Monthly Archives: February 2023

Henry "Enrique" Tarrio (US English: TAR-ee-oh, US Spanish:[tari.o]; born 1984 or 1985[2]) is an American activist, former FBI informant,[5] and convicted felon who serves as chairman of the Proud Boys,[1] a far-right, neo-fascist, and exclusively male organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States.[6] Tarrio was indicted in June 2022 on seditious conspiracy charges, along with four other Proud Boy leaders, for his alleged role in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[7]

Tarrio, who is of Afro-Cuban background,[8] served as the Florida state director of the grassroots organization Latinos for Trump.[9][10][11] In 2020, Tarrio was a candidate in the Republican primary election for Florida's 27th congressional district, but withdrew.[3][4][8] According to a former federal prosecutor and the transcripts of a 2014 federal court proceeding, Tarrio had previously served as an informant to both federal and local law enforcement.[12][13][14]

Tarrio volunteered at a Miami event for far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in May 2017 when he encountered a member of the Proud Boys, who encouraged him to join the organization.[15] In August 2017, Tarrio attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.[16] He said he was there to protest the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials.[17]

In 2018, Tarrio became a fourth-degree member of the Proud Boys, a distinction reserved for those who get into a physical altercation "for the cause"; he punched a person who was believed to be aligned with antifa.[18] He assumed the role of chairman for the organization on November 29, 2018, succeeding Jason Lee Van Dyke, who held the position for two days, and Van Dyke's predecessor Gavin McInnes.[19][20] McInnes involved Tarrio as a prospective electoral candidate, and in that capacity both conferred with Trump right-wing confidants Steve Bannon (whom Trump later pardoned) and Sebastian Gorka.[21]

Tarrio helped organize the End Domestic Terrorism rally held in Portland, Oregon, on August 17, 2019.[22] The event, co-organized by Joe Biggs, was framed as a response to the June 2019 assault on conservative blogger Andy Ngo.[23][24]

Tarrio attended a pro-Trump march on December 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C., along with around two hundred other Proud Boys. He was arrested in connection with the march on a misdemeanor destruction of property charge related to the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church.[25] In August 2021 he was sentenced to five months in jail for the incident and on a weapons charge.[26]

In January 2021, Reuters reported that Tarrio had been an informant to both federal and local law enforcement between 2012 and 2014.[27] This report contributed to rifts within the Proud Boys. In the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack, chapters of the organization split with the national group. Several chapters across three states pointed to Tarrio's past as an informant as a reason for their splintering from the national organization. The Oklahoma chapter also split from the national group because of Tarrio, blaming his "failure to take disciplinary measures [which] have jeopardized our brothers' safety and the integrity of our brotherhood".[28] Tarrio himself did not participate in the attack, having been arrested two days earlier in Washington, D.C., and ordered to stay away from the city. Later, he said he would neither "support" nor "condemn" the attack and did not "sympathize" with lawmakers.[29]

After 2004, Tarrio relocated to a small town in North Florida to run a poultry farm. He later returned to Miami.[15] He has also founded a security equipment installation firm and another providing GPS tracking for companies.[15] Tarrio owns a Miami T-shirt business, known as the 1776 Shop, an online vendor for right-wing merchandise.[30][31] Slate described the 1776 Shop as a "freewheeling online emporium for far-right merch" that sells a range of Proud Boys gear including shirts stating "Pinochet did nothing wrong".[32]

In regard to his views on extremist groups and ideologies, Tarrio has been quoted as saying, "I denounce white supremacy. I denounce anti-Semitism. I denounce racism. I denounce fascism. I denounce communism and any other -ism that is prejudiced towards people because of their race, religion, culture, tone of skin."[33] In regard to his own ethnicity, he has said, "I'm pretty brown, I'm Cuban. There's nothing white supremacist about me."[16]

After Tarrio confronted and shouted expletives at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Coral Gables in late 2018, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party apologized and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio compared the disruptors to the "repudiation mobs Castro has long ago used in Cuba."[34]

In 2018, Twitter removed Tarrio's account, along with others related to the Proud Boys, citing how platform policy prohibited accounts related to violent extremist groups. The following year, Twitter detected and removed another account that Tarrio created to evade the suspension.[35]

Tarrio said he is a close friend of Roger Stone,[10] a Trump ally who is a high-profile Proud Boys supporter.[30] After Stone was arrested in January 2019, Tarrio appeared outside the courtroom in a shirt emblazoned with the message "Roger Stone did nothing wrong".[36] The two appeared in a video together made on December 11, 2020, the day before a "Stop the Steal" rally where Tarrio stood on stage with Stone.[37] On December 23, 2020, Trump pardoned Stone, whose prison sentence he had previously commuted.[38]

