It’s good to see this Washington Post story today about a proposed investigation of the law firm and military contractors who drew up plans to illegally disrupt the activities of critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Public Campaign was targeted because we helped focus a spotlight on the Chamber’s big, secret (and possibly foreign) money investments in the 2010 elections. Last October, I spoke at a lunchtime rally outside the Chamber’s national headquarters, just down the street from the White House, along with Public Citizen’s Rob Weissman, MoveOn’s Ilyse Hogue, and communications strategist Jane Johnson.

For our effrontery, we all wound up on a hit list of people and organizations scrutinized by “Team Themis” an ad hoc combine of three technology companies with more than $20 million in federal contracts. Together with the lobbying and law firm of Hunton and Williams, they were preparing to pitch the U.S. Chamber on a plan to feed disinformation to our organizations and hack into our computer systems. As part of this scheme they began to gather information on our personal lives – where we lived, our places of worship and our children.

When I first learned of these efforts, thanks to a WikiLeaks-type outing of one of the firm’s electronic data by Anonymous, a network of David vs. Goliath hackers, I was curious but perhaps a little dismissive. The information they gathered on me was incomplete and inaccurate, making them seem amateurish. Were these people really going to go after my kids? It made me think of the bumbling bad guys in Home Alone. But after a conversation with the leaders of US Chamber Watch, also targeted by Team Themis, I took the issue much more seriously.

The Anonymous data release had surfaced not-ready-for-primetime templates, so by their nature, they were unfinished and filled with dummy data points. The companies that formed Team Themis were big league players: government contractors whose clients included the Department of Defense and Department of Justice. They were being organized by Hunton and Williams, a firm whose lobby clients have included Koch Industries, Duke Energy, and Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, a utility company front group. And they were drawing serious interest from the Chamber, with a pitch meeting scheduled in mid-February (until the plan became public).  

And the kids?

The leaked memos explained that one easy path to hack into the computers of Chamber opponents would be to befriend the children of organization staff on Facebook, sneak into the children’s computers and from there access the target computers by jumping across home networks. I've always worried about my kids and online predators, but I never thought I'd have to worry about corporate dirty tricks.

The Chamber, of course, has denied any connection to this plot, but the Anonymous documents suggest otherwise. Perhaps, if Congress investigates this episode, we’ll all learn more.  But with Hunton and Williams’ client list including a roster of big political contributors, persuading Speaker John Boehner et al, to dig into the facts will be a heavy lift.