On Stratfor, Assange and Anonymous just don't get it

Wikileaks' Julian Assange is trumpeting the release of emails stolen from the security analysis and consulting firm Stratfor as a major coup. Here's why he's wrong.



Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been desperate for another home run in the 24 months since they began releasing a vast library of US diplomatic cables and military reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Mr. Assange's organization has been on the decline since, with credit card companies refusing to process donations, infighting among early Wikileaks programmers that has left it without a secure "drop box" to receive leaks, and early journalistic collaborators like The New York Times and The Guardian falling out with Assange.

But Assange thinks he's hit paydirt again, with seven years of emails stolen from the Texas-based Stratfor, a company that provides intelligence and geopolitical analysis. Stratfor says it generates its own intelligence for reports, though it also relies heavily on open-source data collection. I've read dozens of their reports over the years. I've found some wildly speculative, others accurate but banal, and still others intriguing.

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And while I've found some Stratfor analysis to be flat wrong, and so perhaps harmful if conclusions are taken by policymakers at face value, I've never seen anything nefarious or dangerous. Yet today, the

internet is filled with claims that the Stratfor is some kind of "shadow CIA," with ominous warnings about its hidden influence and functions.

The emails were stolen by hackers who claim to be aligned with the amorphous activist group "Anonymous." Though Assange hasn't confirmed they're the source, there was much online crowing by the Anonymous crowd in December that they'd broken into Stratfor's computers.

Assange is of the view there's something dangerous about Statfor. "Here we have a private intelligence firm, relying on informants from the US government, foreign intelligence agencies with questionable reputations and journalists," he told Reuters. "What is of grave concern is that the targets of this scrutiny are, among others, activist organizations fighting for a just cause."

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I'm not sure what evidence of "activists fighting for a just cause" being "targeted" by Stratfor will emerge from the millions of emails stolen by hackers from the company's servers (there is evidence that they collected information on Occupy Wall Street protesters but, well, so were lots of journalists). And the first half of that quote on their methods applies to, well, me and any other reporter who's ever covered international affairs. Over the years, I've received information from spies, diplomats, other hacks, and a few really unsavory characters (murderers). If you want information, you go where the information is.

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