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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
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: “. . . . 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 leviathan. Hackers (“civic,” “ethical,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hacktivists, WikiLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anonymous “members,” even Edward Snowden himself 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, 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.
In that context, we again point to “The Obverse Oswald.” 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 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 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: ‘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:
- Evidence suggesting that Russia was NOT behind the DNC hacks. ” . . . . 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. 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?. . . .”
- Information indicating that the NSA “hack” may well not have been a hack at all, but the work of an insider downloading the information onto a USB drive. “. . . Their claim to have ‘hacked’ a server belonging to the NSA is fishy. According to ex-NSA insiders who spoke with 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. . . 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. . . .”
- Eddie the Friendly Spook endorsed the cover story of the Shadow Brokers’ NSA “hack”–that the event was a hack (despite indicators to the contrary) and that Russia did it. ” . . . 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.‘That could have significant foreign policy consequences,’ Snowden wrote on Twitter. ‘Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies. Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections. . . .”
- The code in the files was from 2013, when Snowden undertook his “op.” “. . . . 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 — a move that would have cut off the hackers’ access to the server. . . . ”
- Author James Bamford highlighted circumstantial evidence that WikiLeaker Jacob Applebaum–who appears to have facilitated Snowden’s journey from Hawaii to Hong Kong–may have been behind the Shadow Brokers non-hack. “. . . . 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. . . .”
- Applebaum was anti-Clinton, sentiments expressed in the clumsy Boris and Natasha-like broken English that accompanied announcement of the Shadow Brokers’ gambit. “. . . . Shortly thereafter, he [Applebaum] 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?’ . . .”
- The e‑mail account used by the Shadow Brokers is in Germany and is resistant to attempts at disclosing users’ information. Applebaum, Laura Poitras, Sarah Harrison and Peter Sunde are in Germany. “. . . 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 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. . . .”
- Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 and 895, 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. What role is the CIA playing in this? “. . . 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. . . .. . . 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 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 from Radio Free Asia’s parent agency, the BBG, starting from 2007. . . . . . . . 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 by Edward Snowden, covered favorably by ProPublica 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 get. In fact, just about all the featured open-source apps 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. . . .”
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:
- Trump, Jr.‘s inclusion in a Tweet featuring a Nazi meme, Pepe the Frog.
- Trump, Jr.‘s “Skittles” tweet.
- Trump, Jr.‘s designs on running for office.
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.
“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: “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. https://t.co/AKmgF5AIDJ”
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…
Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 and 895, 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.
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 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 to one concerned tweet with: “He’s fine.”
In any case, since the posting Snowden’s own Twitter presence 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, 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.
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: “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 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 in the DNC hack:
. . . 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. 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. Note also, the clumsy, Boris and Natasha-like 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.
. . . Their claim to have ‘hacked’ a server belonging to the NSA is fishy. According to ex-NSA insiders who spoke with 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.
. . . 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.
“That could have significant foreign policy consequences,” Snowden wrote 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, 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.
. . . . 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 — 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 the actions of Jacob Applebaum, the WikiLeaker who appears to have been deeply involved with getting Snowden from Hawaii to Hong Kong. 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 in the Boris and Natasha-like broken English:
. . . . 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.
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.
. . . 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 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 and 895, 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.
. . . 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. . . .
. . . 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 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 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:
. . . . 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 by Edward Snowden, covered favorably by ProPublica 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 get. In fact, just about all the featured open-source apps 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 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.
. . . . 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 leviathan. Hackers (“civic,” “ethical,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hacktivists, WikiLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anonymous “members,” even Edward Snowden himself 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.
Donald Trump Jr. drew widespread condemnationfor 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 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. “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, 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, 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”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.
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,” 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 mascotof the alt-right, a loosely defined group of white nationalists who congregate online to debate IQ differences between the races and joke 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: @drudgereport@BreitbartNews@Writeintrump “You Can’t Stump the Trump“https://t.co/0xITB7XeJVpic.twitter.com/iF6S05se2w”— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015
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.
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 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 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. But just a few days later he retweeted 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, 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 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, “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 and he’s retweeted several including a a psychologist who believes Jews manipulate society. 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” 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” 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.” 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. In this country it was usually a bowl of M&Ms representing black people.. 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 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:
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
While Trump Jr. told 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 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 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.
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth
Oh great, just what the world needs. Another Silicon Valley Alt-Right sugar daddy. Specifically, a Silicon Valley Alt-Right sugar daddy who created a 501©4 non-profit organization to finance the promotion of Alt-Right “shitposting” memes:
““The American Revolution was funded by wealthy individuals,” NimbleRichMan wrote on Saturday. Luckey confirmed to The Daily Beast he penned the posts under his Reddit pseudonym. “The same has been true of many movements for freedom in history. You can’t fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any and all means.””
So near billionaires like Luckey and Peter Thiel apparent aren’t “American elite” but actually noble populist revolutionaries. Aha. So all the article about right-wing paid online trolling operations over the years have actually be stories of a modern American Revolution. And Luckey paying lead trolls at the white supremacist, antisemitic r/The_Donald Reddit subforum is just one part wealthy individual fighting that second revolution against “the American elite”. Now we know.
