From: Sandra Finley
Sent: April 2, 2015
To: <bschneier xxx@xxx cyber.law.harvard.edu>
Subject: thwarting activists by intrusion into wordpress
Hello Bruce Schneier,
Maybe you could use following info? Maybe it’s already known? (Or maybe my surmisal is incorrect.)
The sharing of information by bloggers is a problem for corporations.
I think that NSA or Lockheed Martin may be an explanation for difficulties being experienced at WordPress. Many activist blogs are done through WordPress. We push out the information on Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Climate Change, the oil and gas industry, water, corruption, governance, Occupy, Idle No More, renewable, the March Against Monsanto (GMOs, Genetic Engineering), the military-industrial-congressional-university complex … you know the list.
The “theme” I use (Suffusion) celebrated its millionth download in 2013. That is just one of the themes available through WordPress.
I do not know what percentage are activist blogs. But when you add all the themes, you are talking a large number of activist bloggers.
I suspect the reason that a stable theme (Suffusion) is now “breaking” is because of intrusion (interference) at WordPress.
Your interview with Ed Snowden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ui3tLbzIgQ&feature=youtu.be prompts me to contact you. Around the 16:30 mark a tactic is mentioned, “… someone (an NSA or surveillance IT specialist) to get hired into your organization”. In the case of WordPress, you don’t even have to get hired. You just have to be a valuable “volunteer”. It’s an exploitable weakness of volunteer organizations that are always desperate for resources of time and money.
Here’s what happened in my case.
A focus of mine is Lockheed Martin in Canada. They are ruthless and immoral; they single-handedly destroy democracy. I joined other protesters beginning in 2003, objecting to the out-sourcing of Census work (Statistics Canada, which is your “Census Bureau”). We were successful in driving Lockheed out of StatsCan (2014). EXCEPT THAT it’s a lie. Lockheed Martin / the NSA will have back-door, if not front-door access (contracts or no contracts). Access is to the comprehensive data base on Canadians at StatsCan. It is growing daily because of on-going “surveys” that coerce personal info, more and more of it. Canadian’s Charter Right to Privacy is a farce.
UPDATE: I found an expense claim on the StatsCan website from their second-in-command (copy on my blog) – – Lockheed Martin runs the FVEY cooperation on data bases 2016-03-18 (Canada) Does Lockheed Martin Corp have a role in the 2016 Census? (The answer is yes – – Lockheed Martin does the “steerage”.)
Experience: Three things happened, the third being the WordPress event.
- There was a coercive effort to force the small company that hosted my blog to take it down. Both the service and I were threatened with a court case (intimidation). The hosting company suggested to me they could transfer the blog to a server in Russia, out of reach of the Canadian justice system. My blog stayed up. The local company continues to do the tech support.
- Next (January 2015) came an assault on the domain name registrar to de-register the blog. I had to hire a lawyer to defend the registration.
- There are now problems with WordPress. I think it’s because so many bloggers use WordPress, and those corporations do not like our successes. They decided to infiltrate WordPress. The infiltrators manipulate the creation of some bad decisions that Thwart and frustrate a whole lot of bloggers. Me being one.
I read the discussion about trying to fix this one theme, Suffusion (that had the millionth download back in 2013). Some unpopular decisions were made by WordPress. As I understand, the discussion saw that as the beginning of the “breaking” of Suffusion.
For me it meant that “Excerpts” can no longer be generated. Terrible for the reader. If you want to see all the postings on Bill C-51 (Anti-terrorism / Secret Police – – Ed Snowden, bless him, did a youtube on it), for example, you can’t scroll through a list that has only the excerpt for each post. You have to go through an unmanageably long list of the whole text for each posting. Also, I can no longer get featured posts to appear in the header. . . .
The community of supporters of Sayontan (the developer of “Suffusion”) are kind of bewildered and struggling. On top of Sayontan’s day-time job, this fellow cannot go back and un-do and re-do Suffusion to “fix” it. It took years, all volunteer work for the public good, for him to develop Suffusion. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could step in and re-do it. And on a volunteer basis. I’ll go to the conversation on “what happened” and “break it to them gently” – – it’s probably their own Government (the NSA) and Corporations (Lockheed Martin). Their sin? – – they have been too successful in serving the public. What a tragedy.
Anyhow, I should abandon WordPress and find secure blogging software. But I never find time. The descent into fascism moves apace.
Thank-you for your valuable contribution to understanding what’s going on.
I hope the preceding can be useful to someone.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley