New British army elite unit to use social media and psychological warfare

Just a few days after the Ukrainian government announces that they are creating a "Truth Telling" Crusade, through their Information Policy minister, Britain has announced the same thing, but on a MUCH grander scale. 


Yesterday, the United Kingdom government announced:

The British military is to form a new specialist force in “non-lethal” forms of psychological warfare using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to tackle the “asymmetric battlefields” of the 21st century.

I found the use of the word "asymmetric battlefields" a very interesting term.  What exactly does "asymetric" mean....

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/asymmetric

a·sym·met·ric

 (ā′sĭ-mĕt′rĭk) also a·sym·met·ri·cal (-rĭ-kəl)adj.

1.

a. Having no balance or symmetry: an asymmetric design.

b. Uneven in distribution.

2.

a. Existing or occurring between two incommensurate entities, especially to the detriment of one.

b. Characterized by an imbalance in power between two opponents in an armed conflict, especially one in which a weaker force uses unconventional means, such as guerilla or terrorist tactics: asymmetric warfare.

Well..... isn't THAT interesting? I find it very interesting that they are basically stating that THEY are the weaker force, hence their use of "unconventional means" such as psychological warfare to upset the balance of truth that is pumping out through the internet in response to the lies of the main stream media.

This is a MASSIVE piece of transparency.  While this news that they are employing people to deliberately "influence" social media and public opinion though manipulation on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.. is not new to most of us in the alternative media world- hell, this has been going on for years- the very fact that the UK government is announcing this to the world and calling it "psychological warfare" is a vitally important piece of information to get out to the public.

...They've tried to take over the internet and to restrict access to, and to censor internet content though legal and governmental bullyboy tactics to no avail.... so now they are telling the world that they will step up their shill game and try to influence the public through mind games and deliberate psychological warfare tactics.


Government agencies, especially American, Canadian and British western "intelligence" agencies, have been using this template to stamp out, ridicule, and negate any forms of truth or information that is put out on the internet that they do not want to public to believe.   I republished an article in January 2013 called "If the Shill fits..." that outlines the story of a paid "shill" who goes public with how he was recruited to troll the internet to take down and ridicule information on several subjects that his "employer" didn't like.

Yes, this form of "psychological warfare" has been going on almost since the inception of the internet, But it is time for the people who've been battling against these shills and trolls to make sure that they are exposed for the agenda's they serve.... and this article is a doorway to expose them to the world.

The articles below state that the "inspiration" for the formation of this new "(dis)information army" comes from the Chindits, a special force used in the Burma war.... of course I find it very interesting that when you look up Chindits, you find this comment:

"A continuing controversy over the force has centred on its extremely high casualty rate and the debatable military value of its achievements."

"Debatable military value", eh?  It would seem that they may have created a self fulfilling prophecy, eh?

....  and isn't it funny though how the US government and western media get all pissy when China and Iran does this type of thing? ..... yet it's their working MO as well. lol.  And now we have proof.


By the way, here is operations manual of Training New Generation of Online Covert-Operations

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/

d

Online army: Ukraine seeks to recruit bloggers for ‘truth-telling’ crusade

http://rt.com/news/226975-ukraine-internet-web-army/

Kiev authorities plan to create a coordination center for Ukrainian bloggers to present a united front in social media, said Information Policy Minister, Yury Stets, adding that popular bloggers will become Ukraine’s “truth-telling” online army.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/return-of-the-chindits-mod-reveals-cunning-defence-plan-10014608.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31070114

