[Lamplighter]

Assange is the mouse that scares all elephants

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/bu...ines&emc=tha25
Facing Threat From WikiLeaks, Bank Plays Defense
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: January 2, 2011

<snip>
it was nearly midnight at Bank of America’s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.,
but the bank’s counterespionage work was only just beginning.

A day earlier, on Nov. 29, the director of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange,
said in an interview that he intended to “take down” a major American bank and
reveal an “ecosystem of corruption” with a cache of data from an executive’s hard drive.

With Bank of America’s share price falling on the widely held suspicion that the hard drive was theirs,
the executives on the call concluded it was time to take action.

Since then, a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials, led by the chief risk officer,
Bruce R. Thompson, has been overseeing a broad internal investigation
— scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public,
reviewing every case where a computer has gone missing and hunting for any sign
that its systems might have been compromised.

“This is a significant moment, and Bank of America has to get out in front of it,”
said Richard S. Levick, a veteran crisis communications expert.
“Corporate America needs to look at what happens here, and how Bank of America handles it.”

Last month, the bank bought up Web addresses that could prove embarrassing to the company
or its top executives in the event of a large-scale public assault,
but a spokesman for the bank said the move was unrelated to any possible leak.

Mr. Assange has never said explicitly that the data he possesses
comes from Bank of America, which is the nation’s largest bank,
though he did say that the disclosure would take place sometime early this year.