- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Leaks: The Publishing Game... Bias Motivation Corruption Ops Agents and Balls, DDoSecrets
by grarpamp 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/18/hacking-canadian-trucker-convoy-us-canad… Was the hacking of Ottawa trucker convoy donors a US-Canadian intelligence operation? [51][IMG][52]Kit Klarenberg.February 18, 2022 Aubrey Cottle, the hacker claiming credit for stealing convoy donor info, has boasted of work with the FBI and Canadian law enforcement. The data was published by DDoSecrets, an anti-Wikileaks non-profit whose founder has disclosed "work in national security/counter-intelligence." [53]On February 13th, the names and personal details of almost 100,000 individuals who donated sums to support the Canadian truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates through the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo [54]appeared online via Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), an online archive seeking to easily connect journalists and researchers with leaked information. The mainstream media used the trove to frame the convoy as [55]essentially foreign-funded, and [56]harass small donors from average backgrounds. Numerous fascinating nuggets, such as the gifting of $215,000 by a donor whose identity, email, IP address and ZIP code was not recorded by the website, unlike every other giver, were in the process ignored. The hack-and-leak represented just the latest broadside against the convoy activists. Hours later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau activated the Emergencies Act for the very first time in Canadian history, an unprecedented move effectively suspending the civil rights of the protesters and granting federal law enforcement the power to seize their bank accounts without a court order. An [57]alleged founder of hacktivist collective Anonymous, Canadian Aubrey Cottle, took credit for the hack of the convoy donors’ information in the form of an [58]online “manifesto” and accompanying video overlaying a clip from the Disney musical Frozen. Echoing Liberal Canadian politicians, Cottle accused the convoy of holding Ottawa “hostage for weeks while terrorizing the peaceful citizens who live there.” The hacker went on to baselessly allege the donations were being used “to fund an insurrection,” and that individuals who had contributed had also bankrolled the January 6th, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. Next, Cottle warned without evidence that the global “convoy movement” could be “a cover for a type of Trojan Horse attack where extremists and militia groups arrive in large numbers with weapons,” as “large convoys of trucks moving in capital cities will look normal given the theme of these world wide protests.” Absolutely nothing I say could EVER prepare you for this video of Aubrey Cottle, dude who hacked [59]#GiveSendGo, writhing, preening, full-throated screaming into the camera “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO ME HUHHHH??!?”[60]pic.twitter.com/852h2RB6UB -- Mandy Stadtmiller (@mandystadt) [61]February 18, 2022 It was a characteristically volatile outburst from the eccentric hacker, who has been praised in mainstream media for taking on the far-right despite his [62]history of overtly anti-Semitic commentary. Operating in broad daylight for many years, the prolific cyber-warrior has somehow been able to function freely without any legal repercussions. Cottle’s impunity may stem in part from his apparently intimate relationship with a variety of intelligence services. In 2007, [63]Cottle was reportedly visited at home by a representative of Canada’s Security Intelligence Service, the nation’s equivalent to the CIA, which wished to exploit his hacking nous to battle “al-Qaeda and terrorist groups.” He allegedly declined the offer after some consideration. Nonetheless, [64]Cottle claims to have “often...dealt with feds" such as the FBI and Royal Canadian Mountain Police. His activities include running “child porn [65]honeypot operations” involving multiple sites that “still give [him] nightmares.” "I've done work for the fbi before and i give zero fucks," Cottle wrote on Twitter on January 20, 2017. As the right-wing outlet American Greatness [66]noted, Cottle has boasted that he has been “lucky” enough to be granted “the blessing of alphabet agencies” - slang for intelligence services - to “weaponize Anonymous” for “antiterrorism” purposes. Further indications of Cottle's ties to law enforcement arrived in July 2021 when journalist Barrett Brown [67]released documents revealing how the hacker had collaborated with [68]notorious neo-Nazi cyber-activist “weev” to conduct major hacks that could be blamed on Antifa. Brown suggests this “just happened” via GiveSendGo. We released documents in July showing FBI assets led by Nazi leader Weev and fronted by racist police asset Aubrey "Kirtaner" Cottle were planning to conduct major [69]#Anonymous hacks that would be blamed on [70]#Antifa. It just happened via [71]#GiveSendGo. [72]https://t.co/VnSb7NK5TY -- Barrett Brown (@BarrettB) [73]February 17, 2022 Cottle has recently taken to Twitter to praise the Canadian government for activating the Emergencies Act. The hacker declared that “THEY F***ED AROUND AND FOUND OUT.” Though his Twitter account has since been locked, he has continued to brag about his GiveSendGo hack in a [74]series of bizarre [75]videos. In another possible hint of national security state involvement, a non-profit self-styled whistleblower site called Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, has taken possession of the information