US Military Explored Hiring Bloggers As Propagandists 355
Zeinfeld writes "Wired reports that one time Clipper Chip supporter Dorothy Denning wrote a report on using blogs for information warfare in 2006 (a report available from cryptome). Amongst the proposals were hiring bloggers directly as propaganda agents and using military media resources to 'make' a blogger posting favorable material. Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media." Is meme warfare just another battleground, or is this dirty pool?
Cool (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
planned obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Politicizing the military is a real problem in a democratic society. During the 1930s through 70s a whole succession of army generals and colonels decided that they could do a better job than the democratic governments of their countries. Thats how Hitler tried to come to power the first time (the beer hall putsch) and how Franco came to power.
The people who complain about the 'liberal media' seem to believe that anything that does not toe the GOP party line as Hanity, Limbaugh etc. do must be biased.
The establishment media in the US is all biased towards the right. Every Sunday the network news shows feature talk show guest lists where Republicans outnumber Democrats by two to one. And when a Democrat does appear, Lieberman is far more likely to appear than Ted Kennedy. Not one of the panels reviewing the first five years of Bush's war in Iraq had a commentator who had been publicly opposed to the war at the start. That is a pretty clear pro-GOP bias. One would expect that a Kos or a Josh Marshall would have earned a slot or Juan Cole who actually can claim to be an expert on the politics of the region. Instead we saw the same myopic pundits who were dead wrong at the start of the war and have learned nothing since.
You can be pretty certain that something similar will happen when they have panels discussing the sub-prime meltdown. Krugman, Atrios have been predicting that it would occur for years now.
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If all the bloggers are against the war maybe that might suggest that folks aren't too keen on our being there and ought to leave? OTOH if all the bloggers are for the war then they should stop whining about taxes, especially those with "support the troop" stickers.
But I think if you had more than three brain
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bush Administration. If the 'War on Terror' is worth fighting then it's worth paying for. FDR didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with a tax cut. Hell during WW2 the highest tax rate reached ninety-four percent. And Bush wouldn't even consider reversing his own ill advised tax cuts to help pay for the war.
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Actually anybody who is FOR the Iraq war should volunteer to go over there and fight it.
If we had all the money being spent in Iraq we wouldn't have to argue
Re:Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, I'll do that. As long as I can reduce the amount I pay in taxes to things I don't support.
Neither did Bush. Bush responded with a tax cut to try to help a struggling economy and because lowering taxes is the right thing to do even with a healthy economy.
Which is patently absurd. And JFK realized that and started the reduction of taxes to non-socialistic levels. Seriously, if I were paying 94% taxes on each dollar earned, I'd stop working until the end of the year when my time would immediately become more valuable. There is nothing progressive about a progressive tax--it's absolutely destructive. Especially at such confiscatory levels like 94%.
Slowing the economy by increasing taxes isn't going to help generate income. It's just going to further slow the economy and hurt everyone, rich and poor, and create less tax revenue because the economy is being further punished by a destructive tax policy.
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Do you have any evidence to support that position? How many potential criminals do you think we're paying enough money to so that they think, "Oh, I was going to rob a gas station but since the government gave me $400 this month, I won't." I suspect the number is very low. And even if it isn't, that's basically a shakedown. "Here's $400, ok, don't commit crime." I don't agree that that's good policy. The biggest factor contributing to our high prison population isn't poverty, it's drugs. Whether or not the war on drugs is a good idea is certainly something that can be debated, but it has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not a socialistic welfare state is a good idea.
That's not the point. You don't give people money, you help them. Thats why systems are there for drug-rehab, health care, psychiatry, child services... People don't usually rob for the hell of it and people are not just criminals. They rob because they feel they have to. All the services i listed are valid reasons to rob a place. By that i mean, it is understandable people stealing if they need it to live or for kids, or they are having mental difficulties/drug problem. In these situations you can't hel
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Then how about anyone who is for the department of education, welfare, etc pay more in taxes to support those programs?
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Gladly. This country needs more education.
Education produces smart citizens. Smart citizens are good for the economy (smart consumers don't start dot com or housing bubbles), good for business (intelligent employees streamline processes and reduce overhead), but above all they are good for the country. Like it or not, reputation matters - would you rather the U.S. be known as a nation of idiots, or would you rather we be respected as a nation of intelligence and honour?
