Here is a draft of the Romas/COIN piece. Let me know if this suits you and if you'd like any changes to be made.

For at least two years, the U.S. military has been conducting a sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance across the Arab world that may be operating in conjunction with equally high-tech propaganda efforts utilizing an array of fake, semi-automated online personalities capable of disseminating misinformation to locals while also providing false impressions of regional sentiment to the rest of the world. And were it not for an unusual set of events that occurred in February of this year, the ongoing operation may very well have been reorganized and even updated further by a collection of intelligence contractors assembled in large part by Aaron Barr – one of the major players in a conspiracy by which several federal contractors sought to engage in unethical and potentially illegal attacks on Wikileaks, an array of U.S. activist groups, and even a prominent journalist on behalf of institutions like Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The nature and extent of the project, which was known as Romas/COIN and which is scheduled for replacement this year by a similar program referred to as Odyssey, may be determined in part by a close reading of hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen from Barr's federal contracting firm, HBGary Federal, as well as its parent company, HBGary. Other details may be gleaned by an examination of the various other firms and individuals that are referred to either as being among those who joined forces in order to win the contract from its current holder or merely noted in e-mail conversations as potential partners in the effort by virtue of possessing particular skills or capabilities.

Compiling the numerous details with additional research and knowledge of the industry results in 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 public. Their products are developed on demand for an intelligence community that is not subject to Congressional oversight and which has been repeatedly revealed as having misused its existing powers in ways that violate U.S. law and American ideals. Based on the Team Themis incident, even some of the most “respectable” of the firms among them, such as Palantir, are clearly willing to sell many of their developments and services to corporations that wish to conduct similarly unethical operations against the public. That none of the individuals or companies which were caught planning criminal acts in pursuit of that criminal conspiracy have been investigated, much less brought before the same Congress that spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars examining steroid use in baseball, has provided an unambiguous message that those in the industry who consider themselves above the law are correct in thinking so.

Although the relatively well-known military contractor Northrop Grumman had long held the contract for Romas/COIN, many such contracts are subject to regular recompetes by which other companies can apply to take over. In early February, HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr wrote the following e-mail to Al Pisani, an executive at the much larger federal contractor TASC:

"I met with [Mantech CEO] Bob Frisbie the other day to catch up. He is looking to expand a capability in IO related to the COIN re-compete but more for DoD. He told me he has a few acquisitions in the works that will increase his capability in this area. So just a thought that it might be worth a phone call to see if there is any synergy and strength between TASC and ManTech in this area. I think forming a team and response to compete against SAIC will be tough but doable." [IO in this context stands for “information operations,” while COIN itself, as noted in an NDA attached to one of the e-mails, stands for “counter intelligence; SAIC is a much larger intelligence contractor that was expected to pursue the recompete as well]

Pisani agreed to the idea, and in conjunction with Barr and fellow TASC exec John Lovegrove, the growing party spent much of the next year working to create a partnership of firms capable of providing the “client” - a U.S. agency that is never specified in the hundreds of e-mails that follow – with capabilities that would outmatch those provided by Northrop, SAIC, or other competitors.

Several e-mails in particular provide a great deal of material by which to determine the scope and intent of Romas/COIN. One that Barr wrote to himself, likely for the purpose of adding to other documents later, is entitled “Notes on COIN.” It begins with a list of entries for various facets of the program, all of which are blank and were presumably filled out later: “ISP, Operations, Language/Culture, Media Development, Marketing and Advertising, Security, MOE.” Afterwards, another list consists of the following: “Capabilities, Mobile Development, Challenges, MOE, Infrastructure, Security.” Finally, a list of the following websites is composed, many of which represent various small companies that provide niche marketing services pursuant to mobile phones.

More helpful is a later e-mail from Lovegrove to Barr and some of his colleagues at TASC in which he announces the following:

Our team consists of:

- 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 ATT plus some other small app developers.