supposedly obtained by Cottle, and begun distributing it to mainstream media outlets. Besides targeting right-wing websites, DDoSecrets has previously been implicated in hacking operations against the Russian government. Its founder, Emma Best, has disclosed a record of "work in national security/counter-intelligence" in court documents. Further, Best is a vitriolic antagonist of Julian Assange and has gone to extreme lengths to paint him as an asset of the Kremlin. Emma Best of DDoSecrets DDoSecrets’ founder smears Assange, implicates Wikileaks Before its role in publicizing the GiveSendGo donors list, DDoSecrets published lists of GiveSendGo donors to causes [76]such as the [77]heavily-FBI penetrated Proud Boys, [78]Kyle Rittenhouse, and an effort to fight [79]“voter fraud” in the 2020 US Presidential election. Clearly aligned with liberal and Democratic Party objectives, DDoSecrets has also been a key hosting ground for terabytes of hacked data on private and public communications between members of militias, neo-Nazi and far-right groups hacked from social networks [80]Gab and Parler, which Cottle claims to have obtained themself. Data scraped from Parler, including video from the January 6th riot, [81]was subsequently used in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in February 20201. DDoSecrets is a largely opaque outfit. [82]Operated by an almost entirely anonymous or pseudonymous team living across the globe, its founder, Emma Best, is the group’s most prominent public-facing member. A former WikiLeaks collaborator and [83]prolific Freedom of Information requester, Best’s dissident bona fides seem on the surface to be beyond doubt. In 2016, after hammering the FBI with seemingly endless FOI demands, the Bureau [84]appears to have considered prosecuting Best for “vexsome” activities. Five years later, it [85]outright banned Best from filing such requests at all, but the decision was later overturned. Best also played a pivotal role in [86]compelling the CIA to publish its 13 million-strong declassified document archive online in 2017. Likewise, DDoSecrets’ June 2020 release of 269 gigabytes of sensitive US law enforcement fusion center data - dubbed “BlueLeaks” - exposed all manner of abuses, corruption, criminality and excesses on the part of American police forces, leading to [87]official investigations, and the [88]seizure of servers hosting the information in Germany by local authorities. So why have mainstream media enthusiastically embraced DDoSecrets while advancing the Western security state’s crusade against WikiLeaks? The latter organization has faced condemnation, censure, and designation by the CIA as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency,” leading to the Agency hatching plots to kidnap or even kill its founder, Julian Assange, while subjecting his collaborators to intensive surveillance and harassment. By contrast, [89]in 2019, the same year Julian Assange was arrested in London’s Ecuadorian embassy and hauled off to Belmarsh Prison to face extradition to the US, the federally funded Congressional Research Service recognized Best’s organization as a legitimate “transparency collective” – and not long after the IRS [90]granted it 501(c)(3) non-profit status. The [91]repeated hailing by mainstream and US government sources of DDoSecrets as a WikiLeaks successor – or even its replacement – is all the more perverse given that Best has [92]repeatedly published private Twitter communications between the Wikileaks collaborators. The contents of these private discussions were [93]dished out to corporate news outlets like Buzzfeed, which presented them as proof Assange was deliberately seeking to secure the election of Donald Trump, and knowingly collaborating with Russian intelligence to do so. You now have evidence? Emma Best's role in 2016 was to obtain evidence for BuzzFeed that would tie Guccifer2 to WikiLeaks. Emma shopping leaks that we're already in WikiLeaks possession is the proverbial dish "best served" cold. Thanks for playing. Game over. [94]https://t.co/MHiZEbLtSf -- Pirate Party Weekly<U+1F3F4><U+200D>☠️ (@PiratePartyINT) [95]April 6, 2018 [96]Numerous interviews conducted by Best over the years [97]amplified the fraudulent narratives used to frame Assange as a Russian asset. In the eyes of many, they have played a role in justifying or minimizing his [98]life-threatening incarceration in Britain’s Gitmo on trumped up, bogus charges. A handful of independent journalists have been harshly critical of Best as a result, wondering how the public interest was served by publishing private communications that implicated Wikileaks in a security state intrigue. The DDoSecrets founder has [99]consistently attempted to parry criticism by claiming their actions were not an attempt to attack or undermine Assange, [100]and were “curated for relevance.” However, Best overwhelmingly curated [101]comments and interactions painting Assange and WikiLeaks in the worst possible light, which inevitably proved extremely alluring to a hostile media. Any exculpatory content included in the leaks was summarily and unsurprisingly ignored. What’s more, the DDoSecrets founder’s own surging contempt for Assange is unambiguous. Over the years, Best has [102]branded Assange as among things a “cowardly, transphobic, antisemitic trash person made of tepid mayo and a bleached wig.” What do such statements tells us about the motivation for publishing ? [103]https://t.co/wL0gglC6w7 [104]pic.twitter.com/DHoV7jo3kq -- Emmy B (@greekemmy) [105]July 14, 2020 Court documents detail Best's pursuit of "counter-intelligence work" The Grayzone has obtained [106]court