by Glenn Greenwald
24 February 2014
24 February 2014
from
FirstLook Website
One of the many pressing stories that remains to
be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are
attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics
of deception and reputation-destruction.
It’s time to tell a chunk of that story,
complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with
NBC News to publish a
series of
articles about
"dirty trick" tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG
(Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group).
These were based on
four classified GCHQ documents presented
to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking "Five
Eyes" Alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing
another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled "The Art of Deception
-
Training for Online Covert Operations."
By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC
reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations:
But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the
overarching point revealed by all of these documents:
namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG
are two tactics:
To see how extremist these programs are, just
consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends:
Here is one illustrative list of tactics from
the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:
Other tactics aimed at individuals are listed
here, under the revealing title "discredit a target":
Then there are the tactics used to destroy
companies the agency targets:
GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly
clear terms:
"using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world," including "information ops (influence or disruption)."
Critically, the "targets" for this deceit and
reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal
spycraft:
In fact, the discussion of many of these
techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of "traditional law
enforcement" against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of
ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, "hacktivism", meaning those who use
online protest activity for political ends.
The title page of one of these documents
reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is "pushing the boundaries" by
using "cyber offensive" techniques against people who have nothing to do
with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally
involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:
No matter your views on Anonymous, "hacktivists"
or garden-variety criminals, it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is
to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they
want - who have never been charged with,
let alone convicted of, any
crimes - with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of
reputation destruction and disruption.
There is a strong argument to make, as
Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the
Paypal 14 hacktivist persecution, that the "denial of service" tactics
used by hacktivists result in (at most) trivial damage (far less than the
cyber-warfare tactics
favored by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political
protest protected by the First Amendment.
The broader point is that, far beyond
hacktivists, these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the
power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online
political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even
though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even
national security threats.
As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of
McGill University told me,
"targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs, resulting in the stifling of legitimate dissent."
Pointing to this
study she published, Professor Coleman vehemently contested the
assertion that,
"there is anything terrorist/violent in their actions."
Government plans to monitor and influence
internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order
to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the
source of speculation.
Harvard Law Professor
Cass Sunstein,
a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs,
wrote a controversial
paper in 2008 (Conspiracy
Theories) proposing that the US government employ teams of covert
agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online
groups and websites, as well as other activist groups.
Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents
into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups" which
spread what he views as false and damaging "conspiracy theories" about the
government.
Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently
named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the
White House, one that - while disputing key NSA claims - proceeded to
propose
many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored
by the President who appointed them).
But these GCHQ documents are the first to prove
that a major western government is using some of the most controversial
techniques to disseminate deception online and harm the reputations of
targets.
Under the tactics they use, the state is
deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it
targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls "false
flag operations" and emails to people’s families and friends.
Who would possibly trust a government to
exercise these powers at all, let alone do so in secret, with virtually no
oversight, and outside of any cognizable legal framework?
Then there is the use of psychology and other
social sciences to not only understand, but shape and control, how online
activism and discourse unfolds.
Today’s newly published document touts the work
of GCHQ’s "Human Science Operations Cell," devoted to "online human
intelligence" and "strategic influence and disruption":
Under the title "Online Covert Action", the
document details a variety of means to engage in "influence and info ops" as
well as "disruption and computer net attack," while dissecting how human
beings can be manipulated using "leaders," "trust," "obedience" and
"compliance":
The documents lay out theories of how humans interact with one another, particularly online, and then attempt to identify ways to influence the outcomes - or "game" it:
We submitted numerous questions to GCHQ,
including:
As usual, they ignored those questions and opted
instead to send their vague and nonresponsive boilerplate:
"It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters.Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from,
These agencies’ refusal to "comment on
intelligence matters" - meaning:
talk at all about anything and everything they do - is precisely why whistleblowing is so urgent, the journalism that supports it so clearly in the public interest, and the increasingly unhinged attacks by these agencies so easy to understand.
Claims that government agencies are infiltrating
online communities and engaging in "false flag operations" to discredit
targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents
leave no doubt they are doing precisely that.
Whatever else is true, no government should be
able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having
government agencies target people - who have been charged with no crime -
for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and
develop techniques for manipulating online discourse?
But to allow those
actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly
unjustifiable.
