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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTeam Themis
NY times article
To get some perspective on the manipulative role that private intelligence agencies play in our society, it is worth examining information that has been revealed by some significant hacks in the past few years of previously secret data.
Important insight into the world these companies came from a 2010 hack by a group best known as LulzSec (at the time the group was called Internet Feds), which targeted the private intelligence firm HBGary Federal. That hack yielded 75,000 e-mails. It revealed, for example, that Bank of America approached the Department of Justice over concerns about information that WikiLeaks had about it. The Department of Justice in turn referred Bank of America to the lobbying firm Hunton and Willliams, which in turn connected the bank with a group of information security firms collectively known as Team Themis.
Team Themis (a group that included HBGary and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowdens leak of the N.S.A.s Prism program), because of Greenwalds support for WikiLeaks. Specifically, the plan called for actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization including a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error. As for Greenwald, it was argued that he would cave if pushed because he would choose professional preservation over cause. That evidently wasnt the case.
Team Themis also developed a proposal for the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the credibility of one of its critics, a group called Chamber Watch. The proposal called for first creating a false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information, giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to prove that U.S. Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.
(A photocopy of the proposal can be found here.)
In addition, the group proposed creating a fake insider persona to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.
Psyops need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them.
The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a persona management system a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (sock puppets) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm.
This may sound like nothing so much as a Matrix-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of Psyops (psychological operations),
snip.... long article and more secrets on wtf is going on including programs use.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war-on-reality/?_r=2
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Team Themis (Original Post)
Ichingcarpenter
Jun 2013
OP
Recursion
(56,582 posts)1. I've trolled conservative forums before; is that any different? (nt)
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)2. I think this post is important
because of collusion with justice department, corporations and the so called private contractors to stifle desent
Cliff Arnebeck
(305 posts)3. Most important!
I could not agree more.