documents from November 2013 related to Best's application to change their name from Daniel Mac Curdy Burnet to Mike Best. The files indicate Best was "currently actively pursuing a course of study in national security and counter-intelligence work," and intended to be employed full-time in the field of national security/counter-intelligence." Court documents filed in November 2013 by Emma Best (formerly Daniel Mac Curdy Barnet) requesting a name change One of the reasons Best requested a name change was as follows: "[concerns] about possible harassment from extremist activists against his family and relatives as a result of his work in national security/counter-intelligence if a connection can be easily found through Google between his family birth name and his professional name." This dubious background is referenced in a glowing May 2020 [107]Der Spiegel article covering Best's work in exposing the offshore financial arrangements of wealthy Germans. The report noted that "a few years ago," Best had worked for subcontractors "hired by US counterintelligence," but had left allegedly "after running into bureaucratic obstruction and disregard for source safety from an international organization." Without providing further detail, Best claimed to have not kept in touch with "old colleagues." Nonetheless, in 2019, [108]the digital activist embarked on a research project with an [109]ex-NSA hacker to unearth US government documents related to historical cyberattacks. On Twitter, Best [110]batted away a request for comment by this reporter about the court documents detailing their "work in national security/counter-intelligence," stating, "I don't plan on answering all your inane questions." Whatever such activities entailed, Best's DDoSecrets's work has often advanced the critical priorities of US intelligence. CIA hack-and-dump ops against Iran and Russia raise further suspicions [111]In November 2021, Yahoo! News reported that the administration of US President Donald Trump authorized the CIA to “run wild” with covert actions in a bid to destabilize Iran. In 2018, Trump sanctioned the Agency to conduct “much more aggressive” offensive cyber activities, leading to the CIA launching “covert hack-and-dump operations” against Iran and Russia and “cyberattacks on Iranian infrastructure” with “less White House oversight” than before. Given that DDoSecrets was launched in December that same year, the timing of the effort was striking. The first major coup of DDosSecrets arrived weeks later when it [112]published 175 gigabytes of “messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine.” The collection was dubbed “The Dark Side of the Kremlin,” and avowedly sourced from a “hacking spree” conducted against Russian targets. Transparency activists release massive trove of hacked, leaked Russian documents [113]https://t.co/pyYTBtsW7W [114]pic.twitter.com/hd550XKTXX -- The Hill (@thehill) [115]January 26, 2019 Best claimed to The New York Times that the tranche was not published “explicitly as payback” for Russia’s alleged release of the DNC emails in 2016, while remarking that “it does add some appreciable irony.” She also used the opportunity to take aim once again Assange and WikiLeaks, stating she was “disappointed” at their “dishonest and egotistic behavior.” Best insisted that her organization had also posted material favorable to Assange “leaked from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.” This refers to internal files from National Intelligence Secretariat (SENAIN), a now-defunct Ecuadorian intelligence agency charged with protecting the WikiLeaks chief and extracting him to safety. The Guardian [116]reported on these documents in 2018 and went to great pains to present SENAIN as villains in the process. Oddly, those files have [117]since been removed from the DDoSecrets archive. In November of that year, The Intercept and New York Times published a [118]number of articles titled “The Iran Cables” based on an “unprecedented leak” of 700 pages of reports supposedly compiled by Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The series sought to expose the scale of Iranian “influence” in Iraq, in the process revealing “the surprising ways in which Iranian and US interests often aligned” in the years following the illegal war. News about Trump’s loosening restrictions on CIA cyberwarfare to authorize hack-and-dump ops makes me wonder if Langley was behind the ICIJ’s [119]#ChinaCables and the Intercept’s Iran Leaks, among other leaks targeting designated enemies [120]https://t.co/YMl3XbPMgM [121]pic.twitter.com/MdDskVoRHB -- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) [122]July 16, 2020 The release of the leaked files may have played a role in escalating conflict between the US and Iran. A New York Times story based on the material [123]focused heavily on the alleged role of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani as the shadowy puppet master of the Iraqi government, claiming he “more than anyone else” had employed “the dark arts of espionage and covert military action to ensure that Shiite power remains ascendant.” Two months later, Soleimani was incinerated in an illegal US drone strike launched as he left Baghdad International Airport for a peace conference. [124]An Intercept article purporting to tell the true “story behind” the cables’ release wove a dramatic narrative straight out of a Le Carré novel, and which may have been just as fictional, claiming a nameless Iraqi approached the publication with the material in order to “let the world know what Iran is doing in my country.” Even if the outlet’s narrative was accurate, and the