Hacker Data Release Reveals Feds Domestic Spy Program Has Grown Far Beyond Our Wildest Nightmares

  Posted by Alexander Higgins - June 24, 2011 at 7:17 pm - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog

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Government data leaked by hackers reveal US government domestic spy program has grown far beyond our wildest nightmare, with Government operatives spying on our every move, in every imaginable aspect of our lives, both online and offline.

Information leaked from government hacked websites reveal that the US domestic spy program has infiltrated every facet of our society both online and offline. The information revealed in the data leaks reveal that companies that we use on a daily basis and have come to rely on in our modern society, companies that we would never suspect, are in spying on us for the FBI. In fact a wide range of companies have been revealed to be spying on us from our healthcare providers, medical insurance companies and hardware stores to companies that provide payroll services, accounting services, financial services, credit card companies, banks, data centers, human resource companies and web hosting companies and every kind of company in between.

In fact the FBI has domestic spies in 350 Fortune 500 companies and even operates in real estate companies, job search websites, employment staffing services, public schools and colleges, music sharing websites and even sites that report on the location of underground parties and raves.

Less shocking is that the Spy Program has been designed in a way to allow the Feds operate outside the laws of the US Constitution, entirely side stepping the 4th amendment which protects individuals against illegal search and seizure by requiring the government to obtain a warrant.

In This Article:

• Background information on the hacks
• Guardian: HBGary emails reveal massive disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users
• HBGary Emails Only Tip Of The Iceberg. AntiSec Hacks Leaking Membership Information Of FBI InfraGard Spy Program In Atlanta Reveals Much Larger Spy Operation
• What is The FBI InfraGard Spy Program?
• ACLU warns the FBI InfraGard Domestic Spy Program Has Turned The US Into A Nazi Style Police State
• List of Companies Participating in the FBI Domestic Spy Program In The Atlanta Georgia Area Alone Reveal Domestic Spy Program Has Grown Beyond Our Wildest Nightmares

Background information on the hacks

The Hacker Group Anonymous and LulzSec have recently declared war against the establishmentafter releasing a series of videos calling for peaceful revolution in America.

The flamboyant antics have caused a wide rebuke members of the anti-establishment movement whoaccuse the groups of engaging in behavior that will accomplish nothing more than garner support for draconian cyber security, online spying and internet censorship laws. Indeed, the FBI has responded to the attacks by raiding a data center and seized servers running several popular blogs and social bookmarking sites.

However while members of the online community rebuke the group for giving the Government cause to enact these laws, the data being released by the group from their hacks reveal that the Government spy program has already grown orders of magnitudes beyond what our politicians are publicly trying to legalize.

Guardian: HBGary Emails reveal massive disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users

For starters, the Guardian news paper just wrote a piece about an investigation into emails released by Anonymous revealing a massive online spy program between the Government and with a wide array of corporations from Google and Apple to a wide array of technology companies.

A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed

Hacked emails from security contractor HBGary reveal a disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users

Last February, three of these firms – HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico, known collectively as Team Themis – were discovered to have conspired to hire out their information war capabilities to corporations which hoped to strike back at perceived enemies, including US activist groups, WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald. That such a dangerous new dynamic was now in play was only revealed due to a raid by hackers associated with theAnonymous collective, resulting in the dissemination of more than 70,000 emails to and from executives at HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary.

After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of aclassified US intelligence programme known as Romas/COIN, as well as its upcoming replacement, known as Odyssey. The programme appears to allow for the large-scale monitoring of social networks by way of such things as natural language processing, semantic analysis, latent semantic indexing and IT intrusion. At the same time, it also entails the dissemination of some unknown degree of information to a given population through a variety of means – without any hint that the actual source is US intelligence. Scattered discussions of Arab translation services may indicate that the programme targets the Middle East.

Despite the details I have provided in the document – which is also now in the possession of several major news outlets and which may be published in whole or in part by any party that cares to do so – there remains a great deal that is unclear about Romas/COIN and the capabilities it comprises. The information with which I’ve worked consists almost entirely of email correspondence between executives of several firms that together sought to win the contract to provide the programme’s technical requirements, and because many of the discussions occurred in meetings and phone conversations, the information remaining deals largely with prospective partners, the utility of one capability over another, and other clues spread out over hundreds of email exchanges between a large number of participants.

The significance of this programme to the public is not limited to its potential for abuse by facets of the US intelligence community, which has long been proverbial for misusing other of its capabilities. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect is the fact that the partnership of contracting firms and other corporate entities that worked to obtain the contract was put into motion in large part by Aaron Barr, the disgraced former CEO of HBGary Federal who was at the centre of Team Themis’s conspiracy to put high-end intelligence capabilities at the disposal of private institutions. As I explain further in the linked report, this fact alone should prompt increased investigation into the manner in which this industry operates and the threats it represents to democratic institutions.

The Guardian report points to a wiki set up detailing the contents of 60,000 leaked emails and the security implication involved.

Romas/COIN

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 afull-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, 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