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by wallflower » Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:11 am
by Plutonia » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:15 am
by justdrew » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:21 am
by Plutonia » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:34 am
EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents
ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.
According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.
According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. View a screenshot below:
The security firms hoped to obtain $200,000 for initial background research, then charge up to $2 million for a larger disinformation campaign against progressives. We don’t know if the proposal was accepted after Phase 1 was completed.
The e-mails ThinkProgress acquired are available widely on the web. They were posted by members of “Anonymous,” the hactivist community responsible for taking down websites for oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and American corporations that have censored WikiLeaks. Anonymous published the emails from HB Gary Federal because an executive at the firm, Aaron Barr, was trying to take Anonymous down. Barr claimed that he had penetrated Anonymous and was hoping to sell the data to Bank of America and to federal authorities in the United States. In response, members of Anonymous hacked into Barr’s email and published some 40,000 company e-mails.
It is widely believed that Wikileaks has sensitive information about Bank of America, and plans to expose it later this year. This revelation prompted Bank of America to hire the law/lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which in turn, according to the e-mails posted online by Anonymous, hired HB Gary Federal and other firms to go after Anonymous and supporters of Wikileaks. For instance, one proposal from HB Gary Federal and its associates proposed targeting Salon reporter and Wikileaks-supporter Glenn Greenwald with “actions to sabotage or discredit” him.
ThinkProgress has published a series of articles investigating the Chamber and its activities. We exposed the Chamber’s efforts to coordinate a lobbying campaign on behalf of large banks, including JP Morgan, to kill significant portions of financial reform. In October, we published a series looking into the Chamber’s efforts to solicit donations from foreign corporations for the same account the Chamber used to run partisan attack ads during the midterm campaign, as well as the Chamber’s participation in secret fundraising meetings convened by the billionaire plutocrats David and Charles Koch.
ThinkProgress will be posting more details of the Chamber lobbyist campaign to target progressives soon.
– With reporting from Scott Keyes
Update: The Chamber has yet to respond to an inquiry from ThinkProgress. We'll update the post if we receive a response.
Update The Chamber responds on its blog by dismissing the emails as "baseless attacks" from ThinkProgress.
Update Commenting on the leaked documents, Marcy Wheeler writes that they're probably "going to cause the Chamber of Commerce to rethink the spying work with HBGary it apparently has been considering."
by Plutonia » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:46 am
The Egyptian mirror
By Glenn Greenwald
Monday, Feb 7, 2011 05:08 ET
(updated below)
One of the most revealing journalistic genres is the effort by establishment media outlets to explain to their American audiences why Those Other Countries -- usually in the Middle East -- are so bad and awful and plagued by severe political and societal corruption (see here and here for examples). This morning, The New York Times has a classic entry, as it unironically details how Egypt is a cesspool of oligarchical favoritism and self-dealing. The article focuses on Ahmed Ezz, a close friend of Hosni Mubarak's son who has exploited his political connections to corner much of the nation's steel market, triggering growing resentment by the public. Along the way, we learn several disturbing things about Egypt, including this:For many years, Mr. Ezz has represented the intersection of money, politics and power . . . . Public resentment at the wealth acquired by the politically powerful helped propel the uprising already reshaping the contours of power along the Nile. . . . Hosni Mubarak's Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.
Can you believe that "in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt," private wealth translates into great political power and vice-versa? What is it like, wonders the curious and concerned Times reader, to live in a country like that? No wonder there's an uprising.
How many American politicians with a national platform over the last thirty years have failed to convert their political standing into great personal wealth? Perhaps only those who began their political careers with great wealth. Ex-Presidents and their wives and top aides are routinely lavished with many millions of dollars from media companies and other corporations for books, speeches and other services (Obama didn't even wait to become President to capitalize on his political celebrity), while a large portion of ex-members of Congress and administration officials with any real power feed at the trough of corporate largesse in exchange for peddling their influence. It would literally be impossible to list all the top officials from both parties who have quickly converted their political influence into vast personal wealth over the past two decades; it'd be much quicker to list the few who haven't.
