Obama Appointee Sunstein Favors Infiltrating Online Groups 689
megamerican writes "President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated in a recent paper the 'cognitive infiltration' of groups that advocate 'conspiracy theories' like the ones surrounding 9/11 via 'chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine' those groups. Sunstein admits that 'some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true' Sunstein has also recently advocated banning websites which post 'right-wing rumors' and bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. You can find a PDF of his paper here. For decades (1956-1971), the FBI under COINTELPRO focused on disrupting, marginalizing and neutralizing political dissidents, most notably the Black Panthers. More recently CENTCOM announced it would be engaging bloggers 'who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information.' In January 2009 the USAF released a flow-chart for 'counter-bloggers' to 'counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the US government and the Air Force.'"
Wow, you can't get better sources than WND? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not link in HuffingtonPost, FreeRepublic, and MichaelMoore.com while you're at it. ;)
For those who care about the actual paper [ssrn.com] rather than the right-wing spin of it:
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Abstract:
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
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Note how the Slashdot header linked to COINTELPRO, to imply that that's what's being talked about? Even in the *scenario* where infiltration is discussed, the paper explicitly states, "By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions." The paper is about how (or whether to) dispel conspiracy theories to prevent them from spreading, not to prosecute the individuals who promote them. Cognitive infiltration is discussed (again, in purely theoretical terms) in not just a covert manner, but also an overt manner. A lot (although not all) of the paper also is about overseas actions against muslim radical organizations, too, giving examples of tactics we're already employing to dispel conspiracy theories that help fuel terrorist organizations. Anyone who doesn't realize that our government actively employs propaganda even against non-conspiracy-theories isn't paying attention.
Now, all of that said, Sunstein does come across in the end as as supporting debunking conspiracy theories which can "create or fuel violence" by "rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cogitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationally isolated social networks." Which form of cognitive infiltration discussed -- covert or overt -- is not mentioned, nor is whether this is a reference to domestic, international, or both kinds of conspiracy theories.
I disagree, but it's not as radical of a paper as it's being made out to be.
Re:Responsible dissent. (Score:5, Informative)
There is NOTHING in there suggesting a ban! (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the damn paper, you will learn that a banning of such sites is listed as one of many responses that could be taken, but the author pointedly did not suggest that actually be done. The bulk of the paper focuses on when and how the govt. should attempt to counter conspiracy theories.
As far as the govt. infiltrating groups that propound conspiracy theories: This is stated as a mechanism for the govt. to sow its own views into the groups, not as a law-enforcement mechanism. I view this as nothing more than speech. Just as citizens can speak, so can the government. If Joe Random Citizen can join a group and talk about random B.S., why can Joe Random PR-Flack not do the same?
SirWired
Disregard this article - it's from World Net Daily (Score:5, Informative)
World Net Daily is a few fries short of a happy meal. This is the same news organization that claims that Obama worked to fund terrorists [wnd.com], that 9/11 was caused by the New Yorkers who had it coming [archive.org], and that the Russian spy poisoned by the KGB using polonium was actually a muslim terrorist trying to sneak radioactive materials into the US [wnd.com]. They are basically a forum for conspiracy theories wrapped up in nice packaging.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:2, Informative)
So the government is joining conspiracy theory groups, posing as ordinary citizens, winning their trust, and then debunking their theories. This is bad, but again, nothing like COINTELPRO, which encouraged illegal behavior, spread gossip to break groups apart, even stooping so low as to have their agents have affairs to break apart groups.
Aaron Klein is disingenous. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't let yourself get bent out of shape over this. Read the paper which is being quoted by the article before you start believing nonsense and posting your own. The Klein article misrepresents and quotes out of context. For example, here is the Cass Sunstein quote that Aaron Klein picks and edits to his liking:
"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."
Sounds really scary right? Okay, here is the full paragraph from Sunstein's paper, available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 [ssrn.com] :
What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).
Note the last sentence. Sunstein leaves the 2 points quoted by Klein out of the recommendation. The paper itself is somewhat insightful and worth a skim. There are things to disagree with perhaps, but this isn't some civil liberty crushing maniac.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:5, Informative)
It is in no way a violation of freedom of speech to put information out there to clarify a certain point of view but it's the essence of freedom of speech.
