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FTR #924 Technocratic Fascism, the High-Profile Hacks and The Obverse Oswald: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE [1]. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by ear­ly win­ter of 2016. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.) (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012.)

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [6].

Intro­duc­tion: On Novem­ber 22, 1963, Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape, neu­tral­iz­ing JFK’s peace ini­tia­tives in Europe, South­east Asia and Cuba. Fur­ther­more, LBJ was manip­u­lat­ed into pur­su­ing the open-end­ed Viet­nam com­mit­ment JFK had stu­dious­ly avoid­ed.

With the high-pro­file hacks and the clum­sy (though well-accept­ed) dis­in­for­ma­tion fin­ger­ing Rus­sia as the author of the crimes, we are wit­ness­ing “Team Snow­den” man­i­fest­ing what we have termed “Tech­no­crat­ic Fas­cism.” The sup­port for Don­ald Trump com­ing from Julian Assange/WikiLeaks/Snowden/Applebaum exem­pli­fies what David Golum­bia ana­lyzed in a sem­i­nal post [7]: “. . . . Such tech­no­cratic beliefs are wide­spread in our world today, espe­cially in the enclaves of dig­i­tal enthu­si­asts, whether or not they are part of the giant cor­po­rate-dig­i­tal leviathanHack­ers (“civic,” “eth­i­cal,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous “mem­bers,” even Edward Snow­den him­self [8] walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . .”

In past dis­cus­sion of “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook,” we have char­ac­ter­ized him as “the Obverse Oswald.” With their exer­cise of “Tech­no­crat­ic Fas­cism,” “Team Snow­den” is destroy­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy as defin­i­tive­ly and effec­tive­ly as the bul­lets in Dealy Plaza did on 11/22/1963.

Sup­ple­ment­ing and sum­ming up the exhaus­tive “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” series, this pro­gram sets forth the Snow­den “psy-op” and the high-pro­file hacks against the back­ground of Lee Har­vey Oswald, the U.S. spy infil­trat­ed into the Sovi­et Union and then into left­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States. Oswald was framed for JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and then killed before he could defend him­self.

Where­as Oswald was por­trayed as a vil­lain, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s oper­a­tion is the obverse, with Snow­den por­trayed as a hero, while decamp­ing first to Chi­na and then to Rus­sia. Snow­den is not only a spy but a fas­cist, who advo­cates the elim­i­na­tion of Social Secu­ri­ty and the return to the gold stan­dard.

Snow­den’s Russ­ian sojourn appears to have been arranged by Wik­iLeaks [9], which also appears to have arranged his flight to Chi­na from Hawaii. (Snow­den’s jour­ney to Hawaii appears to have been facil­i­tat­ed by Jacob Apple­baum, who may be behind the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of NSA cyber­weapons.) It was Snow­den’s jour­ney to Moscow that threw Oba­ma’s “reboot” with Rus­sia under the bus. [10]

In that con­text, we again point to “The Obverse Oswald.” [11]  We strong­ly sus­pect that “Team Snow­den” may have had some­thing to do with this. Snow­den in Rus­sia and work­ing for a com­put­er firm. The (frankly lame) fram­ing of Rus­sia for the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA reminds us of the process of “paint­ing Oswald Red.”

The pro­gram begins with analy­sis of some enig­mat­ic tweets [12] that Snow­den issued, short­ly before the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” leaked the ANT and TAO cyber­weapons. The mys­te­ri­ous tweets may well have sig­naled the release of the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” files. ” . . . . In any case, since the post­ing Snowden’s own Twit­ter pres­ence [13] has been eeri­ly mut­ed. . . . [Bar­ton] Gell­man, who is cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book about the Edward Snow­den leaks, was pre­vi­ous­ly embroiled in anoth­er recent post that sparked con­tro­ver­sy after the for­mer NSA con­trac­tor mys­te­ri­ous­ly tweet­ed [14]: ‘It’s time.’ . . . .

Next, we review infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Rus­sia has been framed for the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA, the evi­dence points increas­ing­ly toward “Team Snow­den” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook him­self.

Points of infor­ma­tion reviewed include:

The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of Don­ald Trump Jr. Many young peo­ple have come to see Assange and Snow­den as heroes. With “Team Snow­den” work­ing for Trump, those young peo­ple may find them­selves seduced by the younger Don­ald.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.  The pro­gram opens with dis­cus­sion of some cryp­tic, mys­te­ri­ous tweets that Snow­den issued, short­ly before the so-called “Shad­ow Bro­kers” released their sup­pos­ed­ly “hacked” NSA cyber­weapons.

Although none of the tweets was the “dead man’s switch” some feared, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the tweets (or one of them) may have been a sig­nal to release the ANT and TAO files in the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” “hack.”

Con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty the leaked NSA hack­ing tools real­ly were part of the Snow­den dooms­day cache (a cache to which Bam­ford pre­sum­ably nev­er had full access). Note that since Edward Snow­den sent out a cryp­tic tweet one week before the leak that could very eas­i­ly be inter­pret­ed as a metaphor­i­cal push of the Dead Man’s Switch [12].

