Barrett Brown is an American journalist, essayist and satirist. He is often referred to as an unofficial spokesperson for the hacktivist collective Anonymous, a label he disputes. He is credited with the creation of Project PM, a research outfit and information collective determined to expose agents of the corporate military spying apparatus. Brown’s large vocabulary and quick wit often make his thoughts a joy to read.
The seven guys with whom I recently spent two months living in a small room at the Kaufman County Jail while awaiting transfer were in the distressing habit of compulsively watching local TV news, which is the lowest form of news. They would even watch more than one network’s evening news program in succession, presumably so as to get differing perspectives on the day’s suburban house fires and rush-hour lane closings rather than having to view these events through a single ideological prism.
One day, there was a report about a spate of bank robberies by a fellow the media was dubbing the Lunch Money Bandit after his habit of always striking around noon, when tellers were breaking for lunch. Later that week, there was another report on the suspect, accompanied by surveillance footage — and then, shortly afterward, he was actually brought in to our cell, having just been captured when the cops received a tip from a former accomplice who’d been picked up on unrelated charges.
Lunch Money was an affable twentysomething guy from New Orleans who’d lost his two front teeth fighting off a couple of assailants who’d tried to rob his family’s motel room after Katrina and had already done four years in federal prison for other bank robberies. He would have gladly taken a real job if he’d been able to find one, he said. Still, he conceded, “I just love robbing banks.” I couldn’t imagine what there is to love about such a career; this isn’t the old days when a bank robbery entailed brandishing a Tommy gun, dynamiting a safe, and tearing off in a stolen Model T roadster with your hard-drinking flapper girlfriend and a dozen cloth sacks adorned with dollar sign symbols. These guys today just sort of walk up to the teller and hand over a note to the effect that they have a gun (which they don’t — going armed carries a more serious charge, and there’s no point in bringing a gun to a bank that’s federally insured, even in Texas).
Drug dealers find bank robbers to be fascinating eccentrics and tend to pepper them with questions. One cocaine entrepreneur asked Lunch Money, “What if, like, when you handed her the note, the bitch just laughed in your face?”
“Man, that’d be fucked up,” he replied thoughtfully, visibly shaken by this potential revolution in human affairs.
One night, as we all lay in our bunks discussing the wicked world, Lunch Money proclaimed that Magic Johnson had never actually had HIV and that the whole thing had merely been a plot by the CIA, which had paid him handsomely to fake it so that he could later pretend to “recover” and the U.S. medical establishment could take credit for having developed such effective HIV treatments. As evidence, he noted that Johnson was inexplicably worth over a billion dollars. I debated with him about this for an hour. I’m not too bothered by my five-year prison sentence, as it will be neat to get out when it’s over and see to what extent video game graphics have improved while I was away, but I sure would like to get back the hour I spent arguing about Magic Johnson’s HIV status with the fucking Lunch Money Bandit.
***
The other day I was woken up at 4:30 am, escorted to a small, bare room, strip-searched, put in handcuffs and leg shackles, had a heavy chain wrapped around my midsection, and placed in the back of a dark and cage-lined van that looked like something from one of those Saw movies. But this was good news. It meant that, having recently gotten my ludicrous sentence, I’d now been “designated.” A crack team of specially trained federal prison picker-outers had chosen a facility for me. I was now to begin the multi-stage pilgrimage to the particular compound where I’ll be spending the next one to two years, depending on whether I get into any further trouble (so, two years).
For the majority of federal defendants, this Prisoner’s Progress, as I’m pleased to call it, entails “catching chain,” or being put on the weekly prison bus and taken to the federal inmate processing facility in Oklahoma, where the federal government has been sending its victims since the Trail of Tears. They’ll spend a week or so there before being shipped in turn to their designated prison. Prisons being far more humane than the amusingly horrid little detention centers where most inmates facing charges are kept until they inevitably give in and plea to a crime, this journey is viewed with fond anticipation by federal prisoners, who thus constitute the only population in human history among which it is common to be excited about the prospect of going to Oklahoma.
As for me, I’d rather rip off my own balls and mail them to Stratfor as restitution than set foot in a third-rate state like Oklahoma, regardless of what wonders may lie at the end of that particular rainbow, so it’s a fine thing that I was just going down the road to the Fort Worth Federal Correctional Institution, which will be my home for the next, er, two years. I know little of Fort Worth other than that it’s a lawless haven for half-caste Indian fighters and shiftless part-time cowhands looking to blow their greenbacks and Comanche scalps at one of the town’s countless Chinese-run opium dens, nor am I bothered by the possibility that what little I do know about the town may be 130 years out of date and racist. But I specifically requested that I be sent to this benighted city’s federal prison. For one thing, I’d already “toured the campus,” as it were, shortly after my arrest, when I spent two months at FCI Fort Worth’s jail unit so that the resident psychologists could subject me to a competency evaluation. (Based on their report, Judge Sam Lindsay declared me competent to participate in a trial, which is more than I can say for Judge Sam Lindsay.)
Fort Worth is also the only federal prison aside from FCI Seagoville that’s located near Dallas, and I’m pretty sure I’m still banned from that one, as noted in a prior column, and naturally I want to be close to my parents so that they can visit me with some regularity. My mom, a writer and editor and former flight attendant and South Texas beauty queen who once took me on a vacation to see a swimming pig at a place called Aquarena Springs, is a valuable fountainhead of media gossip, including which outlets are currently going down in flames (The New Republic, as it turns out), and always makes sure to let me know whether and to what extent my haircut is inadequate. Sometimes, if I happen to have a pimple, she insists on popping it right then and there in the visiting room, right in front of the other criminals. Note that I am 33 years old and, arguably, a hardened convict.
Likewise, my dad is my chief source of information regarding plot developments in what I gather to be a popular television program called The Blacklist, new episodes of which he details to me at great length at every opportunity, although I have never asked him for these reports or expressed any interest in the show whatsoever. Incidentally, when I was a kid, he took me on five different occasions to see a film called Hard Target in which the protagonist, ably portrayed by Jean Claude van Damme, finds himself hunted for sport by a wealthy fellow and his mercenary squad of professional trackers, all of whom he ends up killing in turn. My dad also gave me a promotional poster for this movie and, for years afterward, would turn to me and solemnly proclaim the film’s tagline, “Don’t hunt what you can’t kill,” which I suppose is as good advice as any.
Last time he came for a visit, he began to relate to me, apropos of nothing, the nature and potential killing power of some sort of subterranean supervolcano located at Yellowstone and the general circumstances under which it will someday explode and kill a great majority of North Americans, an event which he prophesied with obvious relish. It’s not that he’s one of those ecological mystics who despise humanity and long to see Mother Earth fight back against the ravages of industrial sentience or some such irritating thing. Quite the contrary. In my younger days, he would often drag me around East Texas and command me to assassinate deer and wild boars with rifles he would supply for the purpose, even though I had no ideological differences with any of these animals, and one time, when I was 17, he took me to East Africa to help him exploit the resident natural resources alongside a group of ex-military adventurers with whom we had somehow managed to attach ourselves (this expedition failed rather spectacularly), and lately he seems to have gotten involved in fracking. So he’s certainly no partisan of Nature. It’s just that he’s fond of power in its rawest forms, and if he smiles at the prospect of 400 million deaths, it is only because he feels that man is insufficiently reverent of this particular supervolcano, this god-made-manifest, which therefore has no choice but to lash out against us as punishment. He’s also a longtime pillar of the Dallas Safari Club and on at least one occasion of which I am aware was literally almost eaten by a lion. I could go on and on. Thankfully my parents are divorced, and so I usually only have to deal with these hyperactive Southern Gothic archetypes one at a time these days. Occasionally, though, they set aside their differences in order to come harass me together, and I eventually emerge from the visitation room looking haunted.
