Bipartisan Congressional Bill Would Authorize the
Use of Propaganda On Americans Living Inside America
Submitted by George Washington
on 05/21/2012
http://albertpeia.com/creepingfascismpropaganda.htm
‘ BECAUSE
BANNING PROPAGANDA “TIES THE HANDS OF AMERICA
Michael
Hastings reports:
An
amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is
being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill....
The
amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of
propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon,
according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee's official
website.
The
tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act
in 1987—that had been passed to protect
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by
Rep. Mac Thornberry from
In a
little noticed press release earlier in the week — buried beneath the other
high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite
detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations — Thornberry
warned that in the Internet age, the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials,
military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a
credible way.”
The
bill's supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence
foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are
needed to help fight Al-Qaeda, a borderless enemy whose own propaganda reaches
Americans online.
Critics
of the bill say there are ways to keep
***
“I
just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons
– go through without anyone noticing,” “ says one
source on the Hill, who is disturbed by the law. According to this source, the
law would allow "
The
new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push
television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the
According
to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of
Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other
restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up
unpopular policies—like the wars in
Critics
of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so “under the
radar,” as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling.
***
The
evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to
safeguard
In
December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley
Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon
would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and,
last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team
under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to
influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.
The
upshot, at times, is the Department of Defense using the same tools on
A
U.S. Army whistleblower, Lieutenant Col. Daniel Davis, noted recently in his
scathing 84-page unclassified report on Afghanistan that there remains a strong
desire within the defense establishment “to enable Public Affairs officers to
influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to "protect
a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will," he wrote, quoting
a well-regarded general.
The
defense bill passed the House Friday afternoon.
Juan
Cole notes:
Nothing
speaks more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the
assertion by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on
Germany in the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that
forbidding DoD and the State Department from
subjecting us to government propaganda “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic
officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively
communicate in a credible way.” And
mind you, they want to use our own money to wash our brains!
***
Of
course, having a Pentagon propaganda unit at all is highly anti-democratic. The best defense of the truth is a free press.
It should also be remembered that nowadays everything in
Doing
propaganda abroad has the difficulty that it doesn’t stay abroad. False
articles placed in the Arabic press in
Then,
another problem is that the Defense Intelligence Agency analysts *also* read
the false articles placed in the Arabic press by *another* Pentagon office,
which they did not know about. So the analysts were passing up to the White
House false information provided by their own colleagues!
Mediaite points out:
The
military has been trying to find new avenues for spread
GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN ILLEGALLY USING
PROPAGANDA FOR DECADES
Of
course - even though it is currently illegal - the government has already been using propaganda against
For
example:
Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful
journalists
The New York Times discusses in a matter-of-fact
way the use of mainstream writers by the CIA to spread messages
A 4-part BBC
documentary called the “Century of the Self” shows that an American –
Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays – created the modern
field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the
The Independent discusses allegations of
American propaganda
And one of the premier writers on journalism says the
We noted in 2009:
The
As
revealed by an official Pentagon report signed by Rumsfeld called “Information
Operations Roadmap”:
The
roadmap [contains an] acknowledgement that
information put out as part of the military’s psychological
operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the
computer and
television screens of ordinary Americans.
“Information
intended for foreign audiences, including public
diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our
domestic
audience,” it reads.
“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media
for much
larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.
***
“Strategy
should be based on the premise that the
Department [of
Defense] will ‘fight the net’ as it
would an enemy weapons
system”.
Indeed,
the Pentagon publicly announced years ago that it was considering using “black
propaganda” – in other words, knowing lies.
CENTCOM
announced in 2008 that a team of employees would be “[engaging] bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue
information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information.”
The Air Force is now also
engaging bloggers. Indeed, an Air Force spokesman said:
“We
obviously have many more concerns regarding cyberspace than a typical Social
Media user,” Capt. Faggard says. “I am concerned with
how insurgents or potential enemies can use Social Media to their advantage.
It’s our role to provide a clear and accurate, completely truthful and
transparent picture for any audience.”
In
other words, the government is targeting “social media”, including popular
user-ranked news sites.
In
addition, when you look at what the Israeli lobby has done with Megaphone
software to automatically vote stories questioning Israel down and to send
pro-Israel letters to politicians and media (see this, this and this), you can start to see how the
U.S. military – an even larger and better-funded organization – could
substantially influence voting on social news sites with very little effort.
Moreover,
the military has outsourced many projects to private contractors. For example,
in
It is
therefore not impossible that the government is hiring cheap labor to downvote stories on the social media sites which question
the government, and to post pro-government comments.
Raw
Story reported last year that the Air
Force ordered software to manage army of sock puppets:
Internet
users would be well advised to ask another question entirely: Are my “friends”
even real people?In the
continuing saga of data security firm HBGary, a new
caveat has come to light: not only did they plot to help destroy secrets outlet
WikiLeaks and discredit progressive bloggers, they
also crafted detailed proposals for software that manages online “personas,”
allowing a single human to assume the identities of as many fake people as
they’d like.
The
revelation was among those contained in the company’s emails, which were dumped
onto bittorrent networks after hackers with cyber
protest group “Anonymous” broke into their systems.
In
another document unearthed by “Anonymous,” one of HBGary’s
employees also mentioned gaming geolocation services
to make it appear as though selected fake persons were at actual events.
“There
are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to
all fictitious personas,” it said.
Government involvement
Eerie
as that may be, more perplexing, however, is a federal contract
from the 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air
Force Base, located south of
While
there are certainly legitimate applications for such software, such as managing
multiple “official” social media accounts from a single input, the more
nefarious potential is clear.
