Yesterday, I posted something here about a major story emanating from last week's Wikileaks release involving Cubic - a massive defense contractor - that managed to get a story shut down in Australia and which was never really in danger of being covered by U.S. media made up of people who are human and thus prefer stories that are less work or more evident. 19 did so regarding the form and not the content. I also posted about a dozen links to other articles on the subject by other people who are better writers, but I don't know to what extent people may have followed them because of the poor formatting overall.
I want to make sure that at least some people get some info on an issue that is important, and which has been deemed to be important by dozens of such figures as NSA defector/whistleblower Thomas Drake (known for testimony on NSA violations of Constitution in data-mining and phone surveillance, among more general issues), plus HuffPost, Young Turks, NBC, RT, etc, with a couple mentions elsewhere - several of which were published only because of the efforts of those who engage in "information activism" with groups like Telecomix.
This issue is tremendous in its scope - a trillion dollar sector involving mundane defense contracting worth non-mundane money, with huge portion of execs that did their romantic stint at The Agency or NSA. The head of Booz Allen Hamilton, a huge U.S. company that, if heard of, most will think of as maybe an adviser to firms that need to get their mail cheaper or whatever, is the former NSA director. Little is known of Booz's intelligence security capabilities, advisory work, collaborations with the agencies that many of its top people come from, and other things we know about firms that cater to lots of people rather than a few powerful ones. The little we know about the industry at all comes in large part from 70,000 e-mails that were once stolen by a bunch of wacky hacker types (of whom a great deal has already been written). Just that sampling, which involved correspondence between one typical firm and its spin-off or subsidiary as well as a couple of dozen firms with which they were dealing over three years. We have a growing list of scandals that have so far been reported in the press and which have dimmed the minimal reputation of the "intelligence contracting" industry as well as a couple of federal agencies including the FBI and Justice Department. Of course, most of the coverage back then went to the fact that a bunch of young folks beat a security company at its own game. There were a lot of stock photos of "shadowy hackers" with face half obscured by darkness as he types his doom-viruses being sold in those days, the Golden Age of Shadowy Guy With Keyboard Stock Photography.
Please read the below piece and please consider reading one of the articles and pieces of evidence linked to. This info was not just accumulated by me, but by a dozen people working with several different civil liberties groups that focus on the net. None of them got paid and many of them come from professional media or industry background. All of us would appreciate that you give this issue some thought, and ask any questions you have about why this is fundamentally bad for all Americans and populations abroad. Thanks.
(Post taken from e-mail I wrote earlier that includes key facts, unusual format explained below.)
TRAPWIRE, CUBIC, THE ARTICLE FORCED DOWN IN AUSTRALIA, OTHER MATTERS
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There's a story kind of struggling for air, on a self-asserted CCTV
"data-mining" capability called Trapwire - erroneous/incredibly
incomplete coverage in NYT, better in coverage by NBC and Daily Caller
and couple others I was quoted in last night, few very informative
pieces in less-exposed outlets. My group Project PM as well as
Wikileaks (which is being covered ATM only in context of Assange
troubles, which are indeed key) and Telecomix have been working on it
for a week now, mostly last 48 hours, based on the original materials,
which stem from the 5.2 million Stratfor e-mails taken by Anon and now
being distributed in groups by topic by volunteers at Wikileaks who
have access to the entire set.
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[Portion removed for privacy of another activist.]
Meanwhile, a syndicated article that appeared on the 13th
in at least six major Australian outlets including Sydney Herald was
entirely pulled from all of them next day, and the much-delayed
explanation (which apparently appeared in Herald print today, but not
anywhere at all online, other than a vague and somewhat odd Tweet by
one of the two authors who's also an editor, that Cubic Corporation -
which acquired Abraxas, parent in turn of spin-off Abraxas
Applications - made some sort of complaint to the effect that it
itself is not really "connected" to Trapwire since, apparently, it was
developed, marketed, and then put into motion via the spin-off two
years before Cubic felt inclined to purchase Abraxas.
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That Cubic
managed to hide any association with another, less official "spin-off"
of Abraxas, Ntrepid - with which Abraxas shares key board members and
draws upon capabilities developed/maintained by Anonymizer, which
Abraxas bought shortly before its own purchase by Cubic, and which
seems to have been created entirely to win (which it did) a bid for
persona management software (fake online people) put out by USAF in
2010 and later confirmed by CENTCOM spokesman to be in operation at
McDill and Kabul, under use of "multinational forces" and under
Earnest Voice. When this first came out of the HBGary e-mails that my
other "associates" seized from them in early 2011 (after they made
threatening remarks to FT about allegedly having identified our
"lieutenants" and our non-existent "co-founder and leader" and
planning to talk to FBI, which was itself very bizarre), we did a lot
of "media outreach" on the issue, and then when two very good
colleagues of mine from The Guardian did a report on it, they never
discovered that Ntrepid had any connection to Cubic at all, which
wasn't mentioned in the piece. Six months later one of my guys at PM
finally found a 2010 Cubic tax filing that showed Ntrepid, like
Abraxas, is "wholly owned" by Cubic.
