Someone else (sorry, can't remember) wrote something that caught my eye on the last page. Normally, the government would not be so concerned about what the public actually knows. This is very true. One of the foundations of modern propaganda is that one should control how people react to information, rather than control the information to which they have access. The second is a battle lost in advance, the first is a battle won before the war begins. Viewed from that perspective, the official reaction to Wikileaks is odd, unless it was planned. Not that this is actually evidence, one way or the other.
That is probably behind about 90% of my skepticism about Wikileaks. Usually the government just ignores this stuff, and everyone else does also (i.e. the mainstream media). The attention it's gotten from Day One in the mainstream, and the loud loud LOUD protestations from our lovely elected and unelected officials makes me highly suspicious.
Could be, however, that it was too big to ignore. I hope that's it. So they went on the offensive as well as loudly on the defensive.
But I don't know. Nobody does. That's why the whole issue, frankly, kind of bores me, until someone comes up with some new info or evidence.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Someone else (sorry, can't remember) wrote something that caught my eye on the last page. Normally, the government would not be so concerned about what the public actually knows. This is very true. One of the foundations of modern propaganda is that one should control how people react to information, rather than control the information to which they have access. The second is a battle lost in advance, the first is a battle won before the war begins. Viewed from that perspective, the official reaction to Wikileaks is odd, unless it was planned. Not that this is actually evidence, one way or the other.
That is probably behind about 90% of my skepticism about Wikileaks. Usually the government just ignores this stuff, and everyone else does also (i.e. the mainstream media). The attention it's gotten from Day One in the mainstream, and the loud loud LOUD protestations from our lovely elected and unelected officials makes me highly suspicious.
Could be, however, that it was too big to ignore. I hope that's it. So they went on the offensive as well as loudly on the defensive.
But I don't know. Nobody does. That's why the whole issue, frankly, kind of bores me, until someone comes up with some new info or evidence.
I don't think that this is totally accurate. To start I think it's not helpful to indulge DrViolin's characterization of this as being a "gnostic" argument between "pro" and "anti" sides--it's a false reduction.
But the "PTB"-complex does care about what people "know". It's wrong to say they don't, and oversimplifies things dramatically.
On edit, Bradley Manning is being brainwashed--torrtured, mind controlled, whatever--at this exact moment to ensure that we get a brand new version of the WikiLeaks history, one where, I suspect, Assange 'compelled' Manning to break the law as if a not-duress/duress/we didn't say duress argument is going to be made--never mind that most journalists ask their sources for stuff. Never mind that he's been in isolation and without even furniture or reading materials or allowed to exercise in his cell. Never mind all that--because they don't care what people know, certainly not enough to seek to coerce disingenuous testimony. I mean, cops would never take a false statement as evidence. I saw that on Law & Order the other night. Even when they do, things will work out for the best within the next 40 minutes.
The implicit theory about the JFK case is that the gov't lost, planted, ignored, created and obscured evidence all manner of evidence. The implicit theory for 9/11 Truth is that the gov't had boots-on-the-PR-ground that morning and had talking heads all over the news that evening. In both cases the point was to minimize the impact of knowledge outside the sanctioned narrative. At present I can't imagine that it's possible for the gov't to disavow the cables without looking bad. If the cables are phony--they may be, some of the may be, etc.--that almost certainly would have emerged by now unless the gov't doesn't know they're phony. But if the cables are legit, it's awfully hard to get beyond that short of a lot of "I don't recall"s.
If you want to suggest that is "different" in some way, b/c there wasn't a vocal reaction against counternarratives, that's just wrong. Dubya spoke out against "conspiracy theories." Cass Sunstein hopes to use burnt-out conspiritards (Cass, I'm in your target demographic... call me) to "cognitive infiltrate", i.e., plant, both true and false information (i.e., "know[ledge]") to steer the conspiritards away from political perspectives disadvantageous to his paymasters.
I would speculate that one incentive about not questioning the cables themselves relies on the fact that they are full of absurd amounts of propaganda. I mean these State Dep't employees actually think they're like a cross between John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and only pinko queers don't like gazing at John Wayne's big, manly hands and chest, right?
But even so, bracket my contentions for a moment.
