Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
The tool ‘Spottsroide’ uses a development feature of the Broadcom modem- called monitor mode– that is present in (in this document, the Galaxy S2) many smartphones and other mobile devices that can be used to snoop and conduct blanket data collection of all WiFi traffic around the device. This data can be analysed later through a variety of different techniques.
Monitor mode (if supported) is normally disabled in firmware, this document confirms that and states “The source was never released, so this is the “reverse engineered” source”- meaning Broadcom didn’t help directly.
This does highlight the issues with fully closed-source backdoors and vulnerabilities, where they can be reverse engineered and exploited regardless of any perceived security.
It is possible there is nothing odd about the Apollo app- or Joseph Cohen’s version specifically- and there is simply some form of exploit or perhaps the app has plugins, extensions, or something that’s being leveraged here to start the data collection. But there’s no doubt this is all very odd.
Credit: Leah Mills/San Francisco Chronicle
The mainstream media has stayed surprisingly silent as some pro-Trump rallies held over the weekend turned violent when anti-Trump protestors and self-proclaimed anarchists showed up to the “March 4 Trump” marches.
The marches were organized across the country and one such event took place in Berkeley, California at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, only a few blocks from the university. The college is well-known for its liberal students, so it was no surprise that anti-Trump protesters made an appearance, but no one was prepared for the violence that ensued.
A few minutes before the march was set to commence, fights broke out after shouting matches escalated into kicking and hitting each other. With bare fists, assault with signs, and the involvement of police dressed in riot gear, the result of the fighting was 10 arrests.
Credit: Leah Mills/San Francisco Chronicle
According to Berkeley police, five were for battery, four were for assault with a deadly weapon, and one was for resisting arrest. Law enforcement also confiscated metal pipes, baseball bats, two-by-four blocks of wood and bricks. Seven people were treated on-site for injuries, but none of them needed or wanted to go to the hospital.
With perhaps the biggest backlash to the pro-Trump rallies, Berkeley spearheaded the anti-Trump sentiment on March 4th and photos and videos of the clashes made rounds on social media. It’s surprising that coverage of these protests, especially those resulting in injury, has been largely avoided amongst mainstream media outlets.
While it’s easy to blame one side or the other, one aspect of the fighting that makes this difficult is that another group, the self-proclaimed anarchists, showed up in Berkeley to wreak havoc. The anarchists were easy to distinguish, wearing all black and donning cloth bandanas to let people know they only wanted to disrupt any semblance of peace that might have been attainable.
This isn’t the first time that anarchists have thrown off the balance of a potentially amicable demonstration, as their rioting disrupted Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day and disgusted even those that don’t agree with Trump’s politics.
Credit: Noah Berger/San Francisco Chronicle
“These people just want to fight,” Nancy Chase, a Trump supporter, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They are anarchists in black, and it’s not what we are about. I just want to stand up for liberty.”
These groups take “advantage of the legitimate protesters to destroy things and emphasize their anarchist roots,” David Gomez, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official in Seattle, told The Washington Post.
This seems to be the resounding sentiment, whether or not attendees supported Trump, as Kiki Valenzuela, a sophomore at Berkeley High School, told the Chronicle. Wearing a shirt that read “liberal elite,” she said she was excited to get involved locally but was horrified when people began beating on each other. She moved to the outskirts of the crowd and was glad she wasn’t involved, as the 16-year-old only wanted to express her beliefs, not act out violently against the Trump supporters like many others did.
Trump supporter David Tomes attended the march and said he has been targeted for his political beliefs, despite advocating for health and mindfulness through the yoga studio he owns. The 49-year-old said,
Credit: Noah Berger/San Francisco Chronicle
It’s possible that even more arrests occurred after the event, as police encouraged others to report crimes later because the volume of the crowd prevented them from catching all offenders.
