down on Fail-again Isle...
Judging from the few examples that have come to light in the last few weeks, it seems likely a large percentage of 'it contracts' let by the government 'security community' are nothing but cons coning con men...
This looks like it could grow into "PROMIS 2.0" ...
in fact, all that needs to happen now is for this Montgomery clown to announce that his warz were for realz and that the gubamint is trying to steal it and silence him. wait for it... wait for it...
actually, this probably does warrant a thread of it's own, but I'll let someone else do that if they like. This THING he sold appears to have been a major source of "preferred information" used extensively by the "say-anything/scare-everybody" so-called security mafia under bush (and still largely in place today).
There's no fucking way they didn't KNOW this software was bullshit, but they NEEDED someone to lie to them, in the right ways. I bet there's a channel from Cheney's people directly to Montgomery, which they used to feed him what they wanted to hear next.
It's a classic con... and the SUCKER is America.
February 19, 2011
Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON — For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret.
The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.
A onetime biomedical technician with a penchant for gambling, Mr. Montgomery is at the center of a tale that features terrorism scares, secret White House briefings, backing from prominent Republicans, backdoor deal-making and fantastic-sounding computer technology.
Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.
Mr. Montgomery’s former lawyer, Michael Flynn — who now describes Mr. Montgomery as a “con man” — says he believes that the administration has been shutting off scrutiny of Mr. Montgomery’s business for fear of revealing that the government has been duped.
“The Justice Department is trying to cover this up,” Mr. Flynn said. “If this unravels, all of the evidence, all of the phony terror alerts and all the embarrassment comes up publicly, too. The government knew this technology was bogus, but these guys got paid millions for it.”
Justice Department officials declined to discuss the government’s dealings with Mr. Montgomery, 57, who is in bankruptcy and living outside Palm Springs, Calif. Mr. Montgomery is about to go on trial in Las Vegas on unrelated charges of trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at casinos, but he has not been charged with wrongdoing in the federal contracts, nor has the government tried to get back any of the money it paid. He and his current lawyer declined to comment.
The software he patented — which he claimed, among other things, could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of the Arab network Al Jazeera; identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines — prompted an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003.
The software led to dead ends in connection with a 2006 terrorism plot in Britain. And they were used by counterterrorism officials to respond to a bogus Somali terrorism plot on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, according to previously undisclosed documents.
‘It Wasn’t Real’
“Dennis would always say, ‘My technology is real, and it’s worth a fortune,’ ” recounted Steve Crisman, a filmmaker who oversaw business operations for Mr. Montgomery and a partner until a few years ago. “In the end, I’m convinced it wasn’t real.”
Government officials, with billions of dollars in new counterterrorism financing after Sept. 11, eagerly embraced the promise of new tools against militants.
C.I.A. officials, though, came to believe that Mr. Montgomery’s technology was fake in 2003, but their conclusions apparently were not relayed to the military’s Special Operations Command, which had contracted with his firm. In 2006, F.B.I. investigators were told by co-workers of Mr. Montgomery that he had repeatedly doctored test results at presentations for government officials. But Mr. Montgomery still landed more business.
In 2009, the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology, even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical about the software, according to e-mails obtained by The New York Times.
Hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery, previously raised by Bloomberg Markets and Playboy, provide a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of government contracting. A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing.
“We’ve seen so many folks with a really great idea, who truly believe their technology is a breakthrough, but it turns out not to be,” said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. of the Air Force, who retired last year as the commander of the military’s Northern Command. Mr. Montgomery described himself a few years ago in a sworn court statement as a patriotic scientist who gave the government his software “to stop terrorist attacks and save American lives.” His alliance with the government, at least, would prove a boon to a small company, eTreppidTechnologies, that he helped found in 1998.
He and his partner — a Nevada investor, Warren Trepp, who had been a top trader for the junk-bond king Michael Milken — hoped to colorize movies by using a technology Mr. Montgomery claimed he had invented that identified patterns and isolated images. Hollywood had little interest, but in 2002, the company found other customers.
With the help of Representative Jim Gibbons, a Republican who would become Nevada’s governor and was a longtime friend of Mr. Trepp’s, the company won the attention of intelligence officials in Washington. It did so with a remarkable claim: Mr. Montgomery had found coded messages hidden in broadcasts by Al Jazeera, and his technology could decipher them to identify specific threats.