What we still don’t know is what exactly Luckey’s 501©4 is going to do other than promote Donald Trump. But it legally has to do something in order to maintain its non-profit status. So what’s the other mission of “Nimble America” going to be? Just generic Alt-Right “shitposting”? A whole bunch of generically pro-bigotry billboards?
Whatever that non-Trump oriented activity of Nimble America ends up being, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be awful. Especially if Trump wins and the US gets overwhelmed with far-right memes not just emanating for internet forums like Reddit but also the White House and Congress. The number of potential horrible ideas that are going to need promoting during a Trump presidency is basically endless . Why using nukes is a great idea? A Trump administration could really use memes like that. Letting poor people die from a lack of medical care? There’s going to be a big need for those memes. A campaign for abusing puppies? That definitely seems very possible. How about replacing the bald eagle with a racist frog as the national emblem? That one’s a given.
As we can see, while Luckey’s Nimble America 501©4 might need to get a little more nimble and varied in its activities if it’s going to remain a legal far-right troll meme sugar daddy, it’s not like there’s a shortage of non-Trump-related far-right memes in dire need of trolling. It isn’t always easy to get a nation to commit national suicide in the form of some sort of Alt-Right revolution. Lots and lots of bad ideas are required.
While the presidential debate last night undoubtedly helped Hillary Clinton given Donald Trump’s erratic and unhinged debate performance, one of the unfortunate questions we have to ask now is whether or not it would make a meaningful difference to his base of supporters. After all, ’tis the Season of Trump. If the Trumpian faction of the electorate cares about things like erratically unhinged leadership it’s not at all obvious at this point.
Well, if the following article is accurately reflecting the response of one of key elements of Trump’s base, Alt Right online trolls, it does appear that Trump’s erratic performance left them a little rattled. And not only rattled but a little pissed too. Why pissed? Because, ironically, when Trump actually made a semi-valid point (one of just a handful for him during the debate) that it’s entirely possible the DNC hackers were some other foreign government other than Russia, or maybe “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”, he ended up insulting that key Trumpian base of 4Chan/8Chan online Alt Right trolls. A base known for its abundance of hackers.
So hey, maybe Trump was right. Maybe the DNC hacks really were carried out by one or more hacker sitting in their beds. After all, there’s a troll army of Trumpian superfans who take the image of hackers in bed very seriously:
“4chan’s de facto white-nationalist mascot Pepe, a cartoon frog that has come to represent both pro-Trump and anti-Semitic users on the site over the last year, even had its hand Photoshopped onto a smiling Clinton. Another meme showed Pepe pointing a machine gun at the back of its head.”
Wow. It turns out a den of white supremacist trolls can be rather fickle. Imagine that. Although not too fickle, since they still rigged all the online post-debate polls for Trump anyway:
“Despite disappointing, angering, and alienating a portion of his typically devout message-board fan base, 4chan and Reddit users still managed to find it in their hearts to mobilize online for Trump on Monday night. Users on the unofficial pro-Trump subreddit R/The_Donald and 4chan posted links to dozens of unscientific polls from news organizations, including Wired, The Telegraph, USA Today, NBC Nightly News, and CNBC, which were asking readers to vote on who they thought won the first debate. Trump supporters bombarded the easily manipulated polls, creating a false sense that Trump had outperformed his opponent. “Abuse Airplane Mode toggling,” one 4chan user wrote, explaining how Trump supporters could vote again and again in various online polls. And it was successful: Trump ended up winning in the unofficial polls, and then spent the evening tweeting out the poll results, which showed he had won. “Great debate poll numbers — I will be on @foxandfriends at 7:00 to discuss,” he wrote Tuesday morning. “Enjoy!” For Trump, it was the perfect result for a campaign not grounded in facts or reality.”
As we can see, when the Troll King trolls his den of trolls the trolls respond by trolling the rest of the world. It’s one reason why, whether or not the DNC hacker really was a Trump superfan, that doesn’t mean the next partisan hack won’t be Trump superfan. Heck, if anything it’s more likely now that’s the Troll King trolled his trolls. That seems to be how they operate.
Troll world is weird.
An article from Canada’s National Post Sept. 28 2016 by Tristin Hopper entitled “Hitler was on cocaine and his troops were on meth:
Author reveals deep influence of drugs in Nazi Germany.”
“Ohler’s book Blitzed will be released in Canada on October 6. Published in the original German as The Total Rush. it tells the story
of how Nazi Germany fought a surprising amount of the Second World War in a drug-fueled haze.”
During Monday’s televised presidential debate many viewers were left wondering if the Trumpenfuhrer was fighting Hilary Clinton
through a similar drug-fueled haze. Trump’s typical Il Duce facial contortions were accompanied by a lot of deep sniffing.
“I call it the Fuhrer-high; it makes you feel on top of the world even if the world is collapsing around” said German author Norman Ohler speaking to the National Post by phone.
It should be noted Ohler was describing Hitler, not Trump, lest there be any confusion.
Did the FBI arrest an NSA contractor responsible for the Shadow Brokers leak? That’s not clear at this point, but it sure looks like it:
“As investigators look into Mr. Martin’s case, it is almost certain that they will focus on whether the contractor was behind a leak in August that exposed a collection of electronic tools used by the N.S.A. to break into networks around the world. That material, released by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, was thought by outside experts to have been obtained by hacking rather than from an insider. Now, in light of the arrest, that assumption may have to be revised. The code released by the Shadow Brokers was dated from 2013, meaning that it almost certainly has been overtaken by more recent code.”
Well, assuming Harold T. Martin III was the guy behind the Shadow Brokers leak that would indicate the Shadow Brokers leak probably wasn’t part of the original Snowden “Dead Man’s switch” cache of documents and wasn’t some sort of Russian hack. Still, if that ends up being the case it does add a layer of intrigue to Edward Snowden’s mystery tweets in early August shortly before the Shadow Broker leak. After all, the files stolen by Martin reportedly come from before the Snowden leak, or at least might have according to the report:
So if these files were taken before Snowden went public, we can reasonably assume that Martin worked for Snowden’s old contractor, Booz Allen, probably during the same time Snowden was there. That doesn’t mean Snowden wouldn’t have actually met this person, but it’s still worth noting that Snowden’s mystery tweet in early August explicitly referenced someone he used to work with:
“Did you work with me? Have we talked since 2013? Please recontact me securely, or talk to @bartongellman. It’s time. https://t.co/AKmgF5AIDJ”
Now, it’s certainly possible that Snowden was simply trying to get in contact with one of his old co-workers to be a kind of character witness. Maybe related to Oliver Stone’s movie Snowden that premiered in September or something. Still, the timing sure is interesting.
You also have to wonder how the Kremlin will respond if it turns out Shadow Broker leak not only wasn’t a Russian hack but actually one of Snowden’s old co-workers considering Snowden’s public suggestions that Russia was behind the hack. 2017 could be a surprisingly eventful year for the Snowden Affair.
@Pterrafractyl–
In evaluating Harold Martin, we want to recall two things that appear to point in a different direction:
Jacob Applebaum’s public disclosure–the first–of the ANT catalogue in December of 2013.
Also the anti-Hillary broken English of the “Shadow Brokers.”
This doesn’t appear to me to fit in to the Martin situation, at least on the basis of what has surfaced so far.
From FTR #924: Author James Bamford highlighted circumstantial evidence that WikiLeaker Jacob Applebaum–who appears to have facilitated Snowden’s journey from Hawaii to Hong Kong–may have been behind the Shadow Brokers non-hack. “. . . . 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. . . .”
Applebaum was anti-Clinton, sentiments expressed in the clumsy Boris and Natasha-like broken English that accompanied announcement of the Shadow Brokers’ gambit. “. . . . Shortly thereafter, he [Applebaum] 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?’ . . .”
IF Applebaum, Martin and–perhaps–Snowden and WikiLeaks (which also had the cyberweapons in question) are linked, it suggests a network and probably a broad one at work here.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: The Daily Beast has a report on Harold ‘Hal’ Martin’s background that would appear to provide an explanation that has nothing to do with Edward Snowden or Jacob Appelbaum: Martin took the code to help him with his PhD thesis. And given the guy’s thesis work and background, it’s not inconceivable since he was working with the NSA’s elite hacker squad and his thesis was on “new methods for remote analysis of heterogeneous & cloud computing architectures.” The article also notes the the NSA elite hacking team Martin worked with was the “Tailored Access Operations” team that was initially exposed by Appelbaum and leaked by the “Shadow Brokers”.
So whwile Martin was indeed working closely with the kinds of tools that the “Shadow Brokers” released and could have conceivably passed some code along to whoever did the actual Shadow Broker leak (with the broken-Russian language and all), there’s nothing else that we’ve seen thus far that’s suggestive that this guy would have had the same ideological motivations that Snowden and Appelbaum have to leak the data and a plausible explanation for the theft that has nothing to do with the Snowden Affair. And he hasn’t actually been charged with leaking, but instead the “mishandling of classified information”.
If he was part of a larger Snowden-affiliated network and passing (or passed in the past) TAO information along that network, investigators either haven’t found evidence of it or aren’t revealing that yet. It’s the kind of situation that’s a reminder that circumstantial ambiguity is an effective form of motivational encryption:
“Martin worked with NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit, sources with knowledge of his background told The Daily Beast. In his LinkedIn resume, Martin says he worked as a “cyber engineering advisor” supporting “various cyber related initiatives” in the Defense Department and intelligence community.”
This will be a story to watch, if only for eventual resolution on what was possibly one of the worst-timed instances of workplace theft in the history. Imagine being someone who stole coveted NSA code for relatively innocent reason right around the time of Snowden’s grand heist. This had to be a long three years for Hal Martin if he had nothing to do with Snowden.
On the plus side for Martin, his thesis probably kicked extra ass with all that TAO code. That said, if he has just waited about three years for the Shadow Broker leak he might not have needed to lift the code at all. Ouch. Which raises the question: since Martin was apparently tempted enough to steal top secret TAO code to write his PhD thesis — a thesis that isn’t available for public consumption presumably due ot the sensitive nature of its contents — you can bet PhD theses in areas related to hacking are going to include some pretty advanced hacking techniques carefully described in detail in publicly available thesis for the next few years until that code becomes too outdated to be useful.
So if you’re running an IT system involving something like, say, a cloud computing, it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for reports on theses involving things like “new methods for remote analysis of heterogeneous & cloud computing architectures”. For example.
