Russians Bots spreading Fake News! - Don't believe the Ruskie.

[Clutch]

How Russian bots appear in your timeline

• 14 November 2017
  
• Technology

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Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionUS Senate Select Committee on Intelligence displayed examples of Russian bot posts
Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Russia of "planting fake stories" online as part of a " campaign of cyber-espionage and disruption ".

Her comments come after prominent social media accounts were exposed as Russian bots.

At the start of November, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence provided a list of 2,753 suspended, Russian-linked Twitter accounts .

But who is behind these bots and how do they operate?

Many bot accounts have been traced to the Internet Research Agency, in St Petersburg. The Russian government-backed agency reportedly runs social media accounts disseminating "disinformation".

This "troll farm" was exposed by a whistleblower in the New York Times in 2015 . A BBC investigation has also uncovered a pro-Russia "troll factory" in Ukraine .

The Oxford Internet Institute - part of the University of Oxford and recipients of the Democracy award for its analysis of propaganda - says bots "significantly impact [on]public life during important policy debates, elections, and political crises" and "flourished during the 2016 US presidential election".

• The surprising new strategy of pro-Russia bots
• The online bots behind Vladimir Putin's birthday wishes
• Net neutrality debate 'controlled by bots'

Bot-spotting tips
The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) offers social-media users tips for spotting a bot:

• Frequency: Bots are prolific posters. The more frequently they post, the more caution should be shown. The DFRL classifies 72 posts a day as suspicious, and more than 144 per day as highly suspicious.
• Anonymity: Bots often lack any personal information. The accounts often have generic profile pictures and political slogans as "bios".
• Amplification: A bot's timeline will often consist of re-tweets and verbatim quotes, with few posts containing original wording.
• Common content: Networks of bots can be identified if multiple profiles tweet the same content almost simultaneously.

The Digital Forensic Research Lab's full list of tips can be found here .

There has been a move away from fully automated bots to semi-automated accounts.

Such accounts are harder to identify, as they intersperse their activity with references to popular culture and personalised replies.

@SouthLoneStar
After the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack in March 2017, Twitter user @SouthLoneStar - who described themselves as "Proud TEXAN and AMERICAN patriot" - posted an image of a young woman in a headscarf on the bridge in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Image copyrightREX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Image caption@SouthLoneStar shared this image
The user captioned the photograph: "Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone #PrayForLondon #Westminster #BanIslam".

The tweet attracted a lot of attention at the time and was widely shared, prompting many inflammatory comments.

Although the account had more than 16,500 followers on Twitter, it was suspended after being identified as a Russian bot.

The unnamed woman in the photograph released a statement through the organisation Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) .

"I'm shocked and totally dismayed at how a picture of me is being circulated on social media," she said.

"Not only have I been devastated by witnessing the aftermath of a shocking and numbing terror attack, I've also had to deal with the shock of finding my picture plastered all over social media by those who could not look beyond my attire, who draw conclusions based on hate and xenophobia."

@TEN_GOP
Image copyrightTWITTER/@TEN_GOP

The Twitter user @TEN_GOP posted a digitally altered image of "moderate Muslims" reacting to the news of the London Bridge attack on a Facebook Live stream from the Al Jazeera news network.

The BBC debunked the fake image shortly after it surfaced , and the account - which had more than 136,000 followers - was suspended by Twitter in August.

The account was not affiliated to the official Tennessee Republican Party and this week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed @TEN_GOP was a Kremlin-linked bot.

Image copyright@TEN_GOP/TWITTER

@DavidJoBrexit
Image copyright@DAVIDJOBREXIT/TWITTER

While not confirmed, there are accusations @DavidJoBrexit is a Russian bot posting pro-Brexit and anti-immigration content to its more than 100,000 followers.

The Times reported the account was a "Russian stooge" , citing the activity of the account and analysis by Twitter user @conspirator0.

@DavidJoBrexit account was set up on 27 January 2013 - over 1,750 days ago. As such, this account has posted, on average, more than 80 times a day.

The account Tweeted any accusations it was a bot were "completely defamatory", adding: "I am not pro-Kremlin at all, I am just a Brexit supporter."

