Should Congress Force Social Media To Investigate Foreign Propaganda Trolls? (politico.com)

"I fought foreign propaganda for the FBI," writes a former special agent from its Counterintelligence Division. Now an associate dean at Yale Law School, he's warning that "the tools we had won't work anymore." An anonymous reader quotes Politico: The bureau is now faced with huge private companies, like Facebook and Twitter, which are ostensibly neutral and have no professional or ethical obligation to vet the material they distribute. Further, foreign intelligence service propaganda agents are no longer human operatives on American soil -- they are invisible "trolls," often operating from a foreign country and behind social media accounts that make them impossible for the FBI to approach directly. Or, in the case of so-called bots -- software programs designed to simulate humans -- they might not even be people at all... [S]ocial media platforms can reach an almost limitless audience, often within days or hours, more or less for free: Russia's Facebook ads alone reached between 23 million and 70 million viewers.

Without any direct way to investigate and identify the source of the private accounts that generate this "fake news," there's literally nothing the FBI can do to stop a propaganda operation that can occur on such a massive scale... But Congress could pass legislation that requires social media companies to cooperate with counterintelligence in the same ways they do with law enforcement. For example, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires telecommunications companies to design their digital networks in such a way that would permit wiretaps for criminal cases. Similarly, requiring social media platforms to develop ways to vet and authenticate foreign users and proactively report potential bots to the FBI would enable the FBI to identify perception management operations as they are occurring. In addition to monitoring these specific FIS-based accounts, the FBI could publicly expose the source of particular accounts, ads or news...
"At this point, we have no choice: It's clear that our current counterintelligence strategy hasn't caught up to the age of asymmetrical information warfare," the former counterintelligence agent concludes. "Until it does, we'll be silently allowing our freedoms to be manipulated...."

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech, anyone?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

speech made not on US soil by non-citizens is covered by the 1A how, exactly?

Re:No

[fustakrakich]

Why would that be modded down? Free speech is precisely the issue. If one doesn't like what's being said, they can tune out. Nobody is being forced to listen or believe. It really is that simple.

Re:No

[Dutchmaan]

well then.. lets get some REAL transparency going Mr. "Anonymous Coward"... you don't have anything to HIDE do you?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech has nothing to do with transparency.... Its about protecting personal freedom of expression, surely you are not THAT stupid and you understand that?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguably, it's not covered. But that's not to say that free speech shouldn't be considered a basic human right.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that freedom of speech isn't an American exclusive, right?

Talk about uncultured and untraveled. Try getting out of your little bubble and live somewhere else once in your life.

Re:No

[fustakrakich]

You're talking about foreign agents using a network to spread propaganda for anti-US purposes

No, you are.

Free speech is free speech, and everybody has the right. The US is the only country on the planet that happens to have it codified into law without any qualifications. All others are mere posers.

Re:No

[Archtech]

1. As previous comments reminded you, freedom of speech is a fundamental human right - not reserved purely for US citizens.

2. One person's "propaganda" is another person's "truth", and vice-versa. If any nation ever allowed a police department like the FBI to tell its citizens which is which, it would automatically be a police state.

3. Why should anyone assume that US citizens - supposedly among the world's healthiest, best educated, and most intelligent - are unable to distinguish between truth and propaganda? Or, indeed, to exercise their own opinions and judgment about all the many statements that fall in the grey area in between?

In most parts of the world the very idea that any government department or corporations should be allowed - let alone expected - to tell citizens what to believe and what not to believe would be greeted with shocked dismay.

Re:No

[Archtech]

Unless, of course, the comments on this thread are representative of US public opinion. In which case, so much the worse for the USA - it is no longer a free country, and the very idea of freedom is no longer understood.

Re:No

[king neckbeard]

Why should I be any more concerned about foreign agents than corporations, who openly use traditional media for their propaganda? The greatest threats always come from within, and all the Russia scaremongering in the world isn't going to change that.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Kettle meet pot.

How ironic is it US nationalists complain about foreign governments spying on them and interferring in their elections. Like the CIA and NSA haven't been doing that for decades past the cold war.

Re:No

[spire3661]

By little bubble, you mean our continent-sized nation that sets the cultural tone for the rest of the world? You do realize cultures come to us and we integrate them, right? Growing up in Detroit i got to experience all sorts of cultures..Polish, Irish, Greek, Arabs (Muslim and Christian), Italians, Germans, Slavs, Yugos, Croats.. Try a better tack next time besides 'America is culturally bankrupt'.

Re:No

[dgatwood]

Exactly. I don't know which to be more concerned about: foreign governments manipulating elections through organized propaganda or further scope creep of our intelligence services into the area of domestic surveillance.

No, wait. Yes, I do. The latter.

Russian electioneering happened once and is unlikely to happen again. There are too many people at too many companies studying what happened carefully and developing machine learning techniques and other strategies to ensure that it can't happen in the future. But once parts of the U.S. government gain additional access to various Internet services, you'll never get their fingers back out of that pie. One is a temporary manipulation of our freedom, the other is a permanent loss thereof.

Frankly, it should be an easy choice for anyone, no matter what political camp you fall into.

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

speech made not on US soil by non-citizens is covered by the 1A how, exactly?

Here's the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Can you point out where it says "soil" or "citizen"? Can you also explain how such restrictions are consistent with the phrase "no law"?

Re:No

[unixisc]

Free speech, anyone?

Precisely, how about making it clear to Zuckerburg, Dorsey, Pichai, Nadella, et al that EU restrictions on speech better not apply to US citizens, and if they do, those 4 companies should be banned from operating in the US?