I wasn’t taken straight to Fort Worth from Kaufman County, as that would be too quick and easy and cost effective, the prison being less than a half-hour’s drive away; rather, I was taken to the federal courthouse in downtown Dallas to wait for another ride to the Mansfield jail, where I’d already spent much of 2013, and from which I’d eventually be taken to Fort Worth next time a U.S. Marshal happened to be going in that general direction. At the end of the day’s no doubt majestic federal court proceedings, I was placed back in the chew-your-arm-off-and-only-then-shall-I-give-you-the-key van for the ride over to Mansfield. In the rusty cage next to mine were two girls, shackled like I was, who had been to court that afternoon. One had been crying; she’d just been sentenced to eight years for conspiracy to distribute marijuana despite having originally been given reason to expect considerably less time, as she’d cooperated with the FBI. The agents had clearly found her testimony helpful, as they’d met with her a second time, but nonetheless they’d neglected to ask the judge for the sentence reduction they’d promised her in exchange. Like most drug dealers, this girl was in the habit of making and keeping bargains on the strength of her word and expected others to do likewise, but then she’d never dealt with the FBI before.
Just as she finished sobbing out her story, something rather incredible happened: the U.S. Marshal who was driving us back to the jail, having been listening to this account, apparently decided that he was sick of serving as another cog in a fascist system that literally places females in chains and ruins their lives over consensual non-crimes like selling marijuana, because he pulled over, stepped out of the van, came around the back, unlocked the girl’s cage, removed her chains and leg irons and handcuffs, gave her all the cash he had on him, kissed her on the forehead, and advised her to hitchhike to Mexico and then catch a flight to Europe, where she’d have another chance at life, far away from the all-seeing state that had sought to deprive her of her youth and freedom.
Just kidding. Actually he drove us to the jail while the girl cried in her cage.
***
Quote of the Day:
“Truth does not often escape from palaces.” —William Durant
***
Editor’s note: Barrett Brown has been incarcerated since September 2012. Go here to read earlier installments of “The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail.” If you’d like to send him a book, here’s his Amazon wish list.
Barrett Brown #45047-177 FCI Fort Worth P.O. Box 15330 Fort Worth, TX 76119
Real or imagined- reasonable or grandiose, I think we can all agree that things that Barrett Brown has recently said leading to his recent arrest and indictment were on the solid side of stupid. People who hate him figured it was about time they nailed him on something, and people who… don’t hate him as much… have defended him under the banner of “Freedom of Speech” and pointed to his claims of being harassed and goaded by the FBI and alleged informants, which, according to Brown, have included the Feds threatening to arrest his mother who he said has had nothing to do with his Anonymous hactivism and crowd-source-style-journalism ProjectPM activities.
As I mentioned in my previous post about the Kelly Thomas killing, the functions and execution of government powers and the legal system are by default biased heavily in favor of the powers that be and such powers have great potential to be, and many times have proven to be, corrupt as hell. That said, before we all collectively tell Barrett Brown to shut up regardless of whether such a pleading would tip a hat to his right to free speech, I think it is fair to acknowledge that Brown’s paranoid ramblings and associated “threats” may have been his only recourse to defend himself from the fears he professed were true: Agent Robert Smith is corrupt; the FBI is corrupt; the Zetas are out to get him; the FBI is in on it with the Zetas; and if armed men charged in on his home, Brown would feel justified in assuming it was a Zeta assassination attempt coordinated in conjunction with the FBI.
…THAT said, and in addition to Brown’s own confession of heroin addiction and issues with Suboxone withdrawal at and around the time of the “threats” and other tweets listed in the indictment, I think we can at least give the government credit for allowing a mental competence hearing for Brown before the trial against him proceeds. This should especially be appreciated by Constitution enthusiasts as the evidence of actus reus of Brown’s alleged crimes primarily revolves around a combination of arguably- and absolutely- protected speech.
As for that “conspiracy” charge? Well, look at the indictment: he was soliciting others to find “Restricted” information on Agent Robert Smith, which has been dubbed a “conspiracy” due to another’s attempt to find such “RESTRICTED” information with what is only described as an “Internet search”. Because you know, when I want to get down and dirty on a Federal Agent’s RESTRICED information, forget unauthorized access to a security clearance-protected Federal Database, I’m all about the old-fashioned Google stalk. For this charge, maybe we should give the FBI a mental competency hearing while we’re at it….
If you haven’t taken a peek at the Federal indictment against Barrett Lancaster Brown, I implore you to do so. Then, I invite you on a First Amendment adventure where I explain to you why we should all be offended and worried by the United States’ Prosecutor’s attack on our Right to Speech. The tale I shall tell will not necessarily defend Brown completely or successfully, but it will point out the fallacy of this indictment against him, which is supposed to contain “essential facts of the case”, but really just reveals the Government’s fear of our right to voice dissent and grievance against them.
Join me…
Count 1: Knowingly and Willfully transmitting in interstate commerce communications containing threats to injure the person of another. 18 USC Section 875(c).
While Brown does make vague and conditional threats against others such as @AsherahResearch and @_Dantalion, the indictment count doesn’t seem to care much about them, citing only “threatening to shoot and injure agents of the FBI” – specifically Robert Smith.
So let’s take a look at the first few useless items in this indictment:
Item 5) f. is a conditional threat made on Brown’s twitter against twitter user @_Dantalion in which Brown warns he will shoot if @_Dantalion comes near Brown’s home in Texas. Brown adds that such an act of self-defense of self and property is legal. Which it is. When I went to check @_Dantalion’s profile on October 5, 2012, on of the first tweets I came across was @_Dantalion explaining to another twitter user, “I am not an FBI agent”. So Brown made a conditional threat, the condition being an act that would trigger a legal right to defend oneself, against someone who is not an FBI agent. This cited evidence in the indictment does not lend to Count 1. At all.
Something I will say now that will apply across all of my arguments is that my belief, which may or may not be held up in a criminal law context in court, is that a threat that is not imminent does not constitute Assault. I base this on my understanding of the civil Tort offense of Assault which defines the intent behind Assault as an intention to cause imminent harm or apprehension of imminent harm. The above conditional threat Brown made to @_Dantalion does not detail imminence, and, as you will see as this story unravels, NONE of the threats made by Brown were imminent. Moving on…
Item 8) c. Is a vague, conditional threat toward renowned Anonymous foe, @AsherahResearch. Talk about my momma again and “see what happens”. So… what’s gonna happen? And what is it about this tweet that implies or infers the requisite intent for a threat against an FBI agent?
More importantly, why doesn’t Count 1 even mention that people who were not FBI agents were also “threatened”? Poor Dantalion and Asherah.
Where Brown is in trouble on Count 1, albeit with room for a defense, are items 12) c. and d.
The Greatest Incriminating Hits from the infamous “last video” by a disheveled, suboxone-withdrawn Brown include “Robert Smith’s life is over”, “I’m gonna look into his kids”, and “I will shoot and kill [the FBI] if they come.”
This is where we should all yell a hearty “Shut up, Barrett Brown” in the general direction of Texas. Don’t threaten a federal law enforcement agent, you guys. It’s enumerated in a Federal statute and is one of the few types of threats out there that does not need to be imminent to be illegal. It is contingent upon whether the threat is made in regards to LE carrying out their official duties.
But there is still a defense. Maybe. The “threats” regarding Robert Smith and his kids aren’t threats of injury. Brown even states “By ruin his life, I don’t mean kill him”. As for shooting and killing the FBI? I point to the “knowingly” sub-element of intent for this particular statute. The threat is conditional on whether or not the FBI comes. Brown never indicates that he knows the FBI is coming. He says in the item 12. video that the FBI has held onto his seized computers for months and has yet to allege Brown of a crime based on the evidence from a previous raid. In fact, as the worst evidence against Brown is this singular video, the FBI probably didn’t even know whether or not they were going to raid Brown at the time that this conditional threat was made. Admittedly, this is a tight defense to make, but I will come back to it for Count 3.
