4 August 2010. Volunteer Tells about Project Vigilant Fraud: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cx2t8/iama_volunteer_for_project_vigilant_amaa/ 3 August 2010 After posting the file below, Google cache provided evidence that Project Vigilant is a fraud: http://cryptome.org/0002/vigilant-fraud.htm
Ubiquity of Online Spying Cryptome: The material below demonstrates the six degree of separation of spies and their presumably unwitting victims. The last image links Wikileaks and Cryptome to the Project Vigilant varmints. Among many Internet research initiatives, The Center for Internet Research has 947 members with personal data on each available at its website. Two of its members are Chet Uber and Richard Brandt of Project Vigilant. Presumbably the other 945 are not volunteer spies for Project Vigilant. However, scholars, researchers and Internet experts are principal gatherers, miners and users of data on Internet users, amply funded by government, businesses and individuals. More about pervasive and lucrative online spying business and research: http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/online-spying.htm In particular: American Stats Assoc Lawful Gov Spying Guide, March 25, 2010 http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/asa-spy.pdf Also, Chet Uber is listed as a subscriber to cypherpunks in 2000. Cypherpunks is a fountainhead of Cryptome, Wikileaks and cyber miscreants galore. Odd that nobody has written about those fat conspiracy dossiers, probably because business is too good to talk about it, well, except for Chet, which might lead to a boom in snitching.
Project Vigilant http://www.projectvigilant.us (now redacted. See Google cache sample below) BBHC Global L.L.C. http://www.bbhc-global.com/ (well obscured)
PROJECT VIGILANT Public Relations Site "Red Tape Will Not Defeat Terrorism." - Kevin Manson A company with secrets, and not a secret companySubmitted by chet.uber on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 19:05 BBHC Global LLC made an announcement on February 20th, 2010 that it was the parent entity of a research project code named VIGILANT. The initial release was a simple notification sent to our members, affiliates, corporate partner, and supporting partners. This announcement was based on the counsel of my closest advisors and major partners. BBHC was beginning to gain traction on the For-Profit side of its "Not Just For Profit Company," and Project VIGILANT needed desperately to recruit a large number of specialist across many domains of knowledge. As the current Director of Project VIGILANT, I met with my boss Steven Ruhe, the Managing Member of BBHC. It took us almost three full days of intense discussions of the pros and cons of becoming "visible." In the end, I convinced Ruhe that this was a 'necessary evil' that did fly directly in the face of everything we had done for almost 14 years. My argument was that the "For Profit" side was drawing heavily on elements of Project VIGILANT; which while always the plan, was actually exposing our hand as a number of our volunteers were retired and list Project VIGILANT in their CV's, and others who while having permission from their workplace were not allowed to disclose their employers names in association with the project. For both those cases we had listed them as being 1099 subcontractors of BBHC, but their jobs would clearly represent their role in VIGILANT in order to prevent gaps in their CV among other valid reasons. So 'For Better or Worse' Ruhe authorized myself, our General Counsel and or Public Affairs officer that on his authority we were to release significant portions of Project VIGILANT's existence, vision, mission, and general information that would be given to a new recruit. With that limitation in mind we began to sort through Tera-bytes of data for the appropriate documents and changed their classification to "Wide Dissemination Permitted." We estimated that it would take 3-4 months of time to make the appropriate disclosures, as we disclose significant information to those we recruit. We also changed our recruitment procedures to allow for "walk ons." We assumed that the publicity would generate a new class of recruit. In the past we had handpicked each person because they were the best available for what they do. We are still in the process of creating and properly marking documents that could for all we know be sent to every news agency in the world. We also expected that since our only customers were elements of the United States of America at the Federal, Tribal, State and Local level; that what we said protected the exact identity of our clients. Another major concern was revealing anything that would expose our "sources and methods" as a large portion of what we do deals with the legal monitoring of public information. We have planned to make announcement once a month for four months to the press; and after that we would only release information that fell into a class where it was suitable and not harmful to have it made public. For BBHC Global LLC and Project VIGILANT these announcements where not intended to become fully transparent, we do "take of our clothes" but we by no means disrobe completely. It would damage our research, partnerships, risk lives, and just was not necessary to explain everything we do to the general public. Our Public Affairs Officer made a good point -- we fall into the class of entities that serve a verify specific set of clients. Our actions and secrecy were no different he said than any R&D company working on the formula for a cure for cancer. They would make it clear when they had to what there purpose was, and when significant events happened that were milestones in their research they would issue a press release to that fact. His point was well taken, we are not a "Secret Company," we are a company whose goals require a good deal of "secrecy" in order to retain our Intellectual Property rights, and to not jeopardize any of our often precarious relationships with members of the LLC and our close trusted partners. I was contacted shortly after our Press Release by Mr. Mark Albertson who represented himself to us as a regular columnist for the online arm of the Examiner, specifically Albertson's column appears under the banner of the "SF Technology Examiner." You can plan for most things, but I will be the first to admit that the whole concept of being in the public eye was not something that is necessarily helpful to us; and in our planning we expected not to make a splash, but to quietly release the essential elements of the reality of the project in a thoughtful manner. Having these Press Releases lead to extensive interviews, but indeed Mr. Albertson was one of many people that contacted us. Another set of meetings between Ruhe, myself, General Counsel and the Public Affairs officer ensued and we made a clarification to our 'marching orders' to give interviews as long as we did not violate specific rules related to our members right to privacy, our partners rights to privacy, and most importantly instructions to never violate the rules on disclosure of "sources or methods" used in our quest for a pro-privacy strong attribution tool kit. We reviewed Albertson's credentials as one of my top advisors had known him for a significant length of time, and told our team that his column was fair and balanced; but be prepared to get asked hard questions. Further investigation of what we could expect from all or those "courting" us in hopes of getting the story first. But Albertson was very patient and he promised us that he both had "off the record" mode, and while respecting our privacy issues he would indeed be interested even if we never told him who exactly our clients were, who all of our members where, and what exactly did we do to collection the information needed to test out or attribution tools. I found his bio very compelling and after reading his work and checking into his bio everyone on the VIGILANT team decided this was the person for the job. I think that it is important to make clear why we chose Albertson, and this is best done by simply listing his bio: "Mark Albertson is an experienced communications professional who has worked in a series of senior management positions for the past three decades with National Semiconductor, Amdahl Corporation (Fujitsu) and AeA. He is currently the Executive Producer of Tech Closeup a nationally syndicated weekly TV program that covers the full scope of the high-tech world." His credentials meant to us that he would actually understand the science and technology behind what we do, and was indeed a very credible journalist. The results of our interviews are listed below. http://www.examiner.com/x-27653-SF-Technology-Examiner~y2010m6d21-Secret... http://www.examiner.com/x-27653-SF-Technology-Examiner~y2010m6d22-Big-na... For additional information, or to schedule an interview, please contact our Public Affairs Officer, Winn Schwartau, at Winn | at | alwayschaos.com. Cryptome: Winn Schwartau's involvement is surprising. He was once an exemplary battler against what Project Vigilant is doing. His website, Infowar.com, is a longstanding source of infowar material.
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