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Obama Appointee Sunstein Favors Infiltrating Online Groups
megamerican writes "President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated in a recent paper the 'cognitive infiltration' of groups that advocate 'conspiracy theories' like the ones surrounding 9/11 via 'chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine' those groups. Sunstein admits that 'some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true' Sunstein has also recently advocated banning websites which post 'right-wing rumors' and bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. You can find a PDF of his paper here. For decades (1956-1971), the FBI under COINTELPRO focused on disrupting, marginalizing and neutralizing political dissidents, most notably the Black Panthers. More recently CENTCOM announced it would be engaging bloggers 'who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information.' In January 2009 the USAF released a flow-chart for 'counter-bloggers' to 'counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the US government and the Air Force.'"
Why fear Middle Eastern terrorists, when there are home-grown Americans so eager to utterly destroy freedom of expression...
What do you expect from the party of Barbara Streisand, than to institutionalize the "Streisand Effect"?
In before screeching about the Thought Police - who are apparently real. This sort of thing will only agitate paranoid netizens and make the rest of us even less trusting of the government (and information that appears to be supportive of it) than we already are.
Don't you merely confirm their conspiracy theories with this dunderheaded plan?
What better way to prove that there isn't a conspiracy
THAN TO TRY AND STOP PEOPLE FROM SPREADING IT.
This would have been a good article to write one of my 5 or 6 paragraph conspiracy theories that I whip up out of thin air, but I already did one of those today, and my brain hurts.
However, there ARE people out there who practice irresponsible dissent, and their sole purpose is to disrupt the lives of everyone in order to make a point which most find irrational. I am all for these people getting shut down, so long as those who are responsible and do not infringe on the liberty of others are left in peace.
The question is, who gets to decide which is which? It would be very easy for a government engaged in an unjust war to label peace protesters as "irresponsible dissenters" and have them shut up.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Who gets to determine the difference between responsible dissent and irresponsible dissent? A Conservative might claim that comparing George Bush to Hitler is "irresponsible", while a Liberal might say that claiming Obama is not a U.S. Citizen is "irresponsible."
It's best just to let people who are wrong keep talking, and simply ignore them. Shutting them up with the power of the government is a bad idea - because those same powers could be used against people trying to bring attention to government misdeeds, like the people in Boston who were arrested for recording what they saw as police brutality.
My blog
I guess the whole infiltration thing will convince the conspiracy theorists that they were right all along, and anyone who questions their theories can now be dismissed as a government infiltrator :/
I agree, it's OK for the government to shut down people I disagree with as long as they leave the people I agree with alone.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
By floating this, he's ensured that participants in these groups, who by definition are more suspicious than most, will now be paranoid that their peers are government infiltrators. They'll be less open with each other, and may quit altogether. And the Man doesn't even have to follow through to have this effect-- it's totally free! Well played, fascist.
...ah, I trust you guys.
Of course, social interaction may be the last thing holding some of the target audience from going lone gunman, but you can't make an omelette without killing a few people. At least, I can't. And the more incidents we have, the more funding the security apparatus gets. There is no downside!
Wait... should I post this?
What on earth do you consider irresponsible dissent? Publicly asking for a birth certificate from the president of the US on your TV show? Or do you consider it something more disruptive, like the sit-ins and freedom rides that happened during the civil rights movement?
I can think of a lot of inane things out there, from birthers to truthers to GNAA, but those people are just annoying. A good moderation system like slashdot's can fix all of them.
This isn't talking about a moderation system, this is talking about sponsoring bloggers to try to influence public perception. This is like what Nixon did, he had a letter-writing organization that would write tens of thousands of letters to news agencies trying to get them to change their programming. The ONLY time infiltrative deception is acceptable is if the organization is criminal, like the mafia. You shouldn't be trying to infiltrate tea-partier groups, even if you disagree with their politics.
The only thing I can think of that would be irresponsible dissent would be something like starting your own militia and invading your neighboring town, and even that in some cases would be morally acceptable. I mean, we have people who are literally trying to secede from the union, and that is alright. But if that isn't irresponsible, what is?
Qxe4
I'd probably consider myself right of center, but I also don't think World Net Daily is a very unbiased source.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
He ought to be fired for being stupid enough to think the government should waste even a penny dealing with conspiracy theorists. Just ignore them. It works just fine. Sure, they pop up now and then, but really, think about it: Of all the various theories about the Kennedy assassination, what do any of them matter in the long run? How does it really affect the government? It doesn't.
