On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 5:25 PM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
> I wrote this piece for al-Jazeera and it was set to go up on the site
> yesterday but then some other editor jumped in and asked me to rewrite it,
> "humanize" it, make it more "punchy," and do "at least four solid
> interviews," so I cancelled the three-part series I was supposed to do. I
> want to try to find a home for it, otherwise I'll just publish it myself on
> Daily Kos or some shit. Any ideas? Basically, I'm revealing the nature of a
> massive and unprecedented espionage program that targets the Arab world, and
> which I'm presenting after having pieced together details from a couple
> hundred leaked e-mails. I want to get this out soon without some other
> incompetent fucking editor trying to "humanize" the fucking thing. Let me
> know if know of anyone who might take it.
>
> ***
>
> For at least two years, the U.S. military has been conducting a
> sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and “data mining” across the
> Arab world. And were it not for a scandal that led to his downfall, 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 he and two
> other contractors sought to engage in unethical and potentially illegal
> attacks on a series of domestic targets on behalf of institutions like Bank
> of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
>
> The nature and extent of the intelligence project, which was known as
> Romas/COIN and which is scheduled for replacement 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 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.
>
> 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, Aaron Barr - CEO of the
> increasingly-respected intelligence contracting firm HBGary Federal – 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:
>
> Mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the
> program.
>
> 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.”
>
> 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.”
>
> 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.”
>
> 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,” “specialized linguistics,” 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 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 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 in the past and
> that they have 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 for a variety of reasons. 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.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
>
512-560-2302
>