I know, the First Amendment doesn't apply to private organizations, which are at liberty to ban whatever they like. However, when something starts out as an open (as in free speech) platform and then morphs into something else at the behest of governments outside the US and that gets universally applied as a simple 'one-size-fits-all' implementation of those governments' requirements, it's not a bad idea to step in. It would be different if we had dozens of FaceBooks, Twitters, mobile platforms and so on, but since we don't, it's worth looking at carefully!

Re:No

[ceoyoyo]

It seems to me the American constitution says things about "inalienable" rights. They're not very inalienable if they only count when you're a US citizen on US soil, are they?

Re:No

[ceoyoyo]

The US has lots of qualifications on freedom of speech codified into law. It starts in the US constitution ("Congress shall make no law....") and the infamous "the", and continues with lots of clarifying laws and court decisions.

You're correct that lots of other countries also have freedom of speech, with some restrictions, codified in their laws though.

Re:No

[Hognoxious]

The numbers & statistics may say that it's theoretically gone down, but Newt says otherwise!

Re:No

[unixisc]

speech made not on US soil by non-citizens is covered by the 1A how, exactly?

Ain't it something like how foreigners who're not in the US have the right to come here nonetheless - an argument the Left was using during the travel ban?

Re:No

[BitterOak]

speech made not on US soil by non-citizens is covered by the 1A how, exactly?

The First Amendment has nothing to do with whether or not the speech was made by citizens or not, nor to do with where the speech was made. The first words of the Amendment are "Congress shall make no law..." The Amendment applies to the U.S. Government, and by later amendments to States as well. (It doesn't apply to foreign legislatures or governments, but they may have their own Constitutions with similar protections.) Since the article is talking about a proposed law passed by Congress, the First Amendment applies. Nothing in the Amendment restricts the scope of its application with regards to citizenship of those targeted by the law or their geographical location. If you're on trial in a U.S. court, the First Amendment applies.

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

It seems to me the American constitution says things about "inalienable" rights.

Nope. That is the Declaration of Independence, which carries no force of law.

Re:No

[yndrd1984]

It seems to me the American constitution says things about "inalienable" rights.

Well, the Declaration of Independence does, but that's not considered to be legally binding in the same way as US Constitution.

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

Indeed. The Constitution does not give the federal government any authority to censor speech (which is what the FBI is trying to do). To the contrary, it specifically and unambiguously denies the federal government any such authority.

Re:No

[ShanghaiBill]

Nobody is being forced to listen or believe. It really is that simple.

No, it isn't that simple. The advocates of censorship don't just want to avoid hearing the message. They also want YOU to not hear the message.

This isn't about controlling what the Russians do. It is about controlling what the American people see and hear. The Russians are just the boogeyman being used as the justification.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your first two points,

3. Why should anyone assume that US citizens - supposedly among the world's healthiest

We aren't

best educated

We aren't

and most intelligent

Honestly, on average, we Americans are probably of average intelligence

are unable to distinguish between truth and propaganda? Or, indeed, to exercise their own opinions and judgment about all the many statements that fall in the grey area in between?

In most parts of the world the very idea that any government department or corporations should be allowed - let alone expected - to tell citizens what to believe and what not to believe would be greeted with shocked dismay.

Propaganda exists because it works. Americans are just as susceptible to propaganda as the rest of the world. I don't see any problem with our government attempting to prevent another government from using verifiably false information to influence our citizens. Now, should we be telling Facebook to perform these investigations? No, that should be the FBI's job, and I'm pretty sure (although I'm providing no information to back this up) that they already have the tools and relationships to do that.

We shouldn't enact laws to declare Facebook the propaganda police, but it is important to fight propaganda.

Re: No

[easyTree]

The greatest threats always come from within, and all the Russia scaremongering in the world isn't going to change that.

Though it may change the perception of it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

If any nation ever allowed a police department like the FBI to tell its citizens which is which, it would automatically be a police state.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said- but I will point out that the US government regularly tells other nations what to do on behalf of a select elite. Copy"right" is a great example of the US meddling in, manipulating, and intimidating other countries. Copy"right" is a political ideology- an artificial construct- and not one everybody agrees with. People on opposing ends of the spectrum from communists to libertarians don't believe in this artificial creation and everybody in-between just about ignores it evidenced by widespread permission-less copying around the world (ie democrats and republicans alike).

We're all living in a police state. One may be in more or less of a police state depending on where one lives, but none-the-less. As an example in the United States and many countries nazi-style checkpoints are routine (or I've heard some places the cops just pull over 20 cards at a time randomly without any reason to suspect people of a crime). They go under the guise of stopping drunk drivers- but in reality catch almost no drunk drivers and severely inconvenience thousands of people regularly and it would not surprise me if its not hit in the millions of people at this point. The US federal government is funding these checkpoints. They routinely ticket people for minor violations at these checkpoints and look primarily for anything in plain sight they can get people on. It's not about safety at all- but revenue generation and what would otherwise be illegal and unconstitutional search. Terrible court precedent has allowed this to happen. New Hampshire is probably one of the only states where there are regularly protesters at these checkpoints- thanks in most part to the Free State Project which is a migration of liberty-minded people to one region (state) for the purpose of pursuing the first free state/country/etc. That is implement the ideals of what we were suppose to have. Freedom to travel without hindrance (no registration, license, license plate, etc), freedom to associate (ie you should not be able to ban ex-cons from associating, voting, etc or groups from protesting/amassing, ie 'free speech' zones), freedom from theft (most tax is little more than a redistribution of wealth and a deprivation of peoples funds such that they become reliant on government for things like security, schooling, child care, and other things the majority would otherwise be able to afford), and so on.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many ways to suppress speech.
One that is popular when pushing propaganda is to just drown out unwanted messages with your own.
This method is pretty popular since it doesn't look like censorship while being very effective.
It is also cost effective. Someone hired to shitpost every day can cover an insane number of internet forums.
Especially since the posts doesn't have to be well thought out and the same message can be posted on several places without much modification.