Tarrio began a run for Congress for Florida's 27th district in 2020, but withdrew before the Republican Party primary. In his campaign's responses to a Ballotpedia survey done in 2019, Tarrio listed criminal justice reform, protection of the Second Amendment, countering domestic terrorism, ending the war on drugs, free speech on digital platforms, and immigration reform among his priorities.[3]

In 2004, when he was 20 years old, Tarrio was convicted of theft. He was sentenced to community service and three years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution.[15]

In 2013, Tarrio was sentenced to 30 months (of which he served 16) in federal prison for rebranding and reselling stolen diabetes test strips.[39][40][41]

According to a January 2021 Reuters report, between 2012 and 2014 Tarrio had been an informant to both federal and local law enforcement; in a 2014 federal court hearing, Tarrio's lawyer said that Tarrio had been a "prolific" cooperator who had assisted the government in the investigation and prosecution of more than twelve people in cases involving anabolic steroids, gambling, and human smuggling; had helped identify three "grow houses" where marijuana was cultivated; and had repeatedly worked undercover to aid in investigations. Tarrio denied working undercover or cooperating with prosecutions, but the court transcript contradicted the denial, and the former federal prosecutor in the proceeding against Tarrio confirmed that he cooperated.[42][43]

On January 4, 2021, Tarrio was arrested by Washington, D.C. police and charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of property in connection with the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a Washington, D.C. church during a pro-Trump march on December 12, 2020, that drew around 200 Proud Boys. Tarrio acknowledged that he had burned the banner, but denied that the act was a hate crime.[25][44] A statement released by African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was one of two historically Black churches in D.C. targeted on December 12, said that the church had sued Tarrio and the Proud Boys organization.[45][46] Tarrio was also charged with two felony counts of possession of a high capacity feeding device after two high-capacity firearms magazines were found on Tarrio when he was arrested.[47][48] His request to be allowed to have Bevelyn Beatty, a Black Christian activist who was herself accused of defacing a Black Lives Matter mural, to testify for him as a character witness was summarily denied.[21] As a condition of his release on bail on January 5, 2021, Tarrio was banned from entering Washington except for trial or meeting with his lawyers.[49][50][51]

The FBI later said they had arrested Tarrio in an attempt to prevent the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[42]On July 19, 2021, Tarrio pleaded guilty to a destruction of property charge and a reduced charge of attempting to possess a high-capacity ammunition feeding device.[52][53]

On August 23, 2021, Tarrio received a 155-day prison sentence,[54] more than the 90 days requested by Department of Justice prosecutors.[55] Tarrio began serving his sentence on September 6, 2021.[55] His November 2021 request for early release based on poor living conditions in the D.C. Jail was denied.[56]

By November 2021, at least two dozen Proud Boys members and affiliates had been indicted for their alleged roles in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[57][58][59] Tarrio and the Proud Boys were subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in November 2021 relating to the organization's alleged involvement.[60]

In March 2022, Tarrio was indicted on a conspiracy charge by the Justice Department for his involvement in organizing the January 6 attack.[61] On June 6, 2022, the Justice Department announced that Tarrio and four other members had been indicted on more serious seditious conspiracy charges.[62][63]

On December 19, 2022, the trial of Tarrio and four co-defendants began after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly denied defense attorneys last-minute bid to delay jury selection.[64][65]

Henry Tarrio was born in 1984 or 1985 and raised Catholic in Little Havana, a neighborhood in Miami, Florida.[34][2][66][1][67] Tarrio is of Cuban heritage and identifies as Afro-Cuban.[15][11] He is divorced.[15]

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What is the NSA and how does it work? – SearchSecurity

Posted: at 10:18 am

What is the National Security Agency (NSA)?

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a federal government intelligence agency that is part of the United States Department of Defense and is managed under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).

The intelligence agency, led by the director of the NSA, does its global monitoring, collection and processing of information and data electronically from its headquarters in Maryland. The NSA is in the Intelligence-gathering business and -- unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) -- its agents don't make arrests. Instead, the NSA turns information over to the military.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman officially formed the NSA to perform a specialized discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT is intelligence gathering by interception of signals -- either communications between people or through electronic signals not directly used in communication.

Two decades later, in 1972, a presidential directive established the Central Security Service (CSS) to provide cryptologic support, knowledge and assistance to the military cryptologic community. The NSA and CSS together form the National Security Agency Central Security Service (NSA/CSS). The job of the NSA/CSS is to create a more unified cryptologic effort with the armed forces and team with senior military and civilian leaders to address and act on critical military-related issues in support of national and tactical intelligence objectives, according to the government.

The NSA exists to protect national communications systems integrity and to collect and process information about foreign adversaries' secret communications in support of national security and foreign policy.

