The Digital Trojan Horse: PROMIS and the Birth of Global Surveillance

0:00 Welcome back, folks. Before we get started, I wanted to make sure you check out our new sponsor, the Prestige couch over on substack looking at the world psychodynamically. It's a fascinating substack to count you want to check out. They do a lot of psychodynamic work and they were talking to the latest article that came up with it's called the Parentified Child. On top of that, my new book came out last year, Dog Psychology. Go check it out.

0:28 So our first one is an interesting story called the Digital Trojan Horse, Promise, and the birth of global surveillance. So let's look at this. In the world of intelligence, the most effective weapon isn't a silent pistol or a microdot, but a back door. Decades before the NSA in prison became household names, a legal case management software called PROMIS Prosecutors Management Information System now PROMISE was designed to help prosecutors track people in cases across different legal databases, essentially the first search engine for law enforcement. The DOJ signed a ten million dollar contract to implement it, but Inslaw's founder was the name of that started a company was called Inslaw. Bill Hamilton accused the DOJ of pirrating the software.

1:13 He alleged to the government withheld payments to drive Inslaw into bankruptcy so they could take the source code, and federal bankruptcy judge actually agreed in nineteen eighty eight. Rually, the DOJ had indeed tricked the individuals and took the software through trickery and fraud, though the ruling was later overturned on a general jurisdictional technicality. Our story talks a little bit more about the espionage world because the software became the og of software based espionage. It is a story of stolen code, shadowy informants in a global tacking system.

1:50 The saga began in the early eighties with Inslaw. As I mentioned, the company that developed a revolutionary attracted five people, but according to whistleblowers like Michael Reconosuto, the CIA had the software and modify with a secret back door. The strategy was classic tradecraft. Step one, compromines the source code, Step two market the gold standard software to foreign intelligence agencies.

2:12 Banks and governments sit back, and Step three watch as their targets voluntarily upload their most sensitive data. This wasn't just about tracking criminals, It was about global visibility. If an enemy state used ProBiS to manage his intelligence files, the US could effectively see into their dark rooms in real time. The story took a dark turn in nineteen ninety one when investigative journalist Danny Casolaro began uncovering what he called the Octopus, a sprawling conspiracy leaking ProBiS to the Iran Contra affair and the October Surprise. Casolera warned his family that he was getting close to the truth and even warned them that if he ever was accused of killing himself, that it wasn't true, And shortly after

2:54 he was found dead at a hotel bathtub. His wrists were slashed. While officially ruled the suicide of his notes were missing, and the circumstances remained a chilling footnote to the annals of investigative journalism, The Promised Scandal illustrates the perception gap in its most lethal form. The public saw a boring contract dispute over legal with software, but the reality we have been the birth of the modern surveillance state.

3:17 It serves as a stark reminder that in the realm of high stakes intelligence, the tools we use to organize our world are often the very windows to which others watch us so I hope you enjoyed the story, and we'll see you next week. Folks,