U.S. Gov‘t Creates ’Fake People’ to Spread Propaganda via Social Networks

Voice of Truth · May 7, 2011

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites. Private security firms employeed by the government have used the accounts to create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.

Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person’s hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request. Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend’s accounts can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend."

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Unfortunately,
In order to get this information out and in the most complete form. I had to draw upon several online sources. Below is a snipit from each with their corresponding urls. My only comment about this is that it's now time to start thinking about the possiblity of turning off the Internet in your homes. Read them all and you might just start regreting having ever used your real name on the Internet.

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Source : http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2...-fake-people-spread-message-social-networking

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
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Source : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/...-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All

The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All

According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HBGary 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.
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.
And all of this is for the purposes of infiltration, data mining, and (here's the one that really worries me) ganging up on bloggers, commenters and otherwise "real" people to smear enemies and distort the truth.
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Source : http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/hb-gary-federal-anonymous-and-wikileaks-8912
I just tweeted a few posts on research and talk. This is the angle I want to stick with. If anyone asks about using this information for law enforcement I think we should say, well of course if law enforcement wants to discuss with me my research I will, its all open source, thats the thing, its all there. But my intent is not to do this work to put people in jail, my intent is to clearly demonstrate how this can be effectively used to gather significant intelligence and potentially exploit targets of interest (the other customers will read between the lines).

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http://www.examiner.com/social-medi...ople-on-social-networks-to-promote-propoganda

skip · May 8, 2011

Simple solution, don't use Facebook.

See this is the diabolical plot behind Facebook and Google, to find everyone and link their info to everyone else's so they can track you and your friends.

Boycott Facebook, or just go ahead and let the US gov't know everything, and I mean everything, even more than you yourself know, about you.

BTW, this has been going on for a long time now, it's only now being revealed. Conservative groups have had their fake operatives posting everywhere for years, since before 9/11/2001 or so.

I don't understand why people don't get it that there are those who are PAID TO POST up specific content.

Remember Conservative TALKING POINTS that were rammed down our throats on every social media site, on TV, radio, newspapers? You'd see half a dozen ppl in a thread posting up the exact same words... I had to ban quite a number of them from this site, for which I was criticized...

stinkfoot · May 8, 2011

"Groupthink" is another tool of the government.

Meliai · May 8, 2011

This doesn't really surprise me. I've thought many times before while reading political blogs that some of the comments at the bottom could indeed be something like this.

Its unfortunate that critical thinking skills aren't being taught in school anymore, as that is the most effective weapon to combat this.

willedwill · May 8, 2011

If these people are kept well in mind the extreme of being Bigot or being Conceitedly Vain are to be kept imperceivable. Eh, geriatrics delinquent?

7point65 · May 8, 2011

That's pretty scary.

Voyage · May 8, 2011

Meliai said:

This doesn't really surprise me. I've thought many times before while reading political blogs that some of the comments at the bottom could indeed be something like this.

Its unfortunate that critical thinking skills aren't being taught in school anymore, as that is the most effective weapon to combat this.
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Public education in this country is diametrically the opposite of critical thinking.

skip · May 9, 2011

It seems to me the technology behind this is exactly what spammers developed to help spam multiple websites with the same messages. It's a matter of managing many accounts and automating the process as much as possible.

If you could classify these guys and their software as spam, perhaps they can be removed and the posters prosecuted for being spammers, and of course their posts must be discredited as gov't propaganda, like I have done for years on this site.

And let it be known that this system was originally setup under Bush and the Obama admin who hasn't given up an inch of what Bush setup, continues to betray the trust of Americans with this bullshit or should I say...

BUSHIT!

6-eyed shaman · May 10, 2011

Not to worry,

this is all being done in the name of marketing research; they don't actually spy on you.

More and more people will wake up and realize how much we are being lied to by the ruling class. They will be brought to justice.

blackcat666 · May 10, 2011

so, what else is new?

bots and spyware are old news.

i first learned about this shit about 10 years ago, on the radio program 'science friday.'
10 years ago the corprations and governments first started doing this with msn groups, yahoo! groups, geocities and, talkcity.
msn groups is no more. geocities is gone. talkcity went away. the rumor is making the rounds that yahoo! is about ready to flush their groups.
now, facebook and twitter are the "in" social groups of the moment.

not one damn thing new at all about any of this.

some things just never change!
:sad:

RooRshack · May 10, 2011

Skip said:

don't use Facebook.
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Seriously folks, how hard is it?

This doesn't superise me one bit. I mean, after all, many "anon" have dozens of FB, many LEO's have dozens of FB, many corporations have dozens of FB, many daily users even have multiple accounts. How could you not expect the government to do the same, when they're the ones who fucking OWN FB?

Lodog · May 10, 2011

Yeah. My pops used to work special intelligence in the army. I got into a conversation with him about how much the government watches us, and he stopped. He said he better not tell me... he finished with "if you knew it'd blow your mind"

He got out in the early 90s.

midgardsun · May 11, 2011

Lodog said:

Yeah. My pops used to work special intelligence in the army. I got into a conversation with him about how much the government watches us, and he stopped. He said he better not tell me... he finished with "if you knew it'd blow your mind"

He got out in the early 90s.
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I also think its way worse than most of the well informed people imagine.

InvisibleLantern · May 12, 2011

It happens on Twitter, too. I remember the day that the Gabriele Giffords Shooting Fiasco occured - and everybody happened to be tweeting about it. Then, out of nowhere, hundreds of accounts started posting the same jokes along the lines of "Is it raining? #blamepalin Did your car break down? #blamepalin"" - the blamepalin meme actually replaced the critisizm, support, and news about the Palin target map on the trending list. Suspicious? Yes - especially considering that all of the bot accounts were OLD but UNUSED, all with very obvious details in common (no photo, usernames like MaryMackMO, and all with a previous message history of nothing but a few gibberish tweets). That means that there are most likely TONS of accounts like that, just waiting to be programmed into fake grassroots action.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26666/?a=f

It's been happening for a while. I used to get follow requests from these fake political activists all of the time. These weren't advertisers or anything - all they did was re-tweet the same political messages.

zombiewolf · May 12, 2011

blackcat666 said:

i first learned about this shit about 10 years ago, on the radio program 'science friday.'

:sad:
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Yep, me too. "Science Friday" rocks.. one of the best programs on national public radio.:2thumbsup:

unclerico · May 12, 2011

i spread propoganda via obey

RooRshack · May 13, 2011

unclerico said:

i spread propoganda via obey
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I don't know what that is.

But I'd be willing to bet spray paint is more effective

There should be a nationwide poster graffiti campaign (or worldwide), with posters telling about the dangers of facebook and it's various tricks...

unclerico · May 13, 2011

RooRshack said:

I don't know what that is.

But I'd be willing to bet spray paint is more effective

There should be a nationwide poster graffiti campaign (or worldwide), with posters telling about the dangers of facebook and it's various tricks...
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obey is all about graffiti

Argiope aurantia · May 18, 2011

RooRshack said:

I'd be willing to bet spray paint is more effective
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*hugs RooRshack*

I wonder how many government spooks watch this site. HI, SPOOK DUDES!

Piney · May 20, 2011

Voyage said:

Public education in this country is diametrically the opposite of critical thinking.
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We are able to see Public education employees in action at political conventions.

Couldn't agree more

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