US Journalists Targeted By Pentagon Propaganda Contractors 232
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "While conducting investigative reporting on civilian contractors in the Pentagon's "InfoOps" Internet propaganda operations, two reporters found themselves the subject of a highly targeted, professional media manipulation effort. Reporter Tom Vanden Brook and Editor Ray Locker found that Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names. Some postings merely copied Vanden Brook's and Locker's previous reporting. Others accused them of being sponsored by the Taliban. 'I find it creepy and cowardly that somebody would hide behind my name and presumably make up other names in an attempt to undermine my credibility,' Vanden Brook said. If these websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption."
Re:How Silly (Score:2, Interesting)
Its probably done during office hours and from ips where you can trace the ips back to them. At least make an effort and if found post all over this is just business as usual and people are starting to realize what their taxes really fund.
Is it real at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
My suspicious side wonders if these reporters created the fake sites themselves to stir up controversy.
My other suspicious side wonders if it was just spammers copying a bunch of real and popular content to a website in order to do black hat SEO. Even the part about them being "sponsored by the Taliban" could have been stolen from some real comment on their articles.
Re:It could violate federal law (Score:4, Interesting)
Since when has violating the law deterred the actions of our government? With the wiretapping of people without a warrant, search and seizure of anyone unfortunate enough to require air travel or border crossing, detainment of individuals without due process, to instigating of torture of war prisoners, I'm somewhat surprised we don't hear more stories like this.
Don't forget Asset Forfeiture [justice.gov] -- you don't even have to be charged with a crime, much less convicted.
Seems every day I'm reading another shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
Tim Weiner, who did a great book on the CIA, was on Jon Stewart the other day, touting his new book on the FBI. Seems the beginning of the plumbers was when J. Edgar Hoover refused to start tapping the phones of all the friends and relatives of groups like The Weathermen. And now the FBI is being asked to tap even more widely and without warrants. The new Surveillance State is, get this, worse than J.Edgar Hoover would tolerate, because it was so blatantly unconstitutional.
But the FBI tapping is small potatoes. Hit Glenn Greenwald's column at Salon.com for the other day's article on "surveillance state evils"....the NSA, always forbidden to tap Americans, is now tapping, well, everything. Suspicions no longer seem paranoid that the "Total Information Awareness" is indeed being pursued: a new NSA data centre is just hoovering up (pardon the expression) every byte.
The article goes on to detail a great deal more journalist and activist intimidation than this /. item: people who've spoken out for Wikileaks, done journalism, whatever, getting up against the wall every time they pass through customs, lawyer Jesslyn Radack searched EVERY TIME she goes through TSA even domestically, people threatened with jail and jailhouse-rape.
It's just bewildering. Is this really the USA? And are it's citizens just taking it? Some freedom-loving people.
Sockpuppets for hire (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sockpuppets for hire (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seems every day I'm reading another shocker (Score:4, Interesting)
>It's just bewildering. Is this really the USA? And are it's citizens just taking it? Some freedom-loving people.
Congratulations. You've just discovered the difference between public ideology ("greatest country on earth," "home of freedom and democracy") and actual reality ("bow down to your corporate overlords").
P.S. The journalists' claims are overblown, in the sense that reporting on Apple's manufacturing was overblown. I get interviewed every time I enter the US (because of "leftist affiliations" shall we say). The interrogations are, in the end, professionally and not over the top in a sort of bureaucratically chilling way. If I don't make a fuss or trouble, it's just a series of questions and answers, and they're not going to do an unnecessary invasive search because they're no point / it's inefficient. If you scream and holler and break protocol on your side, I'm sure, you've just set off all the alarm bells and they have to search you, but because you screamed and hollered and they have to search everyone who screams and hollers-- because that's what the bureaucratic playbook says they have to do-- not because you're a journalist who wrote about this or that, but because, in the end, you're making extra trouble.
In short, don't argue with the cop unless you're prepared for the consequences.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
See it all the time on Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
I did some work on the No Gun Ri article on Wikipedia, which is an incident of Americans massacring Korean civilians during the US war in Korea. It was whitewashed [wikipedia.org] by someone, whose DNS PTR records at the time were 214.13.196.180 host196-180.iraq.centcom.mil . CENTCOM by the way is the organization highlighted in the documentary "Control Room".
Or we have Fort Benning whitewashing [wikipedia.org] all the Latin American death squads that were trained there, that IP's DNS PTR back then was doim1-358.benning.army.mil - it whitewashed the WHISC article as well. Of course, with September 11th, we now have death squads and terrorists trained by the US government now not just killing indigenous farmers in El Salvador, but killing Americans in the US as well. Good going, guys!
It's basically like Orwell's Ministry of Truth in 1984. Well not like it, it is exactly that. My tax dollars go to pay the commissars of the US empire to erase the evidence of their massacres from history. Of course, the purpose of making this stuff disappear from history, like the US soldier who went into a village in Afghanistan recently and murdered many civilians, is so that they can portray the US and its military and its multinational corporations as shining white knights out saving the world, not raping and pillaging for plunder, empire and profit.
Gawker.com says its Leonie Industries (Score:5, Interesting)
USAToday didn't name the people they believe are responsible because they don't have any hard proof linking the smear campaign to them.
Gawker.com, though, is seemingly not burdened by any such journalistic standards :)
Meet the Pentagon Contractor That Ran a Disinformation Campaign Against Two USA Today Reporters [gawker.com]
More on Leonie Industries here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Leonie_Industries
Re:How Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole thing has gotten batshit thanks to the insane amount of money flowing through the pentagon and military industrial complex.
I'm pretty right wing, at least compared to most posters on Slashdot, but there's one thing I'm pretty much in agreement with liberals on: our military industrial complex is out of control. We can't seem to make a weapons system without breaking the bank, and I'm pretty firmly convinced it's because of our MIC tainted procurement process. Unlike the private sector, where I'm a free market guy, I'd like to see the military return to the military owned-system of production we used partially in the 20's and 30's. Many of the Navy's ships were built by the Navy itself in Navy-owned shipyards. Before the naval aviation industry really took off, the Navy made its own airplanes [wikipedia.org] in their own factory. The Army had various plants producing armor and guns. The military began phasing these systems out in the mid-30's (kind of surprising that this would happen under FDR, but it did), and by the early 60's, almost all military production was done by contractors. Some studies showed that the mix of Navy-owned and private shipyards helped keep the contractors honest and prices down.
Basically, I think that since weapons procurement really isn't a "market" in the US, that they military should simply come up with a requirement for what they need, and then build it themselves with a fixed budget from Congress. Get someone like Lockheed involved, and the price always shoots up stratospherically with all of the subcontractors they bring along.
Re:How Silly (Score:2, Interesting)
It is almost unbelievable that everyone doesn't realize that government run healthcare is a panacea, isn't it?
State ‘Death Panels’ Attributable to Single-Payer [nationalreview.com]
Carolina Man Battling Breast Cancer May Have to Pay After Denied Treatment [ibtimes.com]
Letter noting assisted suicide raises questions [katu.com]
Oregon Tells Patients State Will Pay for Assisted Suicide, Not Health Care [lifenews.com]
Does everybody in the UK understand that?
Elderly dying due to 'despicable age discrimination in NHS' [telegraph.co.uk]
Some people will believe anything despite the evidence, eh?