Berkeley made news earlier this year when Milo Yiannopoulos, former senior editor for Breitbart, was scheduled to speak at U.C. Berkeley on Feb. 1. Many students and community members disagreed with this decision and violently protested and rioted until his speech was cancelled. They went so far as to set off fireworks and throw molotov cocktails, resulting in a large fire outside of the building that Yiannopoulos was staying in. Trump responded to the cancellation by accusing U.C. Berkeley of violating freedom of speech, something that seems to have been infringed upon once again with this violent outburst at the pro-Trump rally.
![If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. argue with [people], get in their faces.](https://commonsenseevaluation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WeBringAGun.jpg)
Just a matter of days after John McCain made an “unusual” trip to Syria and Turkey, the Turkish government has cut off water supplies from the Euphrates River into northern Syria, violating international conventions on water rights.
While some measure of stability has returned to pockets of Northern Syria following the Syrian Army’s recent liberation of Al-Qaeda from Aleppo and elsewhere, external forces seem determined to keep the region volatile, regardless of the cost. In the latest example of aggressive foreign intervention in Syria, Turkey, which has long played an antagonistic role in Syria’s nearly six-year-long conflict, has now cut off the flow of the Euphrates River into Syria, depriving the nation of one of its primary sources of water.
According to the Kurdish Hawar News Agency, Turkey cut water supplies to Syria around Feb. 23, which subsequently forced a hydroelectric plant at the Tishrin Dam to shut down while also significantly reducing water levels on its associated reservoir. The dam supplies both water and power to key parts of northern Syria, such as the city of Manbij and other parts of the predominantly Kurdish Kobani Canton.
The dam is one of several major dams along the Euphrates River. Just downstream from Tishrin lies the Tabqa Dam and its reservoir Lake Assad, which supplies Aleppo with most of its power and drinking water, as well as irrigation water for over 640,000 hectares (2,500 square miles) of farmland. A city official in Manbij told Hawar that the city would provide generator fuel to civilians to help cope with the blackout that has resulted from the river being cut off. The same official added that Turkey had “violated the international conventions of water and rivers energy by cutting off Euphrates water.”
This is not the first time Turkey has deprived Syrians of water as a means to advance their political goals in the region. Turkey previously cut the river off in May of 2014, causing water levels on Lake Assad to drop by over 20 feet and creating the potential for genocide by means of dehydration. By blocking the river, Turkey threatens Iraqi civilians as well. Major urban centers like Mosul, whose water supplies largely depend on reservoirs fed by the Euphrates, could be gravely impacted if the river continues to be blocked.
The act of cutting off the river is not unprecedented, but its timing is peculiar. Just days prior to Turkey’s act, U.S. Senator John McCain “secretly” visited the Kobani Canton, the very region that now finds itself without water, before heading to Turkey, where he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the senator’s office, “Senator McCain’s visit was a valuable opportunity to assess dynamic conditions on the ground in Syria and Iraq.” It adds that McCain looks forward to working with the Trump administration and military leaders “to optimize our approach” on fighting the Islamic State.
While the U.S. has backed the Kurds in their fight to keep their territories along the Syrian-Turkish border free of terrorist influence, it has come at the cost of greatly complicating diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Turkey. For example, in early 2016, Erdogan dramatically demanded that the U.S. choose between an alliance with Turkey or with the Syrian Kurds. The diplomatic stand-off has since reached new heights of tension, with Turkey threatening to invade Kurdish-held Manbij less than two weeks ago. Manbij is suffering the most from Turkey’s blockage of the Euphrates, suggesting that the move could be intended to destabilize the Kurds before something more drastic takes place.
It also warrants mentioning that despite Erdogan’s and McCain’s claims that they are eager to “defeat” the Islamic State and other terrorist factions, both have close ties to those very same groups. This, of course, suggests that McCain’s visit, as well as recent moves by Turkey, have ulterior motives that have yet to be publicly expressed.