So the NYT is reporting “Some CIA officials, meanwhile, quietly speculated that the
NSA had a mole…” Might that be because Snowden always was and perhaps still is
CIA?
New Scientist reported on August 24 2016, in connection to determining the identity
of Shadow Brokers, “Certain naming conventions in the files point to scripts only
accessible on a machine physically isolated from the network and therefore
inaccessible to anyone not physically present in the NSA building”.
American Military News reported that Harold Martin served as a “Surface Warfare
Officer on the USS Seattle during the early ’90s”.
Daily Beast acknowledges Martin “the retired Navy officer…worked with NSA’s Tailored
Access Operations unit..” This would be the TAO that James Bamford said was behind
the ANT catalog of hacking tools.
Martin could be a patsy, a Snowden stand-in offered up as a consolation prize by a
subrosa division of CIA that operates on behalf of the Underground Reich, thereby
leaving other assets like Jakob Applebaum free to operate for Team Snowden.
Here’s an interesting mystery related to the big Yahoo 2014 hack that was recently disclose: How on earth did InfoArmor, the cybersecurity firm hired to investigate the hack, have two reports about its conclusions get reported on the same day that arrived at opposite conclusions regarding whether or not the hack was state-sponsored. Yep, that happened. It’s kind of mysterious.
So, here’s the first part of the mystery: An interview with InfoArmor’s chief intelligence officer Andrew Koramov, about how the Yahoo hack didn’t appear to be state-sponsored at all:
“InfoArmor said the hackers, whom it calls “Group E,” have sold the entire Yahoo database at least three times, including one sale to a state-sponsored actor. But the hackers are engaged in a moneymaking enterprise and have “a significant criminal track record,” selling data to other criminals for spam or to affiliate marketers who aren’t acting on behalf of any government, said Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence officer with InfoArmor Inc.”
As we can see, InforArmor’s chief intelligence officer, Andrew Koramov, concluded that the hackers may have sold the hacked database to a state-sponsored actor, but it wasn’t exclusively sold to that state and the hacker themselves have the kind of track record that points towards them just be criminal actors. Maybe one of the clients of the hack was a state, but the hack itself appears to be primary criminally motivated in nature:
That was one of the interviews of Mr. Koramov published September 28. And then there was this report based on an interview of Koramov conducted a week earlier, but published on the same day as the above report, where Koramov asserts that the hack was conducted by criminal hackers and commissioned by an unknown state, possibly Russia (because the hackers-for-hire were Eastern European and Russia likes to hire Eastern European hackers):
“Komarov said that a state-sponsored actor from Eastern Europe commissioned and later paid the hacker collective $300,000 for the Yahoo data trove. He said he didn’t know if the hacks of the other social media companies were also commissioned by a state-sponsored actor, but believed it was likely. He also said he didn’t know if the state that directed the hacks was Russia, or if the state-sponsored actor that paid the hackers was a Russian intelligence agency or some other arm of the Russian government, but that Eastern European hackers often have links to the Russian government.”
Wow, ok, it would appear that Mr. Koramov’s conclusions changed rather dramatically in the week between his interview with NBC and the publication of InfoArmor’s report. There’s nothing wrong with changing conclusions but it’s still a pretty notable coincidence that both versions of Koramov’s report were published on the same day.
So is there an explanation for this odd juxtaposition? Sort of. There’s still no explanation for what caused the dramatic change in conclusions in just a week, but according to the report below it sounds like InfoArmor disputes the NBC interview and is standing by its assertion that the hack was not state-sponsored:
“InfoArmor Chief Intelligence Officer Andrew Komarov told NBC News “that a state-sponsored actor from Eastern Europe commissioned and later paid the hacker collective $300,000 for the Yahoo data trove. He said he didn’t know if the hacks of the other social media companies were also commissioned by a state-sponsored actor, but believed it was likely,” according to an article published Wednesday morning. (An InfoArmor rep later disputed NBC’s account to Business Insider, and said that InfoArmor does not think the attackers were state sponsored. NBC has not updated its story.)”
Well, at least we have a conclusive answer from InfoArmor: they really do not think “Group E” was state-sponsored. They do believe a state purchased the hacked material, but they don’t think it was done on behalf of a state actor and they don’t claim to know which state purchased the material and while Koramov believes that the hackers were Eastern European that’s about as far as InfoArmor’s conclusions go.
It’s a relatively inconclusive set of conclusions and based on InfoArmor’s analysis that’s the most that could reasonably be concluded. What can we conclude from all this? Probably that we shouldn’t be concluding that all the conclusions in reports about these mega hacks are actually conclusions and not inferences designed to fit a narrative. For topics as nebulous as elite hacking in the middle of highly polarized political environment, it’s not so much that ‘less is more’ but that ‘less is less inaccurate and/or misleading’.
We can also conclude that you should probably change your passwords.
@Pterrafractyl–
“Tessa88”? That has an eerie, disturbingly familiar feel to it.
Might Darling Tessa be Nazi?