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So now that's at least out there - at least to those who happen to read our niche wiki on intelligence contracting affairs. A few reporters and other folks with megaphones or access, but most not too regularly.
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Despite the "question" of whether Cubic has
anything to do with the direction of Trapwire as it has with at least
other, even less "official" spin-offs of Abraxas (as proven by merger
records and a couple other documents pulled up just in last few days),
and insomuch as that one of those even notes Cubic's expected
"synergies" from Abraxas merger - and of course this question is
allegedly the reason why an article was disappeared and not edited or
corrected or even initially acknowledged and even still not
acknowledged in any way that the majority who read the now-gone story
online can see it for themselves, NYT does not mention Cubic at all in
its piece yesterday, which claims fears of it are "wildly exaggerated"
based on what reporter was told by DHS officials who are unnamed and
not quoted. Here:
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http://www.nytimes.com/...
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In two years of following this issue closely and sometimes being
directly involved, I have never seen anything like this. At the least,
I hope this will give you some insight into how ill-equipped the U.S.
media in particular has been to cover this trillion-dollar topic in
almost any meaningful way, and want to thank you again for what
Businessweek has done and for allowing someone with my views to take
part in your very timely panel last month. Thanks, and hope all is
well. Here is info we've compiled, plus samples of insightful coverage
of Trapwire and our work on it, much from last 24 hours:
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http://wiki.echelon2.org/...
http://wiki.echelon2.org/...
http://barrettbrown.blogspot.com/...
(a partly silly piece I wrote last night that nonetheless includes
much of the new documentation, tax records, etc)
http://dailycaller.com/...
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Vaguely corrupt marketing partnership between the ex-State Department
types and self-described "intel analysts" at Stratfor and Trapwire
itself, which is supposed not to have any similar or more complex
dealings with its ultimate owner unlike other sub-subsidies such as
Ntrepid: http://www.wired.com/...
DRUNK INTRO TO ABOVE
Yesterday or something close to it, I posted a very long and, er, multi-faceted article explaining not only Trapwire, its coverage, its connections, and why Adrian Chen is a really shitty "reporter" who gets things consistently wrong because he is under zero pressure from John Cook, but also other stuff I forget. 5 percent of the people who commented on Twitter or e-mail or what have you said something about early sentences being long and no paragraphs making it hard to read. I will never add paragraphs now just for spite because I hate people like that.
If god knows how many other people, including dozens of journalists who either linked to it or tweeted it or interviewed me after it, as well as plenty who probably don't know much about the issue, can understand it and even write articles based in part on what it says here, and if dozens of those "basement-dwelling kids" at Anon can understand it, you can fucking understand it. If not, don't ever read my shit, and kill yourself because you commented on some fucking guy's paragraph structure and tendency to write seven-part sentences when he's been (1) out drinking a bit earlier because it's his fucking birthday and now he's writing about some bs called Trapwire instead of hanging with gf and friend who is now over, and (2) drank a pot of coffee and smoked a bunch of pot cause he enjoys that and doesn't care if the news he writes for free is written all wacky-like for 20 fucking percent of it.
Incidentally, every single fucking person who commented on Daily Kos as of just now has done so solely to complain about lack of paragraphs aside from the many divisions that are actually there. The cute thing is that I predicted it(although after the 1st comment) an hour before.
Were it not for the fact that some people would justly benefit from a summary, or perhaps don't want to read 2000 words covering entire epic in detail, I would never cater to the demands of those people. Those people do not deserve to live in democracies and should be exiled to a 50-mile section of the Sahara, surrounded by light Janjaweed patrols who occasionally venture inward for... "access control."
Like a portion of yesterday's, this comes from e-mail I wrote, this time today, to a journalist I know and to the editor of a major publication that has paid attention to these issues before and actually done digging on them. Hope it's of use to those who realize that this issue's low media profile is a low point in national security reporting across U.S., Australia, and elsewhere.
In addition to paragraphs, I have added three lines of asterixs [sp?] to separate the various clumps of sentences so they'll never ever touch. Fuck you.