office a shot, with the full expectation that I would go back to the firm after a few years.  And so I set off for the Justice Department and, in retrospect, I was totally unprepared for what I would encounter there.

    First, many people talk about the pressure of a big firm practice and those in private practice assume that it’s easier on the government side.  My experience was just the opposite.  First, the stakes are a lot higher as a prosecutor.  In private practice, or at least the private practice that I experienced, the lawyers were pretty much representing companies fighting over money.  Make no mistake, the money is important to the clients and often times it’s a whole lot of money, but in the big scheme of things, it’s just money.  No one is going to lose their liberty.  No child is going to grow up with a parent behind bars.  No victim is counting on you to hold accountable the person who robbed or raped or killed a family member.  So while all legal jobs require you to do your best work and vigorously represent the interests of your client, there is a whole lot more riding on how well you perform as a prosecutor.

    Secondly, as a prosecutor, in all but the largest or most complex cases, you’re often handling the case on your own.  There’s not a team of lawyers to draft your briefs and triple-check your footnotes and there’s no one else responsible when things go wrong.  It’s up to you and your judgment.  I was a young associate in private practice, so to be honest, no client was really relying on my advice.  I might write a memo to a partner about the legal issues or even give my opinion on strategy, but in the end, someone else was going to be making that call.  And the pressure on me was to do a good job to impress the partner.  But as a prosecutor, we have real, not artificial, pressure.  Prosecutors generally aren’t writing memos or staying at work late to impress anyone in the office.  Prosecutors are staying late to get their work done and to get it done well.  I always have to chuckle when a defense attorney from a large, well-resourced defense firm with an army of associates on a case mentions the “vast resources” of the government.  While the overall resources may be vast, at least at the federal level, it sure doesn’t feel that way when you’re the one standing by the copy machine late at night making sure your exhibits are ready for the next day, or sitting at your computer drafting last minute responses to defense motions, even though you still have an opening to craft, or putting together your own exhibit binders.  And when you combine the amount of individual work required with the stakes involved, that’s real pressure.

    So why do we do it?  Well, I can tell you why I do it.  Because, as corny as it sounds, we have the privilege of representing the people of the United States.  And this is indeed a privilege to treasure.  Think about it.  When you represent private clients, you pretty much have to take your clients as you find them.  It’s your ethical responsibility to represent their interests, regardless of whether you think they’re really right or whether you even like them.  But as a prosecutor, unless we believe that a defendant is in fact guilty and that it’s right and fair that he or she be charged, we don’t bring that case.  What other group of lawyers has that luxury?  What other group of lawyers has had the opportunity not simply to zealously represent the interests of an individual client, but to do what  is right and just and fair?  But with that privilege comes great responsibility.  The people of our country are counting on us to not only be the glue that holds together an orderly society; they are counting on us to do it in manner that engenders their trust and confidence.  We’re held to a higher standard than other lawyers.  And in my mind, that’s as it should be.  Because, in the famous words of Justice [George] Sutherland, a prosecutor is “The representative not of an ordinary party, but a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

    Over my 27 years as a prosecutor, as a Line Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), Supervisor, U.S. Attorney and now as Deputy Attorney General, I have witnessed and been humbled by prosecutors’ commitment to that responsibility.  I have watched as prosecutors have spoken for victims who had no voice and who stood up for the vulnerable in our society so often overlooked. 

    I remember a human trafficking case during my time as U.S. Attorney in Atlanta.  The defendants in that case had lured impoverished young women and girls from Mexico to the United States on a promise of marriage and jobs.  When the women arrived in the United States, they were forced into prostitution, with more than 20 men on their first night.  They were beaten and tortured, diminished and treated as animals.  Our prosecutors worked hard on that case.  They convicted the perpetrators, some of whom received 40 years in prison.  I will never forget talking with these young women after sentencing, where they had bravely stared down their assailants to testify.  They told me afterward about their newfound dignity, made possible not simply because the case was prosecuted, but because of the way it was prosecuted.  These women found dignity – in part – because our prosecutors treated them with dignity.  They told me that they had their lives back now.  Because of these prosecutors, the defendants will never be able to victimize others in this way again.  Because of these prosecutors, these young women, who had been so brutally abused, had gained the strength to overcome horrors that most of us can’t imagine and to reclaim their lives.  Prosecutors across the country do this kind of work every single day.  And because of the work you do, the weak, the powerless, the silenced victims in this country are not only given voice, they reclaim their sense of self. 