So, are you going to support censorship in the name of free speech?

Re:No

[fustakrakich]

LIFE IS GRAYSCALE

Sure, for those who are color blind

Re:No

[LifesABeach]

Is it the charter of the CIA, and not that of the FBI?

Re:No

[LifesABeach]

Poor A/C is your culture un-adaptive? Have you considered the hopes of Ghost Dancers? They are yours.

Re:No

[Plus1Entropy]

There is no agreed upon "number" of countries in the world, because not everyone agrees that everyone else is a country. You counting Taiwan? Palestine (Gaza and West Bank together or separate)? Is Crimea still a country or not? The Russians might say no, but others disagree.

Obligatory CGP Grey.

Re:No

[Plus1Entropy]

I agree with your principle, but I think the law has been settled for a long time, i.e. the Constitution does not generally apply to non-citizens outside the country. To answer your question, I think it's implied in "the people", meaning "the people of the United States", as stated in the preamble.

In this particular case, you may be able to make the argument that the US Congress cannot limit what people can say or what they can hear. Meaning to censor non-citizen foreigners on social media would violate the 1st Amendment Rights of Americans who might read it.

Re:No

[Plus1Entropy]

Re-reading more carefully, "the people" part only applies to the peaceful assembly and petitioning the government. So you are completely right.

Re:No

[sexconker]

The 1st amendment expressly limits the government's ability to curtail any speech.

Re:No

[Plus1Entropy]

Can you give me a URL? I'd love to get my hands on some of those Soros bucks everyone keeps talking about.

Re:No

[Dutchmaan]

No, this is NOT about freedom of expression, this is about protecting THE TRUTH... the ability to separate facts from lies, to know where stories originate and the sources used so that they can be judged accurately... News IS about transparency.. and the subject at hand is NEWS, the information we consume about the world around us....not freedom of expression... What good is expression when you live in a world of lies... nothing more than parlor tricks and slights of hand. That is something we need to fight against.

Re:No

[Cederic]

our continent-sized nation

You shitting me? You're not even the largest country on the continent.

Re:No

[zifn4b]

speech made not on US soil by non-citizens is covered by the 1A how, exactly?

Here's the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Can you point out where it says "soil" or "citizen"? Can you also explain how such restrictions are consistent with the phrase "no law"?

Can you explain how one country would guarantee these rights in other countries for non-citizens of said country especially ones where they have laws that are not congruent with these principles? Nice try. It probably sounded good in your head as an abstract idea. In reality, when it comes to world affairs we only have the United Nations and not everyone is a member.

Re:No

[zifn4b]

1. As previous comments reminded you, freedom of speech is a fundamental human right - not reserved purely for US citizens.

Show me the document that codifies this right and that the entire world agreed with it. If that's not the origin of said human right, please describe in more detail the origin. Just saying X exists doesn't make it so.

Re: No

[zifn4b]

The text says `make no law` not `shall guarantee` big difference. The amendment says what congress cannot do.

It makes no difference. You are quoting doctrines of the United States of America. Just because the United States decreed something doesn't apply to the rest of the world. Do you not understand what a country is and how laws made by those countries do not apply to other countries unless there is some sort of treaty between those countries or some mutual adoption of a some type of convention?

Re: No

[ShanghaiBill]

Just because the United States decreed something doesn't apply to the rest of the world.

That is not what is happening here. The FBI is not going after the Russians, they are going after Facebook, an American company located in California. Can the federal government censor Facebook just because the text being censored was written by non-citizens? According to the US Constitution, they have no authority to do that.

Re:No

[KingBenny]

*nod*
if it really has to how about using goodspeak and 'encourage' them to , if they want to, without spending tax money on it
i'm still looking for the meaning of, no not life ... what exactly this thing called 'free market' and that other thing they call 'democracy' actually means cos as far as i know the entries in the dictionary are wrong ??!?

Re: No

[zifn4b]

Just because the United States decreed something doesn't apply to the rest of the world.

That is not what is happening here. The FBI is not going after the Russians, they are going after Facebook,

All posters of anti-American propaganda via Facebook reside in the United States then?

Re:No

[Archtech]

I have an aunt who swears that all the gays and trans are out to corrupt our youth by taking over the education system.

Have you understood that your disagreement with your aunt is perhaps nothing more than a semantic misunderstanding? Surely you would agree that *some* gays and trans people are determined to *enlighten* the nation's youth and *save them from prejudice* through the education system?

So it really boils down to her use of the term "corrupt" rather than "enlighten". Such misunderstandings are very common indeed - for instance, Socrates was condemned for teaching logic and philosophy, which Athenians chose to see as "corrupting the youth".

How about just laying out the facts for young people and letting them make up their own mind? Gay and trans people are neither particularly bad or particularly good. They are just different in some respects.

Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[bwanagary]

Let's start with our own media and politicians who can say whatever they want without any accountability.  This is the new millennium "boy who cried wolf".  With the deluge of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and unsubstantiated information that we are bombarded with daily people are now disbelieving of anything and everything.  Before we concern ourselves with foreign "information" we need to first get our own house in order.

Re:Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[avandesande]

In other words, maybe they should change the way they do news so that it is distinguishable from fake news.

Re:Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[jenningsthecat]

Let's start with our own media and politicians who can say whatever they want without any accountability. This is the new millennium "boy who cried wolf". With the deluge of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and unsubstantiated information that we are bombarded with daily people are now disbelieving of anything and everything. Before we concern ourselves with foreign "information" we need to first get our own house in order.

