We’ve all heard of the folks who create new versions of themselves to appear more attractive or appealing on social media sites – but now the U.S. government is getting into the act.
But what may seem just sleazy when it’s a private citizen turns a little scary when it’s the government using fake identities to spread misleading information on the Internet.
The Guardian newspaper reports that the military’s Central Command, headed by Gen. James Mattis, has contracted with a California firm to create an “online persona management service.” The contract is intended to help the military “secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence Internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.”
The program is aimed at disrupting terrorists and extremists and the personas will communicate only in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto – not English, a Centcom spokesman said.
“Because the Internet recognizes no national boundaries, U.S. propaganda efforts in programs like this, even if properly targeted at foreign audiences, could cross our border and improperly influence domestic policy discussions in violation of the law and core democratic principles, said Michael German of the American Civil Liberties Union. “ And because these programs are conducted behind a wall of secrecy, they are too easily misused and abused. Congress and the American public need to know a lot more about these programs before they are implemented to ensure that government propaganda isn’t improperly targeting Americans and influencing our domestic policy debates.”
But Jim Harper of the Cato Institute saw the plan as an appropriate Defense Department operation as long as it does not aim at U.S. citizens.
“Infiltrating jihadi groups and others is a normal part of intelligence gathering and disruption of terrorism planning,” Harper said. “… It’s hard to create a false persona, and it’s easy to flub operations like this, but the mere existence of this program might be sowing distrust among people who might otherwise feel free to organize attacks on U.S. interests.”
Jeff Jarvis, associate professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, used his BuzzMachine blog to criticize the idea.
“It’s appalling that in this era of greater transparency and accountability brought on by the Internet, the US of all countries would try to systematize sock puppetry. It’s appallingly stupid, for there’s little doubt that the fakes will be unmasked. The net result of that will be the diminution, not the enhancement, of American credibility.
“But the effort is amusing as well,” he continued, “for there is absolutely no need to spend millions of dollars to create fake identities online. Any child or troll can do it for free. Millions do. If the government insists on paying, it can use salesforce.com to monitor and join in chats.”
Centcom is reportedly paying a new company called Ntrepid $2.76 million to create the fake-persona program.
