{"id":41787,"date":"2014-04-07T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=41787"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:08","slug":"the-cuban-twitter-scam-is-a-drop-in-the-internet-propaganda-bucket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/04\/the-cuban-twitter-scam-is-a-drop-in-the-internet-propaganda-bucket\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cCuban Twitter\u201d Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Apr 2014 – <\/i>This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program<\/a> run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create \u201ca Twitter-like Cuban communications network<\/a>\u201d run through \u201csecret shell companies\u201d\u00a0in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service\u2019s Cuban users was the fact that \u201cAmerican contractors were gathering their private\u00a0data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes\u201d\u2013specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. According to top-secret documents published today by The Intercept<\/i>, this sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for\u00a0\u201dpropaganda,\u201d \u201cdeception,\u201d \u201cmass messaging,\u201d and \u201cpushing stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

These ideas\u2013discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets\u2013appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ\u2013and previously published by The Intercept<\/i><\/a>\u00a0as well as some by NBC News<\/a>\u2013detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to \u201cdiscrediting\u201d the agency\u2019s enemies with false information spread online.<\/p>\n

The documents in the archive show that the British are particularly aggressive and eager in this regard, and formally shared their methods with their U.S. counterparts.\u00a0One previously undisclosed top-secret document<\/a>\u2013<\/i>prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual \u201cSIGDEV\u201d gathering of the \u201cFive Eyes\u201d surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.\u2013explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda.<\/p>\n

\"gchq1\"<\/a>The document was presented by GCHQ\u2019s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The unit\u2019s self-described purpose is\u00a0\u201cusing online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world<\/a>,\u201d including \u201cinformation ops (influence or disruption).\u201d The British agency describes its JTRIG and Computer Network Exploitation operations as a \u201cmajor part of business\u201d at GCHQ, conducting \u201c5% of Operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The annual SIGDEV conference, according to one NSA document published today<\/a> by The Intercept<\/i>, \u201cenables unprecedented visibility of SIGINT Development activities from across the\u00a0Extended Enterprise, Second Party and US Intelligence communities.\u201d The 2009 Conference, held at Fort Meade, included \u201ceighty-six representatives from the wider US Intelligence\u00a0Community, covering agencies as diverse as CIA (a record 50 participants), the Air Force Research\u00a0Laboratory and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defenders of surveillance agencies have often insinuated that such proposals are nothing more than pipe dreams and wishful thinking on the part of intelligence agents. But these documents are not merely proposals or hypothetical scenarios.\u00a0As described by the NSA document published today,\u00a0the purpose of SIGDEV presentations is \u201cto synchronize discovery efforts, share breakthroughs, and swap\u00a0knowledge on the art of analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

For instance: One of the programs described by the newly released GCHQ document is dubbed \u201cRoyal Concierge,\u201d under which the British agency intercepts email confirmations of hotel reservations to enable it to subject hotel guests to electronic monitoring. It also contemplates how to \u201cinfluence the hotel choice\u201d of travelers and to determine whether they stay at \u201cSIGINT friendly\u201d hotels. The document asks: \u201cCan we influence the hotel choice? Can we cancel their visit?\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously,\u00a0der Spiegel<\/i><\/a> and NBC News<\/a>\u00a0both independently confirmed that the \u201cRoyal Concierge\u201d program has been implemented and extensively used. The German magazine reported that \u201cfor more than three years, GCHQ has had a system to automatically monitor hotel bookings of at least 350 upscale hotels around the world in order to target, search, and analyze reservations to detect diplomats and government officials.\u201d NBC\u00a0<\/i>reported\u00a0that \u201cthe intelligence agency uses the information to spy on human targets through \u2018close access technical operations,\u2019 which can include listening in on telephone calls and tapping hotel computers as well as sending intelligence officers to observe the targets in person at the hotels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The GCHQ document<\/a> we are publishing today expressly contemplates exploiting social media venues such as Twitter, as well as other communications venues including email, to seed state propaganda\u2013GHCQ\u2019s word, not mine\u2013across the internet:<\/p>\n

\"gchq2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"gchq3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(The GCHQ document also describes a practice called\u00a0\u201ccredential harvesting,\u201d which NBC described as an effort to \u201cselect journalists who could be used to spread information\u201d that the government wants distributed. According to the NBC report, GCHQ agents would employ \u201celectronic snooping to identify non-British journalists who would then be manipulated to feed information to the target of a covert campaign.\u201d Then, \u201cthe journalist\u2019s job would provide access to the targeted individual, perhaps for an interview.\u201d Anonymous sources that NBC didn\u2019t characterize claimed at the time that GCHQ had not employed the technique.)<\/p>\n

Whether governments should be in the business of publicly disseminating political propaganda at all is itself a controversial question. Such activities are restricted by law in many countries, including the U.S. In 2008, The New York Times\u2019<\/i>\u00a0David Barstow won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a domestic effort<\/a> coordinated by the Pentagon whereby retired U.S. generals posed as \u201cindependent analysts\u201d employed by American television networks and cable news outlets as they secretly coordinated their messaging with the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

Because American law bars the government from employing political propaganda domestically, that program was likely illegal<\/a>, though no legal accountability was ever brought to bear (despite all sorts of calls<\/a> for formal investigations<\/a>). Barack Obama, a presidential candidate at the time, pronounced himself in a campaign press release \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d by the Pentagon program, which he said \u201csought to manipulate the public\u2019s trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Propagandizing foreign populations has generally been more legally acceptable. But it is difficult to see how government propaganda can be segregated from domestic consumption in the digital age. If American intelligence agencies are adopting the GCHQ\u2019s tactics of \u201ccrafting messaging campaigns to go \u2018viral\u2019,\u201d the legal issue is clear: A \u201cviral\u201d online propaganda campaign, by definition, is almost certain to influence its own citizens as well as those of other countries.<\/p>\n

For its part, GCHQ refused to answer any specific questions on the record, instead providing its standard boilerplate script which it provides no matter the topic of the reporting: \u201call of GCHQ\u2019s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.\u201d The NSA refused to comment.<\/p>\n

But these documents, along with the AP\u2019s exposure of the sham \u201cCuban Twitter\u201d program, underscore how aggressively western governments are seeking to exploit the internet as a means to manipulate political activity and shape political discourse.<\/p>\n

Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the \u201cCuban Twitter\u201d program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.<\/p>\n

Documents published with this article:<\/i><\/p>\n