This article The U.S. Government Is Suing Barrett Brown's Intelligence Research Site offers recent developments in the case of Barrett Brown, a journalist/activist whose web site “Project PM” runs a wiki that provides “a centralized, actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry's interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/”cybersecurity” industry, and other issues constituting threats to human rights, civic transparency, individual privacy, and the health of democratic institutions.”
“Last week…Barrett’s mother plead guilty to her charge of obstructing evidence: she hid his computers from the FBI. Late last night, the news broke through the “Free Barrett Brown” Twitter account that Brown’s Wiki, ProjectPM, which is described on the project’s Twitter page as being, “Dedicated to research of government corruption, sitting in bubble baths drinking wine,” was being subpoenaed by the Department of Justice. ProjectPM is an online compendium where Barrett and his fellow researchers share information they've been gathering about the intelligence industry in the United States. The Department of Justice is suing the company’s hosting provider, CloudFlare. While ProjectPM appeared to have gone down on Wednesday, it seems the site is back up. This kind of spotty connection has been very common for the site over the past few months. Even Googling ProjectPM does not yield any results that point to the site.”
Check out ProjectPm and sites showing research on similar issues at these links:
ProjectPM
http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/
Telecomix Blue Cabinet
“The Telecomix Blue Cabinet is a working wiki project to document vendors and manufacturers of surveillance equipment that are used in dictatorships and democracies around the internets. The project came into being after Telecomix became aware of, and published, that Blue Coat Systems surveillance technology (IP filtering) was being used by the Syrian government under the dictatorship of Assad. These “Blue Coat logs” can be viewed at Project Bluesmote. For more info, see the Blue Cabinet Wiki page for Blue Coat Systems. Blue Cabinet Wiki is PUBLIC. This means that YOU may add truthful data with sources i.e. urls to where you found it online. The purpose of the Blue cabinet Wiki Project is to create an overview and to share resources between Telecomix and other projects out there that have the same goal as us; to name, shame and expose those who profit on selling the surveillance equipment that enables the invasion of privacy, targeted intimidation, harassment and assist government dictatorships to identify and locate people they consider dissidents, often leading to detainment, torture and even death.”
“BUGGEDPLANET.INFO is a about Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Communication Intelligence (COMINT), Tactical and Strategical Measures used to intercept Communications and the Vendors and Governmental and Private Operators of this Technology. The nature of this Issues means that most of it is run in secrecy and information about this activities sometimes is hard to verify. BUGGEDPLANET.INFO tries to distinguish between Information that comes with a verifiable source and those information that does not…Each Section, be it a country specific collection of knowledge, a collection of Material about a vendor of technology and it`s appearance or other Pages can and should contain a section with the Headline UNCONFIRMED RUMORS. The UNCONFIRMED RUMORS section is also set up for Information gathered through Insiders, whistleblowers and whatever ways where the source cannot be exposed. It will be of course most helpful to research all subjects listed in UNCONFIRMED RUMORS to verify whatever described and to add any sources through Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). BUGGEDPLANET.INFO is a collection of pieces of a big puzzle. Please help to sort them out so what we all have a realistic big picture on the matter.”
Phi Beta Iota: We are deeply sympathetic to well-intentioned government employees without a clue, who think they can “mandate” sources & methods secrecy. This is as stupid as CIA thinking it could live immunity for decades working out of official facilities with young kids throwing money around and being easily identifiable within two weeks of arrival in country. Wait for the Chief of Station party and you have them all including the communicators. Hobbyists looking at tail numbers brought down CIA's rendition and torture program. Internal whistleblowers have brought down other programs. In the end, the government has an obligation to a) act in the public interest and b) be capable of doing that which needs to be secret, without having to lock up every kid that can read. We notice with sadness that neither the Department of Justice nor the Federal Bureau of Investgation have any “whales” in their sights — the full capacity of these nominally public agencies is focused on minnows. Government Of, By, and For the 1%. News Flash: there are not enough government attorneys, file clerks, or weapons to suppress the 99%. The ONLY way to come to terms with the 99% is to reconnect with the ethics of democracy.
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