The software so excited C.I.A. officials that, for a few months at least, it was considered “the most important, most sensitive” intelligence tool the agency had, according to a former agency official, who like several others would speak only on the condition of anonymity because the technology was classified. ETreppid was soon awarded almost $10 million in contracts with the military’s Special Operations Command and the Air Force, which were interested in software that Mr. Montgomery promised could identify human and other targets from videos on Predator drones.
In December 2003, Mr. Montgomery reported alarming news: hidden in the crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were hijacking targets.
C.I.A. officials rushed the information to Mr. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could enter American airspace.
“The intelligence people were telling us this was real and credible, and we had to do something to act on it,” recalled Asa Hutchinson, who oversaw federal aviation safety at the time. Senior administration officials even talked about shooting down planes identified as targets because they feared that supposed hijackers would use the planes to attack the United States, according to a former senior intelligence official who was at a meeting where the idea was discussed. The official later called the idea of firing on the planes “crazy.”
French officials, upset that their planes were being grounded, commissioned a secret study concluding that the technology was a fabrication. Presented with the findings soon after the 2003 episode, Bush administration officials began to suspect that “we got played,” a former counterterrorism official said.
The C.I.A. never did an assessment to determine how a ruse had turned into a full-blown international incident, officials said, nor was anyone held accountable. In fact, agency officials who oversaw the technology directorate — including Donald Kerr, who helped persuade George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the software was credible — were promoted, former officials said. “Nobody was blamed,” a former C.I.A. official said. “They acted like it never happened.”
After a bitter falling out between Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Trepp in 2006 led to a series of lawsuits, the F.B.I. and the Air Force sent investigators to eTreppid to look into accusations that Mr. Montgomery had stolen digital data from the company’s systems. In interviews, several employees claimed that Mr. Montgomery had manipulated tests in demonstrations with military officials to make it appear that his video recognition software had worked, according to government memorandums. The investigation collapsed, though, when a judge ruled that the F.B.I. had conducted an improper search of his home.
Software and Secrets
The litigation worried intelligence officials. The Bush administration declared that some classified details about the use of Mr. Montgomery’s software were a “state secret” that could cause grave harm if disclosed in court. In 2008, the government spent three days “scrubbing” the home computers of Mr. Montgomery’s lawyer of all references to the technology. And this past fall, federal judges in Montana and Nevada who are overseeing several of the lawsuits issued protective orders shielding certain classified material.
The secrecy was so great that at a deposition Mr. Montgomery gave in November, two government officials showed up to monitor the questioning but refused to give their full names or the agencies they worked for.
Years of legal wrangling did not deter Mr. Montgomery from passing supposed intelligence to the government, according to intelligence officials, including an assertion in 2006 that his software was able to identify some of the men suspected of trying to plant liquid bombs on planes in Britain — a claim immediately disputed by United States intelligence officials. And he soon found a new backer: Edra Blixseth, a onetime billionaire who with her former husband had run the Yellowstone Club in Montana.
Hoping to win more government money, Ms. Blixseth turned to some influential friends, like Jack Kemp, the former New York congressman and Republican vice-presidential nominee, and Conrad Burns, then a Republican senator from Montana. They became minority stakeholders in the venture, called Blxware.
New Pitches
In an interview, Mr. Burns recalled how impressed he was by a video presentation that Mr. Montgomery gave to a cable company. “He talked a hell of a game,” the former senator said.
Mr. Kemp, meanwhile, used his friendship with Vice President Dick Cheney to set up a meeting in 2006 at which Mr. Kemp, Mr. Montgomery and Ms. Blixseth met with a top Cheney adviser, Samantha Ravich, to talk about expanding the government’s use of the Blxware software, officials said. She was noncommittal.
Mr. Flynn, who was still Mr. Montgomery’s lawyer, sent an angry letter to Mr. Cheney in May 2007. He accused the White House of abandoning a tool shown to “save lives.” (After a falling out with Mr. Montgomery, Mr. Flynn represents another party in one of the lawsuits.)
But Mr. Montgomery’s company still had an ally at the Air Force, which in late 2008 began negotiating a $3 million contract with Blxware.
In e-mails to Mr. Montgomery and other company officials, an Air Force contracting officer, Joseph Liberatore, described himself as one of the “believers,” despite skepticism from the C.I.A. and problems with the no-bid contract.
If other agencies examined the deal, he said in a December 2008 e-mail, “we are all toast.”