“Gell­man, who is cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book about the Edward Snow­den leaks, was pre­vi­ous­ly embroiled in anoth­er recent post that sparked con­tro­ver­sy after the for­mer NSA con­trac­tor mys­te­ri­ous­ly tweet­ed [14]: “It’s time.”

Tak­ing stock: Snow­den first cryp­ti­cal­ly tweets on August 3, “Did you work with me? Have we talked since 2013? Please recon­tact me secure­ly, or talk to @bartongellman. It’s time. [14]https://t.co/AKmgF5AIDJ [37]

Snow­den then tweets a very long cryp­to­graph­ic key of some sort. He then goes silent for a cou­ple days and some start assum­ing he’s dead. And then a week lat­er we get the Shad­ow Bro­ker leak of NSA TAO hack­ing tools.

We have cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the Shad­ow Bro­kers leak may be a con­se­quence of Snow­den issu­ing his cryp­tic tweets, along with cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that Appel­baum already had his hands on the kinds of NSA hack­ing tools that actu­al­ly got leaked but those tools prob­a­bly didn’t come from Snow­den but a dif­fer­ent, still uniden­ti­fied, NSA leak­er. Curi­ouser and curi­ouser… [38]

Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 [25] and 895 [26], we not­ed that Snow­den was work­ing for the CIA in the sum­mer of 2009 when he decid­ed to infil­trate NSA and leak its infor­ma­tion. As will be reviewed below, Apple­baum and much of the so-called “pri­va­cy” advo­cates have received fund­ing from CIA-derived orga­ni­za­tions such as the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, Radio Free Asia and the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund.

“Is Edward Snow­den Dead? Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Claims Whistle­blow­er Killed After Cryp­tic Tweet” by Jason Mur­dock; Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times; 8/8/2016. [12]

Rumours of his demise have been denied by con­fi­dante Glenn Green­wald.

Exiled NSA whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den sparked intrigue on 5 August after tweet­ing a 64-dig­it code to his two mil­lion-strong Twit­ter fol­low­ing, which con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists quick­ly assumed meant he had met his untime­ly demise. The fears were sparked by a Russ­ian news web­site called Sput­nik, which report­ed [39] the now-delet­ed tweet could have been a “dead man’s switch” – an insur­ance code set up to aid the release of anoth­er trove of doc­u­men­ta­tion “if he did not check in to the com­put­er at a cer­tain time.”

How­ev­er, the rumours of his death or kid­nap­ping have been denied by Snowden’s close con­fi­dante Glenn Green­wald, who replied [40] to one con­cerned tweet with: “He’s fine.”

In any case, since the post­ing Snowden’s own Twit­ter pres­ence [13] has been eeri­ly mut­ed.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Snow­den has indi­cat­ed he has such an insur­ance tac­tic in place should some­thing hap­pen to him while he is liv­ing under asy­lum in Rus­sia.

In one report by Wired [41], pub­lished in 2013 after the ini­tial NSA dis­clo­sures hit the head­lines, Green­wald described the sys­tem in place. “It’s real­ly just a way to pro­tect him­self against extreme­ly rogue behav­iour on the part of the Unit­ed States, by which I mean vio­lent actions toward him, designed to end his life, and it’s just a way to ensure that nobody feels incen­tivised to do that,” he said.

In response to the code, which appears on the sur­face to be a form of hash, jour­nal­ist Bar­ton Gell­man also took to social media to note the tweet had a “pri­vate mean­ing” and was not intend­ed for the gen­er­al audi­ence. “Every­one request­ing proof of life for me and @Snowden, take a deep breath. Some tweets have pri­vate mean­ing,” he wrote on 6 August [42].

Based on this, it is like­ly the long code is a form of ver­i­fi­ca­tion used to prove to a con­tact of Snow­den that he is the legit­i­mate sender or recip­i­ent of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Using a direct mail to mes­sage, for exam­ple, would leave meta­da­ta, and there­fore a record of the con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place.

Gell­man, who is cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book about the Edward Snow­den leaks, was pre­vi­ous­ly embroiled in anoth­er recent post that sparked con­tro­ver­sy after the for­mer NSA con­trac­tor mys­te­ri­ous­ly tweet­ed [14]: “It’s time.”

In light of this, the use of a so-called dead man’s switch was used to pro­tect his well­be­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, whistle­blow­ing out­fit Wik­iLeaks, which has released sen­si­tive files from the US gov­ern­ment, also uses the tech­nique. Most recent­ly, the group’s founder, Julian Assange, uploaded a fresh 88GB file [43] to the inter­net – just pri­or to the leaks from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC).