    I have also been repeatedly humbled by prosecutors’ commitment to justice.  The prosecutors I know aren’t motivated by “winning” or amassing notches on their belts.  They don’t try to send everyone to prison for as long as possible.  They are motivated by their responsibility to enforce the law, to make their communities safe and to fairly administer justice.  And fairness and justice is what matters most of all. 

    These aren’t just ethereal concepts.  I have seen prosecutors live this every day.  When I was U.S. Attorney, we learned that a sitting judge in our district had been using illegal drugs with a woman with whom he was involved.  Even more troubling, we learned that during the course of this relationship, the judge had become jealous of the relationship that this woman had with an African American man and he told the woman that he sentenced African American men more harshly than white men.  As you might imagine, we were stunned.  While the case was being prosecuted by main justice, we knew that regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against the judge, we had to do something about the potential impact of the judge’s stated racial bias.  So we gathered the supervisors of our office around the conference room table and considered what we should do.  As it stood, it was unlikely that these statements were going to be publicly revealed during the judge’s criminal case.  But to the great credit of the prosecutors in our office, everyone agreed that we had an obligation to publicly disclose what we had learned and to do everything that we could to ensure that defendants who had appeared before this judge had been treated fairly.  So we publicly announced what we had learned about the judge’s statements and also announced that anyone who had a case before the judge after the time of the alleged statements would get an automatic “do-over.”  We agreed to have their case heard again by another judge.  And because we recognized that this kind of racial animus doesn’t arise overnight, we announced that, if requested, we would review the case of any defendant who had appeared before this judge, regardless of the timing, for any evidence of racial bias.  As you might expect, this was a huge undertaking.  Going back to review trial transcripts and sentencings from years-old cases was enormously time consuming.  But the remarkable part about this is that when we needed to have AUSAs review the transcripts, we didn’t once have to assign a case.  AUSAs raised their hands and volunteered.  They volunteered to take on this tedious and difficult work, on top of everything else they were doing, because they were committed to ensuring that the public had confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system.  They weren’t looking for stats – they were looking for justice. 

    As impressive as this is, it’s entirely consistent with the day-to-day devotion to justice that I’ve seen from the prosecutors I’ve known over all these years.  The prosecutors I know don’t play hide the ball or look to read their discovery obligations as narrowly as possible.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  As I watched prosecutors in our office agonize over whether they had tracked down every possible shred of exculpatory evidence or impeaching evidence, I often wished the public could see the lengths they went to ensure that they didn’t just meet their ethical obligations, but that they exceeded them. 

    This is made increasingly hard in an environment where it seems at least some defense counsel have made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct a standard litigation strategy, where some defense counsel seek to use that wonderful Justice Sutherland quote as a weapon rather than as a reflection of who we are and what we stand for.  Let me be clear, I have absolutely no tolerance for prosecutors who shirk their ethical obligations, discovery-related or otherwise.  I believe that we can and should be held to a higher standard than other lawyers – and if you don’t like that, you shouldn’t be a prosecutor.  But it’s because I believe that the overwhelming majority of prosecutors honor this obligation as one of the most fundamental parts of their job, that I take great exception to irresponsibility throwing around allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.  Prosecutors are in these jobs because we care about our solemn obligation to seek justice and when someone unfairly impugns that commitment, it strikes at the core of who we are. 

    I’m proud to be a prosecutor.  I’m proud to be a part of a profession that holds those who violate our law accountable, that makes our communities safer, that stands up for victims and that, above all else, seeks justice.  At the Department of Justice, we are proud every day to be your colleagues.  We are proud to stand with you and beside you on the side of justice as we seek to advance the values that all of you have spent your lives defending. 

    Thank you.  