Further defense? Mental and emotional instability: persisting paranoia issues plus suboxone withdrawal. Although a finding of Brown’s allegation of FBI corruption would probably not happen, there is a question of self-defense. And if there was no real reason for self-defense, see: delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecutions, paranoid psychosis. In other words, possible insanity defense (and the thresholds for the insanity defense may be lowered when there was no action taken beyond speech).
Count 2: knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with other persons known and unknown to Grand Jury … to make restricted personal information about an FBI agent and immediately family publicly available with intent to threaten and intimidate the agent and to incite commission of violence against the agent. 18 USC Section 371 and 18 USC Section 119.
…How much more element-loaded can a charge get?
The “with intent” and the all-elements-must-be-fulfilled-indicative “and” ‘s of the latter part of this Statute combo are hard for the Government to corroborate with the facts of this indictment. They’re doing pretty good up to “incite commission of violence against” Robert Smith. We’ve got solicitation which, upon the cited agreement Brown made with another to gather Smith’s personal information, merges into conspiracy. We have immediate family members. We have intent to threaten and intimidate. But incite violence? That’s where the prosecution stretches it. Look through the indictment closely, and there is never a threat or suggestion of committing violence against Smith. Only the hypothetical FBI raiders, generally.
But I think this Count specifically is why the indictment tries to pancake all of Brown’s tweets together. Actually, the majority of this indictment is an attempt to build a criminal, violence-inciting profile of Brown out of several non-criminal tweets. This compilation is why I say we should be afraid for our Right to Speech.
It is clear in several tweets, that Brown is soliciting and possibly conspiring to gather restricted information on Robert Smith for the purpose of publicly releasing it. None of these tweets suggest violence toward Smith.
Non-exhaustively: 6) a. 8) a., 11, and 13. Although it legally doesn’t matter for conspiracy, it should be noted that no evidence is listed in the indictment that Brown succeeded in obtaining the sought restricted information on Smith.
One memorable case from my Criminal Law class (at the moment I cannot find the case, but will likely come back to revise this paragraph when I find it) is a case where a drunk driver was acquitted on appeal because evidence levied against him included, basically, pro-drinking propaganda bumper stickers the driver had. These bumper stickers were used as evidence toward the defendant’s intent. It simply didn’t work. Pro-drinking speech didn’t help the prosecutors in adding to the defendant’s intent for criminal drunken behavior. Similarly to this decision, I argue anti-government speech not directly associated with the accused behavior for the alleged crime of conspiracy shouldn’t lend to intent for the conspiracy.
In fact, this is nearly exactly what was held in California State Appellate courts in People v. Huss regarding the instruction of including picketing sign slogans as evidence for conspiracy to incite a riot as being an invalid, unconstitutional instruction. 241. Cal.App.2d 361. Although a California Appellate court decision doesn’t serve as precedent over the Federal District Court that Brown will face trial in, Huss borrows its reasoning from Federal Supreme Court case Terminiello v. City of Chicago. 337 U.S. 1. (How do you like them apples?)
…which should also hold for the next count…
Count 3: knowingly and willfully threaten to assault a federal law enforcement officer with intent to impede, intimidate, and interfere with such federal law enforcement while engaged in the performance of official duties and with the intent to retaliate against such federal law enforcement officers on account of performance of official duties. 18 USC Sections 115 (a)(1)(B) and (b)(4).
…and some of my favorite highlights of the Free Speech-protected tweets that shouldn’t lend to the intent of Counts 2 and 3 are…
2) c. “Do you know how to shoot? You have five years to learn. Maybe less.” Links to a short video of Brown doing some shotgun practice in an open field.
My assumption for this tweet is that in saying “You have five years to learn” how to shoot is a reference to a conspiracy such as FEMA camps where conspiracy theorists believe the government will raid us all and send us to “FEMA concentration camps”. Or something like that. But isn’t self-defense against a corrupt government the heart and soul of the Second Amendment? Otherwise, there is no specific (or even general) mentioned target for the suggested self-defense nor is there an imminence of the assumed threat posed by Brown’s pro-arms propaganda.
3) a. “Kids! Overthrow your government lol” Link? Get this- the link is to a Blondie music video, “Rapture”. A political satire on how the government and media has zombified us all. OH NOES! DISSENT AND GRIEVANCE!
The tweet itself reeks of satire. See: “Kids!” and “lol”. Before heading to the music video link, I thought maybe the link would lead me to something that would really rile me up with a fervent violent fire if I were susceptible to do so. Maybe a conspiracy theory that pulled at revolutionary heart strings? Maybe excerpts from the Anarchists’ Cookbook?
No. It’s a Blondie music video. Not exactly speaking to an incitement of violence nor an intent to retaliate against a raid.
Similar anti-government, pro-self-defense-against-a-corrupt-government comments include “Don’t Wait. Retaliate.” and 10) b.’s vague threat by Brown that he will use “other means at [his] disposal” to ‘wipe out the government’… the “wiping out” he promises to do includes more specific, non-violent threats of using courts, media, and his investigative journalism at ProjectPM.
And 2) e. “Have a plan to kill every government you meet.” in which there is no specific or general threat to any human being, but an abstract entity and with such an abstract entity being the object of the threat, “kill” could be interpreted as a non-violent version of the verb such as “stop” or “get rid of”.
Moving on…
The not-physical, non-injurious, cyber threats….
5) a. “…the net will give us revenge.”
5) c. “Nothing restrains me from my real work. #ProjectPM”
5) e. “Help #ProjectPM plan, execute further attacks … #PantherModerns”
For the record, the Panther Moderns are a FICTIONAL hacking group from the work “Neuromancer” who simulated a CYBER terrorist attack on a media conglomerate called “Sense/Net”
The ReTweeted threat that is actually a threat to himself:
7) “A dead man can’t leak stuff… Illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” Brown is comparing himself to the object and victim of this retweeted threat, Julian Assange. The presumed subject of the tweet instructed to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch” would be a LE officer who should act as a due process-depriving judge jury and executioner for Assange (comparatively, Brown).
Well, at least they’re giving Brown due process so far…
Not even threats and I don’t even know why they were included in the indictment:
2) a. “Don’t be a pussy. Call up every fascist and tell them you’re watching.” Links to a weird music remix featuring harmless sound clips that include Brown.
5) b.: “Fuck you.” -directed at the feds for apparently depriving Brown of his opiates, somehow.
5) d. “Journalists allow the guilty to escape. #ProjectPM ensures the guilty will be known to their children as they are, forever.
10) a. “This is part two of why I’m so fucking angry.” BB mad.
Here, I’ll repeat my defense for Brown’s intent. Knowledge is requisite for Count 3. Brown did not know that the FBI would raid him and his threat was contingent on a raid that he wasn’t even certain would occur based on a lack of the FBI’s ability to charge him with anything from the first raid of Brown.
And once again: insanity or diminished mental capacity due to Suboxone withdrawal. The worst and most incriminating of Brown’s threats from item 12 were coupled with Brown’s admission that he was a Heroin addict and hadn’t taken his Suboxone. In addition, Brown thinks he’s entitled to get his stuff back from the first raid months ago where the FBI took and held his computers. (Non-exhaustively: Items 8) b and 2, 10) b.) He also thinks he deserves an apology [10) b.]. Grandiose and possibly delusional. I almost wonder why the FBI didn’t go for a discrediting involuntary psych ward hold.
Or you know, just give him his stuff back, which as we are learning from recent developments in the PayPal 14 case, he may have very well had the right to after 60 days of the FBI holding it. (But I think feeling entitled to an apology is still a bit delusional.)
In Conclusion…
With and indictment riddled with constitutionally-protected speech, my fear is that the US Prosecutors and FBI wanted to put an attack on anti-government dissent and critique at the forefront of this issue. They wanted to scare us all into shutting up and watching what we say when it comes to speculating government conspiracies and suggesting we consider the possibility of an increasingly corrupt government and promote the intention behind the Second Amendment which is to protect ourselves from a worst-case scenario resulting from such corruption.