2. Under­stand­ing the process of “paint­ing Oswald red” gives us per­spec­tive on the crude decep­tion involved with the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack, as well as giv­ing us an under­stand­ing of the DNC hack. Review­ing why Rus­sia is an unlike­ly cul­prit [15] in the DNC hack:

“Blam­ing Rus­sia For the DNC Hack Is Almost Too Easy” by Dr. San­dro Gay­ck­en; Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions Blog; 8/01/2016. [15]

 . . . A crit­i­cal look expos­es the sig­nif­i­cant flaws in the attri­bu­tion. First, all of the tech­ni­cal evi­dence can be spoofed. Although some argue that spoof­ing the mound of uncov­ered evi­dence is too much work, it can eas­i­ly be done by a small team of good attack­ers in three or four days. Sec­ond, the tools used by Cozy Bear appeared on the black mar­ket when they were first dis­cov­ered years ago and have been recy­cled and used against many oth­er tar­gets, includ­ing against Ger­man indus­try. The reuse and fine-tun­ing of exist­ing mal­ware hap­pens all the time. Third, the lan­guage, loca­tion set­tings, and com­pi­la­tion meta­da­ta can eas­i­ly be altered by chang­ing basic set­tings on the attacker’s com­put­er in five min­utes with­out the need of spe­cial knowl­edge. None of the tech­ni­cal evi­dence is con­vinc­ing. It would only be con­vinc­ing if the attack­ers used entire­ly nov­el, unique, and sophis­ti­cat­ed tools with unmis­tak­able indi­ca­tors point­ing to Rus­sia sup­port­ed by human intel­li­gence, not by mal­ware analy­sis.

The DNC attack­ers also had very poor, almost com­i­cal, oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty (OPSEC). State actors tend to have a qual­i­ty assur­ance review when devel­op­ing cyber­at­tack tools to min­i­mize the risk of dis­cov­ery and leav­ing obvi­ous crumbs behind. Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices are espe­cial­ly good. They are high­ly capa­ble, tac­ti­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly agile, and ratio­nal. They ensure that offen­sive tools are tai­lored and pro­por­tion­ate to the sig­nal they want to send, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­clo­sure and pub­lic per­cep­tion, and the odds of esca­la­tion. The shod­dy OPSEC just doesn’t fit what we know about Russ­ian intel­li­gence. . . . Giv­en these argu­ments, blam­ing Rus­sia is not a slam dunk [16]. Why would a coun­try with some of the best intel­li­gence ser­vices in the world com­mit a whole series of real­ly stu­pid mis­takes in a high­ly sen­si­tive oper­a­tion? Why pick a tar­get that has a strong chance of lead­ing to esca­la­to­ry activ­i­ty when Rus­sia is known to pre­fer incre­men­tal actions over dras­tic ones? Why go through the trou­ble of a false flag when doing noth­ing would have been arguably bet­ter?. . . 

3. The appar­ent “non-hack” of the NSA by “The Shad­ow Bro­kers” also makes no sense [17]. Note also, the clum­sy, Boris [44] and Natasha-like [45] bro­ken Eng­lish used to try and por­tray this as a “Russ­ian” oper­a­tion. In addi­tion, as we will see, this does­n’t appear to be a “hack” at all. A skilled hack­er would not sig­nal his or her activ­i­ties in the man­ner that the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” did, nor would they be like­ly to put the infor­ma­tion obtained through their “exploits” up for auc­tion.

“Here’s Why the Sup­posed NSA ‘Hack’ Is Unlike Any­thing We’ve Ever Seen Before” by Paul Szol­dra; Busi­ness Insid­er Nordic; 8/16/2016. [17]

. . . Their claim to have ‘hacked’ a serv­er belong­ing to the NSA is fishy. Accord­ing to ex-NSA insid­ers who spoke with [18] Busi­ness Insid­er, the agency’s hack­ers don’t just put their exploits and toolk­its online where they can poten­tial­ly be pil­fered. The more like­ly sce­nario for where the data came from, says ex-NSA research sci­en­tist Dave Aitel, is an insid­er who down­loaded it onto a USB stick. . . . When hack­ers gain access to a serv­er, they keep qui­et about it so they can stay there. . . .One of the many strange things about this inci­dent is the very pub­lic nature of what tran­spired. When a hack­er takes over your com­put­er, they don’t start acti­vat­ing your web­cam or run­ning weird pro­grams because you’d fig­ure out pret­ty quick­ly that some­thing was up and you’d try to get rid of them. . . .

 . . . If the Shad­ow Bro­kers owned the NSA’s com­mand and con­trol serv­er, then it would prob­a­bly be a much bet­ter approach to just sit back, watch, and try to piv­ot to oth­er inter­est­ing things that they might be able to find. . . . Instead, the group wrote on Paste­bin, a web­site where you can store text, that “we fol­low Equa­tion Group traf­fic. We find Equa­tion Group source range. We hack Equa­tion Group. We find many many Equa­tion Group cyber weapons,” which imme­di­ate­ly sig­nals to this alleged NSA hack­er group that they have a big prob­lem. [Note the remark­able bro­ken Eng­lish used in the post, rem­i­nis­cent of Boris and Natasha–D.E.] . . . Peo­ple sell exploits all the time, but they hard­ly ever talk about it. . . . Most of the time, an exploit is either found by a secu­ri­ty research firm, which then writes about it and reports it to the com­pa­ny so it can fix the prob­lem. Or, a hack­er look­ing for cash will take that found exploit and sell it on the black mar­ket. So it would make sense for a group like Shad­ow Bro­kers to want to sell their trea­sure trove, but going pub­lic with it is beyond strange. . . .

