Obama and Wiretapping

michecon · May 29, 2011

For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29surveillance.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

How much money they spend on a guy like this? Amazing.

rhadamanthus · Jun 1, 2011

Rand Paul may not be crazy, but he's definitely a duplicitous weasel.

Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made headlines last week for single-handedly obstructing the renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties. His demand to insert a series of amendments to weaken the law nearly allowed it to lapse and put the country at “risk,” but Paul said it was worth it to prevent the government from continuing to “blatantly ignor[e] the Constitution.” But when Paul went on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio show Friday to discuss his opposition to the national security law, he suggested implementing a far more serious infringement on civil liberties. While discussing profiling at airports, Paul called for the criminalization of speech:

PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.
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Paul’s suggestion that people be imprisoned or deported for merely attending a political speech would be a fairly egregious violation on the First Amendment, not to mention due process. What if someone attended a radical speech as a curious bystander? Should they too be thrown in prison? And who defines what is considered so “radical” that it is worth imprisonment?

But Paul’s suggestion is especially appalling coming from someone who fashions himself as a staunch defender of civil liberties. Since coming to Congress, Paul has received praise from libertarians and liberals alike for supposedly being consistent on the issue, and he often speaks of civil liberties in speeches and TV appearances.

However, aside from his admirable stance on the Patriot Act, Paul’s record shows he’s hardly the paragon of civil liberties he claims to be, but rather is “indistinguishable from the rest of the GOP on national security issues,” noted The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer last year. He’s said he will “always fight” to keep GITMO open; has said “[f]oreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution;” and has never taken a strong public stance against torture, staying silent most recently after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“I believe that America can successfully protect itself against potential terrorists without sacrificing civil liberties,” his website says. Apparently speech is not a civil liberty.
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Greenwald has another great essay up regarding this obvious breach of the first amendment, and then makes the cognizant observation that this is precisely the reason that Anwar Al-Awlaki is a target for assassination:

This is not an academic question. The right at stake here is absolutely vital. It is crucial to protect and preserve the right to argue that a government has become so tyrannical or dangerous that violence is justified against it. That, after all, was the argument on which the American Founding was based; it is pure political speech; and criminalizing the expression of that idea poses a grave danger to free speech generally and the specific ability to organize against abusive governments. To allow the government to punish citizens -- let alone to kill them -- because their political advocacy is threatening to the government is infinitely more dangerous than whatever ideas are being targeted for punishment, even if that idea is violent jihad.
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pgabriel · Jun 1, 2011

its all a civil liberty until you are a muslim

rocketsjudoka · Jun 1, 2011

Thanks for the article Rhad.

[rquoter] Sen. Rand Paul:
PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.[/rquoter]

I wonder if that would apply to Tea Partiers who have played fast and loose in their rhetoric regarding violence and the legitimacy of the Obama Admin.?

rhadamanthus · Jun 1, 2011

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

I wonder if that would apply to Tea Partiers who have played fast and loose in their rhetoric regarding violence and the legitimacy of the Obama Admin.?
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Greenwald notes that irony as well:

As Think Progress explains, Paul's argument runs directly afoul of these established constitutional principles and "is especially appalling coming from someone who fashions himself as a staunch defender of civil liberties." There's no doubt about that (and, ironically, some of the rallies from the Tea Party movement, the faction most responsible for Paul's election, as well as many pro-life rallies, may well qualify as "speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government" if viewed by a hostile government official).
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jo mama · Jun 1, 2011

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

Thanks for the article Rhad.

[rquoter] Sen. Rand Paul:
PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.[/rquoter]

I wonder if that would apply to Tea Partiers who have played fast and loose in their rhetoric regarding violence and the legitimacy of the Obama Admin.?
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"we came unarmed...this time".

wtf rand? although i dont agree w/ everything he says, there is alot to like about the guy, but he has a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth.

rhadamanthus · Jun 9, 2011

Good news. The case against Thomas Drake appears to be weakening.

IS THE N.S.A. WHISTLEBLOWER CASE FALLING APART?
Posted by Jane Mayer
The government’s espionage case against Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency employee, appears to be crumbling, with prosecutors offering Drake a plea bargain involving vastly reduced charges.