From these and dozens of other clues and references, the following may be determined about the nature of Romas/COIN:

1. A successful bid on the evolving program was seen to require the combined efforts and capabilities of a dozen firms including several of the world's largest communications companies, including at least one – AT&T – that has a history of providing its customers' communications to the NSA on a wholesale basis.

2. Mobile phones and devices and especially apps for such things are a major component of the program.

3. As there is 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.”

4. The program makes use of “specialized linguistics” in addition to presumably more orthodox “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.”

5. 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.”

6. 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.”

7. A diagram attached to one of Barr's e-mails to the group (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/pmo.png/) 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.

8. There are sporadic references such things as “semantic analysis,” “Latent Semantic Indexing,” and OPS, a programming language designed for solving problems using expert systems.

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

Whatever the exact nature of the program, it unexpectedly changed before the expected recompete. In late September, Lovegrove noted to Barr and others that he'd spoken to the “CO for COIN.” “The current procurement approach is cancelled [sic], she cited changed requirements,” he reported. “They will be coming out with some documents in a month or two, most likely an updated RFI [request for information]. There will be a procurement following soon after. We are on the list to receive all information." On January 18^th of next year, Lovegrove provided an update: “I just spoke to the group chief on the contracts side (Doug K). COIN has been replaced by a procurement called Odyssey. He says that it is in the formative stages and that something should be released this year. The contracting officer is Kim R. He believes that Jason is the COTR [contracting officer's technical representative].” Another clue is provided in the ensuing discussion, when another TASC executive asks, “Does Odyssey combine the Technology and Content pieces of the work?” They forward the discussion to Barr, who says he has already been informed of the change and who presumably discusses it with them in person.

The changes in the project didn't phase the team, which was still a top contender to compete for the upcoming Odyssey procurement. On February 3^rd, key members of the group, including Barr, attend a meeting at “HQ” with the “Odyssey HQ,” presumably in order to be briefed on the latest requirements. Then, two days later, the servers of HBGary and HBGary Federal are hacked by a small team of Anonymous operatives in retaliation for Barr's claims to Financial Times that he had identified the movement's “leadership;” 70,000 company e-mails are released onto the internet, and it is quickly discovered that Barr was a key player in the Team Themis conspiracy. Within the month, Barr resigns from his position, severance package in tow.

There is no way of knowing exactly what Romas/COIN is intended to do or how it differs from its upcoming replacement, Odyssey. The project is classified and clearances were required of all parties concerned, while the only instance of it being discussed until now is a post by a Forbes blogger who came across the name and Apple's involvement while looking through the HBGary e-mails but who appears to have ceased looking into it after being told by a commenter, incorrectly, that COIN stands for “counter insurgency,” which apparently persuaded him that the project was secret for good reason. On the contrary, this program and its replacement clearly involve an unprecedented campaign of data mining and surveillance for use by the same military that has also been discovered to deploy fake online people for purposes of propaganda, along with numerous other capabilities that, taken together, are increasingly providing a small and unaccountable group of men with power that may be exerted in extraordinary ways which are all the more extraordinary by virtue of being undetectable. The excuse for such things, the public is generally told, is that such powers are used to combat 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 dictatorships they find convenient, including those of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and the House of Saud. Nor is it likely to be true; CENTCOM's declaration that persona management would not be used against Americans since such actions would be illegal were made with days of revelations that an Army psyops unit was illegally ordered to target visiting U.S. senators with their own brand of psychological methods that are likewise intended for use against terrorists. And that instance is merely among the latest in a long line of revelations of gross misuse of power by an intelligence community that has consistently engaged in tyrannical behavior by way of such things as COINTELPRO and MKULTRA. Even if the contractors who produce the latest in dangerous capabilities for the U.S. do not sell such things to unethical corporations for the purpose of targeting Americans, as they have done in the recent past, some or another faction of the intelligence community will find such tools to be a convenient means of domestic control. Other, worse governments will obtain these capabilities as well, for a price, from contractors such as Gamma International, which was recently revealed to have attempted the sale of IT intrusion software to the Mubarak dictatorship.