What do "people" know? Almost all the non-bullshit that comes out of 9/11 Truth or JFKtardation has been public domain material. Iran-Contra was fucking prime-time news forever and those guys only served two-year sentences despite actual treason. Anyone who will so much as bother to read the old OKC stuff will see that yes, the gov't was negligent, at best, in handling the case. So was Iran-Contra a psy-op because it received so much public attention? What about Iran Contra 2, the cocaine thing? That was even the subject of a CIA admission.
Even here, with so many people concerned about meta-WikiLeaks crap about Assange's connections to Elders of Zion and their MC slaves, or WTFever, no one can seem to be bothered to read the goddamn cables. In fact, the damn story has been largely in the hands of the NY Times, the Guardian and der Speigel.
The point is that "They" do care about what you know. These people are constantly spinning out more crap narratives, planting disinfo to mislead competing ones, counting on their lackeys in the press and academia to disregard unpleasantries or to concoct more spin, etc., etc. Ollie North is a fucking FoxNews Real American Hero, not a treasonous hack who authorized cocaine imports that destroyed the inner cities. If that doesn't seem like an example of "Them" caring about what "we" know, I don't know what else does. Beyond that, like I said, the propaganda in the cables is piled astronomically high. Fuck, for all I know, everyone in the Midwest thinks it's a good thing that the Yemeni and US gov'ts agreed to lie about a drone that washed up on a beach, or that Lebanese officials planned ethnic cleansing with Israelis to minimize "collateral damage" against non-poor non-Muslims, or that the US and Israel violated treaties of which the US was a guarantor for the sake of fighting a proxy war with China.
The only real difference I see here is in strategy. Rather than planting a counternarrative, "They" are on the offensive--which is itself a 'narrative' in the sense I'm using it here. Lee Harvey Oswald was a "lone nut", right? Even though he had friends and family and was buddies with organized crime, the intel community and the Soviets, he was a lone nut? I see the same character-based attacks against Julian Assange, Date Rapist / Int'l iTerrorist. If it seems faulty or weak, and I'm not sure it seems any more so than the 9/11 story, then that's counting too much on the vagaries of audiences. After all, 99.98% of people (a number based on solid scientific research conducted in the past three seconds) who read the "Julian Assange is a Nerdy Date Rapist Misogynist Arrogant Intellectual Because of This Phony Dating Profile We Found and an Email Some Chick Fwd'd to Us, No Really I'm Not Projecting My Insecurities About My Sex Life or Intellect" stories at Gawker are going to be too busy checking out the First Annual 2011 Taylor Swift Bony-Assed White Girl Competition to be reading one of the seven or whatever cables released today. To quote the Wombat, control is heuristic, not totalizing.
So, yes, "They" actually do care what people know.
„MAN MUSS BEFUERCHTEN, DASS DAS GANZE IN GOTTES HAND IST"
In economics and contract theory, deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry. [LOL] Examples of this problem are adverse selection and moral hazard. Most commonly, information asymmetries are studied in the context of principal-agent problems.
And here I was thinking that power relied on actions, predicated on a complex set of interactions involving violence, knowledge, bureaucracy, institutionalizations etc., etc., as over-determined by constituting factors like class and gender, etc.
„MAN MUSS BEFUERCHTEN, DASS DAS GANZE IN GOTTES HAND IST"
JackRiddler wrote:Yes and no. Starting with the cables release we've seen the top-down propaganda effort to talk only about Wikileaks and Assange, and to avoid the stories that the cables release generates. (Even at the point where only .1 percent had been released we were told they were all "old news," "harmless gossip," and "proof of American goodness," except that their release has "destroyed diplomacy" and "endangered the world.")
To the main spectacle, that of the latest Coalition being assembled to assault the new Axis of Evil of (1) Wikileaks, (2) Irresponsbile Investigative Journalism and (3) Too Much Internet Freedom, there has been a parallel attack on Wikileaks as a supposed psyop front (based on "Spidey Sense" but near-zero evidence). You can go back to the beginning of this thread to see I started it at a time when such threads predominated on RI, and that I did so in the hope of retiring a list of obvious fallacies. Here we are, 57 pages later, still debating the same nonsense in the "Wikileaks=Israel" vein, but with a damned good collection of material in the meantime, covering every development and aspect of the affair.