Sources close to the case, which I wrote about for The New Yorker, say that the government has been scrambling to find a way to avoid the trial now scheduled for next Monday in the federal court in Baltimore. At the moment, Drake faces ten felony charges, and if convicted could serve thirty-five years in prison. But in heated discussions, the government has offered Drake the possibility of pleading to a misdemeanor, with no jail time. He would have to agree, however, that he willfully retained classified national-security materials, taken while he worked at the N.S.A. Drake, who has consistently denied that he misappropriated any classified material, has so far refused even the vastly reduced plea offer from the government—apparently to the frustration of both his defense lawyers, and the prosecutors. Drake is refusing, so far, to plead guilty to any wrongdoing, arguing that it is a lie, and he won’t compromise the truth. (Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokesman, said she couldn’t comment on the developments because the case is pending.)

The government’s willingness to bargain down the charges from ten felony counts to a single misdemeanor suggests that the case is teetering. The bargaining follows a series of setbacks for the government. The government had wanted to substitute summaries for some of its evidence, which it argued was too sensitive, from a national-security standpoint, to show. The judge, however, ruled that Drake had to be able to refer the jury to the specific details in order to fully defend himself. As Politico’s Josh Gerstein wrote on Monday, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, William Welch, then decided to withdraw all references to that classified material, undercutting his own case.

At the moment, it is unclear if the government will be able to find a plea that Drake will accept. If it can’t, the trial will move forward, as scheduled—unless, in what would be a major defeat for the Department of Justice, the case collapses entirely.
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rhadamanthus · Jun 9, 2011

Drake took the plea deal.

I kind of wish he'd forced the government to drop the charges, but I understand his rationale. Regardless, the DOJ blinked, and Obama's shame is compounded with failure.

FranchiseBlade · Jun 9, 2011

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Drake took the plea deal.

I kind of wish he'd forced the government to drop the charges, but I understand his rationale. Regardless, the DOJ blinked, and Obama's shame is compounded with failure.
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well Obama's push with this illegal and authoritarian measures should meet failure. I don't really see these programs ending unless congress grows some cajones and really pushes a formal investigation.

Deckard · Jun 10, 2011

We're beset on all sides by fools, liars, and hypocrites in our government, at all levels. Those who deserve our attention and respect are far out numbered by those who don't. What a freakin' mess.

rhadamanthus · Jun 10, 2011

Great article in the NYT on Obama's crazy case against Drake. Worth a read.

CrazyDave · Jun 10, 2011

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Regardless, the DOJ blinked, and Obama's shame is compounded with failure.
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Sadly, anything x 0 = 0.

rhadamanthus · Jun 14, 2011

Over 20 noted whistleblowers ask that Obama's "Transparency Award" be rescinded.

Over 20 noted whistleblowers have just released a petition calling for rescinding a "Transparency Award" President Obama recently received. The signatories include Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, former Pentagon analyst Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski and former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice. More background on the award and why we're requesting it be rescinded is available in this Guardian UK piece and the "Corbett Report" video below.

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7IzJRG87tVE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (who filed complaints after 9-11 with the Department of Justice Inspector General about a number of problems at the FBI) and yours truly drafted the petition, which begins:

On March 28, 2011, President Obama was given a 'transparency award' from five 'open government' organizations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org. Ironically -- and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama administration's lack of transparency -- heads of the five organizations gave their award to Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House. If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organizations' proffered justification for the award, in contrast to the current reality:

President Obama has not decreased but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy! According to a new report to the president by the Information Security Oversight Office -- the federal agency that provides oversight of the government's security classification system -- the cost of classification for 2010 has reached over $10.17 billion. That's a 15 percent jump from the previous year, and the first time ever that secrecy costs have surpassed $10 billion. Last month, ISOO reported that the number of original classification decisions generated by the Obama administration in 2010 was 224,734 -- a 22.6 percent jump from the previous year. See 'The Price of Secrecy, Obama Edition.'

There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies -- 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

Obama has invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. The list of this President's invocations of the 'state secrets privilege' has already resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency's illegal wiretapping -- Jewel vs. NSA and Shubert vs. Obama; extraordinary rendition and assassination -- Anwar al-Aulaqi; and illegal torture -- Binyam Mohamed.

Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama's presidency has amassed the worst record in U.S. history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. President Obama's behavior has been in stark contrast to his campaign promises which included live streaming meetings online and so forth, and rewarding whistleblowers. Obama's Department of Justice is twisting the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks -- more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined.

The Obama DOJ's prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake who, up till June 9, faced 35 years in prison for having blown the whistle on the NSA's costly and unlawful warrantless monitoring of American citizens typifies the abusive practices made possible through expansive secrecy agreements and threats of prosecution.

