"How Barrett Brown Shone Light on Security Contractors" (Remember the Plan to Discredit Greenwald?)

[Hissyspit]

HBGary...

http://www.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/surveillance-us-national-security

Monday 24 June 2013 08.30 EDT

How Barrett Brown shone light on the murky world of security contractors

- snip -

Brown made a splash in February 2011 by helping to uncover "Team Themis", a project by intelligence contractors retained by Bank of America to demolish the hacker society known as Anonymous and silence sympathetic journalists like Glenn Greenwald (now with the Guardian, though then with Salon). The campaign reportedly involved a menagerie of contractors: Booz Allen Hamilton, a billion-dollar intelligence industry player and Snowden's former employer; Palantir, a PayPal-inspired and -funded outfit that sells "data-mining and analysis software that maps out human social networks for counterintelligence purposes"; and HBGary Federal, an aspirant consultancy in the intelligence sector.

The Team Themis story began in late 2010, when Julian Assange warned WikiLeaks would release documents outlining an "ecosystem of corruption [that] could take down a bank or two." Anticipating that it might be in Assange's sights, Bank of America went into damage-control mode and, as the New York Times reported, assembled "a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials … scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public." To oversee the review, Bank of American brought in Booz Allen Hamilton.

- snip -

According to the Team Themis proposal, its partners suggested creating false documents and fake personas to damage progressive organizations such as "ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com". According to reporting by Wired, the three companies hoped to bill the Chamber of Commerce for $2m a month. But while (as leaked emails showed) the parties in the plan went back and forth over how to apportion the spoils, nothing was forthcoming.

- snip -

The tech companies' emails – which Anonymous hacked and Barrett Brown helped publicize – listed planned tactics:

"Feed(ing) the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization. Submit fake documents and then call out the error."

They also proposed "cyber attacks", using social media "to profile and identify risky behavior of employees", and "get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them", implying threats. There was also email chatter about attacking journalists with "a liberal bent", specifically naming Greenwald. Some aspects of the Team Themis proposal were reminiscent of a leaked 2008 Pentagon counterintelligence plan against WikiLeaks.

- snip -

Within days of the Team Themis scandal, Palantir issued a statement announcing that it was cutting ties with HBGary Federal and issued an apology to Greenwald.

MORE


http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palantir-apologizes-for-wikileaks-attack-proposal-cuts-ties-with-hbgary

Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff

SECURITY | 2/11/2011 @ 8:03AM |16,736 views

Palantir Apologizes For WikiLeaks Attack Proposal, Cuts Ties With HBGary

It’s been a long week for security firm HBGary.

- snip -

Now, just a few days later, one of those firms, Palo Alto-based Palantir, has publicly cut ties with HBGary and apologized for its role in the WikiLeaks response plan, essentially verifying the reality of that plan and isolating HBGary further.

In a statement to the press, Palantir chief executive Alex Carp writes, “I have directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HBGary.” Karp adds that “Palantir Technologies does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so-called ‘cyber attacks’ or take other offensive measures. I have made clear in no uncertain terms that Palantir Technologies will not be involved in such activities.”

On Thursday, the Tech Herald reported that hacked emails from HBGary revealed a PDF document outlining a proposal to Bank of America to sabotage WikiLeaks on multiple fronts, a response plan to what some believe may be a release of Bank of America’s internal documents by WikiLeaks in coming months. The PDF suggested launching cyberattacks on WikiLeaks servers, spreading misinformation about its insecurity, and even pressuring journalists who support the site, specifically focusing on Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.

MORE


http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2#-1







[p]

[HiPointDem]

1. kr

[Hissyspit]

2. kick nt

[Hissyspit]

3. Kick nt

[unapatriciated]

4. K&R

[snot]

5. K&R'd! This confirms our worst fears.

[Catherina]

7. A horrifying picture. This is why WE'RE the ones under surveillance. n/t

[Catherina]

6. Barrett Brown vs. the Private Intelligence Business | scary read

Rec'd.
This article is worth reading the original in full. It's a repost from my related thread, written before I saw yours.

Urizenus Sklar
irl Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University


Barrett Brown vs. the Private Intelligence Business
Posted: 06/23/2013 5:12 pm

In June of 2011, the journalist Barrett Brown published an article in the Guardian, outlining a sinister cyber-surveillance program -- "a disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users." In view of the recent exposure of the PRISM program by Edward Snowden, one might think Brown would be in the news discussing the strikingly similar new revelations, but he isn't. He is in federal custody, facing charges that add up to 105 years in prison. The question is: Why? In a recent article in The Nation I walked through the details of his case, but some additional contextualization is called for.