Russian and Iranian document troves had not been obtained through the CIA “hack-and-dump operations” sanctioned under Trump, it would be an extraordinary if not inexplicable coincidence that content which precisely matched that description was released the following year. CIA hack-and-leak operations are an increasingly common information warfare tactic. For example, [125]in June 2021 a US government official acknowledged Washington was secretly financing “investigative journalists and investigative NGOs” and employing “components of the intelligence community” including the Agency to expose corruption by public officials abroad, having created the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) to serve as a funnel for this material. OCCRP is [126]funded by a welter of US intelligence cutouts, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy. [127]In October 2021, the OCCRP released the Pandora Papers, [128]raising obvious questions about whether the underlying information was obtained through a US intelligence-related hack. Back in December 2019, DDoSecrets [129]partnered with the OCCRP to publish documents and data related to the operations of Formations House, which registered and operated companies for organized crime syndicates, dubious state-owned companies, and fraudulent banks. Whether DDoSecrets and its founder are witting or unwitting pawns of the CIA is a moot point. Its commitment to publishing and hosting as much leaked material as possible makes the organization an extremely attractive conduit for ill-gotten sensitive documents, and the origins of this material is never questioned by news outlets that report upon it. After all, the imprimatur of DDoSecrets lends its releases credibility and legitimacy. DDoSecrets has been scrupulous about attributing sources in particular cases. For example, the [130]DDoSecrets entry on the DNC emails released by WikiLeaks forcefully asserts the documents were “hacked by Russian intelligence services.” This claim was undermined, however, by the admission of the CEO of CrowdStrike – the cybersecurity firm that made the attributions – [131]admitting under oath there is no “concrete evidence” the emails were “actually exfiltrated” by anyone. Meanwhile, [132]other entries are [133]careful to note constituent material was released by individuals associated with Russian intelligence, [134]and may include “forged” documents. The only comparable disclaimer that can be found in respect of any Western intelligence service anywhere else on the DDoSecrets website today relates to [135]Syrian government emails originally dumped by WikiLeaks. The emails now include an accompanying blurb noting “the hack itself was not [emphasis in original] directly sponsored or conducted” by Washington, although its subsequent release was “carried out under the direct supervision of the US via FBI informant Hector ‘Sabu’ Monsegur.” Since its foundation, DDoSecrets has provided a reliable archive for compromising information and data tranches stolen from the servers of foreign states which happen to be in the US government’s crosshairs. Following Biden’s call to Trudeau, during which he demanded swift action against the truckers’ convoy filling downtown Ottawa and blockading US-Canadian border crossings in protest of vaccine mandates, DDoSecrets surfaced once again as a promotional platform for hacked data on convoy donors. And while Assange languishes in prison, DDoSecrets is once again shopping its data to mainstream media outlets and advancing the critical interests of crisis-wracked Western governments. [136]Aubrey Cottle[137]Canada[138]CIA[139]DDoSecrets[140]Emma Best[141]Freedom Convoy[142]Iran[143]Julian Assange[144]Justin Trudeau[145]Qasem Soleimani[146]Russia[147]trucker convoy[148]Wikileaks [149][IMG] [150]Kit Klarenberg Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. 51. https://thegrayzone.com/author/kit-klarenberg/ 52. https://thegrayzone.com/author/kit-klarenberg/ 53. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/more-data-canada-truck-convoy-donors… 54. https://gizmodo.com/givesendgo-leak-freedom-convoy-canada-trucker-protest-d… 55. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/14/22933772/givesendgo-funding-freedom-conv… 56. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1494429455590334469 57. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/founder-of-hacker-group-anonymous-reveals… 58. https://rentry.co/2noy3 59. https://twitter.com/hashtag/GiveSendGo 60. https://twitter.com/IrishAmerican27/status/1494006282566709250 61. https://twitter.com/mandystadt/status/1494492508482461698 62. https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/15/canadian-hacker-who-claims-to-have-worke… 63. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/hacker-group-anonymo… 64. https://stopactivistsurveillance.noblogs.org/post/2021/10/13/aubrey-cottle-… 65. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/531020-fbi-photos-online-esnare-predators/ 66. https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/15/canadian-hacker-who-claims-to-have-worke… 67. https://twitter.com/BarrettB/status/1494150548307816459 68. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1335&context=d… 69. https://twitter.com/hashtag/Anonymous 70. https://twitter.com/hashtag/Antifa 71. https://twitter.com/hashtag/GiveSendGo 72. https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1nAJEYDYVBkJL 73. https://twitter.com/BarrettB/status/1494150548307816459 74. https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1494024855745753089 75. https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1494039402800054273 75. https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1494049285641433090 76. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/10/proud-boys-far-right-givesend… 77. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-before-jan-6-fbi-collected-infor… 78. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/16/us-police-officers-public-o… 79. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/06/04/givesendgo-da… 80. https://www.wired.com/story/gab-hack-data-breach-ddosecrets/ 81. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-riot-vi… 82. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/emma-best-ddosecrets.php 83. https://www.spiegel.de/international/database-exposes-offshore-holdings-of-… 84. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/dec/12/fbi-foia-investigation/ 85. https://emma.best/2021/06/13/fbi-tried-to-ban-me-from-foia/ 86. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jan/17/cias-declassified-databa… 87. https://bangordailynews.com/2021/04/10/opinion/contributors/maine-legislato… 88. https://www.zdnet.com/article/german-authorities-seize-blueleaks-server-tha… 89. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11143 90. https://www.guidestar.org/profile/85-2177863 91. https://newrepublic.com/article/163106/ddossecrets-new-wikileaks-julian-ass… 92. https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kyv9n/activist-publishes-11000-wikileaks-t… 93. https://hornet.com/stories/emma-best-wikileaks-chats/ 94. https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/982005748350595072 95. https://twitter.com/PiratePartyINT/status/982059184056184832 96. https://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/journalist-emma-best-published-wikileaks… 97. https://www.spiegel.de/international/database-exposes-offshore-holdings-of-… 98. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/17/files-australian-julian-assange-prison/ 99. https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1283106293490814976 100. https://www.cyberscoop.com/assangeleaks-ddosecrets-wikileaks/ 101. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/07/30/11000-wikileaks-twit… 102. https://twitter.com/greekemmy/status/1283107645898076160 103. https://archive.is/N3aoQ 104. https://twitter.com/greekemmy/status/1283107645898076160 105. https://twitter.com/greekemmy/status/1283107645898076160 106. https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/DocumentHandler-4.pdf 107. https://www.spiegel.de/international/database-exposes-offshore-holdings-of-… 108. https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb9bjj/hacking-history-foia-project 109. https://www.vice.com/en/article/9knqv5/this-ex-nsa-hacker-is-building-an-ai… 110. https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1495397344531169290 111. https://news.yahoo.com/frustrated-with-cia-trump-administration-turned-to-p… 112. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/world/europe/russian-documents-leaked-dd… 113. https://hill.cm/QnKoXXQ 114. https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1089233764620877824 115. https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1089233764620877824 116. https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/operation-hotel 117. https://ddosecrets.com/index.php?search=senain&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go 118. https://theintercept.com/series/iran-cables/ 119. https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChinaCables 120. https://news.yahoo.com/secret-trump-order-gives-cia-more-powers-to-launch-c… 121. https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1283806625162199040 122. https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1283806625162199040 123. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/18/world/middleeast/iran-iraq-s… 124. https://theintercept.com/2019/11/18/iran-cables/ 125. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536539-cia-leak-pandora-papers/ 126. https://www.occrp.org/en/aboutus/who-supports-our-work 127. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536539-cia-leak-pandora-papers/ 128. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536539-cia-leak-pandora-papers/ 129. https://www.occrp.org/en/29leaks/ 130. https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/DNC_Emails 131. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_y… 132. https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Category:Allegations_of_State_Sponsorship 133. https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/CEIEC 134. https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/CEIEC 135. https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Syria_files 136. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/aubrey-cottle/ 137. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/canada/ 138. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/cia/ 139. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/ddosecrets/ 140. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/emma-best/ 141. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/freedom-convoy/ 142. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/iran/ 143. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/julian-assange/ 144. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/justin-trudeau/ 145. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/qasem-soleimani/ 146. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/russia/ 147. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/trucker-convoy/ 148. https://thegrayzone.com/tag/wikileaks/ 149. https://thegrayzone.com/author/kit-klarenberg/ 150. https://thegrayzone.com/author/kit-klarenberg/