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Director Ronald Davis of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Testifies Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good afternoon, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Coons, and distinguished Members of the Committee.  Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the many ways in which the Department of Justice is providing valuable support and resources to the nation’s 800,000 law enforcement officers in the more than 16,000 local, state and tribal police agencies and sheriff’s offices across the country.

    I come to you today not just as the Director of the Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services – also known as COPS – but as one who has spent close to 30 years as a local police officer.  I served 20 years in the Oakland Police Department rising to the rank of Captain, and close to nine years as police chief for the city of East Palo Alto, California. For me, the decision to become a cop was an easy one – I simply followed my father’s footsteps, who served 25 years in the Philadelphia Police Department.

    I can tell you as a 30-year, second-generation cop, there is no greater or more noble profession than policing.  And, I can also tell you without hesitation that the men and women who answer this calling are truly America’s finest.  So, you can imagine the great satisfaction it brings me to lead the COPS Office and work for the Justice Department – an agency that provides tremendous support to local, state and tribal law enforcement. 

    For example, since 2009, COPS has awarded over $2 billion in hiring grants to create and preserve more than 10,000 police officer and deputy positions in nearly 2,600 law enforcement agencies.  For some agencies, providing funding for just one officer may mean the difference in having a full shift and making sure officers have sufficient cover and safety.

    COPS also supports the development of effective crime-fighting initiatives. As a police chief I implemented several of these initiatives which contributed to dramatic reductions in murders in my city – a city that was once dubbed the murder capital of the United States.

    Over the past 20 years, the COPS Office has provided training to over 700,000 officers and deputies, and supports valuable research releasing publications on a wide range of issues from homeland security to reducing gang violence to building community trust and enhancing officer safety and wellness.  These publications are critical to the field because most agencies have fewer than 50 officers and do not have the capacity to conduct this research on their own.  

    Just last month COPS released two valuable research reports – one addressing ambush attacks against police, and another presenting models for protecting the physical and psychological health of officers.  These reports will help officer safety and save lives.

    Through our executive sessions, COPS brings together the best and brightest minds in the field to tackle issues such as crime and violence, preventing violent extremism, handling mass casualty events, use of force and officer safety.  The information gleaned from these sessions is distributed to the field.  

    Another way we help the field is through the COPS Collaborative Reform Initiative.  At a law enforcement agency’s request, COPS examines key operational areas within the agency – such as training, internal investigations, use of force, and racial profiling – and provides recommendations that will enhance community trust and public safety.  COPS then works closely with the agency in implementing these recommendations.

    The Las Vegas police department was the first to complete this process and Collaborative Reform efforts are now underway in Spokane, Philadelphia, St. Louis County, Salinas, Calexico, and Fayetteville, with the latest request coming from the Milwaukee police chief.

    This voluntary process has received support from the Civil Rights Division and my esteemed colleague, Vanita Gupta.  It is considered in some cases as a viable option, when appropriate, over a pattern and practice investigation.

    Through our Catalyst grants, COPS works with and supports the major law enforcement organizations in addressing key challenges facing law enforcement such as the use of force, animal cruelty, leadership development and mentoring, and officer safety and wellness.

    The COPS Office also funds a Critical Response for Technical Assistance program that offers immediate, real-time assistance to agencies dealing with major public safety incidents.

    For example, within days of the start of mass demonstrations in Ferguson, COPS was able to connect regional police leaders with police executives with experience dealing with similar issues.  We have provided support to nearly a dozen agencies at their request.  And, as with all COPS projects, the lessons learned from these cities are shared with the over 16,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.

    This year, the COPS Office provided administrative support to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing – a task force comprised of law enforcement and community leaders – which issued 59 recommendations to help agencies and communities build trust and advance public safety. 

    While policing is primarily a local issue, the federal government has a critical role to play in helping our local law enforcement agencies respond to the challenges of policing in the 21st  century.  Under the leadership of President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the Department of Justice has made supporting local law enforcement one of the Administration’s top priorities.

    As a career police officer, I know firsthand just how important this support is, and I can say without hesitation that the men and women of the Department of Justice make this a priority every day.