Watch your televisions. Click on those targeted advertisements tailored by our tracking of your Google searches. Did somebody tell you that non-violent protesters were beat and shot at by Riot Cops? Don’t worry. We did it for National Security reasons. And don’t mind the surveillance cameras in every retail store and on every street corner. They’re just livestreaming and storing your every move for TrapWire.
How do you make matters worse for an elusive intelligence company that has been forced to scramble for explanations about their ownership of an intricate, widespread surveillance program? Just ask Cubic, whose troubles only begin with TrapWire.
Days after the international intelligence gathering surveillance system called TrapWire was unraveled by RT, an ongoing investigation into any and all entities with ties to the technology has unturned an ever-increasing toll of creepy truths. In only the latest installment of the quickly snowballing TrapWire saga, a company that shares several of the same board members as the secret spy system has been linked to a program called Tartan, which aims to track down alleged anarchists by specifically singling out Occupy Wall Street protesters and the publically funded media — all with the aid of federal agents.
Tartan, a product of the Ntrepid Corporation, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, un-biased output,” its website claims. “Our analysts, mathematicians and computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification, mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze social networks.” In order to prove as such, their official website links to the executive summary of a case study dated this year that examines social network connections among so-called anarchists, supposedly locating hidden ties within an underground movement that was anchored on political activists and even the Public Broadcasting Station [.pdf].
“Tartan was used to reveal a hidden network of relationships among anarchist leaders of seemingly unrelated movements,” the website claims. “The study exposed the affiliations within this network that facilitate the viral spread of violent and illegal tactics to the broader protest movement in the United States.”
Tartan is advertised on their site as a must-have application for the national security sector, politicians and federal law enforcement, and makes a case by claiming that “an amorphous network of anarchist and protest groups,” made up of Occupy Oakland, PBS, Citizen Radio, Crimethinc and others, relies on “influential leaders,” “modern technology” and “illegal tactics” to spread a message of anarchy across America.
“The organizers of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC have built Occupy networks through online communication with anarchists actively participating in the movements’ founding,” the executive summary reads. On the chart that accompanies their claim, the group lists several political activism groups and broadcast networks within a ring of alleged anarchy, which also includes an unnamed FBI informant.
Although emails uncovered in a hack last year waged at Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, suggested that Occupy groups had been under private surveillance, the latest discovery of publically available information implies that the extent to which the monitoring of political activists on American soil occurred may have extended what was previously imagined.
Things don’t end there, though. While the TrapWire tale is still only just beginning, the Ntrepid Corporation made headlines last year after it was discovered by the Guardian that the company was orchestrating an “online persona management” program, a clever propaganda mill that was touted as a means “to influence regional and international audiences to achieve U.S. Central Command strategic objectives,” according, at least, to the Inspector General of the US Defense Department [.pdf]. The investigation eventually revealed that the US Central Command awarded Ntrepid $2.76 million worth of taxpayer dollars to create phony Internet “sock puppets” to propagate US support.
One year later, the merits of Tartan’s analytics are now being brought into question, but so are the rest of the company’s ties. A trove of research accumulated by RT, Project PM founder Barrett Brown, PrivacySOS.org and independent researchers Justin Ferguson and Asher Wolf, among others, has linked Tartan with an even more unsettling operation.
Margaret A. Lee of Northern Virginia is listed on several websites as serving on the Ntrepid board of directors as secretary, a position she held alongside Director Richard Helms, CFO Wesley R Husted and President Michael Martinka. And although several parties are going to great lengths to deny the ties, a paper trail directly links Lee and company to Abraxas — and thus Cubic — and, of course, TrapWire, the very surveillance system that is believed to be blanketing the United States.
According to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, TrapWire Inc. was registered to Margaret A Lee on March 7, 2009. Other publically available information reveals that, at least at one point, Wesley Husted served as chief financial officer for TrapWire, Inc., where Richard H Helms held the title of CEO.
Various sources have since claimed that Helms, a former CIA agent that once ran the agency’s European division, has severed ties with TrapWire, yet the other connections remain intact.
In RT’s earlier research in the TrapWire case, it was revealed that TrapWire’s parent company, Cubic Corporation, acquired an online identity masking tool called Anonymzer in a 2010 merger, and also controls the fare card system at some of the biggest public transportation systems in the world. According to the latest findings, Cubic’s control extends beyond just that, though. Under their Ntrepid branch, Cubic controlled an operation that spied on political activists with FBI informants and attempted to link them to crimes across America.
Whether or not the TrapWire system was implemented in such operations is unclear, and Cubic continues to maintain that they are not involved with the surveillance network.
Last week, Cubic Corporation issued a press release claiming, “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.”
“Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product,” the article reads. “The spinoff – called Abraxas Applications – will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance.”
Not only does a 2007 report in the Washington Business Journal insist that the companies are practically one in the same, though, but a 2006 article in the same paper reveals that Abraxas had just acquired software maker Dauntless. Researchers at Darkernet have since linked Lee, Husted and Helms to the Abraxas Dauntless Board of Directors as well.
Justin Ferguson, the researcher who first exposed TrapWire two weeks ago, has noted that Lee, Helms and Husted were listed on Abraxas Dauntless’ filings with Virginia as recently as December 2011. They also are all present on the TrapWire filings dated September 2011 and the latest annual filing made with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations on behalf of Ntrepid.
Nevertheless, in a conversation this week with Project PM’s Barrett Brown, Cubic Corp. Communication Director Tim Hall dismisses this tie again.
“There is no connection at all with Abraxas Applications and Trapwire and or Ntrepid,” Hall allegedly insists, according to audio uploaded to YouTube.
Brown, on his part, says he has obtained Cubic’s 2010 tax filings that show that Ntrepd, like Abraxas, is “wholly owned” by Cubic.
Other trademark information publically available online says that the Abraxas Corporation first filed to claim the name TrapWire in 2004 and was granted a license for such in January of 2007.
TrapWire Training Courses Reveal Possible Purpose for its Creation
Although certain people reportedly playing key roles in the web-like leadership structure of TrapWire deny their involvement with the massive surveillance system, there is evidence that the engine driving this global company runs on the ambition of a common core of officers and directors.
Given the potential flood of legal challenges to its constitutionality, the corporation believed to be behind TrapWire is heading for higher ground, denying any association with the surveillance technology.
In a statement published on its website on August 13, Cubic Corporation attempted to sever the ties binding it to TrapWire. “Cubic Corporation (NYSE: CUB) acquired Abraxas Corporation on December 20, 2010. Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc. Erroneous reports have linked the company with Trapwire, Inc.,” the company insisted.
Despite such denials, many are rightly worried about any corporate connection — no matter how tenuous — between Cubic and TrapWire given the former’s access to the personal data of Americans through its other corporate interests. The synergy of such access with a massive surveillance apparatus could threaten the privacy of millions, as well as the freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment.
As for the scope and significance of TrapWire, the size of it cannot be exaggerated.
TrapWire is a massive and technologically advanced surveillance system that has the capacity to keep nearly the entire population of this country under the watchful eye of government 24 hours a day. Using this network of cameras and other surveillance tools, the federal government is rapidly constructing an impenetrable, inescapable theater of surveillance, most of which is going unnoticed by Americans and unreported by the mainstream media.
Unlike other elements of the central government’s cybersurveillance program, word about TrapWire was not leaked by Obama administration insiders. The details of this nearly unbelievable surveillance scheme were made public by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group founded by Julian Assange. The TrapWire story percolated from the millions of e-mails from the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence-gathering firm Stratfor, published this year by WikiLeaks. Covering correspondence from mid-2004 to 2011, these documents expose Stratfor’s “web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods.”
