[ad_1]
While a few years ago when I was based in Moscow as the head of an important news magazine office, a representative from a multinational company approached me and offered me a tremendous offer. He said he has very sensitive materials that surface criminal activities that a Russian competitor can do. The documents were mine with one condition: prior notice, to be out of the country when any story was published.
I had every reason to think that the materials came from a private operational intelligence contracted by the company — there were many such agents in Moscow — but I did not ask my source for his source. Instead, I undertook a rather rigorous investigation, and when I confirmed the materials, I published a splash of story.
This section came back to me while I was reading Barry Meier’s new book, Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and Rise of Private Spies. The first one New York Times the researcher’s reporter Meier sheds harsh light on “private espionage” and journalists who frequently use the nuggets extracted by these agents. In the book’s preface, it revives an idea of “espionage records” that hired agents should disclose the names of clients and tasks, ”as Congress now calls on hired lobbyists to influence lawmakers.
Is it really a problem that needs a solution? Or would spy logs cause worse problems?
It is tempting to conclude that there is nothing new here and that private spies can also provide a public service. At the turn of the century, the Pinkerton Original Detective Agency dedicated itself to the art of intrigue. In 1890, a Pinkerton man hid in the name of his client, the governor of North Dakota, and confirmed from a thorough investigation of the bar that he was distributing the correct amount of “boodle,” the money for the purchase. the governor. The governor showed the dirty treats to the public, and the lottery scheme failed — all of them perhaps for civic benefit.
The current situations are very different. Cheap spyware, hacking and counterfeiting technologies and markets make the spy game easier than ever. Doesn’t the hired guard travel with one of those metal fabric bags that block cell phone GPS signals, such as the GoDark Faraday model that sells online for $ 49.97? This is a trivial element of the expense report.
The tools of the digital age of commerce, along with the promiscuous media, say they are happy to receive clear emails that could not be legally acquired by news organizations on their own, Meier says it has become a “perfect petri dish”. Scary, “The effect of private spies where they grow and multiply without control and without control.” Based on an estimate by consulting firm ERG Partners, it guesses that revenues from the private research industry, $ 2.5 billion in 2018, have doubled in the past 10 years.
Meier plays his accusation ethically in two rough sections, one about the Black Cube. Founded in 2010, the global corporate intelligence company has used “a select group of veterans of Israel’s elite intelligence units” to provide “Creative Intelligence: tailor-made solutions based on high-quality intelligence and cutting-edge technology.” , special specialization and out-of-the-box thinking, ”his website informed us.
“Out of the box” in fact. In 2016, in hopes of preventing the press from publishing allegations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein, the law firm of superlegal David Boies hired Black Cube to work on Weinstein’s behalf. Specifically in Meier’s contract, it was mentioned that the intelligence company used “avatar operators”: experts on social networks, fake Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles and the like for agents in the field who specialized. One such agent, a veteran Israeli military woman who was on the cover of a women’s rights advocate working for an investment firm in London, befriended a plaintiff Weinstein, who was an actress, Rose McGowan. The agent’s hidden goal was to convince McGowan to share a memory he had worked with Weinstein that had not yet been published. All of this later appeared in Ronan Farrow’s 2017 film Black Cube. Asked if Black Cube’s tactics of false identities are misrepresented, Boies was not persuaded to resort to legal legislation: “I think the misrepresentation may depend on what it may be for the recipient.”
Another important example of Meier is the Washington, DC, Fusion GPS company, which “announces excellent research, strategic intelligence, and due diligence services to corporations, law firms, and investors around the world.” It is run by a former business partnerWall Street Journal journalists, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, and it is not surprising that he uses a close personal connection to the journalistic brotherhood.
[ad_2]
Source link