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UK stop the war scam
by professor rat 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

The Stop the War Coalition, which he supports, doesn't oppose all NATO intervention, but -- in effect -- instead demands that NATO work together with Russia to find suitable territorial and political concessions to force on Ukraine. It doesn't demand Russian troops out of Ukraine https://groups.io/g/marxmail/topic/ukraine_debate_between/90172464?p=,,,20,…

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Down among the Azov
by professor rat 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

Oh, this Assange Nazi militant guy is just taking a selfie with some of his Ukrainian citizens after he tied them up to a pole, sprayed their faces & leached their derrieres till they got bloody. His trophy for the day. Stella Moris #FreeAssangeNOW on Twitter: "I spoke to Julian ... https://twitter.com › StellaMoris1 › status 25 Feb 2022 — We contacted Julian Assange in prison. He says that everyone in #Ukraine should install @BriarApp NOW before the internet goes down . . . " NO WEAPONS FOR NAZI's!

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Russia using automated social influence
by professor rat 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

No one with net access need ever be curious who originally sold or leased such technology to them. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.h… in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

1 0

Back in the USSSR
by professor rat 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

School students turn teacher in to police for alleged anti-Russia comments A Russian teacher could be facing 15 years in jail after her students secretly recorded her and then turned her in to the authorities. https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/school-students-turn-teacher-in-to-pol…

2 1

[ot][wrong] coreboot community thing
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

coreboot is currently experiencing a small disagreement about removing the intel quark board from the tree. i'm experiencing paranoia around it. the arguments to plan to delete it are persistent and quick, and seem to generally completely ignore logic to the contrary. it would be appropriate to call something out or express important community practices, to protect the project, but with my paranoid psychosis I can't tell what's true and would contribute to the problem. problems don't seem immidiately imminent, but I feel responsible, and i've seen projects break apart a lot. it's unfortunate when proposals to remove things align with burdenedness or distractedness of those using or maintaining them. simply watching to learn hasn't really worked in the past, since I learn so poorly now. coreboot had its major deletion last decade, when swathes of boards were removed. the board i'm tinkering with porting forward was one of them. on a blockchain git system, i'd just follow the forks that don't delete stuff. but without p2p organisation, my fears start building; I imagine people coming in and removing every board from coreboot until it is empty! or removing boards that suppressed voices need at important times. gerrit: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/63283 mailing list thread: https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/YRJQ… I engaged some discussion on irc, dunno if that's logged though

1 0

Query for Jakob
by professor rat 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

Can you tell us what's up with @snowden since his "suspended from the ceiling tweet" as he realized how badly he misjudged Putin?

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The $300B Shock Verdict and Social Inflation
by Gunnar Larson 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

Check out my new article: https://litigationfinancejournal.com/the-300b-shock-verdict-and-social-infl… The $300B Shock Verdict and Social Inflation A $300B damage award is serving as an example of shock verdicts driving the notion of social inflation. Preserving the ecosystem of litigation finance from shock verdicts is a priority for some in the industry. Best Review’s monthly insurance magazine <https://news.ambest.com/articlecontent.aspx?AltSrc=104&RefNum=317590> highlights the general trepidation of insurers being ‘on the hook’ for high dollar claims that are funded by third party litigation investors. There are those that argue obscene, high-dollar awards are a threat to the judicial system and therefore have the ability to diminish access to justice. Furthermore, litigation finance is blamed for insurance premium spikes–in some cases premiums have increased 25%. The $300B shock verdict referenced above relates to trucking insurance. The award could potentially be the largest damages verdict in United States history. This, as the insurance industry has worked to clamp down on trucker insurance coverage. Best Review notes that insurance contracts for trucking operations previously allowed for $50M in coverage. Today, insurers have reduced many trucking insurance contracts down to only $1M coverage options. Best Review references that savvy insurers continue to approach the problem of social inflation with a barrage of solutions, including lobbying dollars on tort reform. Overall, it would appear that insurers are targeting sophisticated third party investors who likely hold a variety of portfolios that include insurance claims. -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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Crypto’s Most Powerful Regulator Is Here Adrienne Harris, New York’s financial watchdog, has enormous sway over the industry’s future.
by Gunnar Larson 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

