Military conducts cyber attacks on IS

House backs bill to use testimonials to combat terror Fed govt failed to provide info: Brownback

WASHINGTON, April 26, (Agencies): The US military is now conducting cyber attacks on the Islamic State group, a general said Tuesday as the Pentagon looks to accelerate the fight against the jihadists.

A US-led coalition has been striking IS fighters in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, and officials have long stated the importance of using cyber techniques such as overloading IS networks to limit the group’s communications and ability to reach potential new recruits.

“We have now begun to use our exquisite cyber capabilities in this fight against DAESH,” Baghdad-based Major General Peter Gersten told Pentagon reporters, using an acronym that comes from the group’s name in Arabic.

He did not elaborate except to say the effort is “highly coordinated” and has been “very effective.”

In February, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the US military’s top officer, General Joe Dunford, said the United States was determined to “accelerate” the anti-IS campaign, and indicated cyber warfare would play an increasingly important role in doing so.

Dropping

Earlier this month, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said: “We are dropping cyberbombs” on the IS group.

The New York Times published a story Sunday saying the US Cyber Command had placed “implants” in IS networks that let experts monitor the group’s behavior and ultimately imitate or alter commanders’ messages so they unwittingly direct fighters to areas likely to be hit by drone or plane strikes.

The US Cyber Command is charged with protecting America’s military and some civilian networks from attacks, as well as deploying its own offensive cyber strategies if needed.

By 2018, it will have more than 6,000 military and civilian technical experts working across 133 teams.

One such team, comprising about 65 people, today works in the Middle East and carries out cyber operations against IS networks.

Admiral Michael Rogers, head of both Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, declined to provide any additional information Tuesday.

“We have publicly acknowledged that we are using cyber as another tool against ISIL,” Rogers said at a Georgetown University cybersecurity conference, using an acronym for the IS group.

“I want them to be aware: We are going to contest you on the kinetic battlefield, we are going to contest you with information dynamics, we are KANSAS, April 27, (RTRS): Kansas is withdrawing from plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the state after the federal government failed to provide security information on them, Republican Governor Sam Brownback said on Tuesday.

Brownback said in a statement that he repeatedly asked the administration of President Barack Obama for documentation on the screening of refugees who would be relocated from Syria to Kansas.

“Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program,” Brownback said.

Kansas has received a trickle of Syrian refugees. A family of three and two men have been resettled there in the past 15 months, a spokeswoman for Brownback said by email.

Obama pledged last year that the United States would take in

committed to this fight,” he added.

Also: WASHINGTON:

The House passed a bill Tuesday requiring the Department of Homeland Security to use testimonials from former extremists and other social media messages to combat “Hollywood-style propaganda” used by the Islamic State and other militant groups to recruit new members.

The bill was approved, 322-79, and now goes to the Senate.

Rep Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn, the bill’s chief sponsor, said it would help prevent attacks such as a shooting at a Chattanooga reserve center last year that killed four Marines and a sailor. The FBI said the killer was inspired by foreign terrorists.

“Foreign terrorists are using technology to radicalize Americans at a troubling pace that continues to increase,” Fleischmann said, citing estimates that more than 200 American have traveled or attempted to travel to fight with the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

“ISIS is luring Americans with empty and false promises that do not reflect reality on the ground in Iraq,” Fleischmann said, using a common acronym 10,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria, under pressure from European leaders who have been inundated with refugees.

But the promise came under fire from Republicans concerned that violent militants could come into the United States posing as refugees.

Despite opposition from some states, the United States remains committed to admitting the promised number of Syrian refugees in the current fiscal year, which ends in September, said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said state governments can consult on the resettlement of refugees, but the program is administered by the federal government.

“Decisions regarding the admissibility of refugees to the United States are made by the Department of Homeland Security after stringent security checks,” the official said, noting that some refugee records are confidential.

Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for

for the Islamic State group.

All 79 votes against the bill were from Democrats, including some who said it wrongly omitted white supremacists, militias and other groups that have killed more Americans in recent years than foreign terrorists.

“This bill ignores the fact that domestic terror groups — just like foreign terrorist organizations — kill Americans and are a threat to the homeland,” said Rep Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “Countering violent extremism should be our top priority and we have a duty to ensure that our efforts to stop this extremism are focused on all terrorist threats — foreign and domestic.”

WASHINGTON:

Congress sent legislation to President Barack Obama on Tuesday that cracks down on the looting of Syrian antiquities by Islamic State militants.

By voice vote, the House passed the bill that would prevent cultural artifacts removed from Syria from being sold or imported into the United States. The Senate approved the bill earlier the federal Health and Human Services Department, said that “refugee resettlement will continue in Kansas, coordinated by non-profit organizations.”

More than 30 governors attempted to block refugees from their states, but courts and attorneys general have said that it is up to the federal government to screen refugees and settle them.

US officials told a congressional panel in February that the country has tightened vetting of immigrants and refugees after attacks in California and Paris, and put on hold hundreds of applications from Syrian refugees.

More than four million Syrians have fled their war-torn country, according to the United Nations, which calls it the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.

Almost 2 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey and hundreds of thousands live in camps in Jordan, while others have flooded Greece, according to the UN.

this month. The president is expected to sign the legislation into law, the bill’s supporters said.

Rep Eliot Engel of New York, the bill’s sponsor and the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the militants have pocketed millions of dollars by selling irreplaceable artifacts on the black market.

The ransacking also wipes away centuries of Middle East history, said Engel, adding that Congress should be “seizing every available opportunity to cut off” the resources the Islamic State uses to finance its terrorism.

“They want to destroy any trace of any culture or belief system that doesn’t conform to their twisted ideology and twisted way of thinking,” he said.

The committee’s chairman, Republican Rep Ed Royce of California, cosponsored the bill. Buyers in the US appear to be a primary destination for many looted antiquities.

“Besides the human toll of (the Islamic State’s) deplorable acts, we also mourn the tremendous loss of cultural heritage, as these extremists loot and destroy their way through ancient sites in the territories they conquer,” Royce said.