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Obama ditches registry focused on immigrant men from Muslim countries

The Obama administration announced Thursday it is formally scrapping a once-mandatory registry for immigrant men from predominantly Muslim countries, amid speculation over whether the incoming Donald Trump administration may try to renew it.
The U.S. already had stopped using the program in 2011.
The original National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERs, launched about a year after 9/11, requiring men and boys from a variety of mostly Middle Eastern countries to register with the federal government upon their arrival in the U.S. Registration, which also applied to immigrants from North Korea, included fingerprints and photographs and a requirement to notify the government of any address changes.
But after the Obama administration suspended the program in 2011, the Department of Homeland Security put out a notice Thursday officially removing what it called “outdated regulations” pertaining to the “obsolete” system.
The notice stated:
“DHS ceased use of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) program in 2011 after finding that the program was redundant, captured data manually that was already captured through automated systems, and no longer provided an increase in security in light of DHS’s evolving assessment of the threat posed to the United States by international terrorism. The regulatory structure pertaining to NSEERS no longer provides a discernable public benefit as the program has been rendered obsolete. Accordingly, DHS is removing the special registration program regulations.”
The notice, though, comes amid growing international terror fears and Trump's suggestions that he could ban some Muslim immigrants from the United States. After a truck attack killed 12 in a Christmas market in Berlin this week, Trump told reporters, "You know my plans."
While the registration program had been widely derided by civil libertarians as an effort to profile people based on race and religion, the international terror threat led to multiple calls for tougher policies during the Republican presidential primary race. Trump in particular made a far-reaching and controversial call to temporarily ban Muslim immigrants from coming to the U.S., though he later shifted to focus on temporarily halting immigration from an unspecified list of countries with ties to terrorism.
He also seemed, during the campaign, to open the door to a Muslim registry before backing off that idea to focus more on refugees.
However, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Trump immigration adviser during the campaign, said last month that Trump should renew the DHS database.
Meeting with Trump in New York, Kobach carried a document labeled "Department of Homeland Security Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days." It listed an NSEERS reboot as the top priority. The document was visible in a photograph by The Associated Press.
The list suggested the U.S. government "update and reintroduce" the program for all foreigners from "high-risk" areas.
The president-elect, when asked Wednesday if the attack in Berlin would cause him to evaluate the proposed ban or a possible registry of Muslims in the United States, said "You know my plans. All along, I've been proven to be right, 100 percent correct."
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the president-elect's plans "might upset those with their heads stuck in the politically correct sand." He added that Trump has been firm on a plan to suspend admission to the U.S. for people "from countries with high terrorism rates" and subject some others to strict vetting.
When the Obama administration abandoned the DHS system in April 2011, it said a newer data collection program would be sufficient to collect biometric information for all foreigners coming into the country. At the time, more than 80,000 foreigners were registered.

