Keniel A Thomas is part of the wave of violent phone scam gangs that have led to chaos in cities across the island; he made the mistake of trying to con the 90-year-old William Webster out of $50,000 with a hamfisted advance-fee fraud scam, not realizing that Webster is a top US spook, the only person ever to have served as chief of both the CIA and FBI. Read the rest

Following protests against a neo-Nazi rally, the FBI opened a terrorism investigation into By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a civil rights group, conducting surveillance and citing the fact that a BAMN member had been stabbed by a neo-Nazi to justify it. Read the rest

Anti-abortion extremists are among the most violent domestic terrorists in America, having murdered and attempted to murder dozens of people using firearms, firebombs and traditional explosives. Read the rest

Federal agents today arrested a man in Georgia who they say was planning an attack with weapons and explosives on the White House, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Read the rest

“Officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests”

The FBI describes the group Proud Boys as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism” in a document provided to reporters by law enforcement in the state of Washington. Read the rest

In news that will not surprise anyone who is Black, Latinx, Jewish, Muslim, queer, or a member of any other group targeted by hateful idiots, hate crimes in America are way up under Trump. Says who? FBI. Read the rest

Well here's a story you don't run across every day: an FBI agent was recently shot by a booby-trapped wheelchair while searching the former residence of 67-year old Gregory Lee Rodvelt.

Rodvelt was forced to forfeit his home in Williams, Oregon, after his 90-year old mother filed a civil suit against him for elder abuse a few years back. This past September, a real estate lawyer enlisted to sell the Rodvelt's house called local law enforcement to tell them that he'd found a sign posted on the property that warned it was "protected with improvised devices."

From The Oregonian:

They slipped by the minivan outfitted with the spring-loaded jaws of animal snares and avoided a circular hot tub turned on its side and designed to roll over trespassers who triggered a tripwire — something reminiscent of "a scene from the movie 'Indiana Jones.'"

But the FBI special agent and three state police bomb technicians never made it past the empty wheelchair inside the manufactured home they entered on the southern Oregon property, court records say.

The agent was rushed to a hospital in Grants Pass, about 15 miles away. An X-ray found a .410-gauge shotgun pellet in the agent's left leg below the knee.

Ow.

Rodvelt, who's been up shit creek with the law on several occasions in the past, had been serving time in the clink on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, failure to mark explosives and resisting arrest. However, someone had the genius idea to release him for a two-week period so that he could return to his former home and prepare it for sale. Read the rest

The American Bar Association, implied by apoplectic US Senator Lindsay Graham as offering their "gold standard" rating to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, has asked the US Senate to investigate said nominee. Seems the ABA also had problems with Kavanaugh in the past, which the Senate also ignored. Read the rest

Even though the DoJ has expressly prohibited using the No-Fly list to gain leverage over potential informants, the FBI has continued its longstanding practice of blackmailing American citizens by putting them on the No-Fly list because they refused to work as informants. Read the rest

For its 25th anniversary, Wired Magazine asked numerous luminaries to pick a figure from the digital world to celebrate; Edward Snowden chose EFF Pioneer Award Winner Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice and cofounder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, who is one of the leaders in teaching grassroots activists to resist government surveillance. Read the rest

The Clickhole is in incredible form with Step Right Up And Feast Your Eyes On The Unfathomable Comey, The Man Who Is Both Good And Bad! The Beautiful Monster Who Makes Resisters’ Minds Spin! Betrayer Of Hillary! Enemy Of Trump! Behold This Freak Of Nature! It's a timely reminder that the FBI is a domestic surveillance agency with a long, dishonorable history of antidemocratic suppression of justice movements, and that nice guys with a commitment to decency and shared prosperity do not get appointed to head such institutions. Read the rest

🔥😲 Christopher Wray, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, spoke publicly about the findings of the just-concluded investigation into--among other things--James Comey's 11th-hour actions around the Clinton email investigation, and their effect on the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Read the rest

Vpnfilter is the malicious software that targets home routers, thought to be the work of Russian state-affiliated hacker group Fancy Bear, that raised alarm last month on the revelation that it had infected half a million home routers around the world. Read the rest

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

The FBI sent out an urgent bulletin advising anyone with a home or small office internet router to immediately turn it off and then turn it on again as a way to help stop the spread of a malware outbreak with origins in Russia. Read the rest

The FBI has been trying to ban working cryptography since the Clinton years, a losing battle whose stakes go up with each passing day as the number of devices that depend on working crypto to secure them and their users goes up and up and up. Read the rest

Federal investigators believe a man who once worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is responsible for last year's massive leak of Top Secret CIA hacking tools, court documents reveal. Read the rest