Best,
Dave
@Dave: It’s also noting that, according to the report below, Tessa88 is presumed by analysts who have communicated with Tessa88 to actually be two people and only one of them is a native Russian speaker. The interview was done following their sale of the LinkedIn and MySpace hacks back in June. So Tessa88 appears to be at least two people who are intentionally putting up a “I’m Russian” public face as they go about grabbing the world’s attention:
“Barysevich said “it’s very likely” that behind the alias Tessa88 there are actually two people, perhaps a female and a male, and only one who’s a native Russian speaker, judging from how they portray themselves and how they speak. (Our interpreter, who translated our chat with Tessa88, also said she thought we were talking to two different people.)”
So it sounds like Tessa88 is at least two people, only one of which is a native Russian speaker. While it’s not really surprising that multiple people would be operating under the same handle for something like this, it’s still pretty notable given that Tessa88’s activity appeared to be as much about gaining publicity and creating a sensation as it was about making money. As Tessa88 put it:
It’s also worth noting that “Peace of Mind”, also gave an interview following the where he said he was Russian. And when asked where he got the data, he said a ‘team’ did it. A team of Russians. He also suggests that Tessa88 was part of this team. So both Tessa88 and Peace of Mind REALLY want the world to assume they are Russian hackers:
“Peace: Well, all these have been hacked through [a] ‘team,’ if you want to call it that, of Russians. Some have been my work, others by another person.”
That was “Peace of Mind“ ‘s blanket statement about where the data came from and what his relationship was with it: it was a team of Russians, including Peace of Mind. And here’s what he said about Tessa88:
That sure sounds like Peace of Mind was asserting that Tessa88 was part of the original team of alleged Russians.
And look at Peace of Mind’s alleged motivation for taking such a big risk for a relatively small amount of money: he just liked messing with websites who are willing to work with law enforcement. Also, he is safe from law enforcement where he is located:
So “Peace of Mind” is basically trying to tell the world that he is part of some Russian hacking team who can hack with impunity because he is in Russia. If that was the case, telling the world about that probably isn’t the best way to maintain that impunity.
Also keep in mind that that above interview was done before we had InfoArmor’s report describing how a “Group E” appears to be the original hacker in the Yahoo hack and “Tessa88” and “Peace of Mind” purchased or somehow acquired the info only recently to make a big high profile splash. And as we saw in the WSJ article about the InfoArmor report InfoArmor viewed Tessa88 and Peace of Mind as separate from “Group E”:
And in the above interview it notes that Tessa88 only started showing up in April of this year. So while it’s currently assumed that Tessa88 was part of the original team that hacked LinkedIn and MySpace, that’s pure speculation. We’re basically assuming Tessa88 and Peace of Mind are telling the truth.
Additionally, when you read the actual InfoArmor report, they describe Tessa88 as as not even being fully aware of what they were actually selling. And Tessa88 is described as being part of a carefully orchestrated effort to publicly sell the hacked data in a manner that obscured the original source:
“This approach was “carefully” orchestrated in order to mask the actual sources of the hacks and to commercialize the data in an anonymous manner, due to the fact that this data had been used by the threat actors for their own purposes, namely, targeted account takeover (ATO) and spam. Initially tessa88 proposed several databases for sale, including VK, MySpace, Fling and other notable e‑mail providers and some instant messaging services from Eastern Europe. He initially mentions this data in a post, dated 11.02.2016 (February 2016), coinciding with the time frame when the data associated with the 2012 hacks was actually acquired.”
Given all that, it sure looks like “Tessa88” and “Peace of Mind” are playing out the ‘Boris and Natasha’ role a global audience to, at a minimum, cover the tracks of “Group E”, an elite black hat for hire hacking crew that’s assumed to be Eastern European. And maybe they really are Eastern European. Maybe some of them are Russian. We don’t know. What we do know is that they really want the world to think they’re Russian.
According to US intelligence sources briefed on the investigation of Hal Martin, it looks like they aren’t seeing any connection to the “Shadow Brokers” leak and investigators are still trying to determine both what Martin was doing with that data and who the actual source is for the Shadow Brokers leak. And there’s still no hint that investigators are even considering the possibility that Jacob Appelbaum was the Shadow Brokers source, like James Bamford suggests they should. Instead, it’s looking like the official explanation is going to be that it was code accidentally left on a server by NSA staff and picked up by Russian hackers. They haven’t entirely arrived at that conclusion quite yet, but that’s clearly the answer they’re going to arrive at:
“The investigation into the leaks led the FBI to Martin, who had been taking home classified documents for many years, officials say. His motives have not been established.”
Note that, according to a report in the Guardian, the NSA now believes that Martin has been taking NSA documents home “since the 1990s” but can’t tie him to any known leaks. So either this guy is amazing at smuggling out documents from the NSA or it’s not actually very difficult.
Also note that, according to the report below that’s from late September, before the Hal Martin arrest was publicly disclose, NSA investigators have basically already concluded that the Shadow Brokers leak was a result of someone leaving NSA code on a server. What’s the evidence? NSA officials gold investigators about an incident where an employee or contractor left the hacking tools on the server years ago, then told the NSA about it shortly thereafter, and then the NSA went searching for signs that someone else was using the tools and concluded that no one had found the tools and nothing more needed to be done. That’s quite an admission tucked away in the Reuters article below.