And that's to say nothing of the virtually limitless political power automatically wielded by those with great private wealth, who own America's government institutions and literally write most of its laws. As the NYT taught us today, "Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth." We also learn this about Egypt:While hard facts are difficult to come by, Egyptians watching the rise of a moneyed class widely believe that self-dealing, crony capitalism and corruption are endemic, represented in the public eye by a group of rich businessmen aligned with Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son, as well as key government ministers and governing party members. . . . On paper, the changes [in the 1990s] transformed an almost entirely state-controlled economic system to a predominantly free-market one. In practice, though, a form of crony capitalism emerged, according to Egyptian and foreign experts.
So apparently, what happens in Egypt is that they pretend to have a free-market economic system, but in reality, the very rich are able to influence the government for special favors that enhance their private-sector wealth and power. How could the people there have put up with that for so long? But it gets worse:Exacerbating tensions, Egypt's oligarchs flaunted their wealth. They built grandiose homes in the desert outside Cairo and along the country’s coasts. They drove brand-new Mercedes-Benzes down derelict Cairo streets with police escorts.
A tiny segment of the population not only becomes wealthier as a result of its political influence, but increasingly flaunts that wealth while the vast majority of the nation suffers. No country could possibly sustain political stability for long under those conditions. Worse still, the entrenched inequality extends (in Egypt) to the legal sphere as well:Over the next few years, as Mr. Ezz took on important responsibilities in the governing party, allegations mounted that he was using his position to enrich himself and defend his near-monopoly on the steel business. Professor Selim said complaints brought against Mr. Ezz with the Egyptian Competition Authority were dismissed . . . Even without formal sanctions, the public took a dim view of Mr. Ezz’s business dealings, which were faulted -- rightly or wrongly -- as raising construction costs in Egypt. . . . Political analysts said that the focus of investigations now, including Mr. Ezz, is at best selective, intended not to punish corruption, but to address public grievances without actually changing the system.
Even the most flagrant corruption and illegality result in no accountability for the Egyptian elite. Still, public anger at least results in some prosecutions against rich and well-connected people such as Ezz, but when that happens, it's designed only to placate public rage in order to preserve the system of entitlements and prerogatives, not to change it. With a status-quo-perpetuating system of justice like that (over there in Egypt), the only wonder is that it took this long for them to rise up. Thankfully, Times readers don't live in a country were such endemic problems reign.
* * * * *
None of this is to say that such matters are not newsworthy when they take place in other countries; they are. And obviously the domestic political repression in Egypt does not compare to what one finds in the U.S. But there are two points about these types of articles worth making.
The first is that they have the effect of manufacturing the appearance that such problems exist only Over There, but not here. One would never, ever find in The New York Times such a sweeping denunciation of the plutocratic corruption and merger of private wealth and political power that shapes most of America's political culture. Just like "torture"-- which that paper has no trouble declaring is used by Egypt's government but will never say is used by ours -- such systematic corruption can exist only elsewhere, but never in America. That's how this genre of Look Over There reporting is not just incomplete but outright misleading: it actively creates the impression that such conditions are found only in those Primitive Foreign Places, but not here.
The second point is how adeptly the media morality narrative has been managed from the start of the Egypt crisis. Any foreign story that interests the American media for more than a day requires clear villains and heroes. What made the Egypt story so rare is that the designated foreign villains are usually first separated from the U.S. before being turned into demons; it's fine to vilify those whom we have steadfastly supported provided the support is a matter of the past and can thus be safely ignored. Thus were Saddam Hussein, the former Mujahideen (now known as The Terrorists) and any number of Latin American and Asian tyrants seamlessly turned into Horrible, Evil Monsters despite our once-great alliances with them; the fact that it happened in the past (albeit the very recent past) permitted those facts to be excluded.
But so intertwined are the U.S. and Mubarak -- still -- that such narrative separation was impossible. Not even American propaganda could whitewash the fact that the U.S. has imposed Hosni Mubarak's regime on The Egyptian People for decades. His government is not merely our ally but one of our closest client regimes. We prop him up, pay for his tools of repression, and have kept him safe for 30 years from exactly this type of popular uprising -- all in exchange for his (a) abducting, detaining and torturing whom we want, (b) acting favorably toward Israel, and (c) bringing stability to the Suez Canal.
