Any word?

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

There's nothing I can think to add regarding the intrusion at Northrop, as little info is available and they won't even verify that they've been hacked; it's just something that will help get Northrop and the industry in general more attention, good timing for the piece.

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 2:08 AM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Hi Barrett,

 

Sorry you haven't heard from us in awhile.

 

I think this article is good to go, but clearing it with Naz first.

 

In the meantime, would you like to update the article to keep it up to date on current events, such as the cyber attack you just mentioned?

 

Cheers,

Hashem

 

---

From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com]

Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 10:43 PM

To: Hashem Said
Subject: Re: Barret: a couple of re-writes

Northrop Grumman, the company that I reveal in the article as having run Romas/COIN for the last several years, was just hit by a cyber attack. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/31/northrop-grumman-hit-cyber-attack-source-says/

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Any idea when this will go up, or if other changes will be needed?

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Okay, here's a new version with a couple more paragraphs of opinion towards the top. Along with the five paragraphs of opinion at the close, this should be sufficient to make it "opiniony" enough while still including the necessary information/background. Make sure they keep in mind that in addition to being an op-ed, this is also a revelation of a complex program that requires a great deal of explaining, evidence, etc, so obviously a large portion of the middle is necessarily made up of facts.

Introduction: This is the first in a three-part series on the U.S. “intelligence contracting industry,” a collection of corporate entities that the American military and intelligence community have increasingly come to depend on for the development of mass surveillance and propaganda capabilities more sophisticated than those possessed by any dictator in history – and which are developed and utilized within a culture marked in large part by contempt for transparency, informed consent, and the rule of law. In light of revelations that several such firms were prepared to provide advanced information war capabilities to other powerful institutions, and taking into account the dangerous potential of the capabilities themselves, a number of journalists, information activists, and citizen researchers – some hailing from the Anonymous movement, others from outside of it – have spent the last few months conducting what I term to be a crowd-sourced investigation into this industry and the issues surrounding it; as will be argued in the third part, nothing less will suffice.

Part one introduces a number of industry figures as well as aspects of a major classified intelligence program, the contract for which has been held and/or pursued by many in the business.

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 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. And with expanded intelligence capabilities by which to monitor Arab populations in ways that would have previously been impossible, those same intelligence agencies now have improved means by which to provide information on dissidents to those regional dictators viewed by the U.S. as strategic allies.

The nature and extent of the operation, which was known as Romas/COIN and which is scheduled for replacement sometime this year by a similar program known as Odyssey, may be determined in part by a close reading of hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen in February from the contracting firm HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary. Other details may be gleaned by an examination of the various other firms and individuals that are discussed as being potential partners.

Of course, there are many in the U.S. that would prefer that such details not be revealed at all; such people tend to cite the amorphous and much-abused concept of “national security” as sufficient reason for the citizenry to stand idly by as an ever-expanding coalition of government agencies and semi-private corporations gain greater influence over U.S. foreign policy. That the last decade of foreign policy as practiced by such individuals has been an absolute disaster even by the admission of many of those who put it into place will not phase those who nonetheless believe that the citizenry should be prevented from knowing what is being done in its name and with its tax dollars.

To the extent that the actions of a government are divorced from the informed consent of those who pay for such actions, such a government is illegitimate. To the extent that power is concentrated in the hands of small groups of men who wield such power behind the scenes and without being accountable to the citizenry, there is no assurance that such power will be used in a manner that is compatible with the actual interests of that citizenry, or populations elsewhere. The known history of the U.S. intelligence community is comprised in large part of murder, assassinations, disinformation, the topping of democratic governments, the abuse of the rights of U.S. citizens, and a great number of other things that cannot even be defended on “national security” grounds insomuch as that many such actions have quite correctly turned entire populations against the U.S. government. This is not only my opinion, but also the opinion of countless individuals who once served in the intelligence community and have since come to criticize it and even unveil many of its secrets in an effort to alert the citizenry to what has been unleashed against the world in the name of “security.”

