A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/22/hacking-anonymous?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed

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

	Barrett Brown guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 June 2011 19.39 BST

A hacker's silhouette

In February 2011, the hackers' collective Anonymous released 70,000 emails
from security contractor HBGary Federal, which revealed that CEO Aaron Barr
had offered the firm's services to mount cyber-attacks against WikiLeaks and
others on behalf of corporate clients. Photograph: Getty Images

When President Eisenhower left office in 1960, he provided the American
people with a warning.

    "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist."

Sixty years later, the military-industrial complex has been joined by another
unprecedented centre of what has increasingly proven to be "misplaced power":
the dozens of secretive firms known collectively as the intelligence
contracting industry.

Last February, three of these firms b HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico,
known collectively as Team Themis b 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 the Anonymous
collective, resulting in the dissemination of more than 70,000 emails to and
from executives at HBGary Federal and affiliated company HBGary.

After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise
investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of a
classified 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 b 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 b 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 b 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.

Altogether, the existence and nature of Romas/COIN should confirm what many
had already come to realise over the past few years, in particular: the US
and other states have no intention of allowing populations to conduct their
affairs without scrutiny. Such states ought not complain when they find
themselves subjected to similar scrutiny b as will increasingly become the
case over the next several years.

b" Editor's note: The headline and photo caption in this article originally
alluded to HBGary. HBGary Federal is the company in question, which is a
distinct entity from HBGary Inc. The article has been amended to make that
clarification at 9am (BST) on 23 June 2011

guardian.co.uk B) Guardian News and Media Limited 2011