As for welfare, you can't call yourself a Christian nation if you don't believe in helping your fellow man. See: Luke 4:18-19, 18:18-30, 14:13 Matthew 19:16-30, 25:31-46, Mark 8:1-13, 6:30-44, 10:17-31 (or just read the Bible). We're a so-called "Christian" country, that cherry picks the Old Testament and ignores the teachings of Christ (at least until the indictments come down - when that happens, Jesus is suddenly the man).
So, yes. I'd gladly pay more taxes to improve the lot of my fellow men, women and children. I'd even go so far as to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should consider spending far less on defense. The money we save there could go to education and social security - programs that improve our lives as opposed to destroying others. And the best part is: we wouldn't even have to raise taxes.
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This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bush Administration. If the 'War on Terror' is worth fighting then it's worth paying for.
I agree with that 100%. But the same is true for every other government project - entitlement programs, pork-barrel projects, everything. There's no reason to mortgage our kids' future just because the politicians in both parties refuse to accept responsibility for deciding what expenses are actually priorities.
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
Are you similarly willing to say that anyone who supports welfare/entitlement programs should pay more taxes to finance them? I suspect you might get quite a number of folks willing to pay more fo
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And it wasn't just the Republicans; most of the Democrats voted to authorize the Iraq war as well, and some of the Republicans (IINM) voted against authorization.
The only two Republicans in office I truly dis
Just another form of media... (Score:5, Informative)
Someone [xkcd.com] is going to be very busy...
Re:Just another form of media... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just another form of media... (Score:5, Insightful)
One good development from the popularity of blogs and other unreliable (but testable for corroboration) online media is that more info consumers are less likely to believe what they read (and see/hear in pics and video). Soon enough we'll have services that let us point at something published to search for similar or related items, and trace the memes. We'll be able to see who believes it, who repeats, whether we'd believe what they believe. Our healthy skepticism is just getting its wings. Soon enough it will have the kind of bionics that just reading and writing now have.
And since media has always suffered from a scarcity of skepticism and the means to act on it, we'll be much better off than we were before.
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binaryspiral wrote:
They were "lured" into this because it used to be almost exclusively true, but once the medium became popular, it became infested (note: it could be I'm editorializing here) with pseudo-human beings, hired to push different products and causes.
The question, I would say, is how is the on-line community going to react to
It's not a form of media, it's a way of life (Score:4, Funny)
Every time you see a foreign propaganda piece in the Saudi Times and read a comment by Al Rashid, that was our brave comrades in arms, fighting the real fight for Democracy.
Every time you read the Pakistani Journal of Objective Theological Criticism and read the online commentary by Pashtun seperatists, it was Chief Petty Officer Nunzia writing that post.
The few, the proud, the frequently anonymous - Blog Warriors!
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They do it on TV as well (Score:3, Insightful)
The big difference is that on the Internet, everything you read is true.
The other difference is on the Internet, nobody can tell that the government is a dog.
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I can make a blog about what a slut Sally is, and point to other bloggers who also think Sally is a slut, and even find references to sluts named Sally in various publications. I could even make my own "news" site publishing articles about Sally's exploits
The Future of Warfare (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes - I'd have a problem. The role of the government and the military is to serve and protect us as the people who pay for them both. The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour. When that happens, you know that they consider YOU a threat to themselves. And that strongly implies that your interests are not their interests.
Mod parent up, please. (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up, please. (Score:4, Funny)
Ok.
...
Aw, crap!
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
And as regards Ghandi, I'm not familiar with him saying the above, but I imagine that if it is correct, that he was advocating propaganda as an alternative to warfare, not a means of persuading people to support it.
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What you are talking about has to do with suppressing information to foreign enemies. This story is about governments using propaganda to manipulate its own people.
Your weird choice of "I'd prefer signs rather than monitored labour camps" is not a choice that is in any way presented by this story.
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That is exactly what Rosie the Riveter, Wendy the Welder, Loose Lips, Buy War Bonds, and a myriad of other campaigns were about.
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This story is about governments using propaganda to manipulate its own people.
That is exactly what Rosie the Riveter, Wendy the Welder, Loose Lips, Buy War Bonds, and a myriad of other campaigns were about.
I don't mind open, honest propaganda.
I mind secret manipulation through obfuscated means, passing it as the open, honest opinions of unrelated individuals or groups.
P.S. Before Pearl Harbor, Superman for for truth and justice. Period. That I mind a bit more than clever posters.
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
You present a false choice between being deceived into obeying the government and being coerced into obeying the government. Your entire premise is based on the assumption that the government is always correct, and must get its way somehow or another.
However, sometimes the government is wrong, and it uses propaganda techniques to conceal its errors and suppress or disparage those who present embarrassing information. The choice in these situations is between being deceived into obeying the government and having the information you need to decide independently whether to obey the government.
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Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Telling people Sadaam killed babies so he could loot their hospital incubators was propaganda. It would not have been if it were true, but in fact it was a story fabricated by the Kuwaitis and knowingly propagated by the first Bush administration to whip up support for the invasion of Kuwait. And before people get their noses bent out of shape, I supported the first Gulf war and still do. That doesn't mean I have to endorse the government lying to me.
With respect to psychological warfare, this is something any US officer, sworn to uphold the Constitution, must question. The Constitution puts the military under the control of the civilian government, but the subtle point here is that it does it in the way that the military is not an agent of the government, it is an agent of the Constitution and the people it protects. This is what makes the US military different from, say, the North Korean military, which is a creature of the party, and ultimately the Dear Leader. It is not the role of the military to put one over on the American people for their own good.
We can draw a parallel with keeping secrets, or even tactical bluffing. In a democracy's military, these are necessary evils. You have to ask this question: are the American people uniformed, or misinformed, in a substantive way? It makes very little difference in the lives of Americans whether a ship convoy is steaming east or west, but it makes a great deal of difference if it does so to provoke a war under false pretenses. That's the key: are we undermining the sovereignty of the voter?
There is simply no point to democracy if government officials have unlimited power to feed the public with lies, and to force the cooperation of civil servants and the military. The people can't rule themselves if they are making political decisions based on phony stories being fed to them, even indirectly.
It's not that trying to sway public opinion in foreign countries with psy-ops isn't often advantageous, even if it does give Americans a distorted view of the situation. People don't make wrong decisions when those decisions have nothing to recommend them. What makes it wrong is that you can't have the advantages of being a democracy without ceding some of the advantages that totalitarian states enjoy. The question is whether you believe the advantages of freedom outweigh the inconveniences.
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American Heritage Dictionary
propaganda
n.
1) The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
2) Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.
3) Propaganda Roman Catholic Church A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing
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The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour.
Agreed, but realistically the horse ran out of the barn quite a long time ago and this issue with bloggers is just natural incrementalism.
Military agencies plants stories overseas all the time and due to the way news propagates it doesn't take long for them to come back here and be reported as facts.
"Fact finding" junkets are run continually for reporters, pols, clergy, etc., but the military makes sure only one side's
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Informative)
You are entirely right. But it appears that they (the rich people who run our plutocracy) have been pulling this disgusting stuff for most of my life, or more likely since before I was born.
And people wonder why I don't want to vote Democrat or Republican! How can we change our plutocratic republic back into a democratic republic?
-mcgrew
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I have a real problem with the idea that the military is simply an arm of the governing party spin machine. I also have a big problem with the idea that the blogosphere can be managed with Rovian spin techniques. The evidence shows otherwise.
Blogswarms are a real phenomena. If only they were as accurate in their targets as the paper assumes. The paper is rather too willing
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the ideal is (Score:2, Troll)
i would rather someone lie to me than k
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Are we really reduced to these two options?
yes, we are (Score:2)
an ideological battlefield of lies, demagoguery, propaganda, half-truths, manipulations, etc., is superior to bombs and guns
blood on the streets or lies in the mind. you choose
because choosing no conflict whatsoever is not possible, if you truly understand the human condition as it always was and always will be
i subscribe to the theory of catharsis: when you scream your vile emotions, you a
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But what if someone else kills you because they believed the lies?
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Except the purpose of the propaganda is to get you to agree that someone else needs to be killed, and that your tax dollars need to be spent to do it.
It is not in any way, shape, or form about reducing the amount of violent conflict. The thing that reduces the amount of violent conflict in our society is the democratic process, whereby leaders who try
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I'd prefer they'd do neither. There is no reason any military anywhere should be involved in politics at all. Period.
The military should be separate from the civilian government and should have no need to get the people to go along with it. In fact, the military should be be under the command of the civilians government which sho
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Wait ... either I'm parsing that incorrectly, or are you suggesting an either or choice of being "lied to by your own military or thrown into prison for dissent" -- that can't be right.
If it is going to become US domestic policy to subvert and pollute the domestic media as a propaganda campaign -- just set off all the nukes now a
Re:The Future of Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
In a totalitarian state, it doesn't matter what people think, since the government can control people by force using a bludgeon. But when you can't control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion.
