Tales from Stasiland: The Internet Vigilantes by Scott Horton

[Jefferson23]

August 4, 6:09 PM, 2010

Champions of liberal democracy were quick to celebrate the information revolution. Authoritarian societies thrive on isolation, secrecy, and manipulation of information, they reminded us, but the global technology revolution will frustrate plans to control the free flow of information.

In fact, of course, things are far more complex. On the one hand, networking technologies like Twitter helped fuel the Green Revolution in Iran, and recent stories out of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates demonstrate how technology can challenge even wealthy and sophisticated authoritarian states. On the other hand, modern information and networking technologies can easily be used just the way George Orwell envisioned they would be: to spy on people almost effortlessly, in ways that can hardly be detected. Congress has laid down clear restrictions on the government’s ability to collect data, but what if viligantes were to collect the data and then just spontaneously share it with the intelligence community?

Consider the Internet organization called Project Vigilant, which appears to have played a role in identifying the transmissions to WikiLeaks of the documents now known as the Afghan War Diary. Robert McMillan at Computerworld reports on the curious remarks delivered at a public conference by Chet Uber, who claims that he convinced hacker Adrian Lamo to denounce Bradley Manning to the intelligence establishment.

“I used my connections to make sure that the three-letter agencies knew about it,” said Uber, who directs Project Vigilant, a volunteer-run effort to dig up intelligence on “bad actors,” such as terrorists and drug cartels. Lamo has worked as a volunteer with the group since 2009, providing “adversary characterization,” which helps its members understand the different types of computer intruders that they may be dealing with.

Evidently the “bad actors” that Project Vigilant targets include not just terrorists and drug cartels but also government whistleblowers seeking to expose some potentially embarrassing conduct of the nation’s intelligence community.


in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007473

[DBoon]

1. The whole thing is likely a fraud

see cryptome - looks like a PR stunt be a wanna-be