United Health Group; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous

Meet Lisbeth Salander, heroine of the late Stieg Larson's Millennium Trilogy; three novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. A world-wide publishing phenomenon like none before.

Salander sits in a pitch dark, scantily furnished apartment. She has been victimized, abused, physically, emotionally, economically, betrayed by almost everyone she thought she could trust. She's angry, and has every right to be. The only light in the room is the faint green glow that emanates from the only weapon she can fight back with--her laptop. In her hands, and in the hands of her compatriots buried deeply in cyberspace, the secret network of those dedicated to bringing their own brand of vigilante justice to the bad guys, it proves more formidable than any firearm. Lisbeth is a super hacker. And she may be a literary heroine for our time.

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Meet Anonymous. The real life version of Lisbeth and her associates. Anonymous and friends managed to get inside Bank of American, no paragon of financial honesty, and not only uncover but expose for all the world to see yet another one of the many, many frauds BofA has long been known to perpetrate on its unknowing customers.

Nice going, folks. Many thanks from those of us who don't have your gifts of stealth. Those of us tax payers who are sick and tired of being abused, lied to, financially screwed over in every way imaginable. Thanks especially from those who lost their homes to foreclosure while BofA filed improper paperwork, not giving the working stiffs who are busting their asses everyday for hourly wage a chance to just maybe save the roof over their heads. Let's hope there's Hell to pay.

BofA, isn't alone. We've read the news. Citibank. Morgan-Stanley. Chase. The list of criminals goes on. Crime in the street will get you locked up. Crime in the suite will get you a fine bonus. We're putting the wrong people in jail. The execs in these companies should have a room beside Mr. Madoff, who, it's interesting to note, now says, "Of course the bank knew about it. They had too!"

And BofA has the temerity to cry "Foul!" when Anonymous raises the cyber rock and shines the light of day into the darkness where these roaches scurry for cover. I understand there may be a few laws against getting into someone else's computer. But what if, on the other hand, the only way to expose the criminals is to break a couple of rules yourself? Interesting question. Maybe the cyber ethics question of our time.

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Getting from the outside to the inside to expose the bad guys breaks one set of rules. But there's another rule breaker, one even more feared by those in the corporate world who want us to look the other way while they stack the deck against those of us who work rather than steal for a living. The guy who breaks the rules from the inside. The whistleblower. The list of heroes abounds.

Remember a few years back, when those good folks down at the tobacco companies swore on their mother's graves that they weren't boosting the nicotine in their already deadly products to increase addiction? "Trust us," they said. "We'd never do anything like that. It would be illegal, not to mention immoral." So one guy with a conscience steps out of the darkness into the light with the documents to prove tobacco execs had been lying all along.

Then there's Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of Pentagon documents to WikiLeaks. He's not the first, of course. Those of my vintage will remember the Pentagon Papers. Right now he's sitting in a military jail. I think the guy deserves a medal.

Since I've started writing about my time spent in the belly of the healthcare beast--United Health Group--I've heard from all sorts of people who've blown their own whistles. Lest anyone jump in on UHGs side, let's be clear:  this is a company that was fined fifty million back in 2009 for underpaying claims, more than a few for those struggling with cancer. One, Jerome, interviewed on the Today Show, pointed out how, just when you've fought with everything inside you just to stay alive, UHG refuses to pay up. Check out "Today's" archives. It's a story worth keeping alive, and one UHG would rather we forget about.

Just Google United Health Group, click on complaints, and start reading the plethora of information from patients, from lawyers, the lawsuits, the fraud. But due to the power of the internet, we just may be getting to a place where it's more and more difficult for the pepetrators of these moral and civil crimes to find a flat rock to hide under.

Welcome to the Age of Transparency, when any person of conscience has the power to stand up in the middle of the parade and say, "The CEO has no clothes!!"

Micah L. Sifry, in "The End of Secrecy," writes:  "...the reason the recent confrontation between WikiLeaks and the US government is a pivotal event is that, unlike these other applications of technology to politics, this time the free flow of information is threatening the establishment with difficult questions." (The Nation, March 21st edition) Much of what Sifry says about government secrecy and WikiLeaks is equally applicable to the corporate secret keepers. Indeed, the military, corporate, Congressional/government complex is all part and parcel of the same entity dedicated to nothing but it's own survival and the keeping of privilege--mostly at our expense.

"...they (the government) probably understand that the conditions for maintaining their monopoly on critical information have been broken. But they apparently still hope that the next Bradley Manning... will be dissuaded from an act of conscience if he believes either that the personal cost will be too high or that his actions won't make a difference... neither approach will work, as long as millions of other government (and, I would add, corporate) employees have access to the information..."

"The threat of massive leaks," says Max Frankel, former New York Times editor, "will persist so long as there are massive secrets."

"If all it takes," writes Sifry," is one person with a USB drive, the 'least trusted person' whose conscience may be pricked by a contradiction in his or her government's (or corporation's) behavior, that information can move into public view more easily than ever before. That is the reality of the twenty-first century."

Bank of American, United Health Group, the Pentagon; no one need fear the Age of Transparency, unless, of course, they happen to be committing fraud, theft, or some other crime. What they do need is to keep in mind that the game has changed. We, like Lisbeth, like Anonymous, like any whistleblower on the inside, have a new and powerful weapon in our arsenal. And it's only a click away.

Inside? Got the goods? Let's see 'em. Darkness fears nothing more than light.

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Mahalo

UNG; Bank of America; Lisbeth Salander; Anonymous

What could United Healthcare, Bank of America, Lisbeth Salander--for those of you who may have been living on another planet and haven't been home for a while, she's the heroine/anti-heroine known as Steig Larson's, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--and Anonymous, possibly have in common?

Awaiting for a bit more info to arrive... Stay tuned.... There is a thread of commonality here that can be neither dismissed or denied. We may have discovered the most powerful, perhaps the only, available weapon the workers and middle class have left with which to combat the corporate, congressional, military complex.

If you're on the inside.... dump it.

Mahalo