What Your Facebook Posts Mean to US Special Operations Forces

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
What Your Facebook Posts Mean to US Special Operations Forces
Social media as an intelligence asset is of growing value to special operations forces, but there are legal issues and controversy surrounding its use.

It was in the 1873 book "On War," that Prussian military scholar Carl von Clausewitz give birth to the term "fog of war," writing that "war is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth."

United States Special Operations Command, SOCOM, is trying to dispel some of that fog, moving forward with the development of advanced data mining tools that, if revealed, could make some of the capabilities outlined in documents disclosed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden look quaint. The utility of social media data is moving quickly beyond simple investigations directly on the battlefield, to that critical moment when a soldier decides whether or not to pull the trigger. According to some military thought leaders, it's law and policy that isn't keeping up.

Representatives from elite fighting squads, sometimes broadly referred to as special operations units, tasked with fighting America's most dangerous—and often most secret battles—say that they need better information, including from social networks, to execute missions that take place all over half the globe. That idea may be controversial, and, in fact, many of the tools being developed may never be legal to use. Regardless, according to one of the Defense Department's top lawyers, "Legal uncertainty should not be a barrier to us developing a tool" for use by special operations fighters.

Todd Huntley, the head of the National Security Law Department of the Office of the Judge Advocate General, speaking at a special operations event in Washington, D.C., this week, said that the U.S. should continue to build possibly illegal data mining tools rather than relinquish capabilities.

"We should be very cautious in setting precedent that could limit the development of this technology," he said, adding that if the military waits for the courts before building next generation intelligence capabilities "it will take too long." (He did not say we should actually use them outside of law.)

The Defense Department policy that governs the way it collects information on foreign persons, whether for use in combat or just as part of investigations, is called Department of Defense (Instruction) No. 5240 IR. It was originally drafted in 1982. Huntley says that's one reason policy can't keep up with technology or with the battlefield challenges. "If we can't even determine who is and who is not a U.S. person, how do we determine how to use existing policies?"

In a wide-ranging discussion, various special operations thought leaders and key figures spoke to the need for much better situational awareness. That term used to mean understanding the location of enemies, what arms they might be carrying, etc. Increasingly it means instantaneous data from social networks like Twitter and Facebook to identify of the target in the sniper scope, and who might be connected to him or her.

Stuart Bradin, a retired Army colonel who worked for SOCOM, put it this way: "It would great if we could use social media to Positively ID (PID) someone. Accuracy matters. So social media tools that can help would be a great capability."

In highlighting the most pressing problems that the special operations faces, Anthony Davis, the director of science and technology for SOCOM, highlighted the following: enabling small teams through new cutting-edge gear like the TALOS (also known as the Iron Man suit), developing capabilities to conduct special operations in places like Africa where communication infrastructure is absent; and better support and tools for non-kinetic operators, which can mean many things, from assisting with humanitarian missions to gathering intelligence for operational use.

In a previous presentation identifying future needs, Davis highlights data mining and behavior modeling as key to special operation's future.

From that need, new tools are rising. Companies like Snaptrends can immediately connect every Tweet or Facebook post to a specific location. One satellite image analysis company can, reportedly, link any social media post to point on an incredibly high-resolution map.

But those data mining capabilities are still limited and special operations tools and SOCOM has been looking to build beyond them. In May, the command announced their intent to build a new data-mining tool capable of crawling data from "pre-determined web sites" and to "support geospatial, temporal, relationship, textual, and multi-media visualization and visual analytics" to support "situational awareness in a constrained environment," the a program called Automated Visual Application For Tailored Analytical Reporting, or AVATAR.

As Paul McLeary writes for Defense News, the program would "perform link analysis and correlate that information with intelligence that has already been provided by the big U.S. intelligence agencies." That means FBI, NSA and virtually any agency that has useful data. That interoperability in the form a single platform sounds a lot like many of the products developed by Palantir to present and display data across law enforcement agencies to a variety of users. But the AVATAR program shows several critical differences. Most importantly, it would query across government databases and the open web to deliver info to a very specific end user, a special operations fighter who may be using that information in battle.