Likewise, I will here provide as much information as I can on Romas/COIN and its upcoming replacement.

***

Although the relatively well-known military contractor Northrop Grumman had long held the contract for Romas/COIN, such contracts are subject to regular recompetes by which other companies, or several working in tandem, 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, a company which until recently had been owned by Northrop and which was now looking to compete with it for lucrative contracts:

"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 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 being 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 his own e-mail account, 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:

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

1. 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.”

2. 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.”

3. 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.”

4. 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.”

5. 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.”

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

Whatever the exact nature and scope of COIN, the firms that had been assembled for the purpose by Barr and TASC never got a chance to bid on the program's recompete. In late September, Lovegrove noted to Barr and others that he'd spoken to the “CO [contracting officer] 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 a TASC executive asks, “Does Odyssey combine the Technology and Content pieces of the work?”

The unexpected change-up didn't seem to phase the corporate partnership, which was still a top contender to compete for the upcoming Odyssey procurement. Later e-mails indicate a meeting between key members of the group and the contracting officer for Odyssey at a location noted as “HQ,” apparently for a briefing on requirements for the new program, on February 3^rd of 2011. But two days after that 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.

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; 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.

The situation is rendered more dangerous still by another capability, one which is already in use and which will invariably come to be used further: the populating of the internet with fake, software-assisted personalities for the purposes of propaganda and espionage.

Part Two will examine the subject of persona management.

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, I can do that today. I really don't have a problem with making alterations to my articles, so there's no need to be so apologetic; I just wasn't comfortable with what Chris was asking me to do.

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net> wrote:

Hey Barrett,

Oh god are you going to hate me now. But I swear it's not my fault.

The powers that be feel that your article is a little too "features" oriented and not enough "op/ed" oriented.

Aside from the change(s) you already made earlier, do you think you could inject more of your opinion into the article? I can't imagine it would be very hard, since I'm sure you have strong feelings about what's happening. It'll just be a relatively simple process of inserting some editorializing touch-ups.

Once again, I apologize for all the hassle and I know it must be frustrating for a journalist of your caliber, but I think we really ought to make sure we get this right since the revelations are pretty damning.

Best Regards,
Hashem

________________________________________
From: barri2009 [barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 6:38 AM
To: Hashem Said

Subject: Re: Barret: a couple of re-writes

Nevermind about the other tweaks, then -  just replace the first several paragraphs as I changed them around to accomodate altered first paragraph. Everything above the first e-mail ("I met with Mantech") is switched up; should just be three paragraphs now above that. Let me know if that makes sense.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net>
Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 05:49:03
To: Barrett Brown<barriticus@gmail.com>
Cc: Christopher Arsenault<Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net>; NasirYousafzai Khan<nasir.khan@aljazeera.net>
Subject: RE: Barret: a couple of re-writes

Thanks Barrett, I really appreciate it, and we don't mean to be pests about it.

In the end, a stronger beginning means more readers which means more exposure, so it's in everyone's best interest.

I saw the initial paragraph changes, but I hope it's no problem if I can irritate you one last time. Would it be possible for you to quickly highlight the new tweaks elsewhere you made in *bold*? The article is already formatted and everything, so it'll just make our job a ton easier if we could see exactly what you changed so we can quickly find the relevant passages and alter them.

If it's too much of a hassle, don't worry about it - either way, we'll get it up and running either Saturday or Sunday with the appropriate changes.

Cheers,
Hashem

________________________________________
From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 5:47 AM
To: Hashem Said
Cc: Christopher Arsenault; Nasir Yousafzai Khan
Subject: Re: Barret: a couple of re-writes

Okay, I've changed the start and added a few sentences to provide an earlier explanation as to why this should be frightening. I've also made a few last tweaks elsewhere. Let me know if this works.


