U.S. Central Command ‘friending’ the enemy in psychological war, The Washington Times

01.03.2011

Software helps crack terror cells

By Shaun Waterman, The Washington Times, Tuesday, March 1, 2011  

Robert Gates.jpg
Photo: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates (Associated Press)

 The U.S. Central Command is stepping up psychological warfare operations using software  that allows it to target social media websites used by terrorists. 

The Tampa, Fla.-based military command that runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan recently  bought a special computer program that troops use to create multiple fake identities  on the Internet. The military uses the fictitious identities to infiltrate  groups and in some cases spread disinformation among extremist organizations  
  such as al Qaeda and the Taliban with the goal of disrupting their operations, according to documents and U.S. officials. 

The program is aimed at helping troops create and maintain realistic online personalities that  will persuade extremists to allow them into chat rooms and bulletin boards by  creating the appearance that they are logging on and posting messages or other  contributions from anywhere in the world. 

Information operations generally are carried out by U.S. special-operations forces. 

The software is used for what the military calls "information operations" that use  "classified social media activities outside the United States to counter  violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda," Centcom spokesman Cmdr.  Bill Speaks told The Washington Times. 

Information operations include activities designed "to influence, disrupt, corrupt or  usurp adversarial human and automated decision-making while protecting our  own," according to Pentagon documents. Such activities include  disinformation campaigns, or military deception; computer network operations,  or hacking; and what used to be called psychological warfare operations or  "psy-ops," but is now referred to as "military information  support operations." 

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a memo this year directing that military  information support operations replace psychological warfare and transferring  oversight and management of information operations from defense intelligence  officials and to the Pentagon's policymaking directorate. He said the change  would enable better coordination of activities across the Pentagon and  throughout the U.S. government. 

Under Mr.Gates' order, U.S. Strategic Command, where the military's new cyberwarfare arm  is based, will concentrate on military computer hacking and cyberdefenses. The  Joint Staffs will take responsibility for deception operations and Special Operations  Command will take the lead in military information support operations.  Deception operations can be strategic and tactical and can be aimed at  supporting U.S. policies or small-scale operations. 

Former CIA Director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden said in an interview that  information operations like those at Centcom, using social media, are the  cutting edge of U.S. military and intelligence activities that often require  officials to rapidly determine how long-established rules and limits apply in  the borderless world of the Internet. 

"I think a good word would be developmental," Mr. Hayden said. "Operationally  developmental, technologically developmental and legally developmental." Centcom purchased the $2.7 million software from San Diego-based Ntrepid, the same  company that markets "Anonymizer," a popular online tool that lets  users hide their identities and locations on the Web. 

The company and its executives did not respond to several requests for comment. 

According to military procurement documents, the software will "enable an operator to  exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and  without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries." 

"Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world," the  documents stated. 

Any computer that logs on to the Web generally does so from its unique Internet location,  known as an Internet Protocol or IP address. The addresses often can be tracked  back to specific corporations or agencies, and sometimes are pinpointed  geographically. 

The software generates false IP addresses that are not linked to the U.S. military, thus  making them appear to originate from specified parts of the world, the  documents stated. 

"The service includes a user-friendly application environment to maximize the user's  situational awareness by displaying real-time local information," the  document said, a reference to information it can generate about the time,  weather and local news in the pretend location of the fake persona. 

The growth of a single global information culture and the growing ubiquity of the Internet pose  challenges for U.S. military psy-ops warriors who are barred by law and policy  from targeting U.S. audiences.

Traditional information operations such as leaflets can be dropped on enemy troops, making  it easy to exclude U.S. audiences. "Leaflets don't blow across the  world," said Isaac R. Porche, a researcher at the RAND Corp. who has  written about information operations. "That's not the case" with Internet  communications, he added. 

"Cyberspace doesn't have borders," he said.

The issue is further complicated by the most popular social media sites that are owned and  operated by U.S. companies that enjoy many of the same rights and protections  as citizens under U.S. law. 

The social networking site Facebook, for example, says that any effort to create false  identities is a violation of the terms of service agreement required of all  users. 

"Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture," spokesman Andrew Noyes  said. "It's a violation of our policies to use a fake name or operate  under a false identity, and we encourage people to report anyone they think is  doing this." 

He said the company had a special team that reviews these reports and "takes action as  necessary." 

Cmdr. Speaks said the Central Command program operates only on overseas social media sites. 

"We do not target U.S. audiences, and we do not conduct these activities on sites owned by  U.S. companies," he said. 

But restrictions like these placed on information operations are sometimes irksome  to the troops carrying them out, Mr. Porche said. 

"At the lowest echelon of the actual operators," he said, "there are  complaints there that there's too many hoops they have to jump through. ... In  a firefight, if you're shot at, you return fire immediately. ... The people who  have to do the missions are always the ones who want to move the fastest." 

But Mr. Porche said the limitations on "returning fire" in information operations  were necessary. "You can't just unleash an operation. It has to be  coordinated. 

"There are a lot of checks and balances," he said. 

John Delong, an official in charge of overseeing operations at the National Security Agency,  the electronic signals intelligence and code-breaking agency, said he could not  comment specifically on the Centcom operation. But he said it was a challenge  in these emerging and dynamic areas to "play aggressively right up to the  line" of what was allowed under law and policy. 

"Sometimes people think of the rules as these things that are fixed on paper," he  said. "They're constantly changing; they interact with each other. There  are constantly [new] interpretations coming down both internally and  externally."  

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. 


Центральное командование ВС США в порядке психологической  войны "френдит" врагов 

Шон Уотерман | The Washington Times

Центральное командование ВС США  "недавно закупило специальную компьютерную программу, с помощью которой  военные создают в интернете множество фиктивных личностей", используемых  затем для "внедрения в группы и, в некоторых случаях, для распространения  дезинформации". Конечная цель этой деятельности - срыв операций таких экстремистских  организаций, как "Аль-Каида" и "Талибан", пишет со ссылкой  на "документы и американских чиновников" The Washington Times.

Производитель софта - компания Ntrepid (Сан-Диего), сумма сделки составляет 2,7 млн долларов.  Программа "позволяет оператору управлять несколькими онлайн-персонами с  одной и той же рабочей станции, при этом не опасаясь быть раскрытым продвинутым  противником". С помощью ложных IP-адресов система создает видимость присутствия  пользователя в заданном районе мира, одновременно маскируя его принадлежность к  американской армии, уточняет издание. 

Затруднить использование нового  программного обеспечения может американское законодательство, которое запрещает  подвергать домашнюю аудиторию психологическим операциям, а также тот факт, что  популярные социальные сети управляются американскими компаниями и,  следовательно, на них распространяются многие из тех прав и гарантий, которые  имеют рядовые граждане США. Официальный представитель Центрального командования  коммандер Билл Спикс заверил, что программа будет использоваться лишь в  зарубежных социальных сетях. 

Источник: The Washington Times

http://www.inopressa.ru/article/02Mar2011/washtimes/friend.html




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