A Short History of Special Operations Forces Social Network Mining

It isn't the first time that SOCOM has looked into mining social media data for use in operations. A 2012 project called Quantum Leap sought to show that open source data, and particularly social media data, could be made useful to active military operations.

The biggest technological outcome of the program was a plug-in piece of software called "Social Bubble," designed by a Santa Rosa company called Creative Radicals. The Quantum Leap report authors describe Social Bubble as "a tool which summons data via the Twitter API to display Twitter users, their geographic location, posted Tweets and related metadata."


According to the authors of the document, the experiment was a success not just in identifying individuals who were actively tweeting and posting but also—and far more importantly for the military—individuals who happened to be connected to them but who didn't have a social media profile.

"Overall the experiment was successful in identifying strategies and techniques for exploiting open sources of information, particularly social media. Major lessons learned were the pronounced utility of social media in exploiting human networks, including networks in which individual members actively seek to limit their exposure to the Internet and social media." [Emphasis added.] That's key to developing an ability to deal with an enemy like the Islamic State, where every tweeting sympathizer could be connected to a target who would prefer to stay off the radar.

The end goal of much of this activity is something referred to as "human entity resolution." In the most simple terms, that means figuring out not just the identity of the person visible in the sniper scope but the identities of the people connected to him or her.

Special operations fighters say that information could be critical during an operation. But how much of it can now be obtained quickly and legally? That's become something of a murky issue. The 1982 document aside, not long ago, it was thought to be well settled that law enforcement and the military could use technology to collect information that would otherwise be public (such as your location in a car) and could use data that you gave to third parties like telephone companies. Huntley called those assumptions the basis for a lot of intelligence operations.

"Both of those assumptions have been called into doubt with recent Supreme Court revelations," he said.

The Enemy Is Data Mining, Too

The ability to use social network data operationally is no longer unique to the U.S military. It also represents a growing vulnerability for people in uniform. Mathew Freedman, CEO of the firm Global Impact and a longtime Defense Department advisor, noted, "The digital exhaust issue becomes much more critical"¦when an airline knows everything you look at on Amazon"¦through data mining blogs and tweets that you are going to attend future NDIA events." The bottom line for Freedman: "It will be harder for anyone to be clandestine."

The military is currently testing a new encrypted communications devices that function like smart phone in Honduras (see also how the special forces pioneers of the so-called Blackphone). But encryption alone can't solve every potential digital exhaust problem.

Consider the recent hack targeting the Central Command's Twitter and YouTube accounts, which occurred because a Defense Department official did not enable two-factor authentication. The department on Wednesday put out a special instruction document urging employees to take common-sense security precautions.) The sheer volume of data we create suggests the invisibility is impossible, both for our enemies and for us. The human race is expected to reach 40 zettabytes of a data a year by 2020, up from 4 zettabytes in 2013. "This is the technological context for every future special operations action," said moderator Klone Kitchen, a special advisor for cyberterrorism and social media at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Because the work of special operations units is so valuable and so very dangerous, special ops fighters occupy a position of some privilege in the military. Republicans, Democrats and politicians every stripe love the idea of small teams of highly talented super warriors doing what it used to require a—very literal—army. And the American people love stories of extreme heroism hence a seemingly unquenchable appetite for Seal Team Six type media

But there's a danger in relying on small teams to do too much, an intellectual trap to which two of the nation's most controversial defense secretaries, Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld fell victim. It may be a behavior that we are repeating.

As McLeary notes, the 2012 White House National Security Strategy "places a premium on the use of special operations forces to operate — quietly — with allies on train and assist missions while continuing their counterterror mission wherever Washington deems fit."

Washington will continue to see fit to send special operations fighters to do a lot more in the coming years. That could include training, equipping, or helping fighters in places like Iraq, Pakistan or Syria. At some point, those fighters may ask, more publically, for the ability to use controversial intelligence tools to accomplish those missions.

We may not have an answer for them.