Unfortunately,
the Air Force’s contract description doesn’t help dispel their suspicions
either. As the text explains, the software would require licenses for 50 users
with 10 personas each, for a total of 500. These personas would have to be
“replete with background , history, supporting
details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent.”
It
continues, noting the need for secure virtual private networks that randomize
the operator’s Internet protocol (IP) address, making it impossible to detect
that it’s a single person orchestrating all these posts. Another entry calls
for static IP address management for each persona, making it appear as though
each fake person was consistently accessing from the same computer each time.
The
contract also sought methods to anonymously establish virtual private servers
with private hosting firms in specific geographic locations. This would allow
that server’s “geosite” to be integrated with their
social media profiles, effectively gaming geolocation
services.
The
Air Force added that the “place of performance” for the contract would be at MacDill Air Force Base, along with
It
was not clear exactly what the Air Force was doing with this software, or even
if it had been procured.
Manufacturing consent
Though
many questions remain about how the military would apply such technology, the
reasonable fear should be perfectly clear. “Persona management software” can be
used to manipulate public opinion on key information, such as news reports. An
unlimited number of virtual “people” could be marshaled by only a few real
individuals, empowering them to create the illusion of consensus.
***
That’s
precisely what got DailyKos blogger Happy
Rockefeller in a snit: the potential for military-run armies of fake people
manipulating and, in some cases, even manufacturing the appearance of public
opinion.
“I
don’t know about you, but it matters to me what fellow progressives think,” the
blogger wrote. “I consider all views. And if there appears to be a consensus
that some reporter isn’t credible, for example, or some candidate for congress
in another state can’t be trusted, I won’t base my entire judgment on it, but
it carries some weight.
“That’s
me. I believe there are many people though who will base their judgment on
rumors and mob attacks. And for those people, a fake mob can be really
effective.”
***
“Team
Themis” [tasked by the
Chamber of Commerce to come up with strategies for responding to
progressive bloggers and others] also included a proposal to use malware
hacks against progressive organizations, and the submission of fake documents
in an effort to discredit established groups.
HBGary was also behind a plot by Bank of
America to destroy WikiLeaks’ technology platform,
other emails revealed. The company was humiliated
by members of “Anonymous” after CEO Aaron Barr bragged that he’d
“infiltrated” the group.
And
see this, this, this, this.
Wired
reported last year:
The
Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media propaganda
campaigns and spit some counter-spin
right back at it.
On
Thursday, Defense Department extreme technology arm Darpa
unveiled its Social
Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. It’s an attempt to get
better at both detecting and conducting
propaganda campaigns on social media. SMISC has two goals.
First, the program needs to help the military better understand what’s going on
in social media in real time — particularly in areas where troops are deployed.
Second, Darpa wants SMISC to help the military play
the social media propaganda game itself.
This
is more than just checking the trending topics on Twitter. The Defense
Department wants to deeply grok social media
dynamics. So SMISC algorithms will be aimed at discovering and tracking the
“formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” on social
media, according to Darpa’s announcement.
***
SMISC
needs to be able to seek out “persuasion
campaign structures and influence operations” developing across
the social sphere. SMISC is supposed to quickly flag rumors and emerging themes
on social media, figure out who’s behind it and what. Moreover, Darpa wants SMISC to be able to actually figure out whether
this is a random product of the hivemind or a
propaganda operation by an adversary nation or group.
Of
course, SMISC won’t be content to just to hang back and monitor social media
trends in strategic locations. It’s about building a better spin machine for Uncle Sam, too. Once SMISC’s latches on to an influence operation
being launched, it’s supposed to help out in “countermessaging.”
***
SMISC
is yet another example of how the military is becoming very interested in
what’s going on in the social media sphere.
Gene Howington writes that mainstream media - including NPR - have used
propaganda on American audiences to shape the debate on numerous issues:
Consider
the use of media outlets like NPR that made a public and conscious decision to
refrain from reporting on “torture” – a word with extremely negative denotation
and connotation – and instead choosing to use the euphemistic language
“enhanced interrogation”. Everyone with a conscience thinks torture is a bad
thing and torturers are ethically abhorrent people. It’s not only a Federal
crime, cruel and unusual punishment is specifically barred by the 8th Amendment
of the Constitution. The word choice here is designed to clearly shift public
attitudes from “those guys need to be prosecuted as criminals” to “maybe they
aren’t so bad after all”. NPR (aided by the Bush Administration no doubt) chose words with a neutral/positive value load
compared to the word “torture”. Connotation plays to your emotional
response over your rational response. When the word choice becomes more
subtle, the damage of connotations can be even more insidious. Compare:
war – limited police action
conquest – liberation
famine – widespread hunger
pestilence – outbreak
death – casualties
Indeed
- in the ultimate Kafkaesque nightmare - the Pentagon recently used black propaganda to
smear USA Today reporters who were investigating illegal Pentagon propaganda.
Virtually Everything Government Does Is
Propaganda
It is
a sad fact that virtually everything
government does these days is propaganda.
For
example, the government has tried to corral the American public into a certain view on the economy:
One that says that the big banks are more or less healthy, that they must be
saved at all costs, that we need not prosecute Wall Street fraud, and that an
economic recovery is just around the corner.
Indeed,
in response to virtually every
problem, the government puts out spin covering up the severity of the crisis
and pretending that the problem was "unexpected" and that it won't
happen again ... so we can keep on doing the exact same thing. This is true in
regards to the financial crisis, Wall Street fraud, nuclear accidents, oil spills, groundwater pollution and a host of other problems.
Indeed,
it sometimes seem like the only thing the government does these days is to provide propaganda
on behalf of special interests so they can make more money.’