From TFA:
In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing."
Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.
"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."
Banning people from "conspiracy theorizing" sounds a heck of a lot more serious than "put information out there to clarify", it sounds like they consider banning "conspiracy theorizing." Which is a ludicrous policy. Almost any definition of "conspiracy theory" would mandate them to take action against almost all criticism of the government, the state or any of its institutions or representatives. Will it be illegal to levy claims of criminal activities against an elected representatives since it will be a "conspiracy theory"? I can imagine a fairly wide range of ways such a policy could be mis-used; if you even consider the original use legitimate.
Banning people from saying that the government is corrupt, or committing acts they disagree with, is a great injustice. It can only lead to a greater credence to their claims, and with policies such as argued for by Sunstein one starts to feel an increasing drag towards becoming one of these radical voices critical of what the government wants people to accept as justified.
Re:US Airforce kills innocent women and children (Score:4, Informative)
Other Airforce or Ex-Airforce, please jump in and share your experiences.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse? No! Screw that, man. It's bad. But I wanted to correct any misconceptions the article may have caused. It IS NOT as bad as COINTELPRO. Not by a long shot. I have family who were impacted by COINTELPRO, and I can tell you, that was horrendous. This is merely wrong, as opposed to evil.
Just to be clear: the idea of banning any website, even Nazi or KKK websites, is wrong. So is requiring 'fairness' for websites. The Fairness Doctrine is appropriate for the public airwaves, a shared resource, but not for privately held resources like websites.
Re:Is President Obama secretly a Republican? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:2, Informative)
Free speech means the government doesn't control (nor attempt to influence) what people are discussing.
I'd agree with you on "control" but not "attempt to influence." If the government attempting to influence opinions was counter to freedom of speech, then the government couldn't make any public statements at all without attacking freedom of speech.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah it's amusing to hear right-wing loons like the GP say such things while they ignore that even renowned conservatives like Ronald Reagan weren't above executive branch power grabs such as these. While this doesn't excuse Obama in this, as his administration is despicable for even proposing such a thing, the legacy of the Patriot Act and Bush's legions of Executive Orders paved the way for such a thing to happen.
Re:Counterproductive? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess the whole infiltration thing will convince the conspiracy theorists that they were right all along, and anyone who questions their theories can now be dismissed as a government infiltrator :/
The authors explicitly acknowledge that:
In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be suspected of government connections.
Re:One simple question: (Score:5, Informative)
Why is our tax money being used for this?
It isn't. The article is about an academic paper written by the appointee, prior to being appointed. It's not an actual policy or proposal.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:5, Informative)
Spun, you hit the nail on the head.
I am well acquainted with Professor Sunstein and his writings, and the above "summary" is a smear job and some extreme misdirection.
It starts with a link to an article on World Net Daily, which is the paper which published "research" stating that eating soybeans would make you gay. They are a well-known fringe "news" outlet that on any given day will have stories about the "murders" that Barack Obama "committed" when he lived in Chicago and "shocking interviews" with Chicago drug dealers and pedophiles who claim they sold crack to Obama and had gay sex with him. Oh, and of course, they have lots of stories about the "fact" of Obama's Kenyan birth. How a submission with a link to WND got past the slashdot editors is beyond me.
Then, and here's the misdirection part, it immediately links to unrelated articles about COINTELPRO and the US Air Force's plan to start blogs.
There's one bit of truth in this article, though, and that's a link to an abstract of a paper that Professor Sunstein wrote 2 years ago this week. If you're willing to drill down and actually read the paper itself, you'll find nothing that suggests anything like COINTELPRO or "destroying freedom of expression" as the Anonymous Coward GP suggests.
Seriously, this article is some serious baloney and if you care at all about the truth, I ask that you dig a little bit and see for yourself if this smear attempt of a brilliant and decent constitutional scholar should be allowed to stand unchallenged.
This kind of stuff went on back in Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's day and a lot of people's lives and careers were destroyed by right-wing jackoffs playing these games of lies, misdirection and guilt by association. I guess every half a century or so decent people have to smack this kind of smear-mongering down and chase these trolls like "megamerican" back into the sewers of history.
Take a minute and look into Cass Sunstein yourselves, and watch out for this kind of drive-by bullshit.