And yet it's remarkable how self-righteously our political and media class can proclaim sympathy with the heroic populace, and such scorn for their dictator, without really reconciling our national responsibility for Mubarak's reign of terror. Thanks to this Look Over There genre of reporting, we're so accustomed to seeing ourselves as The Good Guys -- even when the facts are right in front our noses that disprove that -- that no effort is really required to reconcile this cognitive dissonance. Even when it's this flagrant, we can just leave it unexamined because our Core Goodness is the immovable, permanent fixture of our discourse; that's the overarching premise that can never be challenged.
Some leading American officials have been criticized for recent statements that have been too starkly pro-Mubarak. Joe Biden was first when he decreed that Mubarak was "not a dictator" because "has been an ally of ours in a number of things" (as always in the American Foreign Policy world, whether someone is a democrat or a dictator is determined by how much they serve or defy America's will, not by how they acquired or use power; kudos to Biden for unintentionally being so candid about that). Then Hillary Clinton -- who said in March, 2009 that "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family": her very politically enriched family, that is -- appeared to defend Mubarak's ongoing rule. Then, it was claimed that a State Department envoy, Frank Wisner, went off-script when he said Mubarak "must stay in office in order to steer those changes through." And Dick Cheney just praised Mubarak as a good friend and ally.
But I empathize more with these pro-Mubarak political officials than with their American critics. All Biden, Clinton, Wisner and Cheney are doing is reflexively giving voice to decades-old bipartisan U.S. foreign policy. They're defending Mubarak because he has been -- and still is -- our close friend and client ruler. He has loyally done our bidding, and in exchange, we've kept him in power and kept him close. That's why it's a bit difficult to endure the sudden outburst of righteous contempt for Egypt's dictator. We've eagerly sent our money and aid for decades to ensure that he wields power over Egyptians; all that's changed is that his true face has been exposed in a way that prevents us from turning away and denying what we support.
The fact that we don't actually regret anything is compellingly demonstrated by Obama's efforts to ensure the empowerment of Egypt's new "Vice President," Omar Suleiman, who has been Mubarak's -- and our -- brutal domestic enforcer and oppressor for years. Pragmatic arguments can of course be assembled to justify that support -- exactly the same way that support for Mubarak can be pragmatically justified. And that's the point: moral proclamations notwithstanding, we're not doing anything different with Egypt now. We're doing what we've always done: subjected the people of that region to hard-core oppression in order to advance what we perceive to be our interests (though, as 9/11 proved, that perception about self-interest is dubious in the extreme). That behavior would almost be tolerable if we were at least honest about it, but pretending that we're so very inspired by the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people -- all while we have long acquiesced and still acquiesce in the extermination of those aspirations -- is a bit too much to withstand. But as long as we can keep Looking Over There to those bad people and bad things, none of these contradictions will be particularly bothersome.
UPDATE: Highlighting several of the points here, The Independent's Robert Fisk today discovered that the aforementioned pro-Mubarak official Frank Wisner -- hired by the State Department as its Egypt envoy -- happens to work at Patton, Boggs, the very well-connected law and lobbyist firm which happens to represent the Egyptian regime and has in the past represented Mubarak himself. I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation for the State Department's conduct here; I can't wait to find out what it is.
by Plutonia » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:54 am
Bwaahahha!!!The cyber world has grown out of control. State and national law enforcement mechanisms are not equipped to deal with the rapidly evolving threat. The complexity of information systems has far exceeded the ability to secure them, while reliance on these systems has only increased. HBGary has an intimate understanding of this problem; We know that understanding the attacker and his methods is the only way to defeat him. This is the core strength of HBGary and why our technology and services outperform the competition. To us, it's personal.
by Nordic » Fri Feb 11, 2011 4:43 am
by JackRiddler » Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:36 am
Friday, Feb 11, 2011 05:12 ET
The leaked campaign to destroy WikiLeaks and its supporters
By Glenn Greenwald
There's been a very strange episode circulating the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald, has been been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler, Forbes, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, Matt Yglesias, Reason, Tech Dirt, and others), so I'll provide just the summary.
Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site (such as Paypal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and others). In retaliation, Anonymous hacked into the email accounts of HB Gary, published 50,000 of their emails online, and also hacked Barr's Twitter and other online accounts.
Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary -- in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies -- on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank's "counterespionage work" against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistle-blower site, along with the hiring of "several top law firms" and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials). The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America's highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign.
The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on documents submitters"; and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prong of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks.
One section of the leaked report focused on attacking WikiLeaks' supporters and it featured a discussion of me. A graph purporting to be an "organizational chart" identified several other targets, including former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, Guardian reporter James Ball, and Manning supporter David House. The report claimed I was "critical" to WikiLeaks' public support after its website was removed by Amazon and that "it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted"; absurdly speculated that "without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold"; and darkly suggested that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause." As The Tech Herald noted, "earlier drafts of the proposal and an email from Aaron Barr used the word 'attacked' over 'disrupted' when discussing the level of support."
In the wake of this controversy, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Tech, Alex Karp, has now issued a statement stating that he "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary." The full statement -- which can be read here -- also includes this sentence: "personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Palantir has also contacted me by email to arrange for Dr. Karp to call me to personally convey the apology. My primary interest is in knowing whether Bank of America retained these firms to execute this proposal and if any steps were taken to do so; if Karp's apology is genuine, that information ought to be forthcoming (as I was finishing writing this, Karp called me, seemed sincere enough in his apology, vowed that any Palantir employees involved in this would dealt with the way they dealt with HB Gary, and committed to telling me by the end of the week whether Bank of America or Hunton & Williams actually retained these firms to carry out this proposal).
* * * * *
My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity. Not being familiar with the private-sector world of internet security, I hadn't heard of these firms before and, based on the quality of the proposal, assumed they were just some self-promoting, fly-by-night entities of little significance. Moreover, for the reasons I detailed in my interview with The Tech Herald -- and for reasons Digby elaborated on here -- the very notion that I could be forced to choose "professional preservation over cause" is ludicrous on multiple levels. Obviously, I wouldn't have spent the last year vehemently supporting WikiLeaks -- to say nothing of aggressively criticizing virtually every large media outlet and many of their leading stars, as well as the most beloved political leaders of both parties -- if I were willing to choose "career preservation over cause."
But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously -- not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights. For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir). Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual; in other HB Gary emails, ThinkProgress discovered that similar proposals were prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists (including ThinkProgress). And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks.
That's why this should be taken seriously, despite how ignorant, trite and laughably shallow is the specific leaked anti-WikiLeaks proposal. As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely.
But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.
That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.
The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this axis of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites. Just consider one amazing example illustrating how this works.
After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening.
Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted. That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law.
* * * * *
What is set forth in these proposals for Bank of America quite possibly constitutes serious crimes. Manufacturing and submitting fake documents with the intent they be published likely constitutes forgery and fraud. Threatening the careers of journalists and activists in order to force them to be silent is possibly extortion and, depending on the specifics, other crimes as well. Attacking WikiLeaks' computer infrastructure in an attempt to compromise their sources undoubtedly violates numerous cyber laws.
Yet these firms had no compunction about proposing such measures to Bank of America and Hunton & Williams, and even writing them down. What accounts for that brazen disregard of risk? In this world, law does not exist as a constraint. It's impossible to imagine the DOJ ever, ever prosecuting a huge entity like Bank of America for doing something like waging war against WikiLeaks and its supporters. These massive corporations and the firms that serve them have no fear of law or government because they control each. That's why they so freely plot to target those who oppose them in any way. They not only have massive resources to devote to such attacks, but the ability to act without limits. John Cole put it this way:One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. . . .
You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn't enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. . . . And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them . . . .
I don't even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. We’re a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit.
