I tried publicizing on some of this stuff here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 439x448357
Let's see how it goes...
JackRiddler wrote:Military, spook and corporate plans to deploy "personas" (sock-puppets) on Internet: New examples...
Does anyone still doubt that government and corporate agents routinely engage in manipulation of Internet debates? Two examples will be treated here.
But first, for clarity, let's define official or corporate "manipulation" of Internet discourse as including, at the very least, any case in which an Internet "persona" delivers organizational talking points or conducts other missions at the behest of an organization, as part of a systematic campaign, while pretending to be a private individual acting out of personal conviction.
It would be manipulation if, for example, anyone at a discussion site like DU pretends to be Mr. or Ms. Josephina Blow, Citizen, who wandered in to relate an individual perspective, but is in fact here to argue a point of view assigned by the United States Air Force.
Other terms for this kind of manipulation are organizational sock-puppetry or electronic astroturfing. If we're lucky and smart, Internet culture will one day universally come to strongly revile such conduct and regard it as the worst possible rules violation on any free speech site. It already is that to many of us, but most of our Internet nation compatriots aren't even aware of it as a major problem.
Above I mentioned the Air Force because of our first example:
The USAF last summer put out a call for contractors to provide "Internet persona" software. Such programs would allow a single user to manage several or a dozen fake user profiles, all of which would be designed to look like different individuals. Among other missions, these virtual propaganda soldiers can be sent on trolling missions to deliver USAF talking points around the Internet.
We users who lack such software must post our ideas manually, in single personas. With the help of this software, one soldier could, with the same effort (and while on salary!) appear as ten different passionately committed political activists who are posting out of conviction, and not for the money.
Interestingly, the solicitation for contract proposals comes from MacDill Air Force Base, home to Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the probable contractor, since the sites of operation or "places of performance" include Kabul and Baghdad.
It's vital to remember that if the theater of action is the Internet, it doesn't matter where the operator sits. Internet posts automatically become worldwide and therefore include the United States within their theater. Locating "persona" (sock-puppet) operators outside the United States may be a way of evading legal complications of conducting psychological warfare operations that will inevitably spill over into the US public -- that is, if the US public is not the actual target in the first place. (It's the classic model for circumventing domestic law by acting from outside one's own country's borders, as when CIA recruited domestic spies by approaching US students studying abroad, or when spy agencies perform illegal domestic missions by having their own citizens spied upon by foreign ally agencies.)
The second example, from the DailyKos diary of one "Happy Rockefeller," details the latest fallout from the exposure of illegal plots involving the government security contractor HBGary and its business partners and potential customers.
It turns out that HBGary was also engaged at least in plotting "persona" operations, which is to say: the commission of massive sock-puppet fraud in the course of corporate psychological warfare aimed against unsuspecting audiences.
An essential point Happy Rockefeller makes is that the awesome "incompetence" of HBGary must not blind us to the reality that it's just one small exposed part of a much larger biotope of surveillance and control, in which freelance elements come together with corporations and governments to conduct extra-legal and illegal operations against opposition.
Please note that one of HBGary's partners, Palantir, was founded in part by Peter Thiel, the same billionaire (an investor in Facebook, among other ventures) who partly financed the O'Keefe-Breitbart video hoax operations against ACORN. O'Keefe and his CIA recruiting buddy Stan Dai came out of the many campus covens of future spooks set up with money from both the CIA and neocon foundations.
The point here is that we are looking at small parts of far more complex, wide-ranging covert networks of surveillance and control that involve private freelance parapolitical operators and contractors with official agencies of the government and the corporate superpowers like Bank of America, the Kochtopus and the Chamber of Commerce.
They are engaging in post-Nixonian dirty tricks aimed at neutralizing perceived domestic enemies such as antiwar groups, unions, free media, community organizers... in short, most of us here at DU, too! Internet sock-puppet ("persona") operations would be a small part of the big picture.