4. Notice, how­ev­er, that Edward Snow­den not only opined that this was, indeed, a hack, where­as the evi­dence points in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, but that “Rus­sia was behind the hack.” Do not fail to take stock of the fact that Snow­den is fore­shad­ow­ing a pos­si­ble con­tro­ver­sy over the hack­ing of vot­ing machines, echo­ing the pro­nounce­ments of Don­ald Trump, the suc­ces­sor to Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice, Ron Paul.

“Here’s Why the Sup­posed NSA ‘Hack’ Is Unlike Any­thing We’ve Ever Seen Before” by Paul Szol­dra; Busi­ness Insid­er Nordic; 8/16/2016. [17]

 . . . If you ask ex-NSA con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den, the pub­lic leak and claims of the Shad­ow Bro­kers seem to have Russ­ian fin­ger­prints all over them, and it serves as a warn­ing from Moscow to Wash­ing­ton. The mes­sage: If your pol­i­cy­mak­ers keep blam­ing us for the DNC hack, then we can use this hack to impli­cate you in much more. [19]

“That could have sig­nif­i­cant for­eign pol­i­cy con­se­quences,” Snow­den wrote [20] on Twit­ter. “Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed US allies. Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed elec­tions.” . . . .

5. The dat­ing of the code used in con­nec­tion with the cyber­weapons dates to 2013, when Snow­den down­loaded NSA files onto USB sticks and went to Hong Kong from Hawaii. Note, again, that Snow­den points to hack­ing [21], rather than the much more like­ly sce­nario of some­one down­load­ing infor­ma­tion onto USB sticks, as Snow­den did.

There is an impor­tant legal prin­ci­ple that is worth con­sid­er­ing, the con­cept of “con­scious­ness of guilt.” If some­one can be proved to have tak­en steps to cov­er up the com­mis­sion of a crime, that is con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient evi­dence to indict the per­son for the orig­i­nal crime. Here, we have Snow­den say­ing “Yup, Rus­sia did it” in spite of indi­ca­tions that such was not the case and “Yup, it was a hack” where­as that appears unlike­ly.

Evi­dence points in the direc­tion of “Team Snow­den,” the WikiLeaks/Snowden/Greenwald milieu we have been research­ing for years.

“‘Shad­ow Bro­kers’ Claim To Have Hacked The NSA’s Hack­ers”; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio ; 8/17/2016. [21]

 . . . . The code released by the Shad­ow Bro­kers dates most recent­ly to 2013, the same year Edward Snow­den leaked clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the NSA’s sur­veil­lance pro­grams.. . . Snow­den also not­ed that the released files end in 2013. ‘When I came for­ward, NSA would have migrat­ed offen­sive oper­a­tions to new servers as a pre­cau­tion,’ he sug­gest­ed [22] — a move that would have cut off the hack­ers’ access to the serv­er. . . . 

6. Per­haps no oth­er author/investigator has done as much writ­ing about NSA as James Bam­ford. In his obser­va­tions about “The Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack, he high­lights [23] the actions of Jacob Apple­baum, the Wik­iLeak­er who appears [46] to have been deeply involved with get­ting Snow­den from Hawaii to Hong Kong [47]. Apple­baum is also a fierce oppo­nent of Hillary Clin­ton. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Wik­iLeaks already had a copy of the ANT and TAO cyber­weapons.

The “Shad­ow Bro­kers” also went after Hillary Clin­ton [23] in the Boris and Natasha-like bro­ken Eng­lish:

“Com­men­tary: Evi­dence Points to Anoth­er Snow­den at the NSA” by James Bam­ford; Reuters; 8/24/2016. [23]

 . . . . Experts who have ana­lyzed the files sus­pect that they date to Octo­ber 2013, five months after Edward Snow­den left his con­trac­tor posi­tion with the NSA and fled to Hong Kong car­ry­ing flash dri­ves con­tain­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of pages of NSA doc­u­ments. . . .

. . . . Enter Wik­iLeaks. Just two days after the first Shad­ow Bro­kers mes­sage, Julian Assange, the founder of Wik­iLeaks, sent out a Twit­ter mes­sage. “We had already obtained the archive of NSA cyber­weapons released ear­li­er today,” Assange wrote, “and will release our own pris­tine copy in due course.”

The month before, Assange was respon­si­ble for releas­ing the tens of thou­sands of hacked DNC emails that led to the res­ig­na­tion of the four top com­mit­tee offi­cials.

There also seems to be a link between Assange and the leak­er who stole the ANT cat­a­log, and the pos­si­ble hack­ing tools. Among Assange’s close asso­ciates is Jacob Appel­baum, a cel­e­brat­ed hack­tivist and the only pub­licly known Wik­iLeaks staffer in the Unit­ed States – until he moved to Berlin in 2013 in what he called a “polit­i­cal exile” because of what he said was repeat­ed harass­ment by U.S. law enforce­ment per­son­nel. In 2010, a Rolling Stone mag­a­zine pro­file labeled him “the most dan­ger­ous man in cyber­space.”

In Decem­ber 2013, Appel­baum was the first per­son to reveal the exis­tence of the ANT cat­a­log, at a con­fer­ence in Berlin, with­out iden­ti­fy­ing the source. That same month he said he sus­pect­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment of break­ing into his Berlin apart­ment. He also co-wrote an arti­cle about the cat­a­log in Der Spiegel. But again, he nev­er named a source, which led many to assume, mis­tak­en­ly, that it was Snow­den. . . .

