They aren't free trade negotiations. They are protectionist trade deals meant to exclude China from trade in its region as it rises. (China has been trying, similarly, to arrange ASEAN trade deals to exclude the United States).
32 karma · joined June 5, 2015
This threat intelligence system is also used to specify patterns of foreign propaganda. However, similar to the story above, patterns that are too broad can silence legitimate speech by citizens.
An example of this is stopfasttrack.com. Their domain name was similar to Russian propaganda, so then the switch was flipped to censor the Russian domain from Facebook, Twitter and popular email providers, their site was caught in the net as well.
They posted to Reddit about it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/38pmg8/hey_re...
(The US government and NATO use the terms 'troll' and 'spam' as synonyms for foreign online propaganda)
https://www.google.com/search?q=61+million+experiment+social...
There are also - and I can go on about this for quite some time - programs and studies partially revealed by the Snowden docs but evidenced well beyond those documents that have the US investing resources into not only tracking the flow of ideas using large scale sentiment and social media analysis, but also curating and directing these ideas. While there is around 10 years of capability research regarding the online case, today DARPA has a research program called SMISC (Social Media in Strategic Communication; Strategic Communication is the DoD term for influence operations/propaganda) that studies how to measure the 'idea posture' of an online community and also how to control it. This combined with efforts like Operation EARNEST VOICE and the host of others does make an onlooker take the State Departments 'War of Ideas' concept much more seriously.
The way the US military works in large and increasing part is that it works with US corporations to achieve these effects. Given the complaints by other countries of weaponization of Google/Facebook and studies done on using search engine results to manipulate voting we should keep our eyes peeled that Google continues to 'not be evil'.
The point of having a rule set that can be pushed to like the system described here is that it can be fed information from a centralized task force. Indeed, these systems are used across industries with patterns and rules to detect malware, hacking, and a host of other activity (using formats such as STIX or TAXI).
It's unlikely that Facebook itself would be trying to determine whether a post to some content is propaganda - it's more likely that their automated system will apply the rules it receives from information defense agencies.
As per your other note, the selective censorship of information is absolutely a form a propaganda of its own. Facebook (and the US government) don't have the best history here and have 100% certifiably censored information to prevent effective organization of (for example) May Day protests. I'm not going to go speak about that at length here - hoping to get some technical clarity from those involved.
My guess is actually that, yes, this system has rules (and gets live feeds of them) to block certain political content associated with influence operations. But I was hoping to get a more serious, direct and charitable answer from someone who works on the system.
No smoking gun and not strong enough evidence to assume it, but it's not a crazy speculation.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/us-airdrops-ant...
Search "Syria propaganda", "Syria video game propaganda" and if you want technical stuff "strategic communication video game". The past ten years or so of DoD propaganda planning has involved elements of and investments in video games (they already match Hollywood for industry size and are projected to grow; they are also great for propaganda - one NSA assessment was leaked by the journalists working with Snowden).
This one is a speculation. All of the pieces are there. The technology and tactics are right, PSYOPs is now mainstream with conventional warfare (it's included in an umbrella term called 'hybrid warfare': IO and Conventional that includes the gambit of information warfare including electronic, espionage and psychological), Psychological Operations work in Syria has been disclosed by many channels - it's not really a secret. Jordan and Egypt are on that list but the document I saw was only about Twitter campaigns.
Anyway I've ranted. It's speculative. It's just not absurd or a leap at all.
"The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China and Iran support the regime."
"If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the shia expanison (Iraq and Iran)."
Released during a FOIA lawsuit (on special forces work in Syria). ["JW v Defense State 00812 court order"].
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judic...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judicial_Watch
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/exclusive-dozens-of-...
Won't quote because its worth reading the whole thing for context. Associated facts (e.g. Turkey, US's equal partner, was caught running guns, Manning had [admittedly old] docs with CIA running guns to Syria) lend weight to the what was thought on Capitol Hill at the time.
But broadly the US and allies support Salafist elements as they are, and can be encouraged to be, opposed to Assad.
The US heavily invests in using video games for propaganda and ISIL and Sunni-insurgent forces have been exposed to a number of anti-Assad video games. Hamas is unlikely to be the progenitor of anti-Assad video themed video games. It's speculative, but it makes a lot of sense that the US would do what it can to direct ire at Assad.
What's not speculative is that Turkey and the US were running guns to groups that became ISIL factions in Syria.
There's lots of influence to be had all over. The larger powers are trying to manage the situation to achieve their ends. That means funding insurgent groups where it benefits them and bombing the same groups from the air where they are challenged.
Methods for state censorship are making their way onto content providers online. For example, in the United States we have a system across Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and other sites whereby links will be blocked from publication.
A recent academic publication "Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities" (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf) has been reported as a boon for 'anti-troll' applications of the internet - though it finds its funding from counter-propaganda funding from the US and NATO.
The West more generally will cry out when nations block Western content, ideas, or US funded Civil Society groups - but are fine themselves censoring anti-Western ideas and narratives even when they are not directly part of a mis- or dis-information campaign.
Those who have lived both inside and outside the United States are, for the most part, well aware that Americans live inside of an information bubble of American narrative - and that Americans (like every other citizen on Earth) is subject to censorship and to propaganda.
The Internet, by a series of laws and technical solutions, is today in the process of being enveloped into this system.
I lived through the era where the Internet was free, and miss it. I fear tomorrow's Internet, and the Internet of the day after; I fear that it will continue - and all signs currently point this direction - down a narrowing corridor until it, too, becomes unashamedly part of the same bubble.
That doesn't mean it goes 'upstream'. But it is startling how far we've come. I remember the days when nobody trusted the internet - not even with their credit card.
Now its hard to trust your Operating System to run a program.
This comment above is about consensus - or its approximate form - that ends up dominating the conversation.
"Free speech!"
But then it will close down forums where some people say mean things about some other people.
"Propriety!" "It's 'curated' or 'managed', not censored!"
It's terrible. Disk encryption in the cloud is going to be so easy to break though I suppose its better than nothing? whelp
I was agreeing with you.
I do not think anything I said disproves your point, nor was it my intention.
I was speaking more broadly about the sorry state of journalism in both the United States and Canada (not comparing them).
Thank you for the information.
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/133736
(From the State Department to the CEO of SONY.)
I'm not sure that top intelligence agencies backdooring products has really made that gap so much worse.
I sorry I don't think I fully understood your point.
> wealth of information on their servers useful for counter intelligence, economic, political and likely even military gain as well
Perhaps you could go further and tease out why a US company would have information on their servers useful for counter intelligence, political and likely even military gain - beyond of course the merely mundane trope of suggesting that the algorithms or IP are the reason.
I'll take a stab, but I'd love to hear how your characterize it: It's because US tech companies, like other multinational corporations inside the US, partner with the US government which some times means intelligence or military sectors - either to provide products and services - to perform research or to fund research - or to offer capabilities as a de facto extension.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act weaponized the US tech service sector to provide data and metadata for US intelligence efforts and for the targeting of foreign nationals.
(Incidentally, it's true also that individuals located at Google hacked back into the Chinese C2Cs.)
Chinese Intelligence is fully aware of FISA and the USG use of technology product and service backdoors.
> I don't we'll ever know exactly what all of their reasons were for breaking in, but I don't think the theory that one of the primary motivations was targeting dissidents can be waved away as just spin.
You really don't motivate why we should take the PR statement more seriously than the journalism. And references to 'I don't think we can ever be certain' is an appeal to uncertainty that isn't really there.