“The World’s Leading Geopolitical Intelligence Platform
Leaders Around the World Rely on Stratfor to Navigate the Increasingly Complex Global Environment”
Excerpted from: http://powerbase.info/index.php/Stratfor
“Strategic Forecasting, Inc., more commonly known as Stratfor, is a private intelligence company founded in 1996 in the United States. George Friedman is founder, chairman and Chief Intelligence Officer of the company.
Stratfor’s client list is confidential, but the group claims it “includes Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies.” On a previous version of Stratfor’s home page the company identified government agencies as among its customers – the New Zealand Police was one example given.”
Excerpted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor
“Stratfor bills itself as a geopolitical intelligence platform, with revenues derived from individual and enterprise subscriptions to Stratfor Worldview, its online publication, and from advisory work for corporate clients.
Stratfor has published a daily intelligence briefing since its inception in 1996. Its rise to prominence occurred with the release of its Kosovo Crisis Center during the 1999 NATO airstrikes over Kosovo, which led to publicity in Time magazine, Texas Monthly, and other publications. Before the end of 1999, however, Stratfor had introduced a subscription service through which it offered the majority of its analyses. At the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Stratfor made its “breaking news” paragraphs, as well as some notable analyses predicting likely actions to be taken by al-Qaeda and the Bush administration, available freely to the public.
Stratfor’s publishing business includes written and multimedia analysis on Stratfor Worldview and an iPhone and Android mobile application. Stratfor Threat Lens, an enterprise level product launched in September 2016, offers specific insight and analysis to support corporate security leaders.”
Excerpted from: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/15/stratfor-canadian-government_n_4449505.html
Stratfor, a.k.a ‘Shadow CIA,’ Had Contracts With 13 Federal Departments: WikiLeaks
Stratfor came under fire recently after a leaked company document prepared for an oil company outlined ways to counter activist groups, such as Greenpeace, who oppose Canada’s oil-sands development.
Excerpted from: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/27/wikileaks-publishes-stratfor-emails-anonymous
WikiLeaks publishes Stratfor emails linked to Anonymous attack
Website says total cache amounts to millions of emails exposing the global trade in intelligence
“WikiLeaks said the documents contained details of the inner workings of the private intelligence agency, links between government and private intelligence, and commentary on WikiLeaks itself.
“The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks,” the whistleblower website said.”
WikiLeaks’ Stratfor dump lifts lid on intelligence-industrial complex
“What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a “global intelligence” provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.
The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines…
…Assange slyly points out that this is in keeping with a lunchroom memo from Fred Barton, Stratfor’s vice-president of intelligence, in which he states that he has an unofficial rule:
“Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.”
Statfor belongs to an extensive industry. In Top Secret America, a new book by Dana Priest and William Arkin of the Washington Post, the authors reveal that there are literally thousands of so-called intelligence analysts hawking equally dubious information to the federal government.
By its very nature, of course, such information is secret and often protected by government order. Nothing short of a major congressional investigation will be able to drill down into this intelligence-industrial cartel to assess not just the quality of the information and the way it was obtained, but whether or not any of it serves the public interest – or the very opposite. That is, unless Anonymous or WikiLeaks gets there and does the work first.”
Excerpted from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jan/08/hackers-expose-defence-intelligence-officials
Hackers expose defence and intelligence officials in US and UK
“Thousands of British email addresses and encrypted passwords, including those of defence, intelligence and police officials as well as politicians and Nato advisers, have been revealed on the internet following a security breach by hackers.
Among the huge database of private information exposed by self-styled “hacktivists” are the details of 221 British military officials and 242 Nato staff. Civil servants working at the heart of the UK government – including several in the Cabinet Office as well as advisers to the Joint Intelligence Organisation, which acts as the prime minister’s eyes and ears on sensitive information – have also been exposed.
The hackers, who are believed to be part of the Anonymous group, gained unauthorised access over Christmas to the account information of Stratfor, a consultancy based in Texas that specialises in foreign affairs and security issues. The database had recorded in spreadsheets the user IDs – usually email addresses – and encrypted passwords of about 850,000 individuals who had subscribed to Stratfor’s website.
Some 75,000 paying subscribers also had their credit card numbers and addresses exposed, including 462 UK accounts.
John Bumgarner, an expert in cyber-security at the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a research body in Washington, has analysed the Stratfor breach for the Guardian. He has identified within the data posted by the hackers the details of hundreds of UK government officials, some of whom work in sensitive areas.
Many of the email addresses are not routinely made public, and the passwords are all encrypted in code that can quickly be cracked using off-the-shelf software.
Among the leaked email addresses are those of 221 Ministry of Defence officials identified by Bumgarner, including army and air force personnel. Details of a much larger group of US military personnel were leaked. The database has some 19,000 email addresses ending in the .mil domain of the US military.”
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