New British army elite unit to hone social media and psychological warfare

Published time: January 31, 2015 16:47

Get short URL

Reuters/Omar Sobhani

22532

Tags
Army, Social networks, UK

The British military is to form a new specialist force in “non-lethal” forms of psychological warfare using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to tackle the “asymmetric battlefields” of the 21st century.
The brigade will number 2,000 and will be made up of regular troops from all three services, as well as reservists and civilians, British media report.
It will attempt to draw the best talent from the regulars and reserves and will also allow civilians with specialist skills to operate alongside their military counterparts.
Senior officers have said that the army has to adapt to the changing nature of warfare, as conflicts from Iraq to Ukraine have demonstrated, and that the information war is as important as tanks and artillery.
READ MORE: Military must ‘sweat buildings & land’ in asset sell-off – UK defense secretary
As well as be able to shape “behavior through the use of dynamic narratives” the brigade will also specialize in reconstruction and development and humanitarian assistance in the battle to win hearts and minds.
“The brigade has been formed to respond to the ever changing character of modern conflict and to be able to compete with agile and complex adversaries,” said the Ministry of Defense (MoD).
The force will be formally unveiled in April and will be based at Hermitage near Newbury in Berkshire.

View image | gettyimages.com

It will have the same number, 77, as the legendary Chindits, the commandos who became famous for their missions behind enemy lines in Burma during the Second World War.
The 77th brigade of the Indian army, or the Chindits, was set up 1942 from British, Indian and Burmese troops to take the fight to the seemingly invincible Japanese in the darkest days of the war. They took their name from the mythical Burmese half-lion, half eagle beast that guarded Buddhist temples.
The Chindits used unconventional warfare and long range penetration units to sabotage Japanese supply and communication lines.
By taking their lead from the Chindits, the new Brigade 77 will aim to be a "smart" brigade.
[The Chindits] “fought in such difficult conditions adopting a new type of psychological warfare, using a mixture of original creative thinkers who integrated with local indigenous forces to multiply effects, the exact requirement of the modern age,” said the MoD.
The Israel Defense Force has pioneered the use of social media. In last year’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza the IDF was active on 30 platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

http://rt.com/uk/228227-british-army-psychological-warfare/

If the Shill fits.....

.... Just Sayin'.

I Was a Paid Internet Shill

By Ex-Shill, Above Top Secret

I am writing here to come out of the closet as a paid shill. For a little over six months, I was paid to spread disinformation and argue political points on the Internet. This site, ATS, was NOT one that I was assigned to post on, although other people in the same organization were paid to be here, and I assume they still walk among you. But more on this later.

I quit this job in the latter part of 2011, because I became disgusted with it, and with myself. I realized I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. If this confession triggers some kind of retribution against me, so be it. Part of being a real man in this world is having real values that you stand up for, no matter what the consequences.

My story begins in early 2011. I had been out of work for almost a year after losing my last job in tech support. Increasingly desperate and despondent, I jumped at the chance when a former co-worker called me up and said she had a possible lead for me. “It is an unusual job, and one that requires secrecy. But the pay is good. And I know you are a good writer, so its something you are suited for.” (Writing has always been a hobby for me).

She gave me only a phone-number and an address, in one of the seedier parts of San Francisco, where I live. intrigued, I asked her for the company’s URL and some more info. She laughed. “They don’t have a website. Or even a name. You’ll see. Just tell them I referred you.” Yes, it sounded suspicious, but long-term joblessness breeds desperation, and desperation has a funny way of overlooking the suspicious when it comes to putting food on the table.

The next day, I arrived at the address – the third floor in a crumbling building. The appearance of the place did not inspire confidence. After walking down a long, filthy linoleum-covered corridor lit by dimly-flickering halogen, I came to the entrance of the office itself: a crudely battered metal door with a sign that said “United Amalgamated Industries, Inc.”

I later learned that this “company” changed its name almost monthly, always using bland names like that which gave no strong impression of what the company actually does. Not too hopeful, I went inside. The interior was equally shabby. There were a few long tables with folding chairs, at which about a dozen people were tapping away on old, beat-up computers. There were no decorations or ornaments of any type: not even the standard-issue office fica trees or plastic ferns. What a dump. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

The manager, a balding man in his late forties, rose from the only stand-alone desk in the room and came forward with an easy smile. “You must be Chris. Yvette [my ex-co-worker] told me you’d be coming.” [Not our real names]. “Welcome. Let me tell you a little about what we do.” No interview, nothing. I later learned they took people based solely on referral, and that the people making the referrals, like my ex-colleague Yvette, were trained to pick out candidates based on several factors including ability to keep one’s mouth shut, basic writing skills, and desperation for work.