First Example: USAF Solicitations for "Persona Management" Software
Note: One funny aspect that we will see in the following solicitations for software that will allow users to conduct lawless operations is that the USAF as contractee in each case mentions the desire to purchase valid user fees, and thus presumably pay (more than) fair price for propietary software. This bizarro-land paradox of legalistic respect for property rights combined with barely-hidden plans for outlaw activity by a rogue superpower is at turns amusing and infuriating.From https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... e&_cview=1
Solicitation Number:
RTB220610
Notice Type:
Sources Sought
Synopsis:
Added: Jun 22, 2010 1:42 pm Modified: Jun 22, 2010 2:07 pmTrack Changes
0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user.
Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.
NOTE: Do you see what's going on here? We are all in a worldwide, multi-factional information war and the USAF sees itself empowered to create a bunch of cloned information warriors with faked details and send them out into the PUBLIC domain of the Internet, where their dispensation of propaganda will end up EVERYWHERE.
The solicitation continues with requests for a number of related support functions to such psychological warfare operations, such as software to allow the fake personas to access the Internet from multiple hoaxed IPs, thus giving the appearance that the USAF trolls are people from all around the world. The first item would be very useful in spying on any and all sites on the Web, so that they don't know a military agency is watching them (which may be actionable in the case of American sites).0002- Secure Virtual Private Network (VPN). 1 each
VPN provides the ability for users to daily and automatically obtain randomly selected
IP addresses through which they can access the internet. The daily rotation of
the user s IP address prevents compromise during observation of likely or
targeted web sites or services, while hiding the existence of the operation. In
addition, may provide traffic mixing, blending the user s traffic with traffic from
multitudes of users from outside the organization. This traffic blending provides
excellent cover and powerful deniability. Anonymizer Enterprise Chameleon or equal
0003- Static IP Address Management. 50 each
Licence protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise
organizations. Enables organizations to manage their persistent online personas
by assigning static IP addresses to each persona. Individuals can perform
static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time.
Also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP
addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization. Anonymizer IP Mapper License or equal
In case you are still under the illusion that the targets of the USAF's Internet-based psychological warfare operations will be conveniently foreign (as though this would legitimate it), note the next item: software that would allow operators outside the Continental United States or CONUS (and thus removed from US law) to appear to be posting from inside CONUS. In other words, appear to be US residents speaking as such in a private capacity, even though they are actually US military personnel on a foreign base acting on USAF orders.0004- Virtual Private Servers, CONUS. 1 each
Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for
each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is
operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to
originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using
commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established
anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and
integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer.
Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by
each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated CONUS Light Geosite or equal
0005- Virtual Private Servers, OCONUS. 8 Each
Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for
each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is
operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to
originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using
commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established
anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and
integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer.
Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by
each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated OCONUS Light Geosite or equal
0006- Remote Access Secure Virtual Private Network. 1 each
Secure Operating Environment provides a reliable and protected computing
environment from which to stage and conduct operations. Every session uses a
clean Virtual Machine (VM) image. The solution is accessed through sets of
Virtual Private Network (VPN) devices located at each Customer facility. The
fully-managed VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is an environment that allows
users remote access from their desktop into a VM. Upon session termination,
the VM is deleted and any virus, worm, or malicious software that the user inadvertently downloaded is destroyed. Anonymizer Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Solution or equal.
Contracting Office Address:
2606 Brown Pelican Ave.
MacDill AFB, Florida 33621-5000
United States
Place of Performance:
Performance will be at MacDIll AFB, Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq.
MacDill AFB , Florida 33679
United States
Primary Point of Contact.:
Russell Beasley,
Contracting Officer
russell.beasley-02@macdill.af.mil
Phone: (813) 828-4729
Fax: (813) 828-5111
.............................................
Second Example: HB Gary's Persona Management
[[...Happy Rockefeller excerpt from DKos follows...]]
Again, Happy Rockefeller makes the essential point that the evident incompetence of HB Gary as exposed in the last week is no reason for relief on our part. In fact, these people are just as dangerous whether or not they are competent.I don't know about you, but this concerns me greatly. It goes far beyond the mere ability for a government stooge, corporation or PR firm to hire people to post on sites like this one. They are talking about creating the illusion of consensus. And consensus is a powerful persuader. What has more effect, one guy saying BP is not at fault? Or 20 people saying it? For the weak minded, the number can make all the difference. And another thing, this is just one little company of assholes. I can't believe there aren't others doing this already. From oil companies, political campaigns, PR firms, you name it. Public opinion means big bucks. And let's face it, what these guys are talking about is easy. ...
SNIP
Lastly, some here are falling for the meme that HB Gary personel, and especially Aaron Barr himself, are incompetent buffoons. This is a mistake. ... I have rummaged through the leaked email, some of which contain resumes for employees there. These guys are recruiting people with incredibly advanced skills from many different agencies and top universities like MIT. ... HB Gary and its subsidiary, HB Gary Federal, as well as Berinco and Palantir, employed a lot of extremely qualified people with backgrounds in the NSA and ATT and other major organizations/corporations. These guys are pros.
Among other things we've learned about HBGary, the CEO Aaron Barr had wrongly identified some poor patsy in San Francisco as the alleged single CEO-type head of Anonymous (which does not actually appear to have a hierarchy of that kind at all). Barr intended to sell this as "intelligence" to the FBI! If this had resulted in the patsy's arrest, as Barr hoped, it would have been no consolation to him to know that Barr is an incompetent fool who got it wrong.
In the same way, the US military filled up its torture prison in Guantanamo with innocent patsy shepherds and taxi drivers kidnapped by US-allied militias in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who sold the victims to the US for a bounty. Is this "incompetence"? I'd say that how smart the criminals are is a very secondary consideration as long as they retain the power to harm people, or remain in office untouched by justice for their crimes.
The first step in counteracting this type of warfare on our minds is to acknowledge that it exists and should be addressed.
A second step might appear to be formal and powerless, but I would consider it very important: to make it clear on all Web sites that "personas" are not tolerated, and that all users have an obligation to announce if and when they are working for an organization or campaign designed to distribute talking points around the Web.
Some of you may laugh and say, so what? They'll keep mum about their connections and get away with the operation anyway. I would argue, however, that this is the first step: to tell everyone unmistakably and programmatically that lying about who dispatched you is not permitted. Make it clear to them, even if they won't confess any time soon, that they are liars and their actions are against the rules, both of civilized behavior and of each Web site on which they practice their manipulation.
Awareness and a clear stand create a climate in which other means of self-defense will be devised, and in which sooner or later there will be defectors and whistleblowers. It's a start.
One of the site's resident technocrats replied:
ProgressiveProfessor wrote:Fri Feb-18-11 01:44 PM
4. One of the solutions touted for this are "Internet Licenses"
Mostly some form unforgeable internet ID. However who will issue and manage them on an international basis is far less than clear. There are also some technical limitations under the current schemes that would require radical restructuring of common services like NNTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP, SMTP and others to accomplish. The best current approaches are some of the anti spam tools being used at various discussion sites, and even there it is a weekly arms race.
Morphing/sock puppets/multiple personalities have been with us well before the Internet, not sure how we can solve technically what is a social issue.
Reply:
JackRiddler wrote:Fri Feb-18-11 01:53 PM
5. I don't believe in any tech fixes for this problem -- let alone "Internet licenses"!
The solution will come when this behavior is known to occur (and not denied), when it is universally knowledge, and when such behavior is universally reviled as wrong, disgusting and uncivilized.
The solution will come when all examples of such practices that are exposed are treated as general emergencies by Internet communities. It will come when the backfire for practitioners of psychological warfare becomes high-cost, when discovery is cause for bannings from sites, press reports about the practitioners, boycotts, economic counter-attacks and general public ridicule.
It will also come with appropriate skepticism any time hundreds of cookie-cutter pro-corporate or pro-government talking points on the issue of the day suddenly appear on Twitter, Facebook, discussion boards and so on. When people start to understand that they can be manipulated by such deceptions.
Anonymous just did more for the cause than any tech fix can ever do. They discovered HBGary engaging in persona fraud and promptly exacted a beautiful retribution that, importantly, is also educational. We have learned a great deal in the last week about what's in the electronic underbrush.
