{"id":190495,"date":"2015-10-11T17:03:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=190495"},"modified":"2015-10-11T17:27:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:27:34","slug":"private-nsa-army-is-attacking-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/private-nsa-army-is-attacking-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Private NSA Army is Attacking YOU!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"keyboard<\/a><\/p>\n

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Privatized NSA Army is Attacking YOU!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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In the first part of this article series, the post 9\/11 rise of a private NSA was detailed.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0Some started in reaction to the twin tower attack. They aren’t connected with the government, intelligence, or homeland security. They are private citizens that have no security clearances in any western country.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They use the free OSINT software found on the internet to find or decide who is a terrorist. Many of them enjoy the feeling of power they from getting people fired from their jobs and put on terrorist investigation lists.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They are freelancers with no oversight or rules. They are only accountable to themselves and their employers. These freelancers thrive on their ability to remain hidden from the public eye. In reality, they could be your socially inept, angry neighbor down the street who is afraid of their own shadow in person. But give them a keyboard and they’ll take your job, your bank account and your freedom.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These freelancers have carved a niche for themselves at the bottom of the OSINT and hacking professions. Today these people who feel so insignificant in their own lives are the cyber warriors for hire by anyone who has an ax to grind and the means to pay them.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They are Hate for Hire.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Freelance Cyber Soldiers<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur view is that cyber is another operational domain, much as the seas are, much as the land is, much as space is.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span>Admiral Mike Rogers \u2014 Commander US Cyber Command, Director of the NSA, Chief of CSS<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cyber in this context goes way beyond hacker attacks aimed at taking down a website. It is meant to cause damage and even death as a military tool. Because this new frontier is so new, the laws governing \u201cCyber-war\u201d have yet to drawn up. What has been done so far are a set of guidelines that define who and what can and can’t be\u00a0targeted.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Tallinn Manual<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0sets out 95 black letter rules to apply international law to Cyber warfare. In the context of war, there are crimes against humanity that are unique to cyber. All the rules follow established laws of war including targeting civilians is a war crime. This will become very important by the time you get to the bottom of the article and make the remedy very simple to accomplish.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When you compare these rules to the conduct described in the first part of this article series detailing how people exercising 1st<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment rights were treated by freelancers like Weisburd the pattern of abuse is clear. These rules are trying\u00a0to describe Laws of War.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Weisburd doesn’t get paid to follow people. After stalking and collecting information his method hasn’t changed since the beginning.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span>Weisburd has not merely “dismantled”\u00a0<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>websites.<\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0He has harassed individuals engaged in perfectly legal online dissent, threatened their family members, harassed their\u00a0employers, and harassed their web hosts. He regularly uses lies, disinformation and threats to accomplish these goals. Weisburd decides what is “threatening.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we no longer question who gets to spy, then who gets to decide who is a sanctionable enemy of the state? Who gets to run counter-terror operations against whom? What punishment can they meet out?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Non-state actors, just ordinary run of the mill citizens have both the means and the will to carry out (PRIVATE) foreign diplomacy, intelligence, military policy, and carry out military actions. If a freelancer is working for a foreign government doing this to citizens in their own country that are expressing legal free speech, are the freelancer’s actions legal?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeacemaker\u201d the website to die for<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Coinciding with the unveiling of the Peacemaker website which is a Ukrainian SBU, Ministry of Information, and Ukrainian Defense Ministry undertaking was the opening of a new web blog-\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Kremlintrolls.com<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>by Andrew Aaron Weisburd (@webradius) which opened a few days earlier than the Ukrainian government site.