....

( Here a mention of the discovery of a power point presentation outlining a strategy to undermine the credibility of Glenn Greenwald" to "neutralize his defense of WikiLeaks" and a "conspiracy of government agencies, lobbying and cybersecurity firms to carry out a disinformation campaign" and "plans for data mining and disinformation campaigns targeting social organizations and advocacy groups".)

...

For example, how did The Chamber of Commerce and the Bank of America get wrapped up in this? WikiLeaks had been claiming that they had a large data dump of emails from a hack of the Bank of America. The Bank of America was clearly concerned about this and, according to the leaked HBGary emails, it approached the U.S. Department of Justice for assistance. The DoJ in turn directed the Bank of America to the law/lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which does legal work for Wells Fargo and General Dynamics and also lobbies for Koch Industries, Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, Gas Processors Association, Entergy among many other firms. (Significantly, they hired the FBI's senior cybersecurity advisor just last month. We will come back to this). The DoJ not only recommended that the Bank of America hire Hunton and Williams, but explicitly suggested they utilize H&W's Richard Wyatt, who famously was the lead attorney in the Chamber of Commerce's lawsuit against the Yes Men and was also the attorney in Food Lion's lawsuit against ABC News.

...

It is worth noting that the contents of the Stratfor hack (which I discuss in my article in The Nation) are even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. This time the emails ranged from blatant admissions of renditions and talk of throwing people out of helicopters to plans to discredit the Yes Men on behalf of Union Carbide. One remarkable exchange revealed that the Coca-Cola company was asking Stratfor for intelligence on dealing with PETA, and the Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence remarked in a leaked email that "The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I'll see what I can uncover." Suggesting, of course, that not only did Stratfor have access to the classified material, but that it would be provided to Coca-Cola. The FBI had been turned into a private dick for corporate America.

...

But even this tells only half the story. One might have thought that private intelligence agencies were simply doing outsourced intelligence work for the U.S. Government. But unfortunately it seems that the tail has begun to wag the dog -- it appears that in many respects the U.S. Government and in particular the Department of Justice is now working for private intelligence firms. This is evident when, for example, Stratfor asks for FBI classified files on PETA or the Department of Justice is used to try and punish journalists for probing into these private intelligence companies.

....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/urizenus-sklar/barrett-brown-vs-the-priv_b_3487161.html

This is why we have the FBI head defending NSA’s surveillance programs. They share that day to use against citizens who get out of line.

[starroute]

8. Another element is the murky online war between Anons and RW bloggers

That war had begun on Twitter even before the HBGary hack, when some particularly prankish members of Anonymous discovered how easy it was to goad right-wing bloggers into making racist remarks on Twitter. But after the Team Themis stuff came out, those blog-level battles got hauled into the developing conflict.

On one side were Anonymous and its associates -- particularly Velevet Revolution, whose StopTheChamber.com was one of the explicit targets of the Team Themis proposal. On the other were the right-wingers and their friends, many of them associated with the Breitbart empire, which had its own history of using dirty tricks to infiltrate and discredit left-wing groups and individuals (James O'Keefe, for example) and had already taken an interest in Velvet Revolution as a possible way of smearing the left.

Most of what followed is better understood as farce than as anything more serious. It got tangled up for a while with the Anthony Weiner scandal and the controversy over the many sock puppets and false internet identities that played a role in bringing Weiner down, and it took on any number of other strange twists and turns.

But it also pulled in Barrett Brown -- particularly through one exceedingly peculiar incident where prominent right-wing blogger and Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney John Patrick Frey, who had been deeply involved in the Weiner uproar, appealed to Brown to have Anonymous discredit the lawyer for former Breitbart associate Nadia Naffe, who had brought a lawsuit against Frey, and also to retaliate against a liberal blogger who had criticized him.

This happened last September, just as Brown was getting into serious trouble with the FBI, and there were people suggesting at the time that it might have had something to do with Brown's flipping out on the FBI guy and subsequent arrest. I don't know -- I gave up following the zaniness around that point, because it was devolving into an endless round of name-calling. But I find it strange that it never seems to get mentioned in the current stories, which focus entirely on the high-profile players like Booz Allen and Glenn Greenwald.

[Luminous Animal]

9. Kick.

[magellan]

10. k&r

[frylock]

12. kickeroo

[Hissyspit]

13. 18 recs for this

and 30 for an OP attack on Greenwald that is either stupidly or intentionally completely false

[frylock]

14. people don't want to see what's behind the curtain..

it's a total buzz kill.