No clue why you were down-modded - what you're saying makes perfect sense to me. I understand that the 'intelligence community' needs to concern itself with foreign influences; but really, as you've pointed out, the more direct, present, day-to-day threat to democracy and social well-being comes from within. Yammering about vague foreign threats is just one more circus act distracting the populace from how they're being lied to and screwed over by corporations and by their own governments.

Re:Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[Mr307]

I miss the old days when we could get some reliable information from the MSM and make up our own minds, rather than this general collection of very politicized opinions with almost no facts.

Nowadays I am getting my info from many many locations and doing my best with it. Seems like a luxury item now to have a news organization actually do some real ground pounding legwork investigative journalism.

Re:Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

He should be down-modded for using a fixed width tag for something other than math/code.

Define foreign propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know where this is headed, classifying what we don't like as trolls and foreign propaganda, even if it doesn't fit the definition. The former happens here all the time.

Re:Define foreign propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Politically correct definitions:

• A "troll" is someone whose opinion disagrees with yours.
• Propaganda is the work product of trolls.
• "Foreign Propaganda" is work product of anonymous trolls. Although nobody can prove the citizenship of an anonymous troll, the "foreign" tag makes people feel better about censoring the speech of others, as it sweeps the 1st amendment issue under the rug.

Re:Define foreign propaganda

[superwiz]

You can preserve anonymity and (mostly) know when someone is posting from a foreign country. Simply put geolocation of each post, but don't put the exact location. Only identify the municipality and the country from which the post was made.

Re: Define foreign propaganda

[superwiz]

Geolocation databases are bullshit.

The more value they provide, the more accurate they'll become. There will be huge financial pressure and a lot of competition to get geolocation right if every post will depend on it. As for VPN's, you can detect that, too. And simply identify it as such. Not much value in hiding behind a VPN if your posts also say that you are posting through a VPN which ends in UK (even though you are most likely posting from Novosibirsk).

Re: Define foreign propaganda

[superwiz]

Yeah, the whole point is to preserve anonymity while identifying likely propaganda. I am guessing you already understand that. And that's why you are so frustrated -- you want to destroy anonymity.

Nothing?

[AmiMoJo]

There is nothing they can do? I'm sure they could post a rebuttal, from their official account, and people would share it in response. Facebook already adds "contested" tags to some stories, with links to sources that contest it. Have they asked about being added to that system?

Re:Nothing?

[fustakrakich]

I'm sure they could post a rebuttal...

Yes, that is the only appropriate response to "propaganda". Anything beyond that is excessive.

Re:Nothing?

[gurps_npc]

Not true.

They can add a tag that says "Paid Russian Post" (or Paid Chinese) etc.

Say contested is very different than telling the source.

Re:Nothing?

[superwiz]

This doesn't quite work. Creating thousands or even millions of fake accounts to create a perception of groupthink narrative cannot be countered with 1 authoritative source. The groupthink news can easily smear a few authoritative sources by painting them as propaganda. I was surprised when roughly 5-10 years ago people started mocking the idea of "freedom" on the internet as foolish. It's not so surprising when you realize that foreign propaganda outlets manage to convince their own populations that this is a foolish notion and they use the same methods on domestic US consumption. Identifying location of each post is the only way to counter this smurfing of information bombardment. Imagine if the (now infamous) story about "Macedonian content farmers" was real. If all the posts they made on social media were real, they would have little to no impact. Who would trust a massive flood of posts from Macedonia?

Re:Nothing?

[AmiMoJo]

They don't create many fake accounts. Look at the ones found so far, they rely on hundreds of thousands of useful idiots following them.

Re:Nothing?

[superwiz]

As far as you know. Newt Gingrich paid for millions for twitter followers when he ran for President (in 2012). And most of his followers were identified as having fake names. So that campaign definitely did have large numbers of fake accounts. Just because some other campaign didn't, doesn't mean that principle does not hold. Groupthink trumps authoritative sources. The only way to counter fake news is to identify the location of the sources or to show that they are posting through the same VPNs.

Re:Nothing?

[superwiz]

This will work until Facebook has a false positive on such identification twice. First time it will sow doubt. After the 2nd time the whole mechanism will become a subject for ridicule.

Re:Nothing?

[gurps_npc]

You are suggesting that we don't even call out the bad guys for fear of getting it wrong and making it worse? Would you refuse to name a criminal out of fear of putting an innocent person in jail?

That's stupid. I can see refusing to prosecute for fear of getting it wrong, but refusing to even call them out?

That's true cowardice.

Call them out, take reasonable steps to make sure you get it right, and the net affect will be positive.

Re:Nothing?

[superwiz]

Would you refuse to name a criminal out of fear of putting an innocent person in jail?

That's exactly what every responsible news outlet does. Every perpetrator of a crime is always reported to allegedly have committed a crime until they are convicted. Reporting otherwise would cast aspersions on someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime and who, therefore, is considered innocent under our system of government. Since you simply don't know that someone is paid to hack unless you were present in the meeting in which the money was exchange for the services (and even then you don't know if it was a joke), you can't claim that someone is saying something because they are a paid shill or because they genuinely believe what they are saying. I don't know where you get the whole "hacker" nonsense, btw. Shilling for a cause has been considered hacking.

Meaningless and would lead to...

[Sqreater]

..filtering such content. That means the FBI would get to pass on whether your comments constituted propaganda or not. Just a larger Southern Poverty Law Center list of unacceptable words, comments, sites, and blogs. Since everything expands despite good intentions, this would become oppressive of free speech rapidly. The goal is laudable, the actual result would be China.

Re:Meaningless and would lead to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Braccae tuae aperiuntur

Re:Meaningless and would lead to...

