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Feds Plan 'Fog of Disinformation' To Track Information Leaks

Posted by timothy on from the surely-this-is-a-very-old-technique dept.

skipkent tips a story at Wired's Danger Room, according to which "Pentagon-funded researchers have come up with a new plan for busting leakers: Spot them by how they search, and then entice the secret-spillers with decoy documents that will give them away. Computer scientists call it it 'Fog Computing' — a play on today's cloud computing craze. And in a recent paper for Darpa, the Pentagon's premiere research arm, researchers say they've built 'a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation and then tracking access and attempted misuse of it. We call this "disinformation technology."'"

27 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. aka... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Counterintelligence. Same game, new enemy. It worries me when the enemies start to become ourselves. It may be foreshadowing what's to come.

    1. Re:aka... by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I figure it would send a message to the leakers. That is, be careful what you leak, we may just find you.

      --
      Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    2. Re:aka... by demachina · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm curious how they are going to flood their own people with a "fog of disinformation" and not cause chaos. The information has to be believable but false, and once its out there how do they stop their own people from acting on it as though it is accurate?

      Maybe if they have someone who is already a suspect and target it only at them they can contain the self inflicted damage, but if they start to dessimate information on any scale the self inflicted damage they could outweigh the damage the leakers do.

      If someone is already a suspect I doubt they really need this tactic to nail them.

      Once it becomes a wide spread suspicion that there is intentional disinformation in the system, wouldn't everyone stop trusting all the information.

      Of course after the "missile gap, WMD's in Iraq and reading some of the stuff that came out of the State department and DOD through Wikileaks the quality of their information is already pretty shitty. Maybe this is just a way to thrown in the towel on intelligence and information gathering and admit its all garbage so they should just make it all up, because its cheaper.

      A possible ulterior motive is they actually want to flood leakers with disinformation, and in turn flood news channels with misinformation, so they can mislead and bombard the public with propaganda but have plausible deniability that thats what they are doing.

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      @de_machina
    3. Re:aka... by zill · · Score: 4, Funny

      and I first thought this would have been more effective if they hadn't announced it.

      This is actually all fake. They pretended there was a disinformation campaign when there wasn't so that the enemies would think there is a disinformation campaign going on.

      Of course if this were true there is no way such a secret will be revealed in a random /. comment.



      Unless, of course, said /. comment is also part of the disinformation campaign







      ...or maybe that's just what they want you to think.

    4. Re:aka... by icebike · · Score: 3, Informative

      Meh. Just be sure to grab someone elses copy and leak that. They;ll trace it back to the other person, not you.

      Well then they would get the original leaker wouldn't they? That is the point.

      There is nothing new here, other than the apparent plan to plug leaks in government, (or should I say inconvenient government leaks).

      Copies of physical documents of sensitive information have often contained minor typos or subtle wording changes in critical and likely to be leaked passages. Churchill ordered this during WWII to see which of his subordinates was leaking.

      IBM applied for a patent on this process in the digital world back in 2009.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    5. Re:aka... by networkBoy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We do that where I work. Certain documents are trade secret, and we want to make sure they don't become trade secrete(tions).
      if you get a copy of the document, it will have some very simple alterations (extra space here or there, couple more pixels per row in tables, etc.) This is along with the more normal markings that it was checked out to you etc.
      If the document leaks they can scan it in to the computer and it will calculate who the doc belonged to.
      Yes you can compare multiple copies, but this requires collaboration, which raises the bar.
      -nB

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  2. Government Already Operates in a Fog by Gunfighter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With the discombobulated nature of the believable information and misinformation, who will be tracking the differences to make sure an intelligence report doesn't result in a military course of action against a non-existent foe (or something similar)?

    Translation: What could possibly go wrong?

    --
    -- Stu

    /. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
    1. Re:Government Already Operates in a Fog by Kaenneth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Iraq?

    2. Re:Government Already Operates in a Fog by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Funny

      Translation: What could possibly go wrong?

      So... FOX News was the prototype for this?

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  3. disinformation all the time by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The bottom line is that you can't believe *anything* any government official says.

  4. An interesting study in modern ethics by TorrentFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is it still right to punish those who in good faith believe there is a pressing need to leak certain information? Entrapment aside, this really will have the most damaging chilling effect yet known in the information age. First no whistleblower protection for gov. employees, and now an active campaign to make sure fucked people stay fucked. Proud to be an American!

    1. Re:An interesting study in modern ethics by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, it is right - for those who sign a contract saying that they will go to jail if they reveal a given secret, it is right for them to go to jail if they then reveal that secret. It really is that simple.

      This isn't about "whistleblowers", who see non-secret but embarassing imformation about their employers and reveal that in a damaging way. This is about state secrets. And history shows: if your government can't keep any secrets, it will be replaced by one that can (often quite violently replaced). Just as you may regret the need for national defense, you'll end up with a government that has some, one way or another.

      We're a democracy. We have oversight of state secrets by our elected leaders, and good ones will legally "out" secrets they don't think should be secret (this happened quite recently, with a congressman reading into the congressional record a court-sealed document related to Fast and Furious). Yes, the system has flaws, all systems do, but it's certainly a workable one.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    2. Re:An interesting study in modern ethics by dark12222000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny enough you mention that they are bound by Contract.

      You see, in all of these contracts (and usually verbatim in government contracts), the duty of the secret keeper is forfeit if the information contained is either illegal, or (in America) goes against "the will" of the people.

