Tag Archives: omnibus

Economy, Government Accountability, Politics, US

Omnibus Bill Includes $1.6 Billion to Resettle Illegal Immigrants

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WASHINGTON – Passage of the omnibus budget bill by the House of Representatives includes a provision providing $1.6 billion for resettlement of illegal immigrants crossing through the U.S. border through the year 2018.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services has begun a process to expand its temporary capacity to house unaccompanied children,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement earlier this month.

Government statistics from October and November of 2015 show a two fold increase of the number of unaccompanied immigrant children, 10,500, crossing the southern border from Mexico over the previous years totals for the same period according to the Washington Post.

To cope with this influx, HHS plans to open a pair of shelters totaling 1,000 beds in South Texas with an additional facility of 400 beds in Southern California.

The total sum of the provisions approved by Congress- $1,645,201,000- will be utilized to assist in this process, along with the funding of “refugee and entrant assistance activities authorized by section 414 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and section 501 of the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980, and for carrying out section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, section 235 of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (‘‘TVPA’’), section 203 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, and the Torture Victims Relief Act of 1998.”

The Department of Health and Human has enlisted the Department of Defense to make an additional 5,000 beds available as needed.

The DoD also noted in a statement on the matter that “The entire administration has been closely monitoring these current trends and coordinating across the whole of government to ensure an effective response to any changes in migration flows.”

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Activism, Civil Liberties, Election, Government Accountability, Politics, US

Evangelist Franklin Graham Leaves GOP Due To Planned Parenthood Funding

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The Republican Party has been abandoned by Evangelist Franklin Graham following last week’s passage of a budget by the Republican-led Congress. Graham called the budget “wasteful” and criticized continued government funding of Planned Parenthood, which he compared to the Nazis.

“Seeing and hearing Planned Parenthood talk nonchalantly about selling baby parts from aborted fetuses with utter disregard for human life is reminiscent of Joseph Mengele and the Nazi concentration camps!” Graham wrote. “That should’ve been all that was needed to turn off the faucet for their funding.”

In previous statements Graham has spoken of not having faith in any of the parties. Rejecting his affiliation with the GOP is a sign of continued discontent with the right and the continuation of a trend among evangelicals supporting non-establishment candidates such as Donald Trump.

Trump has drawn praise from Graham in the past including siding with the GOP frontrunner on issues such as a proposed ban of Muslims in the U.S.

Graham’s criticism of the budget deal centers around the continued funding of Planned Parenthood to the tune of $528 million annually. This accounts for upwards of 40% of the organizations budget and comes mostly by way of Medicaid payments from services rendered to low-income Americans. Planned Parenthood is prohibited from utilizing federal taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions.

The defunding of Planned Parenthood has been a long time priority for social conservatives, an effort that was renewed earlier this year after undercover videos were released by an anti-abortion activist.

The videos appeared to show officials at Planned Parenthood negotiating prices of fetal organs for sale to medical researchers, a practice which could be considered illegal and unethical. The organization has since denied all claims it profited from these sales and announced it would no longer carry on the practice.

Following the 2014 midterm elections, the GOP took control of both the House and Senate. Expectations from some in the party were that funding for Planned Parenthood would be eliminated from the 2016 budget. Some social conservatives in the party threatened a government shutdown if action wasn’t taken against the organization.

An event in November when Robert Lewis Dear, a lone gunman who called himself “a warrior for the babies” and shot and killed three at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, changed the dynamic for politicians.

The result was funding of Planned Parenthood at previous levels. Graham, the son of well known evangelist Billy Graham, was among many religious conservatives incensed by the lack of action.

“This is an example of why I have resigned from the Republican Party and declared myself Independent. I have no hope in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or Tea Party to do what is best for America,” said in a Facebook Post last Monday.

Over the course of Billy Graham’s years in the public eye, he withdrew from politics, claiming it took focus away from his evangelism. His son, however, has been more vocal in offering his take on electoral issues and politicians.

With prayer rallies scheduled in advance of the the Iowa caucus, Graham will likely continue his denunciation of the establishment wing of the Republican Party, emphasizing his desire to “challenge Christians to live out their faith at home, in public and at the ballot box.”

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Government Accountability, Privacy, Technology

Apple’s Tim Cook Opposes More Federal Access To Customer Data

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WASHINGTON – Opposition to back door access to encrypted information by intelligence agencies was defended by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In an interview for “60 Minutes” broadcast, Cook said “There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys.”