There are supposed to be institutions which limit what can be done in pursuit of those private-sector goals. They're called "government" and "law." But those institutions are so annexed by the most powerful private-sector elites, and so corrupted by the public officials who run them, that nobody -- least of all those elites -- has any expectation that they will limit anything. To the contrary, the full force of government and law will be unleashed against anyone who undermines Bank of America and Wall Street executives and telecoms and government and the like (such as WikiLeaks and supporters), and will be further exploited to advance the interests of those entities, but will never be used to constrain what they do. These firms vying for Bank of America's anti-WikiLeaks business know all of this full well, which is why they concluded that proposing such pernicious and possibly illegal attacks would be deemed not just acceptable but commendable.
by JackRiddler » Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:05 pm
justdrew wrote:time to destroy the chamber of commerce.
I suggest a parallel organization be setup and leach membership from them.
for now, boycott member businesses where possible.US Chamber lobbyists map strategies to discredit progressive critics
By Sahil Kapur
Friday, February 11th, 2011 -- 10:45 am
Report claims Chamber hired firm hacked by 'Anonymous'
US Chamber lobbyists map strategies to discredit progressive critics
WASHINGTON – Lobbyists for the US Chamber of Commerce have been working with firms to develop methods to deceive and discredit the Chamber's most vocal progressive opponents, according to documents obtained by ThinkProgress.
Lee Fang of the liberal blog reports that the Chamber and its hired firms mapped ways to attack labor and progressive groups that have taken on the powerful business lobby, "in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com."
In one document prepared by a group called Themis, US Chamber Watch is singled out as "one of the most active members of the opposition." It notes that the Chamber, unlike many of its critics, is "politically connected," making its opponents "vulnerable to information operations that could embarrass the organization and those associated with it."
A six-point plan to discredit the US Chamber Watch includes depicting it as a pawn of labor federation Change to Win, and tying it to labor leader Andy Stern and Velvet Revolution. It also proposes swindling the group by creating "a false document" about the Chamber's finances and, once it's publicized, providing "explicit evidence proving that such transactions never occurred."
"Also," it continues, "create a fake insider persona and generate communications with CtW. Afterward, release the actual documents at a specified time and explain the activity as a CtW contrived operation. Both instances will prove that US Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth."
ThinkProgress reports that the Chamber hired lobbying firm Hunton and Williams and a set of private security companies -- HB Gary Federal, Palantir, Berico Technologies -- the three of which apparently comprise "Team Themis."
A Team Themis document said Phase I of the plan to "collect, analyze, and affect adversarial entities and networks of interest" would cost $200,000, and Phase II would cost $2 million.
The Chamber denied any knowledge of "the document" -- though it didn't say which one -- and claimed it didn't hire the security firm that created it.
"The security firm referenced by ThinkProgress was not hired by the Chamber or by anyone else on the Chamber's behalf. We have never seen the document in question nor has it ever been discussed with us," wrote Tom Collamore on the Chamber's website.
Oddly enough, two of the security firms the Chamber is said to have hired -- HB Gary and Palantir -- made news recently after they were revealed to have devised tactics for Bank of America to discredit the anti-secrecy outlet WikiLeaks.
HB Gary was recently hacked by the cyber-protest group "Anonymous," which published some 44,000 of its emails on the Internet.
by Wombaticus Rex » Fri Feb 11, 2011 4:48 pm
by Plutonia » Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:21 pm
— An Interview With a Target of the FBI's Anonymous Probe
The feds are taking Operation Payback seriously:
John Cook @ Gawker
In response to the Anonymous attacks on Paypal, Mastercard, Amazon, and other corporations that severed ties to Wikileaks in the wake of Cablegate, the FBI has served more than 40 search warrants and subpoenas as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation into the attacks based in San Jose, Calif. We spoke to one target of the investigation, a 19-year-old woman who lives on the West Coast, anonymously about the FBI raid on her home, her participation in the movement, and the FBI's fundamental cluelessness about the nature of Anonymous.
zone: inside
size: 300x600
keywords: mtfIFPath=/assets/vendor/doubleclick/, origin=gawker, visited=gawkerfront
The woman, who operated Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms where efforts to shut down Paypal and other sites were planned under the screen name "No," was raided late last month. Agents served a search warrant, questioned her, and seized two computers, her iPhone, and a router. Far from being a devious "hacker" who used her skills to undermine global corporations, "No" describes herself as a computer illiterate—"everything I know about computers I have learned since November"—who simply helped keep order and crack jokes in IRC channels. She says she never actually participated in DDOS attacks or cracking corporate security. And the FBI agents who raided her house at 6 a.m. displayed disconcerting naivete about what they were investigating: One agent asked her if she had a Guy Fawkes mask, the ad hoc symbol of anonymous that was adopted as a real-world totem by some protesters against Scientology but remains largely a digital badge. It would be weird if she actually had one.
