Michael Hastings

[Cain]

Then I'd look at what he was working on currently.  And apart from it involving "the CIA" and possibly Anonymous, we don't have all that much information on what it is.

Bump again.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/07/connections-between-michael-hastings-edward-snowden-and-barrett-brown-the-war-with-the-security-state/

The fact that he planned to interview Brown was corroborated by documentarian Vivien Weisman, who told WhoWhatWhy that she spoke to Hastings about it at a Los Angeles book signing for "Dirty Wars" in May 2013. And the editor of Buzzfeed reportedly confirmed that Hastings was in the midst of working on the Brown expose at the time of his death.

Knowing this prompts the question: what angle of the PPM research was Hastings about to tackle?

The evidence seems to point to another shadowy project revealed in the cache of hacked emails that PPM was sifting through: Romas/COIN.

Your Data Is Mine

Gallagher, who was briefed on the last discussion Hastings had with Brown before the planned interview, says, "Hastings had specifically asked about Romas/COIN."

Romas/COIN was the name given to a program through which the U.S had been conducting "a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world," according to emails hacked from the cybersecurity firm HBGary Federal. Evidently, this program allows the intelligence community to "monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once."

Over the course of a year, Aaron Barr, CEO of HBGary Federal, sought out various companies to form a consortium that could wrest control of Romas/COIN from the current contract holder, Northrop Grumman. Eventually the consortium included no less than 12 different firms — ranging from niche software companies to behemoths like Google, Apple, and even Disney.

From the emails, it's clear that "mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the program," concludes the entry in ProjectPM. Periodic references to "semantic analysis," "Latent Semantic Indexing," and "specialized linguistics" indicate that the government agency overseeing the contract was clearly interested in automated dissection of spoken or written communication. This is the hallmark of NSA surveillance.

Endgame Systems, one such company cashing in on this new market, was of particular interest to Brown and ProjectPM. Deep in the cache of Aaron Barr's emails are indications of just how secret the work of Endgame is.

In an email to employee John Farrell, then-Endgame CEO Chris Rouland states: "Please let HBgary know we don't ever want to see our name in a press release."

Farrell forwarded that note to Barr with the following explanation:

"Chris wanted me to pass this along. We've been very careful NOT to have public face on our company. Please ensure Palantir and your other partners understand we're purposefully trying to maintain a very low profile. Chris [Rouland] is very cautious based on feedback we've received from our government clients. If you want to reconsider working with us based on this, we fully understand."

One look at Endgame's product line explains a lot about their wariness. Their premier software, "Bonesaw," shows what a powerful asset the corporation has become to America's intelligence agencies.

Bonesaw is a targeting application that tracks servers and routers around the world. It maps out all the hardware attached to the Internet. Through these access points, NSA and Cyber Command can hack into or launch attacks against adversaries. The Bonesaw program functions essentially as a user-friendly map.

That map has at its disposal the geolocation and Internet address of every device connected to the Internet around the globe. By designating a country and city — like Beijing, China for example — and the name or address of a target — say, a People's Liberation Army research facility — a user can find out what software is running on all of the computers inside the facility, what entry points to those computers exist, and a menu of custom exploits that can be used to sneak in.

[Cain]

What do we know about Endgame?

Well...we know it's a spin-off from Internet Security Services Inc, founded by Christopher Klaus, and in particular of "X-Force", a group of whitehat hackers who worked for the government and intelligence agencies on issues concerning internet security and malicious software.

One of the members of X-Force was Christopher Rouland, who was a hacker caught attacking the Pentagon's systems, but was let off so long as he put his powers to work for the US government, and not against it.  Rouland went on to found Endgame, after IBM bought out ISS and the X-Force.  Endgame was financially backed by In-Q-Tel, a venture capitalist firm which "mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve United States national security interests" and is closely associated with the CIA.

One key member of the board of directors at Endgame is retired Lt. General Kenneth A. Minihan, formerly director of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, which serves as an interagency task force that links the NSA to the military. He is a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a founder of the National Information Assurance Program which is a United States government initiative to meet the security testing needs for information technology for both consumers and producers that is operated by the NSA and was originally a joint effort between the NSA and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

The goal of the National Information Assurance Program (NIAP) was to ensure that consumer and business software products comply with the "Common Criteria Evaluation Standard". In 1994 the Federal government had already passed "CALEA" ("Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act") which mandated back-door intelligence access to consumer and business internet systems and products. This back-door access could then be "double checked" by the updates that Minihan oversaw under NIAP and/or the "Common Criteria".