President Obama has set a powerful and chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning, whose guilt he has also publicly stated prior to any trial by his, Obama's, military subordinates.

Obama is the only president who has reenacted Fahrenheit 451 by actually having his agency collect and burn a book due to a never-justified classification excuse: Lt. Col Tony Shaffer's -Operation Dark Heart.

Under President Obama, the FBI has launched a series of raids and issued grand jury subpoenas targeting nearly two dozen antiwar activists. Over 2,600 arrests of protesters in the US have been made while Obama has been president, further encroaching on the exercise of first amendment rights.

President Obama has initiated a secret assassination programme, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Awlaki.

President Obama has maintained the power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalised the power to lawlessly imprison in an executive order. This also means the power to secretly imprison. There are some 1,700 prisoners outside the rule of law in Bagram alone.

The Obama administration is also busy going after reporters to discover their sources and convening grand juries in order to target journalists and news publishers.

President Obama promised to reveal White House visitors' logs. He didn't. In response to outrage over his refusal to reveal the names of health insurance CEOs he had met with and cut deals with on the health insurance reform bill, he announced that he would release the names going forward, but not those in the past. And going forward, he would withhold names he chose to withhold. White House staff then began regularly meeting lobbyists just off White House grounds in order to avoid the visitors' logs.

President Obama has sent representatives to aggressively pressure Spain, England and Germany to shut down investigations that could have exposed the crimes of the Bush era, just as he has instructed the US justice department to avoid such matters. This includes his refusal to allow prosecutions of the CIA for torture, following a public letter from eight previous heads of the CIA informing him that he had better not enforce those laws.
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The full petition which can be signed, its list of signatories and endorsing organizations is here.
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rhadamanthus · Jun 18, 2011

Obama continues the escalation against whistleblowers, leakers,and activists. I know this thread is huge, but read this post, please.

A few days ago, rallies were held in cities all over the United States in support of veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who had his home raided by the FBI on May 17. The rallies coincided with Montes’ arraignment hearing for felony charges, which were filed against him by the LA County Sheriffs and FBI after the raid.

The target of an ever-expanding government investigation into antiwar and international solidarity activists, Montes demanded that his charges be dropped. The District Attorney denied his request. Montes asked to see the search warrant and police report on the raid of his home. The District Attorney initially refused the request but then agreed to release heavily edited versions of the documents. Montes was also told he would not be allowed to show the documents to the press.

Tom Burke, a spokesperson for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression and a subpoenaed activist, explains that Montes allegedly was found to be in possession of a weapon that was not properly registered. Burke believes that if Montes hadn’t been a political activist or organizer he would have been contacted about a problem on the gun permit. But, the LA sheriffs chose to make an example of Montes.

Burke also notes, like twenty-three other activists subpoenaed thus far, Montes has a link to the organizing of marches at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The FBI raided the Antiwar Committee office in the Twin Cities in Minnesota in September 2010. On the warrant for the raid there were seventeen names. Burke says Carlos Montes’ name appears on the warrant.

When Montes’ home was raided by the FBI & SWAT team, they smashed Montes’ front door, rushed in with automatic weapons while Montes was sleeping and proceeded to ransack his home, “taking his computer, cell phones and hundreds of documents, photos, diskettes and mementos of his current political activities in the pro-immigrant rights and Chicano civil rights movement.” They did this at 5 am in the morning.

“For people who have had their homes raided, it’s worse than being robbed because it’s the government coming in and taking the things that are nearest and dearest to you – your own writing, your own diary,” says Burke.

Rallies in eighteen cities were held in support of Montes and against ongoing FBI repression of activists. And because the judge did not drop the felony charges against Montes, another round of rallies will be held July 7 to again call for the charges to be dropped.

Recent articles in news publications like the Washington Post has given the repression against activists greater attention. At the Netroots Nation 2011 conference, a member of the audience asked at a panel session titled, “What the Government Wants to Know About You,” if he could get more information on what he read on the recently published Post article.

Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake, one of the speakers on the panel, described to the audience how the activists are alleged to be “material supporters of terrorism.” She outlined how the grand jury investigation has been opened and recounted how an informant infiltrated the Antiwar Committee. She noted the activists are alleged to have connections to groups in Palestine and Colombia that perhaps have engaged in terrorist activities but concluded, “Chiquita has far closer ties to terrorism than any peace activists but nobody from Chiquita has gone to jail.”

