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WikiLeaks Begins Releasing Stratfor Internal Emails
owenferguson writes "WikiLeaks has begun leaking a cache of over 5 million internal emails from the the Texas-headquartered 'global intelligence' company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The associated news release can be found on pastebin."
after the Stratfor website went live, one could log in with the username/password combo of "username" and "password". If that's how much attention they paid to protecting their rather expensive subscription service, one wonders is if the security of their email servers was any better.
And their CEO is toast... the word of even this leaking out via intercepted e-mail: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leaked-email-shows-stratfor-ceo-george-friedman-resigned-two-hours-ago-over-latest-breach
Zerohedge is all over this like white on rice. For those complaining about boring content in the leaks, see ZH's coverage on the e-mails relating to Obama's inability to maintain a liberal/progressive position and the Republicans' ability to field a decent candidate: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/stratfor-email-leak-reveals-insider-views-obama-emanuel-romney
Sure, we all knew that the players of the American political football game hadn't yet figured out which direction to run on the field, which team they're playing for, or why their ball is spherical and made of pentagons and hexagons, but it's fun to read about this half-assed private intelligence agency saying the same things that we've all been thinking AND about their supposed contacts with shadowy billionaire Powers That Be saying the same: that the Democrats have no spine and the Republicans no brains.
Re: Seriously, how have they...
Disinformation, selective leaks, like to see who is interested, who can work out what. All the chatter lights up a lot of hidden blogs, press people who can still think.
95% can be true, a few real gems in the released works and then that small fake amount that makes the next war seem "ok" to the average person when the press 'finds' it.
If a real expert gets talking in court or via lawyers to the press, then it gets much more interesting.
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco whistleblower who was found hanged.
Spyware eavesdropped on the Greek prime Minister and other top officials’ cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece’s secret service chief.
Adamo Bove head of security at Telecom Italia who exposed the CIA renditions via cell phone logs ‘fell’ to his death.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam was found hanged.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused "gravy train" that sprung up after WikiLeaks' Afghanistan disclosures:
"[Is it] possible for us to get some of that 'leak-focused' gravy train? This is an obvious fear sale, so that's a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don't, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet... Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of 'leak-focused' network security that focuses on preventing one's own employees from leaking sensitive information... In fact, I'm not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution."
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Either way it's a newspaper clipping service with less than twenty employees and delusions of granduer.
Look at the comments on that last story about these people to see how well their self promotion worked. Restoring their computer systems was seen by many here as an epic task and not the reality of dealing with a server or two and twenty or less PCs and laptops.
. . . because the US will never tolerate democracy in the middle east?
Ignoring Iraq and Israel?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I think the most unnerving parts of this could be:
- They are sometimes used by the US government (and others), presumably to provide a hint of plausible deniability.
- They're trading on markets using information gained via espionage, sometimes with information gained at the urging of government agencies.
- They're all-around scary dudes with close ties to our government and our financial organizations.
We'll get more details, but those crazies with delusional rantings about shady para-governmental organizations with nearly boundless resources and a shortage of moral or ethical restriction? Yeah, they're going to be busy for a while.
No, that is the rose-tinted version of the past. The reality of Watergate was that the FBI was at war with the White House; Deep Throat (Mark Felt) himself was up to his eyeballs in corruption, having overseen COINTELPRO, and later convicted for it. Deep Throat was funneling information to Woodward and Bernstein for selfish political purposes.
Supposed hard-nosed "investigative journalist" Woodward now makes his living as a conduit for White House insiders who want to get their white-washed version of history into his hagiographic "behind the scenes" books. He is a total tool of the American political elite.
I think you need to go back and re-read some of this information, as you've obviously missed a lot.
There are documents describing plans for insider trading. There are tons of references to how they collect and pay for their info, which are shady at best and criminal at worst.
Stratfor claims to be "just a newsletter site that does some intel analysis", but these emails make it very clear that they also do intel COLLECTION, which is a completely different ball-game and far more likely to reveal illegal dealings. There's even more than that.
Basically, they're a vertical integration of the private intel world. They solicit clients for analyis reports, data collection and action plans. They themselves are directly involved with the data collection and marketing it to potential buyers.
So they're actually covert intelligence operatives that will sell to anyone with enough money but have access to a lot of classified US material that claim to be "just intelligence analysts."
FTFY.
If we learned anything form 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq it's that government internal intelligence seems hampered by ideological slant and internal politics. Stratfor, on the other hand, tries to be as accurate as possible and even publishes how accurate it's predictions were on a quarterly and yearly basis. Quite frankly, I would be more worried if governments weren't using services like Stratfor.
From http://pastebin.com/D7sR4zhT :
Is insider trading exciting enough for you?