The interview was conducted via e-mail and has been edited into a coherent Q-and-A.
Why did you get involved in Anonymous?
I saw something about them. Some web article. I said, "Wow, wtf are these people?" So I initially joined the IRC to watch them. It seemed like an interesting concept. A large group of angry people with supposedly no control structure tearing shit up online. I wanted to know if they really had no command structure. I wanted to know how it worked. Like a clock, sort of. Watch it. Take it apart. See how it ticks. And I liked what they were doing. I disagree with copyright. I disagree with how companies can shit on our rights and the government stands by and does nothing. I disagree with how a single mother can be sued for millions of dollars over 15 or 20 songs when those same songs are 99 cents on iTunes.
So what did you do? Did you participate in any DDOS attacks?
The phrase I used to use is "I don't lead Anonymous. I don't lead anyone. I just troll with authority." I never hosted a hivemind. I never wrote a piece of DDOS software. I never touched a server. I was a channel operator, or IRCop. Meaning, I had the ability to ban people from the channels I was operator on, kick them from those channels, change the [rules] of the channels. As far as the "did participate in DDOS, etc." question: That is, ironically, the same question the FBI asked me. "Do you have to DDOS or vandalize websites or hack to gain operator status in Anonymous?" My answer was: "No. That would be stupid. What if you are a horrible op and you abuse your privilege?" We give op to the people who we think will do a good job of maintaining the channels.
Why did the FBI target you?
My personal opinion is that, when I was "no," I got away with quite a bit of bullshit on the servers. I had op in quite a few channels. I was allowed to do things that the average user would have been banned for. I was friends with a few of the people that the FBI considers higher up in Anonymous. I helped in some of the setup channels. I think the FBI came to my house that morning thinking that I either was "high up" in Anonymous, or could and would hand them the people they are looking for. None of these things are true. I am just a user the IRCops find particularly amusing and so they let me get away with the ridiculous amount of running amok that I have a tendency to take part in.
Can you describe the raid?
It was six in the morning. I had just woken up to get ready for work. Obnoxious people in vests banged on my door and pointed guns at me when I was in my fucking pajamas. Later they told my family that I was "arrogant and belligerent." I disagree. I think they expected me to cry. I think they expected me to ask for forgiveness. I think they expected me to panic and give them everything I knew. I think that these are stupid expectations based on the fact that I am 19 and female. I think that they were disappointed with what I gave them.
What were they looking for?
The warrant said they were looking for anything that could store files connected to, or software for, hacking, infiltrating, DDOS attacks, etc. This could be anything from a phone, to a USB stick, to a microSD [Flash card], to a computer, to a backup disk. I think they are still looking for a leader of Anonymous. The sad thing is, there is no leader to give them. If they catch an IRCop, if they seize the servers, someone will just make new servers, build a new IRC network, new IRCops will step forward. No one person or select group of people select the targets. If enough people say "Lets DDOS Paypal," Paypal gets DDOS'd. Not by everyone. There is rarely an op where everyone takes part. Because, who is going to make them DDOS? There is no governing body. If they are looking for the responsible party in the Paypal raids, they should look at Paypal. I did not convince 7,000 people to attack Paypal. Paypal convinced 7,000 people to attack Paypal.
So what did they take from you?
The whole thing was sort of a botch. I had this flier hanging on my fridge. It's a picture of my little sister, and it says "The [insert little sister's name] Liberation Front." I made it as a joke about how strict my mother is. It looks quite like some of the fliers that have been made for Anonymous. They brought it into the living room where they were asking me questions and asked very seriously, "Is this an upcoming operation for Anonymous?" I laughed and almost said, "Yes."