“Honestly I do not care about being fired,” Mr. Liberatore wrote, but he said he did care about “moving the effort forward — we are too close.” (The Air Force declined to make Mr. Liberatore available for comment.)
The day after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, Mr. Liberatore wrote that government officials were thanking Mr. Montgomery’s company for its support. The Air Force appears to have used his technology to try to identify the Somalis it believed were plotting to disrupt the inauguration, but within days, intelligence officials publicly stated that the threat had never existed. In May 2009, the Air Force canceled the company’s contract because it had failed to meet its expectations.
Mr. Montgomery is not saying much these days. At his deposition in November, when he was asked if his software was a “complete fraud,” he answered, “I’m going to assert my right under the Fifth Amendment.”
its worth pointing out that much of this plays itself out in public and private enterprises everyday. A generation of clueless know-nothing management pay outrageous prices for consultants and contractors and receive "goat shit" in return everyday. but they're spending money and give good meeting, so the bullshit get's papered over, the enterprise limps along (often only due to the constantly under-threat, underpaid, and unappreciated skeleton crew of "inside talent" having to re-do everything. but "the board" etc never hear anything about that.) These clueless managers and executives think the light of the world shines out of their ass, and anything they need appears on command, just a matter of throwing money at the right contractor.
here's an example of this sort of imperial-mindset manger in action...
Laziest memo ever? Rumsfeld asked undersecretary to deal with other countries
In 2003, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld sent to an associate what may well be the laziest memo of all time -- especially on orders of high importance.
The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal dug through the digital archives at Rumsfeld.com and uncovered an extraordinary message Rumsfeld sent to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
In no more than 56 words, Rumsfeld managed to ask Feith to find solutions to US foreign relations issues in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, and Korea.
He offered no guidance on what the issues were or how to deal with any of them, other than invoking "coercive diplomacy" -- a broad concept if there ever was one -- for Syria and Libya.
"We also need to solve the Pakistan problem," he declared in the memo, without offering a hint on what said problem may entail. "And Korea doesn't seem to be going well."
The former Secretary of Defense is currently making the media rounds promoting his memoir, "Known and Unknown." He resigned in December 2006, engulfed by criticisms about misjudging necessary troops levels in Iraq as well as his role in promoting intelligence that turned out to be false.
Exclusive: Military’s ‘persona’ software cost millions, used for ‘classified social media activities’
By Stephen C. Webster
February 22, 2011 @ 5:49 pm
Most people use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share photos of friends and family, chat with friends and strangers about random and amusing diversions, or follow their favorite websites, bands and television shows.
But what does the US military use those same networks for? Well, we can't tell you: That's "classified," a CENTCOM spokesman recently informed Raw Story.
One use that's confirmed, however, is the manipulation of social media through the use of fake online "personas" managed by the military. Raw Story recently reported [1] that the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called "persona management software." Such a technology would allow single individuals to command virtual armies of fake, digital "people" across numerous social media portals.
These "personas" were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. They even worked out ways to game geolocating services, so these "personas" could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not really present.
When Raw Story first reported on the contract for this software, it was unclear what the Air Force wanted with it or even if it had been acquired. The potential for misuse, however, was abundantly clear.
A fake virtual army of people could be used to help create the impression of consensus opinion in online comment threads, or manipulate social media to the point where valuable stories are suppressed [2].
Ultimately, this can have the effect of causing a net change to the public's opinions and understanding of world key events.
'Classified social media activities'
According to Commander Bill Speaks, the chief media officer of CENTCOM's digital engagement team, the public cannot know what the military wants with such technology because its applications are secret.
"This contract," he wrote in reference to the Air Force's June 22, 2010 filing, "supports classified social media activities outside the U.S., intended to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda."
Speaks insisted that he was speaking only on behalf of CENTCOM, not the Air Force "or other branches of the military."
While he did reveal who was awarded the contract in question [3], he added that the Air Force, which helps CENTCOM's contracting process out of MacDill, has even other uses for social media that he could not address.
A series of targeted searches for other "persona management software" contracts yielded no results.
Mystery bidder
While data security firm HBGary Federal was among the contract's bidders listed on a government website, the job was ultimately awarded to a firm that did not appear on the FedBizOpps.gov page [4] of interested vendors.
A controversy over the HBGary firm, which recently had its inner-workings dumped onto the Internet [5] by hackers with protest group "Anonymous," was what initially brought the "persona" contract to light.