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a March 2015 article\u00a0series<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0I described the true reason for the \u201cPeacemaker\u201d website. It is meant to be a clearinghouse of information to target journalists, activists, people of influence, and people with any connection to them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Weisburd is currently freelancing for the Ukrainian government and \u201cPeacemaker\u201d has all the earmarks of his involvement. Within a few days of the article peace activist, David Swanson was harassed by someone posing as a Russian embassy officer in WDC.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On January 11<\/span><\/span><\/span>th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span>, 2015<\/span><\/span><\/span>(“Mirotvorets”)\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>the peacemaker website<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>went live with a mission to\u00a0\u2026\u201cIn the future the Peacemaker site will be similar to the site of the Viennese Simon Wiesenthal Center, which since the late 1940s has been focused on tracking and catching Nazi war criminals. In the case of Ukraine, these will be criminals who destroyed the Ukrainian people \u2013 the traitors,collaborators, Russian and other mercenaries, and military personnel taking part the undeclared and therefore illegal war by Russia, he concluded\u2026Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Advisor\u00a0Herashchenko wrote.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>It is also noteworthy that foreign intelligence services\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>have become interested in the Peacemaker site \u2013 the CIA, FBI, European intelligence and counterintelligence. The reason in simple.\u00a0The civilized countries, drawing on information on the pro-Russian militants-terrorists, will be able to create their own databases of suspicious persons and individuals that must be neutralized and isolated from society, he said.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oles Buzina<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within one month after the article that stated journalists were going to be targeted offline, Oles Buzina was put on a cleansing list at Peacemaker, geo-located, and executed. Regrettably there is only so much you can do.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Weisburd began openly working for the Ukrainian government in January 2015. \u201c<\/span><\/span>Mirotvorets”\u00a0has all the earmarks of his involvement from geo-location through OSINT to targeting people designated as political terrorists like Oles Buzina. Weisburd is currently one of the best-known freelancers specializing in this niche area of OSINT. Without trying too hard, we have the motive, means, and opportunity. Normally that could be enough to prompt a criminal investigation which in this case, will never happen.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Peacemaker’s future is meant to be Ukraine’s contribution to NATO and European security by working in conjunction with NATO COE Latvia. The Ukrainian war is just the starting point which is carrying on the work Aaron Weisburd has been perfecting for the last 14 years. They are to geo-locating and targeting people that read, write, or share something in social media that disturbs whatever entity or person the freelancer has a contract with.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Facebook took “Peacemaker” serious enough<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to ban the profile of the Ukrainian adviser to the Interior Minister Gerashenko\u00a0who is opening another \u201ccleansing\u201d page for Russian citizens in Syria.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/span>In accordance with the above, I invite all who have information about the Russian citizens taking part in the\u00a0undeclared\u00a0war of Russia against the Syrian people to\u00a0report all the information to the website “Peacemaker” (“Mirotvorets”), where there will be a separate section “Putin’s crimes in Syria and in the Middle East.”<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where Ukraine can get away with it \u201ccleansing\u201d has meant murder, literally. Where that isn’t possible in western countries, Weisburds techniques to ruin the lives and livelihoods of his victims are being put into use.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Weisburd<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>‘s February 26<\/span><\/span><\/span>th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>definition of what he is doing- \u201c<\/span><\/span><\/span>I<\/span><\/span><\/span>‘m just trying to do my part to help make bad things happen to bad people who are in the service of the Kremlin. And for the record, I’m not an army of one. I’m more like a one man intelligence service.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In order to get paid freelancers like\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Weisburd needed to create Russian active measures agents.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0He’s going about this the same way he has for 14 years. He hacks the lives of normal people and paints them the way his employer needs to see them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By doing this he is taking large swaths of the US and EU population and making them active Russian agents and soldiers according to Rule 26.7 of the Tallinn Manual-\u201cbelonging to\u201d clause. This takes them out of protected civilian status and makes them targetable in the war. As long as no one looks into it, no one will ever know.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