What Your Facebook Posts Mean to US Special Operations Forces - Defense One
 

Yusuf

GUARDIAN
Super Mod
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
24,324
Likes
11,757
Country flag
British army creates team of Social Media warriors

The British army is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age.

The 77th Brigade, to be based in Hermitage, near Newbury, in Berkshire, will be about 1,500-strong and formed of units drawn from across the army. It will formally come into being in April.

The brigade will be responsible for what is described as non-lethal warfare. Both the Israeli and US army already engage heavily in psychological operations.

Advertisement

Against a background of 24-hour news, smartphones and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, the force will attempt to control the narrative.

The 77th will include regulars and reservists and recruitment will begin in the spring. Soldiers with journalism skills and familiarity with social media are among those being sought.

An army spokesman said: "77th Brigade is being created to draw together a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare. It recognises that the actions of others in a modern battlefield can be affected in ways that are not necessarily violent."

The move is partly a result of experience in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. It can also be seen as a response to events of the last year that include Russia's actions in Ukraine, in particular Crimea, and Islamic State's (Isis) takeover of large swaths of Syria and Iraq.

Nato has so far been unable to find a counter to what the US and UK claim is Russia creating unrest by sending in regular troops disguised as local militia, allowing president Vladimir Putin to deny responsibility.Isis has proved adept at exploiting social media to attract fighters from around the world.

The Israel Defence Forces have pioneered state military engagement with social media, with dedicated teams operating since Operation Cast Lead, its war in Gaza in 2008-9. The IDF is active on 30 platforms – including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram – in six languages. "It enables us to engage with an audience we otherwise wouldn't reach," said an Israeli army spokesman.

It has been approached by several western countries, keen to learn from its expertise.

During last summer's war in Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, the IDF and Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades, tweeted prolifically, sometimes engaging directly with one another.

The new brigade is being named the 77th in tribute to the Chindits, the British guerrilla force led by Maj Gen Orde Wingate against the Japanese in Burma during the second world war. Wingate adopted unorthodox and controversial tactics that achieved successes completely disproportionate to the size of his forces, sending teams deep into Japanese-held territory, creating uncertainty in the Japanese high command and forcing it to alter its strategic plans.

In a nod to the Chindits, members of the 77th Brigade will have arm badges showing a mythical Burmese creature.

The aim is that the new force will prove as flexible as the Chindits in the face of the dizzying array of challenges being thrown up in the early part of this century.

The creation of 77th Brigade comes as the commander of Nato special operations headquarters, Lt Gen Marshall Webb, speaking in Washington this week, expressed concern about Russia and about Isis.

"Special operations headquarters is uniquely placed to address this," he said. "We tend to take an indirect approach. We can engage without being escalatory or aggressive. We tend to view things from an oblique angle, and we absolutely acknowledge that trust, information-sharing and interagency collaboration is crucial."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade
 

Srinivas_K

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2009
Messages
7,417
Likes
12,935
Country flag
Re: British army creates team of Social Media warriors

Similar to Chinese 50 cent army !

But these guys seems trained better.
 

Yusuf

GUARDIAN
Super Mod
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
24,324
Likes
11,757
Country flag
Re: British army creates team of Social Media warriors

Similar to Chinese 50 cent army !

But these guys seems trained better.
Not quite. They are raising special wing of military pros to do this. 50 cent army has paid fanboys 😂
 

Srinivas_K

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2009
Messages
7,417
Likes
12,935
Country flag
Re: British army creates team of Social Media warriors

Not quite. They are raising special wing of military pros to do this. 50 cent army has paid fanboys ������
I am trying to be sarcastic ! :)

Chinese cyber wing consists of all kinds of cyber warriors including 50 cent army. But West only concentrate on them to downplay Chinese.
 

