[reader50]

News Blurb with video.

The US military is developing software that would allow its personnel to use multiple fake online identities called "sock puppets" in chatrooms and other online forums.

The idea is to use social media to spread positive messages about the United States. While the Pentagon says it is a bid to counter violent extremist and enemy ideologies, critics call it propaganda.

Supposedly it will not be used with well-known US sites like FaceBook. Since we get spammers from India, Nigeria, Vietnam and Pakistan (among others) you may soon find yourself arguing with Colonel Happy US Sad Afghan Girl about US military policies.

This sucks. If we need propaganda on a daily basis, we're doing something wrong. Or our government is anyway. And my tax dollars should not be spent on windbags.

[turtle777]

I'm pretty sure we already had a thread about this. Lemme see if I can dig it up.

-t

[turtle777]

Can't find it.

Must have been a side discussion in a related thread, but not a dedicated thread itself.

-t

[lpkmckenna]

I'm convinced some of our regulars are already agents of various institutions.

[reader50]

While I just heard about this, Google gives a bunch of links from March 2011. I need to track down the & issue so we can post search links again...

It still sux. And with two months to work on it, the software may be done by now.

I'm not sure why they need to develop custom software. The spammers have packages for sale to automate signups for things like this. Software to automate sock puppet exchanges too.

[OldManMac]

Might it also be used to find out who is saying some things about the U. S. that those in power don't like? Just sayin....

[ghporter]

With the news coming out as it did in March, I think we're a lot more than a couple of months behind this thing. And I think that, if they actually do this, they'll be a lot more subtle than to make it apparent to anyone what is happening-it's kind of the point behind the effort.

To be honest, I bet this sort of thing has been going on for quite some time, on a smaller scale, and done more manually. Though I do think that there are probably already spammer tools out there that would do this sort of sock puppet stuff.

And I think this is at least less cynical than astroturfing for commercial products. Flummoxing discussions in Urdu-language forums on potential bad things to do to people in the States or the UK or wherever seems a lot less mercenary than making a company's "Crapomaatic 2000XLiR" sound like less of a PITA because your sock puppets give it glowing reviews...

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

To be honest, I bet this sort of thing has been going on for quite some time, on a smaller scale, and done more manually. Though I do think that there are probably already spammer tools out there that would do this sort of sock puppet stuff.

My guess is that it's been happening for decades (tied in with Echelon intercepts to see where to put the manpower) and that this announcement is simply to cover the fact that they got caught doing it.

Why do they need to develop custom software for this instead of going with "off-the-rack"? Because they'd already developed the software - probably back in the '80s before they let us plebs anywhere near the Internet.

I'm almost certain that Abe was a team of people - just a gut feeling from this forum and others.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I'm almost certain that Abe was a team of people - just a gut feeling from this forum and others.

I always suspected that as well. In fact, there were a few times when that puppet went way off message with a distinctly different posting style and at one time actually admitted that a few people had access to it.

[The Final Dakar]

Well, didn't he have like three different accounts here? The logic seems sound enough.

Edit: Anyway, yes, this is propaganda.

[imitchellg5]

You caught me.

[olePigeon]

I always thought Cold Warrior was suspicious.

[finboy]

Originally Posted by reader50 

And my tax dollars should not be spent on windbags.

The astroturfers have been doing in on the Left since before the 2000 election, and the Right caught up a few years ago. Of course I'm not counting the media in this - things like spiking the WashPo's "blog" etc.

I agree that it isn't a government function, but the need to astroturf (because it gets results in public opinion given the money spent on it) shows what a bunch of sheep the majority of folks out there really are.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by finboy 

... shows what a bunch of sheep the majority of folks out there really are.

Kind of like Tea Partiers and anti-vaccination proponents.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

My guess is that it's been happening for decades (tied in with Echelon intercepts to see where to put the manpower) and that this announcement is simply to cover the fact that they got caught doing it.

Why do they need to develop custom software for this instead of going with "off-the-rack"? Because they'd already developed the software - probably back in the '80s before they let us plebs anywhere near the Internet.

I'm almost certain that Abe was a team of people - just a gut feeling from this forum and others.

It doesn't take Echalon intercepts to know that Forum A is all about how evil The West is, nor to figure out where to focus attention in Forum B, which may be getting more than a little radical. My feeling is that the analysis of the traffic is what the software is doing, possibly along with suggestions about where to steer discussions. It takes a lot of work to run down whether a new user here with flakey or confusing posts, is real, a spammer, or something else. Automating that would be extremely cool... And that would hardly be something the pre "web" world would see as a possibility, let alone "existing art."

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It doesn't take Echalon intercepts to know that Forum A is all about how evil The West is, nor to figure out where to focus attention in Forum B, which may be getting more than a little radical.

Now think about how many forums there are out there.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

My feeling is that the analysis of the traffic is what the software is doing, possibly along with suggestions about where to steer discussions

Analysing the traffic is precisely what Echelon does. So basically you've just said exactly the same thing that I did.

[ghporter]

Certainly, managing a watch on how many discussion forums exist even based in a small geographic area is a mind boggling task. I just don't think that it takes a lot of research to narrow down where subtle PR attention is needed.

Further, Echelon is probably not built to investigate network sources, similarities in IP addresses among different posters, nor variations of user names and registration email addresses of different posters. My understanding of Echelon is that it is basically a big funnel for electronic signals, and that it sufficiently predates Internet usage by any but the initial schools and military users that such details are too big to leave to Echelon. It is one thing to monitor voice traffic (including in-band and out-of-band control and signaling data) over long haul lines; it is quite another to apply the same sort of aggregation and analysis to a completely different sort of communication system.

And I must add that my opinions here on this subject are entirely opinions; I have no direct knowledge of how intelligence agencies collect real data. Open press information on Echelon indicates that it was developed to monitor telephone and "typical intel-related" radio traffic (Morse or voice short wave signals). While including monitoring of data communications would not be a show-stopper technologically, the extremely broad range of ancillary data associated with Internet traffic (IP and user names being only the most blatantly obvious) could conceivably overwhelm a system geared mostly for telephonic exploitation.

[Dork.]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I'm almost certain that Abe was a team of people - just a gut feeling from this forum and others.

A team of foreign agents, no doubt.

[el chupacabra]

… .

[turtle777]

Needs more irony.

-t

[Dork.]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

I demand that this thread be deleted immediately. To not delete this thread is unpatriotic and means you dont support our soldiers, you might as well spit on them. The US government is great. Look at all they have done for you. If you dont like it go somewhere else. They are in the middle east doing great things for the world. They only increase taxes for your safety. They only regulate for your safety. If there was no bailout for big bank you would all be in a depression and your children would die. The US government saved their lives. Thats what the US government does; it saves lives and stands up for freedom. And now the US government has increased financial regulation to fix problems that they created by being too involved in the first place.... but they created those problems for your safety. Your just too blind and unpatriotic to see it.

GO USA!! U. S . A !!! U. S . A !!! U . S . A !!!

I saw a bumper sticker today:

If you don't want to stand behind our soldiers, then go stand in front of them!

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Dork. 

If you don't want to stand behind our soldiers, then go stand in front of them!

That sounds very homoerotic.