March 15th-\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Not all Kremlin Trolls are in Russia. Not only are they not all in Russia, they are not all in countries sympathetic to – let alone allied with – Russia. In fact, quite a few are in NATO countries. So, when I speak of efforts to combat Russian active measures campaigns as needing a robust counterintelligence component, this is what I’m getting at.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Weisburd’s association with groups like \u201cPeacekeeper\u201d made it possible for him to scale up again. He’s gone from a few thousand people working for him to over 40,000 people just at Peacekeeper alone. The Ukrainian war isn’t the only project he is working on. Iran, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Russia, the Russian world, and American internal politics are some others. He has counter parts in every western country doing the same thing.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

May 26th<\/sup>\u00a0– \u201cOver the past week or two the Kremlin Trolls and their sundry fellow travelers became rather… agitated by previous entries on this site…The traffic generated by each URL provides a snapshot of who each troll’s engaged followers are, and where they appear to reside. Many of the trolls follow each other, so in all likelihood I’ve collected data on the Kremlin Trolls themselves, in addition to their engaged followers… How many of them were using proxy servers or VPNs? Not many. The Internet remains a great place to share, and a terrible place to try and hide.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geolocation data is summarized in the table below. These countries account for 81% of all the Kremlin Trolls and their engaged followers. The top five countries alone account for 58%. That the USA is ranked first came as something of a surprise. Detailed analysis is ongoing, and I’m unlikely to share the findings publicly.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If the people he was targeting were active Russian agents like he claims why wouldn’t they use virtual private networks (VPN) to shield themselves like he does? Is it surprising that none of his Kremlin Trolls were in Russia?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In mid-March 2015\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>I covered Joel Harding’s role in Ukraine’s rapidly developing info-war<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>. Harding was one of the planners for the Iraq war, Afghanistan war, and the invasion of Haiti. He wrote the white papers that US cyber war doctrine is based in and was a part of setting up the NSA. He just discovered what he sees as a munition or real world \u201clive round\u201d to attack journalists and people that shared their views on social media.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I was in a discussion today about information being used in social media as a possible weapon<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>The people I was talking with have a tool which scrapes social media sites, gauges their sentiment and gives the user the opportunity to automatically generate a persuasive response. Their tool is called a \u201cSocial Networking Influence Engine\u201d. \u00a0No, not related to the SMISC BAA from a few years ago. Better.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>..Can this be categorized as a\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>munition<\/b><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>? \u00a0I looked through and it does not seem to apply. The implications seem to be\u00a0profound\u00a0for the information environment.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The implications may have far-reaching impact beyond Department of Defense. \u00a0The people who own this tool are in the civilian world and don\u2019t even remotely touch the defense sector, so getting approval from the US Department of State might not even occur to them. \u00a0If this does require ITAR approval, the corporate world that deals with information and influence will definitely be affected.<\/i>\u00a0..So\u2026 my question is, who at the US Department of State must I coordinate with to get a ruling if this \u201cSocial Networking Influence Engine\u201d must receive ITAR approval?<\/i>\u00a0\u201c- Joel Harding<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

SCALING UP!<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

On May 16<\/span><\/span><\/span>th,<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span>\u00a02015 Joel Harding \u201cpublicly\u201d discovered Aaron Weisburd for the first time.According to Harding<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>THIS blog I will keep an eye on. \u00a0It seems simply wonderful!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>It was man-love at first sight. Weisburd’s twitter account\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>shows a standing relationship<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>. On September\u00a028<\/span><\/span><\/span>th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Weisburd retweeted Harding’s call for operators<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to scale up the info war.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On September 21<\/span><\/span><\/span>st<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Harding posted this advertisement to scale up<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0the war against you.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Ladies, Gentlemen, and everyone in between<\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am building a database of planners, operators, logisticians, hackers, and anyone wanting to be involved with special activities I will call \u2018inform and influence activities\u2019.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have received a few\u00a0different suggestions to help organize operations \u2014 of all sorts \u2014 against anti-Western elements. \u00a0No government approval, assistance or funding. \u00a0This skirts legalities. \u00a0This is not explicitly illegal and\u00a0it may\u00a0not even be legal, at this point. That grey area extends a long way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am only trying to assess the availability of people willing to participate in such efforts. Technology, equipment and facility offers are also\u00a0appreciated.\u00a0If you would like to be included in my database, please send a tailored resume to joel_harding at\u00a0yahoo.com. \u00a0In your resume, I am more interested in actual skills and experience. \u00a0If you have hands on experience of a less than legal nature, you might not want to admit illegal work. \u00a0If need be, I will contact you for clarification of your skills.\u201d- Joel Harding<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who is being Located?<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

