Bank Robber is shocked at what Sabu tried to pull
Indeed, there are few words in the English language to describe what the former Anon formerly known as Sabu tried to pull on Wikileaks. Few words indeed, but enough to form the lyrics of the following:
If you need more information, you can find ALL of it at Nigel Parry’s comprehensive blog post. I was going to do that, but he did it first, more thoroughly, and better. Just go.
dear Stratfor clients, let us know how you really feel?
Yes, if you looked closely on Twitter there WAS something more interesting than the Oscars going on tonight. Well, photosynthesis is more interesting, but you know what I mean.
Anonymous and Wikileaks combined forces to leak over five million emails from “private CIA” company Stratfor. Anonymous has gone up against Stratfor before, but by routing the dox through Wikileaks they leverage a chain of media relationships and thus publicity that Anon alone could never reach. Said it before and I will, in fact, say it again: Wikileaks is a PR agency for documents. Wikileaks had a vested interest in this leak because over 4000 of the emails mention Julian Assange or Wikileaks.
Just when everyone thought they had become; a) irrelevant and b) preoccupied, Wikileaks comes out with a fatal stroke that, because of its more than 25 international media partnerships, is as instantly ubiquitous as it is effective.
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
Did I say “fatal?” I sure as hell did. Take a gander at this document, a mere two hours old.
From: george.friedman@stratfor.com
To: fred.burton@stratfor.com
Subject: Draft
Date: 2012-02-26 19:02:07
It is with great personal disappointment I have to inform you that I will resign from my position as CEO for Stratfor to immediate effect.
Please rest assured that this decision was not an easy. But in the light of the recent events, especially the release of our company emails by WikiLeaks, I have decided that stepping down is in the best interest of Stratfor and its customer base.
I want to emphasize that this will have no effect on Stratfor’s business or its members and we will continue to provide state-of-the-art intelligence services.
Regarding the latest breach, Stratfor is fully in control of the situation However, while I cannot take any personal responsibility for this incident, I still have to admit that mistakes have been made on our side. To be clear: We certainly do not condone any criminal activities by groups like Anonymous or other hackers. This is theft and we will continue to cooperate with law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice. But we must acknowledge that this incident would not have been possible if Stratfor had implemented stronger data protection mechanisms – which will be the case from now on. Indeed we will immediately move to implement the latest, and most comprehensive, data security measures.
While I played no role in our technical operations, as the company’s CEO I do accept full responsibility thus will resign from my position effective immediately.
Again, my sincerest apologies for this whole unfortunate incident.
Sincerely,
George Friedman
Yes, George Friedman, former CEO of Stratfor, is officially Fried, if not Fired. That’s a neat trick, saying you can’t take any personal responsibility but that you do accept full responsibility; not to mention claiming to be fully in control of a situation where five million of your security company’s “secure” emails, many of them mortifying, have been released.
Mortifying? How about institutionalized bigotry and opportunistic, malevolent greed for starters, not to mention this high-level security company being shown up, repeatedly, on the security front. There are five million more emails to sift through, and a press conference coming up in a few hours. Who knows what lulz may come?
Everyone's wondering, Who's Next? youtube.com/watch?v=SGptO6…—
WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 26, 2012
It’s the Juiceman, by a trickle. But in more interesting news:
I have a stuffed lobster. What more do you people need????
Lobster Man got 337 votes. God I love #Vancouver!—
(@raincoaster) November 20, 2011
and
6093 votes have been tallied for Amy "Evil Genius" Fox for Vancouver councillor. #vanelxn—
Brent Gilliard (@bgilliard) November 20, 2011
That platform:
FOX, Amy “Evil Genius”
Hello Vancouver.
That's an evil genius we can all get behind!
Most candidate profiles are just resumés and vague promises.
But I? As finance director of Sublime Conception and as a Supervillain, I offer you a Bold New Vancouver with shocking changes like 1. affordable housing, 2. accessible transportation and… 3. livability!
- Let’s end the NPA/Vision housing bubble! Squatters will occupy idle buildings! Taxes on non-resident owners and property flippers will finance mixed income housing! Let’s smash one third of streets and, upon their ruins, build houses… and parks!
- We’ll catch bike thieves with “bait bikes!” Cars that plow through crowded crosswalks will be sold for parts! How about a city-wide “safewalk” program? Traffic-calming circles!? Curb-cuts!? Roofed…bus-stops!?
- Motor vehicles will have proper mufflers! Ban car alarms and booming subwoofers! Replace helicopter flyovers with nice, quiet zepplins!
And rename streets after people who weren’t rich English landowners.
Curious?
You’ve got ten votes.
Join me.