The whole time they are asking me questions in my living room, I can hear the rest of the team in my kitchen looking over my laptop giggling and all excited like little kids. You expect the FBI to be professional. I mean, they have the vest, the gun, the little LED flashlight that leaves spots on your eyes. They all have the over exaggerated adjective "special" in front of their "agent". The whole 9 yards. And then you hear them gasping and cooing over my Mac because they are so excited they think they caught a cyber terrorist. (Who cyber terrorizes from a Mac?) I think, that to them, the raid was a game. The agent in charge of my particular warrant actually asked me if I owned a Guy Fawkes mask. I told him no and then asked him if he was disappointed that he wouldn't have a picture of "a real live Anon's mask" to hang in his office. He actually said yes. He gave me his card before he left. Later on, when he talked to my family, he told them that if I released his info to Anonymous, he would bring "the full force of the FBI" down upon me.
They found my German dictionary in my room and kept it with them when they were asking questions. Rather funny in my opinion. Very "Boondocks Saints". Like I might start insulting them in German and think they couldn't look it up later.
I think the American public sometimes has this general image of the FBI as professional and well informed and omniscient. Up until this point, I sort of held this same belief.
Do you fear you will be indicted?
There is a tiny little part of me that is like, "Oh shit. It's the FBI." But in honesty, there is nothing I can do if they choose to press charges. All I can do is try to not give them more evidence against me and not make it easy for them to reach a conviction.
Or do you just think it was just that they were digging through your stuff to look for bigger fish?
I think they thought they were catching a bigger fish, or that I would lead them to bigger fish. I am not a big fish. I am rather harmless. I have a propensity for teaching other Mac users how to use their Macs. Last I checked, this is not a crime. Although, I think that certain government agencies (including Steve Jobs, who I am convinced is a government agency) would like to make it illegal.
Have you also been called to testify before the grand jury?
No I have not. I was disappointed by this. I think I would have been a fun person to question. Maybe because they didn't want to pay for a German translator?
Why do you think the feds consider some folks "leaders"? Just that they're more active?
I think the Feds need there to be a leader. How do you cut the head off a snake that doesn't have a head? They are looking for the fastest most efficient way to kill Anonymous. If they ever kill Anonymous, it won't be fast and it wont be efficient. They would have to oppress many, many civil rights to do so. As far as taking out those who are more active—I can tell you that we had a boy in the Netherlands who used to help a lot with Anonymous. He got caught. He was 16. Before he got caught, Anonymous had maybe 15 Dutch on the whole IRC. After he got caught a special channel had to be made just for all the Dutch people that were coming in.
How'd they find you?
They found me through the IRC. I did not make myself a particularly hard person to track down, because I did not believe and still do not believe that I am worth prosecuting. I am harmless. The warrant said they were looking for anything that could be used to hack or infiltrate. I do not hack or infiltrate. Everything I know about computers I have learned since November. That is if you can consider a Macintosh a computer.
How has this affected you financially? Emotionally?
Well, I had a surplus when they hit. I have since moved out of my father's house. We disagree on my civil rights. He believes I should give them everything. I believe I should give them nothing. He believes I am not entitled to privacy and a doorknob. I believe he is a drunk who needs to learn how to clean the kitchen. Me and my father no longer speak and he refuses to call me by my name. He calls me either "terrorist" or "enemy of state." I find these amusing. I am even thinking of making t-shirts.
by Luther Blissett » Fri Feb 11, 2011 7:51 pm
by Joe Hillshoist » Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:45 pm
Wombaticus Rex wrote:Uhhhh WOW. Aaron Barr was posing as Julian Goodspeak? I totally interacted with that handle and it was trying to pump me for info. Blocked it and moved along, thought nothing more of it. Fucking crazy.
Obviously, FTR, I have no connection with Anonymous and lack the technical skills to be 1337....but still, when I hit page 2 of that Ars Technica article I literally spilled some fucking coffee on the table here jumping. Unreal.
by JackRiddler » Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:22 am
Friday, Feb 11, 2011 13:12 ET
Inside Salon
A disturbing threat against one of our own
By Kerry Lauerman
From the leaked report titled "The WikiLeaks Threat"
(Updated below)
We take threats against our own very seriously.
