The British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, \u201camplif[y]\u201d sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be \u201cextremist.\u201d The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.<\/p>\n
The tools were created by GCHQ\u2019s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG\u2019s use of \u201cfake victim blog posts,\u201d \u201cfalse flag operations,\u201d \u201choney traps\u201d and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.<\/p>\n
But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an \u201cemergency\u201d to \u201chelp keep us safe,\u201d a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called \u201cJTRIG Tools and Techniques\u201d provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit\u2019s operations are. The document\u2014available in full here\u2014is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG\u2019s \u201cweaponised capability\u201d when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker\u2019s buffet for wreaking online havoc.\ufeff\ufeff <\/p>\n
Source: First Look<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, \u201camplif[y]\u201d sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be \u201cextremist.\u201d The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower … Continue reading “Seeding the net with false info”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[186,9480,9479,3408,2283,3355],"class_list":["post-14747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-britain","tag-fake-polls","tag-false-information","tag-gchq","tag-internet","tag-surveillance"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14748,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747\/revisions\/14748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}