This coterie of Stratfor co-conspirators is apparently angry about the leaks, considering that the WikiLeaks servers have been under near-constant Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks since the TrapWire revelations began attracting the notice of alternative journalists. Some outlets report that the cyberattacks are being carried out by agents of the American intelligence community determined to prevent the full depth of this scandal from being explored by reporters.
Exactly what is TrapWire? According to one description of the program, from Russia Today:
Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence.
Although many of the details remain undisclosed, it is known that the infrastructure of TrapWire was designed and deployed by Abraxas, an intelligence contractor based in northern Virginia headed and run by dozens of former American surveillance officers. As one article described it: “The employee roster at Abraxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.”
The network is believed to be immense. An article published by transparency advocacy group Public Intelligence claims that Stratfor e-mails suggest that TrapWire is in use by the U.S. Secret Service, the British security service MI5, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as counterterrorism divisions in both the Los Angeles and New York Police Departments and the LA fusion center. The e-mails also suggest that TrapWire is in use at military bases around the country. A July 2011 e-mail from a “Burton” to others at Stratfor describes how the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Pentagon have all begun using TrapWire and are “on the system now.” Burton described the Navy as the “next on the list.”
A survey of WikiLeaks e-mails containing information about TrapWire reveals another facet of this ever-expanding tool for tracking and targeting individuals.
The first course listed in the darkernet article is called the Surveillance Awareness Workshop. This class is reportedly “designed to instruct network and security personnel to use and navigate the TrapWire software system to familiarize themselves with the indicators of surveillance, terrorist surveillance methodologies, facility vulnerabilities, and the identification of probable surveillance zones that exist within each facility.”
The goal is that those with their fingers on the buttons and eyes on the consoles will learn to “view their facility the same way as would a terrorist, and then to be alert to the indicators of pre-attack surveillance.”
Pre-attack is a statist way of saying “guilty until proven innocent.” These agents — typically law enforcement or federal intelligence officers — reportedly will learn to spot suspicious behavior that points to the target’s propensity for participation in illegal activities.
This sort of advance profiling is eerily similar to the philosophy undergirding the signature strike that is becoming the go-to tactic in the Obama administration’s drone war.
A signature strike is not a strike on a particular suspect, but rather an attack on a person or group of people demonstrating behavior that is typical of those who might be associated with terror.
Perhaps the TrapWire “pre-attack surveillance” and the drone war “signature strike” are just two identifiable examples of a wider, more insidious government movement toward a society where one can be found guilty in advance of any crime based solely on one’s likelihood to act unlawfully and then be summarily executed based on that probability alone.
The second class offered by the makers of TrapWire according to the Internet investigation is designed along similar lines. It is called the Terrorist Pre-Attack Operations Course (TPOC).
Darkernet reports that participation in TPOC “will enhance overall security awareness and improve participants’ understanding of terrorist and criminal pre-attack surveillance and intelligence collection operations.”
Once again, the watchers are taught to better understand “terrorists” and what behavior they display just prior to the commission of a crime.
Unlike actual laws, these technologies and the courses improving their capabilities in the hands of users do not offer definitions of “terrorist” or “criminal.” One is left to one’s own understanding, it would seem, in the matter of conceiving of who is and is not a terrorist.
Today, the typical target might be a Muslim seen frequenting a subway station, for example. However, as the gulf separating the rulers and the ruled widens, perhaps a future TrapWire operator will target a gun-owner or attendant at a rally opposing a government policy as a potential threat and will initiate the requisite “intelligence collection operations.” The end result of those operations may be indefinite detention or death by Hellfire missile.
Finally, the last class listed in the darkernet article is called the Deception Detection and Eliciting Responses (DDER) course. This class will “teach students to detect deception and elicit responses in individuals including those which have been identified by TrapWire as having been engaged in suspicious behavior.”
So, once the target’s image pops up on one of the myriad cameras tracking the movements of every citizen (all are targets and potential terrorists, apparently) and the intelligence officers are called in to begin building a dossier on the target, the responding agents will use their newly-acquired interrogation skills to get the truth out of the target. “We have ways of making you talk,” in other words.
Given the aversion of the wizards running the surveillance state to allowing the curtain to be pulled back exposing the incredible extent of its domestic surveillance activities, it is more likely than not that TrapWire’s use in the tracking of Americans is wider and more institutional than most of us would like to believe.
A link to a complete listing of all TrapWire courses and the associated material is found here.
It is hard for me to express how much I appreciate your letter, which is the first I have received here, along with the support I’ve reportedly gotten from others so far. Before I forget, let me request that you also send a tweet of support to Jenna, @ElviraXMontana on Twitter; as my girlfriend, she had to watch as the FBI crushed my ribs (which I believe will be healed in time even if I’ve had trouble acquiring medical attention due to me under Geneva; put in formal request for X-ray last night here at Mansfield, whereas last week at Lew Sterrett I was sent to medic by an officer Tamer before being instead re-directed to what is intended as a temporary holding cell for those about to be released on bond, this change of plan being instigated by an officer Roeun (sic?) whom I have since reported to the proper authorities. Despite my having explained her mistake politely twice over the course of the next seven hours, and despite my condition having been serious enough to have prompted other inmates to suggest I check for internal bleeding, I was screamed at and then later simply ordered to lay down, all of which was witnessed by two other inmates, one of whom promised to inform Tim Rogers of D Magazine that I was potentially dying and needed intervention ASAP as soon as he himself was released a few minutes hence (again, this was the temporary outgoing holding cell, not meant for housing inmates for anything longer than an hour or so as their bond is processed; as such, I was not fed, either, much less given my medication, suboxone. Note that none of the treatment I received at Lou Sterrit had anything to do with who I am or what I am accused of, – it is simply the natural result of the inhumane and degenerate mentality found within the Texas “corrections” system, something I first described in a 2005 article for Towards Freedom. It is something we will have to address more firmly over the coming years, just as we have addressed North Africa and the intelligence contracting industry since late 2010. And I note all of this not merely to complain—although to complain is among the few vices I have been left aside from bragging to my fellow inmates – but to illustrate the fundamental problem that so many of us have sacrificed or risked to combat. This problem, which even Richard Nixon recognized and spoke about on that famed evening at the Lincoln Memorial, is that a republic built with the blood of giants has since become a “wild animal.” – one that now feeds upon us all.
I try to avoid metaphors, which can illuminate but in practice are too often used to obscure. Like many aspects of language, the false metaphor kills and enslaves. And at any rate, there will be time to discuss these broader issues later. For now, I must ask you to publish this on pastebin, Anonpaste, piratepad.de, and all other available venues, and that you also send it to some of the journalists that have been kind enough to follow my work as well as the consequences thereof, particularly my friend Michael Hastings, Barry Eisler, Michael Riley (Bloomberg), Ryan Gallagher (Guardian), and Josh at Daily Caller (forgot his last name) – plus the former editor of The Yemen Times who’s now at Global Times or some such and who, along with a certain Washington Times correspondent known to Gregg Housh, plus one or two others that I know of, who are now looking into Romas/COIN due in part to my release of the NYT e-mails earlier this month. Along with others in both the mainstream and independent media, these are most likely to report accurately on this matter. Having been mischaracterized at least a hundred times by “professional” journalists since I first appeared on Fox News in January 2009 to denounce Obama’s association with the goofy fascist Rick Warren – and was introduced as being spokesman for the non-existent “American Atheist Society” rather than GAMPAC. This would be a good time to note, particularly for the benefit of certain journalists, that I am not and never have been the spokesman for Anonymous, nor its “public face” or, worse, “self-proclaimed” “face” or “spokesperson” or “leader” (as the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe called me last year when I felt compelled to “quit” the non-group that I’d never technically joined in the first place, but rather gradually attached myself to as Wikileaks and Tunisia went down in December of 2010). Anyone who cares to learn what happens to a person who decides to help deal with such issues at the request and with the knowledge of active Anons can search my name in conjunction with those terms, and then see the article “Barrett Brown is Anonymous” from April 2011 in which I explain clearly, as I have countless times since, that no one has the authority to designate me as such. It is known to some of those who worked out of Anonops or were otherwise particularly active in the beginning of 2011 that I wrote or edited a number of the press releases of that time, and that the al-Jazeera article written in the first few days of January and which appeared later that month under the title “Anonymous and the Global Correction” was also my work – something I revealed privately to the brilliant cyberpunk essayist Bruce Sterling after he openly speculated as to the author’s background in Wired, noting the sentiments to be that of a true revolutionary. Among those who now agree with him are the FBI, which has since responded accordingly – and unethically.
