[Vision2020] US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents

[Dave]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/lobbyists-chamberleaks/

Anyone from the local chamber care to comment?

Dave

>
>     EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage
>     Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents
>     <http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/lobbyists-chamberleaks/>
>
> ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. 
> Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing 
> ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is 
> working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to 
> undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a 
> surreptitious sabotage campaign.
>
> According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the 
> lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney 
> Richard Wyatt, who once 
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/19/chamber-of-commerce-still_n_768076.html> 
> represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was 
> hired 
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/19/chamber-of-commerce-still_n_768076.html> 
> by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt 
> and his associates 
> <http://images2.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/johnwoodsagreeingthemis.PNG>, 
> John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security 
> firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies 
> (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging 
> progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the 
> labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and 
> StopTheChamber.com.
>
> According to one document 
> <http://images2.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/ProposalForTheChamber.pdf> 
> prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. 
> The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps 
> highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a 
> progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently 
> expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the 
> Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake 
> insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. View 
> a screenshot below:
>
> <http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/screenshotfixed.jpg>
>
> The security firms hoped to obtain $200,000 
> <http://images2.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/themisplan.pdf> for 
> initial background research, then charge up to $2 million 
> <http://images2.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/themisplan.pdf> for 
> a larger disinformation campaign against progressives. We don’t know 
> if the proposal was accepted after Phase 1 was completed.
>
> The e-mails ThinkProgress acquired are available widely on the web. 
> They were posted by members of “Anonymous 
> <http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks>,” 
> the hactivist community responsible for taking down websites for 
> oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and American corporations that 
> have censored WikiLeaks. Anonymous published the emails from HBGary 
> Federal because an executive at the firm, Aaron Barr, was trying to 
> take Anonymous down. Barr claimed 
> <http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/Cyberactivists-warned-arrest-ftimes-3487898538.html?x=0> 
> that he had penetrated Anonymous and was hoping to sell the data to 
> Bank of America and to federal authorities in the United States. In 
> response, members of Anonymous hacked into Barr’s email and published 
> some 40,000 
> <http://gawker.com/#%215753570/anonymous-hackers-pay-back-fbi-snitch-with-50000-leaked-emails> 
> company e-mails.
>
> It is widely believed that Wikileaks has sensitive information about 
> Bank of America, and plans to expose it later this year. This 
> revelation prompted Bank of America to hire the law/lobbying firm 
> Hunton and Williams, which in turn, according to the e-mails posted 
> online by Anonymous, hired HBGary Federal and other firms to go after 
> Anonymous and supporters of Wikileaks. For instance, one proposal from 
> HBGary Federal and its associates proposed targeting Salon reporter 
> and Wikileaks-supporter Glenn Greenwald with “actions to sabotage 
> <http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/09/the-disinformation-campaign-bank-of-america-considered/> 
> or discredit” him.
>
> ThinkProgress has published a series of articles investigating the 
> Chamber and its activities. We exposed 
> <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/24/stealth-chamber-banks/> the 
> Chamber’s efforts to coordinate a lobbying campaign on behalf of large 
> banks, including JP Morgan, to kill significant portions of financial 
> reform. In October, we published 
> <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/13/chamber-foreign-funded-media/> a 
> series <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/05/foreign-chamber-commerce/> 
> looking into the Chamber’s efforts to solicit donations from foreign 
> corporations for the same account the Chamber used to run partisan 
> attack ads during the midterm campaign, as well as the Chamber’s 
> participation 
> <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/20/beck-koch-chamber-meeting/> in 
> secret fundraising meetings convened by the billionaire plutocrats 
> David and Charles Koch.
>
> ThinkProgress will be posting more details of the Chamber lobbyist 
> campaign to target progressives soon.
>
> – With reporting from Scott Keyes
>



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