For example, McCain has been so intent on removing Assad from power that he has fostered relationships with the Syria’s “moderate rebels” and its more notorious opposition factions such as the Islamic State. Photographic evidence has confirmed this, with one infamous photo showing McCain posing with Khalid al-Hamad – a “moderate” rebel who gained notoriety after a video of him eating the heart of a Syrian Army soldier went viral online. McCain has also admitted meeting with ISIS on national television, going so far as to acknowledge that he is still in contact with the infamous terrorist group.
Erdogan, for his part, was revealed to be a major player in the smuggling of Islamic State oil out of Syria for sale on the global market. It was these oil sales that enabled the Islamic State to grow into what it is today and to become one of the world’s most well-funded terror groups.
With such connections now well-documented, it seems unlikely that McCain and Erdogan discussed how to defeat the Islamic State. Based on the evidence, it seems much more likely that both remain eager to destabilize the region due to their shared goal of deposing Assad. With Turkey already working to destabilize Northern Syria by cutting off key resources, we will soon see what other measures may have been discussed during this “secret” meeting.
US Representative Tulsi Gabbard is proving to be quite the thorn in the side of the establishment warmongers. In January, Gabbard went on a secret trip to Syria to investigate first hand and to find the truth that the Mainstream Media is covering up about the Syrian war. Since then, this brave congresswoman has remained steadfast in her mission to show Americans how their tax dollars are funding terrorism in the Middle East.
In a press conference this week, Gabbard called on President Trump to “end the regime change in Syria,” adding that this is what is causing the refugee crisis.
“The most important question is, how do we address the cause of these people fleeing their homes,” Gabbard stated before pointing to a bill that she’s submitted to Congress this year that would help in solving this problem.
The bill’s premise to stop the refugee crisis is quite simple — stop arming the terrorists.
“Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” or HR 608, would ban the use of US taxpayers’ funds to aid terrorist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).“For years, our government has been providing both direct and indirect support to these armed militant groups, who are working directly with or under the command of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, all in their effort and fight to overthrow the Syrian government,” Gabbard said in an interview Wednesday.
During her visit to Syria in January, Gabbard met with refugees and victims of the US-backed Syrian regime change, who all asked the same question — why is the US funding terrorism.
“I’ll tell you what I heard from the Syrian people that I met with, Jake, walking down the street in Aleppo, in Damascus, hearing from them.
They expressed happiness and joy at seeing an American walking through their streets. But they also asked why the U.S. and its allies are providing support and arms to terrorist groups like al-Nusra, al-Qaida or al-Sham, ISIS who are on the ground there, raping, kidnapping, torturing and killing the Syrian people.
They asked me, why is the United States and its allies supporting these terrorist groups who are destroying Syria when it was al-Qaeda who attacked the United States on 9/11, not Syria. I didn’t have an answer for them,” Gabbard said, noting the clear dismay the average Syrian has for the U.S. support of al-Qaeda – a proposition which every American should equally question.
The reality is… every place that I went, every person that I spoke to, I asked this question to them, and without hesitation, they said, there are no moderate rebels. Who are these moderate rebels that people keep speaking of?
Regardless of the name of these groups, the strongest fighting force on the ground in Syria is al Nusra, or al-Qaeda and ISIS. That is a fact,” Gabbard said.
As pro-war neocons — consistently beating the war drum in spite of never actually spending any time in the military — lash out at Gabbard for her Syrian trip and proposed legislation, other members of Congress, who’ve actually been in the military (like Gabbard), are showing their full support of the bill.
Representative Tom Garrett (R-Virginia), a US Army veteran, is one of those supporters who said that the goal in Syria should be peace.
“Tulsi understands that arming the so-called ‘rebels’ in Syria has only led to more bloodshed, more suffering, and created more refugees,” Tima Kurdi said in a statement on Tuesday. “A military solution in Syria is not the answer. I hope that President Trump will stop arming terrorists and commit to a political solution in Syria—it is the only way to restore peace.”
Previously:
Congresswoman Exposes Damning Truth After Visit To Syria: “There Are No Moderate Rebels”