Contrary to the countless claims to the effect that I hold some official role in Anonymous, I can think of only one occasion in which any Anon has come close to actually deeming me as such, that being the day on which HBGary was hacked in retaliation for HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Baar’s claim – shown to be entirely false – that he had identified Anon’s “lieutenants” and “co-founder” and that he had been contacted by the FBI about this. In fact, he had conflated three different people including a professional gardener and, as shown in the notes Anon released along with the e-mails taken from HBGary Federal, had made a huge number of additional mistakes – something since confirmed by everyone concerned including Barr himself. (That the Financial Times writer who had bought Barr’s self-promotion would again essay to write about Anonymous months later, this time taking the claims of a Dutch kid at face value in the course of “reporting” various negative things about how the movement operates, is only one of numerous bizarre and depressing twists to this story; I myself would later encounter him on Canada television as a panelist during a discussion in which he accused Anon of being particularly anti-“American interest”, to which I responded that it is difficult to avoid stepping on the empire’s toes when one assists North Africans in fighting off dictatorships that the US has supported for years.) (Oh snap!) On that day, as recorded on pastebin from the discussion on the #OPHBGary channel at Anonops, I was referred to in passing as “our public face” to a journalist. I was on the phone to HBGary President Penny Hoglund at the time, apologizing that HBGary’s e-mails had been seized by Sabu in addition to HBGary Federal’s, instructing her on how to get on IRC in order to make her case directly to the hackers, and promising to remove the link I had put up to the 70,000 e-mails acquired in the operation, a link I had placed upon a Daily Kos post put up to explain the situation to the great many who would miss the “makeover” done to HBGary.com. Had I known that Penny was lying to me about what she and husband Greg Hoglund had known about Barr’s irresponsible attempt to save his own career at the expense of the innocent and heroic alike, I would have simply hung up. Instead, I was polite – but I recorded the call, just as I recorded the next call with Barr, the next call with HBGary exec Jim Butterworth, and finally the drunken call I received months later from Greg Hoglund himself. “Trust but verify,” as Reagan said in the context of a different set of villains.
With the exception of the ten minute convo I released between myself and Aaron Barr, all of the other recordings – and plenty of others – are in the possession of the FBI, which raided my apartment as well as my mother’s home on March 6th. For more on those events, as well as the criminal conspiracy to which I have been subjected by elements of the FBI, HBGary, and paid informant/contractor Jennifer Emick (among other parties both known and undiscovered), please see the last 3 videos I uploaded to my YouTube account, as well as documents I linked to on my Twitter account @BarrettBrownLOL in the final days before my most recent (and dramatic!) arrest. Not everything is released; I was interrupted by armed, mediocre federal agents and DPD officers (“No complicity in assassination of a chief executive since 1963!”) before I could finish making my case, which was to be done over several days before the entirety would be sent to the FBI and the judge who signed my March search warrant. This was to be followed by the instigation of a civil suit against HBGary and other parties to be named in the next 2 months. My plan has been disrupted – plans often are, as history tells us – but it has not been rendered obsolete. It will evolve, just as ProjectPM itself has evolved steadily since 2009, when this war became evident to me, when I first realized that my future as a political satirist would have to be abandoned in favor of this dirty, grueling struggle.
But why was I arrested this time? I would love to tell you. But the prosecution wouldn’t like that. I, and everyone else in the court room, were ordered to refrain from discussing the complaint, affidavits, and warrant, all of which are sealed at the request of the author, one FBI special agent whom I shall not name lest I give him cause for fright (or pretend fright – I am allegedly a danger to one especially skittish special agent whom I shall be careful not to name again until such time as I am prepared to list him in the civil suit I’ve been preparing for weeks now). Frankly, I do not blame this other special agent for requesting that the document be sealed – if I had written something of such low quality and demonstrable untruth, I would burn it and ask forgiveness of every deity invented by man and the higher apes/dolphins/whales. Likewise, if I were the US attorney who signed the Motion for Detention dated September 13 2012 – the document that, after having been approved by Judge Paul D. Stickney, ensured I would not only be prevented from discussing what I’m being accused of but also made a prisoner of the state until such time as a trial or some such can be concocted out of the jurisprudential magick I struggle to follow, in my innocence. Apparently I am not just a danger to the fragile FBI agents who have taken to threatening my mother and fracturing my ribs in the course of heavily-armed raids on my uptown Dallas apartment, but must be prevented from explaining to my associates, followers, and even enemies why I have again been subjected to violence and indignity.
I explained the first raid against me (March 6th, 6:30 a.m. CST) and the second against my mother (about six hours later) in several pastebin messages at that time. It was not until 2 months ago that I learned how a judge had been tricked into permitting this raid on me – how the disgraced contracting firm HBGary hired the paid FBI informant Jennifer Emick to, in their words, “find something to get [me] picked up on,” even as this bizarre former Anon made public accusations against me under both her real name and her adopted contractor persona: “FakeGreggHoush” on Twitter (now “AsherahResearch”) and Asherah on IRC – particularly the 2600 server where she frequented the #jester channel alongside various ex-military men and current “security’ contractors who all found themselves inclined to associate with the admitted criminal hacker th3J35T3R, one of several parties who have taken credit for DoS attacks on Wikileaks. I should not have to remind anyone that 40 U.S. homes were raided in January 2011 due to a similar but less effective series of DDoS attacks on Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon which were clearly an act of protest against an unprecedented economic blockade ordered by the U.S. regime. 14 of the “criminals” in question are being charged such that they face up to 15 years in prison. Thanks largely to Jay Leiderman the California attorney and John Penley the NYC activist and veteran, many of them are being represented for free. Likewise, I will seek and accept only pro bono assistance from this point on, though with the stipulation that I will pay any such lawyers what I can from the defense funds that have been set up for me thus far by well-wishers. As of this writing I dismiss Tom Mills, whom I retained for $3,500 after receiving bad advice from a well-meaning person. I will also expect that money returned within 60 days of the publication of this missive online (ProjectPM participants, please ensure that he receives this message, which I have also delivered through my mother – whom he falsely claimed to be representing on the matter of the FBI threats against her despite having been paid by me, not her). And as I had noted both publicly and privately earlier this month, I am still seeking additional attorneys with skill in civil litigation to pursue at least two suits I’ll be filing by the end of the year. Those interested may write to me at my new home, Some Jail in Texas. I am able to arrange for phone conversations with any applicants (or anyone else who is either especially interesting or who is able to accept a collect call or contribute $5 to my commissary/phone fund, that being the cost of a 15-minute call instigated by me). Anyone who writes me without us having been formerly introduced, I will guarantee a response if you send self-addressed stamped envelope. Also I believe that only mail with a return address will be delivered to me, though I’m not sure.