[hsthompson69]

Mod parent up - foreign propaganda can consist of genuine emails, and local propaganda can consist of faked national guard documents.

Truth is not something that is given to you, it is something you need to claw for with great personal effort.

Re:Meaningless and would lead to...

[superwiz]

Uh, or maybe just if you're one of a bunch of people spending hundreds of thousands on ads, pretending to be from American political organizations, and operating out of an FSB front in St. Petersburg?

ditto

Missing continuation...

[YuppieScum]

"Until it does, we'll be silently allowing our freedoms to be manipulated.... by others when it should be just by us."

How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see fake news on TV all the time. The worst of the stories get retracted -- eventually. The worst fakers get fired or reassigned (Dan Rather, Brian Williams, etc.) But there is a steady stream of anonymously sourced stories, presented as "news", only to magically disappear when it becomes obvious that somebody made it up.

http://www.washingtonexaminer....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06...
http://elections.huffingtonpos...

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[mean pun]

Sigh. One more time: those are not examples of fake news, they are examples of reporters trying to report the truth and failing.

Fake news is when you tell a deliberate lie. Fake news is not when you make an honest mistake; it is not selective news; it is not spin; it is when you tell a falsehood, a porky pie, a fib, an invention, a deliberate misstatement, disinformation. Donald Trump seems to be easily confused about this term, and many of his followers as well, but it is really not so difficult. Not true and you know it == Fake News.

And how do you say that you don't like a news item? Well, you just say you don't like the news item. I admit it is quite a mouthful in a Twitter message, but hey, that's Twitter for you.

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

Wingnut lies about Rather were deliberate, not an honest mistake.

FTFY. Even if the Air Guard memos were faked - which were a fraction of the case that Bush skipped out on his Guard commitments - the source only forged the truth. And this was a source, not something that Rather pulled out of his ass - and we don't see wingnuts demanding that every media person who ever covered Bush's claims on Iraq be fired, as those were indisputably lies.

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

The worst fakers get fired or reassigned (Dan Rather, Brian Williams, etc.)

Fakiest fakest fake false equivalence. Rather reported on a story made by a producer, who (as a fraction of the case that Bush went AWOL on his Air Guard commitments) included memos from a source. Memos that, even if forged, were accurate representations of the base commander's thoughts on Bush.

Contrast that to all the media reporters and pundits who breathlessly repeated Bush's claims on Saddam's WMD's, which were built on more bullshit than you can find at a cattle feedlot. Not one of the Rather haters demanded any of those people be fired.

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

AKA the "Uberbah believes demonstrably fake documents."

1) They were never demonstrated to be fake

2) Even if they were forged, it was a forgery of the base commander's actual views

3) And even then Rather had nothing to do with the production of the report, most of it not based on memos from the base commander

4) When are you fuckheads going to demand every media person who repeated Bush's Iraq lies be fired

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

Ummm, when a source gives you a DEMONSTRABLY FORGED document

Wingnuts questioning a document doesn't mean it's a forgery - just ask Obama's birth certificate. The authenticity of the documents one way or the other was never proven, and never will be as the source provided copies, not originals.

"Fake but accurate"

Who cares? If the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives turns out to be a forgery of the original - but one that is completely accurate - does that mean it shouldn't be quoted?

comes from CBS's legal department

The one that was determined to toss Rather out the door? Golly gee!

In other words, they de facto admitted that Dan Rather is the ultimate purveyor of fake news - literally.

Literally more bullshit than a cattle feedlot. You wingnuts have spent over a decade fucking that chicken but DGAF that Bush did in fact go AWOL on his Guard service, only to run around accusing anyone who questioned the Iraq war as a coward.

And, you're the third AC to skate right on past the fact that none of you fuckwits has ever called for anyone to resign for repeating Bush's lies over Iraq. Which are proven.

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Zemran]

When Bush said that Saddam had WMDs and could use them to attack in 45 minutes he was fully aware that that was a lie. In various accounts defenders of countries that are attacked by the US are called terrorists when they are merely defending their country. This and loads more is fake news by the US government. The US creates the most fake news and does it to effect elections in other countries for example Ukraine. Most people in the US actually believe that Russia invaded Crimea when this was very clearly a lie. Ukraine is far worse now than it was before. I have been there many times and was there last week. It has suffered greatly from the coup that was driven by US lies. Do you even remember that girl that was hired to lie to congress to get the first Iraq war started? We now know 100% that that was a deliberate lie.

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

Yeah, they were written in a proportionally-spaced font

All of which was able to be done on typewriters made in the 70's. The rest of your post is continued fucking of a decade old dead chicken.

4) When are you fuckheads going to demand every media person who repeated Bush's Iraq lies be fired

Great, now your dragging in Iraq. Can't win defending Dan rather, so you try to muddy the waters.

Wingnut translator: "don't highlight the fact we are hypocritical, brain dead partisan hacks who created a standard that applies to Dan Rather, and no one but Dan Rather! Certainly not Fox News, which would have had to fire every person who worked for the organization if reporting false information was really a problem for us!"

You're as bad as the Hillbots who go on defending her private email server, right after being shown video of her complaining about the Bush Administration's use of private email. You guys hang out for coffee and doughnuts?

Re:How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?

[Uberbah]

Amazing how horrible these GOPers are, that the only evidence of them being bad has to be made up. You would think you could just pull anything they did ever and it would be proof of how bad they are, but you don't you literally make shit up and claim its the truth.