All the 9/11 conspiracy theorists have accomplished what? Pretty much nothing.
The more important question is: Who gets to decide who is the conspiracy theorists? That's where the real danger is. Hard to believe Obama would hire such an idiot. Sounds like a George Bush kinda guy.
To me this reads like a complete admission that government has little or nothing to fear from standard media, which is something I've felt for a long time. And they think I should be giving them my money or that Google should be paying them for their worthless prattling of the establishment line.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
online groups?
Sarah Palin's Facebook followers? better off going to the circus.
E.L.F.? do they post their plans for world domination to their forums?
this is an appointee for Obama, but i have to wonder who actually proposed this person for Obama to nominate. someone left over from the Bush regime, like Gates? is he contracting work out to John Yoo? anyway, it's not like the C.I.A. or N.S.A. isn't already doing this.
"To stop the terrorists."
Post anything negative to a Twitter-aware company like Comcast, and they connect you with somebody from corporate who will set right whatever you're complaining about. What's the difference between that and the Air Force wanting to debate people spreading inaccurate information about them?
If you allow comments on your blog... that's something who disagree with you can use.
Why is our tax money being used for this?
I mean, I don't care about people who think the moon landing is fake. Let them spend their time thinking that. It doesn't hurt me. What does hurt me is _my_ hard earned money being used for a useless cause.
It even states in TFA that "some conspiracy theories, under [their] definition, have turned out to be true." So why spend time and energy arguing potentially the wrong side?
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
Remember when the left-wingers merely suspected GWB of thinking about possibly doing something similar and how apeshit crazy they went over that slim possibility?
Where are those people now?
Now that someone is actually proposing these CHILLING suggestions, because they are against "right wing nutjobs" it is okay?
Hypocrites. It wasn't right then, it isn't right now. It doesn't matter what you "agree" with; that which needs protection is that which you DON'T agree with.
Obama Administrator is no friend of Liberty, and he is making GWB look angelic at this point. Don't get me wrong, the Republicans aren't any better, and I'm not defending them either.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There's a reason for this, there's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got... because the owners of this country don't want that.
I'm talking about the real owners now... the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want.
They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this fuckin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good, honest, hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them.
They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all! At all! At all! And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.
-- George Carlin
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
People should be encouraged to explore their theories, not prevented from thinking about them.
And when people start telling others that vaccines are really bad for you (thus endangering the whole population with an outbreak of measles, mumps, rubella...), should a CDC representative, after identifying themselves, offer a counter point? I fail to see how a public official engaging a possible lunatic without hiding their identity is a threat to freedom.
If you don't believe that public officials should engage the public, you must have a very poor opinion of many of the Founding Old White Guys.
> In the words of Noam Chomsky: "Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favour of freedom of speech for precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favour of free speech."
If you actually held people to that standard, you'd find that very few people actually support free speech.
...criminalizing organizations. That's the biggest potential of such infiltration. Actually manufacturing unlawful dissent, in direct opposition to the official policy.
Because, as it clearly states, the goal is to place infiltrators in key positions of organization...meaning they effectively try to take it over.
And we know how that ends; few years ago German courts dismissed cases against neonazis because there was so much infiltration - the agents were basically the ones running the show!
It was similar in communist Poland, when SB (security agency) had many agents in Solidarity movement (I guess Stasi did so too), especially in very useful factions already lending towards radicalism.
When your agents start to influence the policy of given organization, it's not only easy to make sure the members aren't misinformed, but also to radicalize them. Manufacturing in this way convenient scapegoats.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Any time you wish your buddies had a power, imagine what it would be like if the other team had that same ability.
That maybe why some of the things Obama supporters disapproved of and wanted Obama to shut down didn't get shut down. All the powers and abilities they really didn't like and felt no one should have.
"Hey! This Gitmo place, seems it actually serves a useful purpose. Those are some real bad guys they got there. The wiretapping... uh yeah... did you read the reports on the shit they got from that? Just imagine if they hadn't overheard those motherfuckers and stopped them."
You all voted for this guy, so whose fault is it when he picks Sunstein etal. to expand the regulatory reach of government into areas you never though possible or desirable? He has never really hidden his beliefs, motives, or goals.