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HOW COVERT AGENTS INFILTRATE THE INTERNET TO MANIPULATE, DECEIVE,
AND DESTROY REPUTATIONS
Glenn Greenwald
Feb. 24 2014, 11:25 p.m
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the
Snowden archive is how western intelligence[?] agencies are attempting
to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of
deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of
that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series
of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by G**Q’s previously
secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These
were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and
the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance.
Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document,
in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert
Operations.”
By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted
some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and
Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks
they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring
people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses.
But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point
revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are
attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online
discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the
internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics:
(1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order
to destroy the reputation of its targets; and
(2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online
discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.
To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics
they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations”
(posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to
someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of
the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting
“negative information” on various forums. Here is one illustrative
list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
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To all this i would add the relatively recent phenomena whereby
social media 'profiles' are now available as automated summaries
of net activity. These unchallengeable, uncorrectable 'profiles'
are available to whomever now shows an interest. These profiles
are made to persist, so that they become a focus repeated blindly
by as many as have access to them, all with no thought on the
veracity of their claims.
What follows goes beyond any law or any court. Some might call it
an unnatural justice. The effects of these centralized sources of
disinformation are, as yet, undocumented, but one might coin the
phrase, 'The profile Effect', to borrow from that other phenomena
of psychology, The Observer Effect.
This effect would start with the profile, the profiled, and then
look at the 'accumulative effect' of all those responding to what
was determined to be your profile. This profile might in time
become self-fulfilling just by virtue of all those repeating its
claims.
Quite how this 'Profile Effect' would manifest itself in the rest
of society would be anyone's guess, but imagine its effects as more
and more people were caught up in this web from which they could
never escape. More and more people subject to A.i's best guess, as
it set about data mining with the latest hot topics in mind. A.i
seeking X would see only X, even where the context was 'NOT X'.
These automated Summaries, which might otherwise be seen as Hearsay,
would become these automated Profiles to invite an equally automated
response by those 'inbetweeners', whom one hears very little of.
Blind Actions leading to confused reactions, so that it allowed no
feedback, no defense, and no correction. No way for A.i to learn
from its mistakes.
Imagine more and more people at the mercy of these technologies,
with mischievous trolls on one side, and keen zealots on the other.
One would be left to wonder at all those inexplicable reactions, at
large in society, for which there seemed no fathomable cause.
Complete the loop.