I constantly call out Russiagate for the unhinged McCarthyism it is, so in your attempt to call bullshit here you only got it all over your face. Now, back to the topic, it's a fact that Bush skipped out on his Air Guard service, which in itself was a way to get out of Vietnam. I wouldn't GAF about that, as the occupation of Vietnam was a crime against humanity that killed millions, if Bushco hadn't gone around smearing anyone who questioned the illegal Afghanistan and Iraq wars as cowards.

No

[chispito]

Thanks Betteridge.

Hold on a second...

[Gravis Zero]

Legit question: have we been doing the exact same thing to other nations? If so, this is really a problem of your own making. Either way, sanctions are an option but if you are doing the exact same thing, they are going to be uninclined to comply.

Education

[Areyoukiddingme]

Gee, maybe the powers that be will actually have to encourage the training of critical thought in the population at large, so people can approach the marketplace of ideas with some discernment.

Naaah. They'd much rather have sheeple they can trivially manipulate themselves. If they get derailed by some foreign power's propaganda, they can be put right again by doubling down on their own propaganda. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Re:What about CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc?

[Dutchmaan]

...and how do we know you're not the very kind of foreign propaganda troll the article mentions, trying to discredit our own media?

what else is new?

[doctorvo]

The bureau is now faced with huge private companies, like Facebook and Twitter, which are ostensibly neutral and have no professional or ethical obligation to vet the material they distribute.

So... just like all our other media then?

Nothing new

[Dan East]

This is nothing new. The only difference is modern technology and connectivity makes the reach and impact greater. There have always been propaganda in the form of shortwave radio broadcasts, printed text (leaflets, magazines, books), one on one contact and even television. It's just that in the past a person had to more actively seek out these communications to be exposed to them. Now it is coming through in our more normal day-to-day lives.

The problem is that the bulk of the Western public is naive and takes too many things at face value. There's an innocence, if you will. A big part of that is not having been (too terribly) deceived by government to the point it led to things like mass imprisonment or death.

Misinformation and gullibility is rampant on social media and it needs to be addressed more fundamentally, but unfortunately social media represents one of the truest forms of democracy, and the results shed light on the fact that the "average" person is simply not very intelligent when it comes to certain matters.

For example, the people constantly sharing Facebook posts that say crap like "We ordered too many luxury RVs and they are last year's model so we have to give them away", and all the various permutations thereof ( http://www.snopes.com/luxury-r... ). It really takes a special kind of naivety to share something like that.

The one that is particularly annoying to me at this moment are people sharing pictures of this traffic jam from Rita (Texas, 2005) claiming it is from the Irma hurricane hitting Florida right now (and then it typically includes other stuff like "this is why so many people have to shelter in place and not evacuate"): http://www.hurricanescience.or... That is a much more subtle type of misinformation, but it is still "fake news".

So no, in answer to the question, we don't need government / corporations / etc trying to protect the American people from foreign propaganda. We need to educate the populace in a more general way to identify and filter out manipulative "fake news" and other garbage of the sort.

Re:Nothing new

[dgatwood]

So no, in answer to the question, we don't need government / corporations / etc trying to protect the American people from foreign propaganda. We need to educate the populace in a more general way to identify and filter out manipulative "fake news" and other garbage of the sort.

Heh. Good luck with that. We've been trying for over twenty years, and Fox News and MSNBC are still on the air.

Re:Isn't most of it propaganda these days?

[HornWumpus]

When and where was that? Seriously, it was way before my time, and I'm old. Were you watching TV or news reals? Couldn't have been TV.

First Amendment

[doctorvo]

Just a reminder:

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

That isn't qualified by saying "except for foreign political views the US government doesn't approve of".

The First Amendment is as much a guarantee to be able to receive information freely as it is to speak freely.

Re: First Amendment

[Uberbah]

We should be proud of the fact that we helped put down the Arab dictatorships

Like when we sold weapons to the Bahrain dictatorship to brutally put down their Arab Spring protests, while at the very same time bombing Gaddafi to protect his Arab Spring protestors?

Re:What about CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc?

[hsthompson69]

...and how do we know that CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc aren't the very kind of foreign propaganda trolls the article mentions, trying to discredit our own independent media outlets?

"Everything you know is wrong." - Weird Al

The problem is ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... some people want to learn the truth and some want to validate their own beliefs. The former will continue research the things, the latter will be happy with what they find. "Fake News" is a problem for the former to weed through, but is the answer for others. Intervention and/or identification may help some, but won't make any difference to others - or may make them hold on to their beliefs more tightly. Some people have their identities built around what they believe, regardless of the truth. You can't fix that with a warning label.

Re:Hypocrites

[mean pun]

You think maybe we should stop interfering in everybody else's elections before we demand everyone else stop interfering in ours?

No. You can do both at the same time.

Should be forced to allow all political views.

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter bans popular, but "offensive" accounts.

YouTube is creating a system to isolate "bad" videos (commenting disallowed, won't find in search, possibly can't be embedded/linked). Jordan Peterson lost his YouTube *and* GMail account because someone thought he made offensive videos (complaints eventually got it back, but what about people without clout?).

These companies have made open platforms for the public at large to use them. It would be simple enough to say that anyone who makes offers such a service to the public for free will have to comply with the principles of freedom of thought. (EULAs or Terms of Service won't get them out of this since those are contracts and the terms of contracts are set/enforced by the government.) They can ban porn and commercial spam, fine, but expressing unpopular sentiments should be allowed.

MSM Is Perceived As Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick clamp down on the internet! Free speech must only be allowed when its to OUR tune. God forbid we actually educate our citizens on what is really going on so they won't be so easily persuaded by the enemy. This here is when the internet goes to shit folks, when it challenges those in authority. It was a good run while it lasted.

when others do...the exceptionalism

[quantic_oscillation7]

lol...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://web.stanford.edu/class...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Resurrect HUAC?

