
The Agency - sc90
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0
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B-Scan
This Story was submitted few days ago. Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645369)

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jackgavigan
Looks like the HN Submit script doesn't recognise the fact that $URL and
$URL?$SPURIOUS_GARBAGE are actually the same URL...

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downandout
If it didn't recognize them as distinct URLs, a significant percentage of
links would be rejected as having already been submitted.
Http://site.com/article.php?id=1234 and
[http://site.com/article.php?id=5678](http://site.com/article.php?id=5678) may
be two legitimately unique articles.

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jackgavigan
Then it's not $SPURIOUS_GARBAGE, is it?

My point is that it's not exactly rocket science to add an if/case statement
in the Submit script that checks whether the URL being submitted is on a list
of domains for which the '?' and anything after it should be disregarded.

'Twould also be great if it recognised that www.bbc.co.uk and www.bbc.com are
effectively the same site.

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aerique
I think you underestimate how hard this is, especially since your suggested
solution would be a maintenance nightmare.

Also the problem isn't so bad to invest the non-trivial amount of time in it
to fix it.

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hugh4life
I was voted down for pointing out that what Russia does is not exactly
unique(except they're not really good at what they do since they're easy to
spot)... so here are some links.

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Military's 'sock
puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American
propaganda

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
ope...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-
social-networks)

Israel to pay students to defend it online
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-
students-social-media/2651715/)

HACKING ONLINE POLLS AND OTHER WAYS BRITISH SPIES SEEK TO CONTROL THE INTERNET
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-
online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/)

[edit] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-
sponsored_Internet_sockpu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-
sponsored_Internet_sockpuppetry)

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themodelplumber
Reading your links, the known footprint between these governments seems quite
different. Russia seems unique in its usage of these media. Faking a chemical
disaster in the US, attempting to incite discord by faking a police shooting
video, turning their own special LOIC on a NYT reporter...in comparison, the
writeups on other nations' efforts (that we know about) leave a lot of room
for this to be a false moral equivalence at this point. This NYT story is a
pretty big deal in terms of providing evidence to that effect.

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tptacek
The more important distinction is that Russia's sockpuppet propaganda is aimed
primarily at its own people.

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onestone
Yes, but I wouldn't underestimate their foreign propaganda. It's very obvious
in some countries, for example mine (Bulgaria), where trolls affiliated with
Russia regularly flood articles with anti-EU and anti-US comments.

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reagency
In USA, regular Americans do that.

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tptacek
Regular people are by definition not sockpuppets.

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mercurial
Ludmila Savchuk sounds very brave. I hope that the next time we hear about
her, it won't be some news about her body being found in a dumpster.

That said, I'd be curious to know which countries do the same thing on a
comparable scale. China is well-known to be one, but there were indications
that the NSA/GCHQ were not above this sort of thing either.

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fit2rule
Indications? Sorry, but there is absolutely no question that the NSA/GCHQ and
indeed all the others of the Anglo-intelligence sphere have groups just like
this operating, daily, to manipulate opinion and influence group dynamics.

No question about it: if your country has an Internet industry, it has
government spy agencies involved in the Internet industry.

Spy Agencies - people who give themselves more rights and privileges than the
rest of us in general, in fact - are a hidden society within every
civilization that ever attempted to defend its right to define itself. Without
a spy agency, you'll never quite know if you turned Japanese, for how will you
know what a Japanese is, until you've become one?

Alas, this beautiful quandry seems to endear our species to its pitfalls, and
we continue to allow classes in our societies to rule and dominate us by
extending their privileges.

Were we to be able to turn off the secrecy bit - for all, and not just a few
privileged - we may just find that we don't need to keep killing each other
over the same things, over and over again, just because we don't really truly
understand each other. All secrecy is a degree of none-understanding, held in
place with force, to rule you.

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tptacek
So what you're saying is that there are US government-sponsored agencies
putting fake people on Internet message boards inventing --- out of whole
cloth --- disasters, industrial accidents, and misdeeds of foreign
governments?

Can you cite a source?

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dmpk2k
The US has Operation Earnest Voice, and Britain has JTRIG. Whether they're
inventing disasters is another matter.

It's a sad reality that all major state actors have or will get involved in
this, but not surprising. Warfare is changing in part due to massively
increased connectivity, and the military and policy wonks have been aware of
that for at least a decade.

I personally recommend books by David Kilcullen if you're interested.

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tptacek
The Russian propaganda is aimed principally at the Russian people. That's
illegal in the US, and technically when the US spreads propaganda overseas
they're required to make English-language copies available to the US press.

