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Obama Appointee Sunstein Favors Infiltrating Online Groups

Posted by timothy on from the freedom-of-somethingeruther dept.

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.'"

6 of 689 comments (clear)

  1. Why fear terrorists... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why fear Middle Eastern terrorists, when there are home-grown Americans so eager to utterly destroy freedom of expression...

    1. Re:Why fear terrorists... by BobMcD · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If only that is what they are proposing to do, that would be fine. Let the arguments stand on their own merit, and let people decide without coercion. Particularly without using any government agents to influence the conversation through infiltration.

    2. Re:Why fear terrorists... by Peter+La+Casse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Fairness Doctrine is appropriate for the public airwaves, a shared resource,

      No. The Fairness Doctrine is a tool for the government to suppress political views it does not agree with. That's how it was used, and that's why people want to bring it back.

    3. Re:Why fear terrorists... by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh man! Cut to the chase shall we? The Fairness Doctrine is aimed squarely at Rush Limbaugh. The Democrat party has a major hard-on for getting rid of him. Had it been any other time or country, the military would have assassinated him AND his family long ago. He pisses them off that badly!!!

      So what do Rush Limbaugh and Micheal Moore have in common? They both exercise the 1st Amendment to its fullest. Very brave of them!

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
  2. GENIUS! by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:What do you expect... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As an outsider who used to be a liberal, I find conservatives' fixation on Barbara Streisand to be utterly bizarre. When I was a liberal, the only times I ever thought about Barbara Streisand were when conservative wackadoos got enraged over things she said or did -- and that was just long enough to think "Barbara Streisand? Huh? Who gives a shit?" The other liberals I knew had more or less the same reaction.

      Now that I've moved to a position outside that of the R vs. D "Go team!" demographics, I think I grasp the foundation of the problem: modern conservative politics, lacking much in the way of coherent principles since Goldwater went down, has to appeal to emotion. Consequently, the conservative hate machine is born, and every two minutes, there has to be a new Two Minutes Hate, and a constant cycling of new targets for hatred. Otherwise conservatives might stop being angry for a moment and start thinking for themselves. This would be as dangerous for Republican politicians as if the Democratic base really sat down and thought about what they actually want and whether their politicians ever showed any inclination of giving it to them. (No, being the answer to that. The Democratic party is a self-contained, self-interested machine at this point.)

      Then again, I guess that "Streisand Effect" is also easier for conservatives to stomach than "Nixon Effect", the real modern archetype of an individual who made things worse by trying to hush everything up.

      - mantar