| Subject: Re: Chamberleaks |
| From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 5/20/11, 00:34 |
| To: neal rauhauser <nrauhauser@gmail.com> |
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:
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.
Mobile phones and devices and especially apps for such things are a major component of the program.
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.
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.
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 (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.
There are sporadic references such things as semantic analysis, Latent Semantic Indexing, 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 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 18th 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 3rd, 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.
Wait, nevermind; they say it came from you?On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:28 PM, neal rauhauser <nrauhauser@gmail.com> wrote:
thought it was on Echelon or something.On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 12:26 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Was just produced by my team.On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:25 PM, neal rauhauser <nrauhauser@gmail.com> wrote:
UIsed where?--On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 12:22 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
http://i.imgur.com/TodhW.png
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
mailto:nrauhauser@gmail.com//
GV: 202-642-1717
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
mailto:nrauhauser@gmail.com//
GV: 202-642-1717
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
