Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs. That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
STATS: Migrants Committing Disproportionately High Crime In Germany, Media/Govt Focus on 'Far Right' Thought Crimes
While much of this criminality concerned illegal border crossings, German authorities instead talked up a “record surge” in crimes by “right wing radicals”. Concerning statistics from the 135-page report reveal that 70 per cent of pickpocketing, one of the crime types on the rise, was committed by non-Germans. Of this figure, 34 per cent was committed by recent asylum seekers, with the rest committed by “non-Germans”.
British army creates team of Facebook warriors
The British army is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age. The 77th Brigade, to be based in Hermitage, near Newbury, in Berkshire, will be about 1,500-strong and formed of units drawn from across the army. It will formally come into being in April. The brigade will be responsible for what is described as non-lethal warfare. Both the Israeli and US army already engage heavily in psychological operations.
US military launches Operation Sock Puppet, pays contractor $2.76m for social media ops (UPDATED)
From the Your Tax Dollars at Work file, news that the US military's Central Command (CENTCOM) has awarded a $2.7 million contract to Ntrepid, a newly-formed Los Angeles-based startup, to create fake online "personae" for the purpose of manipulating online conversations and spreading pro-American, pro-military propaganda in social media. The "online persona management service" called for in the contract would permit one US serviceman or woman to manage up to 10 separate sock puppets. The Guardian article today says the program would make it possible to "secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter." CENTCOM disagrees with this characterization of the program, and their statement to Boing Boing is at the bottom of this post. Snip from Guardian: Read the whole article in the Guardian: "Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media"
War on Syria begins with mass vaccination program
Rady AnandaActivist Post Before the first official bomb lands on Syria, the New World Order plans to vaccinate 2.2 million Syrian children under the age of five, reportedly to protect against polio. The global plan now includes all of the Middle East, seeking to vaccinate 23 million children under the age of five. That went so well in Africa, India and Pakistan that surely Big Pharma profits going in and out, in caring for all the syndromes that develop — later if not immediately — and earning a tidy sum under the snake oil promise that vaccines prevent disease or provide protection against them. Evidence show that vaccines are too loaded with toxins and nanobits of who-knows-what to risk the side effects or sub rosa purpose of today’s vaccines.
12 Fake News Stories from the Mainstream Media
Walter Duranty and the Holodomor: The mother of all fake news stories must be New York Times reporter Walter Duranty helping Stalin’s Russia conceal the Holodomor from the world. Duranty helped the communists cover up one of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated, the forced starvation of over 1.5 million people in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. This was the worst of many lies Duranty told in the service of Soviet communism.
Hypocrisy of the west over fake news claim
The defence secretary, Michael Fallon, appears ignorant of well-established UK and US military programmes designed to modify public perceptions in conflict zones (Nato must counter Russia’s ‘weaponising’ of lies – Fallon, 3 February). A prototype system was first reported in detail by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain in the Guardian nearly six years ago – just as Nato began air attacks on Libya (Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media, 18 March 2011). I quote: “… it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives … each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details … up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.
Operation Earnest Voice
According to CENTCOM, the US-based Facebook and Twitter networks are not targeted by the program because US laws prohibit state agencies from spreading propaganda among US citizens as according to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.[6] However, according to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, dissemination of foreign propaganda to domestic audiences is expressly allowed over the internet including social media networks.[7] Isaac R. Porche, a researcher at the RAND corporation, claims it would not be easy to exclude US audiences when dealing with internet communications.[5] Details of the program[edit] The US government signed a $2.8 million contract with the Ntrepid web-security company to develop a specialized software, allowing agents of the government to post propaganda on "foreign-language websites".[2] Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software development request, are:
Nanobiometrics Will Track You By Smell
Nicholas WestActivist Post In a few short years, we already have become accustomed to drone surveillance and an array of biometric ID tracking technology that has formed a pervasive matrix of identification and personal data retention. As discussed in How Close Are We to a Nano-Based Surveillance State?
Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group
The Washington Post on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.” The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. Yet the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics.