. . . . Short­ly there­after, he turned his atten­tion to Hillary Clin­ton. At a screen­ing of a doc­u­men­tary about Assange in Cannes, France, Appel­baum accused her of hav­ing a grudge against him and Assange, and that if she were elect­ed pres­i­dent, she would make their lives dif­fi­cult. “It’s a sit­u­a­tion that will pos­si­bly get worse” if she is elect­ed to the White House, he said, accord­ing to Yahoo News. . . .

. . . . In hack­tivist style, and in what appears to be pho­ny bro­ken Eng­lish, this new release of cyber­weapons also seems to be tar­get­ing Clin­ton. It ends with a long and angry ‘final mes­sage” against ‘Wealthy Elites . . . break­ing laws’ but ‘Elites top friends announce, no law bro­ken, no crime commit[ed]. . . Then Elites run for pres­i­dent. Why run for pres­i­dent when already con­trol coun­try like dic­ta­tor­ship?’ . . . .

7. Anoth­er piece of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence point­ing in the direc­tion of “Team Snow­den” con­cerns the fact that the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” used a Ger­man e‑mail provider.

Since Appel­baum is cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Berlin it’s worth not­ing that the email address that appears to be used by the Shad­ow Bro­kers is a Ger­man email provider with a pol­i­cy of coop­er­at­ing with legal author­i­ties as lit­tle as pos­si­ble and only hand­ing over encrypt­ed data when giv­en a court order. [48]

In addi­tion to Apple­baum (who appears to have assist­ed Snow­den in get­ting from Hawaii to Hong Kong), Lau­ra Poitras (Glenn Green­wald’s asso­ciate), Sarah Har­ri­son (Assange’s ex-girl­friend who assist­ed Snow­den in his flight from Hong Kong to Moscow) and Peter Sunde (who found­ed the Pirate Bay web­site on which Wik­iLeaks held forth) are all res­i­dent in Ger­many at this time.

“Edward Snow­den: Rus­sia Is Chief Sus­pect In NSA Hack” by Thomas Fox-Brew­ster; Forbes ; 8/16/2016. [21]

 . . . He said Tutan­o­ta had only ever been forced to hand over encrypt­ed data of its users a few times and it has a trans­paren­cy report [24] where it dis­clos­es those cas­es. ‘How­ev­er, we release data only in very, very few cas­es … And when we have to pro­vide the data due to a court order, it is still encrypt­ed,’ Pfau added, going on to explain the company’s stance on sur­veil­lance. . . .

 

8. Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 [25] and 895 [26], we not­ed that Snow­den was work­ing for the CIA in the sum­mer of 2009 when he decid­ed to infil­trate NSA and leak its infor­ma­tion. NSA “non-hack” sus­pect Apple­baum and much of the so-called “pri­va­cy” advo­cates have received fund­ing from CIA-derived orga­ni­za­tions such as the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, Radio Free Asia and the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund.

“Inter­net Pri­vacy, Fund­ed by Spooks: A Brief His­tory of the BBG” by Yasha Levine; Pan­do Dai­ly; 3/01/2015.  [27]

. . . Jacob Appelbaum’s will­ing­ness to work direct­ly for an old CIA cutout like Radio Free Asia in a nation long tar­geted for regime-change is cer­tainly odd, to say the least. Par­tic­u­larly since Appel­baum made a big pub­lic show recent­ly claim­ing that, though it pains him that Tor takes so much mon­ey from the US mil­i­tary, he would nev­er take mon­ey from some­thing as evil as the CIA [28]. . . .

. . . Appelbaum’s finan­cial rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous CIA spin­offs like Radio Free Asia and the BBG go fur­ther. From 2012 through 2013, Radio Free Asia trans­ferred [29] about $1.1 mil­lion to Tor in the form of grants and con­tracts. This mil­lion dol­lars comes on top of anoth­er $3.4 mil­lion Tor received [29] from Radio Free Asia’s par­ent agency, the BBG, start­ing from 2007. . . .

9. More about CIA-derived BBG, Radio Free Asia and Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund and their finan­cial back­ing for much of the so-called “pri­va­cy” advo­cates and the tools they rec­om­mend:

“Inter­net Pri­vacy, Fund­ed by Spooks: A Brief His­tory of the BBG” by Yasha Levine; Pan­do Dai­ly; 3/01/2015.  [27]

. . . . Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended [30] by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica [31] and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can getIn fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps [32] on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF. . . .

. . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .

10. Quot­ing from a sem­i­nal arti­cle [7] by David Golum­bia, THIS is what Julian Assange, Wik­iLeaks and “Team Snow­den” are doing!

“Tor, Tech­noc­ra­cy, Democ­ra­cy” by David Golum­bia; Uncomputing.org; 4/23/2015. [7]

. . . . Such tech­no­cratic beliefs are wide­spread in our world today, espe­cially in the enclaves of dig­i­tal enthu­si­asts, whether or not they are part of the giant cor­po­rate-dig­i­tal leviathanHack­ers (“civic,” “eth­i­cal,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous “mem­bers,” even Edward Snow­den him­self [8] walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . .

11. Both Wik­iLeaks and Snow­den are heroes to many young peo­ple. As we have seen, the “Alt.right” forces embod­ied in Don­ald Trump are the same embod­ied in Julian Assange, Wik­iLeaks and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.  We con­clude the pro­gram with brief dis­cus­sion of Don­ald Trump, Jr.‘s role in tweet­ing and re-tweet­ing Nazi dog-whis­tles.

“Trump Jr’s ‘Skit­tles’ Tweet Is Based on Two Dif­fer­ent White Suprema­cist Memes — and Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da” by Travis Get­tys; Raw Sto­ry ; 9/20/2016. [34]

Don­ald Trump Jr. drew wide­spread con­dem­na­tion [49]for com­par­ing Syr­i­an refugees to poi­soned can­dy — but his anal­o­gy isn’t a new one, and it’s based on two sep­a­rate white suprema­cist memes with roots in Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.

Trump — the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s eldest son and a top cam­paign sur­ro­gate — tweet­ed the image Mon­day evening in an appar­ent response to the dump­ster bomb­ing over the week­end in New York City, which his dad inapt­ly linked [50] to the refugee cri­sis.

“This image says it all,” reads the text. “Let’s end the polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect agen­da that doesn’t put Amer­i­ca first. #trump2016,” accom­pa­nied by the offi­cial Don­ald Trump/Mike Pence cam­paign logo and slo­gan. The anal­o­gy isn’t new, and has been used for years by white suprema­cists to over­gen­er­al­ize about var­i­ous minor­i­ty groups. “It is often deployed as a way to prop up inde­fen­si­ble stereo­types by tak­ing advan­tage of human igno­rance about base rates, risk assess­ment and crim­i­nol­o­gy,” wrote Emil Karls­son on the blog Debunk­ing Denial­ism [51]. “In the end, it tries to divert atten­tion from the inher­ent big­otry in mak­ing flawed gen­er­al­iza­tions.” A spokes­woman for Wrigley Amer­i­c­as, which makes Skit­tles, whacked Trump’s dehu­man­iz­ing com­par­i­son. “Skit­tles are can­dy. Refugees are peo­ple. We don’t feel it’s an appro­pri­ate anal­o­gy,” said Denise Young [52], vice pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate affairs. “We will respect­ful­ly refrain from fur­ther com­men­tary as any­thing we say could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as mar­ket­ing.”

Joe Walsh, a sin­gle-term con­gress­man from Illi­nois and now a right-wing talk radio host who’s been boot­ed from the air­waves for using racial slurs [53], bragged that Trump’s meme was near­ly iden­ti­cal to one he had tweet­ed a month ear­li­er.

The anal­o­gy, which has been used on mes­sage boards and shared as social media memes, orig­i­nal­ly used M&Ms as the can­dy in ques­tion — but that changed after George Zim­mer­man gunned down Trayvon Mar­tin while the unarmed black teen was walk­ing home from buy­ing a drink and some Skit­tles.

A Google image search of “skit­tles trayvon meme” [54]reveals a hor­ri­ble boun­ty of cap­tioned images mock­ing the slain teenag­er, whose killer was acquit­ted after claim­ing self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

But the poi­soned can­dy anal­o­gy goes back even fur­ther, to an anti-Semit­ic children’s book pub­lished by Julius Stre­ich­er, the pub­lish­er of the Nazi news­pa­per Der Stürmer who was exe­cut­ed in 1946 as a war crim­i­nal.

The book tells the tale of “the poi­so­nous mush­room,” and was used to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren in hate.

“Just as poi­so­nous mush­rooms spring up every­where, so the Jew is found in every coun­try in the world,” the story’s moth­er explains to her son. “Just as poi­so­nous mush­rooms often lead to the most dread­ful calami­ty, so the Jew is the cause of mis­ery and dis­tress, ill­ness and death.”

So Trump’s appalling anal­o­gy isn’t just uno­rig­i­nal and demean­ing — it’s actu­al­ly racist in four dif­fer­ent ways.

12. Roger Stone and Trump, Jr. were por­trayed in an Alt.right tweet endorsed by the Trumpenkampfver­bande. Do not lose sight of the fact that Stone is now net­work­ing with Julian Assange and Wik­iLeaks.

“Trump Ally, Son Share Meme Fea­tur­ing Sym­bol Of White Nation­al­ist Alt-Right” by Alle­gra Kirk­land; Talk­ing Points Memo Livewire; 9/12/2016. [33]

Two mem­bers of Don­ald Trump’s inner cir­cle shared memes on social media over the week­end fea­tur­ing a sym­bol pop­u­lar with the white nation­al­ist alt-right.

Riff­ing off of Hillary Clinton’s remark that some of Trump’s sup­port­ers are racists, misog­y­nists, and xeno­phobes who belong in a “bas­ket of deplorables [55],” the meme shared by Don­ald Trump Jr. and Trump ally Roger Stone showed key Trump allies pho­to­shopped onto a poster from the move “The Expend­ables.” In the edit­ed poster for “The Deplorables,” those armed staffers and Trump boost­ers are shown along­side Pepe the Frog, a car­toon fig­ure that first cropped up on the 4chan web­site and has since become asso­ci­at­ed with the white suprema­cist move­ment online.

