We will leave it up to the reader to determine whether The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made serious errors in in judgment.  They have taken money from a foreign government to influence elections.  They have supported a Conservative Far Right position especially when it comes to Church and State issues.  It is apparent from the data collected, that the first amendment may be in danger from their past and future actions as well as other constitutional sections. 

They have stated that their position is that Certain Religions aren't  "Real" religions.  What is a real religion, folks?  What you have been practicing?  They say that only certain religious denominations are valid.  Read the following and remember: "By their Works may they be known."  This is a summary of information collected from several sources about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at allegations about anyone.     Don't believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself!  And remember, the First Amendment Coalition and Religious Freedom Coalition of the South East do not represent any political party nor do we recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political process.)

ChamberLeaks: Military Contractors Palantir And Berico Under Scrutiny

Excerpts from several articles at thinkprogress.com and huffingtonpost.com between 2/2011 and 3/24/2011

Excerpt of contract between Berico and HBGary, signed by Berico co-founder Nick Hallam. Click to enlarge.

Last month, ThinkProgress revealed a campaign organized by lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against its opponents using three security contractors, Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal. During an Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked military officials to provide contract information related to the government’s business with the firms involved in the Chamber proposal. Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), requested that the information be made available to the full subcommittee.

Palantir, Berico, and HBGary may have used techniques and technologies developed under military contracts in their pro-Chamber campaign. For months, the security firms — who named their collaboration “Themis,” after the Roman goddess of law and order — worked on behalf of the Chamber’s law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, creating electronic dossiers on political opponents of the Chamber through illicit means.

What is known about the business relationship between these firms?

BERICO TECHNOLOGIES: Berico’s co-founders, CEO Guy Filippelli and COO Nick Hallam have issued a statement claiming that Berico “does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals,” calling the actions “reprehensible.”

However, Berico’s initial proposal to Hunton & Williams called for the “open source collection of information on target groups and individuals that appear organized to extort specific concessions through online slander campaigns.”

Furthermore, Berico COO Nick Hallam signed a contract with HBGary in November to “better conduct cyber investigations and corporate campaign analysis” in response to the request of Hunton & Williams.

Excerpt of nondisclosure agreement between Berico and HBGary, signed by Berico co-founder Nick Hallam. Click to enlarge.

In December, Hallam signed a nondisclosure agreement with HBGary to use Palantir on behalf of Hunton & Williams to “provide information, insight, and analysis relating to nongovernmental organization corporate campaigns and labor union corporate campaigns.”

In pursuit of this unethical project to proactively target the Chamber’s political adversaries, Berico employees then uploaded data scraped from Facebook onto Palantir’s servers.

Emails indicate that Berico CEO Guy Fillippelli met with Hunton & Williams partner Bob Quackenboss, the primary contact with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to negotiate pricing of the spying campaign.

PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES: In his testimony, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander described how Palantir’s tools provide the defense and intelligence communities “a way of visualizing what’s going on in the networks” [of terrorists]. Alexander explained that military contracts generally specify whether technologies developed for the defense department can be used for commercial applications.

Palantir co-founder and CEO Dr. Alex Karp has issued a statement that Palantir has “a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties.” However, Palantir was in fact the company that first asked HBGary to conduct illicit invasions of privacy.

Palantir was the first company approached by Hunton & Williams to conduct the pro-Chamber espionage campaign in the middle of October, 2010. Even before learning the identity of the law firm’s corporate client, Palantir’s Matthew Steckman then asked Barr to provide “digital intelligence collection” and “social media exploitation” — i.e., illicit and unethical hacking.  Emails indicate that the pro-Chamber spying was approved by Palantir founder Alex Karp, the board of directors, and Palantir general counsel Matt Long.

Excerpt of contract between Berico and Palantir, signed by Berico co-founder Nick Hallam and Palantir general counsel Matt Long. Click to enlarge.

Under contract from Berico, Palantir developed a database designed to hold data scraped from social media sites, and both Berico and HBGary uploaded such illicit data to the Palantir servers. It is unknown whether Palantir has deleted all such data scraped from Facebook and LinkedIn for their projects. It is also unknown how much data scraped from social media sites still resides on other Palantir projects.

After the conspiracy was revealed, Berico and Palantir have cut ties with HBGary for its “reprehensible” “cyber attacks.” Palantir has now suspended software engineer Matthew Steckman “pending a thorough review of his actions.”

However, top officials of the Themis companies signed contracts to work together to use Barr’s “abhorrent” and “reprehensible” methods on behalf of Hunton & Williams and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Simply disowning HBGary and putting a “26-year-old software engineer” on leave shouldn’t make the questions about the extent of this unethical conspiracy go away.

Richard Clarke Says U.S. Chamber Committed A Felony By Cyber-Targeting Political Opponents

Earlier this month, Richard Clarke, who served for both Democratic and Republican Presidents, including a stint as the cyber security czar for the Bush administration, denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for plotting with a group of military contractors to hack into progressive groups. Clarke was in DC speaking at a cyber security conference hosted by Symantec. Although Clarke focused his remarks about the growing threat of global cyber terrorism, ThinkProgress spoke to the longtime public servant about the ChamberLeaks story we originally broke.

According to documents first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce began working with three military contractors — Berico, HB Gary, and Palantir — to come up with a proposal to discredit groups like ThinkProgress, the SEIU, StopTheChamber.com, MoveOn.org, and others. The tactics proposed included spying on families, using malware computer viruses to steal private information, using fake documents to embarrass liberals, and creating fake identities to infiltrate their targets.

Clarke denounced the scandal in no uncertain terms. Noting accurately that the Chamber “took foreign money in the last election,” a story also uncovered by ThinkProgress, Clarke said the Chamber had conspired to commit a “felony”:

FANG: Hi. You talked a lot about classifying and recognizing cyber security threats, but you mostly focused on foreign threats. I’m curious about a story that broke last month, that the US Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest trade association, based here in DC, had contracted or attempted to contract military defense firms like HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico, to develop proposals to use the same type of cyber warfare tactics normally reserved for Jihadi websites against left-wing activists, trade — labor unions, and left of center think tanks here in America. What do you think about that type of threat from a lobbyist or a corporation targeting political enemies, or perceived enemies here in the US?

CLARKE: I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours.

Listen here:

Clarke, the author of a new book called Cyber War, was right to point out the Chamber’s plot to hack into progressive groups constitutes a felony. There are a number of federal and state statutes that prohibit the theft of private computer information.

Recently, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) formally requested documents from the NSA and Defense Department relating to contracts with two of the firms involved in this scandal, Berico and HB Gary. Nineteen other lawmakers have called for a wider investigation.