11 ms·

Ludmila Savchuk sounds very brave. I hope that the next time we hear about her, it won't be some news about her body being found in a dumpster. That said, I'd

Ludmila Savchuk sounds very brave. I hope that the next time we hear about her, it won't be some news about her body being found in a dumpster. That said, I'd be curious to know which countries do the same thing on a comparable scale. China is well-known to be one, but there were indications that the NSA/GCHQ were not above this sort of thing either.

ino 11y ago
Israel does it, but maybe on a lesser scale.
- gargarplex 11y ago
  Sources?
  - okasaki 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 11y ago
      This is a private organization and it clearly states its goals. I have doubts about this approach anyway, but still it's very different from a secret army of government-paid propaganda agents the very idea of which is to pretend it's a voice of ordinary citizens.
      - mercurial 11y ago
        While I have specific information on this group, Air America [1] was a private company, but in reality owned by the CIA. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline)
        Mikhail_Edoshin 11y ago
        There's no such information about JIDF and even if there were, it's still a group that clearly states what they are doing, not a covert joint pretending to be an "internet research agency". There's a saying: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". The guys from the Agency are very concerned with this too. They don't exist, you know. These are just perfectly real people that happen to think Putin is not that bad and that Russia just wants to show its side of the story :)
  - omeid2 11y ago
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...
fit2rule 11y ago
Indications? Sorry, but there is absolutely no question that the NSA/GCHQ and indeed all the others of the Anglo-intelligence sphere have groups just like this operating, daily, to manipulate opinion and influence group dynamics. No question about it: if your country has an Internet industry, it has government spy agencies involved in the Internet industry. Spy Agencies - people who give themselves more rights and privileges than the rest of us in general, in fact - are a hidden society within every civilization that ever attempted to defend its right to define itself. Without a spy agency, you'll never quite know if you turned Japanese, for how will you know what a Japanese is, until you've become one? Alas, this beautiful quandry seems to endear our species to its pitfalls, and we continue to allow classes in our societies to rule and dominate us by extending their privileges. Were we to be able to turn off the secrecy bit - for all, and not just a few privileged - we may just find that we don't need to keep killing each other over the same things, over and over again, just because we don't really truly understand each other. All secrecy is a degree of none-understanding, held in place with force, to rule you.
- tptacek 11y ago
  So what you're saying is that there are US government-sponsored agencies putting fake people on Internet message boards inventing --- out of whole cloth --- disasters, industrial accidents, and misdeeds of foreign governments? Can you cite a source?
  - dmpk2k 11y ago
    The US has Operation Earnest Voice, and Britain has JTRIG. Whether they're inventing disasters is another matter. It's a sad reality that all major state actors have or will get involved in this, but not surprising. Warfare is changing in part due to massively increased connectivity, and the military and policy wonks have been aware of that for at least a decade. I personally recommend books by David Kilcullen if you're interested.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      The Russian propaganda is aimed principally at the Russian people. That's illegal in the US, and technically when the US spreads propaganda overseas they're required to make English-language copies available to the US press.

ino 11y ago

Israel does it, but maybe on a lesser scale.

gargarplex 11y ago
Sources?
- okasaki 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force
  - Mikhail_Edoshin 11y ago
    This is a private organization and it clearly states its goals. I have doubts about this approach anyway, but still it's very different from a secret army of government-paid propaganda agents the very idea of which is to pretend it's a voice of ordinary citizens.
    - mercurial 11y ago
      While I have specific information on this group, Air America [1] was a private company, but in reality owned by the CIA. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline)
      - Mikhail_Edoshin 11y ago
        There's no such information about JIDF and even if there were, it's still a group that clearly states what they are doing, not a covert joint pretending to be an "internet research agency". There's a saying: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". The guys from the Agency are very concerned with this too. They don't exist, you know. These are just perfectly real people that happen to think Putin is not that bad and that Russia just wants to show its side of the story :)
- omeid2 11y ago
  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...

fit2rule 11y ago

Indications? Sorry, but there is absolutely no question that the NSA/GCHQ and indeed all the others of the Anglo-intelligence sphere have groups just like this operating, daily, to manipulate opinion and influence group dynamics. No question about it: if your country has an Internet industry, it has government spy agencies involved in the Internet industry. Spy Agencies - people who give themselves more rights and privileges than the rest of us in general, in fact - are a hidden society within every civilization that ever attempted to defend its right to define itself. Without a spy agency, you'll never quite know if you turned Japanese, for how will you know what a Japanese is, until you've become one? Alas, this beautiful quandry seems to endear our species to its pitfalls, and we continue to allow classes in our societies to rule and dominate us by extending their privileges. Were we to be able to turn off the secrecy bit - for all, and not just a few privileged - we may just find that we don't need to keep killing each other over the same things, over and over again, just because we don't really truly understand each other. All secrecy is a degree of none-understanding, held in place with force, to rule you.

tptacek 11y ago
So what you're saying is that there are US government-sponsored agencies putting fake people on Internet message boards inventing --- out of whole cloth --- disasters, industrial accidents, and misdeeds of foreign governments? Can you cite a source?
- dmpk2k 11y ago
  The US has Operation Earnest Voice, and Britain has JTRIG. Whether they're inventing disasters is another matter. It's a sad reality that all major state actors have or will get involved in this, but not surprising. Warfare is changing in part due to massively increased connectivity, and the military and policy wonks have been aware of that for at least a decade. I personally recommend books by David Kilcullen if you're interested.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The Russian propaganda is aimed principally at the Russian people. That's illegal in the US, and technically when the US spreads propaganda overseas they're required to make English-language copies available to the US press.