*Crypto’s Most Powerful Regulator Is Here Adrienne Harris, New York’s financial watchdog, has enormous sway over the industry’s future: * https://nym.ag/3qMUDaA Thirteen years after the birth of cryptocurrency, it was supposed to be time for Washington to rein it in. Instead, the White House punted, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is still hashing out how it’s going to oversee the $2 trillion industry. State watchdogs have filled that vacuum, making Adrienne Harris, the head of the New York State Department of Financial Services, by default the most powerful crypto regulator in the country. While states such as Florida and Wyoming have adopted a laissez-faire approach to regulation, attracting a sizable chunk of the booming industry, more money and jobs are still flowing into New York than any other city, making it the de facto crypto capital of the U.S. “There’s a misconception that having rigorous regulation turns off innovative companies,” Harris tells me during an hour-long interview at her office looking out onto the Statue of Liberty last month. “That hasn’t been our experience here.” Harris was tapped as the first Black woman to lead DFS last year. She came into her position after a turn working in Silicon Valley and representing Wall Street banks, a résumé that critics have used to paint her as too close to the industries she is regulating. She’s eager to dispel any criticism that she’s soft as a regulator, especially when it comes to crypto. Harris says she’s looking to expand the agency’s remit, hire new regulators, and possibly watch over lending and asset management in decentralized finance, a.k.a. DeFi, one of the fastest-growing crypto industries, which has been prone to very large hacks. The agency’s power over the industry lies mostly with the BitLicense, a required if unloved permit for crypto exchanges to operate within state lines. When it was first introduced in 2014, it was meant to be a model for the country, but the crypto industry has attacked the license for being too strict, limiting what people can trade, and requiring expensive anti-money-laundering operations, which, it should be noted, most traditional financial institutions are required to maintain. For Harris, the problem isn’t that it’s too restrictive — it’s that the process of getting one, which has stretched years for some companies, is too slow. “If you think about the companies that are BitLicensees, and even the companies in the queue, having the imprimatur of ‘Have you passed regulatory muster with a stringent regulatory regime?’ — I think the good actors see that as a good thing,” she says. Created in 2011, DFS has been a regulator feared more than any of its counterparts in other states for the power it has over banks, insurance companies, and a host of other financial institutions. It brought ambitious money-laundering cases against banks like BNP Paribas (a settlement that resulted in several bankers losing their jobs), fined Deutsche Bank for its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and levied a $2.5 million fine on the National Rifle Association for selling its so-called murder insurance in the state. “DFS has a lot of teeth, and the sky’s the limit if the agency is exercised properly,” says state Sen. John Liu of Queens, a member of the state finance committee. “DFS compelled multinational banks to cough up $15 billion. We were able to build a couple bridges with that money. We still have much infrastructure in the state of New York that might benefit from DFS’s vigorous functions.” But part of DFS’s mandate is to keep the state’s economy healthy, a balancing act when it means protecting consumers from predatory, but also lucrative, companies. “For me, it’s an opportunity to bring my lived experience as a woman of color,” Harris says. So far, she has established the agency’s first climate division, frozen fees for check-cashing businesses that target the poor, and looked into non-bank lenders for evidence of redlining. “It’s important to me that those voices are at the table and being heard,” she says. “I bring a sort of pragmatism. It’s one thing to sit in our offices with nice views and make policy, but it’s another thing, in my mind, to really run the water through the pipes.” In 2008, Harris joined Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm so close with Goldman Sachs that it has long sent its lawyers to work in-house at the investment bank. It was there that she worked for H. Rodgin “Rodge” Cohen, then the law firm’s chairman and the so-called trauma surgeon of Wall Street. Cohen remembers Harris working late into the night writing near-flawless memorandums so they’d be ready on his desk in the morning. “She just brought what I’d call a penetrating intelligence to the problems that were at hand,” Cohen tells me. “Many of the problems we get, you cannot just look up the answer in a book. It’s a question of judgment and trying to apply rules written often for other circumstances.” Still, it was clear that corporate law wasn’t for her. “Her heart was really in public service,” he says. From there, she went on to work for the Treasury Department, then the Obama White House, where she focused on policies around the then-upstart fintech industry. After the administration turned over, Harris took a spin through the revolving door between government and business. Her New York financial-disclosure forms show a superabundance of work with the tech and finance industries: She sat on the boards of six companies and nonprofits, including LendingClub, which had recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission over claims it had misled users on fees. She also advised 11 companies, owned two, and invested in or on behalf of two others. “I just thought, well, if you’re going to make policy about it, you should do the thing — run the company, build the company,” she says. “At the time, I felt very comfortable going to a start-up because I thought, well, coming out of government, you’re not making a ton of money. And if this start-up blows up, I’ll probably be no worse off, financially speaking.” It seems Harris did well enough. One real-estate tech company at which she worked went public last summer, and Harris appears to have cashed out. Since the disclosures were for 2020, they didn’t include her stake in Forethought, a private A.I.