There comes a point when a state abuses its privilege of secrecy and makes such a mockery of the rule of law upon which its authority rests that both secrecy and authority can no longer be respected. Like most nations, the government of the United States has reached that point. As such, I will soon be revealing details of further classified programs.

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

A series may be for the best; I've just found more on what Romas/COIN is and what's involved by looking through notes, the NDA, and a corporate teaming agreement that were attached to some of the e-mails. The apparatus they were developing to fulfill requirements of federal contract entailed extraordinary capabilities by which to monitor online conversations as well as partnering with an online game company to spy on users. This firm was to be used for the former: http://www.socialeyez.ae/. Description: “sophisticated natural language processing methodology” “making sense of millions of online conversations,” local language experts familiar with dialects and slang, “we process tens of millions of multi-lingual conversations daily”, “researchers and analysts on the ground” “to understand what your customers are saying about you.” All targeted at the Arab world and Arab diaspora as well as Urdu speakers. That's just one component they were going to integrate into the overall apparatus. Still digging up more details.

I could make this next piece about Romas/COIN and the Odyssey procurement that will be replacing it, basically showing that a massive surveillance program has been in place to spy on the entire Arab world using a series of sophisticated methods, and then do another on the other issues that come up here, including an examination of how all of these companies relate to each other and portions of the intel community and military - basically, an industrial-military-intelligence complex that operates without oversight by Congress (those in USAF intelligence are required not to speak to Congress at all about these programs due to rules put in place recently). Both would also reference other recent examples of relevant espionage/propaganda efforts by U.S. military and intel community against Arab world and U.S., respectively, to show why it is almost certain that these will be likewise misused by both U.S. and these contractors; I've been compiling info on Gamma International with a couple of other journalists and my research team, for instance, that being the firm that was recently revealed to have tried to sell Mubarak interior ministry IT intrusion tools by which to spy on dissenters using their own computers.

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Nasir Yousafzai Khan <nasir.khan@aljazeera.net> wrote:

I'm cool with it - we can frame it as a series.

Naz

Sent from my iPhone

On May 14, 2011, at 5:47 AM, "Hashem Said" <saidh@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Sounds quite interesting. If there is a lot to write about, could we consider breaking it up into different parts? It’s something to consider, although Naz will need to give the word on that.

 

Or do you think you could fit all that into a single article?

 

From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2011 10:58 A

To: Nasir Yousafzai Khan
Cc: Hashem Said
Subject: Re: Anonymous, OpMetalGear, and Gamma International

 

This is going to be a bit bigger than I thought. I've spent the day doing research and came across some interesting things by using new search terms on the 70,000 e-mails. Some portion of U.S. military intelligence is replacing their COIN/Romas program with another called Odyssey which, from the context of discussions on COIN/Romas, would appear to target the Arab/Persian world for advanced surveillance involving another instance of persona management aside from that being employed by multinational forces operating above CENTCOM. A fellow referred to as "Doug K." and characterized as being in charge of contracts by TASC exec John Lovegrove told Lovegrove that it was "in the formative stages" as of January and that "something should be released this year." I've also got a name and initial for someone referred to as the contract officer and thus may be able to determine exactly what agency is handling this. Several of the contractors I'm looking at at TASC had a meeting the following month referred to in an e-mail as "Meet with Odyssey CO," which likely involves a classified briefing on the necessary capabilities for use by the various firms that would apply to provide pieces of the necessary technology. As it's only been a few months, Odyssey has probably not yet been deployed. I'm going to see what else I can find on this. Called John Lovegrove of TASC and he was pretty unhappy that I knew about his work with Aaron Barr and COIN/Romas in particular; he even tried to claim that his refusal to answer questions was "off the record," which is bizarre, but at any rate I recorded it, being in a single-party consent state. I'm going to see what else I can dig up on Odyssey and get some opinions from some of my other contacts, but it can be assumed at this point that it will be more sophisticated than COIN/Romas, which, from Barr's notes, seems to have involved data mining via social networking by which to conduct mass surveillance on the Arab world. Also, I've learned that Mantech, another firm involved in all of this, offered Barr $100,000 to develop persona management capabilities, apparently for a different project altogether, and Barr accepted.

