Re: psyber ops?
Subject: Re: psyber ops?
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 4/20/12, 11:44
To: Matt Seaton <matt.seaton@guardiannews.com>

Last night’s report by USA Today - the one in which two of the paper’s employees became targets of a widespread and dishonest online disinformation campaign immediately after making inquiring calls to several intelligence contractors with ties to the U.S. military - might be very surprising to those of the nation’s journalists who only pay attention to our intelligence community and its conduct when some of its members are caught with prostitutes. The other dozen or so will not be surprised at all.

In the case that the guilty party is found, and does indeed turn out to be one of the private firms that the Pentagon hired to provide “information operations” for use in Afghanistan, what are the consequences likely to be? To judge from the last known incident in which several government contractors were actually caught planning a far more sophisticated campaign of intimidation against yet another journalist, the consequences will not be so bad as to prevent others from doing the same thing. It’s easy enough, especially for those firms that are encouraged by their government clients to produce new and better ways by which to lie and discredit. There’s even money in it.

Early in 2011, four contracting firms with strong government ties - HBGary Federal, Palantir, Berico, and Endgame Systems - decided to combine their capabilities and set up a high-end private info warfare unit called Team Themis. Bank of America asked them to write a proposal for a covert campaign against Wikileaks. Aside from hacking the group’s European servers, the team raised the possibility of going after Salon contributor Glenn Greenwald, a prominent Wikileaks supporter. “These are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause, such is the mentality of most business professionals,” wrote HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr, who resigned with a severance package a few weeks after the affair was exposed by Anonymous - and soon afterwards got a new job with another government contractor.

What of the others? Berico simply broke ties with HBGary Federal, as if it were merely a bad influence. Endgame Systems, the execs of which explicitly noted that their government clients didn’t want its name appearing in a press release, was barely noted by the press at all - until a few months later, when Business Week discovered that their shyness may stem from the fact that they’ll take out West European airports via cyber attacks if you’ve got a couple million dollars to pay for it. Palantir - which received seed money from the CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, and shares founders with PayPal - made a public apology to the effect that the cyber-plotting did not reflect the company’s values and put one of the employees involved - Matthew Steckman - on leave. A few months later, when the press lost interest, Palantir brought him back on. Nothing at all seems to have happened to another employee, Eli Bingham, who was also heavily involved. When Palantir throws its annual convention, it still attracts keynote speakers like former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff - who happens to be on the board of another huge contractor, BAE Systems, which just happened to have done some degree of mysterious business with HBGary Federal as well.

To be fair, these sorts of companies provide valuable services to the U.S. and its allies. For instance, when CENTCOM needed software that would allow 50 of its information warfare people to pretend to be 500 entirely fake people who don’t exist outside the internet, it had the USAF put out a call for bids. A number of contractors were up for the job - including the ethically challenged HBGary Federal - but only one of them could actually win. Perhaps the others can provide this sort of “persona management” capability to other, private clients with a need to discredit their enemies in a clandestine fashion. I can think of about a dozen journalists they might want to go after. The rest won’t be a problem.  

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Matt Seaton <matt.seaton@guardiannews.com> wrote:
PS  I haven't read the story carefully, but I guess we should exercise appropriate caution about ascribing responsibility for this latest USA Today incident, whatever we may infer from similar past experience

On 20 April 2012 09:12, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Yep, will get back to you with it soon, how many words can it be? More the better.


On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Matt Seaton <matt.seaton@guardiannews.com> wrote:
Hey. Barrett

That's great -- half done already.

Another couple of pars, a few links, and we're good to go. Please peg it to this USA Today story because that's trending.

Usual fee applies (actually it's gone up! $143).

Can you do this morning?

Thanks, Matt


On 20 April 2012 09:07, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
This is going to be a growing problem for journalists and activists who are deemed to be threats to any aspect of the intelligence contracting industry because of two things: it's almost impossible to trace if the perpetrators know what they're doing, which they absolutely do; and even on those rare occasions when intelligence contractors are caught, there are zero consequences.

You probably recall the Team Themis scandal I wrote about early last year, which was only exposed via chance. Glenn Greenwald was to be "pushed" in such a way as to "choose professional preservation over cause," as the planning documents put it, so as to weaken support for Wikileaks. Obviously this would have been done in such a way as to hide the source. 

So what happened when this draft proposal was discovered? Palantir broke off ties to HBGary - even though their own employees were just as complicit - and released a vague apology about how this and other things proposed didn't reflect their values. And then they put one of their employees, Matthew Steckman, on a leave of absence - and afterwards quietly brought him back on. Nothing even so bad as that happened to Eli Bingham, another of their employees who was heavily involved, and who had earlier summed up the industry mentality in an e-mail to his Themis partners with the old rap lyric, "Damn it feels good to be a gangster." 

Did Palantir lose any face among the people that really matter to them? No. A few months back, Michael Chertoff served as the keynote speaker of their annual conference. Another firm that served as Team Themis' "silent partner," Endgame Systems, didn't have to say a word about it. 

So we have a situation in which some unknown number of talented but amoral people are being encouraged to incubate disinformation capabilities and methodology by the U.S. government, and who are clearly willing to use such things at the behest of private buyers, or in such cases as a journalist starts asking around. This is only going to get easier for them as they continue to develop protocols like persona management - which is to say it's going to get a lot harder for anyone to catch them. And it's all going to get worse when PR firms like Qorvis, which is based in D.C. and which represents the government of Bahrain, start making strategic alliances with those firms in order to better serve their state "clients." 

So, yes, I would like to write about this.

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 6:44 AM, Matt Seaton <matt.seaton@guardiannews.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett


Do you know enough about it to mount an op-ed commentary?

be glad to commission that.

Best, Matt


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Regards,

Barrett Brown
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Matt Seaton
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