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marksc
>That's illegal in the US

WAS illegal in the US.*

Legalized with the enactment of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. The
reform effectively nullifies the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was amended in
1985 specifically to prohibit U.S. organizations from using information "to
influence public opinion in the United States."[1]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-
offici...](http://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-officially-
aired-2013-7)

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tptacek
The bill you're referring to is extraordinarily short. Its major section
opens:

 _(a) IN GENERAL.—No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of
State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public
opinion in the United States._

Did you know that BBG, to which this act primarily pertains, is also one of
the world's primary funding sources for security audits of open-source
cryptography? That program is managed under the aegis of Radio Free Asia, and
has put top-caliber researchers on virtually every open source cryptosystem
you've ever heard of, and of course many you haven't.

Something tells me that NSA and BBG aren't closely coordinating.

Meanwhile, in Russia, which is what this article actually talks about, the
country's largest social network was siezed and nationalized by the
government.

Personally, and I know everyone won't agree with me on this, but I think we
should all stop pretending that what the Russian government is doing is
comparable to what the US and UK governments are doing. In the industrialized
world, Russia and China are one kind of state controlled media, and everyone
else is another. We should stop pretending that Russia and China are OK, or
casting a pox on everyone else's houses. You'd rather have German media, or
even US media, than Russian. Full stop.

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marksc
I did not know that about the BBG. That is quite interesting.

I would have to agree that the level of media manipulation done by Russia and
China is far beyond that done by the US. I think that's pretty clear. Frankly,
I don't think any of it is "OK."

But third-world propaganda doesn't excuse first-world media manipulation
either. Or maybe it does. I think it's fair to say that we're squarely in the
realm of opinion here.

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fit2rule
I don't think the level of manipulation is any different between Russia and
the US. The only difference is the type of manipulation - US spooks need to
found a company and use their connections to make influence - e.g. CNN -
meaning they're more covert. Russian examples are more overt, because Russian
culture simply allows for the embarrassment. Americans would rather not be
confronted with the degree to which their government is oppressing them - so
they hide it behind corporate entities designed to hide the true influence in
the shadows.

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tptacek
What would be a convincing argument for people who _don 't_ believe that CNN
is literally a front for the US Government?

 _Edited for clarity_.

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verroq
These aren't trolls, these are the shills, the wu-mao, the JIDF. Trolls
agitate discussion for their own amusement, shills push an agenda for another.

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nickbauman
Sounds like they're doing both.

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nickbauman
Wow I'm being down voted did you actually read the article? Faking a disaster
is like mega-trolling.

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1337biz
How is that different form United States Military Central Command's Operation
Earnest Voice?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice)

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bwilliams18
And Operation Earnest Voice wouldn't be targeting US Citizens. Yes I
understand they would still end up being part of it, but that isn't the
primary goal, it also isn't being used in the same expressly political manner.

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ianstallings
I'm pretty sure I can use this article to get funding in DC to make sure there
is no _troll gap_. Being that we're America I'll of course go overboard and
use machine learning, big data, and drones.

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keithpeter
In the UK: I'd imagine some people from Cheltenham are having tea with some
senior civil servants and a couple of dons in an Oxford college somewhere
while chatting about the need to _keep our end up_.

And so it goes...

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custo15
"Well paid trolls", hmm... the monthly salary of Savhuk was 37,000 roubles
monthly after taxes (by her words) what equals to ~$750. This is not a lot in
St. Petersburg.

And there's a lot of trolls around russian web resources (don't know, on
salary or not), especially when some politic issues are being discussed.
Actually, it is not possible to do a constructive discussion at any russian
forum, no matter if this is pro-Russian or pro-West. So, I prefer to not visit
any places where political issues are being discussed.

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jpatokal
According to the article, driving "normal" people off political forums is one
of the explicit goals of The Agency.

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Mikhail_Edoshin
What caught my eye in this article was this phrase:

"Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical
journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might
smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent
protester."

Are there really such "right-wing agitators" out there or it's just a
hypothetical case? Any investigations, perhaps? Or is it just a usual
political struggle? I noticed that the most favored comment also was against
the conservative party.

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reagency
False flag riot-inciting operations by police are extremely common at
protests, at least. And police supremacy is a right-wing tenet, as far as the
silly wing analogy goes.

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dataker
They're doing a terrible job misinforming about fake terrorist attacks and so
on.

However,Western media and forums end up becoming quite biased in their own PC.
Different points of views are often ignored or nonexistent(strong herd
mentality).

If Russians limited their actions to showing another side of the story, I
don't think it'd be a bad thing.