A bizarre plan for an attack on the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks and journalists construed as sympathetic to it -- first reported by the Tech Herald -- clearly targets Salon's Glenn Greenwald, saying that his "level of support" for WikiLeaks "needs to be disrupted." The report (you can download the purported final draft here) is listed as an "overview by Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies," and according to a string of e-mails also leaked, was developed following a request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm that represents, among others, Bank of America.
Bank of America is the presumed next target of WikiLeaks, and has reportedly been bracing for what's to come.
The leaked report singles out other journalists, as well, and suggests that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause ..." And goes on: "Without the support of people like Glenn wikileaks would fold."
For a complete breakdown of what it all means, Glenn has a thorough, illuminating report. But what the authors of the report meant when they plotted how Glenn and the others could be "disrupted" or "pushed" is as unclear as it is ominous -- and has us deeply concerned. The report was exposed by Anonymous, the pro-WikiLeaks hackers who went after the companies that dropped services to the whistle-blowing organization last year. Anonymous was apparently acting in retaliation to HBGary, whose head of security services, Aaron Barr, had earlier claimed to have infiltrated the Anonymous network. HBGary has since responded, claiming that "information currently in the public domain" from the leak "is not reliable because the perpetrators of this offense, or people working closely with them, have intentionally falsified certain data."
But the security firm Palantir wasted little time severing all relations with HBGary, with Palantir CEO Alex Karp issuing a statement saying that "I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Karp also reached out and apologized directly to Glenn.
We have no reason not to take the report seriously. As a result, I've asked both Hunton and Williams and Bank of America to explain any role they played and address whether HB Gary (or any of the firms) were being paid, or promised payment, for its development. I'll update this post when we hear their responses.
As bumbling as this whole saga sounds -- Internet security firm can't keep its shadowy dirty tricks campaign from being hacked -- what's outlined in these sets of proposals, as Glenn points out, "quite possibly constitutes serious crimes." And as it relates to Glenn and the others, it constitutes an unconscionable attempt to silence journalists doing their jobs. We'll continue to stay on this story until we get some real answers.
Update I (4:05 p.m. ET): Berico CEO Guy Filippelli and COO Nick Hallam have now formally severed ties with HBGary, saying in a statement:
Our leadership does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals. We find such actions reprehensible and are deeply committed to partnering with the best companies in our industry that share our core values. Therefore, we have discontinued all ties with HBGary Federal. We are conducting a thorough internal investigation to better understand the details of how this situation unfolded and we will take the appropriate actions within our company.
Late last year, we were asked to develop a proposal to support a law firm. Our corporate understanding was that Berico would support the firm’s efforts on behalf of American companies to help them analyze potential internal information security and public relations challenges. Consistent with industry standards for this type of work, we proposed analyzing publicly available information and identifying patterns and data flows relevant to our client’s information needs. Any subsequent discussions or proposals that attempted to extend the initial scope of work run counter to our organization’s values.
Update 2 (5:11 p.m. ET): A reader sent me this post on USA Today's technology blog, which went up as I was first preparing this post. In it, BofA spokesman Scott Silvestri says, "We've never seen the presentation, never evaluated it, and have no interest in it." When asked specifically about the PowerPoint display, Silvestri is quoted: "Neither Bank of America, nor any of its vendors, have engaged HBGary Federal in this matter. We have not engaged in, nor do we have any plans to, the practices discussed in recent press reports involving HBGary Federal."
I have a call and an email in to Silvestri and still hope to hear back from him. We have, naturally, more questions. Did BofA or Hunton and Williams solicit the report from HBGary? Were they, or any of the security firms, paid for their efforts?
We hope to have more answers soon.
Update 3 (6:45 p.m. ET): Silvestri emailed back, providing the same quotes as he had given USA Today, above. We replied with the same followups as outlined above. We hope to hear back soon.
Kerry Lauerman is Salon's Editor in Chief. Follow him on Twitter: @kerrylauerman. More: Kerry Lauerman
LINK
http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/ind ... _wikileaks
by wallflower » Sat Feb 12, 2011 1:27 am
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