Its role in preserving national security is twofold:

In October 2017, Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed new guidelines enabling the NSA to provide intercepted communications and raw SIGINT -- before applying domestic and foreign privacy protections -- to 16 government agencies, including the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency.

Although the organization's number of employees -- as well as its budget -- falls into the category of classified information, the NSA lists among its workforce analysts, engineers, physicists, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts, managers, and administrative and clerical assistants.

It also claims to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the U.S. and possibly worldwide. NSA/CSS mathematicians perform the agency's two critical functions: They design cryptographic systems to protect U.S. communications, and they search for weaknesses in the counterpart systems of U.S. adversaries.

The NSA denies reports claiming that it has an unlimited black budget -- undisclosed even to other government agencies. Nevertheless, the agency admitted that, if it were judged as a corporation, it would rank in the top 10% of Fortune 500 companies.

It's been known that the NSA listens in on every international phone call made to and from the U.S., but that's just one aspect of the agency's work. Another aspect is the agency's focus on intelligence gathering.

It was believed that the NSA only focused on international intelligence gathering. However, that belief was derailed in 2013 when details about some of the NSA's other surveillance programs became public.

That's when former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden leaked troves of confidential NSA information to the national and international press. The documents indicated the agency had broadened its domestic surveillance activities to bulk collection of U.S. communications.

Snowden told the press about 10 NSA surveillance programs:

Early interception techniques relied on radio signals, radar and telemetry.

The first traces of SIGINT date back to July 1917 when the government created the Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence. This was three months after the United States had declared war on Germany, in part because of the infamous Zimmerman Telegram.

Intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, the Zimmerman Telegram revealed that the German foreign secretary attempted to entice Mexico into war against the U.S. by promising to return the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico should Germany win the war.

When British codebreakers intercepted this message, it inflamed the U.S. and proved the value of SIGINT.

After the war, SIGINT work became fragmented and scattered among numerous agencies and government entities. The Army Signal Corps developed the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in May 1929 after taking over cryptology from military intelligence. Civilian William F. Friedman became chief cryptologist at SIS and was tasked with educating a small team of civilians on cryptanalysis so they could compile codes for the U.S. Army.

After the armed forces succeeded in cracking German and Japanese codes during World War II, President Truman reorganized American SIGINT under the NSA. SIS, renamed the Signal Security Agency and then the Army Security Agency in the mid-1940s, became part of the National Security Agency.

In 1957, the NSA moved to Fort Meade in Maryland, where it is still based today.

In 2012, The New York Times reported that Stuxnet malware, discovered in June 2010 after a damaging attack on Windows machines and programmatic logic controllers in Iran's industrial plants, including its nuclear program, had been jointly developed by the U.S. and Israel. Neither country has admitted responsibility for the malicious computer worm.

A hacker organization dubbed Equation Group allegedly used two of the zero-day exploits prior to the Stuxnet attack, according to antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, which is based in Moscow and made the claims in 2015.

In addition to protecting national security through cryptography and cryptanalysis, the NSA has weathered security breaches beyond Snowden that have caused embarrassment for the agency and affected its intelligence-gathering capabilities.

An unidentified NSA contractor removed classified U.S. government information from the NSA in 2015 and stored the material, which included code and spyware used to infiltrate foreign networks, on a personal device. The files were allegedly intercepted by Russian hackers. The contractor acknowledged using antivirus software from Kaspersky Lab.

In 2017, Israel intelligence officers revealed that they detected NSA materials on Kaspersky networks in 2015. Kaspersky officials later admitted that they became aware of unusual files on an unidentified contractor's computer, and they did not immediately report their findings. In December 2017, the U.S. government banned the use of Kaspersky Lab products for all federal agencies and government employees.

A hacker group calling itself The Shadow Brokers claimed it had stolen NSA files in 2017. It released batches of files on the internet, some of which allegedly contained the Internet Protocol addresses of computer servers that were compromised by Equation Group -- hackers reported to have ties to the NSA.

The continual dumping of NSA files has exposed zero-day exploits targeting firewalls and routers, Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities and other cyberweapons. The NSA, according to the ongoing leaks, has been stockpiling vulnerabilities, most notably the Windows EternalBlue exploit used by cybercriminals in the global WannaCry ransomware attacks.

The FBI arrested Harold T. Martin III, a former NSA contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, in August 2016 and accused him of violating the Espionage Act for unlawful possession of terabytes of confidential materials allegedly taken from the NSA and other intelligence agencies over a 20-year period. A grand jury indicted him in February 2018. The case is still pending as prosecutors wrestle with criminal counts and the sheer volume of materials.

