Slashdot Mirror
Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek To Control the Internet
Advocatus Diaboli writes The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, "amplif[y]" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be "extremist." The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG's use of "fake victim blog posts," "false flag operations," "honey traps" and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.
Whenever I saw someone write something retarded on the internet in the past, I just chalked it up to the person in question genuinely being retarded. The idea that a government agency might intentionally be contributing retardation to poison genuine discussion seemed ridiculous on the face of it. Now, every time I read something and think "no one can really be that stupid, can they?" I've begun to wonder. Maybe no one CAN really be that stupid...
How to avoid being manipulated by online poll results
Short answer: don't buy into online poll results.
Polls are one of the worst methods of "information gathering" known to man, in terms of accuracy; online polls, doubly so. Not only do you have to be concerned with how the polls are worded, how large a sample size is used, and what group of people were used for the sample, you also have to consider that not every poll respondent is answering honestly 100% of the time. Take the "drug use" polls, many of which are now saying that marijuana use is up in teens. Is usage really up? Is the question just worded in a different way than the last poll? Or has the recent bi-state decriminalization caused more people to be willing to be honest in a poll that asks them if they're doing something that may be illegal where they live?
Trouble is, it seems, is that most people will ignore flawed methodology if the result of the poll is confluent with their pre-existing beliefs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I don't believe GCHQ is involved in anything of the sort and you shouldn't either. This story simply reeks of falsehood.
Edit: Hey, that's not what I wrote...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/ge...
(originally titled: The Gentleman's Guide To Forum Spies)
It could never happen, and yet it does
You turn scumbag government spying into "alien lizards live among us"? I think you're wearing your tinfoil hat for the wrong reason.
The agency has been officially outed as GoatCHQ.
The sad thing is that they don't realize that they actually cost society something important when they derail online discussions and polls.
It is a damage that is hard to put a number on when you prevent people from communicating freely.
Snowden has documents showing GCHQ was also behind those page widening posts in the early days of Slashdot as well as posting countless goatse and tubgirl links and other assorted crapflooding.
I would like to call you troll but unfortunately they were caught Man In The Middling slashdot.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
makes a decision based on an online poll, page count, or anything to do with YouTube deserves what they get.
You simply don't understand how marketing works. I do it for a living (on the database/reporting/IT side of things)
Give me the power to do what GCHQ claims to be able to do and I could get the person of your choice elected president of the united states. You have no idea how powerful being able to manipulate page ranks would be. It would be staggering, unfathomable power. They could get any law passed, any person shunned, any insane conspiracy accepted as fact. Your control of the press would be unprecedented in human history. You could tank the world economy in days, that would actually be childs play.
...this explains the downward spiral of /. comments....
This is nothing new for the UK. The only thing new is that it is done electronically rather than by old fashioned methods (ie, bribes, cajoling, blackmail). Just about every fucked up situation in the world today can be traced back to root causes that are result of UK colonial policies and the use of "intelligence" agencies from the late 1800's thru the late 1960s (when they finally became a has been).
>There are a class or group of people, however you want to define them, that think no matter what the US does, says, hears, thinks, or anything, they are evil. It has nothing to do with critiques or anything but a resentment for what they think has already happened (and it may have happened too).
I won't doubt that these people actually exist, but recently we've seen "HURR AMURIKKKA" comments used to describe very real concerns people have about what snowden, manning, et all have discovered, and are simply re-itterating what they've read in linked mainstream newspapers with some shock and disgust as anyone who values living in a free society should.
As for English intellegence, anything they do is considered very relivant to the USA because they are part of the five eyes partnership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
"There are a class or group of people, however you want to define them, that think no matter what the US does, says, hears, thinks, or anything, they are evil."
Yes there are. They are the world's population. Even your allies don't like you. Now, why would that be?
The point isn't "look at the technology", it's "look at the behaviour" - look at what a government is willing to do to make sure the democratic will of the people is what they think it should be. Right now, with the amount of noise in the British press about so-called "cybernats" (trolls in favour of Scottish independence, a very tiny minority typically blow out of all proportion by the media), it's a sobering thought,
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'