Congressman Probing HBGary Scandal Fears ‘Domestic Surveillance’

Submitted for your consideration:

Congressman Probing HBGary Scandal Fears ‘Domestic Surveillance’

http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2...-surveillance/

Quote:

---

a Congressional subcommittee has asked to see all HBGary Federal’s contracts with the U.S. military and the National Security Agency (NSA), along with those agencies’ contracts with two other private security firms, Berico Technologies and Palantir Technologies.

[We're] talking about government contractors who may have developed tools to track and control information from foreign terrorists organizations. When those contractors using that kind of technology, developed pursuant to government contract and utilising American tax payer dollars, then turn the tools into domestic surveillance and marketing to business organizations, with the goal of discrediting and disrupting and actually destroying organizations that disagree with their clients, doing that domestically is like turning spying tools on the very people who paid for them. You should not use tools developed to get at foreign terrorist agents on American citizens who are choosing to exercise their first amendment rights.

---

The global collective of propagandists, script kiddies, hackers and wannabes known as Anonymous hacked a U. S. Government contractor last month and published their emails. This is the same Anonymous that threatened to harrass the commander of Wikileaker Bradley Manning's brig.

Elements of Anonymous issue pronunciamentos threatening to the Information Assurance, Operational Security and Military Information Support Operations of my beloved Westphalian nation-state. I view them as opposites to Counterinsurgent Supportive Civilian Irregular Information Operators.

Democrat urges investigation into federal security contractors

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,6918223.story

Quote:

---

The inquiry stems from email correspondence between the three data security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies — proposing surveillance and sabotage of liberal and labor activists in an effort to win a contract with Hunton & Williams, a law firm representing the Chamber of Commerce.

The security firms came together in a group they dubbed "Team Themis," apparently after the Greek goddess of law and order.

Details of the proposal, which included planting false information to embarrass anti-chamber groups and creating dossiers on activists, complete with photographs and family references, were leaked this year by the hacker group Anonymous.

---

http:// pastebin. com / B1g3fckX

Quote:

---

4.The Objectives of the Anonymous Digital Forensics Challenge are:
5.Characterize the players in the HBGary scandal for journalists & U.S. Congress
6.Determine what role the DoD Cyber Crime Center played in attacking Wikileaks
7.Develop new tools, techniques, and memes for Anonymous

---

Anonymous calls this OpMetalGear.