A renewed push by politicians and law enforcement has come in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks on Paris, when attackers were said to have used encrypted devices to coordinate and execute attacks outside the purview of government surveillance.

While the interview with Cook had been filmed prior to the Paris attack, the CEO has since emphasized his support for protecting encryption, saying the choice between privacy and national security was a false one.

“I don’t believe the tradeoff here is privacy versus national security,” he said, adding that’s an “overly simplistic view…We’re America. We should have both.”

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) has been a contentious issue in the tech community over the past year. The measure allows for direct sharing of consumer data and information with the surveillance community. Many provisions in previous versions of the bill which called for anonymity of that data were stripped out of the version of the bill which passed as a part of the omnibus budget.

“Organizations can now directly share raw data with several agencies with no protection or anonymity,” said engineer Joseph Pizzo with Norse Security. “There may have been a small cost associated with anonymizing the data, but now that this requirement has been removed and organizations may feel that they’re helping, I don’t foresee any work moving forward to protect consumer data.”

Candidates including Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have advocated for the ability for intelligence agencies to circumvent encryption during the 2016 presidential campaign.

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Activism, Featured, Privacy, Technology

Surveillance Bill Masked as ‘Cybersecurity’ Close to Completion

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The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was officially approved by the Senate back in October. Since that time, the bill has languished in committee as lawmakers sought to align the Senate bill with the versions passed by the House of Representatives in April.

CISA is designed to allow private companies to easily share threat intelligence with government agencies. Sharing of intelligence is supposed to be voluntary. Critics of the bill say the provisions will only increase the indiscriminate monitoring of legal activity by giving companies immunity from lawsuits for sharing information with the government.

Before the Senate vote, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment which would require companies to adhere to their own terms of service with customers. However, this amendment failed after only receiving 32 votes. Senator Paul’s presidential campaign website says that the bill “would transform websites into government spies.”

The bill may face a final vote in the House and the Senate as soon as next week. However, there are reports that the cybersecurity bill could be added as a provision to the budget bill which is supposed to keep the federal government running through 2016.

“It’s either this scenario or we wait until early 2016, and chamber members definitely prefer seeing passage sooner rather than later,” said Matthew Eggers, senior director of the National Security and Emergency Preparedness Department at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told USA Today.

Reuters reports that a vote on the budget will happen on Friday before the midnight deadline for funding the federal government. According to Reuters, “lawmakers have been unable to reach agreement on a number of policy ‘riders’ some lawmakers would like to add to the bill.” These “riders” include the CISA provision.

On Wednesday, a coalition of 19 civil liberties groups sent a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders calling for stricter privacy protections and warning that such protections are being “stripped” from the House Homeland Security Committee version of the bill.

“Let me be clear that we do not support any of the three bills and believe that cybersecurity legislation could actually make us more vulnerable to cyber attacks by housing more personal information with government agencies that aren’t good at protecting it,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, organizer of the letter. “But, of the three bills, the House Homeland Security Committee’s bill had the strongest privacy protections and was sort of the least terrible.”

Fight for the Future was joined by the American Library Association, Demand Progress, and Free Press Education Fund to FreedomWorks, Campaign for Liberty, and R-Street.

The organizations say that CISA would “reduce privacy protections for Americans’ personal information” and “overexpand the term ‘cyber threat’ to facilitate the prosecution of crimes unrelated to cybersecurity.”

The letter comes one day after The Hill reported on additional changes to the bill. According to the Hill, “it now appears the final language is unlikely to include notable privacy provisions that digital rights and civil liberties groups insist are necessary to reduce the odds the bill enables greater government surveillance.”

The Hill also confirmed that “lawmakers are aiming to vote on the final cyber bill as part of an omnibus budget deal that is expected before the end of the year.”

USA Today reported that House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul “said he would prefer to wait and have a formal conference committee made up of House members and senators negotiate a final bill rather than relying on staff talks to try to speed legislation through Congress in the next few days.”

McCaul told USA Today he warned Republican House leaders that they could lose votes on the 2016 government budget if they attempt to add on CISA without strong privacy protections.

As Truth In Media recently reported, the supposedly “voluntary” aspects of the bill are not voluntary at all and amount to surveillance of private customer information.

“Number one, it’s not voluntary for their customers, millions and millions of customers,” Senator Ron Wyden, a long-time opponent of CISA told the Daily Dot. “And number two, to get the liability protection, the companies have got to say that they didn’t find anything personal and unrelated in a knowing fashion. And that’s going to be a pretty easy bar because they don’t have to do much to look!”