Introduction: This is the first in a three-part series on the U.S. “intelligence contracting industry,” a collection of corporate entities that the American military and intelligence community have increasingly come to depend on for the development of mass surveillance and propaganda capabilities more sophisticated than those possessed by any dictator in history – and which are developed and utilized within a culture marked in large part by contempt for transparency, informed consent, and the rule of law. In light of revelations that several such firms were prepared to provide advanced information war capabilities to other powerful institutions, and taking into account the dangerous potential of the capabilities themselves, a number of journalists, information activists, and citizen researchers – some hailing from the Anonymous movement, others from outside of it – have spent the last few months conducting what I term to be a crowd-sourced investigation into this industry and the issues surrounding it; as will be argued in the third part, nothing less will suffice.


Part one introduces a number of industry figures as well as aspects of a major classified intelligence program, the contract for which has been held and/or pursued by many in the business.



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 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. And with expanded intelligence capabilities by which to monitor Arab populations in ways that would have previously been impossible, those same intelligence agencies now have improved means by which to provide information on dissidents to those regional dictators viewed by the U.S. as strategic allies.


The nature and extent of the operation, which was known as Romas/COIN and which is scheduled for replacement sometime this year by a similar program known as Odyssey, may be determined in part by a close reading of hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen in February from the contracting firm HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary. Other details may be gleaned by an examination of the various other firms and individuals that are discussed as being potential partners.


Although the relatively well-known military contractor Northrop Grumman had long held the contract for Romas/COIN, such contracts are subject to regular recompetes by which other companies, or several working in tandem, 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 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 being 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 his own e-mail account, 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.  Mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the program.

 2.  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.”

 3.  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.”

 4.  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.”

 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,” “specialized linguistics,” 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 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.


Whatever the exact nature and scope of COIN, the firms that had been assembled for the purpose by Barr and TASC never got a chance to bid on the program's recompete. In late September, Lovegrove noted to Barr and others that he'd spoken to the “CO [contracting officer] 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 a TASC executive asks, “Does Odyssey combine the Technology and Content pieces of the work?”


The unexpected change-up didn't seem to phase the corporate partnership, which was still a top contender to compete for the upcoming Odyssey procurement. Later e-mails indicate a meeting between key members of the group and the contracting officer for Odyssey at a location noted as “HQ,” apparently for a briefing on requirements for the new program, on February 3rd of 2011. But two days after that 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.


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; 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.


The situation is rendered more dangerous still by another capability, one which is already in use and which will invariably come to be used further: the populating of the internet with fake, software-assisted personalities for the purposes of propaganda and espionage.



Part Two will examine the subject of persona management.


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>> wrote:
Sure, I can do that. I'll have it in to you soon.


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net>> wrote:
Hey Barrett,

Thanks for your quick response.

No one is in the office right now, so the article will probably run either tomorrow or on Sunday.

I do have one query though.

Now I know this request might come as a sort of a bother, considering we just went over it, but would it be possible for you to write up a quick paragraph (or a sentence or two, actually) in the introductory paragraph (not the introduction, but the first paragraph of the actual article) about how abhorrent what you are about to describe is, and how what you will describe relates to the reader? Remember, we need to assume our audience is daft and doesn't know what you are talking about.

Indeed, you DO cover why it is bad, but I'm afraid our readers will have to be a few paragraphs in before they realize its scope -- if they don't read far enough and aren't intelligent enough to grasp just how problematic it is, they might stop before they get to the....well...juicy parts that really underscore how bad this is really getting.

If you feel the article is still good as is, we will still run it, since obviously what you wrote is powerful and revealing of how depraved things have gotten. But I think the above mentioned appendings will help draw readers in. If you don't want to include it in the actual article, do you think it would be all right to include a few extra lines in the "introduction"?

Regardless, if you still disagree, we would still like to continue with publishing the article as is, along with the rest of the series.

Once again, I don't mean to cause offense, but I do think it will help to strengthen the *opening* to your article. Please let me know if this is cool or not.