Essentially, the FBI now has all this data and is able to use it to start investigations. The FBI can turn over any rock that they want to turn over and they can seek out whatever they want to find and piece together a case.

With the FBI moving to expand surveillance powers, it is cases like this investigation into activists that the new powers will effectively make legitimate.

Burke reacts to the news that the FBI is claiming new powers, “The FBI has been violating their own guidelines and their own standard operating procedures and instead of saying we violated what we set out ourselves, they decided to expand what they were allowed to do.

Why does the government want these new powers? Why does the Justice Department under Obama support a growing investigation into activists?

Burke suggests with the economy getting worse the American people are getting more frustrated, with the Congress’ approval rating getting lower and lower, the war in Afghanistan failing, stability in Iraq not being maintained and troops not being sent home, the Colombia war stagnating with no defeat of the insurgency—This “cumulation” is leading to more state repression against those fighting for change in the system.

The war on free speech and activism is apparent here at Netroots Nation as people like Lt. Dan Choi and Tim DeChristopher speak on panels and as individuals like David House are discussed during panel sessions.

Lt. Dan Choi, a soldier and gay rights advocate who engaged in an act of civil disobedience at the White House fence last year to push the Obama Administration to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” is facing federal charges for exercising his right to demonstrate. While most people receive misdemeanors for protesting, for the first time since 1917, the Department of Justice under Obama is taking him to trial this August for speaking out.

Tim DeChristopher, a climate activist who placed fake bids in a public land auction to disrupt drilling by energy companies, has been convicted of a crime. Although the land auction was ultimately declared illegal, the Obama Administration has gone ahead and pursued a case against DeChristopher. The prosecution pushed the jury in his trial to not consider his conscience but rather that he broke a law. They nudged the jury to obfuscate facts and, in fact, many key details on the auction were kept from the jury. And so, DeChristopher now faces up to ten years in prison.

And, David House, co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, has been embroiled in a grand jury investigation that seeks to embroil him in espionage charges for being linked to WikiLeaks. House has been targeted consistently by the government for the past months. His lawful association with the Bradley Manning Support Network, which was created to raise funds for the legal defense of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower to WikiLeaks now being held at Ft. Leavenworth, has led the Department of Homeland Security stop him at airports and seize his laptop, camera and USB drive.

What is at stake with the targeting of activists is an American’s right to protest against the government and sometimes take bold action that could be regarded as adversarial. Those who believe in free speech and support a person’s right to protest must not ignore the cases the Department of Justice is pursuing against individuals in this country, who are being made examples to send a message to others that if they draw inspiration and display courage in the face of power they too might face the same punishment or harassment as these people.
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rhadamanthus · Jun 23, 2011

HOLY CRAP

Project PM Investigation Reveals the Domestic Echelon
link

Project PM Leaks Dirt on Romas/COIN Classified Intelligence Mass Surveillance

According to a Project PM announcement, here are some of the 'classified intelligence' details about Romas/COIN (Odyssey) with capabilities to monitor and automatically analyze millions of conversations, and then secretly store a wide range of personal data. It appears as if even Apple, Google, and Disney's Pixar were trying to be brought aboard to help out in this mass surveillance apparatus.

Updated note: To be clear, all analysis and documentation to expose this mass surveillance was done by Project PM.

If you are not sitting, please do so. Although I don't advocate drinking, you might also pour a double-shot of whiskey to prepare yourself for distinctly unpleasant news about immensely sophisticated mass surveillance called Romas/COIN, or soon to be replaced by a similar program known as Odyssey. The nature and extent of the "counter intelligence" operation can be glimpsed in part by closely inspecting hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen in February from the contracting firm HBGary Federal.

After searching through HBGary e-mails for keywords and reading until I wanted to puke or scream, I decided to go ahead and run with Project PM's announcement. Barrett Brown of Project PM will publish these findings in full on Project PM Wiki later, but this is part of that release. According to Project PM:

For at least two years, the U.S. has been conducting a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world, allowing the intelligence community to monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once. And with an upgrade (Odyssey) scheduled for later this year, the top contender to win the federal contract and thus take over the program is a team of about a dozen companies which were brought together in large part by Aaron Barr - the same disgraced CEO who resigned from his own firm earlier this year after he was discovered to have planned a full-scale information war against political activists at the behest of corporate clients. The new revelation provides for a disturbing picture, particularly when viewed in a wider context. Unprecedented surveillance capabilities are being produced by an industry that works in secret on applications that are nonetheless funded by the American public - and which in some cases are used against that very same public. Their products are developed on demand for an intelligence community that is not subject to Congressional oversight and which has been repeatedly shown to have misused its existing powers in ways that violate U.S. law as well as American ideals.