Yeah I guess I include everyone, even the Australian and US govts in that us. I agree that the whole wikileaks is a psyop thing is probably one itself, or becoming one. Tho suspicion of the whole thing is also fair enough. To a point. I reckon we passed that point a long time ago, in the absence of real, serious evidence of anything.
The new axis of evil tho ... really that should be obvious to everyone, sometimes if looks and quacks like a duck its only actually a duck. Honestly the debate here ... it reminds me of that scene in South park when Stan forms a dance posse and goes to recruit one of the Goth kids.
FFS even if it is, its already proved useful to me as I've said. Use the enemies weapons against them if thats the case. That should always be obvious.
I think this is a weird/wyrd process but I'll get to that.
Thank you for the Australian perspective:
Not that I saw. Tell us more why you write the following. I mean, what is about this Oakes that constitutes a probable...
nail in JAs coffin cept for the obvious.
Oakes made his support for JA clear as he accepted an award - the most prestigious in Australian journalism, which isn't saying alot - but he was getting that award cos he had publicised leaks during an election that nearly brought down a govt.
The Australian media has disapppeared so far up its own arse it almost looks like its come out the other side, but even it could see the obvious - that wikileaks had already shown its usefulness for Australians. Had done what the MM should have done - reported the filter blacklist. Oakes support isn't part of some psy op cept in the crude sense that he represents the MM and trad media trying to bask in reflected credibility - like a tiring animal in the middle of an ocean, desperate to stay alive as long as it can, but knowing its only a matter of time.
Laurie Oakes is a self important mainstream media political commentator.
Really that says it all. He's a powerful media figure, and he doesn't work for Murdoch, but he did work for Kerry Packer, Murdochs lifelong rival, and just as big a capitalist media tycoon prick. He still works for whats left of the organisation kerry packer founded. laurie Oakes is sposed to be a left wing commentator, but only in the same sens e that Obama is a left wing president (ie not at all.)
Oakes is larger than life literally and as a media figure. He often is the story as much as being someone who reports the story, cos he gets big leaks, and this year he nearly gave a Tony Abbot led Liberal party the Federal election. Abbot is a fruitcake, he has been dubbed the mad monk, and is probably a dangerous person to have in power.
That he had a chance at leading the countries government ... well I kind of understand how smart Americans witrh some respect for whats good about their culture felt when Dubya was er ... elected. (Tho who elected him, not the American people.) While the rest of the world laughed in disbelief. (We'd be laughing on the other side of our faces soon enough.)
Anyway Oakes looks like a cross between Jabba the Hutt and the monster that haunts the hills behind Stregoicavar, probably because he's become a Dorian Grey portrait of his sense of self importance. Its a sad comment on the state of Australian politics and the Australian media, which has shrunk (in terms of the number of different owners or networks) by a huge amount over the last 20 to 30 years, and yet still seems to produce sweet FA in the way of real journalism. By "it" I mean that he has so much sway and yet produces so little that seems relevant to me.
Maybe I just don't like him.
Usually if Oakes supports something then by definition thats sus, but in this case I dunno, after all his entire career has basically been made by people leaking to him. And I spose to his credit he doesn't reveal sources. (AFAIK.)
Not that it got a mention by the "Wikileaks is a scam crowd." And it should of. I guess no one (with the possilble exception of Alice - Hi Alice, I hope you and your family are well) outside America thinks wikileaks is a psy op. The fact that it took a public outcry for our govt to even remember Assange was entitled to consular support (being an Australian citizen) isn't exactly an endorsement of the idea. If anything its cemented the idea of protection for whistleblowers and the people that publish their information in the public mind.
If its a psy op so fail its failure is beyond epic.
What you say after that demands emphasis.
Do you know where has your courage gone? Do you remember where you did once belong? Are you going away? Are you going away from me? Do you know?
We're all fighting against The Man The big brotherhood and the master plan We're all fighting against that same evil man
As far as the charges (?) against him go. Given the climate its not hard to see this as a set up of some sort. But ... if he does have a case to answer then he should answer it.
