Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Here’s some breaking news from the other, other, other Democratic scandal in Washington, D.C.:

House investigators concluded that Democratic IT aides made unauthorized access to congressional servers in 2016, allegedly accessing the data of members for whom they did not work, logging in as members of Congress themselves, and covering their tracks, according to a presentation summarizing the findings of a four-month internal probe.

Their behavior mirrored a “classic method for insiders to exfiltrate data from an organization,” and they continued even after orders to stop, the briefing materials allege. There are indications that numerous members’ data may have been secretly residing not on their designated servers, but instead aggregated onto one server, according to the briefing and other sources. Authorities said that the entire server was then physically stolen.

When acting on the findings, Democratic leadership appear to have misrepresented the issue to their own members as solely a matter of theft, a comparison of the investigators’ findings with Democrats’ recollections and a committee’s public statement shows, leading 44 Democrats to not conduct protective measures typically taken after a breach — including informing constituents whose personal information may have been exposed. (A list of the involved members is below.)

The presentation, written by the House’s Office of the Inspector General, reported under the bold heading “UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS” that “5 shared employee system administrators have collectively logged into 15 member offices and the Democratic Caucus although they were not employed by the offices they accessed.”

It found indications that a House “server is being used for nefarious purposes and elevated the risk that individuals could be reading and/or removing information” and “could be used to store documents taken from other offices.” The server was that of the House Democratic Caucus, a sister group of the DNC that was run at the time by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra.

The aides named are Imran Awan, his wife Hina Alvi, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and his friend Rao Abbas, Pakistani-born aides whose lives are filled with reason for concern. Abid’s Ukranian wife Natalia Sova and Haseeb Rana were also involved in the Awans’ activities but departed the House payroll prior to the investigation.

One systems administrator “logged into a member’s office two months after he was terminated from that office,” the investigative summary says.

While the rules could have been violated for some innocuous purpose, the presentation indicates that is unlikely: “This pattern of login activity suggests steps are being taken to conceal their activity.”

The list of affected Democratic Representatives (many of whom have been forcibly retired by voters or otherwise left office), alphabetized for your convenience:

Plus the House Democratic Caucus server.

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine a Republican had broken into one Democratic congressional servers. That would be front page news for weeks. Now imagine a Republican had broken into the servers of 44 Democratic congressmen, plus the DNC. There would be congressional hearings televised by every major network and calls to disband the RNC. But let five Pakistani nationals do the same thing and the MSM just can’t be arsed to even investigate it.

It’s a huge scandal.

Tags: Abid Awan, Charlie Crist, Crime, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrats, Frederica Wilson, Imran Awan, Jamal Awan, Joaquin Castro, Luke Rosiak, Pete Aguilar, Rahm Emanuel, Tammy Duckworth, Ted Lieu

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2018 at 9:04 AM and is filed under Crime, Democrats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.