-- Noam Chomsky
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Also, would anyone really have a problem with this if said bloggers were clearly labeled rather than astro-turfing?
In a world full of splogs, shills, and guerilla marketers why would you take any blog at face value? The problem is that people want to judge the usefulness or correctness of information they receive based mostly upon their preconceived notions about the source instead of thinking for themselves. It is a trained response that is branded (pun intended) into the minds of young people from an early age by relentless marketing, consumer-oriented public education, and paternalistic government programs and polic
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In the same way, would we prefer the army to use propaganda on its own citizens to convince us of its message or perhaps we would prefer being thrown in a secret prison for descent?
What I really just can't even fathom is why you think these are the only choices here.
I've got one for you.. would you prefer to be:
Killed outright.
or
Have your left hand cut off?
Cuz those are the only two possible choices.
I guess my choice would be to have a military that protects the people, and doesn't engage in propaganda cam
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Why hire? (Score:2, Insightful)
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So what's new? (Score:5, Informative)
How on earth anyone could be shocked by this at this point is beyond me. This kind of stuff is fairly benign next to the kind of stuff they do in SECRET. It's when they actually start talking about killing reporters to silence dissent [wikipedia.org] that they REALLY get nasty.
i'm not defending the usa (Score:2, Insightful)
american? [wikipedia.org]
american? [wikipedia.org]
american? [wikipedia.org]
american? [wikipedia.org]
all of your complaints are valid in the context of bad HUMAN nature. they are invalid in the context of bad AMERICAN nature. what is the intellectual value in your mind of prosecuting the usa alone for crimes all of humanity is guilty of?
you need to be morally and intellectually honest. or you are just another useless pointless partisan. the world has enou
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A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."
Four-Minute Men (Score:3, Informative)
But they have killed Reporters (Score:4, Interesting)
During the Kosovo crisis Serbian State TV (equivalent to the BBC) was showing the effects of NATO bombing on civilians. To stop this NATO bombed the Serbian State TV station killing 15 civilians. NATO justified this by saying that the station was a tool of propaganda. By this rational, if the US/UK go to war with Iran, the BBC and many American news outlets will be viable targets. General Wesley Clark was confronted with this war crime during a conference and he seemed very sheepish about it and resorted to saying that his orders had come from the top.
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In this age of Google News, it's easy for a propaganda story planted in a foreign paper to make its way back to US readers. You can call that psy-ops collateral damage. Targeting psy-ops stories specifically at US citizens is 100% illegal. I'm not talking about press conferences and interviews. Those are still ok, regardless of the truthiness of information d
The future is now (Score:2, Insightful)
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Slight difference - they're "dropping" the propaganda pamphlets on us.
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However, your previous posts were making the claim that U.S citizens were the target of propaganda leaflets released from airplanes during the Cold War. I assure you that that was not the case, at l
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Fine - I'm much happier about you drawing parallels with McCarthy era witch hunts than with pamphlets air-dropped behind enemy lines. The anti-communist propagada is a much closer analogy. But ultimately we don't really need any analogies, do we? The situation is pretty clear - the US military was investigating ways of manipulating the opinions and understanding of the US public. I conclude that this is bad as will anyone US citizen who cares to understand what is going on in their country.
Yeah Right (Score:2, Funny)
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And this _decreases_ the believability of blogs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like this is anything new... (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of our media is manipulated...why not blogs? Compared to the other forms of media, blogs are notoriously easy to manipulate. With the ever-growing cacophony of voices on the internet, it's more and more difficult for Joe Sixpack to adequately fact-check a given story...so they increasingly just believe what they hear from their mouthpiece of choice. I personally have to debunk all of the ridiculous stories my wife's family mindlessly forwards around to each other without question....the latest was that Obama is Muslim.
Re:It's not like this is anything new... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, well, he turned me into a newt! Burn him! Burn him!
Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
If the military hired bloggers post mostly postive news stories that's fine, because typically those stories are completely ignored by main stream media.
The problems begin if they start putting heavy spin on bad news to make it sound good, fabricating stories, or pretend there is no bad news and not report it, then we have a problem.
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turnabout is fair play? (Score:2)
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Operation Mass Appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeff Gannon (Score:2)
apologies to carl von clausewitz (Score:2, Troll)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz#Cultural_References [wikipedia.org]
on advice (Score:2)
finish the quote from the original source, asshole xoxoxoxox
If Anti-Military Orgs Use Bloggers (Score:3, Interesting)
. . . to place their propaganda on the internet (ahem, Huffington Post [huffingtonpost.com], DailyKos [dailykos.com], etc, ad nauseum), then why can't the military use bloggers to post its point of view?
