Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

As expected, a federal court jury has found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty in the Boston Marathon bombing, the Washington Post reports.

The same jury will now decide whether he spends the remainder of his life in prison or is executed under a federal death penalty statute.

Tsarnaev stood with his head bowed and his hands clasped as the verdicts were read, the Post reported.

By Steve Neavling

The FBI is warning that hackers claiming to be ISIS sympathizers are attacking websites with security vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins.

PC World reports that some of the plugins were providing an easy back door for some hackers to gain access and inject scripts or install malware.

The hackers targeted news organizations, religious institutions, government websites and businesses, PC World wrote. 

“Although the defacements demonstrate low-level hacking sophistication, they are disruptive and often costly in terms of lost business revenue and expenditures on technical services to repair infected computer systems,” the advisory said.

The hacking is particularly concerning because the perpetrators are voicing support for ISIS “to gain more notoriety than the underlying attack would have otherwise garnered,” the FBI said.

By Steve Neavling

President Obama’s plan to shield millions of immigrants from deportation received another setback Tuesday after a judge refused to lift a temporary hold on the executive action.

The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville declined the administration’s request to lift the preliminary injunction issued on Feb. 16.

Without the injunction lifted, the administration is barred from implementing its new immigration policies.

The Justice Department also has appealed the court’s original hold on the actions, and arguments could begin as early as April 17.

By Steve Neavling

The Secret Service had a recent mishap behind the wheel at the White House, but that hasn’t stopped the agency from teaching President Obama’s oldest daughter how to drive, The New York Daily News reports. 

“The Secret Service (taught her) actually, because they wouldn’t let me in the car with her,” the First Lady told television host Rachel Ray in an interview airing Thursday.

To get a true sense of the road, 16-year-old Malia has driven outside White House grounds, but never without security.

The president said the driving lessons give Malia “a sense of normalcy.”

“My kids have got to learn how to live in the world like normal kids,” Obama said.

The Buffalo News

The good news – and it is good news – is that the FBI has made great strides in transforming itself since the 2001 terror attacks. In a new report by the FBI 9/11 Review Commission, the agency is credited with significantly improving the number of analysts qualified for their jobs and better foreign language ability.

Yet some of the finding are also puzzling, so many years after the attacks. While the bureau was credited with having improved its foreign language ability, it also notes the continuing need for more linguists.

That imperative was made public within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks. How hard can it be, especially when the need is so obviously critical? Schools have churned out 14 years of graduates over that time; surely enough to have produced sufficient numbers of trained linguists – assuming the pay is commensurate with demand. Specifically, the report notes that while the bureau has enough linguists in its large offices, they are in “short supply” in other parts of the country.

And therein lies a problem. Congress has also played a destructive role in – bluntly – keeping the country less safe than it should be. Budget cuts, such as those included in the mindless sequestration policy that took hold two years ago, have “severely hindered the FBI’s intelligence and national security programs,” the report concluded. Among the report’s three principal authors is Edwin Meese III, who was attorney general in the Reagan administration and can hardly be dismissed as a reckless government spender.

The report also notes that the FBI needs to improve its abilities at analysis and to develop a deep roster of informants.

These are areas where the FBI needs to improve, and Congress must play a role, along with the bureau’s leaders. Still, on balance, the report was positive and as one observer noted, periodic evaluations such as this will help keep it on track.

To read more click here. 

By Steve Neavling

The DEA and Justice Department have been secretly amassing logs of nearly all international phone calls that originated from the U.S., the USA Today reports.

The collection of billions of calls came nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The government has tracked calls to as many as 116 countries, including Canada, Mexico and most of South America.

The records helped investigators track the distribution networks of drug cartels.

According to the USA Today,

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.

Other Stories of Interest

• Former FBI Hostage Negotiation Trainer Applies Lessons to Life
• Human Smuggler Accused of Throwing Road Spike at Border Patrol Trucks
• Video: FBI’s Capabilities Tested by Surge in Homegrown Terror 
• DEA Scandal Involving Sex Parties Is About More Than Sex
• FBI Searches for human Remains in Alabama