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Are they suggesting that the US resurrect The House Un-American Activities Committee?

Re:Resurrect HUAC?

[fustakrakich]

*cough* Patriot Act

Re:Resurrect HUAC?

[VeryFluffyBunny]

:) Wish I had mod points

Re:What about CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc?

[msauve]

"Everything you know is wrong." - Weird Al

Young pup. That quote is from "Happy" Harry Cox. Quid Malmborg in Plano.

This could be interesting

[Kormoran]

Before 2008 nobody in the US gov cared about foreign propaganda. Now they worry about people saying things they don't like. That's the same thing USSR was worried about all the time since post-WW2 at least... people must not speak freely, or they will tell things the Nomenklatura cannot allow to pass over as truth.

IMHO, this means that US propaganda (yes, there is) is not working anymore. American people, or at least a significant part of it, has stopped thinking what the deep state (and the media, and the elites) wants they to think. The writing is on the wall. Now the million dollar question is: what american people is going to think? What will they held as truth, what will they value most, what will they ask to their government?

Re:This could be interesting

[Max_W]

What is interesting it that people, who in the USSR were the most severe hard-liners, who uncompromisingly protected the official communist ideas, became again the official line supporters. Even if it meant changing political orientation by 180 degrees.

It is so called Status Quo Bias, a social and psychological phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: What about CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc?

[Dutchmaan]

You seem a little triggered there comrade.

DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[c0y]

The network we built to survive nuclear war has been weaponized against us and DARPA is giving out grants now to study how its child turned into a killer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Russia is trying to incite civil war and very few people see how. Their end game is not a glorious Trump presidency but a demoralized and ineffectual United States that no longer intrudes in their sphere of influence.

We're a nation of useful idiots now. Our partisan hatred makes us more willing believers in the alleged atrocities of our enemies. Credulity is vulnerability. Patriotism now requires skepticism of atrocities by political opponents and criticism of real misbehavior by our allies that feeds weaponized narratives.

Re:DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[Pinky's Brain]

Russia is trying to internally destabilize the EU and US, I doubt they are aiming for civil war in countries with nukes though.

On the other hand globalists tried to push the EU into incorporating an economic basket case for geopolitical reasons and against EU citizen's economic interests, like most EU expansions in recent history, helping kick all this shit off.

Re:DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[c0y]

I found this fake antifa manual circulating among US civil war / confederate history buffs in the days before Charlottesville. They are livid and eating up the red meat of each new outrage.

http://imgur.com/gallery/BcZOg?

Someone went to a lot of work making that, and they fully understand right-wing paranoid fantasies. This is too much effort for so many pages of such poor satire. It's not designed to convert/convince but to incite latent fear and hate. If that isn't the Kremlin thumbing its nose at us, then it is someone who wants us to think it is Kremlin. The manual was posted to imgur about a week after Trump signed new sanctions.

We also see evidence of Russian incitement in the troll factory activity on twitter that is more easily linked to their networks.

https://www.dailykos.com/stori...

The most useful idiots are Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich, who are all pushing the idea of a new civil war. We don't need help hating each other, but we are getting it. (Donald Trump is more than a useful idiot. Since he has the full briefings, we have to consider him overtly complicit in the campaign to incite political violence.)

We need to rewrite the rules for Poe's law. The Charlottesville corollary is that satire of fundamentalism provides cover for propaganda and false flag action. The most dangerous weapon in information warfare is one that we never see as a weapon.

Given that the antifa manual is a parody of leftist fundamentalism, it says something about the dangerous political divide that a segment of people can't tell the difference any more.

Re:DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[Pinky's Brain]

There a lot of kids and people who never grew up on the right with a lot of time on their hands, blaming Putin for this bit of larping is a stretch.

If you want it to look authentic instead of clear satire you wouldn't put that bit of not distributing to cis white males for a start, they are the majority of Antifa after all.

Re:DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[Pinky's Brain]

The majority of Antifa (a loose assembly of people who protest anyone they perceive as fascists) consists of white people born biologically male who exclusively fuck women (ie. cis white males). So when an "Antifa manual" says "do not distribute to cis white males" you know apriori it's a joke.

Re:DARPA grant needed to fix previous DARPA grant

[Uberbah]

Russia is trying to incite civil war and very few people see how.

Maybe because it's the most deranged conspiracy theory since the idea Obama's parents knew in the 60's that he'd be president, and planted a fake birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper to back up the Kenyan's fake birth certificate?

The story goes that Putin was crafty enough to dug up dirt (which all happens to be true) on Hillary (who was already campaigning on shooting down Russian jets in Syria) and gave it to Wikileaks to torpedo her campaign. Yet Putin, while being that crafty, was at the same time dumb as a sack of hammers by colluding with Trump, because reasons. Which means the CIA and the NSA would have known all about this collusion.

Which means President Hillary - it was still her election to lose right up until she didn't bother campaigning in the Rust Belt - would have known about it too. Which means this entire storyline is nothing but Swiftboating projection from partisan tribalists. Interfering with other countries governments and elections, both overtly and covertly, is what you do to the rest of the world.

Whatever

[nehumanuscrede]

Congress can't even keep their own in house processes corruption free.

Get back to me about dictating what everyone else is doing when they get their own shit together.

What law is being broken?

[petes_PoV]

there's literally nothing the FBI can do to stop a propaganda operation

And since it is not illegal, why should they want the power to try?

There are no laws apart from fraud, libel and slander that dictate that everything everyone says has to be true. And if there was, then no politician would last 5 minutes before having their ass hauled off to jail.

The FBI seem to have created their own "issue" here, defined it as bad and then decided that someone else should have the duty and the obligation to fix it for them. Well, that isn't how democracies work. If something is illegal, have the law enforcement deal with it. If it isn't illegal then either make it so, or let is go.

