EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Hired Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Oppone

[Omaha Steve]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/lobbyists-chamberleaks/

ThinkProgress has learned that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams to spearhead this effort. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, hired a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. View a screenshot below:



The security firms hoped to obtain $200,000 for initial background research, then charge up to $2 million for a larger disinformation campaign against progressives.

FULL story at link.

[abelenkpe]

1. I'm shocked!

Well, no not really.

Sad, huh?

[FreakinDJ]

2. $2 million for a larger disinformation campaign against progressives

Yep - the Dumbing Down of Amerika is working out rather well

[Danger Mouse]

3. Scumbags, the lot of them.

[RandomThoughts]

4. That is easy to fix.

Those that poison song and story, only draw wrath upon them.

You thought drink was poison? The poison is the smearing of things that are not bad, like song and drink, and many other things, by those that do not understand the difference between spiritual and material.

Drinking can weaken 3rd defense in some, so some that only have that defense do dumb things when drinking, or lose some of that defense. Song can heighten first spiritual feelings, so those without 2nd and 3rd defense can have issues with song. That's how it works.

That is the spiritual side of that stuff.


Blinded by the Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg8cDmi7-U8

[Kingofalldems]

5. Special Prosecutor needed--subpoena all records

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Hacking? If there is evidence of computer hacking why doesn't the

FBI get involved?

[cliffordu]

7. Maybe it's time to

burn them out like rats.

metaphorically, of course.

[starroute]

8. This is part of the Anonymous / Wikileaks/ Glenn Greenwald story

From the linked story:

"The e-mails ThinkProgress acquired are available widely on the web. They were posted by members of 'Anonymous,' the hactivist community responsible for taking down websites for oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and American corporations that have censored WikiLeaks. . . . It is widely believed that Wikileaks has sensitive information about Bank of America, and plans to expose it later this year. This revelation prompted Bank of America to hire the law/lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which in turn, according to the e-mails posted online by Anonymous, hired HB Gary Federal and other firms to go after Anonymous and supporters of Wikileaks. For instance, one proposal from HB Gary Federal and its associates proposed targeting Salon reporter and Wikileaks-supporter Glenn Greenwald with 'actions to sabotage or discredit' him."

As I noted on an earlier thread, the law firm Hunton and Williams has also done lobbying for Koch Industries, the National Association of Manufacturers, and a number of energy industry and anti-environmental groups. (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/koch-direct-lobbying-expenditu) This could get very interesting.


http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/hb-gary-federal-anonymous-and-wikileaks-8912

A conflict between everyone's favorite hacktivists and an obscure security research company has just gotten interesting. HB Gary Federal is a cyber-security company run by Aaron Barr who has been researching individuals he believes are associated with Anonymous. Specifically he has been trying to link the handles of IRC participants to real people. When he decided to publicize his findings in the Financial Times last Saturday, it touched off a very interesting series of events which are still unfolding.

Some of the best reporting on what came next is provided by The Tech Herald. Using an impressive array of tactics, hackers managed to breach every aspect of the HB Gary Federal infrastructure. All of it. Even the phone system. They also breached the infrastructure of the parent company HB Gary (which holds a minor stake in Federal). The only data released so far has been 50,000+ emails from Barr's account. . . .

This in itself makes a pretty good story, I had intended to link it earlier in the week. But now the next shoe has dropped. Within the 50,000-odd emails released was a presentation crafted for Bank of America regarding how to effectively deal with Wikileaks. The plan is .... interesting. In many ways it reflects similar thinking to the DoD strategy for disrupting Wikileaks published in 2008. The proposal ranges from cyber-attacks against Wikileaks servers to mounting a campaign against Glenn Greenwald.

Over at FDL, Marcy Wheeler has been following the story. With proper scorn for the quality of the plan, and special focus on the Glenn Greenwald-centric parts of the strategy. I imagine a bit of digital ink might be spilled on the implications of BoA exploring the tactics in the first place.

[Omaha Steve]

9. I'll be staying tuned for part 2

Red pill or blue pill?