Why Did The U.S. Military Buy 500 Fake Internet Personas?

Why Did the U.S. Military Buy 500 Fake Internet Personas?

Saturday, February 19, 2011 9:41






The answer to the question "why does the government need software to create a bunch of fake Internet "people?" is probably quite simple, and while Daily Kos seems to feel it has to do with attacking progressives, I'm afraid the aim of the purchase is far more subversive and far-reaching. Leave it to libtards to take it personally and ignore the fact that there is an ongoing war against Americans, waged by their own government, that has so far claimed our privacy, freedom and now our economic well-being.

I also remind Daily Kos here that the American progressive is already an extinct creature, replaced by leftist maniacs too drunk on their own perceived invincibility to realize that they're the ones holding the torches as Rome burns. I have no problem with progressives and could probably play one on TV as I believe in crazy ideas like advancing knowledge and equal rights and am fascinated by the sociology of economics, all matters progressives tend to say they are into. I believe gays should be allowed to marry but churches should be allowed to say they refuse to marry them (that's the whole separation of church and state we seem to have forgotten about). Just as the true conservative has been replaced with a holier-than-thou army of Christian fundamentalist freaks who obviously haven't read a Bible lately since the one I read said something about "love your brother" and "judge not lest ye be judged," we are once again losing the battle by fighting amongst ourselves over semantics instead of attacking the true enemy.

But what if the enemy could replicate itself to infinity and invade our most sacred space of information exchange, the Internet? Worse, what if they already have?

We have known for a long time this happens. It's why sketchy IP addresses show up in my stats and comments appear on politically-charged websites that seem to paint the OP as a kook or set up a critical mass of straw men to otherwise discredit the point of the article. I've seen it in practice and it's usually more sad than frightening. Real commenters get so caught up in their feelings they let their emotions bleed through the keyboard. Real commenters are idiot Americans who were churned through our sub-par public school system and don't know the difference between your and you're. But fake commenters always seem to be cool and collected, with perfect use of their and they're and even there. The next time you're trolling Huffington Post, Daily Kos, the New York Times, WSJ, whatever your media poison, keep your eyes peeled for these disinformation agents and you might just see what I mean.

But I digress. We're talking about defense contractors and their weird plans to make a bunch of fake Internet personas, right? The HBGary Federal attack is just a little too complicated to get into here without its own post, so let's just say HBGary's CEO Aaron Barr got humiliated by Anonymous while at the same time being outed to the very targets of his bizarre plot to attack the Internets with fake personas. But the plot wasn't just a sick fantasy in Barr's head, as the following excerpt from a hacked HBGary email explains:

<BLOCKQUOTE>Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use.</BLOCKQUOTE>
JDA would like to take this opportunity to assure loyal readers that she is, in fact, an actual person. TLP can confirm this but won't because he knows better than to open his mouth but he's a real person too. I've met WC Varones in person so I can say he, too, is real but as for anyone else? Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway. The really bad news is that this isn't theoretical, the Air Force actually secured the rights to 500 fake personas, claiming they'd be used at MacDill AFB, Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq. Strange, MLM bots manage to do this on Twitter all the time and don't need to shell out huge amounts of money to do it.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Solicitation Number:
RTB220610
Notice Type:
Sources Sought
Synopsis:
Added: Jun 22, 2010 1:42 pm Modified: Jun 22, 2010 2:07 pmTrack Changes
0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user.
Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.</BLOCKQUOTE>
If you ask me, they're trying to hide their stalker-like behavior. Why else would they need a bunch of fake IPs?

<BLOCKQUOTE>0003- Static IP Address Management. 50 each
Licence protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise
organizations. Enables organizations to manage their persistent online personas
by assigning static IP addresses to each persona. Individuals can perform
static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time.
Also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP
addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization. </BLOCKQUOTE>
You can't tell me our military isn't advanced enough to know how to use Hide My Ass or some similar proxy server, nor can you tell me whoever it is they're allegedly watching in Iraq and Afghanistan (likely story, didn't we win Iraq years ago?) use StatCounter (JDA's tracking software of choice) or some similar tracking software themselves. Since when does Osama bin Laden blog and obsessively track his stats? I don't buy it.

Related reading: The Information Super-Sewer: Will the Internet be Hijacked by Corporate Interests by Chris Hedges via Global Research.

It's happening, people, the question is whether you'll be standing there arguing with a fake sockpuppet of the establishment or shoving your foot up his or her fictitious ass when it happens to you.

And great... if "They" weren't watching me before... you can bet your sweet assets They are now.

From M.o.1 -- This is interesting and I have to wonder whether they actually did this or if this isn't a gigantic psy op on people like you and I in the big picture here? All you need for something liket his CoIntelPro agents to work is the perception that they exist....you don't even really need agents on the ground, just the perception that they are there. Much like the US government uses the "Bin Laden" card on the American people...CoIntelPro is the same. All this does is create distrust in every single person who may have a differing opinion that you do.....this causes issues and works fantastically if you are trying to cause confusion in the advancing forces. This is what Sun Tzu in "The Art of War" stated was a great strategy for disrupting the enemy...this is what they are doing. My guess is that the purposely released this as disinformation in order to create the perception of being out there lurking on the internet. I do not doubt that such a group does exist however we have to be mindful of how this is working and not jump to conclusions as to what is really going on here.