[Oilwellian]

15. That was a nice walk down memory lane

NOT. Great post Hissyspit. K&R

[struggle4progress]

16. The perfect libertarian hero: another spoiled rich brat from the Park Cities!

Barrett Brown is Anonymous
From a tiny Uptown apartment he's organizing a worldwide collective of hackers that brought down HBGary and helped overthrow the government of Tunisia
by Tim Rogers
Published 3.23.2011
From D Magazine APR 2011

... then he mentions that he went to Preston Hollow Elementary School with George W. Bush’s twin daughters ...

He grew up comfortably in Highland Park. His father, Robert Brown, hailed from East Texas and came from a family of means. “I made a lot of money when I originally came to Dallas,” Robert says. “I eventually had $50 million in real estate holdings all across the state ...

... he read voraciously on his own, diving into Ayn Rand .. while he was still in middle school ...

... there is a third drawback to Brown’s new, more visible role in Anonymous ... Brown .. has taken to calling enemies of Anonymous and certain federal authorities (sometimes one and the same) to tell them how cool he is. Of course, that’s not what he explicitly says. He says he’s calling to help. A few weeks ago, he talked to a woman in the NSA. He says he contacted her as a courtesy, to let them know that Anonymous had a copy of Stuxnet ...

[Hissyspit]

17. Ad Hominem all you got, hunh? Also beside the point of the OP.

Your post looks an awful lot like that 3rd slide.

[struggle4progress]

19. No, it's not entirely ad hominem: it really goes to credibility and motive. What we have here is yet

another rich self-absorbed North Dallas kid, who has refused to grow into adulthood, spending his time taking drugs, figuring that money and connections would protect him while he styled himself the public face of a gang of cyber-vandals and poked the authorities in the eye, by making nyaa-nyaa-nyaa phone calls to the NSA, for example

Now that he's been charged with threatening a federal agent and seems to be suspected of involvement in a conspiracy by Anonymous, involving theft of credit card information and unauthorized use of the cards

He may indeed be a bright young man who's told us some interesting stories. But the acknowledged behavior here also has an adolescent side, and it reminds me of the fifteen and sixteen year old "rebels" I knew in my high school -- and the criminal charges, as well as the claims of persecution, are entirely consistent with that

People like this make a silly splash, but they don't really move us forward

[Hissyspit]

20. Again, besides the point of the OP.

[struggle4progress]

22. (1) So Arun Gupta is pushing the conspiracy theory that the Federal charges against Brown

are motivated by his alleged whistle-blowing activities. So what? Brown's very public and very adolescent behavior is perfectly consistent with the criminal charges against him

(2) I suppose the details of the PR campaign plan against Greenwald have some limited interest but

(a) The good news is, in part, that the campaign plan shows just how utterly clueless the consultants can be. Although I don't much like either Assange or Greenwald, the notion that Greenwald has been in any way central to the success and survival of Wikileaks is laughable. Assange has been an effective self-promoter for some years, and Greenwald has played no significant role there -- except that in recent years, Greenwald has reliably echoed some of the Assangist conspiracy theories

(b) That corporations hire PR consultants, not only improve their own image but also to undermine those whom they feel obstruct them won't be news to anyone who's ever been involved in a major political fight. In the cold war era, one could reliably expect a well-orchestrated barrage of accusations "Communist!" in some sorts of fights. One particular arena in which the PR game is regularly played is union organizing: some folk make money drawing up such plans for union-busting

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. I remember some of this.

We have quite honestly a war in the shadows.

[me b zola]

21. K&R

[Segami]

23. K&R!!!

[nashville_brook]

24. new cannonfire post links to starroute here...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.ca/2013/07/uncle-sams-hackers-new-theory-of-death.html

Now let's put it all together. Again: What I'm about to say is speculative. But what if....what if...

What if someone at the NSA got Weiner's passwords? What if this same "someone" found out about the guy's naughty online activities?

(After Tice revealed what he revealed, the notion doesn't seem as outlandish as it once might have.)

And what if that same NSA guy gave the incriminating data to Breitbart (or to folks around Breitbart) in order to set a sting into motion?

What if Barrett Brown, Ron Brynaert and Michael Hastings got wind of what really happened to Anthony Weiner? (In this context, you may want to scan the comment from Starroute here.)

Only one of those three men had credibility: Barrett Brown is in jail, and Ron Brynaert is -- well, he's Ron Brynaert. But Hastings was dangerous. He had a killer resume, he wrote well, and he looked good on teevee.

more at link

[DirkGently]

25. Interesting.