{"id":1330975,"date":"2022-02-23T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1330975"},"modified":"2022-02-23T08:09:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T13:09:00","slug":"lets-hope-the-special-counsel-and-others-are-investigating-the-people-who-watch-you-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lets-hope-the-special-counsel-and-others-are-investigating-the-people-who-watch-you-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Hope The Special Counsel (And Others) Are Investigating The People Who Watch You Online"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flets-hope-the-special-counsel-and-others-are-investigating-the-people-who-watch-you-online%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1330975&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A revelation buried in a cache of documents opens a new and potentially important investigative corridor for Special Counsel John Durham. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/2022\/02\/17\/checkered_past_of_fbi_cyber_contractor_who_spied_on_trump_817234.html\">shady<\/a> tech executive who featured prominently in the federal indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also communicating with a covert group of computer scientists skilled in mining internet data. This revelation raises concerns that the man referred to in special counsel legal documents as Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe, may have shared sensitive government and private internet data more broadly than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p>Joffe\u2019s role in Spygate represents one of the most recent developments exposed by the Special Counsel\u2019s office. For years, the Christopher Steele dossier stood as a headstone marking the demise of the Russia collusion hoax perpetrated on our country by the Clinton campaign and the corrupt media. But recent court filings indicate the Clinton campaign also holds blame for peddling a second con concerning the Russian Alfa Bank.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"a-quick-refresher-on-the-alfa-bank-tale\"><strong>A Quick Refresher on the Alfa Bank Tale<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The month before Trump and Clinton squared off in the 2016 presidential election, the media began pushing allegations that the Trump organization and the Russian-based Alfa Bank had established a secret communication channel and that the FBI had launched an investigation into that backdoor network. In indicting Sussmann, however, the special counsel\u2019s office also revealed that the Clinton campaign bore responsibility for both the FBI probe and the press\u2019s coverage of that fake scandal.<\/p>\n<p>According to the indictment, Sussmann provided the FBI\u2019s then-General Counsel James Baker with \u201cwhite papers\u201d and data purporting to show a secret communications channel between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank. When he met with Baker, Sussman was representing both the Clinton campaign and Joffe, but Sussman lied to Baker about that fact, the indictment charged, telling Baker he was not working on behalf of any client.<\/p>\n<p>The indictment then explained how Sussmann obtained the data and white papers showing the supposed Alfa Bank-Trump connection. According to the indictment, by July 2016, a computer researcher, now known to be April Lorenzen, \u201chad assembled purported DNS data reflecting apparent DNS lookups between Russian Bank-1 and an email domain, \u2018mail1.trump-email.com.\u201d Lorenzen, according to Durham\u2019s team, shared the information with Joffe and others, and Joffe told Sussmann about the data.<\/p>\n<p>Joffe later \u201cexploited his access to non-public data at multiple Internet companies to conduct opposition research concerning Trump,\u201d according to the indictment. Joffe did this in a couple of ways, the indictment explained. First, in early August 2016, Joffe allegedly \u201cdirected and caused employees of two companies in which he had an ownership interest,\u201d \u201cto search and analyze their holdings of public and non-public internet data for derogatory information on Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Second, the indictment claimed that Joffe enlisted the assistance of researchers at Georgia Tech, since identified as Manos Antonakakis and David Dagon. Antonakakis and Dagon, \u201cwho were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract,\u201d were allegedly tasked by Joffe to scour internet data \u201cfor any information about Trump\u2019s potential ties to Russia.\u201d Among the data Joffe provided them access to was data obtained by Joffe\u2019s tech company in its role as a \u201csub-contractor in a sensitive relationship between the U.S. government and another company.