Slashdot Mirror
US Military Explored Hiring Bloggers As Propagandists
Zeinfeld writes "Wired reports that one time Clipper Chip supporter Dorothy Denning wrote a report on using blogs for information warfare in 2006 (a report available from cryptome). Amongst the proposals were hiring bloggers directly as propaganda agents and using military media resources to 'make' a blogger posting favorable material. Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media." Is meme warfare just another battleground, or is this dirty pool?
Blogging is just another form of published media - it can be used for any reason. People have just been lured into believing blogs are personal posts from individuals.
Someone is going to be very busy...
How on earth anyone could be shocked by this at this point is beyond me. This kind of stuff is fairly benign next to the kind of stuff they do in SECRET. It's when they actually start talking about killing reporters to silence dissent that they REALLY get nasty.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
C'mon folks, if you're getting your "hard facts" from blogs, you're already toast. Everybody has an agenda, it's just that some folks get paid for it. Don't think of them as military propaganda arms, think of them as paid public lobbiests (aka astroturfers) . Whole different form of slime, but slime nonetheless.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media.
The rest of our media is manipulated...why not blogs? Compared to the other forms of media, blogs are notoriously easy to manipulate. With the ever-growing cacophony of voices on the internet, it's more and more difficult for Joe Sixpack to adequately fact-check a given story...so they increasingly just believe what they hear from their mouthpiece of choice. I personally have to debunk all of the ridiculous stories my wife's family mindlessly forwards around to each other without question....the latest was that Obama is Muslim.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
And just what makes you think they're doing it for free?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Yes - I'd have a problem. The role of the government and the military is to serve and protect us as the people who pay for them both. The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour. When that happens, you know that they consider YOU a threat to themselves. And that strongly implies that your interests are not their interests.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
If the military hired bloggers post mostly postive news stories that's fine, because typically those stories are completely ignored by main stream media.
The problems begin if they start putting heavy spin on bad news to make it sound good, fabricating stories, or pretend there is no bad news and not report it, then we have a problem.
This doesn't seem to compare to "Operation Mass Appeal" which was a programme by M16 to plant stories in the British media in the run up to the Iraq War. They needn't have bothered really though since the Mainstream Media is quite capable of printing flimsy government accusations as fact without the intervention of the Secret Service.
And as regards Ghandi, I'm not familiar with him saying the above, but I imagine that if it is correct, that he was advocating propaganda as an alternative to warfare, not a means of persuading people to support it.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
. . . to place their propaganda on the internet (ahem, Huffington Post, DailyKos, etc, ad nauseum), then why can't the military use bloggers to post its point of view?
Seems like another double-standard to me.
What?
And just what makes you think they're doing it for free?
Well, dailykos.com is on the record saying that they take money to endorse candidates.
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
In a totalitarian state, it doesn't matter what people think, since the government can control people by force using a bludgeon. But when you can't control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion.
-- Noam Chomsky
You can't take the sky from me...
Who needs propaganda bloggers when you have fools like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly?
Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media.
Not to mention the legality... The Hatch act still exists, to the best of my knowledge. And although people generally interpret it somewhat more liberally than intended, this seems like exactly the form of corruption targetted thereby... The executive branch, using federal funds to make the war look better, to improve the chances of McCain getting in come November.
Then again, since when has the current administration bothered with obeying all those pesky little laws? "Four more years - Why should the constitution matter this time?"
During the Kosovo crisis Serbian State TV (equivalent to the BBC) was showing the effects of NATO bombing on civilians. To stop this NATO bombed the Serbian State TV station killing 15 civilians. NATO justified this by saying that the station was a tool of propaganda. By this rational, if the US/UK go to war with Iran, the BBC and many American news outlets will be viable targets. General Wesley Clark was confronted with this war crime during a conference and he seemed very sheepish about it and resorted to saying that his orders had come from the top.
Frankly I would rather have signs above the area where everyone clocks in rather than controlled and monitored labour camps.
You present a false choice between being deceived into obeying the government and being coerced into obeying the government. Your entire premise is based on the assumption that the government is always correct, and must get its way somehow or another.
However, sometimes the government is wrong, and it uses propaganda techniques to conceal its errors and suppress or disparage those who present embarrassing information. The choice in these situations is between being deceived into obeying the government and having the information you need to decide independently whether to obey the government.
And I'm glad to see that they finally declassified my third military occupation, so now the world can know we milbloggers have been on the front lines in the War On Terror.
Every time you see a foreign propaganda piece in the Saudi Times and read a comment by Al Rashid, that was our brave comrades in arms, fighting the real fight for Democracy.
Every time you read the Pakistani Journal of Objective Theological Criticism and read the online commentary by Pashtun seperatists, it was Chief Petty Officer Nunzia writing that post.
The few, the proud, the frequently anonymous - Blog Warriors!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ok.
...
Aw, crap!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Except "loose lips sink ships" is not propaganda; it's just pithy advice.