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
It was in the 1873 book "On War," that Prussian military scholar Carl von Clausewitz give birth to the term "fog of war," writing that "war is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth."
A slight correction:

Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz[1] (/ˈklaÊŠzÉ™vɪts/; June 1, 1780 – November 16, 1831)[2] was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral" (in modern terms, psychological) and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his death.
Carl von Clausewitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
I would say that in terms of intel, specifically HUMINT, that social media is so overwhelmed by noise, that the effort described in the article would only amount to so much nave-gazing. I mean, just look at DFI :)
 

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
Re: British army creates team of Social Media warriors

The brigade will be responsible for what is described as non-lethal warfare.
Nothing could be more absurd and a greater waste of time.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
I would say that in terms of intel, specifically HUMINT, that social media is so overwhelmed by noise, that the effort described in the article would only amount to so much nave-gazing. I mean, just look at DFI :)
Absoultely sir, I was wondering how are they gonna filter out the noise from HUMINT unless specifically they are targeting and piping data traffic from certain geographic locations and performing the mining on it. but most of their social media handles are done by people outside the conflict zone.

One way is to use the "REPORT POST" feature then have as many as levels of moderations to escalate it.

Hmmm...we have to start somewhere..some day..better now than never.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Re: British army creates team of Social Media warriors

Well...outfits like ISIS are motivating retards via social media....
They better have some functionary to delete the contents categorically.
IMO..Every country should have such functional unit.
 

blueblood

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
1,872
Likes
1,496
Intel gathering is 1000 times more efficient today than it was a decade or two earlier but analysis is still done by humans. So, in short petabytes of data collected daily will amount to nothing if it cannot be analysed.
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,834
Absoultely sir, I was wondering how are they gonna filter out the noise from HUMINT unless specifically they are targeting and piping data traffic from certain geographic locations and performing the mining on it. but most of their social media handles are done by people outside the conflict zone.

One way is to use the "REPORT POST" feature then have as many as levels of moderations to escalate it.

Hmmm...we have to start somewhere..some day..better now than never.
The social media is indeed full of noise rather than substance.

However, it has it value, even if at times, appear to be a nuisance.

It allows folks to let out pent up steam and frustrations. And that is good or else they could do worse things because of the stress level reached in this modern world, more so in countries where the social and economic divide is glaring.
 

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
I would say that in terms of intel, specifically HUMINT, that social media is so overwhelmed by noise, that the effort described in the article would only amount to so much nave-gazing.
Erratum. The term is "navel-gazing."
 

prohumanity

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
1,290
Likes
1,362
Country flag
Why India can't do some of this stuff. India has a huge population of computer savvy youth....out of 1200 million Indians, if only 1% can be trained in Cyber warfare ...India's security can take a big leap against all its potential enemies.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
EU to Europeans: Abandon Facebook to Avoid US Spying

European Union citizens who want to keep their information private from United States intelligence services should close their Facebook accounts, the European Commission warned, finding that current EU legislation does not protect citizens' data.

EC attorney Bernhard Schima made that comment in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems. The case examines whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in light of mass data tracking revealed by National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden.

French comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala gestures to the media as he leaves a Paris court house, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015. Controversial French comic Dieudonne has gone on trial charged with defending terrorism in a Facebook post made after the three-day terror spree in Paris last month.

"You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one," Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

At issue is the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens' data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.

Safe Harbour states that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a "self-certify" basis. But Schrems maintains that the US no longer qualifies for such a status due to its tracking programs, so companies operating inside the EU should not be allowed to transfer data to the US.

When asked directly, the commission could not confirm that the Safe Harbour rules, as they currently stand, provide adequate protection of EU citizens' data.


The case argues that the US government's Prism data collection program, revealed by Snowden in leaked NSA files, in which which EU citizens' data held by US companies is passed on to US intelligence agencies, breaches the EU's Data Protection Directive "adequacy" standard for privacy protection, meaning that the Safe Harbour framework no longer applies.

Poland and a few other member states as well as advocacy group Digital Rights Ireland joined Schrems in arguing that the Safe Harbour framework cannot ensure the protection of EU citizens' data and therefore is in violation of the two articles of the Data Protection Directive.

The commission, however, argued that Safe Harbour is necessary both politically and economically and that it is still a work in progress.