Although military contractor Northrop Grumman had long held the contract for Romas/COIN, enter HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr in an email to Al Pisani, an executive at the much larger federal contractor TASC, with a plan related to COIN. "I met with [Mantech CEO] Bob Frisbie the other day to catch up. He is looking to expand a capability in IO [information operations] related to the COIN re-compete but more for DoD."

The layout and story is extremely long, and you'll need to read over the announcement at Project PM when it's published there. Project PM determined from the dozens of clues and references in leaked emails the unbelievable mass spying nature of Romas/COIN:

- Mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the program.

- There's discussion of bringing in a "gaming developer," apparently at the behest of Barr, who mentions that the team could make good use of "a social gaming company maybe like zynga, gameloft, etc." Lovegrove elsewhere notes: "I know a couple of small gaming companies at MIT that might fit the bill."

- Apple and Google were active team partners, and AT&T may have been as well. The latter is known to have provided the NSA free reign over customer communications (and was in turn protected by a bill granting them retroactive immunity from lawsuits). Google itself is the only company to have received a "Hostile to Privacy" rating from Privacy International. Apple is currently being investigated by Congress after the iPhone was revealed to compile user location data in a way that differs from other mobile phones; the company has claimed this to have been a "bug."

- The program makes use of several providers of "linguistic services." At one point, the team discusses hiring a military-trained Arabic linguist. Elsewhere, Barr writes: "I feel confident I can get you a ringer for Farsi if they are still interested in Farsi (we need to find that out). These linguists are not only going to be developing new content but also meeting with folks, so they have to have native or near native proficiency and have to have the cultural relevance as well."

- Alterion and SocialEyez are listed as "businesses to contact." The former specializes in "social media monitoring tools." The latter uses "sophisticated natural language processing methodology" in order to "process tens of millions of multi-lingual conversations daily" while also employing "researchers and media analysts on the ground;" its website also notes that "Millions of people around the globe are now networked as never before - exchanging information and ideas, forming opinions, and speaking their minds about everything from politics to products."

- At one point, TASC exec Chris Clair asks Aaron and others, "Can we name COIN Saif? Saif is the sword an Arab executioner uses when they decapitate criminals. I can think of a few cool brands for this."

- A diagram attached to one of Barr's e-mails to the group depicts Magpii as interacting in some unspecified manner with "Foreign Mobile" and "Foreign Web." Magpii is a project of Barr's own creation which stands for "Magnify Personal Identifying Information," involves social networking, and is designed for the purpose of storing personal information on users. Although details are difficult to determine from references in Barr's e-mails, he discusses the project almost exclusively with members of military intelligence to which he was pitching the idea.

- There are sporadic references such things as "semantic analysis," "Latent Semantic Indexing," "specialized linguistics," and OPS, a programming language designed for solving problems using expert systems.

- Barr asks the team's partner at Apple, Andy Kemp (whose signature lists him as being from the company's Homeland Defense/National Programs division), to provide him "a contact at Pixar/Disney."

Altogether, then, a successful bid for the relevant contract was seen to require the combined capabilities of perhaps a dozen firms - capabilities whereby millions of conversations can be monitored and automatically analyzed, whereby a wide range of personal data can be obtained and stored in secret, and whereby some unknown degree of information can be released to a given population through a variety of means and without any hint that the actual source is U.S. military intelligence. All this is merely in addition to whichever additional capabilities are not evident from the limited description available, with the program as a whole presumably being operated in conjunction with other surveillance and propaganda assets controlled by the U.S. and its partners.

Here's the team players:

- TASC (PMO, creative services)

- HB Gary (Strategy, planning, PMO)

- Akamai (infrastructure)

- Archimedes Global (Specialized linguistics, strategy, planning)

- Acclaim Technical Services (specialized linguistics)

- Mission Essential Personnel (linguistic services)

- Cipher (strategy, planning operations)

- PointAbout (rapid mobile application development, list of strategic partners)

- Google (strategy, mobile application and platform development - long list of strategic partners)

- Apple (mobile and desktop platform, application assistance -long list of strategic partners)

- We are trying to schedule an interview with AT&T plus some other small app developers.

Two days after a briefing requirement meeting, the servers of HBGary and HBGary Federal were hacked by a small team of Anonymous operatives in retaliation for Barr's boasts to Financial Times that he had identified the movement's "leadership;" 70,000 e-mails were thereafter released onto the Internet. Barr resigned a few weeks later.

Also according to Project PM, along with clues as to the nature of COIN and its scheduled replacement, a close study of the HBGary e-mails also provide reasons to be concerned with the fact that such things are being developed and deployed in the way that they are. In addition to being the driving force behind the COIN recompete, Barr was also at the center of a series of conspiracies by which his own company and two others hired out their collective capabilities for use by corporations that sought to destroy their political enemies by clandestine and dishonest means, some of which appear to be illegal. None of the companies involved have been investigated; a proposed Congressional inquiry was denied by the committee chair, noting that it was the Justice Department's decision as to whether to investigate, even though it was the Justice Department itself that made the initial introductions. Those in the intelligence contracting industry who believe themselves above the law are entirely correct.

That such firms will continue to target the public with advanced information warfare capabilities on behalf of major corporations is by itself an extraordinary danger to mankind as a whole, particularly insomuch as that such capabilities are becoming more effective while remaining largely unknown outside of the intelligence industry. But a far greater danger is posed by the practice of arming small and unaccountable groups of state and military personnel with a set of tools by which to achieve better and better "situational awareness" on entire populations while also being able to manipulate the information flow in such a way as to deceive those same populations. The idea that such power can be wielded without being misused is contradicted by even a brief review of history.

History also demonstrates that the state will claim such powers as a necessity in fighting some considerable threat; the U.S. has defended its recent expansion of powers by claiming they will only be deployed to fight terrorism and will never be used against American civilians. This is cold comfort for those in the Arab world who are aware of the long history of U.S. material support for regimes they find convenient, including those of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and the House of Saud. Nor should Americans be comforted by such promises from a government that has no way of ensuring that they will be kept; it was just a few months ago that a U.S. general in Afghanistan ordered a military intelligence unit to use pysops on visiting senators in an effort to secure increased funding for the war, an illegal act; only a few days prior, CENTCOM spokesmen were confidently telling the public that such other psychological capabilities as persona management would never be used on Americans as that would be illegal. The fact is that such laws have been routinely broken by the military and intelligence community, who are now been joined in this practice by segments of the federal contracting industry.

It is inevitable, then, that such capabilities as form the backbone of Romas/COIN and its replacement Odyssey will be deployed against a growing segment of the world's population. The powerful institutions that wield them will grow all the more powerful as they are provided better and better methods by which to monitor, deceive, and manipulate. The informed electorate upon which liberty depends will be increasingly misinformed. No tactical advantage conferred by the use of these programs can outweigh the damage that will be done to mankind in the process of creating them.
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The complete release is available here.

Another link from Forbes on HbGary's dealings with Apple.

FranchiseBlade · Jun 23, 2011

rhadamanthus said: ↑

HOLY CRAP

Project PM Investigation Reveals the Domestic Echelon
link

The complete release is available here.

Another link from Forbes on HbGary's dealings with Apple.
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Too bad we don't have a President and DoJ that are doing their job to protect the citizens from this kind of crap, and violation of our rights.

rhadamanthus · Jun 23, 2011

FranchiseBlade said: ↑

Too bad we don't have a President and DoJ that are doing their job to protect the citizens from this kind of crap, and violation of our rights.
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And the companies... Holy smokes. Illegality abounds.

pgabriel · Jun 23, 2011

FranchiseBlade said: ↑

Too bad we don't have a President and DoJ that are doing their job to protect the citizens from this kind of crap, and violation of our rights.
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is this against citizens? it doesn't say specifically but implies its used in foreign territory

FranchiseBlade · Jun 23, 2011

pgabriel said: ↑

is this against citizens? it doesn't say specifically but implies its used in foreign territory
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I presuemed that domestic echelon meant that citizens would be included. Add that to the fact that it mentioned cell phone apps, I'm not sure how the initial collection wouldn't include citizens.

Northside Storm · Jun 23, 2011

pgabriel said: ↑

is this against citizens? it doesn't say specifically but implies its used in foreign territory
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yeah, we all know the American government has a stirring record with FISA.

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