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Nasir Yousafzai Khan <nasir.khan@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Maybe you could write two separate pieces? no? We'll pay 350 for the second piece,

 

Naz

On May 12, 2011, at 11:30 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:

 

Actually, having thought about it more, I'm not sure if there's any way of packing in this information while also providing sufficient background into persona management and the dangers it presents as well as info on the crowd-sourced investigation that's been launched in response; this particular aspect would probably take another article to properly describe. I've attached the documents here so that another journalist can do a separate story on these other companies if al-Jazeera is interested in pursuing this further.

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Nasir Yousafzai Khan <nasir.khan@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Sounds good to me!

Sent from my iPhone

On May 12, 2011, at 10:21 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Sirs-

I've just received a series of documents that have been provided by a contact of mine to members of Congress and the FBI and which confirm the participation of U.S. companies such as TASC, Apple, Mantech, Northrop Grumman, and others in seeking federal contracts by which to conduct mass surveillance on the public. If you'd be interested in having me re-write this piece in such a way as to discuss persona management while also referencing the overall surveillance efforts by these companies, let me know.

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's a draft of the OpMetalGear piece; let me know if/what changes need to be made.

If the internet is to exist as a means by which to promote transparency and freedom, it must of course be protected from those forces which seek to instead use it for purposes of secrecy and control. The problem lies in recognizing those forces, which are not comprised merely of flamboyant dictators with obviously evil intent, but also include a number of benevolent-seeming institutions that operate for what they believe to be the greater good of mankind. But good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes, as history confirms. Recent history in particular has given the world reason to be suspicious of those who believe they have the right to use public resources for the purpose of manipulating that same public, no matter the excuses given or the promises made. It is a fine thing, then, that the latest such project has been revealed by accident and may now be scrutinized by a public that was never meant to know of its existence.

In early February, as the Anonymous collective was continuing its month-long effort to assist protesters living in Tunisia and other North African dictatorships, the CEO of intelligence contracting firm HBGary Federal boasted to Financial Times about having infiltrated the group and identifying some of its most active participants. The next day, a small team of hackers associated with Anonymous retaliated by infiltrating the servers of HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary, acquiring more than 70,000 e-mails and other documents which together provide an unusual look into the interplay between federal contractors and U.S. government agencis. A great deal of wrongdoing became evident almost immediately, with reporters understandably focusing on a complex scandal in which Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had hired a prestigious law firm to arrange for a campaign of dirty tricks against
those parties which the two institutions perceived as threats to their own interests.

As that incident and its implications continued to play out in the media, a different but related issue came to light when Raw Story discovered that HBGary had written up a detailed proposal by which to win a contract with the U.S. Air Force, which itself had put out a call for bids on the creation of something called “persona management software.” The requested apparatus would have allowed 50 users to each control 50 “personas” - essentially non-existent “people” who could be deployed for purposes of propaganda. As the solicitation puts it:

Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly [sic] consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.

When asked about the matter, CENTCOM spokesman Bill Speaks had little choice but to acknowledge what amounted to a smoking gun, telling reporters that this particular program “supports classified social media activities outside the U.S., intended to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda.” Speaks sought to further reassure the press by noting that it would be illegal for such efforts to target U.S. citizens.