Best Regards,
Hashem

________________________________________
From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>]
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 3:29 AM
To: Hashem Said
Cc: Christopher Arsenault; Nasir Yousafzai Khan
Subject: Re: Barret: a couple of re-writes

Great, I'm glad we could come to an agreement, and thanks for your understanding. Go ahead and run it when you're ready and I'll get you an updated version of the persona management article in a few days.

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:05 PM, Hashem Said <saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net><mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net<mailto:saidh@aljazeera.net>>> wrote:
Dear Barrett,

Please don't take offense to the email.

If you feel passionately that this piece is good as is, we will run it as it stands without alteration (aside from minor edits, such as conforming it to our style guide - like turning the English into UK grammar, and such).

Please let us know if you would still like to proceed, and we will publish this as is. It's already been templated, edited and ready to go, so as soon as we hear the word, it will go up.

Cheers and best regards,
Hashem

________________________________________
From: Barrett Brown [barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com><mailto:barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>>]
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2011 10:01 PM
To: Christopher Arsenault
Cc: Nasir Yousafzai Khan; Hashem Said
Subject: Re: Barret: a couple of re-writes

I'm sorry, but what you're proposing is not at all appropriate. For one thing, it's not really about data mining; it's about a classified military apparatus that makes use of data mining in addition to a large number of other capabilities. And victims of data mining don't know they've been data mined; data mining is done secretly and on a massive scale. It's not something like identify theft. Why this is a problem is made quite clear throughout the piece.

As for "humanizing" and making the piece more "punchy," that's not something I do, as I think it's bad for journalism. The "pull" in this case comes from the fact that I am revealing a massive, advanced surveillance apparatus which the U.S. is using to monitor a great portion of the Arab world, and that I am explaining this as someone who has been leading a crowd-sourced investigation into the intelligence contracting industry for several months, which is why a number of journalists and others are already reporting that I'm about to reveal something big. Quotes from other privacy advocates would add nothing of substance to the piece; obviously they'd be opposed to it for the same reasons I've already noted. That's a major reason why I don't interview for articles.

I understand that you have an opinion about how an article like this should be written but I do as well, and since this is the most important piece I've ever done in terms of what it reveals, I need it to be done in accordance with my own views on journalism and in my own style. As such, I'm going to have to publish this piece elsewhere.

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Christopher Arsenault <Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net><mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net>><mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net><mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:Christopher.Arsenault@aljazeera.net>>>> wrote:
Hi Barrett,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Chris Arsenault and I am an editor with Al jazeera's english language website. I just read your first piece on data mining. While I really like the investigative angle and the research, I think the piece lacks pull and will need some additions and re-writes.

To over-simplify, I am left thinking: Who cares about all these e-mails and junk after I read it. You need to humanise the issue a little bit. And explain clearly to someone who isn't familiar with the issue why they should care about this. As it stands, the piece reads too much like a technical document.

I am hoping you can talk to some privacy advocates (start with the ACLU and go from there) aout why this is scarey, and then have them comment on particular aspects of the case. Ideally, I would like you to talk to someone who is a victim of data mining. Please do at least 4 solid interviews.

At one point you list a bunch of companies and then a bunch of services provided. Some of this information could be interesting, but you need to walk the reader through why it is important.

Take a look at some of the stuff the Guardian and other papers have done with Wikileaks.

We are really excited about the investigation and look forward to running it. However, let's really make it punchy.

thanks
let me know when you can send a new version.

chris

Chris Arsenault  Journalist  |  Web & New Media
Al Jazeera English Channel |  PO Box 23127  |  Doha  |  Qatar
M: +974 331-23107<tel:%2B974%20331-23107><tel:%2B974%20331-23107<tel:20331-23107>><tel:%2B974%C2%A0331-23107> Email address: christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net><mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net>><mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net><mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net<mailto:christopher.arsenault@aljazeera.net>>>
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