Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek To Control the Internet 117
Advocatus Diaboli writes The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, "amplif[y]" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be "extremist." The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG's use of "fake victim blog posts," "false flag operations," "honey traps" and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.
So... (Score:0, Funny)
They act like reddit, then?
Re:And suddenly V doesn't sound so unlikely a scen (Score:2, Funny)
You turn scumbag government spying into "alien lizards live among us"? I think you're wearing your tinfoil hat for the wrong reason.
Re:It's worked, too (Score:2, Funny)
Whenever I saw someone write something retarded on the internet in the past, I just chalked it up to the person in question genuinely being retarded. The idea that a government agency might intentionally be contributing retardation to poison genuine discussion seemed ridiculous on the face of it. Now, every time I read something and think "no one can really be that stupid, can they?" I've begun to wonder. Maybe no one CAN really be that stupid...
It's a nonsense that's been thoroughly debunked. We ran a poll in the foremost security forum, and only 3 respondents said it was possible, while the other 9 billion said it wasn't.