Of course, the billions of non-Americans to whom such assurances do not apply are thus left vulnerable to targeting by this sophisticated propaganda measure, which will inevitably expand in scope as allowed by improvements in technology and development. Americans, meanwhile, ought not to take any comfort in the promise that such methodology will never be used for the purposes of shoring up the domestic support that generals require to achieve their specific objectives. Less than 24 hours after Speaks told his countrymen that they need not fear any illegal propaganda by the military, my colleague Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone revealed the exact opposite to be true. “The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in ‘psychological operations’ to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war,” he wrote upon his return from Afghanistan in an article that appeared on February 23rd, “and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.”

Even if the U.S.’s top generals somehow manage to prevent those under their command from violating the legal and ethical guidelines that have already been disregarded in this and previous instances, the mere development of persona management by any party, for whatever reason, will almost certainly lead to such technology being utilized in a manner that threatens the integrity of civic life throughout the world. The U.S. and other governments depend on an array of intelligence contractors to produce capabilities of the sort, and we need not merely suspect that some of those contractors might provide similarly powerful capabilities to other parties that would use them against their own enemies; this was illustrated quite plainly through the e-mails obtained by Anonymous.

Which brings us back to HBGary, one of the bidders on the persona management project for the USAF. As noted, the federal contractor had teamed up with two other firms under the name Team Themis; the plan called for each company to contribute its particular brand of expertise towards the establishment of a highly organized corporate information war apparatus which would then be hired out to those companies with an interest in disrupting and discrediting its enemies. Unsurprisingly, it found quick success; the law firm Hunton & Williams asked Team Themis to prepare a covert campaign by which to effectively destroy Wikileaks on behalf of its own client Bank of America. This was to be accomplished through a variety of tactics involving malware, DDOS attacks, disinformation, and “social engineering.” Hunton & Williams also provided Team Themis with information on union leaders and left-wing activists compiled by another of its clients, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wanted Themis to use it for the purpose of obtaining further data on the families of Chamber critics in support of what appears to have been intended as a campaign of sabotage and intimidation.

On its surface, the Team Themis affair demonstrates the extraordinary dangers inherent to the practice of the U.S. federal government relying on private firms to produce technology which those same firms can then hire out to unethical corporations and other institutions; one might come to the initial conclusion that such things should be developed by the U.S. internally to avoid such problems. The problem is that the federal government itself has facilitated the situation; as the e-mails revealed, it was the Justice Department that recommended Hunton & Williams to Bank of America for the purpose of launching unspecified attacks against Wikileaks, for instance. And one of the two other firms that made up Team Themis, Palantir Technologies, had been founded in 2004 in part through an investment by In-Q-Tel, a CIA-chartered investment firm that was itself founded to facilitate the development of new technologies of potential use to the U.S. intelligence community. In fact, to the extent that one examines the intelligence contracting culture that beget the Team Themis conspiracy, one begins to discover an interlocking directorate of government agencies and private interests that work towards their various common goals in a way that has dealt further damage to transparency, the rule of law, and even simple decency at a time when such things are already in short supply.

This is the environment that I and several of my associates in the Anonymous movement entered into in early February of this year when HBGary CEO Aaron Barr began publicly bragging about having infiltrated our participant base - the incident that has since spawned the wider investigation into persona management. I spoke to Barr a few hours after five Anon operatives had launched our counterattack; throughout the ten-minute conversation, this respected figure of the federal contracting world repeatedly lied to me about his intentions, claiming that he never sought to get Anons arrested and that he had never sought to get in touch with the FBI about his findings when the e-mails taken from the company clearly showed otherwise.

This dishonesty in the face of verifiable facts appears to be a hallmark of the industry. A week or so after other investigators came across HBGary’s bid on the persona management contract, I came across another series of e-mails in which Barr had been in communication with military/intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and specifically the office of vice president William Wansley, who had spoken to Barr via phone and even brought him in for a meeting at their Virginia offices after having discussed Wikileaks, Anonymous, and the methodology by which Barr hoped to disrupt both groups. I called Wansley to ask him about the purpose of this conversation; he told me that Booz had “no business dealings with HBGary, nor have we ever.” Presumably Barr had been brought in for purely social reasons.