When you understand that freelancers do this work for PAC’s, political parties, companies, or just people that pay; every person that reads, has an opinion\u00a0or shares on social media is being targeted. Ukraine wants to be the clearing house for this work.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What they have found is except through direct hacking many of the news sites and journalists have strong reputations with their readers and remain directly outside their grasp. Instead, they turned to software that finds\u201cinfluential people\u201d to target through social media networks. Destroy those links and the website gets less\u00a0social shares and if it is done enough the targets influence diminishes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine\u00a0a world\u00a0where local, state, or national political candidates use freelancers to target each other this way and promote their candidate\u00a0or destroy their competition. No, wait, don’t imagine it. It’s happening today.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/span>It doesn\u2019t hurt that the Kremlin has an existing base of support in Texas in the form of Ron Paul & Co\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>http:\/\/t.co\/ub537ZsDu6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Mon May\u00a011,2015\u00a0@webradius<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span>..turnabout is very definitely fair play. More than a few of the Kremlin’s trolls\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>currently operating outside of Russia and or allied nations are likely acting as Russian agents in the strictly legal sense of the term<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0(agent, not be confused with intelligence officers, the latter being those who recruit and run agents).\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Who are the people Weisburd calls Kremlin trolls and Russian agents?\u00a0By the way\u00a0he talks about them you would think they were directly employed by Vladimir Putin. Just ask Ron Paul or anyone that subscribes to the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If you are a libertarian, you’re on the lists as a Russian asset.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Even Facebook<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0which took down the profile of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Adviser for soliciting murder is Russian troll owned and against Ukraine.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As a brief example, when\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>you see a graph like this<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0which looks like nothing\u00a0and spend a few minutes investigating one of the people,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>it turns into this<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>. In this case, we now have 100 people that potentially influence 52,000+. From there the geolocation work begins. In reality, they are targeting over 1 million people worldwide. Like the human rights activists he learned his trade on, most of these people cross lines on what he would call interests. The same people that support the Occupy Movement are also likely to support human rights around the world. In Weisburd’s words, this makes them good targets.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How is this done?<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

If we take a brief look at some of the tools you can see how invasive they are.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>On October 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/span><\/a>, 2015 Edward Snowden<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0released information that the UK government could now hack your smartphone. I think it would be more shocking if they couldn’t.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Using open source tools this has been going on for years in the private sector.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0For geolocation purposes, your smartphone is one of the greatest tools to use.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Finding and following you has never been easier<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>. Let’s face it\u00a0if you are going to stalk someone, \u201cstreet view” on a map is the next best thing to being there.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the following video, the software hacks your modem. It’s only one step from your phone or computer<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Who Are They Working for?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, it is directly for Ukraine and the Ukrainian emigre PACs like the UCCA. His social connections range across the Ukrainian government, the US OSCE, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Azov battalion’s Swedish Nationalist sniper-Mikael Skillt, and it wouldn’t be the same without\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>the authentic Stepan Bandera III<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>. Like his notorious grandfather before him\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Bandera III is working behind the scenes to destroy democracy<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0and anyone’s life that gets in the way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Is it Treachery or is it Treason?<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

It doesn’t matter if you don’t give a damn about the Ukrainian war, saving Donbass people, or anything about Russian culture or politics. It doesn’t matter that you don’t care about Syria and hope the good..?.. IGIL guys make it home for tea. It certainly doesn’t matter that the life you care about is what’s happening in front of you. In the USA or whichever western country you live in, your life is now a freelancer’s meal ticket.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the first part of this article<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0I detailed how i<\/span><\/span><\/span>n<\/span><\/span><\/span> the UK,<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span>a partner of Weisburd’s Glen Jenvey<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>fabricated stories in media about terror plots, falsified and planted evidence, falsified testimony of \u201cterrorist activity\u201d by using online sock puppets, hacking accounts and\u00a0posting\u00a0as the account owner, as well as setting up entrapment scams. That’s part of what is going on today.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Tallinn Manual cyber war rules clearly show all these actions including just labeling normal people as targets is illegal. The \u201cPeacemaker\u201d project and Weisburd’s work are clearly listed as crimes against humanity. Harding’s new project even adds that element of conspiracy to commit crime into the mix.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Does Weisburd know he is committing crimes against his own people? Does he know what he is doing is against international law and is in the category of Crimes Against Humanity?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’m the guy who reckons one day he’ll get busted for playing bluegrass louder than the law allows on a Saturday night, & I’m okay w\/that.\u201d Sunday May 10, 2015 twitter @webradius<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cyber-war is Real War<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

The Tallinn Manual is important because if real States have limitations on what they can do, how much more limited should normal citizens be that are working as \u201cfreelancers.\u201d To my knowledge no western country allows its citizens to make war on each other or citizens of other countries they are at peace with. The Black Letter Rules include:\u00a0Rule 23.3 Cyber attacks against civilians is a war crime defined by rule 32.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n