Did X-Force and, later on, Endgame, have access to the backdoor access?  It's not known, though there has certainly been a lot speculation in regards to that.

It's also worth noting that Chris Rouland was the creator of the senate.gov website, which is not only the "front page" of the Senate, but also doubles as an online communications infrastructure for the Senate as a whole, such as between Senators and staffers.

And, as we know, Endgame created Bonesaw, a "cyber-targeting application".  It's exact applications are unknown, but what we do know is that it could serve as a platform for offensive cyber-operations by the US government.  Marketing documents say "the Bonesaw platform provides a complete environment for intelligence analysts and mission planners to take a holistic approach to target discovery, reducing the time to create actionable intelligence and operational plans from days to minutes."  "Bonesaw is the ability to map, basically every device connected to the Internet and what hardware and software it is," says a company official who requested anonymity.

Endgame's next product is more advanced than Bonesaw. The application, called Velocity, is to provide access to this mapped-out Internet in real time as hardware is added and deleted, making cyber targeting more immediate, and increasingly laying bare the Internet.

[Triple Zero]

BTW (somewhat related to my braindump in the Surveillance thread), "Latent Semantic Indexing" is a Natural Language Processing / Machine Learning algorithm that can do "fuzzy" text matching according to semantic content. Meaning it doesn't require sets of specific keywords to group texts with similar topics, or to calculate a "semantic distance" between two texts.

There's no real parsing or linguistic "understanding" involved, it's mainly a statistical technique that correlates groups of words and phrases used in similar contexts between different texts. But neither the words nor the contexts need to be identical in a strict word-for-word sence, in order to get a (partial) match.

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called singular value decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is based on the principle that words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. A key feature of LSI is its ability to extract the conceptual content of a body of text by establishing associations between those terms that occur in similar contexts.[1]

LSI is also an application of correspondence analysis, a multivariate statistical technique developed by Jean-Paul Benzécri[2] in the early 1970s, to a contingency table built from word counts in documents.

Called Latent Semantic Indexing because of its ability to correlate semantically related terms that are latent in a collection of text, it was first applied to text at Bell Laboratories in the late 1980s. The method, also called latent semantic analysis (LSA), uncovers the underlying latent semantic structure in the usage of words in a body of text and how it can be used to extract the meaning of the text in response to user queries, commonly referred to as concept searches. Queries, or concept searches, against a set of documents that have undergone LSI will return results that are conceptually similar in meaning to the search criteria even if the results don't share a specific word or words with the search criteria.

(...) LSI is also used to perform automated document categorization.

(...) Dynamic clustering based on the conceptual content of documents can also be accomplished using LSI. Clustering is a way to group documents based on their conceptual similarity to each other without using example documents (this is called "unsupervised learning", btw - 000) to establish the conceptual basis for each cluster. This is very useful when dealing with an unknown collection of unstructured text.

Because it uses a strictly mathematical approach, LSI is inherently independent of language. This enables LSI to elicit the semantic content of information written in any language without requiring the use of auxiliary structures, such as dictionaries and thesauri. LSI can also perform cross-linguistic concept searching and example-based categorization. For example, queries can be made in one language, such as English, and conceptually similar results will be returned even if they are composed of an entirely different language or of multiple languages.

(...) LSI automatically adapts to new and changing terminology, and has been shown to be very tolerant of noise (i.e., misspelled words, typographical errors, unreadable characters, etc.).[9] This is especially important for applications using text derived from Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and speech-to-text conversion. LSI also deals effectively with sparse, ambiguous, and contradictory data.

Text does not need to be in sentence form for LSI to be effective. It can work with lists, free-form notes, email, Web-based content, etc. As long as a collection of text contains multiple terms, LSI can be used to identify patterns in the relationships between the important terms and concepts contained in the text.

(full WP article)

It's a really cool (elegant / relatively simple) algorithm, btw.

So yeah you can probably guess how this sort of technology would be very useful to an organisation that has the need for automatic classification and relevance filtering / selection of huge amounts of textual data. I couldn't say whether it would be feasible to apply it on all data, or whether its computational complexity restricts it to use only on certain groups of targets and/or people on certain "lists".

Additionally new developments in a different technique called Restricted Boltzmann Machines / Deep Learning Networks, are said to yield even better results for unsupervised learning and Semantic Indexing of Big Data. Geoffrey Hinton is the big name in this field, he works for Google now. His talks are quite enjoyable to watch, IMHO. What I further understand about RBMs is that because of their simple structure they can be implemented in FPGAs and specialized computation hardware in order to increase performance. On the other hand, research in this field has only gotten huge results since a few years, so governments are probably not using it, just yet.