Trump, Indi­ana Gov. Mike Pence ®, New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie ®, Ben Car­son, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones, and alt-right fig­ure­head Milo Yiannopou­los were among those in includ­ed in the image.

“Appar­ent­ly I made the cut as one of the Deplorables,” Trump Jr. wrote on Insta­gram in a cap­tion accom­pa­ny­ing the meme, say­ing he was “hon­ored” to be grouped among Trump’s sup­port­ers.

Infor­mal Trump advi­sor Roger Stone shared the same image on Twit­ter, say­ing he was “so proud to be one of the Deplorables.”

Pepe the Frog has emerged as an unof­fi­cial mas­cot [56]of the alt-right, a loose­ly defined group of white nation­al­ists who con­gre­gate online to debate IQ dif­fer­ences between the races and joke [57] about burn­ing Jew­ish jour­nal­ists in ovens.

Last fall, Trump him­self shared a meme fea­tur­ing him­self as pres­i­dent Pepe. He has retweet­ed users with han­dles like @WhiteGenocideTM on mul­ti­ple occa­sions.

@codyave [58]: @drudgereport [59]@BreitbartNews [60]@Writeintrump [61] “You Can’t Stump the Trump“https://t.co/0xITB7XeJV [62]pic.twitter.com/iF6S05se2w [63]”— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Octo­ber 13, 2015 [64]

Trump has dis­avowed sup­port from the alt-right and white suprema­cists like for­mer KKK Grand Wiz­ard David Duke, though he hired Steve Ban­non, chair­man of the alt-right pro­mot­ing Bre­it­bart News, as his cam­paign CEO in August.

13. Trump, Jr. has polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions. The grav­i­tas that Snow­den and Wik­iLeaks have with young Amer­i­cans may bear very bit­ter fruit, indeed.

“A Chip off the Old Block” by Dig­by; Hul­la­baloo; 9/21/2016. [35]

I wrote about Trump Jr for Salon this morning:In the begin­ning of the 2016 cam­paign the only one of Don­ald Trump’s five chil­dren with a high pub­lic pro­file was his daugh­ter Ivan­ka who has her own celebri­ty brand just like her father’s. The two old­er sons were unknown to the gen­er­al pub­lic but they made quite a good first impres­sion [65] when the whole fam­i­ly appeared on a CNN fam­i­ly spe­cial. They are all so attrac­tive and glam­orous that many peo­ple came to believe they were Don­ald Trump’s best fea­ture. Indeed, it was said that the fact he’d raised such an admirable fam­i­ly spoke so well of him that it smoothed some of the rough edges of his own per­son­al­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as peo­ple have got­ten to know them bet­ter, they’ve revealed them­selves to be as rough edged as dear old Dad, par­tic­u­lar­ly his name­sake, Don­ald Jr.

For most of the pri­maries Trump proud­ly evoke his two old­er sons when he talked about the 2nd amend­ment, tout­ing their NRA mem­ber­ship and love of guns. It was a lit­tle bit shock­ing to see the ghast­ly pic­tures of their African big game kills includ­ing a hor­rif­ic shot of Trump Jr hold­ing a sev­ered ele­phant tail, but they seemed to oth­er­wise be pret­ty ordi­nary hard-work­ing busi­ness­men devot­ed to their fam­i­ly. For the most part they kept a low pro­file, serv­ing as the usu­al fam­i­ly props in a polit­i­cal cam­paign.

When Don­ald Jr spoke to a white suprema­cist radio host in March [66] it set off a few alarm bells sim­ply because his father’s extreme immi­gra­tion poli­cies had been so ecsta­t­i­cal­ly received by white nation­al­ist groups. But most chalked it up to inex­pe­ri­ence and let it go. Sure­ly Junior wasn’t as crude­ly racist as the old man who was report­ed to keep a book of Hitler speech­es next to the bed [67]. But just a few days lat­er he retweet­ed [68] a racist sci­ence fic­tion writer named Theodore Beale who goes by the han­dle of “Vox Day” claim­ing that a famous pic­ture of a Trump sup­port­er giv­ing a Nazi salute was actu­al­ly a fol­low­er of Bernie Sanders. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree after all.

At the GOP con­ven­tion in July, all four of the grown kids gave heart­felt speech­es about their Dad, even as they made clear through their child­hood anec­dotes that the only time they ever spent with him was at the office and it seemed that Junior in par­tic­u­lar had tak­en a more active role and was seen in a more seri­ous light. peo­ple were talk­ing about him as a mod­er­at­ing voice in the cam­paign.

