Greenwald drops the bomb on government trolling of internet

[jakell]

Assuming there are no professional trolls on board here--who knows?--it appears there is no need to employ the devices described in the Greenwald report. The somewhat narcissistic psychometrically intelligent EGOs posting here do a fine job all by themselves.

Again, that is, assuming there are no professional trolls posting here....

I think there is too much stress on the word 'professional' here, as if that is the deciding factor.

Internet forums are becoming increasingly being dominated by obsessives with time on their hands. It just comes down to a bandwidth war, signal to noise ratio.

Such a person may seem 'professional', but it's mainly a role they have conferred upon themselves. The outward result is roughly the same when seen from the 'distance' that cyberspace confers.

[justdrew]

How the Military Uses Twitter Sock Puppets to Control Debate and Suppress Dissent
Is Your New Little Friend on Twitter an NSA analyst?

< see story at link >

[coffin_dodger]

Anyone else think RI needs an NSA/GCHQ subject forum of some sort? New docs (and consequent analysis from third parties) are being published consistantly. It all seems a bit disparate to post in GD - no chance of cohesion. This info strikes me as pretty important, regardless of whether it's being run past the NSA/GCHQ before publication.

Anyway, here's another few from Firstlook - (not about trolling, but I don't want to start a new thread in GD)

How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware By Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald 12 Mar 2014

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/arti ... s-malware/

[Elihu]

But you seem to enjoy some type of strange new immunity here on RI.

it's not new

[MayDay]

I've been trying not to look. Got a day off work, read the whole thread.

Gotta say Jack, your superior tone can be grating at times, but I almost always find myself in agreement with you. You are an asset to this forum, and one of the main reasons I still frequent RI, especially now that most of my favorite voices around here have vanished. You challenge me to re-examine my assumptions, and I apreciate that imensely. I agree with you about slimmouse, by the way, and I am wary of the click that keeps bullying you, as I have been for quite some time.

Hope you stick around. Maybe a little less harsh? It would only boost your ceredibility to be a bit more subtle.

[JackRiddler]

Thanks MayDay. The feeling is mutual.

I'm much more an observer here now, for reasons not necessarily related to the flamewars. Many other things going on in my life. But it's better to do as you say, and I hope never to escalate a fight again. It has its attractions but is ultimately a bad idea. In the next months, before I disappear 99% into Ph.D. program land, I intend to do a bit of curation on the many threads a) I've found most interesting or astounding or illuminating or fun, or b) which I feel have my best writing or research on this board. Create an annotated index, in other words. As much for me (to be able to sort out all the work that has gone in here) as for others who may be interested. Fact is, some of the work I did here gave rise to the writing sample that more or less won me my fellowship and is likely to become my first journal publication. I think a lot of other work here can be similarly mined. So I'm not rejecting or attacking this board, quite the contrary. It's been and remains a (mostly) good trip. And there are a lot of great people here. Thanks to you all!