The Star Chamber of Commerce

Have you been following Chamber-gate, the sleazy effort by the Chamber of Commerce to spy on and smear its critics in blogworld? Glenn Greenwald was targeted, and so was Brad Friedman. In fact, Brad's server was ever-so-mysteriously knocked out of commission. This Firedoglake interview with Brad is a must-read:

“But these guys” in the Chamber of Commerce, he continued, “the money they were playing with is our fucking tax money. They’re funded by corporations like AIG and Bank of America who received billions in bailout dollars, and Exxon-Mobil with billions in tax subsidies. They take that money and use it to attack private citizens and private organizations for having the temerity to stand up and say, you guys are wrong. We’re fighting against how our own tax dollars are being spent against us.”

Glenn Greenwald has his say here. ThinkProgress has done remarkable work on this, as has Marcy Wheeler: See here and here and here.

The hacker-thugs who were vying for the contract wanted two million bucks. Hell, for a quarter of that amount I'd be happy to mount a smear campaign against myself!

Marcy:

But I was particularly interested in what HBGary’s Aaron Barr proposed charging for the work of what they called a “Social Media SME.”

Social media sme ($250 per hour) – experienced in social media link analysis. Personna development. Content management. Social media exploitation techniques.

This is a social media consultant, someone we know from the team’s plans they intended to deploy on Facebook and Twitter in false personas ultimately aiming to destroy the credibility of anti-Chamber activists.

These are just reasonably skilled trolls.

And for that, they wanted to charge $2,000 a day.

As Marcy points out, this is the same Chamber of Commerce that wants to pay janitors minimum wage.

There are many lessons to be learned here, but one of them is this: AVOID FACEBOOK. Social networking sites are nothing more than a scheme to allow Big Brother to spy on you more easily and more thoroughly.

I'll have more to say on this soon. For months now, I've been sitting on a rather startling AIG story. About time to trot it, eh wot? But remember -- for a mere $250,000, I'll launch a smear campaign against myself, which should blunt the impact of the AIG story.

On another subject: They are still dancing in the streets in Cairo! What a spectacle. It's the best party on the planet, even if there is no booze.

Good to know that someone on this globe is heading toward freedom instead of away from it.