Urizenus Sklar
irl Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University


Barrett Brown vs. the Private Intelligence Business
Posted: 06/23/2013 5:12 pm

In June of 2011, the journalist Barrett Brown published an article in the Guardian, outlining a sinister cyber-surveillance program -- "a disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users." In view of the recent exposure of the PRISM program by Edward Snowden, one might think Brown would be in the news discussing the strikingly similar new revelations, but he isn't. He is in federal custody, facing charges that add up to 105 years in prison. The question is: Why? In a recent article in The Nation I walked through the details of his case, but some additional contextualization is called for.

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( Here a mention of the discovery of a power point presentation outlining a strategy to undermine the credibility of Glenn Greenwald" to "neutralize his defense of WikiLeaks" and a "conspiracy of government agencies, lobbying and cybersecurity firms to carry out a disinformation campaign" and "plans for data mining and disinformation campaigns targeting social organizations and advocacy groups".)

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For example, how did The Chamber of Commerce and the Bank of America get wrapped up in this? WikiLeaks had been claiming that they had a large data dump of emails from a hack of the Bank of America. The Bank of America was clearly concerned about this and, according to the leaked HBGary emails, it approached the U.S. Department of Justice for assistance. The DoJ in turn directed the Bank of America to the law/lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which does legal work for Wells Fargo and General Dynamics and also lobbies for Koch Industries, Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, Gas Processors Association, Entergy among many other firms. (Significantly, they hired the FBI's senior cybersecurity advisor just last month. We will come back to this). The DoJ not only recommended that the Bank of America hire Hunton and Williams, but explicitly suggested they utilize H&W's Richard Wyatt, who famously was the lead attorney in the Chamber of Commerce's lawsuit against the Yes Men and was also the attorney in Food Lion's lawsuit against ABC News.

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It is worth noting that the contents of the Stratfor hack (which I discuss in my article in The Nation) are even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. This time the emails ranged from blatant admissions of renditions and talk of throwing people out of helicopters to plans to discredit the Yes Men on behalf of Union Carbide. One remarkable exchange revealed that the Coca-Cola company was asking Stratfor for intelligence on dealing with PETA, and the Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence remarked in a leaked email that "The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I'll see what I can uncover." Suggesting, of course, that not only did Stratfor have access to the classified material, but that it would be provided to Coca-Cola. The FBI had been turned into a private dick for corporate America.

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But even this tells only half the story. One might have thought that private intelligence agencies were simply doing outsourced intelligence work for the U.S. Government. But unfortunately it seems that the tail has begun to wag the dog -- it appears that in many respects the U.S. Government and in particular the Department of Justice is now working for private intelligence firms. This is evident when, for example, Stratfor asks for FBI classified files on PETA or the Department of Justice is used to try and punish journalists for probing into these private intelligence companies.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/urizenus-sklar/barrett-brown-vs-the-priv_b_3487161.html