... (snip something about rugby I might check out later) ...[/quote]
Australian rules football, not rugby, its nothing like rugby, its so not like rugby its not funny. American football is more like rugby. heaps more like it actually. (Its almost exactly like rugby with all the fun of actually playing the game squeezed out of it.) But as a comparison, along the lines of what Naomi Wolf was getting at compare the two.
About that song. Its the Deer in You, by gerling from their early 2001 album When young Terrorists Chase the Sun.
No shit. Thats what it was called.
I'm not surprised you've never heard of it.
I reckon the examination of him as inhabiting an archetype deserves some more examination too, cos its kind of happening in the public eye. That is wyrd.
He's a bit like Dr Who too, especially the new (saw the Xmas specal the other night. Its not ad actually, face it, it wouldn't be Dr Who if it wasn't thin in places and remarkably dense in others.) one. Well the last 2 I spose.
But he's not really Dr Who ish. Dr Who helps people, JA is more of a little guy who takes some power for himself and uses it. The downrodden nerd who strikes back against every bully and oppressor.
There's a bit of a magician in there, but more because coding is arcane, not through any actual magical power.
Archetypes bring magic power with them, well thats the theory anyway, so watching this play out will be interesting.
Thats part of whats going on here.
JA isn't wikileaks, but he may as well be in many peoples minds. They are confused tho, cos what he is is possessed by an archetype. These things tho they are stories that reveal themselves in the telling and every time the story is similar but different.
"Revenge of the nerds" isn't always gonna be Bill gates, its just as obvious in his case that its not Bill Gates, totally different but all about information and how it becomes power.
And cause in many ways this is a new thing. Its like the magical archetypes but it isn't, cos its a different technology, so obviously the archetype isn't as fixed as a young warrior one in a traditional indigenous culture.
I reckon thats part of the reason the response to Him and to wikileaks has been so confused and demented. The archetype is hungry for form and people can sense that - hence all the projection.
So thats added to the "psyop" mix as well.
Its kind of fascinating, but really I should probably be reading cables instead of spinning shit about JA.
On the plus side if there is anything sus about wikileaks then I'd hope the wikisceptics (woo hoo coined a word) would find it. I don't think there is but I could easily be wrong.
In economics and contract theory, deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry. [LOL] Examples of this problem are adverse selection and moral hazard. Most commonly, information asymmetries are studied in the context of principal-agent problems.
And here I was thinking that power relied on actions, predicated on a complex set of interactions involving violence, knowledge, bureaucracy, institutionalizations etc., etc., as over-determined by constituting factors like class and gender, etc.
Power relies on lots of things. A power imbalance can be corected by addressing information, and an information imbalance can be used to counter a technological or some other physical disadvantage. Especially temporarily.
Ultimately power is the ability to do stuff, get others to do stuff or somehow get stuff done.
And here I was thinking that power relied on actions, predicated on a complex set of interactions involving violence, knowledge, bureaucracy, institutionalizations etc., etc., as over-determined by constituting factors like class and gender, etc.
Erm...
nathan28 wrote: But the "PTB"-complex does care about what people "know". It's wrong to say they don't, and oversimplifies things dramatically.
On edit, Bradley Manning is being brainwashed--torrtured, mind controlled, whatever--at this exact moment to ensure that we get a brand new version of the WikiLeaks history, one where, I suspect, Assange 'compelled' Manning to break the law as if a not-duress/duress/we didn't say duress argument is going to be made--never mind that most journalists ask their sources for stuff. Never mind that he's been in isolation and without even furniture or reading materials or allowed to exercise in his cell. Never mind all that--because they don't care what people know,
*snip well considered rant*
So, yes, "They" actually do care what people know.
But yeah. There's more than one tool in the toolbox.
[the British] government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister
Shashidhar Mishra uncovered official wrongdoing using India's Right To Information law. Now he's its latest martyr
Jason Burke in Baroni guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 December 2010
Shashidhar Mishra was always a curious man. Neighbours in the scruffy industrial town of Baroni, in the northern Indian state of Bihar, called him "kabri lal" or "the news man" because he was always so well informed.
Late every evening, the 35-year-old street hawker would sit down with his files and scribbled notes. In February, the father of four was killed outside his home after a day's work selling pens, sweets and snacks in Baroni's bazaar.