The account was set to private following the Times article.

 

[Manidabest]

we cant trust western news agencies either because they sexed up the stories for iraq war

 

[MiG-35-BD]

"citing the activity of the account and analysis by Twitter user @conspirator0."

LOL

What a dump western media has become. Retarded.

 

[takeitwithyou]

Russian troll describes work in the infamous misinformation factory
by BEN POPKEN and KELLY COBIELLA

For months, Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was one of hundreds of workers pumping out misinformation online at the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll factory responsible for explosive content seen by 126 million Americans in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.

In many ways, the IRA was like a normal IT facility, Bespalov told NBC News in an exclusive broadcast interview. There were day shifts and night shifts, a cafeteria, and workers were seated at computers in a large open floor plan.


But in the squat, four-story concrete building on Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, secured by camouflaged guards and turnstiles, bloggers and former journalists worked around the clock to create thousands of incendiary social media posts and news articles to meet specific quotas.

The work was all "Lies... a merry-go-round of lies," Bespalov said. "When you get on the carousel, you do not know who is behind you and neither you are aware of who is in front of you — but all of you are running around within the same circle," he said.

Bespalov told NBC News he "absolutely" believes the agency is connected to the Kremlin — a notion backed up by the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that a "close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence" is the "likely financier" of the agency.

Controversial content
In November, Facebook testified to Congress that it had linked over 80,000 pieces of divisive content back to the agency, and Twitter provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with almost 3,000 accounts linked to the IRA.

“These troll farms can produce such a volume of content with hashtags and topics that it distorts what is normal organic conversation,” Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NBC News. “It’s called computational propaganda, the volume [at] which they push, false information or true, makes things appear more believable than they might normally be in an organic conversation.”


Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was a Russian "troll" spreading propaganda online. NBC News
Bespalov described how his own work centered on discrediting Ukraine, but that others in the building focused solely on the U.S.

Workers in the “American department” were paid the equivalent of between $1,300 to $2,000 a month for sparking social media uproar. Entry level trolls got only about $1,000 a month with paid bonuses.

Writers were separated by floor, with those on the third level blogging to undermine Ukraine and promote Russia. Writers on the first floor — often former professional journalists like Bespalov — created news articles that referred to blog posts written on the third floor. Workers on the third and fourth floor posted comments on the stories and other sites under fake identities, pretending they were from Ukraine. And the marketing team on the second floor weaved all of this misinformation into social media.

Even though each floor worked on material the other created, they didn't have any contact with each other inside the building, said Bespalov, except for in the cafeteria or on smoke breaks.

"You could have worked there for half a year being on the ground floor and making fake news and you would not have had a single occasion when you could chat with another guy who [wrote comments on it]," Bespalov told NBC News.

"What we did was exactly the same, we didn't know the people who were party to that — but we all were doing the same job filled with lies," he said.

From Ukraine with love
Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014 — and Russia's subsequent suspension from the G8, plus heavy international sanctions — Bespalov was hired at the troll factory to rewrite articles about Ukraine for a site that was designed to look like it was based out of that country, not St. Petersburg, Russia.

The facts were to remain the same, but with a few key words swapped out. "Terrorist" became "militia men." "Ukrainian Army" became "national guard." Russia couldn't be criticized.

The objective was to have the articles be "70 percent" original text and get them to the top of search engine results, Bespalov said.


55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia, a location used by the Internet Research Agency . Google Street View
Related: Russian trolls duped global media and nearly 40 celebrities

At one point, Bespalov worked to create social media profiles to boost pro-Russian sentiment. One account that existed for “quite a long while” used profile photos from a Moscow journalist, Bespalov told NBC News.

“So, you can imagine yourself logging in to Facebook and you see there an account with your photos but another person's name," he said. "And the person from this account is writing ‘The fascists in Ukraine are killing Russian people’ and there is a link to the source of the news and there is your photo matching all this."

“We were told that girls' accounts are looked at more often,” Bespalov told NBC News. “We would put Name, Surname, City... any photo of an attractive girl that I would have managed to find on the internet and then links... all sorts of links and links.. Then the girls would get blocked eventually and you would start afresh.”