    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Defense News: NPS, Industry Research Leads to First in Persistent, Ocean Acoustic Data Collection Technology

    Source: United States Navy

    The team’s successful development of an innovative, self-powered autonomous underwater drone, known as the Persistent Smart Acoustic Profiler (PSAP) Voyager, has already delivered large swaths of oceanographic and passive acoustic data primed for NPS student research since it was deployed for the first time off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, in early November of 2024

    Naval forces have an inherent operational reason to be quiet and stealthy at sea. Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Joseph, a researcher in the NPS Department of Oceanography and principal investigator on the project, said the effort has been funded by the school’s Consortium for Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER), which is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

    “PSAP started as a CRUSER project a few years ago when Yi Chao, Seatrec CEO and a well-known oceanographer, gave a talk at NPS about their energy-harvesting system,” said Joseph, who recognized an opportunity to combine the school’s expertise in undersea acoustics and research instrumentation with Seatrec’s innovative energy harvesting technology.

    NPS excels at conducting applied research in the operating environment. For the first time, PSAP offers an ability to collect and send oceanographic and passive acoustic monitoring data in near real-time for an unlimited period, thanks to the profiler’s ability to harvest energy from the temperature differences in the ocean, enough to fully power the instrumentation indefinitely.

    “Theoretically, PSAP can be deployed once, communicate its acoustic information to remote operators in near real time for limitless periods without requiring retrieval to offload data, refreshment – such as swapping batteries or data storage, or replacement,” explained Joseph. “These characteristics greatly reduce lifecycle costs of a continuous acoustic monitoring effort.”

    Empowering student research and discovery is central to the institution’s efforts with industry partners, and the PSAP Voyager’s ongoing operational test – which can be monitored via the Seatrec website – has provided a trove of data for potential research.

    “Now that we have a sizable amount of oceanographic and acoustic data collected by PSAP, we plan to have students in the undersea warfare and meteorology and oceanography curricula to use these data for thesis research,” said Joseph.

    The role of acoustic sensing in Naval operations is far-reaching and fundamental to U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations at sea, including undersea sensing and detection.

    “Passive acoustic listening has many operational and research applications in the Navy, and our students at NPS conduct applied research to meet naval-unique needs for at-sea operations that require measurements of ambient noise, understanding the composition of soundscapes and monitoring of marine mammals,” said Joseph. The autonomy and endurance of the PSAP Voyager “provides an unprecedented opportunity to collect acoustic data in real-time for very long periods in remote areas without the expense and logistical tail of ship support.”

    “Sound is used to ‘see’ underwater and is vital to understanding the ocean and monitoring the movement of natural and man-made objects,” added Yi Chao, Ph.D., Seatrec’s CEO and Founder in a recent news release. “Previously, hydrophones required power from expensive underwater cables from shore or ships but our PSAP Voyager untethers hydrophones and provides nearly unlimited persistent monitoring of the ocean in an extremely economical way.”

    While the technology promises to be useful for improving maritime domain awareness, it will also enhance U.S. naval oceanographic models for operational planning used to improve own-force sonar system performance.

    (This news story does not constitute an endorsement of Seatrec or its products and services by the Naval Postgraduate School, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.)

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Defense News: NAS Pensacola Participates in Annual Force Protection Exercise

    Source: United States Navy

    The exercise was part of Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain 2025 (CS-SC25), an annual, two-part force protection Commander, Naval Installations Command (CNIC) and U.S. Fleet Forces Command (USFFC)-led exercise that is taking place Feb. 3 through 14 at all continental U.S. Navy installations.

    CS-SC25 is designed to enhance the training and readiness of Navy security personnel and better prepare Department of the Navy (DoN) personnel for potential force protection situations.

    “Our security personnel operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” said NAS Pensacola Installation Training Officer Erich Brinkmeir. “Although this exercise is not held in response to any specific threat, it’s important that we train for a variety of realistic threats to enhance our personnel and force-wide readiness.”

    Brinkmeir said that the exercise stress-tests NAS Pensacola’s ability to disseminate information and put into action individual response plans and security force responses while testing their ability to coordinate with local emergency responders and the community.

