Slashdot Mirror
Secret Plan To Kill Wikileaks With FUD Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "Three information security consultancies with links to US spy agencies cooked up a dirty tricks campaign late last year to destroy Wikileaks by exploiting its perceived weaknesses, reads a presentation released by the whistleblowers' (pdf) organization that it claimed to be from the conspirators. Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed to lawyers for a desperate Bank of America an alliance that would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach. Since the plan was hatched, disgruntled volunteers mentioned in the PDF broke away from Wikileaks, financial institutions withdrew services, [Jacob ] Appelbaum was harassed by the US government, and Amazon denied service to Wikileaks' website."
Of course the motivation for infiltrating Anonymous was profit as Arron Barr said in an e-mail:
Step 1 : Gather all the data
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Profit
Sort of an amusing story and very easy to see where Mr. Barr made the error of becoming part of this event (demonstration or debacle depending on your views) and seeking media attention. Pretty clear he was in over his head and doing his own thing thinking he was dealing with three individuals who were two bit morons. It almost deserves the cheesy "hunters have become the hunted" movie tag line. Well, the soft hack of HBGary Federal appears to be providing more than enough material for this to be a focus of media attention, congratulations are in order for Mr. Barr and let's all wish him the best of luck with step three. He's gonna need it!
My work here is dung.
Oh so this was a secret plan was it?
Was it commissioned by the ministry for the bloody obvious?
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Looks like were at part 3 now.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It would appear that a variety of groups, representing a de-facto merger of state and corporate power, are allied to destroy you.
On a scale from "1" to "highly ironic" how would you describe this confirmation of your assertion that the "representative" goverments actually pend a lot of time doing dirty deeds in the shadows?
Palantir Technologies? Really?
Was "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall Inc" already taken?
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks
Can't say I'm surprised but the tactics and manipulation they discuss but I find it outrageous all the same.
However, the fact that they felt the need to present such a teach-yourself-how-to-destroy-wikileaks-in-21-days presentation in such a dumb manner is somewhat encouraging.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
The sudden appearance of rape charges, schisms and turmoil within the organization, etc. were pretty obviously concerted efforts to discredit the organization and Assange. Didn't take a genius to see it all coming after his big leaks started, or to know who was behind it. I knew a discrediting campaign was coming down back before Assange even met his "rape victims" or faced a schism.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Oh boy, that PDF is nothing more than a sales pitch written by someone who probably believes the hype of "cyber-warfare" as portrayed in movies, and is trying to excite some clueless bank executives into getting involved in the action as portrayed.
It does sound exciting with talk of "global networks, movement between countries", although in reality such movement would just be scp -r /var/www/wikileaks user@server-in-foreign-country:/var/www/.
Of course, as a sales presentation it's well done, I could imagine the bank executive getting excited that he could initiate a "cyber-hunt" to kill the organization.
If this document is genuine, this company "Palantir" has suggested and supports activities that are not only criminal in Europa but also in the US. We're talking about libel and slander, "cyber-terrorist" attacks on foreign it business and infrastructure (servers hosted in Sweden, France), and so on.
I don't know whether the document itself gives enough grounds for a lawsuits, probably not, but if these guys do anything of what they suggest or even aid in it, and it can be traced back to them, I feel a lawsuit coming in 3...2...1...
By the way, how are the investigations of the DoS attacks against Wikileaks server going? Any news on that?
Talk about a role-reversal...the discreditors become the discredited. Alas, this is a great blow to the future of the Wikileaks conversation. Now all critics legitimate and otherwise can be lumped together as part of a coordinated effort against Wikileaks. It's now easier than ever to accuse someone who demands more self-scrutiny from WL and its supporters as a "shill" or "operative". And this time we have these 3 companies to blame.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
His programmer had doubts, saying that the scraping and linking work he was doing was of limited value and had no commercial prospects. As he wrote in an e-mail:
I'm a big tall mofo.
The plan was pitched to Bank of America on the 3rd. Amazon and EveryDNS already had withdrawn services so I think it's a stretch to try to insinuate that Paypal doing the same on the 4th is somehow related to a proposal submitted to a separate financial institution on the 3rd. It's also not entirely surprising that people pointed out to be weak links and ready to leave Wikileaks turned out to be weak leaks and decided to leave Wikileaks. This sounds like a case of some defense companies ever looking to scrape up some profits pointing out the blindingly obvious and now when a couple of the obvious things happen on their own people trying to attribute it to a successful implementation of said plot.
It's always nice to have a good conspiracy - but chronology is a bitch. Even before the plan was hatched, Paypal has canceled Wikileaks accounts twice, disgruntled volunteers were gruntling very publicly, Wikileaks had to change providers several times and Julian Assange reported harrassment from every government he had to deal with.