In the process of making other calls by which to determine Booz’s interest in Anonymous, I happened to reach a former employee who was willing to speak to me. This person confirmed our initial supposition that Booz was indeed involved in persona management, describing the software as a “good product” but akin to “a gun” insomuch as that it could be used for good but heavily misused in “the wrong hands.” The informant was of the opinion that Booz’s hands were not exactly the right ones. Convinced that persona management was a wider problem than initially suspected, a few of us decided to launch a wider investigation, dubbed Operation Metal Gear, which I announced on Russia Today on March 13th. Initial press coverage of our efforts prompted new informants and offers of research assistance, in turn leading to such discoveries as a 2007 IBM patent proving that persona management efforts had been going on for years. Meanwhile, journalists at The Guardian, Tech Herald, and other outlets began making their own discoveries concerning the fast-increasing list of those institutions known to be involved in the dangerous push towards automated propaganda.

After two months of research on the part of dozens of activists, journalists, and citizen investigators, it’s become obvious that the cottage industry of deploying semi-automatic sock puppets for the purposes of disinformation and espionage has expanded to include a great number of public and private institutions. There is as of yet no way of telling how widespread the practice has become or exactly to what end such things are being used. Uncertainty in this case is concerning enough, but to understand the true extent of the danger, consider the possibilities available to any government or corporation that is capable of putting out its preferred take on reality in such a way as to make it appear to be coming from the public itself. To the extent that this degenerate practice is allowed to continue, the internet will become a means by which to obscure the truth, rather than reveal it.

Anyone who considers the situation hopeless should consider what has already been accomplished over just two months by a mere handful of people who have dedicated themselves to fighting back against those responsible for this assault on transparency. Certainly the majority of people will not bother to join us in this fight, but nor do we need the majority to mount an effective counter-campaign; when information is the means by which a conflict is waged, all that is required to wage it is a dedicated, loosely-knit effort by those who know how to acquire and use that information. Anyone may join us in compiling data on those who develop or utilize persona management, information which we are organizing at a central venue in order to assist journalists and activists in launching their own investigations - and any information they obtained is then added back to that central venue, which thus serves as the centerpiece of what might be termed a “crowd-sourced investigation.” Persona management and related efforts depend on secrecy; our response, then, will depend on scrutiny.

 

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Great, that will work fine. Here's my new op-ed for Guardian on the possibility of the Sony heist having been another instance of disinformation/discrediting by the various federal contractors and U.S. intel agencies that have already been caught engaging in such things: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/06/anonymous-sony

 

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Nasir Yousafzai Khan <nasir.khan@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Word length anything from 900 to 2000,

cheers,

Naz

On May 5, 2011, at 9:09 PM, Hashem Said wrote:

