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Agents reportedly looking into the events leading up to the Dali ship colliding with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March

The FBI has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, with agents looking into the events leading up to the Dali ship colliding with the bridge.

The Washington Post first reported on the existence of the criminal investigation into the collision and collapse, with the investigation beginning in earnest on Monday morning.

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After a week of debate, Congress on Friday reauthorized section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

Congress spent the past week in a fractious debate over a major government surveillance program that gives US authorities the ability to monitor vast swaths of emails, text messages and phone calls without a warrant. In a vote on Friday, lawmakers ultimately decided to keep that warrantless surveillance intact and passed a two-year reauthorization of the law, known as section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa.

The law has long been contentious among both progressives and libertarian-leaning conservatives who view it as a violation of privacy rights and civil liberties. Donald Trump has likewise lambasted it out of personal grievance. Its defenders, which include intelligence agencies and Joe Biden’s administration, argue that it is an important tool in stopping terrorist attacks, cybercrime and the international drug trade.

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One of the largest cash heists in the city’s history went unnoticed until police opened vault that few people knew about

Thieves in Los Angeles pulled off one of the largest cash heists in city history over the weekend, stealing as much as $30m from a money storage facility on Easter Sunday, authorities said on Wednesday.

The break-in unfolded at an unnamed facility in the Sylmar area of the San Fernando Valley that handles and stores cash from businesses across the region. Burglars were able to enter without immediate detection and breached a safe, said Elaine Morales, a Los Angeles police department commander, to the Los Angeles Times .

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With the Electoral Commission just the latest target on a list that includes the economy and supply chains, experts warn of data-gathering ‘on an industrial scale’

In March last year an integrated review of the UK’s defence and foreign policy said it would protect the country’s “democratic freedoms” from Chinese state attacks.

A few months later the Electoral Commission confirmed why democratic institutions and processes were on the threat list as it revealed that a cyber-attack – by a then unidentified assailant – had accessed the data of 40 million voters.

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Experts say FBI’s finding crime numbers dropped should be viewed with caution but nonetheless the numbers are encouraging

Crime in the US fell significantly in 2023, according to new FBI data , with a 13% decline in murder and drops in reported violent crime and reported property offenses.

Both robbery and aggravated assault dropped by 5% from 2022, the FBI data shows, while all violent crime declined by 6%.

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Jerry Hal Saliterman, 76, of Minnesota allegedly threatened to release a sex tape of a woman if she told anyone about the caper

Nearly five months after an ailing man with a history of theft admitted to stealing the shining shoes worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, a second person has been charged in the caper, according to the Associated Press.

Jerry Hal Saliterman, 76, of Crystal, Minnesota, was charged with theft of a major artwork and witness tampering. He did not enter a plea when he first appeared on Friday in a US district court in St Paul, Minnesota. He was released on his own recognizance after the hearing.

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The purported threat of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions , but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.

In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.

The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users. (TikTok says it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. This week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that “there’s no CCP ownership” of ByteDance, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.)

Though top national security officials seem happy to echo these allegations of Chinese control of TikTok, they stop short of saying that China has ever actually coordinated with the company.

Typical is an interview CIA Director William Burns gave to CNN in 2022, where he said it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok.” Not what the Chinese government has done, but what it could do.

What China could do turns out to be a recurring theme in the statements of the top national security officials.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a 2022 talk at the University of Michigan that TikTok’s “parent company is controlled by the Chinese government, and it gives them the potential [emphasis added] to leverage the app in ways that I think should concern us.” Wray went on to cite TikTok’s ability to control its recommendation algorithm, which he said “allows them to manipulate content and if they want to [emphasis added], to use it for influence operations.”

In the same talk, Wray three times referred to the Chinese government’s “ability” to spy on TikTok users but once again stopped short of saying that they do so.

“They also have the ability to collect data through it on users which can be used for traditional espionage operations, for example,” Wray said. “They also have the ability on it to get access, they have essential access to software devices. So you’re talking about millions of devices and that gives them the ability to engage in different kinds of malicious cyber activity through that.”

