US Gov. Software Creates ‘Fake People’ on Social Networks to Promote Propaganda
by Sean Kerrigan
The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage “fake people” on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
The contract calls for the development of “Persona Management Software” which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.
According to the contract, the software would “protect the identity of government agencies” by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.
The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.
Included in HBGary’s leaked emails was a government proposal for the government contract. The document describes how they would ‘friend’ real people on Facebook as a way to convey government messages. The document reads:
•”Those names can be cross-referenced across Facebook, twitter, MySpace, and other social media services to collect information on each individual. Once enough information is collected this information can be used to gain access to these individuals social circles.
•Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person’s hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request. Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend’s accounts can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend.”
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Wild Thing’s comment…….
The left has already been been creating fake voters for years. Heck, they even created a fake president!!!!!!!!!
Our tax dollars at work creating faux-cyber activists.
Good grief, we have a seriously out of control government.
If George Bush had tried anything like this, the left and the media would be going absolutely out of their minds. Every committee chairman in the House and every committe chairman in the Senate, and the Chairmen of every one of their subcommittees, would be demanding hearings into every aspect of this. We would literally never hear the end of it.
Rememebr this…….. Cass Sunstein: Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal…..By Glenn Greenwald
Rush Limbaugh talked about this on his show yesterday. He said. Obama was just meeting with all the large social net work and Internet executives.
This is what Rush just mentioned to this caller who doubted what he said about this report:
Remember, it’s the Obama administration doing this — and why? Why do they have to create fake numbers, fake people? Why do they have to manufacture people who don’t exist? It’s precisely because very few people agree with what they believe. Very few — in terms of the majority population in the country, very few — actually think the way they do. They have to fake it. They have to make themselves look like they’re mainstream when they’re actually nothing but fringe, and Obama has an entire media wing who post on Twitter and Facebook for him. They’re from MoveOn.org. There’s a whole wing. When I say a media wing, I’m talking about a brigade, a division. Who knows how many people are out there working Facebook and Twitter each and every day, for Obama.
Fake identities. Fake people. You know, Lenin called his party “the Bolsheviks.” That means “big party,” but it was actually quite small, and it’s what we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with absolute false, fake imagery, because that’s all they can do to make themselves look legitimate; all they can do to make themselves look like a majority because they aren’t. The truth is that majority of people are not them and disagree with them profoundly.