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the indictment focused mainly on Joffe\u2019s alleged exploitation of data to craft the Alfa Bank-Trump hoax, a subsequent filing by Durham revealed Joffe \u201cand his associates\u201d had also \u201cexploited his access to non-public and\/or proprietary Internet data\u201d to track internet traffic at the Trump Tower, Donald Trump\u2019s Central Park West apartment building, and the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).<\/p>\n<p>Using data culled from Joffe\u2019s exploitation of that internet traffic, Sussmann met with the CIA on February 9, 2017, and told the intelligence service that data showed supposed connections between the Trump-related locations and the \u201cinternet protocol\u201d or \u201cIP addresses\u201d of a supposedly rare Russian mobile phone provider. According to the indictment, Sussmann told the CIA that \u201cthese lookups demonstrated that Trump and\/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These revelations in themselves are <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/18\/5-media-lies-about-the-latest-special-counsel-revelations\/\">huge,<\/a> showing that, in addition to the Clinton campaign paying for the peddling of the Alfa Bank hoax,\u00a0\u201cenemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Equally significant was the special counsel\u2019s assertion that Joffe \u201cexploited his access to non-public and\/or proprietary Internet data,\u201d including data Joffe\u2019s then-internet company had come to access \u201cas part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the [Executive Office of the President].\u201d The exploitation by Joffe of sensitive government or private data to target a political enemy should shock everyone.<\/p>\n<p>But something even more explosive may be lurking beneath this scandal when the allegations contained in the Sussmann indictment are compared to the initial reporting on the Alfa Bank story.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"revisiting-the-reporting\"><strong>Revisiting the Reporting<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>When Slate initially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/cover_story\/2016\/10\/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html\">floated<\/a> the Alfa Bank story on October 31, 2016, the liberal outlet spoke of the discovery of the supposed Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication network coming from \u201ca small, tightly knit community of computer scientists who pursue such work\u2014some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies. . ..\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This group, Slate stressed, had unprecedented access to internet data. \u201cThey are entrusted with something close to a complete record of all the servers of the world connecting with one another,\u201d Slate bragged.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in explaining how this community of computer scientists weaved together the Alfa Bank connection, Slate noted that Lorenzen, identified merely as \u201cTea Leaves\u201d in the article, began keeping \u201clogs of the Trump server\u2019s DNS activity.\u201d Lorenzen then \u201ccirculated them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world,\u201d with six computer scientists in total \u201cscrutinizing them for clues.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The New Yorker, which revisited the Alfa Bank story in 2018 in \u201cWas There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign,\u201dlikewise spoke of the discovery of a supposed secret communication channel as originating with \u201ca group of prominent computer scientists\u201d who \u201cwent on alert\u201d after news broke of the alleged Democratic National Committee computer hack. Joffe, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/02\/18\/truth-about-techies-who-targeted-trump\/\">identified<\/a> in The New Yorker article by the alias \u201cMax,\u201d described this small group of scientists, some of whom work \u201cwith law enforcement or for private clients,\u201d as \u201cself-appointed guardians of the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to The New Yorker\u2019s interview of Joffe, his \u201cgroup began combing the Domain Name System, a worldwide network that acts as a sort of phone book for the Internet, translating easy-to-remember domain names into I.P. addresses.\u201d Again, The New Yorker stressed that the \u201cgroup are part of a community that has unusual access to these records.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those searches led Joffe\u2019s group to discover Domain Name System or D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by the Russian-based Alfa Bank. The article continued with details of the supposed strength of the evidence of an Alfa Bank-Trump network and how Joffe shared the data with his lawyer, now known to have been Sussmann. From there, the \u201cevidence\u201d was presented to the press and the FBI, and later to the CIA\u2014all details included in the Sussmann indictment.