Read more: EU to Europeans: Abandon Facebook to Avoid US Spying / Sputnik International
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Eye in the Skynet
How Regimes Can Quell Social Movements Before they Begin

Dictators constantly face a dilemma: crushing dissent to terrify (but anger) the populace or tolerating protests and offering reforms to keep the public at bay (but embolden dissidents in the process).

Instead of relying on gut instinct, experience, or historical precedent, autocrats now have advances in data analytics and ubiquitous passive data to thank for letting them develop new, scientifically validated methods of repression. By analyzing the dynamics of resistance with a depth previously impossible, autocrats can preemptively crush dissent more reliably and carefully.

With machine learning and social network analysis, dictators can identify future troublemakers far more efficiently than through human intuition alone. Predictive technologies have outperformed their human counterparts: a project from Telenor Research and MIT Media Lab used machine-learning techniques to develop an algorithm for targeted marketing, pitting their algorithm against a team of topflight marketers from a large Asian telecom firm. The algorithm used a combination of their targets’ social networks and phone metadata, while the human team relied on its tried-and-true methods. Not only was the algorithm almost 13 times more successful at selecting initial purchasers of the cell phone plans, their purchasers were 98 percent more likely to keep their plans after the first month (as opposed to the marketers’ 37 percent).

Comparable algorithms to target people differently have shown promise somewhat more ominously. For example, advanced social network algorithms developed by the U.S. Navy are already being applied to identify key street gang members in Chicago and municipalities in Massachusetts. Algorithms like these detect, map, and analyze the social networks of people of interest (either the alleged perpetrators or victims of crimes). In Chicago, they have been used to identify those most likely to be involved in violence, allowing police to then reach out to their family and friends in order to socially leverage them against violence. The data for the models can come from a variety of sources, including social media, phone records, arrest records, and anything else to which the police have access. Some software programs along this line also integrate geo-tags from the other data in order to create a geographic map of events. Programs like these have proven effective in evaluating the competence of Syrian opposition groups, in identifying improvised explosive device creation and distribution networks in Iraq, in helping police target gangs, and in helping police better target criminal suspects for investigation.

Related breakthroughs in computer algorithms have proven effective in forecasting future civil unrest. Since November 2012, computer scientists have worked on Early Model Based Event Recognition using Surrogates (EMBERS), an algorithm developed with funding from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity that uses publicly available tweets, blog posts, and other factors to forecast protests and riots in South America. By 2014, it forecasted events at least a week in advance with impressive accuracy. The algorithm learned steadily from its successes and failures, adjusting how it weighed variables and data with each successive attempt.

In Russia, the pro-Kremlin Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest think tank claims to have developed a similar software system, called Laplace’s Demon, which monitors social media activity for signs of protest. According to the center’s head, Yevgeny Venediktov, social scientists, researchers, government officials, and law enforcement agencies that use the system “will be able to learn about the preparation of unsanctioned rallies long before the information will appear in the media.” Venediktov considers the tool a vital security measure for curbing protests, stating, “We are now facing a serious cyber threat—the mobilization of protest activists in Russia by forces located abroad,” necessitating “active and urgent measures to create a Russian system of monitoring social networks and [develop] software that would warn Russian society in advance about approaching threats.”

Authoritarian governments, of course, have access to much more data about their citizens than a telecom company, a local police department, or Laplace’s Demon could ever hope for, making it all the easier for them to ensure that their people never escape the quiet surveillance web of trouble-spotting algorithms. Classic Orwellian standbys such as wiretapping, collecting communication metadata, watching public areas through cameras (with ever-improving facial recognition), monitoring online activity (especially true in China, which has direct control over network providers and surveillance tools built directly into social media services), tracking purchase records, scanning official government records, and hacking into any computer files that cannot be accessed directly will become only more effective through the use of new technologies and algorithms.


Aly Song / Reuters
Security cameras are seen on a building at the Bund in front of the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai March 6, 2015.