Re:Responsible dissent. (Score:3, Informative)
You're more likely to find the interesting bits surrounding the various press offices of government orginizations. They have a responsibility to engage and inform the people regarding their work and to clarify matters that are widely misunderstood. I'm not aware of any legal obstacle to an agent of the government logging on to a website under a nom-de-plume and posting the agency's party line. I'm sure
We expect our leaders and institutions to engage the public on matters of concern. They take polls, review focus groups and consult experts. The President is expected to speak on behalf of his policies and party, as are other political figures. I expect the Surgeon General to put forth informaiton on the latest health buzz.
The first difference in this case is that you could be speaking to an agent of the government online, and not be aware. This starts to get pretty creepy. You think it's bad not knowing if KittenPrincess22 is a dude or not, imagine wondering if she's actually an EPA plant. It's the sort of thing people mean when they talk about a "chilling effect on public discourse".
The second worrisome point is that an individual citizen or group could be targetted by federal agencies for their speech. Again, we expect the FBI to keep an ear to the ground when an orginization has violent history or current criminal connections, but those investigations should be driven by criminal concerns, not concerns of disruptive speech. Sending a federal employee to monitor someone's communications because they say something you don't like is not a good thing. It would be hard to prevent monitornig of communications in a public space (like
We want our government to be where we can see it. We want to be able to keep an eye on it. We want to know if it's keeping an eye on us as individuals.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, cause it was that hugely liberal president and Congress that overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act that has been the progenitor of all of these stupid policies to follow. Oh wait, you mean it was a Republican president and Republic-controlled House and Senate that passed such policies?
The Senate was controlled by the Democrats when the Patriot Act passed. You may recall that sometime during the summer in 2001 Senator Jim Jeffords [wikipedia.org] left the GOP and decided to caucus with the Democrats. He broke the 50-50 tie that had given the GOP control of the chamber (via Dick Cheney's tie breaking vote) and made Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) the majority leader.
The Democratically controlled Senate then passed the patriot act by a vote of 98-1 [senate.gov]. Every single Democrat but two voted for it. Feingold voted no and Landrieu didn't vote at all.
Just admit that the Democrats really aren't any better on civil liberties than the GOP.
Re:What do you expect... (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the valid double-Streisand play by the parent poster possibly because you overlook two things:
First, see:
http://www.amazon.com/Live-Concert-Forum-Barbra-Streisand/dp/B0000024ZL/ [amazon.com]
That has a recording of her appearing at a George McGovern ('72 Democratic presidential candidate) fund-raising event, smoking a joint between songs, saying as I recall something like - "We have to face our problems head-on!"
That entrenched her as an icon for Democrats and liberalism.
Second:
There was no internet in Nixon's day. Whoever gets there first gets it named after them - so Streisand Effect is valid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect [wikipedia.org]
So, no, it's not about being unfair, it's not about who invented the cover-up and having it backfire.
It's about iconography - and the parent did a bang up job with just one line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconography [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:1, Informative)
but you can't make an omelette without killing a few people
That's exactly what Obama's favorite political activist said, who is better known as Mr. Mao Zedong.
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why Rush runs from 9-Noon. Can you see my eyes rolling?
Re:Why fear terrorists... (Score:3, Informative)
The great misconception is that "abnormal" people have some sort of defect that makes them especially vulnerable to brainwashing and propaganda. The truth is that the "normal" people are the ones who are brainwashed, while the jittery paranoiac is the person who doesn't buy in to conformist thinking and the official story line. "Normal" people are "normal" PRECISELY because they are the people most easily influenced by their environment, and most receptive to propaganda. If those fringe elements that the good government sheep describe as "conspiracy nuts" or "loonies" were so easy to brainwash, they'd simply fall in line with mainstream media propaganda.
I'd highly recommend William Sargent's excellent book called "Battle for the Mind" for a discussion of this, and many other interesting topics related to the psychology of brainwashing.
Re:Rush says Haiti aid is Obama courting blacks (Score:3, Informative)
If you want it easier to digest for yourself, here's [mediamatters.org] a nice link to get you started. I know, if you visit mediamatters.org, your head will explode. As a self-professed dittohead, you must have already written them off as irrelevant. But the clip is quite clear -- Rush did exactly what spun claimed he did.