Telling people Sadaam killed babies so he could loot their hospital incubators was propaganda. It would not have been if it were true, but in fact it was a story fabricated by the Kuwaitis and knowingly propagated by the first Bush administration to whip up support for the invasion of Kuwait. And before people get their noses bent out of shape, I supported the first Gulf war and still do. That doesn't mean I have to endorse the government lying to me.
With respect to psychological warfare, this is something any US officer, sworn to uphold the Constitution, must question. The Constitution puts the military under the control of the civilian government, but the subtle point here is that it does it in the way that the military is not an agent of the government, it is an agent of the Constitution and the people it protects. This is what makes the US military different from, say, the North Korean military, which is a creature of the party, and ultimately the Dear Leader. It is not the role of the military to put one over on the American people for their own good.
We can draw a parallel with keeping secrets, or even tactical bluffing. In a democracy's military, these are necessary evils. You have to ask this question: are the American people uniformed, or misinformed, in a substantive way? It makes very little difference in the lives of Americans whether a ship convoy is steaming east or west, but it makes a great deal of difference if it does so to provoke a war under false pretenses. That's the key: are we undermining the sovereignty of the voter?
There is simply no point to democracy if government officials have unlimited power to feed the public with lies, and to force the cooperation of civil servants and the military. The people can't rule themselves if they are making political decisions based on phony stories being fed to them, even indirectly.
It's not that trying to sway public opinion in foreign countries with psy-ops isn't often advantageous, even if it does give Americans a distorted view of the situation. People don't make wrong decisions when those decisions have nothing to recommend them. What makes it wrong is that you can't have the advantages of being a democracy without ceding some of the advantages that totalitarian states enjoy. The question is whether you believe the advantages of freedom outweigh the inconveniences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You are entirely right. But it appears that they (the rich people who run our plutocracy) have been pulling this disgusting stuff for most of my life, or more likely since before I was born.
And people wonder why I don't want to vote Democrat or Republican! How can we change our plutocratic republic back into a democratic republic?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bush Administration. If the 'War on Terror' is worth fighting then it's worth paying for. FDR didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with a tax cut. Hell during WW2 the highest tax rate reached ninety-four percent. And Bush wouldn't even consider reversing his own ill advised tax cuts to help pay for the war.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sure, I'll do that. As long as I can reduce the amount I pay in taxes to things I don't support.
Neither did Bush. Bush responded with a tax cut to try to help a struggling economy and because lowering taxes is the right thing to do even with a healthy economy.
Which is patently absurd. And JFK realized that and started the reduction of taxes to non-socialistic levels. Seriously, if I were paying 94% taxes on each dollar earned, I'd stop working until the end of the year when my time would immediately become more valuable. There is nothing progressive about a progressive tax--it's absolutely destructive. Especially at such confiscatory levels like 94%.
Slowing the economy by increasing taxes isn't going to help generate income. It's just going to further slow the economy and hurt everyone, rich and poor, and create less tax revenue because the economy is being further punished by a destructive tax policy.
Gladly. This country needs more education.
Education produces smart citizens. Smart citizens are good for the economy (smart consumers don't start dot com or housing bubbles), good for business (intelligent employees streamline processes and reduce overhead), but above all they are good for the country. Like it or not, reputation matters - would you rather the U.S. be known as a nation of idiots, or would you rather we be respected as a nation of intelligence and honour?
As for welfare, you can't call yourself a Christian nation if you don't believe in helping your fellow man. See: Luke 4:18-19, 18:18-30, 14:13 Matthew 19:16-30, 25:31-46, Mark 8:1-13, 6:30-44, 10:17-31 (or just read the Bible). We're a so-called "Christian" country, that cherry picks the Old Testament and ignores the teachings of Christ (at least until the indictments come down - when that happens, Jesus is suddenly the man).
So, yes. I'd gladly pay more taxes to improve the lot of my fellow men, women and children. I'd even go so far as to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should consider spending far less on defense. The money we save there could go to education and social security - programs that improve our lives as opposed to destroying others. And the best part is: we wouldn't even have to raise taxes.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
You can't take the sky from me...
Politicizing the military is a real problem in a democratic society. During the 1930s through 70s a whole succession of army generals and colonels decided that they could do a better job than the democratic governments of their countries. Thats how Hitler tried to come to power the first time (the beer hall putsch) and how Franco came to power.
The people who complain about the 'liberal media' seem to believe that anything that does not toe the GOP party line as Hanity, Limbaugh etc. do must be biased.
The establishment media in the US is all biased towards the right. Every Sunday the network news shows feature talk show guest lists where Republicans outnumber Democrats by two to one. And when a Democrat does appear, Lieberman is far more likely to appear than Ted Kennedy. Not one of the panels reviewing the first five years of Bush's war in Iraq had a commentator who had been publicly opposed to the war at the start. That is a pretty clear pro-GOP bias. One would expect that a Kos or a Josh Marshall would have earned a slot or Juan Cole who actually can claim to be an expert on the politics of the region. Instead we saw the same myopic pundits who were dead wrong at the start of the war and have learned nothing since.
You can be pretty certain that something similar will happen when they have panels discussing the sub-prime meltdown. Krugman, Atrios have been predicting that it would occur for years now.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/