> Oops, sorry, I think I just sent a blank email.
>
> Anyways, it's hard to say with max word length. Naz usually prefers around 1k words, but for something like this, it might be better if it's a bit longer.
>
> Hopefully Naz will read this and let you know.
>
> Cheers,
> Hashem
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 3:03 AM
> To: Hashem Said
> Subject: Re: Anonymous, OpMetalGear, and Gamma International
>
> I can definitely simplify it; I've been having to do so quite a bit when explaining the issue to people quickly. What's the maximum word length I can do?
>
> On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net>> wrote:
> Hi Barrett,
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> That sounds pretty complicated, but I think it's highly compelling. Bin Laden-mania is almost over, so this could be good to break up the monotony. How long do you think it'll take to write something up?
>
> Regards,
> Hashem
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>]
> Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 2:17 AM
> To: Hashem Said
> Cc: Naz Khan
> Subject: Re: Anonymous, OpMetalGear, and Gamma International
>
> Hashem-
>
> I understand about Iran. With regards to doing another piece on Anonymous, I wrote a press release regarding Sony that's been making the rounds and am doing an op-ed for The Guardian on the subject, but I have something more important for al-Jazeera if you're interested. For the last two months we have been conducting a crowd-sourced investigation called Operation Metal Gear which has been covered a bit in the press and which I announced on Russia Today early on. We're working with activists and several investigative journalists to prompt coverage and inquiry into the use of "persona management," something that was brought to attention from the e-mails we acquired from HBGary. It turned out that the US Air Force had been requesting software by which a single person could control ten fake online people complete with backgrounds, likes and dislikes, with the software helping to keep everything straight and not only translating into a particular dialect, but also keeping tabs on conversations and adding that info to its dataset. I made a number of calls to contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, which had been talking to HBGary about these matters and which brought Aaron Barr in for a meeting to discuss them; I got VP William Wansley to lie to me on the phone about it (I recorded it from a single-party consent state so it's legal and I can link to the recording from an article if you like), claiming he "never" met with Barr even though the meeting is discussed at length in the e-mails we have. I finally got in touch with a former employee of Booz Allen who confirmed that they're involved in persona management and that it was a dangerous development. Meanwhile, after I went on Russia Today and Forbes and other publications began reporting that we had launched the investigation, we were approached by Barry Friedman, whose father William Friedman helped to invent cryptology during World War II (there's a wikipedia page about his father with more info) and who has been involved in software, intelligence, and psyops for decades. He put us on the right track, and we did a great deal of research into the subject which we're still compiling and also began to provide leads to several journalists that we respect so that they could uncover more details of which firms are involved in developing such things and where and how they're being used. CENTCOM now admits to using persona management for propaganda purposes in the Middle East but claim it's not used against Americans. Even if that's true, the software is being developed by perhaps a dozen federal contractors who are allowed to turn around and use it in service to their corporate clients, as we saw with Palantir and HBGary and all that, so it's very likely that these automated sockpuppets are already being used against civilians across the world. We compile our information at this wiki, which is in turn used by journalists who wish to conduct additional investigations: http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page. Last night, I did a podcast with Ian Murphy, who's running for Congress in New York and who's also an editor and to whom I'm serving as an advisor, in which we discussed the problem and what's been discovered: http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=5939. The main page of that wiki includes links to some of the articles that have appeared in publications based on our tip-offs.
>
> So, I'd very much like to write a piece explaining the implications of all of this and going into some of what we've told by our informants. We have reason to believe that persona management is being used in conjunction with things like Echelon, Carnivore, and other signals intelligence apparatus to perform surveillance and propaganda feats that are essentially destroying privacy as well as the integrity of online discourse. Meanwhile, we know for a fact that they're being used in the Middle East to achieve U.S. propaganda objectives at the expense of the truth, and we fear that as this capability is developed further, it will basically make it impossible for anyone to know where certain opinions are coming from while also assisting various powerful entities in controlling public opinion. This is essentially the most frightening thing I have come across in more than ten years as a journalist and five as an online activist in a position to see certain dynamics that most people are unaware of, and I'm going to be working for years if necessary to identify those responsible and prompt reasonable governments to find ways to combat this.
>
> On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net><mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net>>> wrote:
> Dear Barrett,
>
> Thanks for getting back in touch with us. I looked at your DailyKos post, and while it's definitely interesting, we obviously can't give people...err...tips on how to combat one's own government. After all, we're a news network, not an NGO.
>