Right after the con­ven­tion, how­ev­er, he let out a deaf­en­ing dog­whis­tle that left no doubt as to his per­son­al affil­i­a­tion with the far right. He went to the Nesho­ba Coun­ty Fair in Philadel­phia Mis­sis­sip­pi [69], best remem­bered as the place where three civ­il rights work­ers were mur­dered in 1964. But it has spe­cial polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance as the site of Ronald Reagan’s famous “states’ rights” speech [70] in 1980 where he sig­naled his sym­pa­thy for white suprema­cy by deliv­er­ing it at the scene of that hor­ren­dous racist crime. (The man who coined the term “wel­fare queen” was always a cham­pi­on dog­whistler.) Trump Jr went there to rep­re­sent and rep­re­sent he did. When asked what he thought about the con­fed­er­ate flag he said [71], “I believe in tra­di­tion. I don’t see a lot of the non­sense that’s been cre­at­ed about that.”

Since then it’s been revealed that he fol­lows a num­ber of white nation­al­ists on twit­ter [72] and he’s retweet­ed sev­er­al includ­ing a a psy­chol­o­gist who believes Jews manip­u­late soci­ety. [73] And in the last cou­ple of weeks Junior has let his alt-right freak flag fly. First he got excit­ed about Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” com­ment and proud­ly retweet­ed a pic­ture with the title “The Deplorables” [74] that had been mak­ing the rounds fea­tur­ing Trump, Mike Pence, Rudy Giu­liani, Chris Christie, Ben Car­son, Eric Trump and Don­ald Jr along with con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones, right wing hit man Roger Stone, alt-right leader Milo Yia­nop­o­lis and white suprema­cist sym­bol Pepe the Frog. There’s no indi­ca­tion that any of them had a prob­lem with that but a lot of oth­er peo­ple found it to be reveal­ing, to say the least.

A cou­ple of days lat­er Trump Jr stepped in it again, say­ing the media would be “warm­ing up the gas cham­ber” [75] for Repub­li­cans if they lied and cheat­ed the way Hillary Clin­ton does. He claimed he was talk­ing about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment but his asso­ci­a­tion with vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tes makes that claim ring a lit­tle bit hol­low.

And then there was the Skit­tles inci­dent. Don­ald Jr tweet­ed out a deeply offen­sive image of a bowl of skit­tles with the words “If I had a bowl of Skit­tles and I told you three would kill you would you take a hand­ful? That’s our Syr­i­an refugee prob­lem.” [76] It’s a ter­ri­ble metaphor, wrong in every way and Don­ald Jr took some heat for it. But it’s yet anoth­er win­dow into his asso­ci­a­tion with alt-right white nation­al­ism. That bad metaphor has been around in var­i­ous forms for a long time [77]. In this coun­try it was usu­al­ly a bowl of M&Ms rep­re­sent­ing black peo­ple. [51]. The peo­ple who traf­fic in this garbage fair­ly recent­ly changed it to Skit­tles because that was the can­dy Trayvon Mar­tin had bought on the night he was mur­dered by vig­i­lante George Zim­mer­man. Yes, it’s that sick.

You hear pun­dits and com­men­ta­tors say­ing that Don­ald Trump is sui gener­is and his phe­nom­e­non won’t be recre­at­ed. They’re prob­a­bly right. But per­haps they are not aware that his son also has polit­i­cal ambi­tions [36] and he is sim­ply a younger, bet­ter look­ing ver­sion of his father with much more hair. If alt-right white nation­al­ism is going to be an ongo­ing fea­ture of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life, they have their leader. He is one of them.

14. More about Trump, Jr. and his polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions:

“Yikes! Now Don­ald Trump Jr. Says He Would “Love” to Run for Office ‘as a Patri­ot’ ” by Sophia Tes­faye; Salon; 7/20/2016. [36]

After his ques­tion­able speech to the RNC, Trump Jr. said he “would con­sid­er” run­ning once his kids fin­ish school

Call­ing it “one of the most thrilling moments of my life,” Don­ald Trump Jr. brushed aside bur­geon­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the sec­ond Trump fam­i­ly speech at the RNC in as many days while speak­ing with the Wall Street Jour­nal Wednes­day morn­ing.

The old­est son of the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee said that while he still has “a lot to do in my own career,” he would seri­ous­ly con­sid­er fol­low­ing in his father’s foot­steps out of real estate and into polit­i­cal life.

The 38-year-old New York­er said that “maybe when the kids get out of school I would con­sid­er it.” The father of five explained that he’d “love to be able to do it, as a patri­ot.”

His seem­ing­ly pre­ma­ture flir­ta­tion with polit­i­cal office comes hours after he deliv­ered a major address to the RNC Tues­day evening — a speech that has already been flagged as a poten­tial sec­ond case of Trump fam­i­ly pla­gia­rism.

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/755601024908300288 [78]

While Trump Jr. told [79] Fox News’ Sean Han­ni­ty that “We [the Trump kids] all took a lot of pride. We all wrote the speech­es our­selves,” Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist told [80] Vox News that the appar­ent­ly lift­ed por­tions can’t be con­sid­ered pla­gia­rism because he wrote both the orig­i­nal col­umn and the Trump’s speech.

So while he may not be a pla­gia­riz­er in the new con­ser­v­a­tive def­i­n­i­tion [81] of the word (my col­lege pro­fes­sors always warned against recy­cling my own work for new cours­es) it looks like we may have anoth­er Don­ald Trump pop­ping up on the polit­i­cal land­scape very soon.