[Cramulus]

"Bonesaw is the ability to map, basically every device connected to the Internet and what hardware and software it is," says a company official who requested anonymity.

Endgame's next product is more advanced than Bonesaw. The application, called Velocity, is to provide access to this mapped-out Internet in real time as hardware is added and deleted, making cyber targeting more immediate, and increasingly laying bare the Internet.

sorry, all I have to add is a tittering nervous-laughter high pitched panic reaction

[Cain]

Well well well...

http://www.sandiego6.com/story/cia-director-brennan-confirmed-as-reporter-michael-hastings-next-target-20130812

This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter's sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).

Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor's President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government's continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.

After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster's spokesperson responded in lightning speed. Two emails were received; one acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story and the other said, "Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless." 

Although, one might want to be wary of Dvorak's reporting

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/13/exclusive-hastings-unauthorized-cremation-mega-rumor-false-family-says/

According to a member of Michael Hastings's family, a widely circulated story that the investigative journalist's body was cremated by authorities without the family's permission is flat-out untrue.

The story that the cremation was unauthorized—further stoking credible suspicions aroused by Hastings's strange death in a fiery one-car crash, complete with a dramatic explosion– has raged across the Internet for weeks.

A recent count showed 475,000 results for "Hastings cremated" and 357,000 for "Hastings cremation." The top results all reported that the family did not want the cremation. The clear implication was that this was proof of a cover-up – that "the authorities" had rushed to dispose of the body in a way that would make further inquiries, such as an autopsy, impossible.

But a family member told WhoWhatWhy, "It was our wish to have Michael's remains cremated." In fact, this family member said the cremation came about at the family's specific request—and only after an autopsy and toxicology tests, whose results are pending.

In a telephone interview, Biggs told us that he was the source of Dvorak's reporting, but not her mis-reporting. "That lady asked me about being at the memorial service. I said it was the first one I've been at without a body. I meant we didn't have closure....I said that if I were killed, I would never want to be cremated. Somehow all this got mixed up... She took that to be that the body is missing and family didn't know where it is. Then this whole thing spun out of control.

"I saw the video of her on the news talking about it... That made me sick to my stomach... I finally got hold of her, and she said she'd retract it, and I don't know if she did." (She has not.)

Biggs said that as soon as he saw Dvorak's report, he contacted everyone he could think of to tell them that his comments had been badly distorted to create the appearance he was alleging a conspiracy.

Matt Farwell, who often worked with Hastings as his writing partner and who is finishing Hastings's final story for Rolling Stone, is furious with Dvorak, whom he called "a fucking disgrace—and that's on the record." Farwell says he fired off an angry email to Dvorak, decrying her reports.

Edit: make that very wary:

It's not at all clear Dvorak deserves the title of "journalist." Her twitter page identifies her not as a television reporter but as "Examiner National Homeland Security Correspondent"—a reference to the Examiner network of conservative-oriented websites. Most of her work has been essays with an editorial tone for conservative or right-wing sites, marked by a clear animus toward the Obama administration, and by alarmist content about "illegal aliens" and other perceived threats.

[Junkenstein]

Brennan, was in charge of the government's continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.

Surely no link to the latest PRISM shenanigans here. I'm guessing rough times ahead for some journalists in the near future.

[Cain]

Hmmmm

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/21/hastings-autopsy-traces-of-meth-found-in-body-but-crash-caused-death/

Toxicology tests showed traces of amphetamine in journalist Michael Hastings's body after his fatal car wreck in Los Angeles on June 18, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Department said Tuesday, though it said the drugs were "unlikely contributory to death."

The coroner also released previously undisclosed details of the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation, which showed that the journalist apparently had relapsed into narcotics abuse after years of sobriety. Two of Hastings's siblings had arrived in California the day before the fatal wreck, the report said, and "the family was attempting to get decedent to go to detox."

The coroner said small amounts of methamphetamine and marijuana were found in Hastings's blood.

But a Hastings family member had a surprising reaction when contacted by WhoWhatWhy, calling the coroner's report "irresponsible."

"I can honestly say with absolute certainty that he wasn't doing meth," the family member, requesting anonymity, told WhoWhatWhy in an email. "'Methamphetamine' can be nasal spray, Sudafed, one of those upper drinks at the gas station, prescription amphetamines, etc."

The family member continued, "The LAPD has done a really sloppy job investigating his case, and they were hoping for a mother lode of drugs in his system. When they didn't get it in the toxicology lab results (science!), they had to insert speculation throughout their field report to compensate for their lack of an investigation. It's so irresponsible."