The killing was swift and professional. The street lights went out, two men on motorbikes drew up and there were muffled shots. Mishra, an enthusiastic RTI activist, as those who systematically use India's right to information law to uncover wrongdoing and official incompetence are known, became the latest in a country's growing list of RTI martyrs.
The RTI law, introduced by the Congress party-led government in 2005, was a radical piece of legislation giving private citizens the right to demand written answers from India's always opaque and often corrupt bureaucracy and state institutions such as the police and army.
"It was a total paradigm shift from a regime of secrecy to one of transparency," the law minister, Veerappa Moily, said in an interview in Delhi. "It has changed the entire culture of governance."
In many ways, the law has been an astonishing success, prompting from tens of thousands of often poor, sometimes almost illiterate, always highly motivated citizens. In Bihar, more than 100,000 demands were made last year, 20 times as many as five years ago, said AK Choudry, the chief information commissioner for the state. In India as a whole at least 1 million RTI requests have now been filed.
"This act is for the common man of India. Without paying a bribe a poor man can get answers. We have the right to know what is happening in this country," said Afroz Alam Sahil, a student from Bihar who has registered hundreds of requests.
Yet, with the rule of law weak in much of the country, exercising new rights can mean danger. At least 10 activists have been killed so far this year. All found themselves up against powerful individuals, often in league with local authorities. One uncovered a series of corrupt land deals and thefts of social benefits by officials and was subsequently hacked to death near his home near the city of Pune, Maharashtra state.
A 55-year-old stallholder was killed after investigating electricity supplies and gambling dens in his home town of Surat in the western state of Gujarat. Two activists investigating fraud in government labour schemes for the poor were killed in the lawless eastern state of Jharkand, while others - including a 47-year-old sugar cane farmer in the central state of Maharashtra and an activist near the southern city of Bengaluru - were killed after investigating land acquisitions by big businessmen.
In July, Amit Jethava, a pharmacist in Gujarat who had hounded officials about mining which endangered Asian lions, spotted deer and wild boar near his village was shot dead. There has since been a lull in the killing but beatings, intimidations and threats continue.
Amitabh Thakur, who heads an RTI network in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and is writing a book on the RTI martyrs said that "cases of murder, persecution, prosecution and harassment" are legion. "When you are digging for information there are people who try to hide it from you," he said. "They will do what it takes to keep it hidden."
The true number of activists killed could be much higher. Frequently, campaigners say, the authorities deny a link between the RTI requests and violence, dismissing incidents as everyday crime.
Choudhrysaid that no killing linked to RTI had taken place in Bihar and that Mishra's death in February was "not linked to any RTI application". Local police denied Mishra was an activist and said they no longer had possession of the investigation file opened on his death. It contained, his family said, most of the answers he had received to his various RTI requests.
The dead man had hidden a box of papers at home that suggest the hawker's activism was indeed the reason for his murder. The documents, seen by the Guardian, included receipts for hundreds of different applications for information on local officials, businessmen and even the police themselves.
Mishra, described by his sister as a "sharp and smart guy", had started demanding information two years before his death. His first target was a local government-run dairy, a big employer, where he suspected animals were being mistreated. His next campaign focused on unlicensed stalls run on public land outside the local railway station. These were eventually demolished.
Encouraged by his success, Mishra asked for records of land purchases and sales by members of the local council over the last 20 years. In June last year, he began investigating the local market, largely built by local businessmen on government land. A month later, he asked why there was no electricity in the local health clinic. By the end of the year, he had established that many of the contracts awarded to resurface a road through the town were suspect. He spoke darkly to his family of death threats.
In December and January, Mishra filed a flurry of further information requests, asking for details of the postings of certain policemen and the whereabouts of vehicles the police had recently impounded.
On 9 February , he requested a list of those contracted to carry out construction of a road in the market. He also demanded the local council's 2009 accounts. The answer — which showed that at least £80,000 had been paid to contractors for work that had never been carried out — arrived in May, three months after Mishra's death.
His killers had used silenced handguns, the mark of professionals. That a power cut plunged the street into darkness for the few minutes they needed to work indicates the involvement of officials, campaigners claim.
Now his brother Mahdidar is trying to look after four extra children on a family income that has been halved. Hetold the Guardian he was "desperate".