HBGary, which conspired with Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce to attack WikiLeaks [6], spy on progressive writers [7] and use malware against progressive organizations, was also revealed to have constructed software eerily similar to what the Air Force sought.
"This contract was awarded to a firm called Ntrepid," Speaks wrote to Raw Story.
Ntrepid ? ANY RELATION to eTREPID? the first story in this post? which was founded in part by a las vegas moneybags, last name of Trepid?
"In addition to the classified activities this software supports, USCENTCOM, like most military commands, does use social media to inform the public of our activities. I should emphasize that such uses do not employ the kind of technology that was the subject of this contract solicitation."
Ntrepid Corporation, registered out of Los Angeles [8], bills itself as a privacy and identity protection firm in some job postings, and a national security contractor in others, but its official website was amazingly just one page deep [9] and free of even a single word of description.
In spite of their thin online presence, Speaks said the firm was awarded $2,760,000 to carry out the "persona management" contract.
He added that it was unclear why an the contract went to an unlisted bidder, and that he would try to find out and report back.
Privacy? Or something else?
Ntrepid's chief technology officer, Lance Cottrell [10], founded the privacy firm Anonymizer, Inc. [11] in 1995, making him a global leader in identity protection and cryptography. He also runs theprivacyblog.com [12].
Far from just being involved in privacy efforts, Ntrepid is a player in the national security realm and was invited to give a presentation for the US EUCOM i3T conference [13], which took place in Berlin last week.
Event organizers described the affair as a series of talks "on the challenges to developing technology, demonstrations of advanced technology pertinent to facilitating and/or enabling security and stability, ways and means of analyzing socio-cultural risks and opportunities, and the operationalization and execution of solutions to mitigate or avail issues with U.S. and multinational partners."
Featured speakers included the US EUCOM director of intelligence, the director of the Air Force Research Labratory and the chief information officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, among other high-profile names [14].
While the company is remarkably scarce with information on their website, descriptions of the firm's goals seem to vary depending on their job openings.
One post [15] seeking a "senior QA test engineer," filed with corporate candidate tracking firm Catsone.com, describes Ntrepid as "the global leader in online privacy, anonymity, and identity protection solutions".
But another help wanted ad [16], seeking an "intelligence analyst" on Appone.com, described Ntrepid as "a leading provider of technology and managed services to national security customers in the areas of cyber operations, analytics, language engineering, and TTL".
Its customers are both public and private sector, the ad said.
A Linked In profile [17] of the company cited them as providers of "software, hardware, and managed services for cyber operations, analytics, linguistics, and surveillance." It had at least 30 employees, according to the business networking site, all located in either San Diego or Washington, DC.
Cottrell himself has advocated on behalf of civil liberties, claiming that widespread Internet surveillance tends to provide no real security benefits [18].
Efforts to contract both Ntrepid Corporation and Mr. Cottrell did not trigger a response by late Tuesday. A phone number could not be located.
URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/22/e ... ctivities/
URLs in this post:
[1] Raw Story recently reported: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/18/r ... al-people/
[2] valuable stories are suppressed: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/08/09/di ... ltra-cons/
[3] the contract in question: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... 2&_cview=0
[4] did not appear on the FedBizOpps.gov page: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... bmode=list
[5] had its inner-workings dumped onto the Internet: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/07/a ... embership/
[6] attack WikiLeaks: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/09/d ... wikileaks/
[7] spy on progressive writers: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/u ... f-critics/
[8] registered out of Los Angeles: http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/cbs.aspx
[9] just one page deep: http://www.ntrepidcorp.com/
[10] Lance Cottrell: http://obscura.com/about-me/
[11] founded the privacy firm Anonymizer, Inc.: http://www.anonymizer.com/company/about/management.html
[12] theprivacyblog.com: http://www.theprivacyblog.com/
[13] US EUCOM i3T conference: http://www.ncsi.com/eucom11/index.shtml
[14] among other high-profile names: http://www.ncsi.com/eucom11/speakers.shtml
[15] One post: http://ntrepid.catsone.com/careers/inde ... rID=339908
[16] another help wanted ad: https://www.appone.com/MainInfoReq.asp? ... hScreenID=
[17] A Linked In profile: http://www.linkedin.com/company/ntrepid-corporation
[18] no real security benefits: http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/0 ... veillance/
AFAIK... the first publicly know such software was called "megaphone" and released by Israeli government for their private speakers to use in their hasbara activities.