There are many new surveillance methods available at the touch of a button. For example, former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych sent a passive-oppressive mass text to those near a protest, warning them that they were registered as participants in a mass riot. Governments can monitor their citizens’ locations through their phones, and the future of tracking people through wearable computers and smart appliances is still on the way. With a steady stream of data available from nearly every citizen, automated sifters such as EMBERS can steadily learn which data are valuable and prioritize appropriately. Machines have already shown that they are competent in deriving a variety of private traits through Facebook likes, using social media profiles to forecast whether groups will stick together, identifying personality traits through phone data and Twitter activity, determining the stage of one’s pregnancy through purchase behavior, or ascertaining how likely one is to take a prescribed medication based on a variety of seemingly unrelated factors.


At the same time that mass surveillance is becoming less obtrusive, outright mass censorship, once a standby tool of repressive regimes worldwide, may have a more effective alternative thanks to analytics. Not only can blatant censorship provoke a backlash, it also complicates the ability of states to monitor their people by encouraging them either to use communication channels that are harder to watch or to figure out how to cleverly evade notice by using coded language or symbols.

The Grass-Mud Horse, for example, is an entirely fictional creature popularized on the Chinese Internet because its pronunciation sounds like an incredibly vulgar swear word that the Communist Party’s automatic censors would normally catch. However, the text itself seems harmless, so the censors couldn't easily clamp down on it. Indeed, Chinese Internet users have developed very extensive systems of code phrases to evade the automated detection of certain sentiments.

Authoritarian regimes have been getting smarter at how they influence the public dialogue. Russia boasts a well-organized army of paid anonymous online commenters. These agents seek to covertly influence opinion both internally and internationally, posting on Russian and English forums and social media outlets that feature news about the nation, items on Ukraine, or criticisms of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reports also link the group to attempts to manipulate global opinion of U.S. President Barack Obama, as well as the perpetuation of several serious online hoaxes, including false reports in the United States of a chemical plant explosion, an Ebola virus outbreak, and the lethal shooting of an unarmed black woman by police in the wake of the shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

China pioneered the use of government-paid commentators with their 50 Cent Party, the countless commentators who steer online discussion in party-approved directions. According to a New Statesman interview with an anonymous 50 Cent Party member, the goal is “to guide the netizens’ thoughts, to blur their focus, or to fan their enthusiasm for certain ideas.” This aligns with a speech by former Chinese President Hu Jintao to the Politburo in 2007, in which he called for the organization to “assert supremacy over online public opinion” and “study the art of online guidance.” Like Veneditkov and others in Russia, members of the Chinese government see this guidance as being necessary to protect their leadership against foreign attempts to stir up unrest. Last May, the People's Liberation Army publicly claimed that "Western hostile forces along with a small number of Chinese ‘ideological traitors’ have maliciously attacked the Communist Party of China, and smeared our founding leaders and heroes, with the help of the Internet. . . . Their fundamental objective is to confuse us with ‘universal values,’ disturb us with ‘constitutional democracy,’ and eventually overthrow our country through ‘color revolution.’”



The ability of autocrats to fend off regime change may be refined further through careful analysis of how news and ideas spread. Academics have been able to track the diffusion of ideas (automatically clustering distinctive words and phrases into unified memes) across millions of news sites since 2009 and have since been creating quantitative models of the diffusion. Since 2012, scholars have developed mathematical models to infer how information flows from one group to another across millions of blogs and news sites, without even having direct intelligence on how it was transmitted.

These breakthroughs can be used to turn phone metadata and online activity into complex models that depict how ideas spread. When coupled with psychological profiles of specific subjects made by algorithms, governments can forecast how ideas will spread and also steer them as they see fit. Even a difference as subtle as the order in which a search engine returns results has been found to dramatically impact the formation of political opinions: most Web users will click the first search results and ignore later results, suggesting that a great deal of latitude can be had in influencing beliefs through subtle, calculated nudges. Similarly, even the color of text can impact behavior and attitude, as evidenced in a recent study of online gaming traits.