Seems like another double-standard to me.
Re:If Anti-Military Orgs Use Bloggers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If Anti-Military Orgs Use Bloggers (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, it is.
Nobody is "pro-war". Well, no reasonable person is. However, there is a time and place for war. So while even I hate war, I also realize that there is a time and place for it. If you are "Anti-war", you can speak against war, generally or specifically, and it is quite easy. And if you speak in general enough terms, I might even agree with much of what you say.
For an exercise in application, try to write a pro-war piece. Most people would have an awful time trying. Now write an Anti-war piece. Just about everyone could.
And no, I'm not making excuses for GWB. In fact, if you want to blame anyone for this, blame congress, who has the power to declare wars and such. And who exactly are we at war with now anyway? It surely isn't the current Government of Iraq, is it?
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Second, we're not talking about a "pro-military org" placing propaganda, as opposed to your "anti-military org". We're talking about THE MILITARY. If you can't see the difference, there's little point in continuing this conversation.
Military propoganda directed domestically (Score:3, Interesting)
Is, to some extant, against the tenants of democracy. My reading on democracy is that there are rules about what people are allowed to do to eachother physically, but no rules about memes. I think it's questionable as to whether using physically coercive means such as taxes to further memetic warfare directed at our own citizens is at all valid within this framework. The government here is trying to enforce rules about memes on its own citizens.
Unethical? Try illegal. (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention the legality... The Hatch act still exists, to the best of my knowledge. And although people generally interpret it somewhat more liberally than intended, this seems like exactly the form of corruption targetted thereby... The executive branch, using federal funds to make the war look better, to improve the chances of McCain getting in come November.
Then again, since when has the current administration bothered with obeying all those pesky little laws? "Four more years - Why should the constitution matter this time?"
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My eyes are failing (Score:2)
I read the headline as "US Military Hired Exploding Bloggers As Propagandists" !
Shills, but not fabrications (Score:2)
What is not OK is lying. (1) Making a false statement about whether he's accepting funds or (2) making up a fake person to be the speaker are both impermissible.
Err.... (Score:2)
What does it matter whether or not the military thinks they *should* be doing this? They are, and have been for a long, long time.
Probe The Question Deeper (Score:2)
[Following message is US centric. My apologies to non-US citizens, and hopefully similar sentiments work for you in your country, but trying to make this generally applicable weakens the message.]
The very simple answer is another question: Is the government the subject of the people or are the people the subjects of the government? If the government knows better than we then the military should engage in information manipul
manipulating domestic media - big whoop (Score:2)
Crappy media outlets are easily manipulated. Some media outlets are masters at manipulation. How about good old honest reporters and media outlets that actually research and verify stories, and actually do their best to be unbiased and fair? Is that too much to ask?
Half these sites have regular folks providing "news items" via video, text msgs, blogs etc. For the military to hire bloggers to "manipulate" the media, well...more power to them.
Ignoring the mountain for the molehill... (Score:2, Insightful)
The government says jump, you *WILL* jump. The government says something is good, you *WILL* believe it is good. The brainwashing is too strong.
The only reason there is any sort of anti-war movement at all, is because there are brainwashed citizens of countri
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Oh, thank god. I though I might have to take responsibility for my ridiculous actions and beliefs. Now, I can just blame the government!
I'd much rather have a McEducation or a Pepsi-brand bachelors in the Delic
Has You Seen Mah Bukkit? (Score:3, Funny)
The Military is like Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
It's that simple.
They should be forced by law to have "ombudsmen" embedded in every office who can tell the real story without any risk of being disciplined because they're outside the chain of command. The same should apply to every other government office. Of course, the next problem is how to get the "ombudsmen" to tell the truth...
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Well, dailykos.com is on the record saying that they take money to endorse candidates.
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And Obama sure can afford them this fall.
Re:The military decided it wasn't worth paying for (Score:3)
Big difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
The tactics are not the same.
Bloggers who are anti-fascist aren't airing their opinions for a paycheck, nor are they pretending that they are broadcasting their opinions of their own volition when really there is a man behind the curtain giving direction. One system is honest while the other is structured on an attempt to deceive. There's a big difference. If you align yourself with falsehoods, then that