"I want justice for my brother but what can I do? There are many corrupt and powerful. I am just one man."
Cases of intimidation and violence are "isolated", Moily, the law minister, insisted. "Wherever protection is needed the government provides it."
[the British] government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister
Nordic wrote:To me, this is boiling down to one simple question:
Why does everyone know who Julian Assange is, and nobody knows who Sibel Edmonds is?
One difference between Sibel Edmonds and Julian Assange is that Sibel was an American Citizen employed by the US Govt and Assange is not. Sibel must STFU when told, or face certain misery and/or death (a la Manning) while Assange has some means to evade repercussions.
Further differences: Assange has wikileaks.org and Edmonds only started her blog after being hit with a gag order. So we hear about him because of his larger megaphone. Assange has actual copies of documents to back up his testimony and Sibel only has her memory, which she can't talk about. So he gives us something 'tangible' to preserve and disseminate.
Last edited by crikkett on Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Even though Greenwald isn't coming right out and saying it, he seems (to me, at least) to be strongly suggesting that the Wired Wikileaks stories, which lie at the heart of Bradley Manning's "arrest" and incarceration, are a set-up.
It's a long piece, so I'm only excerpting part of it here. The original article has several informative links, so that's the best place to read it.
For more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed -- but refuses to publish -- the key evidence in one of the year's most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source. In late May, Adrian Lamo -- at the same time he was working with the FBI as a government informant against Manning -- gave Poulsen what he purported to be the full chat logs between Manning and Lamo in which the Army Private allegedly confessed to having been the source for the various cables, documents and video which WikiLeaks released throughout this year. In interviews with me in June, both Poulsen and Lamo confirmed that Lamo placed no substantive restrictions on Poulsen with regard to the chat logs: Wired was and remains free to publish the logs in their entirety.
Despite that, on June 10, Wired published what it said was only "about 25%" of those logs, excerpts which it hand-picked. For the last six months, Poulsen has not only steadfastly refused to release any further excerpts, but worse, has refused to answer questions about what those logs do and do not contain. This is easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year: it is just inconceivable that someone who claims to be a "journalist" -- or who wants to be regarded as one -- would actively conceal from the public, for months on end, the key evidence in a political story that has generated headlines around the world.
In June, I examined the long, strange, and multi-layered relationship between Poulsen and Lamo, and in that piece raised the issue of Wired's severe journalistic malfeasance in withholding these chat logs. But this matter needs to be re-visited now for three reasons:
(1) for the last six months, Adrian Lamo has been allowed to run around making increasingly sensationalistic claims about what Manning told him; journalists then prominently print Lamo's assertions, but Poulsen's refusal to release the logs or even verify Lamo's statements prevents anyone from knowing whether Lamo's claims about what Manning said are actually true;
(2) there are new, previously undisclosed facts about the long relationship between Wired/Poulsen and a key figure in Manning's arrest -- facts which Poulsen inexcusably concealed; and,
(3) subsequent events gut Poulsen's rationale for concealing the logs and, in some cases, prove that his claims are false.
Much of the new evidence cited here has been found and compiled by Firedoglake in three valuable indices: the key WikiLeaks-Manning articles, a timeline of the key events, and the various excerpts of the Manning/Lamo chat logs published by different parties.
Kevin Poulsen, it must be said, is unusually compromised even by the standards of mainstream journalism. The FBI owned him before he even started writing.
TV commentator Mark Rasch is one of many top security experts who are part of Project Vigilant.
It’s tempting to look at a secret group of cybercrime “monitors” and dismiss them as a group of lightweights trying to play cops and robbers in the Internet world. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
As referenced in this column yesterday, Project Vigilant has been operating in near total secrecy for over a decade, monitoring potential domestic terrorist activity and tracking various criminal activities on the Web. In a series of exclusive interviews with some of the group’s leaders, it’s clear that the people doing this work are among the most sophisticated and experienced experts in today’s rapidly moving world of Internet security.
Many of them are very recognizable names in technology circles, yet their public profiles, posted for all to see on sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and even their own webpages, omit any reference to Project Vigilant. As one source explained, “These are known names in the industry, but they have stayed under the radar to help their law enforcement clients.”
