The fetid swamp of “integrity”: The initiative that scurried from the spotlight

The recent articles showing that erstwhile U.S. Administrator of Truth Nina Jankowicz was connected with the shadowy, government-funded British group Institute for Statecraft (and its offshoot Integrity Initiative project) have reopened a can of worms far too numerous to herd into a single post.

Indeed, they’re so numerous it’s hard to keep track of them from one online search to the next.

So this won’t be an in-depth treatment of “IfS/II” and its squirming, hydra-headed mass.  Rather, it’s a few notes on what Ms. Jankowicz was doing in the period when an IfS/II document reflects a connection to her.  Plus some bonus observations about IfS/II.

As far as I’ve discerned at this point, one document out of quite a few – all of which were hacked and exposed by Anonymous in 2018 and early 2019 – identifies Jankowicz as explicitly linked to the Integrity Initiative’s “UK Cluster.”*

The IT role in Russiagate: Part III – Internet maneuvers, an Obama-linked trust group, and DARPA

Part I is here.  Part II is here.

Part II concluded with a discussion of Rodney Joffe’s private ISP, an arrangement he spoke of himself in a June 2015 PR release on an award from the tech organization Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG).

Part III continues with a listen to the echoes of the Conficker worm (a high-profile project for Rodney Joffe); a most remarkably-timed formation of a new trust group with extensive Obama links – and one link in particular to the 2016 DNC intrusion; and the link – because of course there is one – to the DARPA project John Durham is investigating Georgia Tech’s participation in.

Previous plot outline?

One penultimate set of facts sheds some clarifying light on what we’ve tallied up already.  It relates to Rodney Joffe’s participation in the IT working group

The IT role in Russiagate: Part II – “Trust,” those pesky years 2015 and 2016, and new Georgia Tech dots that connect

Part I is here.  (Part III is here.)  Part II, in this article, was planned originally.  There is now a Part III, which I will post separately but simultaneously.  Separating Parts II and III is principally about limiting the size and number of images in each article.

Key points for Parts II and III:

• Features of Ops-Trust “trust group” model are significant to assessing Joffe and Georgia Tech roles in Alfa-gate
• A different industry group (M3AAWG), which functions in some ways as a trust group, has links to multiple Alfa-gate actors
• One of those is Listrak, suggesting a reason to probe how contract with Cendyn and exploitation by Joffe team came about
• Rodney Joffe was using a private ISP he controlled for over a decade, including in 2016-2017
• Several of same players (including Joffe and Georgia Tech) involved in Conficker worm working group in 2009; interesting pattern of features
• New non-profit for cybersecurity was started by Obama-linked experts near end of his term and joined M3AAWG in May 2016
• Georgia Tech involvement in DARPA research project (reported on 10 March) is about a key principle uniquely associated with CrowdStrike conclusions on DNC intrusion – and grant solicitations were announced in April 2016

The IT role in Russiagate: Part I – Taking (brief) stock with graphics

[Links to Parts II and III at the bottom. – J.E.]

This article started out to be a somewhat different one, developing a couple of points about the monitoring of EOP (Executive Office of the President) communications referenced in the John Durham court filings.

But with a firehose of new information coming in, it seems necessary to take stock and put in perspective the things we know up to this point.  I don’t think most will find it a waste of time.  The stock-taking is relatively short, and the principal feature is something we haven’t had yet:  schematic diagrams of how the major IT pieces fit together to make the surveillance of “Trump” possible, and facilitate the concoction of an anti-Trump narrative about supposed links to Russia.

The graphics are very simplified, which I suspect many readers will consider a blessing.  My hope is to spare some unnecessary efforts to sort out confusion when it need not be at work.

Federal regs II: State Dept’s new regs would transform the Internet beyond recognition

Rusty Weiss called to our attention Monday morning an update to “arms trafficking” regulations posted to the Federal Register last week by the State Department.  The National Rifle Association has sounded the alarm, having recognized quickly how these new regs would effectively shut down the exchange of information among gun enthusiasts on the web.

But the chokehold effect would be felt in other quarters as well.  This move by the State Department is an absolutely terrible idea across the board.  Even if it dealt with international trade in pork bellies or chicken parts, rather than arms, it should still be opposed strenuously on principle.

Its effect will be to make a tremendous chunk of what people talk about on the web every day subject to prior restraint, by, of all agencies, the State Department – or, potentially, other federal agencies, depending on topic.