      In another words, if you bind me via contract to not disclose that you're going to nuke New York, and I tell someone, then I have *not* violated my contract (either the contract is invalid in the first place as it violates established law, or my duty to the law/my fellow citizens surpasses my contracted duty).

      In these cases, most of these people ARE whistleblowers. The information they release has been released because the whistleblower feels it either violates established law or that it goes against the will of the people.

    3. Re:An interesting study in modern ethics by colinnwn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And history shows: if your government can't keep any secrets, it will be replaced by one that can (often quite violently replaced).

      Does history show this? I'm generally curious. My guess is that most governments can't keep secrets well, and even the ones that are particularly bad and have also failed, have other more significant causes of the failure.

    4. Re:An interesting study in modern ethics by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In another words, if you bind me via contract to not disclose that you're going to nuke New York, and I tell someone, then I have *not* violated my contract (either the contract is invalid in the first place as it violates established law, or my duty to the law/my fellow citizens surpasses my contracted duty).

      Your sense of the importance of the information you wish to leak does not give you the legal right to leak it - in a very practical sense, you rarely have the context to be certain of such things, unless you're very senior in which case you will some legal avenue to bring the information to the attention of the right people. Now, if you really feel your sense of duty is more important than the law, leak away, and go to jail morally righteous. If enough people in out democracy agree with your judgement, someone will pardon you.

      whistleblower feels it either violates established law or that it goes against the will of the people.

      I'm sorry, but what the whistleblower "feels" goes against the "will of the people" is so much bullshit. There are elected leaders whose actual job is to judge that, and who have legal oversight over secret programs, and who represent the will of the people as best humanity can figure out how to make that happen. Those congresscritters have legal ways to fix these problems.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:An interesting study in modern ethics by vux984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Leaking of Secret/classified information is separate from ordinary whistleblowers working for the government. It's a bright-line distinction: each document is Secret, or not.

      The bright-line distinction is not whether or not something is marked secret. Its whether some thing is right or wrong.

      I don't give a shit how many times they stamp the word Top Secret on something. If its not something we should be doing then it needs to be outed. The US doesn't need secret prisons. And the mis-treatment of prisoners in them is a crime not a "secret".

      So am I, but the right system is to police that through oversight committies with appropriate clearance to review the information in the first place, who aren't in anyone's chain of comman except the voters. And we have those.

      Sometimes we have them. And sometimes they work. But there is no reason not to have other checks in the system... like protecting a whistleblower who is reporting on the criminal activity of the state.

  5. Or, And This is Just a Thought... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Stop doing shit you don't want the People to know about.

    Cue the state-owned lapdogs prattling on about the dangers of military secrets becoming public knowledge, in spite of the fact that all the fallout from leaked documents thus far has been political, and in no way put any of our troops at risk.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  6. How... by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...is anyone going to tell this disinformation apart from the disinformation that makes up the majority of mainstream news today, anyway?

  7. As a taxpayer... by Lendrick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Deliberately creating and circulating misniformation seems like an unethical use of my tax money, much like propaganda campaigns.

  8. Tom Clancy calls this a "canary trap" by Thagg · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a pretty common idea, really. Wikipedia entry.

    --
    I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
  9. Great, now... by Hatta · · Score: 3, Informative

    Put the same sort of effort into discovering and prosecuting those who classify documents to avoid embarassment, rather than ensure national security. This group is far larger, and far more dangerous than any group of whistleblowers.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  10. Re:Better yet. by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All they really need is to alter a few words in sentences depending on who is accessing the document.

    What you're talking about is a simple form of watermarking. What they're talking about, since they're calling it "disinformation", is much more than that.

    Now only the 4-star generals will know which spy plane blueprints are real, and which diplomatic cables are true, so no information will be actionable until it first gets reviewed and validated by a 4-star general first.

  11. I am Moredoc by DontBlameCanada · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Enabler of Disinformation Services! You may know my brother, Mordac the Preventer of Information Services.

  12. Re:Better yet. by capnchicken · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That sounds scalable. /sarcasm

    The big thing all these leaks really proves is that there are too many secrets and the US govt's clearance and need to know mechanisms are wholly broken. Some info really does need to be secret, but instead of vetting everything its just way easier to sweep it all under the its a secret rug and call it a day.

    Just another pentagon project to treat the symptoms and totally disregard the main cause.

    --
    A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
  13. More Government Control by davegravy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What this amounts to is a way out for the government any time something embarrassing is leaked through the likes of Wikileaks (or similar). The government can simply announce that a piece of leaked information was part of their disinformation campaign... the population can rest safely knowing that the offending "leaker" is being brought to justice (i.e scape goat is sent off to Gitmo), and that the information leaked is not actually true.

    This campaign isn't to give the government power against the untrustworthy, it's to give the untrustworthy government more power over you.

    1. Re:More Government Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The brilliance of it is you don't have to actually create fake documents. Any time something gets leaked, claim it as fake and point back to this announcement. Claim the program is a huge success.

  14. It might be even more sinister than that by F69631 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They might be sending message to the wider public: "Oh, you saw documents that state we are up to something really evil? Well... you can't know whether they're accurate or planted by us. If you were certain they were accurate, you might be willing to risk it all to do the right thing but now that you aren't certain... Do you feel lucky?"

    The point of censorship is never to prevent access to information by a few dedicated people. It is to allow the masses - who want to feel like good people - a way to shield themselves from everything evil the government does so they have a way to rationalize to themselves why they don't do what they know to be the right thing. This is exactly that.