Main Core, PROMIS and the New American Fascism

[David Guyatt]

Not a pleasant thought, but one that has to be thunked by everyone now.

[Ed Jewett]

"The FBI pushes for broadband wiretap powers.

All broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, would have to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police, according to a new proposal from the FBI. The long-awaited proposal, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday, has been crafted so broadly that it would outlaw the introduction of new broadband services that did not support ready wiretapping access. Companies currently offering broadband would be given 15 months to comply.

http://www1.seisint.com/images/products_01_2.gif


Meanwhile, a newspaper claimed, the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles sold driving records of Ohioans for about $50,000 to the company developing a multistate crime database program.

The program, called Matrix, lets states share information with one another and cross-reference the data with up to 20-billion records in databases held by a Florida company called Seisint.

Seisint, founded in 1998, has one location in one former Sep11th "hijacker" city, Boca Raton, FA.

President & Chief Executive Officer of Seisint is Paul S. Cameron, who came from Accenture, which is the new name for Arthur Andersen, former auditor of ENRON.

Accenture is meanwhile also member of an electronic military task force, who supports e-voting.

Other suporters are Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, and EDS.

Seisint's e-voting ties continue with Christiane Breton, Chief Financial Officer, who worked at ChoicePoint.

ChoicePoint, Greg Palast-specialists might know this, merged in 2002 with Database Technologies DBT, which was responsible for the fake felony list of 90,000 people in Florida, which was one of the real reasons for the "stolen election".

It's getting more interesting.

Seisint's Vice President Sal Hernandez, joined Seisint in February 2003 after serving over fifteen years as a Special Agent with the FBI.

Hernandez supported the development of MATRIX in Boca Raton, with funding by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Another Vice President, William D. Shrewsbury, is a former DEA agent, formerly working in the Miami and Ft. Myers Regions.

Other High Tech/Database/Evoting-connections:

• Executive Vice President James P. Swift joined Seisint in May 1999 from Modus Operandi, Inc., a management and technology consulting firm.
  
• Chairman Jack Hight, also on the board of Modus Operandi, was a co-founder of EDS
  
• Director Martha Barnett is on the LEXIS-NEXIS Legal Advisory Board
  
• Bruce Barrington is the founder of Clarion Software and worked with military contractor McDonnell Douglas
  
• Kenneth A. Horowitz, telephon guru, is one of the original founders of the cellular telephone industry
  
• Ira Siegel is CEO of LEXIS-NEXIS
  
• Brian L. Stafford, Managing Director, who was the Director of the United States Secret Service until February 2003.
  During his 31-year career, he safeguarded seven the U.S. nation's presidents and served as the agency's lead executive under Clinton and George W. Bush."
  

Source:
911 Skeptics Unite (Blog March 15th 2004)

author: Nico Haupt aka ewing2001 e-mail: nicohaupt@yahoo.com
Reflections on 9/11 Investigations and post-political aftermath Monday, March 15th 2004
By Ewing2001

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/282914.shtml

[Magda Hassan]

[David Guyatt]

Is that the Linda Minor writing at the bottom Maggie?

[Magda Hassan]

I believe so. I found this today in my wanderings but I can't recall from where I link to it from but it may be another blog of hers. Different from Minor Musings. A new one by the looks of it.

[Ed Jewett]

Great find, Maggie.

[Ed Jewett]

DARPA: Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales'

January 23rd, 2011 Via: Fast Company:
As DARPA puts it: "When we look through the evidence after the fact, we often find a trailsometimes even an obvious' one. The question is can we pick up the trail before the fact giving us time to intervene and prevent an incident?" Computer forensics companies rise to the challenge.
…
NetCerto is one of the companies that is soliciting grant money from DARPA under the ADAMS program. Many companies will be applying to DARPA claiming they have the next algorithm or bit of software that will finally be able to suss out the dangerous needle in a haystack of data. But in order to ensure that software truly works, DARPA will also need software that simulates an environment in which anomalies occur.
NetCerto's CEO David Kovar explains this in a neat metaphor: His company creates a simulated crime scene. "If you wanted to test the abilities of a crime scene forensics team," he tells Fast Company, "you would go out in a parking lot somewhere, you would put bullet casings out, blood marks out, scuff marks in some places. We do the same thing in electronic environments. We will create the clues for people doing analysis to find. And since we created the evidence, we can score them"i.e., the other applicants for DARPA money, those offering forensic software"accurately on whether they found them all."
The same principle could be put to work to catch the next Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter in the Arizona killings. Reports in the wake of the shootings have shown that Loughner left many digital traces signaling anti-government paranoia.
The only problem, points out Kovar, is that anti-government paranoiacs are a dime a dozen. The trick is finding, amidst the tens of thousands, the single one who is planning to act. "That's the core of the problem," says Kovar. "There's so much noise out there….There's so much rhetoric out there that goes nowhere"i.e., that doesn't erupt in violence. Say that the investigation of Loughner reveals a series of characteristics that seem predictors of his violence. "Now you gotta look through the entire Net, and you realize those characteristics match 30,000 people." How do you winnow down the list to the real threats? "I don't have the answer, and DARPA doesn't either, and that's why they're running this program," says Kovar.
Related:
The Last Roundup: MAIN CORE
Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation

[Peter Lemkin]

Spy Software Up for Grabs?
18th January 2012

By Ryan Nelson, Opinion Columnist

The Daily O'Collegian, January 8, 2012

Imagine living in a world where corporations and intelligence firms created software that can intercept communications of entire populations and demographics. Imagine a world where this software was sold by intelligence contractors to governments around the world, including brutal authoritarian dictatorships. Imagine these contractors making billions of dollars in the process.

There's no need to pretend that this world exists, you're living in it.