In October 2020, the NSA released an advisory specifying 25 publicly known vulnerabilities actively exploited or being scanned by Chinese state-sponsored actors. Later that year, the NSA verified that SolarWinds Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 2 eliminated the malicious code used in the extensive SolarWinds hack.

In January 2021, for the first time, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the DNI and the NSA publicly suggested Russian threat actors were responsible for the SolarWinds supply chain attack.

That April, the Biden administration formally attributed the SolarWinds attacks to the Russian government's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The FBI, NSA and CISA jointly warned that state-sponsored, SVR-allied threats were actively exploiting known vulnerabilities to get access to national security and government-associated networks.

Also that April, the NSA found four new Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities, of which three were critical.

Learn more about how the SolarWinds attack puts national security strategy on display.

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When Charles Barkley revealed the reason for his addiction to gambling: Ive lost a million somewhere about 10 to 12 times – Sportskeeda

Posted: at 10:15 am

When Charles Barkley revealed the reason for his addiction to gambling: Ive lost a million somewhere about 10 to 12 times Sportskeeda

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When Charles Barkley revealed the reason for his addiction to gambling: Ive lost a million somewhere about 10 to 12 times - Sportskeeda

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The two realities of the Shift Age | The Futurist

Posted: at 10:14 am

David Houle

(NOTE: Most of this column is a direct quote from my second book on the Shift Age Entering the Shift Age published in 2012.)

Prior to the development of the communications technologies of the last 200 years, the concept of place was an overriding reality of human life. Where one lived largely determined ones life, as other places could not be experienced without lengthy and arduous travel.This meant that the concept of place was the dominant reality and ones life was largely defined by what one did and experienced in that place. Reality meant physical reality.

Even during the explosive growth of communications technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, radio and television from the 1830s through the 1970s, one had to be in a specific place to communicate with another place. The telegraph office gave way to the telephone at home and at work, both connected to the wall.Radios were large and in the home, as were televisions. The experienced reality was still about places with these electric devices anchored in them.So, one lived in a place, was largely defined by that place, and was connected to the world through these place-based appliances.

No longer.

We now live in a broadband world, the world of connectivity.This new broadband world shows up on screen, from giant televisions to smartphones.

This screen reality can be every bit as compelling as the reality that we physically inhabit.Do we not all check our screens with close to addictive regularity?Isnt how a teenager is perceived at night on social media every bit as important to them as how they are seen in school the next day?

This connectedness, happening at the speed of light, is creating an entirely new place: the noosphere. Our physical reality exists in the biosphere the thin surface of the planet where life exists. But this new, rapidly growing noosphere is the electronic extension of our collective neurological activity. It is a pulsing, cyber-repository of humanitys creative brainpower, knowledge, history, culture, social interactions, entertainment, and commerce.This is a global village vastly more comprehensive and interconnected than Marshall McLuhan could ever have envisioned when he coined the phrase electric village more than 50 years ago. We now live in a two-reality world: the physical reality in which we live and the noosphere reality of the screen that connects us to everything and everyone else on the planet.

Story continues

The Shift Age is the first time that humanity has experienced these two realities. These realities will develop at significantly different evolutionary rates. This will cause an incredible transformation of physical reality and of human consciousness.

Often, if not always the future shows up first in the screen reality and then the physical reality. Here is one clear, real-time example of that.

10 years ago I was speaking to dozens of CEO groups and dozens of business conferences every year, These audiences expect a futurist to provide forecasts. Back during the Great Recession, it became clear that online retail was growing dramatically while physical retail was not. As a big fan of Amazon since the late 1990s, I was impressed with their long-term focus on growth and total market share. All the time that financial analysts criticized the company for low or non-existent profits, Amazon always responded that they were focused on the long-term.

At this same time, in an already over-retailed America, retail chains were fighting for anchor positions in new malls, undertaking growth for growth's sake.Basically, physical retail chains were competing against each other in the physical reality at a time when online retail was gaining ever more total market share.

So I looked at that reality and projected rapid growth online with flat to down growth in physical retail. I then, and for several years from 2010-2014 stated that the 2010-2020 decade would be a time of massive contraction in the physical retail space. That was clearly a forecast that came true. Dozens, if not hundreds of retail chains and outlets declared bankruptcy in this decade.

The key lesson to learn here is that, if one operates in physical reality, one must be aware of what is going on in the screen reality. The screen reality has, is, and will reshape our physical realities, business and personal.

NOTE TO READERS: In this space at the Herald-Tribune I write future-focused columns through a local filter. Three months ago, I launched a newsletter that covers many topics not covered here. You can sign up atEvolutionshift.substack.com.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written 13 books and is futurist in residence at Ringling College of Art andDesign. His websites aredavidhoule.comandthe2020sdecade.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

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