I just caught a tweet from AnonymousIRC and the firm Palantir Technologies has cut their ties with BofA and HB Gary.
phpislife Abhy Awasthi Retweeted by AnonymousIRC
FLAWLESS VICTORY! =D RT @AnonymousIRC: @PalantirTech cuts all ties with @HBGaryPR and apologizes in public: Firm targeting WikiLeaks cuts ties with HBGary - apologizes to Glenn Greenwald
The linked story from The Tech Herald didn't mention Glenn Greenwald in the title, but the opening paragraph did.
Dr. Alex Karp, the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, one of three data intelligence firms who worked to develop a systematic plan of attack against WikiLeaks and their supporters, has severed all ties with HBGary Federal and issued an apology to reporter Glenn Greenwald.
Palantir Technologies’ statement comes at a time when HBGary has refused to talk about the WikiLeaks proposal, or any other topic for that matter, related to the security incident caused by Anonymous after HBGary Federal’s Aaron Barr went to the press claiming he had infiltrated the loosely associative group.
It is unlikely that Anonymous would forge thousands and thousands of emails or attachments. Yet, the complete severance of ties by Palantir Technologies, and the public apology to Greenwald, leaves little room for doubt that the information seen by The Tech Herald, Crowdleaks.org, and many others is legitimate.
[update 1] Glenn Greenwald responds for the first time to this sequence of events on Salon.com.
The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters
The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters"; 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. Moreover, for the reasons I detailed in my interview with The Tech Herald -- and for reasons Digby elaborated on here -- the very notion that I could be forced to choose "professional preservation over cause" is ludicrous on multiple levels.
I do have a problem with Glenn blaming the entire Justice Department and the Government in general because of the actions of one person who recommended the Hunton & Williams firm, but I believe everyone deserves to see his response.