    “We’re committed to safeguarding life, equipment and facilities, and training like this helps us do that,” he said.

    Brinkmeier said scenarios during Citadel Shield – the first week of the exercise, led by CNIC – included the active shooter drill and hostage scenario, which members of the NAS Pensacola Anti-Terrorism Training Team (ATTT) used to gauge readiness from responding NAS Pensacola Naval Security Forces personnel.

    “Making sure that all of the different entities on base are aligned can help our Naval Security Forces personnel more effectively do their job,” he said. “Communication during any event is critical in ensuring the safety of our most valuable assets – the men and women here – which is crucial to our ongoing mission of supporting the commands which train the best aviators, aircrewman, aviation maintenance personnel and cyber warfare specialists in the world.”

    The second week of the annual Navy-wide exercise – Solid Curtain, led by USFFC – is centered around NAS Pensacola’s capability of exercising Navy Command and Control (C2) capabilities and evaluating the readiness and effectiveness of fleet and installation force protection programs.

    The two-part approach is designed to enhance the readiness of U.S. Navy security forces and ensure seamless interoperability among the commands, other services and agency partners in order to protect life, equipment and facilities.

    NAS Pensacola, referred to as the “Cradle of Naval Aviation,” is designed to support operational and training missions of tenant commands, including Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC), Naval Aviation Schools Command (NASC), the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training (CNATT), Marine Aviation Training Support Groups (MATSG) 21 and 23 and is the headquarters for Naval Education and Training Command (NETC).

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein Delivers Remarks at the Investiture of United States Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery.

    Thank you, Chief Judge Smith. Greetings to the distinguished judges and court personnel, United States Attorney’s Office employees, family and friends of the Eastern District of Virginia’s new U.S. Attorney.

    It is a great privilege to join so many distinguished guests to celebrate Zach Terwilliger, and to honor the Office of the United States Attorney and the judicial system in which it serves.

    After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, one of the first Congressional actions was to adopt the Judiciary Act, establishing federal district courts and United States Attorneys, including one for what was then the District of Virginia.

    When President George Washington selected the first United States Attorneys, he sent each one a handwritten letter. Some of the recipients had applied for the job, but to others, the appointment came as a surprise, and as a burden that was not always welcome.

    It was a part-time job. There were no Assistant U.S. Attorneys or support staff. And it did not pay very well.

    So, Washington appealed to the patriotism of his inaugural class of U.S. Attorneys. He wrote: “The high importance of the Judicial System in our national Government, made it an indispensable duty to select … characters to fill the … offices … [who] would discharge their respective trusts with honor to themselves and advantage to their Country.”

    Virginia lawyer John Marshall, the future Chief Justice of the United States, was a recipient of that letter.

    The internet web site for the Eastern District of Virginia proudly states, and I quote, “John Marshall … was appointed by President Washington to serve as the first United States Attorney for the District of Virginia.”

    Virginia’s claim to Chief Justice Marshall as the first U.S. Attorney is quite a distinction. But it is not entirely accurate. Now, it is literally true that John Marshall was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Washington. But he never actually served as U.S. Attorney.

    In fact, Marshall responded to the President with a letter of his own. Marshall wrote, “[T]hank you … very sincerely for the honor … [but] I beg leave to declare that … with real regret[,] I decline ….”

    Washington replied with yet another letter. He wrote, “As some other person must be appointed to fill the Office of Attorney for the district of Virginia, it is proper your Commission should be returned to me.” He wanted the document back!

    Perhaps that explains why, when the case of Marbury versus Madison came along in 1803, Chief Justice Marshall focused so intently on the importance of the signed commission.

    Zachary Terwilliger did not share John Marshall’s reluctance to serve as U.S. Attorney. On the contrary, Zach was so eager that he did not even wait for a Presidential nomination, let alone a senate confirmation or a signed commission. Fortunately, it is well-established that the Attorney General, as a principal officer, possesses the authority to appoint federal prosecutors.

    But the decision to select Zach was not made lightly, by either Attorney General Jeff Sessions or President Donald Trump. It was made with the support of two distinguished Senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and with the gratitude of many members of the bench and bar.

