Time was, a story about governments and big corporations using scary spy technology would’ve been easy to write off as the rantings of a conspiracy nut. New emails released by Wikileaks, however, suggest that the likes of Google and Salesforce were offered a video surveillance program developed by ex-CIA operatives.
The program, called “TrapWire” was developed US-based Abraxas Corporation which is allegedly staffed mostly by former CIA agents. According to ZDNet, the technology is meant to be used in the identification of terrorists and is able to correlate video footage with other sources such as watch lists. The company also has a number of high-profile state-run clients around the world.
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In a leaked email Stratfor president Don Kuykendall wrote: “Their clients include Scotland Yard, #10 Downing, the White House and many [multinational corporations]”.
“Our consideration is introducing them to companies like Walmart, Dell and other[s],” he added.
Vice president Fred Burton meanwhile wrote about introducing TrapWire to the likes of Salesforce.
“Salesforce HQs in San Fran is interested in TrapWire after I briefed them on their wonderful capabilities”. He added that:
the timing is right to revisit our relationship with Google and sense growing frustration (and chaos) on their part in light of the Chinese penetrations and intellectual property theft”.
…
I’ve been playing constant phone tag with their security director.
In the email, Burton also revealed that the program may already have foiled at least one terrorist attack:
According to a very good source responsible for domestic surveillance operations, an extremely serious al Qaeda terror plot has been uncovered targeting a financial institution, an entertainment centre and a government office building in Los Angeles. The same terrorist-surveillance team conducted pre-operational surveillance of all three sites. The group is currently under watch.
Wikileaks is currently facing its tenth successive day of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. According to activist group TrapWire the source of software that facilitates intelligence-gathering on US and global citizens, using surveillance technology, incident reports from citizens, and data correlation for local police and law enforcement agencies.