Wray is referring to the potential ability, according to U.S. intelligence, to commandeer phones and computers connecting to TikTok through apps and the website.

In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in November 2022, Wray was even more circumspect, stressing that the Chinese government could use TikTok for foreign influence operations but only “if they so chose.” When asked by Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., if the Chinese government has used TikTok to collect information about Americans for purposes other than targeted ads and content, Wray only could acknowledge that it was a “possibility.”

“I would say we do have national security concerns, at least from the FBI’s end, about TikTok,” Wray said. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm which could be used for foreign influence operations if they so chose.”

The lack of evidence is not for lack of trying, as Wray alluded to during the same hearing. When asked by Harshbarger what is being done to investigate the Chinese government’s involvement in TikTok, Wray replied that he would see whether “any specific investigative work … could be incorporated into the classified briefing I referred to.”

The FBI, when asked by The Intercept if it has any evidence that TikTok has coordinated with the Chinese government, referred to Wray’s prior statements — many of which are quoted in this article. “We have nothing to add to the Director’s comments,” an FBI spokesperson said.

The fiscal year 2025 FBI budget request to Congress, which outlines its resource priorities in the coming year, was unveiled this week but makes no mention of TikTok in its 94 pages. In fact, it makes no mention of China whatsoever.

Since at least 2020, the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has investigated the implications of ByteDance’s acquisition of TikTok. The investigation followed an executive order by former President Donald Trump that sought to force TikTok to divest from its parent company. When that investigation failed to force a sale, a frustrated Congress decided to get involved, with the House passing legislation on Wednesday that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok.

In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the highest-ranking intelligence official in the U.S. government, was asked about the possibility that China might use TikTok to influence the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. Haines said only that it could not be discounted.

“We cannot rule out that the CCP could use it,” Haines said.

The relatively measured tone adopted by top intelligence officials contrasts sharply with the alarmism emanating from Congress. In 2022, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., deemed TikTok “digital fentanyl,” going on to co-author a column in the Washington Post with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calling for TikTok to be banned. Gallagher and Rubio later introduced legislation to do so, and 39 states have, as of this writing, banned the use of TikTok on government devices.

None of this is to say that China hasn’t used TikTok to influence public opinion and even, it turns out, to try to interfere in American elections. “TikTok accounts run by a [People’s Republic of China] propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022,” says the annual Intelligence Community threat assessment released on Monday. But the assessment provides no evidence that TikTok coordinated with the Chinese government. In fact, governments — including the United States — are known to use social media to influence public opinion abroad.

“The problem with TikTok isn’t related to their ownership; it’s a problem of surveillance capitalism and it’s true of all social media companies,” computer security expert Bruce Schneier told The Intercept. “In 2016 Russia did this with Facebook and they didn’t have to own Facebook — they just bought ads like everybody else.”

This week, Reuters reported that as president, Trump signed a covert action order authorizing the CIA to use social media to influence and manipulate domestic Chinese public opinion and views on China. Other covert American cyber influence programs are known to exist with regard to Russia, Iran, terrorist groups, and other foreign actors.

In other words, everybody’s doing it.

The post U.S. Intelligence Says TikTok Is a Threat — But Only in Theory appeared first on The Intercept .

In the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza, the intelligence community and the FBI believe that the threat of Islamic terrorist attack inside the United States has increased to its highest point since 9/11, according to testimony of senior officials. “It’s long been the case that the public and the media are quick to declare one threat over and gone, while they obsess over whatever’s shiny and new,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point earlier this month. Wray said that though many “commentators” claimed that the threat from foreign terrorist organizations was over, “a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations [are calling] for attacks against Americans and our allies.”

Though Wray cites Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS as making new threats against America, he said that the bureau was actually more focused on “homegrown” terrorists — Americans — as the primary current threat. “Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” he said at West Point.

Soon after the Gaza war began, Wray appeared before the House Committee on Homeland Security and said that homegrown violent extremists, or HVEs, posed the single greatest immediate foreign terrorist threat to the United States.

