Bank of America and Glenn Greenwald
[Ed Brayton/Glenn Greenwald/Salon.com] Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary Federal, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site.
The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal [...] and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prongs of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks.
My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity. Not being familiar with the private-sector world of internet security, I hadn't heard of these firms before and, based on the quality of the proposal, assumed they were just some self-promoting, fly-by-night entities of little significance. [...] But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously -- not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights.
But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. [...] There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.
The whole situation is appalling but hardly surprising. And as Greenwald notes, much of it is illegal. But don't expect anyone to be charged with those crimes any time soon. It was the DOJ that recommended HB Gary to Bank of America. And their actions fit the DOJ's agenda to destroy WikiLeaks. The DOJ will conveniently look the other way.
Justin Elliott/Salon.com: New information emerges on anti-WikiLeaks plot