-based customer-service company that announced in December that it had attracted such investors as Harris, Ashton Kutcher, and Gwenyth Paltrow. When I asked her about Forethought, Harris said her investment in the company predated her time at DFS, that all her investments are now in a blind trust, and that she would recuse herself from any dealings with companies she has conflicts with. So when Hochul appointed Harris to lead DFS, she was attacked by the left. Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon both criticized Harris as being insufficiently independent, thanks to her connections in tech and finance. The American Prospect dug up a speech in which she characterized regulators as looking for “no-nos” and “icky things.” Harris has also advised the cash-advance companies Earnin, Brigit, and SmartWage (based in South Africa), according to her disclosures. In 2019, DFS led a multi-state investigation into the cash-advance industry over whether they created debt traps and state banking and anti-usury laws, since equivalent interest rates for the fees they charged would reach as high as 469 percent. A person directly familiar with the investigation told me that Harris’s predecessor was presented with multiple options for furthering the investigation, including reaching a settlement, but ultimately never made a decision. DFS wouldn’t comment. So, of all the companies to work for, why them? “My role, when I was working with those companies, was not to dictate price pricing or business model. It was more to say: Here’s how regulators would view this. Here’s why you should engage with them. Let me help you engage with them and figure out these issues and how you can also serve customers. Less pricing and business model, but, as an adviser who’s not in the day-to-day, helping to sort of guide a culture and mentality,” she says. Did she disagree with those arguing that these companies created debt traps for consumers? “I think it’s hard to paint with a broad brush,” she says. “I think we should always always be careful with any new products and services, that they are affordable and non-predatory, not creating debt traps, and that they’re solving a real problem for consumers. And I think some do that and some don’t.” Last summer, after Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor, many of his appointees went with him, including then-superintendent of DFS, Linda Lacewell. Soon Harris’s old boss, Cohen, had recommended her to Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York, a business-advocacy group that has advised DFS. “The folks at Sullivan & Cromwell thought that Adrienne would be a terrific candidate to field for that job given her eight years of experience in the Obama administration and the fact that she was somebody who understood industry,” Wylde says. “On the theory that a regulator should know something about the industries they’re regulating — which may be a novel concept but struck me as a valid one — I thought she sounded like a terrific candidate.” Harris sailed through her confirmation, with 63 senators voting for her and nine against. “When the regulated are complaining that the regulator is being too aggressive, that generally means the regulator is doing their job.” said Michael Gianaris, the state senator from Queens who voted against Harris’s nomination and, in 2019, tanked Amazon’s proposed HQ2 in New York. “Cuomo was a prick, and the people he appointed tended to share his bare-knuckles approach to the world. In some cases, that’s actually not a bad thing.” While the crypto industry doesn’t appear to be getting the reprieve it had been hoping for, other industries will surely lobby Harris to make similar gestures toward the business community. For instance, Wylde says that insurance companies are hoping that Harris will lower the reserves they are required to have on hold, which they claim are higher than what’s required by other states. “There are some long-standing issues that the industry has that they feel that they’ve got a fresh start on with Adrienne’s leadership,” she says. Still, crypto is going to play a major part in how Harris’s tenure is defined. “It’s clear that New York is doing well now and the companies that came and started here five to ten years ago are doing well,” says Matt Homer, a former deputy superintendent at DFS and the current executive-in-residence at the venture-capital fund NYCA Partners. “It’s not totally clear what the future will look like five to ten years from now.” New York is the home base for major exchanges such as Coinbase and Gemini, and it’s also home to shady NFT front-running scandals and alleged rapping billionaire money launderers. That such a volatile industry could implode and damage New York’s economy is apparent. “I understand that other states may have gone the opposite way of the BitLicense, but there are things we can do here in New York that will hopefully inform the federal regulators as they continue to think about this space,” Harris said. “It’s a new world with crypto, with DeFi, with NFTs.” -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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NSA agent facing federal charges for allegedly sending classified info through personal email
by jim bell 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

NSA agent facing federal charges for allegedly sending classified info through personal email https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3087843-nsa-agent-facing-… NSA agent facing federal charges for allegedly sending classified info through personal email Authorities on Thursday said a National Security Agency (NSA) agent will face federal charges, accusing him of sending classified information through his own personal email account. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that a federal grand jury had returned an indictment for Hanover, Md., native Mark Robert Unkenholz, issuing charges of willfully transmitting and retention of National Defense Information (NDI)

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