Palantir was paid to go after Julian Assange
In the fall of 2010, Palantir employees partnered with an ex–Navy intelligence analyst named Aaron Barr, the new CEO of HBGary Federal, which specialized in identifying computer viruses, on an ill-conceived project that carried the promise of big money—but also a lot of risk.
Palantir and HBGary Federal teamed up with a third intelligence contractor, Berico Technologies, to provide information on groups and individuals deemed hostile to the US Chamber of Commerce. The law firm Hunton & Williams first approached Palantir about the work, which was to include reconnaissance of various Web sites and social media in order to build dossiers on the chamber’s opponents. Operating under the name Team Themis, the companies would set up an analysis cell to provide the law firm with intelligence about “adversarial entities and networks of interest,” according to a proposal the team drew up. Palantir would “serve as the foundation for all of the data collection, integration, analysis, and production efforts.”
For its work, Palantir asked to be paid $1.1 million. Anticipating that its client might balk at such a price, Matthew Steckman, a Palantir employee in the Rivendell Washington office, wrote an e-mail to his teammates urging them to emphasize, “We are the best money can buy! Dam it feels good to be a gangsta.”
A few days later, the law firm asked Team Themis whether it could offer a proposal for another job, this time targeting the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which was threatening to release internal records from Bank of America. As Steckman explained to his team, the bank wanted to sue WikiLeaks and enjoin it from releasing the information.
The Justice Department, which had been looking for a way to prosecute WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, called Bank of America’s attorneys and told them to get in touch with Hunton & Williams. “Apparently, if they can show that WikiLeaks is hosting data in certain countries, it will make prosecution easier,” Steckman wrote.
Barr said that Themis should target WikiLeaks’ “global following and volunteer staff” as well as people donating money to the group. “Also need to get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them. Transaction records are easily identifiable.” He said they should submit fake documents to WikiLeaks and try to foment distrust among different camps of supporters. Barr also suggested they target “people like Glenn Greenwald,” the progressive blogger who was a vocal WikiLeaks supporter. And he wanted to launch “cyberattacks” on a server WikiLeaks used in Sweden in order to “get data” about people who were anonymously submitting information.
Team Themis never got the chance to carry out its campaign of espionage and propaganda. In February 2011, an article appeared in the Financial Times quoting Barr, who bragged that he’d been able to penetrate the inner ranks of another hacker-activist group, Anonymous. The group retaliated by breaking into Barr’s e-mail account and publishing years’ worth of his correspondence, which included the Team Themis proposals.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/01/31/killer-app/