> Now, I can't make any editorial decisions regarding content, but I think posting *anything* not Iran-friendly right now would do us no good, considering one of our journalists who is Iranian, Dorothy Parvaz, is currently being detained in Syria. I don't know if Iran is offering anything other than lipservice, but it's better not to make an enemy out of them at this point until Dorothy is released.
>
> I'm being a bit paranoid in that respect, and Naz is more "in the know" than I am, so if he thinks differently, we can obviously take a look at reworking some stuff into an op ed / feature (I assume you'd probably want to write something fresh rather than rework that post).
>
> Have you caught wind of other things in the works for Anon? What about how Anon briefly took down the Sony PSN? I heard that there might have been some division on whether that was a proper Anon activity or not.
>
> Taking that and going further, what about cyber-vigilantism against non-governmental cybercriminals, like those who hacked the PSN and stole millions of user details? I know Anon has some problems with Sony, but I don't think Anon would condone such behavior.
>
> Anyways, get back to me and let me know your thoughts.
>
> Best Regards,
> Hashem
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Naz Khan [nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com><mailto:nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com>>]
> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 9:48 PM
> To: Barrett Brown
> Cc: Hashem Said
> Subject: Re: Anonymous, OpMetalGear, and Gamma International
>
> Dear Barrett,
>
> I'm very keen on this. Hash is going to take it on from here, looking forward to see how this evolves into an Op-ed!
>
> keep safe,
>
> Naz
>
>
>
> On May 2, 2011, at 6:44 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:
>
> Hi, Naz-
>
> Let me know if you'd like a piece on OpIran, which was re-launched yesterday, or one on the future of Anonymous and the necessity of transmitting what we've learned and developed regarding online activism to the public at large. Here's a post I just did on OpIran, including info on how anyone can easily assist:
>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/02/972425/-Help-Anonymous-help-Iran,-now
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Naz Khan <nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com><mailto:nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com>><mailto:nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com><mailto:nyk284@gmail.com<mailto:nyk284@gmail.com>>>> wrote:
> Sounds interesting. I'll mail you in the morning ! Bed time!
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 27, 2011, at 4:07 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com><mailto:barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>><mailto:barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com><mailto:barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>>>> wrote:
>
> Naz-
>
> Barrett Brown here. Thanks again for running my essay earlier this year on our North Africa operations. Wanted to check in with you regarding a couple of things.
>
> First, would you be interested in an article on Operation Metal Gear, an investigation we're leading into the use of persona management (fake online people) as used in conjunction with advanced surveillance and data collection? We're working with several journalists on this while also conducting a crowd-sourced investigation by which Anonymous and other parties work together in a loose network by which to gather and compile information on the companies and government agencies involved. Here's our website:
>
> <http://opmetalgear.zxq.net/OMG/Home.html>http://opmetalgear.zxq.net/OMG/Home.html
>
> <http://opmetalgear.zxq.net/OMG/Home.html>And here's a good explanation from about a month ago by Steve Ragan, one of the journalists we work with:
>
> <http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201111/6939/Anonymous-Government-contractor-has-weaponized-social-media?page=1>http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201111/6939/Anonymous-Government-contractor-has-weaponized-social-media?page=1
>
> And here's the wiki at which we're compiling information on those involved: <http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page> http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> <http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201111/6939/Anonymous-Government-contractor-has-weaponized-social-media?page=1>Also, I wanted to make sure that al-Jazeera is aware that a U.K. firm called Gamma International, a component of the Gamma Group, has been discovered to have offered IT intrusion software to Mubarak's Interior Ministry which would have presumably been used to break into the e-mail accounts of dissidents. Here's the piece:
>
> <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/25/british-firm-offered-spy-software-to-egypt/?page=2>http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/25/british-firm-offered-spy-software-to-egypt/?page=2
>
> <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/25/british-firm-offered-spy-software-to-egypt/?page=2>Anonymous and my own group Project PM intends to retaliate against this firm in order to send a message that this sort of thing will receive an appropriate response in the future.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302><tel:512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302>><tel:512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302><tel:512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302>>>
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302><tel:512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302>>
>
>
> Notice: This email is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential and privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of our firm shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.
>
>
>
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>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302><tel:512-560-2302<tel:512-560-2302>>
>
> Notice: This email is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential and privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of our firm shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.
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>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302


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