<\/p>\n<p>The New Yorker continued the story, moving post-election and focusing on Joffe\u2019s continued claims of the Alfa Bank connection and efforts by Daniel Jones, a former staffer for Democrat Diane Feinstein, to \u201caccess the Alfa Bank data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In seeking to verify Joffe\u2019s claims, The New Yorker reported that it also spoke with \u201cPaul Vixie, one of the original architects of the D.N.S. network.\u201d Vixie \u201caffirmed that Max\u2019s group is widely understood to have [the] capability\u201d \u201cto see nearly all the D.N.S. lookup on a given domain.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"access-to-secret-internet-data\"><strong>Access to Secret Internet Data<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Author Dexter Filkins included much more in his approximately 7,000-word tome, but it is the timing he reported, coupled with his reference to Joffe\u2019s group of \u201cself-appointed guardians of the Internet,\u201d that \u201care part of a community that has unusual access to these records,\u201d that in retrospect proves striking.<\/p>\n<p>Joffe\u2019s group reportedly claimed it scoured the internet soon after the April 2016 DNC hack, which coincides with Durham\u2019s allegations that by July 2016, Lorenzen had assembled data purporting to show DNS lookups between Alfa Bank and the email domain, \u201cmail1.trump-email.com,\u201d spanning the period from May 4, 2016, through July 29, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The indictment, however, presents Lorenzen\u2019s work as independently derived, which conflicts with Joffe\u2019s claims to the New Yorker that after the April 2016 DNC hack, his \u201c<em>group <\/em>began combing the Domain Name System, a worldwide network that acts as a sort of phone book for the Internet, translating easy-to-remember domain names into I.P. addresses.\u201d Also, according to the indictment, it was not until August 2016, that Joffe allegedly began providing data to the Georgia Tech researchers to mine for information to support the inference of a Trump-Russia connection.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"where-did-they-get-this-access\"><strong>Where Did They Get This Access?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>So where did Joffe\u2019s group get access to the data it had reviewed? And what was the community this group was part of that has \u201cunusual access\u201d to the D.N.S. lookup data of \u201cprivate companies, public institutions, and universities\u201d? A random email, forwarded by Joffe to Georgia Tech\u2019s Dr. Manos Antonakakis, provides a possible answer: Ops-Trust.<\/p>\n<p>Ops-Trust is a <a href=\"https:\/\/portal.ops-trust.net\/\">self-described<\/a> \u201chighly vetted community of security professionals focused on the operational robustness, integrity, and security of the Internet,\u201d that \u201cpromotes responsible action against malicious behavior beyond just observation, analysis and research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the scant public portion of its webpage, \u201cthe community\u2019s members, span the breadth of the industry including service providers, equipment vendors, financial institutions, mail admins, DNS admins, DNS registrars, content hosting providers, law enforcement\u201d and other third-party security-related organizations. Membership in Ops-Trust is extremely limited with new candidates accepted only if nominated and vouched for by their peers.<\/p>\n<p>While there is little public information on Ops-Trust, it is a <a href=\"https:\/\/researchain.net\/archives\/pdf\/Cybersecurity-Information-Sharing-Governance-Structures-An-Ecosystem-Of-Diversity-Trust-And-Tradeoffs-3211287\">well-known<\/a> cyber-security information-sharing community, and its members appear to meet, and even make presentations at various conferences, such as the Forum of Incident Response and Security Team, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.first.org\/resources\/papers\/conference2014\/first_2014_-_vixie-_paul_-_op_sec_trust.pdf\">FIRST conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Slides still available online from a 2014 conference, contain several interesting tidbits of information. First, the link to the Ops-Trust presentation includes the name \u201cPaul Vixie,\u201d who as noted above, told The New Yorker Joffe\u2019s group is \u201cwidely understood\u201d to have the ability \u201cto see nearly all the D.N.S. lookups on a given domain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was not Vixie\u2019s only connection to the story, however. Rather, Vixie\u2019s name first appeared when Slate pushed the Alfa Bank tale shortly before the November 2016 presidential election. \u201cThe group of computer scientists passed the logs to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Vixie\">Paul Vixie<\/a>,\u201d Slate wrote about the supposed discovery of the Alfa Bank-Trump connection, and then, after studying the logs, Vixie concluded that \u201cthe parties were communicating in a secretive fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The slide deck from the FIRST <a href=\"https:\/\/www.first.org\/resources\/papers\/conference2014\/first_2014_-_vixie-_paul_-_op_sec_trust.pdf\">conference presentation<\/a> also lists Vixie by name, explaining he \u201ccreated the ops-t \u2018portal,\u2019\u201d that currently boasts about \u201c40 trust groups,\u201d \u201c700 members,\u201d and an \u201ceven larger\u201d \u201cCrimeware\u201d group.