Attorney: FBI singling out Chinese-Americans with insider-threat program

The FBI has singled out Chinese-Americans as part of a controversial insider-threat reduction program that has sought to flag alleged efforts to manipulate polygraph tests, according to a leading national security defense attorney.
"The government reacts with this sledgehammer instead of laser precision to determine who would be an insider threat which is very difficult to predict," said Mark Zaid, who has several clients with ongoing disputes involving intelligence agencies including the FBI. "They're sacrificing tons, dozens and dozens of Americans who're doing nothing but their jobs, and the FBI is one of the worst to do this."
Zaid argues the program is flagging potentially innocent people based on a questionable standard.
One of Zaid's clients -- who asked not to be identified for fear of further retaliation – explained how it works. The client said, in their case, an evaluator alleged during a routine polygraph that the FBI employee had used "counter measures" to affect the accuracy of the test.
The National Center for Biotechology Information describes "counter measures" as changes in behavior designed to manipulate the test results. They include the use of a "physical countermeasure (biting the tongue or pressing the toes to the floor) or a mental countermeasure (counting backward by 7) among others."
Tom Mauriello, an adjunct lecturer and laboratory instructor for the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, further explained that, “No one in the polygraph community has really agreed on a specific definition, but I would say a countermeasure (CM) is the intentional manipulation of the polygraph subject's physiology by the subject with the explicit intent to distort their reactions.”
Agencies have sought to flag the use of “counter measures” amid the fear of an insider threat from China, in the wake of high-profile breaches including the compromise of more than 21 million records at the Office of Personnel Management.
Mauriello said the greatest concern is security-clearance applicants "intentionally trying to beat the test in order to gain access to sensitive and classified information for purposes of espionage, etcetera. That is the person the process is trying to identify, not an overly nervous person who is just trying to pass the test."
But critics suggest ordinary workers are getting caught up in the process. Zaid said once a government employee is accused of countermeasures, it becomes difficult to prove a negative.
"All this device is doing is measuring your breathing, your heartrate, your galvanic sweat response. And it's determining based on that if you're telling the truth or not,” he said. “And it's determining are you telling the truth depending on where your physiological response falls."
Mauriello said there is room for confusion. "It is my opinion that when a subject is being told that they are not passing their polygraph test, their attempt to try to help themselves is being labeled as them using countermeasures rather than them just trying to pass the test," he said.
Asked if the tool is open to abuse, Mauriello emphasized, "I don't think there is any intentional abuse by anyone in the polygraph community in regards to this matter. They are trying to use the polygraph effectively for what it is, just an ‘investigative tool.’ I believe it is a lack of collective understanding and definition of what a countermeasure is and maybe overzealous examiners looking for something that is not there."
After being accused of using countermeasures, the federal employee who spoke with Fox News said they were placed on unpaid leave -- and with a suspended clearance, could not seek other work in the national security sector. Both Zaid and the employee said there is no timeline on when an appeal should be resolved. In the individual's case, the first level of review took more than a year.
"You don't see any leadership inside the agencies or on the Hill to take a look at this. There's still thankfully a small number of cases," Zaid said. "They are on unpaid leave for two or three years. There's no voice for these people. When you look at it you have anything but utter disappointment and sadness and pathetic feelings for how our system works."
Polygraphs are given every five years to most security-clearance holders. As a way to mitigate the risk, some employees are polygraphed on a more frequent basis due to factors such as birth outside the U.S., foreign-born parents, frequent overseas travel or financial trouble.
Fox News was told that about 18 months ago, the FBI changed its procedures, and those accused of countermeasures were given the opportunity to take at least one more polygraph. Whether their clearance was suspended, and they were placed on unpaid leave, was decided on a case-by-case basis.
Fox News asked the FBI for comment on the allegation that the review process was slow, and the use of countermeasures was too subjective. Fox News also asked the bureau if there is publicly available data to test whether Asian Americans are being wrongly singled out.
The FBI did not provide data so the claim could not be tested. An FBI spokesperson told Fox News in a statement: “All employees undergo a periodic reinvestigation to determine whether a person’s continued access to classified information is clearly consistent with national security. The polygraph examination augments the FBI security process as one of many tools utilized when collecting information through investigation for making access eligibility determinations. Such determinations are not based solely on the result of a polygraph examination.”
With his client now in a second year of unpaid leave, Zaid said the issue appears much larger. "As much as we are supposed to be protecting these ethnic groups from discrimination," Zaid said, "once you start seeing that, you have to raise your eyebrows and ask ‘are we racially profiling these individuals’?”

Turkey restricts internet access after release of ISIS video

ANKARA, Turkey –  A monitoring organization says Turkey restricted access to social media websites after the Islamic State group released a video purportedly showing two Turkish soldiers being burned alive.

ISIS released the video late Thursday, which purports to show the killing of two soldiers captured while fighting the militants in or around the northern Syrian town of al-Bab last month.

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Turkish officials have not commented on the video.
Turkey Blocks, an internet monitoring website, said it had detected the "throttling of Twitter and YouTube," affecting many users in Turkey.
Turkey frequently restricts access to social media websites to prevent the spread of graphic images and other material authorities say would harm public order or security.

Israel reportedly asked Trump for help to avoid UN vote on settlements

The Israeli government asked President-elect Donald Trump to apply pressure on the Obama administration and the United Nations to prevent a Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Reuters reported late Thursday.
The news agency, citing a senior Israeli official, reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government contacted "high level" members of Trump's transition team after failing to persuade the Obama administration to veto the resolution. Allowing the resolution to pass would have reignited a dispute with a key Middle Eastern ally in the waning days of Obama's tenure.
The Israeli official told Reuters Obama's intended abstention from the vote was "a violation of a core commitment to protect Israel at the U.N."
Multiple White House officials declined comment on the Reuters report. There was no immediate comment from the Trump transition team.
Hours before the planned Security Council vote, Trump released a statement urging that the U.S. veto the resolution.
"As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations," the statement read, in part. "This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis."
Later Thursday, Trump spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. A transition official told Reuters the two leaders had spoken about the Middle Eastern peace process.
Then, around two hours before the vote was set to take place Thursday afternoon, Sisi abruptly postponed the planned vote on the settlement resolution, which his country had proposed.
The U.S., as a permanent member of the Security Council, has traditionally used its veto power to block resolutions condemning Israeli settlements, even though it sees them as an obstacle to a peace settlement. But in recent weeks, the Obama administration had been especially secretive about its deliberations, which included what one official described as an unannounced meeting between Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month.
Israel has expressed concern that Obama, who has had an icy relationship with Netanyahu, would take an audacious step in his last weeks in office to revive the peace process, but U.S. officials have said he has nearly ruled out any major last-ditch effort to pressure Israel.
A Security Council resolution would be more than symbolic since it carries the weight of international law. In the past, Obama has refused to endorse anti-Israel resolutions in the council, saying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved through negotiations.
Trump, who takes office in less than a month, has indicated a more sympathetic approach to Israel and appointed an ambassador, David Friedman, who has been a supporter of the settler movement.