[Cain]

Mother Jones has also cast doubt on the journalistic credentials of Kimberly Dvorak:

Dvorak's other theories are just as questionable. She claimed on air that the engine of Hastings' Mercedes C250 coupe had been found behind the crash site, which would have been impossible with the forward velocity of an ordinary accident. The engine was found in front of the crash site. Her suggestion that a grainy video of the crash showed evidence of a "pre-explosion" sabotage has been dismissed by car experts. She has also reported that the intensity of the resulting fire might suggest the use of thermite accelerants—a popular theory among 9/11 truthers who believe thermite was used to melt the World Trade Center towers' steel columns. She's written credulously about the theory that President Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States. And Dvorak has repeated speculation by Richard Clarke, the former Bush- and Clinton-era counterterrorism czar, that Hastings' car's computer system may have been remotely hacked—something that's technically possible but highly unlikely.

[Cain]

LA Weekly:

Hastings was intensely interested in government surveillance of journalists. In May, the story broke about the Department of Justice obtaining the phone records of Associated Press reporters. A couple weeks later, Edward Snowden's revelations about the National Security Agency's massive surveillance program became public. Hastings was convinced he was a target.

His behavior grew increasingly erratic. Helicopters often circle over the hills, but Hastings believed there were more of them around whenever he was at home, keeping an eye on him. He came to believe his Mercedes was being tampered with. "Nothing I could say could console him," Thigpen says.

One night in June, he came to Thigpen's apartment after midnight and urgently asked to borrow her Volvo. He said he was afraid to drive his own car. She declined, telling him her car was having mechanical problems.

"He was scared, and he wanted to leave town," she says.

The next day, around 11:15 a.m., she got a call from her landlord, who told her Hastings had died early that morning. His car had crashed into a palm tree at 75 mph and exploded in a ball of fire.

On the one hand, Hasting's fear and the considerable pressure it put him under may have contributed to him making mistakes when driving which led to the crash.

On the other hand, that he died just the day after saying he thought his car was being tampered with, in a car crash....well, no matter how you cut that, it sounds suspicious as hell.

[Junkenstein]

Question - If Hastings thought his car was being tampered with, why did he drive it? I've been over this a few times in my head and I just can't make sense of that. Sure a rental/friends car  might be tampered with too, but it just seems very odd to drive a car you suspect to be dangerous.

Even with the suspected tampering just being tracking or surveillance, it makes no sense to drive the car anywhere, especially if you want to vanish for a while.

[Cain]

It's a good question.

The only scenario that comes to mind is that he was intending to hide away somewhere - in which case, if he couldn't get another car by borrowing it, the only choice would be to use his own. Hire cars would show up on a credit check, and have GPS transponders to track them.

That would also explain the time of night he was driving at.  He was trying to disappear for a while, with no-one knowing where he was.

[Junkenstein]

It's a good question.

The only scenario that comes to mind is that he was intending to hide away somewhere - in which case, if he couldn't get another car by borrowing it, the only choice would be to use his own. Hire cars would show up on a credit check, and have GPS transponders to track them.

That would also explain the time of night he was driving at.  He was trying to disappear for a while, with no-one knowing where he was.

I'm thinking along the same lines as the bold, but even that seems shaky.

Hiring a car reveals your location and with the GPS aspect makes it worthless. Disappearing off the grid without a degree of planning and a sack of cash to support you in the endeavour does not seem to have occurred. I'd have guessed train/bus to be the best method to escape on too so again, the car aspect seems odd. I'm considering the idea of a panic flight brought on by "reasons unknown". Just one too many helicopters and the brain shouts "BAIL" resulting in tragic circumstances. That seems plausible, but unlikely.

[Cain]

One problem - the Mercedes he crashed in was also a rental vehicle, I just discovered.

So much for that theory.

[Junkenstein]

Hmm. That would then lean more toward the accident side of theories but again, bailing in a hired car seems pointless for exactly the reason you already mentioned. Very odd. I'm inclined to suspect foul play slightly more just because it seems likelier.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I suspect foul play because the intelligence community is pretty fucking stupid in some ways, and why NOT kill a reporter?  Hell, we're chasing a reporter right now, because he had the bad judgement to tell the truth, and England is sending thugs into newspapers to smash their computers.  And, by amazing coincidence, leaning on the partner of a reporter who said things the USA doesn't like.

This is the new reality.  Same as the old reality, only without the smiley face mask.

Funny thing is, we have less of an excuse for putting up with this shit than the Germans had in the 1920s.