I hate that I have spent so much time in conflict over the past two years, and that so much of this has involved my fellow American citizens rather than the Middle Eastern dictators that I got involved in this to combat. I feel sorrow at the lost opportunities, and as for the way it has changed me as a person… I like to think that I am wiser and less naïve than I was, but I know too well how foolish and unsophisticated I was to begin with. I cannot excuse the mistakes I myself have made on both the strategic and tactical levels in my short career. I shudder when I look back on some of the things I wrote or said when I got my first real taste of power at the dawn of 2011, and I continue to bring shame upon myself and upon my family and work by some of the things I say even lately. In particular I have made comments about the U.S. military that I do not mean and which are obviously not entirely accurate. Along with other nonsense I have said, felt, written throughout my life, many of these things originate from my own fears and weaknesses. I am humiliated at not being able to protect my own mother from the FBI, or to shield my own girlfriend from watching heavily-armed men step on my spine as I scream in pain. I cannot forget how my mom cried on March 6th after the FBI had left with my equipment and hers, and how she whispered through tears that she wanted to be able to protect me from prison but couldn’t; I will never forget the look on Jenna’s face as the federal thugs swept through my efficiency apartment with guns drawn and safeties off, in search of hidden assailants and non-existent weapons. That these things are unjust and increasingly insane does not change the fact that they are the result of my own behavior, my own miscalculations, my own choices.
Having said that, I regret nothing. For the last week I was denied opiates and thus forced to feel not just rage, hatred, all the primal things, but forced to endure them while sicker than most humans can imagine and in a jail that is overcrowded and filled with common criminals. I have gained something extraordinary in that process, which ended this morning when I was given the first of 30 days of suboxone. I will personally thank everyone on the outside who has helped me and this movement particularly at this critical time, when I have regained the freedom that I did nothing to lose. For now, and until that time, it is war, on paper as always, but war.
Barrett Brown Founder ProjectPM Prisoner #35047177 Mansfield Law Enforcement Center 1601 Heritage Parkway Mansfield, TX 76063
Postscript-
[redacted], if you are able to relay this message to the Anons, my ProjectPM people, journalists, etc, you will have done me a finer deed than most men ever have occasion to do for another. I am transmitting a copy of this to another individual to ensure that the FBI does not manage to silence me on this (incidentally, the local jail here in Mansfield has proven to be run by honorable, trustworthy, even friendly people, but it is nonetheless subject to the Yankee boot (no offense)). Tell journalists, etc that they may contact [redacted]. My future and that of ProjectPM depends on you and a handful of others. Thank you for your loyalty at this time. Finally, please include this PS when forwarding and ask people to see my original search warrant as published on Buzzfeed a few months back. Echelon2.org is part of the key to this affair, but not all. More to be revealed when all is prepared. Good luck to you.
For the second time this year, self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown was raided by the FBI.
The latest dramatic incident occurred late Wednesday evening while Brown and another woman identified by some as his girlfriend were participating in an online chat on TinyChat with other individuals.
Two minutes into the recorded chat session, loud voices could be heard in the background of Brown’s residence in Texas while the woman in the room with him was in front of the computer screen. She quickly closed the computer screen, but the audio continued to capture events in the room as the FBI appeared to strong-arm Brown to put handcuffs on him. Brown could be heard yelling in the background.
A spokeswoman in the Dallas County sherriff’s office confirmed to Wired that Brown was raided last night and was booked into the county jail around 11 p.m. She said the FBI removed him from the jail this morning to take him to a different facility, but she did not know where he was headed.
California attorney Jay Leiderman, a member of Brown’s legal team, told Wired that Brown was scheduled to be arraigned today in Texas on making threats to a federal agent.
Asked if the FBI agents were aware that Brown was online at the time of their raid, Leiderman said, “They problaby would have preferred to raid him when he was not online.” He noted that the audio from the raid was “certainly less than flattering when they’re marching through these doors dropping F-bombs…. I imagine they would not want to have that captured if they could help it.”
A transcript of the TinyChat session has been posted online. Just moments before the arrest, there were jokes about whether one of the chat participants was real or just an animated GIF. Moments later, the chat participants faced a different conundrum: trying to figure out whether they’d just witnessed an FBI raid.
A voice that appeared to come from one of the arresting agents was heard saying something to the effect: “You’re going down! Get your hands down!”
Right as the noise began, another participant in the chat room showed up in a video window with a white handkerchief covering his lower face. “Is Barrett Browm getting fuckin’ raided by the FBI?” he appeared to say. “Holy shit!”
Brown’s latest raid came after he posted a long and rambling YouTube video in which he talked about taking drugs (though not today, he noted) and about retaliating against an FBI Agent named Robert Smith after he learned that his mother might be hit with obstruction of justice charges. The threat of charges was apparently related to a laptop of Brown’s that he apparently hid.
“So that’s why Robert Smith’s life is over,” Brown said in the video (beginning around minute 9:40). “When I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids. Because Aaron Barr did the same thing and he didn’t get raided for it. How do you like them apples?” he said, smiling.
The video, titled “Why I’m Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith Part Three: Revenge of the Lithe” was accompanied by a note apparently posted by Brown that reads: “Send all info on Agent Robert Smith to [email protected] so FBI can watch me look up his kids. It’s all legal, folks, Palantir chief counsel Matt Long already signed off on it when Themis planned worse.”
Brown also talked about being a target of the Zeta drug cartel and mentioned that he was heavily armed and was concerned that the cartel would come after him posed as federal officers.
“Any armed official of the U.S. government, particularly the FBI, will be regarded as potential Zeta assassin squads,” he said in the video. “As FBI knows … they know that I’m armed and I come from a military family and I was taught to shoot by a Vietnam veteran … and I will shoot all of them and kill them if they come and do anything…. I have reason to fear for my life.”
He signed off the video saying: “Frankly, it was pretty obvious I was going to be dead before I was 40 or so, so I wouldn’t mind going out with two FBI sidearms like a fucking Egyptian pharaoh. Adios.”
Asked about Brown’s comments, Leiderman said that he hadn’t seen the full video and wasn’t aware of everything Brown had said, but he noted that his client had a reputation for hyperbole and joking around, and that things he said might appear to be a threat when they weren’t really intended to be that way.
“It’s hard to understand the context [of what he said], Leiderman said. “But this is speech, so ordinarily we go to a First Amendment defense, but obviously there are lines that can be crossed where you can lose your First Amendment protection.”
An FBI spokeswoman had no comment to make on Brown’s arrest.
The Conspiracy driving Private Contractors, Private Security, and Privatized CyberSecurity. Major Players trying to remain Name-less. Government influence on outsourcing, etc.
The Feds raid the home of unofficial Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown.
They’re after his Twitter records, chat logs, IRC conversations, his computer, and apparently everything else, according to the search warrant obtained by BuzzFeed.
Last month, the FBI raided the Dallas home of Barrett Brown, the journalist and unofficial spokesperson for the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous.
According to the search warrant, the agents were after any information from Brown involving a “conspiracy to access without authorization computers,” one of three serious charges listed in the document.
The Feds seized Brown’s computer and cellphone, searched his parent’s home as well, and demanded his Twitter records, chat logs, IRC conversations, Pastebin info, all his Internet browsing activity, and almost any form of electronic communications Brown conducted.
The warrant, exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed, suggests the government is primarily after information related to Anonymous and the hacking group Lulzec.
The authorities also appear to be interested in info on two private intelligence contracting firms, HBGary and EndGame Systems, two companies Brown has frequently clashed with and criticized on a website he founded called Echelon2.
Brown, a 30 year old journalist who has written for Vanity Fair and the Guardian, is perhaps the most high profile target thus far in the FBI’s investigation into a series of hacks that have shaken the corporate and defense establishment.
Brown, currently at work on a book about Anonymous, believes he’s being wrongly investigated. “I haven’t been charged with anything at this point, although there’s a sealed affidavit to which neither I nor my attorney have access,” he emailed BuzzFeed. “I suspect that the FBI is working off of incorrect information.”
Qorvis Communications is a “Public Relations” / lobbying firm based in Washington, DC which specializes in representing high-profile overseas clients – including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei. They are fond of editing Wikipedia to make themselves look better, as documented by Business Insider and Project PM.