<\/p>\n<p>Significantly, the slides also explained that \u201cthe security community now has, in Ops-T, a mature data sharing capability.\u201d \u201cYou can stop reinventing it; join us and help out,\u201d the slide invited. Further, every \u201ctrust group\u201d \u201chas its own private wiki &#038; mailing lists,\u201d suggesting ease of communication by this exclusive group of tech geniuses. While the Ops-Trust webpage does not display any emails, the presentation listed three with an ops-trust.net domain.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"let-the-questions-begin\"><strong>Let The Questions Begin<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>These details prove important for several reasons. First, the ops-trust.net domain provides a connection between Joffe and the secretive organization because in September 2018, a recent Ph.D. graduate emailed <a href=\"mailto:cw-general@ops-trust.net\">cw-general@ops-trust.net<\/a> to provide his change in affiliation to the \u201cCrimeWare\u201d group. That email apparently went to Joffe because later that day Joffe forwarded the message to Antonakakis, asking if the sender was \u201cone of\u201d his.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/margot2.23.22.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268033\" width=\"456\" height=\"455\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/margot2.23.22.jpg 467w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/margot2.23.22-300x300-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/margot2.23.22-200x200-1.jpg 200w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>That Joffe forwarded the email to Antonakakis also suggests a connection between Antonakakis and the Ops-Trust organization.<\/p>\n<p>An attempt to contact the \u201cCrimeWare\u201d group via the above email proved impossible, with the email coming back undeliverable. An email sent to another individual whose Ops-Trust email appeared in a separate presentation did not come back as undeliverable, but a request for comment went unanswered. And inquiries to the attorneys for Joffe, Antonakakis, Dagon, and Lorenzen were all ignored, making it impossible to ascertain whether Joffe\u2019s group referenced in Slate and The New Yorker articles was the Ops-Trust group.<\/p>\n<p>If so, an entirely new angle of inquiry emerges, with questions ranging from whether the Ops-Trust members abided by the organization\u2019s position that they are \u201cexpected to contribute data as appropriate and in a fashion that does not violate any laws or corporate policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And what about Joffe, whom Durham\u2019s team claimed had previously pressured employees to cull company data to obtain derogatory information on Trump: Did Joffe push Ops-Trust members to assist in the Alfa-Bank and Russia cell phone research?<\/p>\n<p>What about the sensitive data Joffe had provided to Georgia Tech researchers: Did he also provide that data to Ops-Trust members? What about other government data Joffe or other members of Ops-Trust had access to? And what about the law enforcement members of Ops-Trust or the \u201cthree-letter federal agencies? Did any of them share in the research project targeting Trump?<\/p>\n<p>These questions are not mere curiosities. Tech giants and the bloated government bureaucracy hold enormous amounts of private data and, as Ops-Trust brags, it has \u201ca mature data sharing capability.\u201d So what data is being shared? How is it being used? By whom? And for what purpose?<\/p>\n<p>Joffe\u2019s connection to this group and the allegations that he exploited both government and private data to target Trump, mean these questions matter. So, while the special counsel\u2019s office appears focused on the data Joffe provided to Georgia Tech, The New Yorker\u2019s attempt to get ahead of the story of Joffe\u2019s small band of dedicated \u201cguardians of the internet\u2019 suggests that is where the real story lies.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A revelation buried in a cache of documents opens a new and potentially important investigative corridor for Special Counsel John Durham. The shady tech executive who featured prominently in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}