A Short Revelation on Trapwire, Cubic, and Public Surveillance, Kept Simple for People Who Can't Read Sentences That Are Hard

UPDATE Well, we may have actually won an op, although whether we do so is dependent on how many media are willing to implicitly note mistakes. Ntrepid has now been shown to be connected to Trapwire via Ntrepid, as proven at around 3:00 EST by one of our wonderful activists: "This paste http://pastebin.com/kRNMPj9N from @BarrettBrownLOL says M. Lee registered #TrapWire. She's BOD Secretary for #Ntrepid" A few minutes later we've already got one journo with major outlet who's writing on this calling up Cubic and Trapwire in the morning, so looks like we have a chance to get this done thoroughly and otherwise have a clean hit akin to HBGary (and less like Endgame, which dragged out and got ignored by most outlets after Business Week did the final work on it). [Unnecessary but occasionally amusing six-paragraph intro I wrote when I was drunk has been moved to bottom. Read it if you have nothing better to do, loser] TRAPWIRE, CUBIC, THE ARTICLE FORCED DOWN IN AUSTRALIA, OTHER MATTERS *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** There's a story kind of struggling for air, on a self-asserted CCTV "data-mining" capability called Trapwire - erroneous/incredibly incomplete coverage in NYT, better in coverage by NBC and Daily Caller and couple others I was quoted in last night, few very informative pieces in less-exposed outlets. My group Project PM as well as Wikileaks (which is being covered ATM only in context of Assange troubles, which are indeed key) and Telecomix have been working on it for a week now, mostly last 48 hours, based on the original materials, which stem from the 5.2 million Stratfor e-mails taken by Anon and now being distributed in groups by topic by volunteers at Wikileaks who have access to the entire set. *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** [Portion removed for privacy of another activist.] Meanwhile, a syndicated article that appeared on the 13th in at least six major Australian outlets including Sydney Herald was entirely pulled from all of them next day, and the much-delayed explanation (which apparently appeared in Herald print today, but not anywhere at all online, other than a vague and somewhat odd Tweet by one of the two authors who's also an editor, that Cubic Corporation - which acquired Abraxas, parent in turn of spin-off Abraxas Applications - made some sort of complaint to the effect that it itself is not really "connected" to Trapwire since, apparently, it was developed, marketed, and then put into motion via the spin-off two years before Cubic felt inclined to purchase Abraxas. *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** That Cubic managed to hide any association with another, less official "spin-off" of Abraxas, Ntrepid - with which Abraxas shares key board members and draws upon capabilities developed/maintained by Anonymizer, which Abraxas bought shortly before its own purchase by Cubic, and which seems to have been created entirely to win (which it did) a bid for persona management software (fake online people) put out by USAF in 2010 and later confirmed by CENTCOM spokesman to be in operation at McDill and Kabul, under use of "multinational forces" and under Earnest Voice. When this first came out of the HBGary e-mails that my other "associates" seized from them in early 2011 (after they made threatening remarks to FT about allegedly having identified our "lieutenants" and our non-existent "co-founder and leader" and planning to talk to FBI, which was itself very bizarre), we did a lot of "media outreach" on the issue, and then when two very good colleagues of mine from The Guardian did a report on it, they never discovered that Ntrepid had any connection to Cubic at all, which wasn't mentioned in the piece. Six months later one of my guys at PM finally found a 2010 Cubic tax filing that showed Ntrepid, like Abraxas, is "wholly owned" by Cubic. *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** So now that's at least out there - at least to those who happen to read our niche wiki on intelligence contracting affairs. A few reporters and other folks with megaphones or access, but most not too regularly. *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Despite the "question" of whether Cubic has anything to do with the direction of Trapwire as it has with at least other, even less "official" spin-offs of Abraxas (as proven by merger records and a couple other documents pulled up just in last few days), and insomuch as that one of those even notes Cubic's expected "synergies" from Abraxas merger - and of course this question is allegedly the reason why an article was disappeared and not edited or corrected or even initially acknowledged and even still not acknowledged in any way that the majority who read the now-gone story online can see it for themselves, NYT does not mention Cubic at all in its piece yesterday, which claims fears of it are "wildly exaggerated" based on what reporter was told by DHS officials who are unnamed and not quoted. Here: *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/us/trapwire-antiterrorist-software-leaks-set-off-web-furor.html *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** In two years of following this issue closely and sometimes being directly involved, I have never seen anything like this. At the least, I hope this will give you some insight into how ill-equipped the U.S. media in particular has been to cover this trillion-dollar topic in almost any meaningful way, and want to thank you again for what Businessweek has done and for allowing someone with my views to take part in your very timely panel last month. Thanks, and hope all is well. Here is info we've compiled, plus samples of insightful coverage of Trapwire and our work on it, much from last 24 hours: *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Trapwire http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Cubic_Corporation http://barrettbrown.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-facts-on-cubic-and-trapwire-abraxas.html (a partly silly piece I wrote last night that nonetheless includes much of the new documentation, tax records, etc) http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/15/pr-effort-launched-to-cover-tracks-about-trapwire-domestic-surveillance-system/ *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Vaguely corrupt marketing partnership between the ex-State Department types and self-described "intel analysts" at Stratfor and Trapwire itself, which is supposed not to have any similar or more complex dealings with its ultimate owner unlike other sub-subsidies such as Ntrepid: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/trapwire-strafor-biz/ DRUNK INTRO TO ABOVE Yesterday or something close to it, I posted a very long and, er, multi-faceted article explaining not only Trapwire, its coverage, its connections, and why Adrian Chen is a really shitty "reporter" who gets things consistently wrong because he is under zero pressure from John Cook, but also other stuff I forget. 5 percent of the people who commented on Twitter or e-mail or what have you said something about early sentences being long and no paragraphs making it hard to read. I will never add paragraphs now just for spite because I hate people like that. If god knows how many other people, including dozens of journalists who either linked to it or tweeted it or interviewed me after it, as well as plenty who probably don't know much about the issue, can understand it and even write articles based in part on what it says here, and if dozens of those "basement-dwelling kids" at Anon can understand it, you can fucking understand it. If not, don't ever read my shit, and kill yourself because you commented on some fucking guy's paragraph structure and tendency to write seven-part sentences when he's been (1) out drinking a bit earlier because it's his fucking birthday and now he's writing about some bs called Trapwire instead of hanging with gf and friend who is now over, and (2) drank a pot of coffee and smoked a bunch of pot cause he enjoys that and doesn't care if the news he writes for free is written all wacky-like for 20 fucking percent of it. Incidentally, every single fucking person who commented on Daily Kos as of just now has done so solely to complain about lack of paragraphs aside from the many divisions that are actually there. The cute thing is that I predicted it (although after the 1st comment) an hour before. Were it not for the fact that some people would justly benefit from a summary, or perhaps don't want to read 2000 words covering entire epic in detail, I would never cater to the demands of those people. Those people do not deserve to live in democracies and should be exiled to a 50-mile section of the Sahara, surrounded by light Janjaweed patrols who occasionally venture inward for... "access control." Like a portion of yesterday's, this comes from e-mail I wrote, this time today, to a journalist I know and to the editor of a major publication that has paid attention to these issues before and actually done digging on them. Hope it's of use to those who realize that this issue's low media profile is a low point in national security reporting across U.S., Australia, and elsewhere. In addition to paragraphs, I have added three lines of asterixs [sp?] to separate the various clumps of sentences so they'll never ever touch. Fuck you. UPDATE 8/17 10:45 PM Many Bothans died to bring us these sometimes amusing #OpTrapWire propaganda pics. Not interested in posting them? Guess what? You're worthless! ^___^