They’re also pretty sure Russia did eventually hack this server and is now behind the Shadow Brokers leak. Why Russia? One reason given is that the Shadow Brokers decided to reveal the code to the world instead of selling it like regular criminals. It doesn’t seem like particularly conclusive proof of specifically Russian involvement, but that’s the theory they’re going with:
“Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the former NSA person, who has since departed the agency for other reasons, left the tools exposed deliberately. Another possibility, two of the sources said, is that more than one person at the headquarters or a remote location made similar mistakes or compounded each other’s missteps.”
So that’s where the investigation is clearly heading: someone left it one a server, and Russia hacked it. And what’s the evidence? Well, apparently the evidence is an admission by the NSA that they knew all about an incident three years about involving an employee or contractor leaving these tools on a server.
So, assuming this is accurate, it sounds like the NSA at least half-solved the Shadow Brokers mystery in terms of where the code came from. Either that or the intelligence community is so paranoid about acknowledging the possibility that it was part of the Snowden/Appelbaum heist that making up a story like this is the better alternative. Either way, there’s still the question of who is doing the leaking now. And as we saw, while they haven’t concluded it was Russia, it’s presumed to be Russia:
Regarding the decision the hackers’ to release the code to the world instead of immediately selling it, keep in mind that the Shadow Brokers actually only released some of the code as a kind of teaser, written in ‘Boris and Natasha’ broken English, and then offered the rest of the code to private bidders via a Bitcoin auction. But it was the claims by Wikileaks that they had all the code and were going to release it for free that really made it seem like the hackers weren’t actually in it for the money. And, of course, don’t forget that Jacob Appelbaum was Wikileaks’ chief hacker and remains quite close to the organization.
Also note that Wikileaks hasn’t actually released the code yet, which raises the question as to whether or not they’re keeping it as a kind of leverage to protect Assange. And maybe protect Appelbaum...could that be part of why he’s never mentioned in the investigation? The threat of releasing everything now before systems can get patched? Either way, the hackers are at least pretending to really want some money for the code:
“Although the writing style is likely to throw analysts off the track of determining who wrote Shadow Brokers’ messages, the allegedly forced broken English gets annoying fast even if you aren’t a grammar Nazi. That might partially be why the group’s second message was basically ignored by the media; however, it did mention a bid of 1.5 bitcoins which is currently worth about $915. The blockchain info shows a measly 1.761821 bitcoins received in total – which was worth $1,073.85 at the time of publishing.”
Yes, someone who appears to be a native English speaker trying to appear like a non-native English speaker is very upset that the no one in the world wants to pay them $1 million in bitcoins with a no refunds policy for the code that Wikileaks promises to release for free at some point.
So that’s the apparent state of the Shadow Brokers investigation. It wasn’t Hal Martin, who appears to be some sort of NSA data hoarder. And it wasn’t Jacob Appelbaum or anyone related to the Snowden Affair (even though Wikileaks somehow got their hands on the code and has yet to release it all after saying they were going to do so). Instead it was an NSA employee or contractor who left the code on a server and actually told the NSA about all this shortly doing so and the NSA knew about this years ago but concluded that nothing bad would happen if they didn’t tell anyone about. That’s what happened. And maybe that’s actually what happened. But it will be interesting to see if Wikileaks ever releases that code and whether or not the investigators conclusions regarding the culpability of Appelbaum or someone associated with his network suddenly change.
Now that the US government is officially blaming Russia for the various high-profile political hacks this year, one of the big questions going forward is how the US responds. And as this post from the the Council on Foreign Relations blog suggests, that US response might not come in the form of some retaliatory cyber actions. Instead, we should probably expect non-cyber responses like increasing military aid for Russia’s neighbors and increasing government investments in anonymizing cyber technology (like Tor):
“This does not mean there should be no reaction. Instead, Washington will want to consider a range of options such as extending sanctions to those around Putin using a new a new executive order, more aid to Estonia and other states on Russia’s periphery, and more funds for the development of next generation anonymizing tools for dissidents and non-governmental organizations that monitor the Kremlin. The United States could also take steps to dismantle the IT infrastructure and hop points that Russian intelligence used to compromise U.S. political institutions to disrupt future cyber operations. This could take the form of clandestine activity or publicly visible steps, such as working with the international network of computer emergency response teams much like the United States did to counteract the 2011–2013 Iranian denial of service attacks against U.S. banks.”
Yes, if the US responds to its charges against Russia with cyber attacks of its own, that could lead to a massive escalation of attacks that neither side can control. But there are other options, like fueling a military build up on Russia’s borders. No possibility for a disastrous escalation of tensions there!
The other recommendation was that the US could increase funds for anonymization tools that could be used by Russian dissidents. And that’s an obvious reference to tools like Tor. Tools like Tor which happen to have been developed by cypherpunk hackers like Jacob Appelbaum (who is no longer with Tor following a wave of sexual harassment allegations this summer).
Since it’s possible, or at least recommended by the CFR blog, that the US respond to these hacks with a military build up around Russia and an increase in funding for tools like Tor, maybe it’s worth keeping in mind:
a. The manner in which the Snowden Affair appeared to have had the disruption of the US-Russian “reset” as one of its objectives.
b. The degree to which Snowden, Appelbaum, and the rest of the cypherpunk community would love to see the development of even more secure anonymization tools like Tor that would greatly enhance the power of hackers to operate anonymously.
and c. The distinct possibility — in terms of capability, ideology, and motives — that someone from this cypherpunk network could be behind at least some of these high-profile hacks.