According to the FBI, while inspired by the actions of foreign terrorist groups, HVEs are lone actors or members of small cells disconnected from material support of the established extremist groups they draw inspiration from. Though Wray isn’t willing to discount the likelihood of a 9/11 magnitude attack — in fact, at West Point he cites the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel as the equivalent of an attack on the United States that would have killed nearly 40,000 people in the single day — he says small-scale and “lone wolf” attacks are more likely. “Over the past five months, our Counterterrorism Division agents have been urgently running down thousands of reported threats stemming from the [Israel-Hamas] conflict,” Wray said on March 4.

“The FBI assesses HVEs as the greatest, most immediate international terrorism threat to the homeland,” Wray said in his November testimony to Congress, adding that “HVEs are people located and radicalized to violence primarily in the United States, who are not receiving individualized direction from [foreign terrorist organizations] but are inspired by FTOs, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (“ISIS”) and al-Qa’ida and their affiliates, to commit violence.”

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for North America, echoed Wray’s concern in his testimony this month before Congress. “The likelihood of a significant terrorist attack in the homeland has almost certainly increased since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Multiple terrorist groups — including ISIS and al-Qa’ida — have leveraged the crisis to generate propaganda designed to inspire followers to conduct attacks, including in North America. The increasingly diffuse nature of the transnational terrorist threat challenges our law enforcement partners’ ability to detect and disrupt attack plotting against the homeland and leaves us vulnerable to surprise.” Guillot’s counterpart in U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, Gen. Laura Richardson, did not raise the domestic terror threat during her congressional testimony .

Though the FBI is focused on homegrown threats, Wray does say that after months of chasing down an influx in leads, his counterterrorism division has started “to see those numbers level off,” adding that “we expect that October 7 and the conflict that’s followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come.”

Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking U.S. intelligence official, agreed with Wray’s view, testifying this week, “The crisis has galvanized violence by a range of actors around the world.”

“While it is too early to tell, it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism,” she warned, setting the stage for a renewed priority of Middle East terrorism at the very time when much of the intelligence apparatus had shifted to a different type of domestic terrorist threat after January 6. In the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment , praise for the October 7 attack by the Nordic Resistance Movement, a European neo-Nazi group, was cited as evidence of the spread of extremist ideology. No direct neo-Nazi plots, however, were identified.

The Intercept also recently wrote of the homeland security agencies’ expanded interest in domestic extremism, specifically targeting anarchists and leftists in the wake of Aaron Bushnell’s death .

Among the foreign threats raised during his West Point address, Wray mentioned Hezbollah support and praise for Hamas posing “a constant threat to U.S. interests in the region,” Al Qaeda issuing its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or Yemen, calling on jihadists to attack Americans “and Jewish people,” and ISIS urging its followers to target Jewish communities in both Europe and the United States.

To embellish the domestic threat picture, earlier this week, Wray said that immigrant crossings at America’s southern border were extremely concerning, with foreign terrorist organizations infiltrating into the country through drug smuggling networks. “There is a particular network that has — some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have — ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about, and we’ve been spending enormous amounts of effort with our partners investigating,” he said.

Picking up where Wray left off, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News this week that illegal immigration was one of the greatest catalysts for America’s imperilment. “The terror threat to this country is enormous.” Cruz said. “It is greater than it’s ever been at any time since September 11th.”

Other members of Congress have similarly seized on Wray’s warnings about the Hamas threat to push for their own policy objectives. As Wired reported this week , House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio, met with lawmakers in December in an attempt to dissuade them from initiating reforms that could cripple the FISA 702 authority, a law enshrining the intelligence community’s ability to conduct warrantless surveillance .

According to the report, Turner “presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an allegation that was used to illustrate why surveillance reforms may prove detrimental to national security.”

In the past three months, the only Hamas-connected prosecution carried out by the Department of Justice appears to be the arrest of Karrem Nasr, a U.S. citizen who allegedly traveled from Egypt to Kenya in an effort to wage jihad with the Somalia-related terrorist group al-Shabab. “Karrem Nasr, motivated by the heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, devoted himself to waging violent jihad against America and its allies,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in a press release , saying that they had been able to disrupt his plot.

The post FBI Warns Gaza War Will Stoke Domestic Radicalization “For Years to Come” appeared first on The Intercept .