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In reply to the discussion: Holy Fuck Me Harder! [View all]starroute
(12,977 posts)That's one thing that strikes me, and I wonder how much his seeming reticence in writing about this presentation is a result of having been affected personally.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked-hbgary-documents-show-plan-to-spread-wikileaks-propaganda-bofa-attack-glenn-greenwald.shtml
Feb 10th 2011
You may have followed the recent story involving a security firm called HBGary Federal, in which the company's CEO, Aaron Barr, told the Financial Times this weekend that he had secretly "infiltrated" the non-group Anonymous and identified its leadership... and that he was planning to hand over the info to law enforcement. Of course, it was pretty questionable how accurate the information is, considering Anonymous isn't actually a "group" with a hierarchy at all. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that there were some folks who were heavily active, but that's different than claiming there's "leadership." Either way, Anonymous did what Anonymous does when someone does something it doesn't like: they hacked. Beyond taking over Barr's Twitter account and revealing all sorts of private info and taking over various web servers connected to HBGary Federal, it also released 44,000 of the company's emails. . . .
There are two key slides in the presentation. The first is a totally bizarre plan of attack on Salon journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been an outspoken supporter of Wikileaks. However, these three companies seem to think that they can pressure him to give up supporting Wikileaks in this case and that will somehow solve a big part of the issue.
According to the Tech Herald, the word "disrupted" in the final presentation was actually written as "attacked" in earlier drafts of the presentation. This suggests some pretty confused thinking on the part of these firms. The idea that Wikileaks would "fold" without people like Glenn supporting them seems pretty silly, as does the idea that Glenn would suddenly give up the cause. Still, it's pretty freaking ominous for the firm to seriously be suggesting that it can somehow put pressure on Greenwald that would lead him to "choose professional preservation over cause." It makes you wonder just what level of underhanded tricks they were thinking about pulling.