    And it was well deserved.

    I was fortunate to work closely with Zach for more than a year. He helped me through my confirmation process. At the end of my Senate confirmation hearing, Zach told me that I probably would not need to return to Capitol Hill anytime soon. He said that the Deputy Attorney General rarely testifies before the Congress. That was the only bad advice he gave me.

    Zach went on to serve as my Chief of Staff. That is one of the most challenging jobs in the Department of Justice. It requires legal skills. It requires political skills. It requires organizational skills. It requires tact. It requires endurance. And Zach performed it with distinction.

    I want to offer three points of advice for success as United States Attorney, principles that Zachary Terwilliger exemplifies.

    Point one: Know what you stand for.

    A few months ago, on Law Day, President Trump explained that “we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather than according to the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.  Through law, we have ensured liberty.  We should not … take that success for granted.”

    Consistent with the President’s words, we do not take success for granted. We know that the rule of law depends on the character and conduct of the people who enforce the law.

    I encourage you to pay attention to the final clause of the oath that Zach swears today. It includes a promise to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”

    Not every government job carries the same duties. In order to fulfill your oath, you must understand the unique responsibilities of your office. You need to know what you stand for.

    In a 1940 speech, Attorney General Robert Jackson spoke eloquently about what prosecutors stand for. He said that “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.”

    Another Attorney General, Edward Levi, once observed that “it is by watching [law enforcement] that many of our citizens learn what kind of country this is…. People must believe, if not in the wisdom of a particular law, at least in the fairness and honesty of the enforcement process… Nothing can more weaken the quality of life … than … failure to make clear by words and deeds that our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose.”

    More recently, Judge Richard Posner described our job this way: “The Department of Justice wields enormous power over people’s lives, much of it beyond judicial or political review. With power comes responsibility, moral if not legal, for its prudent and restrained exercise; and responsibility implies knowledge, experience and sound judgment, not just good faith.”

    Zach understands that good faith is necessary to do the job well, but it is not sufficient. Wisdom and experience are required, and Zach brings those attributes to the task.

    Point two: Maintain a sense of perspective.

    I was a young prosecutor in the Department of Justice when Zach’s father, George Terwilliger, served as Deputy Attorney General, and Zach was a young boy running down the Main Justice hallways. Bill Barr was the Attorney General. There were many other superb officials in Main Justice, and in the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices, including Jeff Sessions in Southern Alabama.

    Each of those great leaders faced unique challenges. You never know what crises may hit on your watch, but you can be sure that things will not always go as planned. Always keep in mind that we are just temporary stewards of these jobs.

    The adjective “executive” in the Executive Branch refers to the obligation to get things done. You are required to make controversial decisions, often in exigent circumstances and with imperfect information. Then everybody else gets unlimited time to reflect on how they might have done things differently. If you worry too much about the criticism, you will never get anything done.

    So after you identify priority goals, make sure you stay focused on achieving the priority goals. There is a sign in our office that reads, “Don’t tell me what I want to hear, just tell me what I need to know.” Zach always respected the importance of avoiding distractions and remaining focused on the things that really matter. As we say at Main Justice, keep moving forward.

    Point three: Earn the love and support of family and friends.

    There are times when these jobs require you to miss important events in the lives of your loved ones, both large and small.  Zach worked many nights and weekends, but he never lost track of what he was missing. He always spoke about his family and tried to make up for lost time.

    Zach, you learned those priorities from your parents, and you and Anne will pass them on to Charlotte and George. You had a life before this job. You will have a life after this job. Stay close to the people you want as part of that life.

    Let me conclude with one final thought. Robert Jackson ended his 1940 speech to U.S. Attorneys with these words: “A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.”

    If you follow that advice, you will remain faithful to our mission.

    Zach, for the past two years I have observed your sense of fair play, your kindness, your commitment to the truth and the rule of law, and your humility.

    John Marshall declined to take up George Washington’s charge to serve as U.S. Attorney. Thank you for proudly accepting the commission. You will serve with honor to yourself and advantage to your country.

    It is an honor to work with you in the pursuit of justice.

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