So whether or not these hacks really are coming from the cypherpunk elite hacker networks, if the US responds to these high-profile hacks with a big new investment in the cypherpunks’ dream-tools, you can be pretty sure there’s going to be a lot more high-profile hacks. Hacking the US will be like a cypherpunk pinata: hit it hard enough in a manner that implicates a country like Russia or China (countries the anonymization tools were built to be used in) and fun prizes eventually fall out!
Similarly, if the US does indeed respond to these hacks with a big military build up in places like the Baltics and Georgia and specifically attributes the build up to the alleged Russian hacks, you can also be pretty sure there’s going to be a lot more high-profile US hacks.
Still, it’s possible the US does actually have solid evidence that the Russian government was indeed behind the hacks but can’t reveal because that evidence would expose sources and methods. And let’s say the US has concluded there’s a justification for some sort or response. In that case, what should the US government do?
The answer isn’t obvious and more importantly it isn’t obvious it isn’t obvious because we’re in new weird territory here. Kind of like the new weird territory of the nuclear age and the madness of mutually assured destruction with nukes or other WMDs. Doomsday-ish techno-showdowns aren’t new, but each one is its own snowflake of doom.
And since one of the biggest threats in the age of the Great Hack is the risk that one of these hacks either directly leads to the use of a WMD (like someone taking over launch systems) or indirectly (like a hack response that spirals out of control), it’s definitely worth keeping in mind that one of the biggest goals of the age of the Great Hack is to get rid of WMDs. Or at least get that all pointed towards space for the eventual Borg attack (Good luck with that!). And while that may not be possible any time soon, we probably shouldn’t underestimate the utility of an endless international conversation about a vision for a future that doesn’t involve doomsday showdowns. Because technology is making doomsday showdowns easier and easier and that trending isn’t ending until we do. And bad relations aren’t an excuse for not talking about how to build a better tomorrow.
So why shouldn’t the response to this growing US-Russian showdown be a “Russian reset” reset? And why not make building a global agreement for not using high profile hacks as a way of messing with other nations elections one of those building blocks for that better tomorrow. Regardless of whether Russia was behind these hacks or not, now is probably a good time for a reset reset and a long meaningful talk about what to do next.
Here’s something rather notable about the big DDoS attack last week that took down a number of major websites: Wikileaks basically claimed the attack done by Wikileaks supporters in retaliation against the cut off of Julian Assange’s internet access. And while Wikileaks’s claim hasn’t been proven, as the article below notes, shortly after Wikileaks sent out a tweet asking its supporters to end the attack, the attack ended:
“Shortly after WikiLeaks tweeted its message, Dyn posted a status update to its site proclaiming, “This incident has been resolved.””
Well, coincidences do happen. But the fact that it’s really hard to dismiss the idea that one or more Wikileaks supporters carried this out (the attack was carried out by a Botnet so it could have conceivably been one person running the whole attack) is a reflection of the reality that Wikileaks is probably going to have an abundance of supporters with extensive hacking skills. The kind of hacking skills that, if misinterpreted, could create a major international incident. It’s a fun fact increasingly worth keeping in mind.
Here’s an article that should serve as a reminder that, if Hillary Clinton wins, the GOP investigations are going to be up and running from the very first day and probably continue until she leaves office (assuming the GOP never loses control of the House during her time in office). It’s a reminder we don’t really need since it’s obvious this will happen, but with key GOP leaders already talking about “years” of investigations they have lined up it’s still worth noting. But there’s another reminder in the article that hasn’t received too much attention yet: If Hillary wins, the GOP’s reliance on Wikileaks for anything Hillary-related is only going to grow and grow:
““It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.””
That was the warning coming from Jason Chaffetz, head of the House Oversight Committee: get ready for the GOP to make impeaching Hillary Clinton their full-time job. And House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared to fully back him up. It’s predictable that they would do so, but it wasn’t necessarily predictable that they would just come out and admit it before the election. But that’s what they just did so it will be interesting to see if that admission enters into both the presidential and House races with the election less than two weeks away. Pledging to begin years of investigations from day one is a rather polarizing statement for party leaders to make.
And that pledge basically means Julian Assange’s current status as a kind of GOP savior-in-waiting is probably going to continue unabated too:
Is Chaffetz really going to resist the allure of all those Wikileaks documents? Julian Assange is still presumably going to remain hell-bent on somehow taking down Hillary one way or another so we should expect a steady stream of Hillary-related leaks, real or not. And Wikileaks has already proven time and again this campaign season that its capable of titillating GOP audiences. So if Wikileaks releases a leak that could actually either create a new GOP investigation or further an existing investigation, it’s hard to believe that Chaffetz and the rest of the GOP isn’t going to be more than happy to overcome any remaining reticence they might have about rely on stolen documents.
All in all, it’s very clear we can expect an endless wave of investigations and, therefore, it’s also very clear that we can expect one giant endless GOP prayer for Wikileaks to somehow provide the evidence they need to prove Hillary is a demon or something. And the more the GOP invests its political fortunes in somehow taking down Hillary, the stronger that Wikileaks prayer is going to get.