With these advances either at-hand or in the near future, it would seem that regimes will be able to steadily nudge their societies into an ideal of submissive police states, isolating their subjects from any factors that could influence their thoughts towards rebellion. By identifying and removing the “glitches” that cause dissent, these regimes could slowly, but steadily reengineer humanity into the perfect machine-servants. Thanks to advances in computer science, autocracies can be made more secure than ever before.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-07-01/eye-skynet


==
@pmaitra, @Bangalorean, @blueblood, @brational , @roma, @ezsasa and others.
 
Last edited:

blueblood

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
1,872
Likes
1,496
50 cent party is a hoax created by the Western media to malign the almighty CCP. The deluge of Chinese commentators on several internet fora in just a couple of years, writing perfect English is just a matter of internet penetration and the sudden curiosity of your average Chinese netizen about international relations.

Am I correct? @nimo_cn , @badguy2000 , @amoy .
........................................................

Frankly, I think that all this mass surveillance this system works in the favour of the citizens because unlike the olden days authoritarian regime can get rid of its suspicions rather easily. Your average worker bee in the intelligence community can track your whereabouts, people you meet, food you like etc in a matter of minutes and clear your name that very second and move on to the real culprit.

Stasi had an unparallelled surveillance system. Even today with all the tech available, intelligence agencies like IB or ISI etc wish they have that capabilities Stasi had in 70s and 80s. Stasi was also well known for its sheer brutality. Something which is being prevented in modern day China and Russia, I hope.
 

amoy

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Messages
5,982
Likes
1,849
Obviously @blueblood has no value to add to "international relations" fora, thus he has to resort to low balls. But IBM like u doesn't deserve any attention from Stasi or RAW. :lol:

Perfect English? Waht a flatter! Sure much better than your curry Inglish.

50 cents? It's worth a lot more than your 50 ruppees. 1 USD = 6.2 RMB, 1 USD = 63 INR Rupee sucks = pieces of tissue paper!



Mud slinging - the only trick u're good at :biggrin2:

Nowadays the world is a level playing ground. China's internet penetration rate is 42% vs. India 11%. However that 11% cream of India like @blueblood with a FB homepage is quite a big letdown~!





Obviously the Western Media doesn't bother about Indians of meagre %%% with internet access :megusta:
 

blueblood

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
1,872
Likes
1,496
Obviously @blueblood has no value to add to "international relations" fora, thus he has to resort to low balls. But IBM like u doesn't deserve any attention from Stasi or RAW. :lol:

Perfect English? Waht a flatter! Sure much better than your curry Inglish.

50 cents? It's worth a lot more than your 50 ruppees. 1 USD = 6.2 RMB, 1 USD = 63 INR Rupee sucks = pieces of tissue paper!



Mud slinging - the only trick u're good at :biggrin2:

Nowadays the world is a level playing ground. China's internet penetration rate is 42% vs. India 11%. However that 11% cream of India like @blueblood with a FB homepage is quite a big letdown~!





Obviously the Western Media doesn't bother about Indians of meagre %%% with internet access :megusta:


Chor ki dadi mein tinka..........:pound:
 

Ancient Indian

p = np :)
Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
3,403
Likes
4,199
Obviously @blueblood has no value to add to "international relations" fora, thus he has to resort to low balls. But IBM like u doesn't deserve any attention from Stasi or RAW. :lol:

Perfect English? Waht a flatter! Sure much better than your curry Inglish.

50 cents? It's worth a lot more than your 50 ruppees. 1 USD = 6.2 RMB, 1 USD = 63 INR Rupee sucks = pieces of tissue paper!



Mud slinging - the only trick u're good at :biggrin2:

Nowadays the world is a level playing ground. China's internet penetration rate is 42% vs. India 11%. However that 11% cream of India like @blueblood with a FB homepage is quite a big letdown~!





Obviously the Western Media doesn't bother about Indians of meagre %%% with internet access :megusta:
I have question. . .

Why you guys always so serious about everything?

I am observing you people for some time. I yet to read any jokes or any thing from you guys.

Our Bollywood movies do collect good in your country but you never comment on them.

What do you do in real life?
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top