Reader bonus: the U.S. government and Pentagon were so sensitive to examination of this issue that they attempted the rarely-utilized strategy of attacking 2 journalists who were working on this story (see the link above). 2nd bonus: an eagle-eyed, tech-savvy reader discovered the IP address used to attack the reporters had redirected to the NSA(!), and described his findings in the comments section of a news story on this issue. I will also attempt to find that and post it here.
Got it. A commenter using "StephenStewart" made these observations about the IP addresses used in a campaign to harass the USA Today journalists investigating U.S. propaganda campaigns (from 4/20/2012, Guardian U.K.): The registrants of the phony web sites shielded themselves by using a proxy service, but GeoIP reveals the location and IP address of the web servers. They can be tracked and identified. TomVandenBrook.com GeoIP City: New York, NY IP:68.178.232.100 WhoIs Registrant: Domains By Proxy, LLC Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC RayLocker.com GeoIP City: Minneapolis, MN IP: 64.202.189.170 WhoIs Registrant: Domains By Proxy, LLC Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC Recommend (24) Responses (0) Report Share StephenStewart 20 April 2012 11:48PM The TomVandenBrook.com and the RayLocker.com web sites have been taken down, but an IP address search service reveals that they both had the same root domain (secureserver.net) about which no information is available. One of the IP addresses was detected last year intruding into a computer and the other used to redirect to the NSA. TomVandenBrook.com: 68.178.232.100 Hostname: parkwebwin-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net User Comments: this I.P want come in my P.C - 2011-02-20 RayLocker.com: 64.202.189.170 Hostname: pwfwd-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net User Comments: why does this ip address redirect to the NSA??? - 2011-02-19 Source: http://whatismyipaddress.com Recommend (16) Responses (0) Report Share These leads should be the subject of deeper investigations.
Trapwire is within the same company that tried to unlawfully conduct propaganda campaigns against U.S. citizens. Also, the Obama administration is now lobbying for detention of U.S. citizens without trial. Along with the heavy surveillance and illegal propaganda campaigns, the government is intentionally treating it's own citizens the same way we treat our foreign ENEMIES.
Just a revisit to this surreal topic. 3 U.S. companies, Abraxas, Cubic and Ntrepid are all under one umbrella. All 3 companies are populated by ex-CIA and ex-FBI employees. It is illegal for the U.S. government to run propaganda campaigns against it's own citizens. But that's exactly what the 3 companies above have done. When 2 U.S. journalists decided to cover this story, they were harassed by mysterious persons. The source of the harassment was subsequently traced to the super-secret NSA eavesdropping agency in the U.S. U.S. journalists were not attacked for revealing national defense secrets that protect our nation. U.S. journalists were attacked for revealing an illegal program that the U.S. government was running against its own citizens. Go to ProjectPM. People there are trying to piece together, through "crowdsourcing", the surprising surveillance conducted against U.S. citizens from leaked intelligence documents.
More is known, now, about this illegal government program to influence public opinion. It's called "Tartan".