I'll say it again.
If US intelligence agencies and their actions, security, political connections and control of information are *REALLY* this bad, the US has a much bigger problem than a website.
If this is how a genuine intelligence agency acts and gets caught doing so by the equivalent of a back-bedroom UFO hunter, then the first ever *real* cyberwar will see them wiped off the planet.
The UK, in the middle of a war, infiltrated by spies, managed to capture, analyse, decrypt, monitor and intercept German communications for YEARS, to the extent that they could literally direct the enemy to move their defences to cover false "threats" while watching them do that. And most of exactly what happened took 50+ years to come out and we still don't know *all* of it.
The US, in peacetime (so no major distractions, counter-incentive, etc.), can't stop their own soldiers putting documents into the public domain, with HUGE fanfare, then "rubber-stamp" those documents as official by "hunting down" a civilian not really related to the leak, when the guy handed himself into a police station in an allied country and told the newspapers about it. If the US "anti-cyber-warfare" campaign is anywhere near as ineffective, you better hope nobody tech-savvy *bothers* to go to war with the US.
"Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed to lawyers for a desperate Bank of America an alliance that would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach."
I had to read this sentence several times before it made any sense. The first few times it sounded like the defense contractor consultants asked some lawyers to marry them in order to obtain the Bank of America, who was inexplicably desperate -- all of which would discredit Wikileaks.
I think what was attempting to be conveyed was the following:
"Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed an alliance with a desperate Bank of America which would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach."
Proverbs 21:19
Wait a minute. Isn't Wikileaks reporting a leaked report that there was a conspiracy against them a little bit like saying God exists, because the Bible says so?
Government and the control of society is about more then absolute evidence, it is about state of mind.
There are those in society who wish for private industry to have greater control of society without an elected body having the right to control them. So be it, but do we then just accept this without questioning what kind of mentality these self appointed power brokers posses?
This is not a criminal trial, it is a hiring process and during such a process I want to see from your past and current behavior how you are going to act in the future. So, if people propose banks like Bank of America should have LESS regulation and LESS government oversight shouldn't we first examine whether that is a good idea?
No, them telling us it is a good idea is NOT good enough fool. And THIS leak shows exactly what the mentality of the Bank of America is. No, not because there is proof they did this but because they EVEN considered it.
That requires some advanced thinking but basically goes that for some thought crimes are indeed crimes. Some people/institutions should NOT even be allowed to consider certain things.
The Kenedy assassination is a prime example of this. Was the CIA behind it or not? Doesn't really matter, it has been proven beyond a doubt that senior CIA officials had plans to assassinate the president of their own country. THAT is enough of a crime in itself. If the protector of democracy even dares thinking of killing a democratically elected leader the crime has been done.
The Bank of America by even being involved in this have shown that banks can not be trusted to be open and that private businesses will fall all over themselves to supply services to lie to the people. That means we have once again been shown that banks and private industry need strict government supervision.
That is what this leak shows.
Not some timeline of crime to be fought over in court to sentence some individuals but the whole sale condemnation of private business as being unworthy of trust.
But of course, you are a fool and trust the bank because merely considering lying isn't bad at all... no no, let them work without oversight I am sure that when something really bad happens they will tell us honestly...
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's hardly surprising that there is a market for plans in how to manipulate public perception. There's a whole industry that exists specifically for this. People who find themselves in that industry have to set aside their conscience to do the job and put food on the table. They rationalize it as a game or a competition or just business. Some are probably reading slashdot right now.
It's the sad nature of civilization that we are a huge crowd of people just trying to put one foot in front of the other. It's hard to imagine that our small push forward on the person in front of us is really contributing to the squeeze that is crushing people to death somewhere else in the crowd.
Don't forget that they made Julian Assange a pompous douchebag by drugging his food. A side effect, perhaps intended, is the paranoia that makes him think he'll be imprisoned at Guantanamo. They also slipped a defective condom into his wallet so they could trump up rape charges.
So these Evil Consultants are running a propaganda campaign about Wikileaks, and Anonymous leaks their "secret plans", including the plan to try to sell a disinformation plan to BofA... But can we trust all the incriminating pages in the leaked secret plans? Could Anonymous have planted a bit of extra content in the leaked material? Could the Evil Consultants themselves planted bogus material in the leak, and leaked it to Anonymous themselves?
I would like to subscribe to your news letter, but only if it dramatically goes, "Dunt dunt DUUUUNNNT!", and tells me what happened in previous episodes when I open it.