Eventually, some of the IRA’s social media accounts that started out supporting Russian actions in Ukraine later morphed into accounts that advocated for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015, according to U.S. intelligence.

“I now believe nothing I come across on social media,” Bespalov said.

The Kremlin has denied any knowledge of the troll factory's activities and suggested that reports that it existed might be fake.

 

[AndrewJin]

Western media is much faker than Russian one.
They co-created a lie on chemical weapon, and slaughtered thousands of innocent children.

 

[TaiShang]

Russian troll describes work in the infamous misinformation factory

How would an Indian like yourself be possibly able to know?

 

[mandrom]

How would an Indian like yourself be possibly able to know?

Not all indians believe Western Fake news.

 

[takeitwithyou]

Western media is much faker than Russian one.
They co-created a lie on chemical weapon, and slaughtered thousands of innocent children.

Nothing takes the cake like creating the great leap forward propaganda and killing off 30 million of your own citizens.

 

[mandrom]

Russian troll describes work in the infamous misinformation factory
by BEN POPKEN and KELLY COBIELLA

For months, Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was one of hundreds of workers pumping out misinformation online at the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll factory responsible for explosive content seen by 126 million Americans in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.

In many ways, the IRA was like a normal IT facility, Bespalov told NBC News in an exclusive broadcast interview. There were day shifts and night shifts, a cafeteria, and workers were seated at computers in a large open floor plan.


But in the squat, four-story concrete building on Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, secured by camouflaged guards and turnstiles, bloggers and former journalists worked around the clock to create thousands of incendiary social media posts and news articles to meet specific quotas.

The work was all "Lies... a merry-go-round of lies," Bespalov said. "When you get on the carousel, you do not know who is behind you and neither you are aware of who is in front of you — but all of you are running around within the same circle," he said.

Bespalov told NBC News he "absolutely" believes the agency is connected to the Kremlin — a notion backed up by the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that a "close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence" is the "likely financier" of the agency.

Controversial content
In November, Facebook testified to Congress that it had linked over 80,000 pieces of divisive content back to the agency, and Twitter provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with almost 3,000 accounts linked to the IRA.

“These troll farms can produce such a volume of content with hashtags and topics that it distorts what is normal organic conversation,” Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NBC News. “It’s called computational propaganda, the volume [at] which they push, false information or true, makes things appear more believable than they might normally be in an organic conversation.”


Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was a Russian "troll" spreading propaganda online. NBC News
Bespalov described how his own work centered on discrediting Ukraine, but that others in the building focused solely on the U.S.

Workers in the “American department” were paid the equivalent of between $1,300 to $2,000 a month for sparking social media uproar. Entry level trolls got only about $1,000 a month with paid bonuses.

Writers were separated by floor, with those on the third level blogging to undermine Ukraine and promote Russia. Writers on the first floor — often former professional journalists like Bespalov — created news articles that referred to blog posts written on the third floor. Workers on the third and fourth floor posted comments on the stories and other sites under fake identities, pretending they were from Ukraine. And the marketing team on the second floor weaved all of this misinformation into social media.

Even though each floor worked on material the other created, they didn't have any contact with each other inside the building, said Bespalov, except for in the cafeteria or on smoke breaks.

"You could have worked there for half a year being on the ground floor and making fake news and you would not have had a single occasion when you could chat with another guy who [wrote comments on it]," Bespalov told NBC News.

"What we did was exactly the same, we didn't know the people who were party to that — but we all were doing the same job filled with lies," he said.

From Ukraine with love
Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014 — and Russia's subsequent suspension from the G8, plus heavy international sanctions — Bespalov was hired at the troll factory to rewrite articles about Ukraine for a site that was designed to look like it was based out of that country, not St. Petersburg, Russia.

The facts were to remain the same, but with a few key words swapped out. "Terrorist" became "militia men." "Ukrainian Army" became "national guard." Russia couldn't be criticized.

The objective was to have the articles be "70 percent" original text and get them to the top of search engine results, Bespalov said.


55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia, a location used by the Internet Research Agency . Google Street View
Related: Russian trolls duped global media and nearly 40 celebrities

At one point, Bespalov worked to create social media profiles to boost pro-Russian sentiment. One account that existed for “quite a long while” used profile photos from a Moscow journalist, Bespalov told NBC News.

“So, you can imagine yourself logging in to Facebook and you see there an account with your photos but another person's name," he said. "And the person from this account is writing ‘The fascists in Ukraine are killing Russian people’ and there is a link to the source of the news and there is your photo matching all this."

“We were told that girls' accounts are looked at more often,” Bespalov told NBC News. “We would put Name, Surname, City... any photo of an attractive girl that I would have managed to find on the internet and then links... all sorts of links and links.. Then the girls would get blocked eventually and you would start afresh.”

Eventually, some of the IRA’s social media accounts that started out supporting Russian actions in Ukraine later morphed into accounts that advocated for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015, according to U.S. intelligence.

“I now believe nothing I come across on social media,” Bespalov said.

The Kremlin has denied any knowledge of the troll factory's activities and suggested that reports that it existed might be fake.

so you mean with 145,000 dollars investment ,the russians beat hillary clinton who spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Lol. It was not Russian troll factory ,but the expose of electoral fraud by Hillary clinton on Bernie Sanders as exposed by Seth Rich. That was the reason. The Russian media like RT,Sputnik and conservative ones blew that like a bull horn . Even the Elites ditched hillary as she was too much a liability.

Nothing takes the cake like creating the great leap forward propaganda and killing off 30 million of your own citizens.

Well the conservative christians tend to talk about the abortion holocaust of 66 million children since 1973 in USA.
Marxists and anti-americans talk about 20-30 million native americans killed and 30 million third worlders killed by USA.

Those who live in Glass houses should not throw stones at others.

 

[TaiShang]

Nothing takes the cake like creating the great leap forward propaganda and killing off 30 million of your own citizens.

How about your Modi killing 2 million kids per year, including last year. More SP12?

 

[zzzz]

Russian troll describes work in the infamous misinformation factory
by BEN POPKEN and KELLY COBIELLA

For months, Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was one of hundreds of workers pumping out misinformation online at the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll factory responsible for explosive content seen by 126 million Americans in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.

In many ways, the IRA was like a normal IT facility, Bespalov told NBC News in an exclusive broadcast interview. There were day shifts and night shifts, a cafeteria, and workers were seated at computers in a large open floor plan.


But in the squat, four-story concrete building on Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, secured by camouflaged guards and turnstiles, bloggers and former journalists worked around the clock to create thousands of incendiary social media posts and news articles to meet specific quotas.

The work was all "Lies... a merry-go-round of lies," Bespalov said. "When you get on the carousel, you do not know who is behind you and neither you are aware of who is in front of you — but all of you are running around within the same circle," he said.

Bespalov told NBC News he "absolutely" believes the agency is connected to the Kremlin — a notion backed up by the U.S. intelligence community, which noted that a "close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence" is the "likely financier" of the agency.

Controversial content
In November, Facebook testified to Congress that it had linked over 80,000 pieces of divisive content back to the agency, and Twitter provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with almost 3,000 accounts linked to the IRA.

“These troll farms can produce such a volume of content with hashtags and topics that it distorts what is normal organic conversation,” Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NBC News. “It’s called computational propaganda, the volume [at] which they push, false information or true, makes things appear more believable than they might normally be in an organic conversation.”


Vitaly Bespalov, 26, was a Russian "troll" spreading propaganda online. NBC News
Bespalov described how his own work centered on discrediting Ukraine, but that others in the building focused solely on the U.S.

Workers in the “American department” were paid the equivalent of between $1,300 to $2,000 a month for sparking social media uproar. Entry level trolls got only about $1,000 a month with paid bonuses.

Writers were separated by floor, with those on the third level blogging to undermine Ukraine and promote Russia. Writers on the first floor — often former professional journalists like Bespalov — created news articles that referred to blog posts written on the third floor. Workers on the third and fourth floor posted comments on the stories and other sites under fake identities, pretending they were from Ukraine. And the marketing team on the second floor weaved all of this misinformation into social media.

Even though each floor worked on material the other created, they didn't have any contact with each other inside the building, said Bespalov, except for in the cafeteria or on smoke breaks.

"You could have worked there for half a year being on the ground floor and making fake news and you would not have had a single occasion when you could chat with another guy who [wrote comments on it]," Bespalov told NBC News.

"What we did was exactly the same, we didn't know the people who were party to that — but we all were doing the same job filled with lies," he said.

From Ukraine with love
Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014 — and Russia's subsequent suspension from the G8, plus heavy international sanctions — Bespalov was hired at the troll factory to rewrite articles about Ukraine for a site that was designed to look like it was based out of that country, not St. Petersburg, Russia.

The facts were to remain the same, but with a few key words swapped out. "Terrorist" became "militia men." "Ukrainian Army" became "national guard." Russia couldn't be criticized.

The objective was to have the articles be "70 percent" original text and get them to the top of search engine results, Bespalov said.


55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia, a location used by the Internet Research Agency . Google Street View
Related: Russian trolls duped global media and nearly 40 celebrities

At one point, Bespalov worked to create social media profiles to boost pro-Russian sentiment. One account that existed for “quite a long while” used profile photos from a Moscow journalist, Bespalov told NBC News.

“So, you can imagine yourself logging in to Facebook and you see there an account with your photos but another person's name," he said. "And the person from this account is writing ‘The fascists in Ukraine are killing Russian people’ and there is a link to the source of the news and there is your photo matching all this."

“We were told that girls' accounts are looked at more often,” Bespalov told NBC News. “We would put Name, Surname, City... any photo of an attractive girl that I would have managed to find on the internet and then links... all sorts of links and links.. Then the girls would get blocked eventually and you would start afresh.”

Eventually, some of the IRA’s social media accounts that started out supporting Russian actions in Ukraine later morphed into accounts that advocated for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015, according to U.S. intelligence.

“I now believe nothing I come across on social media,” Bespalov said.

The Kremlin has denied any knowledge of the troll factory's activities and suggested that reports that it existed might be fake.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda



The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

Centcom's contract requires for each controller the provision of one "virtual private server" located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.

It also calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability".

The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth".

This month Petraeus's successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV "supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities".

Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts.

Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.

In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." He added that Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain".

According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than Centcom.

Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability."

OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries".

Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.

Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of "criminal impersonation" and identity theft.

It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result.

• This article was amended on 18 March 2011 to remove references to Facebook and Twitter, introduced during the editing process, and to add a comment from Centcom, received after publication, that it is not targeting those sites.

 

[mandrom]

How about your Modi killing 2 million kids per year, including last year. More SP12?

If you care so much you can take them in as refugees like the West.

 

[TaiShang]

If you care so much you can take them in as refugees like the West.

No way, I guess. China, just like India, is a developing nation. It is not even a self-claimed SP12.

 

[zzzz]

Nothing takes the cake like creating the great leap forward propaganda and killing off 30 million of your own citizens.

You are talking about President Hoover who starved to death millions of Americans?

 

[TaiShang]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda



The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

Centcom's contract requires for each controller the provision of one "virtual private server" located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.

It also calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability".

The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth".

This month Petraeus's successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV "supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities".

Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts.

Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.

In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." He added that Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain".

According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than Centcom.

Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability."

OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries".

Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.

Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of "criminal impersonation" and identity theft.

It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result.

• This article was amended on 18 March 2011 to remove references to Facebook and Twitter, introduced during the editing process, and to add a comment from Centcom, received after publication, that it is not targeting those sites.

Besides sockpuppets, it has also been revealed that the US (NSA) is able to stage cyber-attacks or plant fake news and then leave traces behind as if they were carried out by an opponent country (Russia or China in most cases.)

You are talking about President Hoover who starved to death millions of Americans?

He is Indian. A false flagger.

And yes, indeed, if the same methodology they use against China is applied to the US during the Great Depression, the number of people killed reaches up to 9 million.