But trying to prevent people saying stuff, just because you don't like it, is not the way to go.

Re:For a more rational discussion on the issue

[Pinky's Brain]

Slashdot is fine, anywhere where free speech and relative anonymity (ie. it takes more than a minute to dox someone) exist political incorrectness has no lack of representation, nor does it need Putin.

I maybe lose a little more karma than I gain by being offensively politically incorrect, but it's pretty even handed.

No, Duh

[Greyfox]

Where's the fun in that? I mean, it's the perfect opportunity to create an over-priced federal agency to do that, or justify the budget of an existing one. And set up government servers at social media sites to collect information about all the users and what they're posting. Think there's not a precedent for that? Ever hear of those secret NSA comms closets with all the major telcos? Google it. Anywhoo, so you set up your new federal office, are now listening to all traffic on all the social media networks (Except Google+, because seriously, who uses that?) and you can leverage that 2002 law forbidding foreign nationals from influencing elections. Which is not unconstitutional because the constitution only applies to USA citizens (That's already been well established in Gitmo cases.) Ohh yeah... Christmas is coming early to the Government this year! Thanks, Russians!

Scary

[easyTree]

Without any direct way to investigate and identify the source of the private accounts that generate this "fake news," there's literally nothing the FBI can do to stop a propaganda operation that can occur on such a massive scale.

It must be worrying when your own propaganda machine is being neutralised. The horror.

US is already a police state

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is already a police state in which:

1. Policeman are routinely armed with deadly weapons even when not sent out to confront some armed gang etc.
2. Policemen usually get away with summary execution of citizens with no cause even when caught on tape.
3. About 1% of the population is incarcerated at any given time
4. The central government can detain people incognito, holding them in isolated (sometimes secret) compounds out of the sovereign territory and deny them procedural legal rights (PATRIOT act and other practices)
5. The police can (only in some states?) confiscate personal property upon arrest for certain offenses, before sentencing, conviction or (AFAIK) even charges being filed
6. The central government records much of the population's online communications; not clear how much, but we do know from the Snowden disclosures that most email and social network interaction is recorded, indexed and later used

There's probably a lot more, but, really - is this not enough?

Re:US is already a police state

[Plus1Entropy]

No, it's not enough.

People who came to the United States from actual police states (like my father who grew up in Egypt) would be able to describe the differences to you in minute detail. The fact that secret policemen are not breaking your door down this instant just for posting your comment is all the proof you need.

Although I want to say that I agree with all the specific points you made, but I don't think we're that far gone yet.

False Advertising

[mi]

For better or worse, it has long been established, that False Advertising is not protected by the Amendment.

Most social media companies promise — explicitly or implicitly — interaction with other people. Or, when it is with businesses or other organizations, the accounts are clearly marked as such — or are supposed to be under the terms and conditions of the usage. For example, this line from Facebook's Terms:

1. You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.

implicitly promises, that the company will fight people/entities lying...

A company's failure to enforce such terms should be interpreted as a failure to deliver the service it promised its advertisers and other users. It can — and should — be punished for the breach. No special laws are necessary even — we already have them...

American paid trolling is a way bigger problem

[Rujiel]

... because your and my taxes are paying for it. Paying, to be lied to.

Re:American paid trolling is a way bigger problem

[Gallomimia]

The police investigated themselves for using excessive force and found no wrongdoing.

Our media routinely discredit theirselves

[Rujiel]

If someone's not paying you already, you probably could make some money playing dumb like this--for example, Israel or Monsanto would gladly pay you for your writing service.

Re: How is this any worse than domestic propaganda

[Rujiel]

"they are examples of reporters trying to report the truth and failing." Bullllllshit. You are either paid, or one of the most delusional people I've ever seen regarding the media

Two issues

[shentino]

There are two separate issues here.

First, do foreign propaganda trolls have free speech rights in relation to the federal government?

Second, if they don't, can social media be forced to investigate said trolls?

I'm a little iffy on the first part, but my theory is that anything that would bring a foreigner of any sort under US jurisdiction in the first place would also put them under the protection of the constitution, with the attending protections to free speech as provided in the first amendment.

The second part is a completely different angle. Social media sites themselves are entitled to their own constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, and they are also not agents of the state. Unless a court order says otherwise they are under no obligation to investigate foreign trolls, or, for that matter, even lift a finger to assist the government in doing so.

So, in a nutshell, apart from first amendment implications with the trolls themselves, why should social media sites have to roll up their own sleeves to do the government's job for them?

Re:Two issues

[Gallomimia]

Can I stop to mention that such freedoms to speak uncouthly regarding ones own government in such freedom loving country as Canada? There are several laws against free speech.

No. Market Correct

[Gallomimia]

I believe the world of massive social media will soon implode, and give way to decentralized private interoperable networks, and the platforms that have adequate moderation will attract the masses away from the ones that don't. It's not exactly a new concept.

Re: healthiest, best educated, and most intelligen

[Archtech]

Are you familiar with the word "supposedly"? As in:

"Why should anyone assume that US citizens - supposedly among the world's healthiest, best educated, and most intelligent - are unable to distinguish between truth and propaganda?"

supposedly
n adverb according to what is generally believed or supposed.

I did not say that I think US citizens are among the world's healthiest, best educated, and most intelligent. I said that it is generally supposed in some quarters. In particular, it is generally supposed by the US government. Which makes it inconsistent and hypocritical for the USA government to simulate concern that US citizens are being deceived by propaganda. If US citizens are as clever and well-educated as the US government would have us believe, those citizens would have no difficulty in distinguishing between truth and lies.