Hats off to reporter Steve Ragan at The Tech Herald for publishing the most interesting bit of (real) journalism on the intertubez this morning, about one part of Bank of America's panic-stricken response to news it would be Wikileaked. This is really, really good, so please follow me over the fold for the PowerPoint presentation.
Here's the background in a nutshell. When Bank of America learned that Wikileaks intended to publish its top secret files, it went into panic mode, complete with a made-for-TV, late-night conference call that included its general counsel. The counsel, acting on advice from the Justice (except for gays) Department, brought in another law firm to put together a "team capable of doing a comprehensive investigation into the data leak." The three companies contacted were: Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal, the target of a recent, spectacular Anonymous hack and the source of so much generalized mirth around IRC water coolers. Now, as we all know, Anonymous wound up with a trove of 50 to 60,000 HBGary e-mails, which happen to contain the presentation it worked up for an emergency meeting with Bank of America.
In all fairness, they only had 24 hours to come up with this and HBGary is, well, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Let's not mock (much).
Here is what the security companies proposed to Bank of America for dealing with Wikileaks:
Submit fake documents and then expose them. Why does that sound familiar?
Cyber attacks against the infrastructure. Illegal, but what the hell? It's France and Sweden.
I have no doubt the media whores will be forming a line outside BoA for their handouts.
Get into the employees' private lives. Oh, to be a part of the BoA family!
And here is their scheme for Glenn Greenwald:
So, the plan for Greenwald was to somehow put his "professional preservation" on the line. Think about that for a minute. About having one of the biggest banks in the U.S. actively working to threaten your professional career.
Nobody knows, at this point, if BoA has accepted the proposal. The fact that something of such obvious illegality could be discussed in the boardroom of a major American corporation speaks volumes.
That's it. Not my field, but thought The Tech Herald deserved a huge shout-out for making all this public.