According to a media release on 9 Aug, 2000, Qorvis was:
‘Formed through the merger of three well-known and highly regarded companies: The Poretz Group, an investor relations firm serving technology companies; The Weber/Merritt Company, a public affairs and grassroots firm; and JAS Communications, a public relations and marketing communications company. Main mover in the formation of Qorvis was Michael Petruzzello, former CEO of Shandwick North America, who will be the new firm’s managing director. The company launches with approximately $14 million in revenues and 22 employees. In addition, powerhouse law firm Patton Boggs has established an exclusive strategic alliance with Qorvis and is the company’s lead investor.’[1]
Qorvis acquired its Bahrain account from Bell Pottinger in July 2010, for whom it served as a subcontractor until August 2011. [2] In its November 2011 FARA statement, the firm declared having rendered the following services to the Kingdom:
monitoring daily media coverage relevant to Bahrain;
conducting press activities for government officials
drafting/distributing fact sheets, op-ed pieces speeches and news articles by e-mail in order to position Bahrain as a committed player in the war on terror, an agent of peace in the Middle East and other unspecified issues “pertinent to the Kingdom.”[3]
Service began approximately one month prior to a major crackdown on Shiite opposition figures and domestic media outlets.[4] The New York Times speculated that the clampdown was part of the lead-up to the October 2010 parliamentary elections in which the Sunni establishment was expected to lose power to representatives of the Shiite demographic majority.[5]
Qorvis sparked criticism in March, 2011, after issuing a misleading press release on behalf of the Bahraini government.[6] After a draconian crackdown in which security forces in the Bahraini capital violently dispersed unarmed demonstrators, interrupted telecommunications services and reportedly hindered the treatment of injured civilians, Hilary Clinton issued a strong criticism of the government’s actions.[7] Qorvis responded by issuing a press release that emphasized Clinton’s positive comments by presenting them out of context, while completely skirting her critical statements:[8]
PARIS, March 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today emphasized the
commitment of the United States toward Bahrain and her hope for the success of the National Dialogue in the island
kingdom. She also affirmed the "sovereign right" of Bahrain to invite security forces from allied countries, and
stated that the U.S. shared the goals of the GCC regarding Bahrain.
Since the uprising in Bahrain began, Bahrain's Crown Prince has called on all parties to engage in a dialogue to
reconcile differences. Secretary Clinton said the goal of the United States is "a credible political process that can
address the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain."
Ambassador Houda Nonoo appreciated the Secretary's comments that dialogue should unfold in a peaceful, positive
atmosphere that ensures that students can go to school, businesses can operate and people can undertake their normal
daily activities. Said Ambassador Nonoo, "The government of Bahrain has consistently maintained that differences
should be resolved peacefully around the negotiating table, but unfortunately, the opposition has not responded to
this offer and instead has chosen to continue along the path of violence and disruption of normal life in Bahrain. It
is my government's belief that wisdom will prevail among the opposition and they will come to the negotiating table to
resolve all differences peacefully."
This has been issued by Qorvis Communications on behalf of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States.
SOURCE Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States*
Recent media:
‘How Bahrain works Washington’ from Salon (Dec 9, 2011)[9]
‘Meet Bahrain’s Lobbyists’ from The Hill (Dec 9, 2011)[10]
In May, 2011, Bahrani human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja was invited to speak as part of a panel discussion ‘Dawn of a New Arab World’ at the Oslo Freedom Forum.[11] Writing in the Huffington Post, Oslo Freedom Forum founder and CEO Thor Halvorssen[12] notes that ‘the Bahraini government has been aided by a coterie of “reputation management” experts, including professionals from the Washington, D.C., offices of Qorvis Communications and the Potomac Square Group, in addition to Bell Pottinger out of their offices in London and Bahrain.’ He goes on to describe:
‘Within minutes of Maryam’s speech (streamed live online) the global Bahraini PR machine went into dramatic overdrive. A tightly organized ring of Twitter accounts began to unleash hundreds of tweets accusing Maryam of being an extremist, a liar, and a servant of Iran. Simultaneously, the Oslo Freedom Forum’s email account was bombarded with messages, all crudely made from a simple template, arguing that Maryam al-Khawaja is an enemy of the Bahraini people and a “traitor.” Most of the U.S.-based fake tweeting, fake blogging (flogging), and online manipulation is carried out from inside Qorvis Communication’s “Geo-Political Solutions” division.
The effort is mechanical and centrally organized, and it goes beyond the online world. In fact, right before Maryam was to give her speech, she noticed two young women in the crowd who stalk her speeches and heckled her a few days earlier at an event in the U.S.
More so than intimidation, violence, and disappearances, the most important tool for dictatorships across the world is the discrediting of critics like Maryam.’[13]
An earlier Huffington Post article on Qorvis, linked to by Halvorssen, states:
‘One of the methods used by Qorvis and other firms is online reputation management — through its Geo-Political Solutions (GPS) division, the firm uses ‘”black arts” by creating fake blogs and websites that link back to positive content, “to make sure that no one online comes across the bad stuff,” says the former insider. Other techniques include the use of social media, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.’[14]
Attacks made on Maryam al-Khawaja through Twitter were numerous at that time and this, from @ActivateBahrain, is representative: #OFF2011 Maryam Al Khawaja is presenting a falsified presentation in #oslo about #Bahrain it is a package of lies and exaggerations.[15]
Another, from @Dand00na86, and posted to the #Bahrain hashtag included two phone numbers and the message Let Maryam Al-Khawaja know what you think of her lies by calling her direct![16]
Thor Halvorssen also writes that a second Bahrani blogger, Ali Abdulemam, had also been invited to speak at the 2011 Forum:
‘Ali was imprisoned by his government in September 2010 for “spreading false information.” After being released on February 23, he enthusiastically accepted his speaking invitation and plans were made for his travel. And then he disappeared. No one has seen or heard from him since March 18.’
The Geo-Political Solutions division of Qorvis is under the supervision of partner Matt J Lauer.
To date, Qorvis’ work in Yemen has come about through their association with UK firm Bell Pottinger which is reported to have held contracts with Yemen’s National Awareness Authority and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[17]
On November 29, 2010, Qorvis’ lodged a statement with the US Department of Justice’s register of lobbyists which outlined its role as a subcontractor to Bell Pottinger on a ‘one off basis’[18]. The work required Qorvis ‘to place an opinion article by a Yemeni official in a news outlet’.[19]
A secong statement was lodged on August 4, 2011. Qorvis was to be ‘subcontracted to provide media outreach for print and television media and strategic communications consulting’ and this would last ‘for the duration of Bell Pottinger’s engagement by Yemen’. The contract was worth a ‘payment of $30,000 monthly’[20].
[edit] Involvement With Saudi Government’s 9/11 Response
Three of Qorvis’s founding partners – Judy Smith, Bernie Merritt and Jim Weber – left in December 2002, probably due to the firm’s taking $200,000 a month from the Saudi government to aid in downplaying the links between Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda after September 11th, 2001.[21]
Sam Dealey – Former editor of the Washington Times, the newspaper funded by the CIA and the Unification Church that eschews both profitability and truth-seeking in favor of sucking Ronald Regan zombie dick.
Ron Faucheux
Greg Lagana – Former SVP for communications and marketing @ DynCorp International; worked for Bush 2 at the Coalition Information Center prior to that.
Matt J Lauer – Former executive director of U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy @ Department of State.
Rich Masters – Talking head. Manages client teams for the House of Saud as well as big pharma and the sugar industry.
John Reid – Partner and managing director for the Middle East.
‘Yemen’s butcher, Ali Saleh hires PR firm Bell Pottinger (& Qorvis) amid murder of journo and protesters’[22]
‘Lobbyists Jump Ship In Wake Of Mideast Unrest’[23]
‘PR Mercenaries, Their Dictator Masters, And The Human Rights Stain’[24]
‘Extreme Makeover: Mideast Autocrat Edition: From Moammar Qaddafi to the house of Saud, six repressive rulers who hired PR firms to help clean up their images’[25]
Qorvis Communications is a “Public Relations” / lobbying firm based in Washington, DC which specializes in representing high-profile overseas clients – including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei. They are fond of editing Wikipedia to make themselves look better, as documented by