Last month, Wikileaks published a collection of documents called the "Spy Files" which details just how extensive and pervasive the global surveillance industry has become over the past decade. U.S. corporations such as Blue Coat sell software to oppressive countries like China and Iran to censor, track down, and crush dissent. As a longtime blogger on international affairs, I've been told stories of political bloggers in Iran who have been chopped up into little pieces and mailed back to their families in boxes. I know it's a horrible image to picture in your head, but these atrocities are made possible by corporate entities such as Blue Coat and many like them.

This software isn't only used by authoritarian regimes abroad; they are used here in the U.S., as well. Commercial interests are responsible for the software used in Predator drones that provide data for the CIA. These drones have recently been authorized to be used by law enforcement in the U.S. to gather intelligence.

Intelligence Integration System Inc. created software called Geospatial Toolkit to instantly identify your location and identity based on your phone signal and voice print. It's called "location-based analytics", and it was sold to the CIA and also applied to various drone operations abroad in extrajudicial assassinations. With the PATRIOT Act still in law, one can only assume the worst as to how private our private lives really are and how involved our own government is in it.

With the National Defense Authorization Act now signed into law that authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial, this global surveillance industry becomes even more dangerous in the United States and creates more room for power to be abused.

Private companies don't just sell spying software to the U.S. It's going to go to whoever is the highest bidder, as well. Whether it is the president of Iran or the Saudi royal family, profit is profit and that bottom line is what matters in the end. Multinational surveillance corporations don't have morals or ethics because they can't afford it.

This elusive industry isn't only limited to the secret meetings of intelligence agencies or the backrooms of dictator palaces; it has also infiltrated universities around the country.

The National Security Agency has been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into grants for research funding in academics for at least the past five years. They don't try very hard in hiding it either. In fact, many researchers and academics take pride in the fact that they are being funded by the NSA. With the dangerously common "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" mentality still very present in today's political discourse, the NSA doesn't worry too much about the public outrage as to exactly what they are investing their money in; investments into joyful expenditures such as analysis of intercepted communications, pattern detection and data mining.

Students do all the hard work in researching hardware and software that will be used in the future to spy on American citizens and kill countless civilians abroad, all with our tax dollars. You're welcome NSA.

One of the main reasons the Nazis were so effective and organized when it came to the concentration and death camps was because of computers created and given to them by a U.S. company called IBM. IBM customized these computers specifically for the death camps. Technology is not neutral when the intent of its design is specifically for undermining the freedoms and rights of citizens.

If you could go back in time and stop IBM, would you? What if you didn't have to? These things are being done right now. Western companies are selling technologies to regimes that have no problem in slaughtering their own people to preserve their power, and indeed they have; mostly with weapons sold by U.S. arms traders and manufacturers. Thank you Lockheed Martin.

These intelligence and surveillance firms are able to do what they do because the public is not informed enough to make them accountable for the suffering and death they have caused in the pursuit of profit and at the expense of privacy and freedom from the state. By talking about these issues and facts brought to light by hackers and whistleblowers around the world and entering them into the public discourse, we will make it harder for these firms to market their oppressive technologies that result in the murders on innocent people.

Go ahead and share this on Facebook and Twitter. Maybe the people who are logging your information will have a sudden change of heart and blow the whistle on the company they work for. Like Wikileaks said in a Tweet the other day, "Programmers and system admins control every intelligence agency and bank. What happens when they awake and unite?"

http://www.ocolly.com/mobile/spy-softwar...-1.2738916

[Peter Lemkin]

[URL="http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html"]Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries
[/URL]
It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for 'political opponents' are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L'Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. WikiLeaks has released 287 documents today, but the Spy Files project is ongoing and further information will be released this week and into next year.

International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users' physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.

But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about 'good Western countries' exporting to 'bad developing world countries'. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.
Selling Surveillance to Dictators

When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.

Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on voiceprints'. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.

Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011.
How Mass Surveillance Contractors Share Your Data with the State

In January 2011, the National Security Agency broke ground on a $1.5 billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.

Telecommunication companies are forthcoming when it comes to disclosing client information to the authorities - no matter the country. Headlines during August's unrest in the UK exposed how Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry, offered to help the government identify their clients. RIM has been in similar negotiations to share BlackBerry Messenger data with the governments of India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Weaponizing Data Kills Innocent People

There are commercial firms that now sell special software that analyze this data and turn it into powerful tools that can be used by military and intelligence agencies.

For example, in military bases across the U.S., Air Force pilots use a video link and joystick to fly Predator drones to conduct surveillance over the Middle East and Central Asia. This data is available to Central Intelligence Agency officials who use it to fire Hellfire missiles on targets.

The CIA officials have bought software that allows them to match phone signals and voice prints instantly and pinpoint the specific identity and location of individuals. Intelligence Integration Systems, Inc., based in Massachusetts - sells a "location-based analytics" software called Geospatial Toolkit for this purpose. Another Massachusetts company named Netezza, which bought a copy of the software, allegedly reverse engineered the code and sold a hacked version to the Central Intelligence Agency for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft.

IISI, which says that the software could be wrong by a distance of up to 40 feet, sued Netezza to prevent the use of this software. Company founder Rich Zimmerman stated in court that his "reaction was one of stun, amazement that they (CIA) want to kill people with my software that doesn't work."
Orwell's World

Across the world, mass surveillance contractors are helping intelligence agencies spy on individuals and communities of interest' on an industrial scale.

The Wikileaks Spy Files reveal the details of which companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights.
How to use the Spy Files

To search inside those files, click one of the link on the left pane of this page, to get the list of documents by type, company date or tag.

To search all these companies on a world map use the following tool from Owni