Like I said before:
well in fact I AM a big deal on Google+
You know how we hate to toot our own horn around these parts, but this must be said: apparently I’m kind of a big deal on Google+
which is really rather amusing, considering I’ve been banned twice in two days and am still banned. Nonetheless, here’s what my stats look like today:
ReferrerView
s
google.ca17
gawker.com8
Meaning that even though I can’t do my usual self-promotional link-dropping, and all my existing droppings have been mopped up from the Goog, other people are spreading my droppings all over the horizon. It’s kinda like Farmville, only I WIN!
And as to why I’ve been banned twice, that’s easy. I’m raincoaster, right? Over five million blog readers have encountered me as raincoaster, so when I started up in G+ I started as “rain coaster.” Now, I wasn’t stupid; the rules clearly say you MUST identify yourself by your real name, so I opened the account not from raincoaster at gmail dot com but from real.name at gmail dot com, and in the space provided for “other names” I put Real Name. I mean, why would you HAVE that space if you weren’t allowed to have more than one name, right? Or as this very wise person put it:
I actually got clipped by Google a week ago due to using the name CZ Unit. Which was interesting, since they asked me to use the name I am commonly known by.
I had to explain over the course of a week that my friends know me as CZ, family knows me as CZ, people in real life know me as CZ. I even asked my friends “What name pops into your mind when you think about me”? “What name do you call me when you see me across a room”
In both cases (and others) the results were unanimous: CZ. Even the person who turned me in used to call me CZ back in 1987 (yes, I have the NextMail with voice attachment
I had to point them to my LJ (cz-unit), something I have been keeping since 2002. 3,000 posts; probably not a sock puppet.
I had to have my friends send emails of support and they were even having notarized letters signed on my behalf saying that they knew me as CZ and only as CZ.
And I had to scan in a copy of my lunch bag as evidence that yes: My wife even writes “CZ’s Lunch” on my bag. What more positive, tangible ID would one need?
All of this brings up two points: First is who defines a person? Is it your parents? Your Job? The Government? Google? Your friends? You?
Second is just how wise is it to outsource your friend support network? I was on G+ for a week when I got clipped, and I still have my LJ as a backup. How about people who don’t have that? What are they going to do when their network vanishes due to upsetting the provider?
Very interesting stuff. I wrote about it on my LJ, it has been an interesting experience. But it does help me to answer the age old question:
“Who Am I?”
That’s a very, very wise post. My own experience was a little less profound, since I’m used to dealing with this question All the Damn Time.
The first time I was banned, there was no notification at all, and if someone hadn’t posted the direct link to the appeal process in the help forum, I wouldn’t have been able to ask for my account back. Google deleted that helpful forum post, by the way. Why, if they don’t want to be evil? It asked for links to places I was mentioned as “raincoaster,” and they had to be along the lines of registered accounts at Google-owned sites like YouTube or media mentions, that kinda thing. I gave them this list (stalkers, here’s your dream material!):
http://facebook.com/raincoaster http://www.linkedin.com/in/raincoaster https://twitter.com/#!/raincoaster http://www.flickr.com/people/raincoaster/ http://www.facebook.com/raincoastermedia http://empireavenue.com/RAINCOASTER http://www.wordcampvictoria.ca/2010/04/featured-speaker-raincoaster/ http://en.forums.wordpress.com/profile/raincoaster http://www.peerindex.net/raincoaster http://ahamedia.ca/category/raincoaster-media/ http://gawker.com/people/raincoaster5/ http://1st.shortyawards.com/category/raincoaster http://trueslant.com/people/raincoaster/ http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol4_3/v4-3-article70-raincoaster.html http://www.surveymagnet.com/2011/01/lolebrity-interview/ http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/raincoaster-is-a-god/ http://www.mainwriter.com/2010/02/09/questions-over-lunch-with-lorraine-murphy-raincoaster/ http://lanyrd.com/2011/northern-voice/speakers/ http://www.miss604.com/2008/08/vancouver-blogger-profile-lorraine-murphy.html http://emmerogers.com/tag/raincoaster/ http://carocat.co.uk/2009/08/14/twitlight-who-are-you-raincoaster/
Is that enough, Google??? IS IT??? For god’s sake, the LinkedIn and Facebook vanity links are “raincoaster.”
Google emailed me after I filled in the form to tell me that changing my name from “rain coaster” to what I had on my LinkedIn Profile would be acceptable. My LinkedIn profile says “Real (raincoaster) Name,” so that’s what I did (subbing in quotation marks for parenthesis). Last night, they suspended my account AGAIN.
I guess something like 20 links is still not enough?
When are they gonna suspend Xeni Jardin, who also isn’t using her birth name?
And, as women are disproportionate users of pseudonyms (for “what are you wearing, baby” issues), this has become a gender issue. Yeah, I know it’s old skool and boring to call out sexism, but even if that was not the intention, that has been the result.
Not just “a word,” but “WORD!”
via the always-awesome JulianAssangeFanciersGuild