So while it’s obviously going to be quite interesting to see how years of endless GOP investigations impacts the public’s view of Hillary, it’s going to be extra interesting to see just how popular Julian Assange is with the American right-wing after four to eight years of this. Especially if the GOP begins to experience a “Boy who cried corrupt wolf” public backlash, making some sort of big ‘score’ from Assange all the more important for the “investigate Hillary into oblivion” strategy. Yes, some in the GOP might still have cold feet about cozying up to Wikileaks, but the interest is obviously there to take this relationship to the next level. And why not? It’s a relationship that clearly has a lot of long-term potential. And who knows, maybe they’re soulmates.
Interesting that the Podesta hack originated from Ukraine. While it is possible that this was done by Russian-linked groups in Ukraine, where they have launched many attacks from before, it is also possible that the attack came from pro-Ukrainian fascist forces as well, possibly to ensure that Hillary stays in their camp?
https://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/
In the email, the hackers even provided an Internet address of the purported Ukrainian hacker that actually traced to a mobile communications provider in Ukraine.
Awww...it looks like the “Trump server set up secret communication with Alfa” story is already crumbling as other experts with access to the data comment on the findings, including the FBI which had already investigated the matter. As the article below notes, it’s not that there isn’t something somewhat odd about the communication pattern been Alfa’s mystery server with the server used by the Trump organization allegedly for marketing purposes. It is odd. But it’s also potentially totally innocuous so nothing can be concluded:
“Foer mentions in his piece that the New York Times was investigating the link. On Monday, the paper reported that the FBI had looked into and dismissed the idea that the two servers represented a secret communications channel. Investigators “concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts,” the Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers reported.”
Well, that settles that...in that it settles nothing which is appropriate given the lack of any conclusive evidence.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that if any groups want to set up secure servers for private communication with each other in the way alleged by the original Slate article, now we all know how to do it: set up your servers to behave as closely to these servers as possible because at that point it will seem innocuous if someone detects the odd behavior. After all, a marketing server would potentially be a pretty good front for something like that.
It’s analogous to the challenges of discerning the identity of, say, alleged Russian hackers when the data used to make that ID can be so easily spoofed by a skilled hacker or confirming the validity of hacked emails when the email content can be totally forged and no one would know it. So while digital conspiracy theories are likely to be increasingly prevalent as major hacks continue to rock societies, and while those digital conspiracy theories are likely to be criticized because the evidence to conclusively back them up simply isn’t available, the 2016 US campaign is turning into a giant lesson in the reality that digital conspiracy theories are basically the only option in a digital age.
It’s also a reminder that the problem isn’t really with the digital conspiracy theories. Those are unavoidable and unfortunately necessary. The problems are with the digital conspiracy conclusions using inconclusive evidence.
With the 2016 US election season coming to a merciful end, and the question of just how much damage Donald Trump did to the Trump brand by running as an Alt-Right white nationalist candidate yet to be answered, it’s worth noting that the Trump isn’t the only brand potentially seriously sullied by this election. Of course there’s the GOP’s brand too, but that was already pretty sullied. Perhaps a more interesting question is what this is going to do to Wikileaks’ brand, because it’s not as if the world has gotten an explanation for why the organization was doing everything it could to thrust President Donald Trump onto the world stage. And here’s Wikileak’s answer...it’s and answering that’s probably not going to do much for the brand: Wikileaks wasn’t trying to help Donald Trump at all. Nope. Nothing to see here:
“Assange himself wrote in February that a vote for Clinton is “a vote for endless, stupid war.” In a June interview, he called Clinton “a bit of a problem for freedom of the press.” And Trump ally Roger Stone claimed in a speech he delivered in August that he had “communicated with Assange” about an “October surprise” the WikiLeaks founder had promised to reveal about Clinton, which never materialized.”
Yeah, it’s kind of hard to ignore Roger Stone’s claims that either he or one or one of his friends was in contact with Assange and getting inside information on when Wikileaks was going to do an anti-Hillary dump. We’re all apparently just supposed to ignore about that. And while an official “October Surprise” may not have emerged from Wikileaks in October, that probably had something to do with the fact that they were releasing all the Hillary/Democrat-related information in near daily dribs and drabs for months. Sure, the leaks weren’t really “surprising” at that point, but they were still pretty damaging and very obviously favorable to the Trump campaign. But we’re presumably supposed to ignore that too.
So, given the enormous damage Wikileaks did to its credibility by basically acting as Donald Trump’s digital dirty-tricks middleman, one of the interesting questions worth asking now is what happens if people in general just started ignoring Wikileaks. Or, more specifically, what if Wikileaks acquired a reputation as a crypto-far-right organization and effectively died because it lost that critical trust factor. Or whatever other reason that might cause the organization to dissolve. What happens to all the unleaked information? Because just imagine how much real, and totally fake, unleaked information is still residing on its servers. Does some other ‘transparency organization’ get all the data? Assange has previously hinted that an “insurance” file will get released if Wikileaks is shut down. But what if it just dies a slow death? Is everything going to be dumped in one giant death rattle? In other words, does Wikileaks have a will? If there is a Wikileaks will, can we all see it or is it private? After the near-death experience Wikileaks helped but the the United States through it seems like a question worth answering.