With a couple of Federal investigations going on, several law suits winding down and another presidential race gearing up, now is a good time for a cautionary tale on being careful who and what you get involved with on the internet. Practice some due diligence before joining a cause. Use your your googler to do some research before donating to anyone or any organization. Some individuals you associate with online may be involved in activities that could get you in trouble. And some groups and organizations hover on the border between complying with laws and unethical, if not illegal, activities. A case in point would be the 2012 election.
Attempting to duplicate Obama’s use of technology in 2008, campaign organizers for Mitt Romney came up with Project ORCA in 2012. This web application was intended to inform campaign headquarters in real time which precincts showed low Republican voter turnout. This would allow volunteers to contact non-voters and get them to the polls.
On October 22nd, two weeks before the 2012 presidential elections, a video was posted on Youtube by Anonymous. The video warned Karl Rove that Anonymous was watching, ready to intervene if Rove made any attempts to steal the election and “overthrow the American government”. That video is here.
On November 1st, a non profit organization called Velvet Revolution offered a $1 million reward for any information on election fraud.
On November 6th, the election took place, the web app Project ORCA didn’t live up to hype or expectations. There were quite a few problems including the whole system crashing and going offline for several hours.
On November 12th, an Anonymous group calling itself The Protectors claimed credit for stopping Karl Rove from stealing the election with a fire wall they called The Great Oz. That letter is down below. The Protectors declined the $1 million reward and everyone lived happily ever after.
So that’s the basic timeline of Project Orca and The Protectors. But a closer look raises quite a few red flags. The Protectors and The Great Oz were a scam, a publicity stunt to raise awareness of a nonprofit organization called Velvet Revolution and get it more public donations.
Velvet Revolution is one of Brett Kimberlin’s nonprofit organizations. And Brett Kimberlin is most noted for being the Speedway Bomber and the guy who claimed to have sold pot to Dan Quayle. And he was the subject of “Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” in May of 2012.
Several bloggers were harassed for writing about Kimberlin’s sordid past and assorted crimes. People were doxed and there were even allegations of bloggers being SWATted. The logic behind Everyone Blog About Kimberlin Day was safety in numbers. Kimberlin couldn’t possibly retaliate against every blogger who exercised the First Amendment right to blog about him. But that day and all the hullabaloo surrounding it was very bad PR for Velvet Revolution and Kimberlin’s other nonprofit, Justice Through Music Project. Donations were affected. Something had to be done to counteract the bad publicity.
Luckily for Brett, at that time one of the people helping him out was Neal Rauhauser! And when two sociopaths work together, there’s really no public relations problem that can’t be overcome.
So the Anon video got posted on YouTube. You might think that Anonymous getting involved in partisan politics is strange. It was certainly a first and only event. The claim that Karl Rove was trying to overthrow the government was hilarious.
While there were accusations that Karl Rove had endowed ORCA with some kind of super technology that could magically manipulate the results of the election, those accusations came from Velvet Revolution. There wasn’t anything sinister involved with ORCA, no secret tech to alter votes or hijack the election. It was just an app. There was no evidence, then or now, that Project Orca or Karl Rove attempted to rig the election. Perhaps Rove may have been capable of doing this but Project Orca was not. It didn’t even work.
The million dollar reward from Velvet Revolution was another red flag and bit of potato. One million dollars was a very generous reward. I’ve seen Velvet Revolution’s 990 tax statement for that year and their reported revenue for 2012 was $73,000. That’s a long way from a million dollars so I guess they planned to make monthly installments to Anonymous or whoever saved America from being overthrown.
On election day, ORCA failed big time with a wide range of problems. It wasn’t robust enough to handle a national election. Comcast wasn’t alerted to the amount of traffic that would be generated so they shut down the system thinking there was a hacker attack. But there was NEVER an actual hacker attack, just poor planning and implementation by the campaign managers. Project Orca failed on its own without any outside help.
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| The complete post is at http://raincoaster.tumblr.com/post/39932343012/nothing-to-see-here-2-abt2 |
The true tell is the last sentence in The Protectors’ letter below. “We may just put all the evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London.” That’s pure Rauhauser. “Tidy little package” is one of his pet phrases. I’ve lost count of the times he’s threatened to send tidy little packages. It’s his favorite threat, he thinks law enforcement everywhere is interested in his collections of tweets.
Neal and Brett pulled a fast one on America. The Protectors and The Great Oz were a complete hoax. Before you donate to Velvet Revolution or Justice Through Music (sure, the world needs another crappy video with Brett singing insipid lyrics through his nose) please google them. Check their 990 tax returns and find out how they’ve spent the money given to them. Check out Brett Kimberlin, look for the underage girls and the dead bodies in his past. If you find him expressing any remorse or sympathy for any of his victims, let me know. I haven’t found a single thing.
And before you get involved with Neal Rauhauser or donate to his latest GoFundMe scam campaign google him too. Look at all the internet drama he’s been involved in, TwitterGate, SWATgate, Weinergate, GAWgate to name a few. He’s the poster boy for failure.
So the caution part of this cautionary tale: Look behind the curtain! Sociopaths may be interesting to watch but they’re not safe to get close to. What they tell you and what they show you just might not be true.
Letter by The Protectors, a very secret and very elite of hackers who saved the world.
Greetings to the good people of the Velvet Revolution
8 November 2012
Please we were to see that you put your faith in the hands of we protectors of democracy, and tempted too to claim your generous reward. But wealth does not drive us.
Two months prior to your offer, we chose to take action against those who have subverted the will of the people in past elections, which resulted in terrible destruction across the globe. We began following the digital traffic of one Karl Rove, a disrespecter of the Rule Of Law, knowing that he claimed to be Kingmaker while grifting vast wealth from barons who gladly handed him gold to anoint another King while looking the other way.
After a rather short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl’s operation and even that of his ORCA. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside.
So what do we do with these doors? Do we leave them open and catch the thieves as they steal the prize? Or do we close them so they cannot steal the prize?
Our decision-protect the citizens.
We coded and created, what we call, The Great Oz. A targeted password protected firewall that we tested and refined over the past weeks. We placed this code on more than one of the digital tunnels and their destinations that Karl’s not so smart worker bees planned to use on election night. We noticed that these tunnels were strategically placed to allow for tunnel rats to race to the server sewers from three different states. Ah yes, karl tried to make it appear that there were more than three but we quickly saw the folly of his ploy.
We watched as Karl’s little boys and girls confidently ran their tests while Karl told his barons to smoke cigars.
6 November, 2012
10am, EST-ORCA Killer
8pm EST-The Great Oz
We watched as Karl’s speared ORCA whale was beached, rotting with a strong stench across his American playground, unable to be resuscitated. We watched as karl’s weak corrupters repeatedly tried to penetrate The Great Oz. These children of his were at a loss-how many times and how many passwords did they try-exactly 105.
We work without remuneration. Karl, on the other hand, takes ships of gold from barons to do their bidding. We sank those ships and we have a warning for Karl – sail again at your peril. We may just put all the evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London.
tidy.