{"id":40419,"date":"2014-03-03T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=40419"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:02","slug":"how-covert-agents-infiltrate-the-internet-to-manipulate-deceive-and-destroy-reputations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/03\/how-covert-agents-infiltrate-the-internet-to-manipulate-deceive-and-destroy-reputations\/","title":{"rendered":"How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A page from a GCHQ top secret document prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit<\/p><\/div>\n

24 Feb 2014 – <\/i>One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It\u2019s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.<\/p>\n

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News<\/i> to publish a series<\/a> of articles<\/a> about \u201cdirty trick\u201d tactics<\/a> used by GCHQ\u2019s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four<\/a>\u00a0classified<\/a>\u00a0GCHQ<\/a>\u00a0documents<\/a>\u00a0presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking\u00a0\u201cFive Eyes\u201d alliance<\/a>.\u00a0Today, we at the Intercept<\/i> are publishing another new JTRIG document<\/a>, in full, entitled \u201cThe Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse \u201chacktivists\u201d of using, the use of \u201choney traps\u201d (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.<\/p>\n

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1)<\/b> to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2)<\/b> to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: \u201cfalse flag operations\u201d (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting \u201cnegative information\u201d on various forums.\u00a0Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we\u2019re publishing today:<\/p>\n

PLEASE GO TO ORIGINAL TO ACCESS ALL TABLES, PHOTOS, GRAPHS \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, <\/i>No Place to Hide<\/em>, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn\u2019s column was featured at <\/i>Guardian US<\/em> and <\/i>Salon<\/em>. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/i>Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He lives in Rio, Brazil.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Feb 2014 – One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It\u2019s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}