From: drarwingnutte@gmail.com   
      
   How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy   
   Reputations    
   By Glenn Greenwald24 Feb 2014, 6:25 PM EST 104    
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   Featured photo - How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate,   
   Deceive, and Destroy Reputations A page from a GCHQ top secret document   
   prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit    
   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 r   
   putation-destruction. It's time to    
   tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.    
      
   Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of   
   articles about "dirty trick" tactics used by GCHQ's previously secret unit,   
   JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four   
   classified GCHQ documents    
   presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking   
   "Five Eyes" alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new   
   JTRIG document, in full, entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online   
   Covert Operations".    
      
   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   
   "hacktivists" of using, the use of "   
   honey traps" (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.    
      
   Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to   
   inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the   
   reputation of its targets; and (2) 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: "false flag operations" (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   
   "negative information" on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of   
   tactics from the latest    
   GCHQ document we're publishing today:    
      
      
      
   Other tactics aimed at individuals are listed here, under the revealing title   
   "discredit a target":    
      
      
      
   Then there are the tactics used to destroy companies the agency targets:    
      
      
      
   GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: "using online   
   techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world", including   
   "information ops (influence or disruption)".    
      
      
      
   Critically, the "targets" for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend   
   far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their   
   leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion   
   of many of these    
   techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of "traditional law   
   enforcement" against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of   
   ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, "hacktivism", meaning those who use   
   online protest activity for    
   political ends.    
      
   The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency's own awareness   
   that it is "pushing the boundaries" by using "cyber offensive" techniques   
   against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security   
   threats, and indeed,    
   centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:    
      
      
      
   No matter your views on Anonymous, "hacktivists" or garden-variety criminals,   
   it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government   
   agencies being able to target any individuals they want - who have never been   
   charged with, let alone    
   convicted of, any crimes - with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics   
   of reputation destruction and disruption. There is a strong argument to make,   
   as Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the Paypal 14   
   hacktivist    
   persecution, that the "denial of service" tactics used by hacktivists result   
   in (at most) trivial damage (far less than the cyber-warfare tactics favored   
   by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political protest   
   protected by the First    
   Amendment.    
      
   The broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance agencies   
   have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people's   
   reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they've   
   been charged with no crimes,    
   and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or   
   even national security threats. As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of   
   McGill University told me, "targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to   
   targeting citizens for    
   expressing their political beliefs, resulting in the stifling of legitimate   
   dissent." Pointing to this study she published, Professor Coleman vehemently   
   contested the assertion that "there is anything terrorist/violent in their   
   actions."    
      
   Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and   
   covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and   
   disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation.   
   Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a    
   close Obama adviser and the White House's former head of the Office of   
   Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008   
   proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and   
   pseudo-"independent" advocates to "   
   cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites, as well as other activist   
   groups.    
      
      
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