Take Mark Rasch, Project Vigilant’s General Counsel. Rasch has been a guest on numerous TV programs, including the PBS program “Charlie Rose,” and is frequently quoted in the press on a variety of Internet crime matters. For over 9 years, Rasch led the Department of Justice computer crime unit. He’s been associated with Project Vigilant for approximately 18 months.
“It’s an exciting concept,” said Rasch. “We are using our unique talents to collect information about threats and vulnerabilities, but we will not do things that violate the law.”
Chet Uber, the group’s current director, is a founding member of InfraGard (a partnership between the FBI and the private sector) and a longtime participant in AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association). He is considered by many to be one of the country’s leading experts in “attack attribution,” the complex ways in which computer code and the people behind it who create malicious attacks on the Internet can be tracked and identified. He’s frustrated by what he sees as a lack of security awareness on the part of computer users as the Internet has grown. “We wish people would quit leaking private matters because it’s making the country vulnerable,” said Uber.
One of Uber’s top lieutenants is Kevin Manson, who serves as Project Vigilant’s liaison with state and federal law enforcement groups. Manson recently retired after many years as the Senior Instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, under the Department of Homeland Security. He also is a co-founder of Cybercop, a web portal used for the confidential exchange of information between groups such as Project Vigilant and authorities within the U.S. government.
Manson likens Project Vigilant to the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian offshoot of the U.S. Air Force that got its start during World War II in an effort to keep the country safe. “This is a bit of a unique organization,” said Manson. “It’s built on a web of trust.”
George Johnson is the second in command for Project Vigilant.Johnson was handpicked by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – part of the U.S. Department of Defense) to develop secure tools for the exchange of sensitive information between federal agencies.
Another recent addition to the group is Ira Winkler. He is one of the world’s experts on Internet security and informational warfare. Winkler is president of the Internet Security Advisors Group and is a former employee of NSA (National Security Agency).
The limited list of members provided to this columnist reveals the depth of experience the group has been able to recruit to its ranks. It includes a former top cybersecurity official from the FBI and two previous high ranking managers from NSA. Suzanne Gorman, one of Project Vigilant’s top leaders, is a former security chief for the New York Stock Exchange and is widely viewed as one of the foremost experts on Web threats in the financial services world.
Asked about her current involvement in the group, Gorman was clear in her support. “I admire every single thing that this organization has done,” she said.
Most of the group’s interaction takes place in secure private chat and email, although several members will occasionally meet quietly in person if they find themselves together at one of several Internet security conferences that take place in various locales during the year.
Beneath the header on every page for Project Vigilant’s website is a quote from Kevin Manson: “Red Tape Will Not Defeat Terrorism.” From what we now know about the group’s leadership, it doesn’t appear that cutting through red tape will be much of a problem.
Comments
* RealityBites 4 months ago
Just another bunch of corporate spies selling their traitorous info to the corporate anti American greedmasters.
These Traitors should be executed for the crimes against the USA. Their only purpose is to protect and ensure the traitors in power continue to destroy American and murder it's citizens.
* RealityBites 4 months ago
If these losers were actually the "experts" they are supposed to be why is the USA constantly victim of completely successful foreign cyber attacks? Seem to me the so called "experts" are not anything of the kind.
Rather they appear to be corporate spys, selling info to the highest bidder and protecting the traitors in the USA government deliberately killing American Servicemen and innocent civilians.
* rasmus e. thorkin 4 months ago
Project vigilant just helps us to know who to round up for the guillotine once they finish destroying whats left of privacy and freedom. No mercy after they bring about the end of our Republic. Remember their names...their money will be worth nothing to them then and it will be time to pay the piper.
* n3td3v 4 months ago
Looks like an American copy-cat of the n3td3v group which has been around since the late 1990s.
sites.google.com/site/n3td3v/
n3td3v group has over 10,000 volunteers, whereas these guys only have 600.
n3td3v group has proper connections with the authorities, whereas these guys haven't.
n3td3v group has over 10 years experience, whereas these guys haven't.
* Jerror 4 months ago
Do you people reaserch anything before you write it or do you just copy and paste and call it a day?
Chet Uber lives in his moms house in Flordia and made a really crappy Drupal website that is all that "Project Vigilant" is and will ever be. Retards.
[the British] government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister
