Military, spook and corporate plans to deploy "personas" (sock-puppets) on Internet: New examples...

[JackRiddler]

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&mode=form&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&tab=core&_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

((SNIP -- MORE AT THIS PUBLIC DOMAIN SITE OF THE US GOVERNMENT, FINANCED BY OUR TAXES))

((Contracting Office Address: MacDill AFB))

((Place of Performance: Performance will be at MacDIll AFB, Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq.))

========================================

Second Example: HB Gary's Persona Management

((ON EDIT: Snipped a couple of Happy Rockefeller paragraphs to fit four-para rule; other paragraphs quoted from HBGary. Thanks.))

From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All

Wed Feb 16, 2011 at 10:56 PM EST

UPDATED: The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All

As I wrote yesterday , there is a leaked email that has gotten surprisingly little attention around here. It's the one where Aaron Barr discusses his intention to post at Daily Kos - presumably something negative about Anonymous, the hacking group. But that's not the email I'm talking about here.

As I also mentioned yesterday, in some of the emails, HB Gary people are talking about creating "personas", what we would call sockpuppets. This is not new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars and coffee houses. But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet.

According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.

Some choice quotes from the HB Gary e-mails:

Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use.

To build this capability we will create a set of personas on twitter,‭ ‬blogs,‭ ‬forums,‭ ‬buzz,‭ ‬and myspace under created names that fit the profile‭ (‬satellitejockey,‭ ‬hack3rman,‭ ‬etc‭)‬.‭ ‬These accounts are maintained and updated automatically through RSS feeds,‭ ‬retweets,‭ ‬and linking together social media commenting between platforms.‭ ‬With a pool of these accounts to choose from,‭ ‬once you have a real name persona you create a Facebook and LinkedIn account using the given name,‭ ‬lock those accounts down and link these accounts to a selected‭ ‬#‭ ‬of previously created social media accounts,‭ ‬automatically pre-aging the real accounts.

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.

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.

.

[Arctic Dave]

1. I brought this up to several different dems up here and they thought a was a CT nut.

Maybe now they will take it seriously.

[JackRiddler]

2. It's very important that people see the documents put out by the actual perpetrators...

of such deceptions. In this case, the USAF is very clear about the capability they want (and no doubt have already -- these are to update systems). HBGary's plans for creating armies of personas steered by a small number of salaried "users" are also from HBGary documents.

Showing it in the peretrators' own words is another reason the Cablegate trove is so important, even when it's merely showing "old news."

[ProgressiveProfessor]

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.

[JackRiddler]

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 universal 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.

Finally, it will also come when we the people understand that THESE ARE OUR TAXES AT WORK IN ATTACKING OUR OWN MINDS! With a few rules, agency pronouncements, executive orders and budget changes the government side of this could be shut down tomorrow, if there were sufficient political will.

[BanzaiBonnie]

8. RIght on and thank you JackRiddler

I'm working to further publicize your excellent post. This is information we all need to grok.

[JackRiddler]

11. Thank you love!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. I agree, but they will be tried and justified for some of the concerns you raise and others

I saw a write up recently pushing for complete traceability for all net based activities as a way to stop crime and particularly child pornography. Classic "do it for the children" meme. CUrrent efforts to force ISPs to track traffic is just the start. Easily defeated but you just have to know how and spend a little money.

The problem that the "public shaming" approach you suggest is that it is hard to prove, and if those doing it are careful, damn near impossible to trace, even with some level of network forensics.

It all comes down to power. Those that have it want to control those who do not. The current open structure of the Internet denies them the traceability and control they need to control information flow. In your desire to limit astroturfing can be played to support that kind of control.

Not saying you are wrong, just suggesting some care as to methods and bedfellows.

[JackRiddler]

21. Well, the government side of this could be shutdown almost instantly.

Congress could ban such behavior by government agencies. Include rules for contractors and presto -- most of the industrial paid activity of this sort is over.

It would be even easier to do it by agency rules or executive orders. We're not talking about something that requires a big criminal justice effort, just administrative rules. No Internet sock-puppetry (and it can be easily defined as representation of employees or contractors as private individuals posting out of conviction), or you lose your budget or jobs.

What's lacking here is political will.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. Perhaps the government side, and then only perhaps

Many Federal agencies find ways around the express will of Congress. It would still not impact the private side which is IMO much more of a long term risk. Such rules could also impact police sting operations trolling for sex offenders.

[Erose999]

3. This is definitely a cause for concern. But I am sure the Heritage foundation probably already has

software that does that sort of thing. Whats really scary though is that they really don't even need software to inflate their numbers and presence in discussions, the Media does that for them already.

[JackRiddler]

6. Please. It's a huge difference when one paid user can pose as 10 or 100 sock-puppets.

The right-wing media doesn't brainwash, it merely indoctrinates those already inclined to believe the tripe. But even if we say it brainwashes, it can't brainwash people nearly as fast as this software allows operators to manufacture personas and thus add to the appearance of consensus. That happens to be the most powerful form of brainwash -- when it can be made to appear that "everyone" thinks something so you had best conform or shut up.

[Erose999]

7. Thats exactly what Fox News and CNN do with their phony statistics and stuff though.

they tell you a million people showed up to Glenn Beck's "restoring Whiteness" rally.

When in reality it was closer to one-tenth that many.

They tell you Tea Party extremists are "ordinary Americans".

[JackRiddler]

9. Sure. This is a multifront battle...

Beck's nonsense can be refuted by aerial pictures, and was minced into finely ground meat a few weeks later by the Stewart/Colbert rally, especially the clever initial segment to establish the size and density of the crowd.

Similarly, the "persona" problem requires awareness, an end to denial, and publicity for all cases that are discovered, until people develop sufficient skepticism to see sock-puppetry in action, and demand also to see an end to it.


.....


(EDIT: Fixed embarrassing typo, "pubicity." Is that the environment of pubic or a pube city?)

[BanzaiBonnie]

10. It is a war of propaganda

There will be no gunfire, only the sound of the signal through the dark. And, "you can't stop the signal."

Let's make sure the signal of real people gets through. Net neutrality! Can you imagine if the PTB REALLY gain control over the internet?

[slipslidingaway]

12. knr - "The first step ... is to acknowledge that it exists..."

"The first step in counteracting this type of warfare on our minds is to acknowledge that it exists and should be addressed."

:applause: :applause:

Also it rememinded me of this article.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein

Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal

"...In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government)...

There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade ..."

[LoZoccolo]

13. It shouldn't matter how many trolls there are.

People can easily do this persona management at home using free resources such as VirtualBox virtualization software, a Linux distribution installed on each VM, a free email service like Yahoo!, and a free web-based proxy set as the homepage of each VM to remind you which one to use. You could even put an entire persona mangement system consisting of these components on a bootable USB stick drive and use someone else's computer to pull it all off. There is nothing to be gained by worrying about the technology because it's already here, and easily accessible.

What you should worry about is two things:

1. Not being prepared to defeat the troll rhetoric.
2. Using the troll infestation as an excuse to not take responsibility for defeating the troll rhetoric.

[JackRiddler]

16. Actually, it should matter how many of them are dispatched at taxpayer expense, or by corporations.

They should be considered intolerable, and the view of the number should be strictly binary. Any is bad, only zero is good.

[LoZoccolo]

19. It should not affect how you approach politics online, though.

Even if this was rooted out of government, or even corporations, individuals could still engage in this relatively easily.

[BOG PERSON]

14. your tax dollars at work.

paying people to dick around on message boards. no wonder the chinese are kicking our ass!

[JackRiddler]

20. Um, sorry, but: The Chinese govt is no doubt just-as or more-than busy doing the same thing.

[BOG PERSON]

24. i doubt it

people are happy to do pro-chinese trolling for free. pro-chinese trolling is its own reward.

[JackRiddler]

25. I see: They are doing it by private initiative and volunteerism, not government subsidy...

which is why they're kicking our asses, damn it!!!

[BOG PERSON]

28. correct

n/t

[Blue_Tires]

15. i thought they were already doing this...

[JackRiddler]

18. But of course. We're just getting to see more and more of this world exposed.

[JackRiddler]

22. FORGOT TO LINK: Earlier thread on HBGary conspiracy to disrupt free press and opposition groups

How to destroy Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald - Spooks pitch plan to Bank of America

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x386784

[upi402]

27. kick n/t

[Poboy]

26. Kick and recommend!

[JackRiddler]

31. Thanks!

[MadHound]

29. While this is shocking and enraging and worrisome,

I doubt that is anything new. I think we're just now being let in on the secret.

[JackRiddler]

30. Don't fall for the "old news" trap. Confirmation is always significant... it ends denial.

We're not being let in on the secret... the loose ends come out, gradually it accumulates, and then you've actually got documentation instead of (sound) surmise. It's a big difference. Same is true of the Wikileaks stuff -- the deniers have to drop the denial, although it is true that they then switch to claiming, "Old news! Knew it all along! So what?" But it's a slow thing, this progress.