WikiLeaks has done it again.
This time the whistle-blowers are releasing 5 million emails dating from between July 2004 and December 2011 that they’ve scooped from Texas strategic intelligence and geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor (Strategic Forcasting Inc.). The documents have been seductively termed the “Global Intelligence Files.” This comes after Anonymous’ December 24, 2011 hack of the website where logins and credit card information were compromised.
Stratfor stipulates in the “About” section of their site that: “Our goal is simple: to make the complexity of the world understandable to an intelligent readership, without ideology, agenda or national bias.” Oh yeah, Stratfor?
“[The documents] reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency,” says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “What we have discovered is a company that is a private intelligence Enron.”
The publishing of these documents, whether authentic or not, positions Stratfor not as a publishing agency for intelligence (as it claims), but moreso as a spy service, participating in sketchy dealings like paying off media and journalist informants, closely monitoring activist groups, investing based on its intelligence knowledge and something called “psychological methods.” Code names included in the documents include “Hizzies” (the Hezbollah) and “Adogg” (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).
The documents will be officially leaked through a partnership that WikiLeaks’ has established with 25 media outlets.
Stratfor has come to their own defense saying that what they’ve experienced is “a deplorable, unfortunate – and illegal – breach of privacy.“
There are two sides to every story.
The official press release is available for public consumption.
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Jessica Carroll is the Toronto Standard’s editorial assistant. Follow her on Twitter at @jssckr.
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