We sat down at his desk and he began by asking me a few questions about myself and my background, including my political views (which were basically non-existent). Then he began to explain the job. “We work on influencing people’s opinions here,” is how he described it. The company’s clients paid them to post on Internet message boards and popular chartrooms, as well as in gaming forums and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Who were these clients? “Oh, various people,” he said vaguely. “Sometimes private companies, sometimes political groups.”

Satisfied that my political views were not strong, he said I would be assigned to political work. “The best people for this type of job are people like you, without strong views,” he said with a laugh. “It might seem counterintuitive, but actually we’ve found that to be the case.” Well, OK. Fine. As long as it comes with a steady paycheck, I’d believe whatever they wanted me to believe, as the guy inGhostbusters said.

After discussing pay (which was much better than I’d hoped) and a few other details, he then went over the need for absolute privacy and secrecy. “You can’t tell anyone what we do here. Not your wife, not your dog.” (I have neither, as it happens.) “We’ll give you a cover story and even a phone number and a fake website you can use. You will have to tell people you are a consultant. Since your background is in tech support, that will be your cover job. Is this going to be a problem for you?” I assured him it would not. “Well, OK. Shall we get started?”

“Right now?” I asked, a bit taken aback.

“No time like the present!” he said with a hearty laugh.

The rest of the day was taken up with training. Another staff member, a no-nonsense woman in her thirties, was to be my trainer, and training would only last two days. “You seem like a bright guy, you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast, I think,” she said. And indeed, the job was easier than I’d imagined. My task was simple: I would be assigned to four different websites, with the goal of entering certain discussions and promoting a certain view. I learned later that some of the personnel were assigned to internet message boards (like me), while others worked on Facebook or chatrooms. It seems these three types of media each have different strategy for shilling, and each shill concentrates on one of the three in particular.

My task? “To support Israel and counter anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic posters.” Fine with me. I had no opinions one way or another about Israel, and who likes anti-Semites and Nazis? Not me, anyway. But I didn’t know too much about the topic. “That’s OK,” she said. “You’ll pick it up as you go along. For the most part, at first, you will be doing what we call “meme-patrol.” This is pretty easy. Later if you show promise, we’ll train you for more complex arguments, where more in-depth knowledge is necessary.”

She handed me two binders with sheets enclosed in limp plastic. The first was labeled simply “Israel” in magic-marker on the cover, and it had two sections .The first section contained basic background info on the topic. I would have to read and memorize some of this, as time went on. It had internet links for further reading, essays and talking points, and excerpts from some history books. The second, and larger, section was called “Strat” (short for “strategy”) with long lists of “dialogue pairs.” These were specific responses to specific postings.

If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.” This section also contained a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, links to pornography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”

The second binder was smaller, and it contained information specific to the web sites I would be assigned to. The sites I would work were: Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, CNN news, Yahoo News, and a handful of smaller sites that rotated depending on need. As stated, I was NOT assigned to work ATS (although others in my group were), which is part of the reason I am posting this here, rather than elsewhere. I wanted to post this on Godlike Productions at first, but they have banned me from even viewing that site for some reason (perhaps they are onto me?). But if somebody connected with this site can get the message to them, I think they should know about it, because that was the site I spent a good 70% of my time working on.

The site-specific info in the second binder included a brief history each site, including recent flame-wars, as well as info on what to avoid on each site so as not to get banned. It also had quite detailed info on the moderators and the most popular regged posters on each site: location (if known), personality type, topics of interest, background sketch, and even some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for ATS, I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.”

Each popular poster was classified as “hostile,” “friendly,” or “indifferent” to my goal. We were supposed to cultivate friendship with the friendly posters as well as the mods (basically, by brownnosing and sucking up), and there were even notes on strategies for dealing with specific hostile posters. The info was pretty detailed, but not perfect in every case. “If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”

At first, like I said, my job was “meme-patrol.” This was pretty simple and repetitive; it involved countering memes and introducing new memes, and didn’t demand much in-depth knowledge of the subject. Mostly just repetitive posting based on the dialogue pairs in the “Strat” section of the first binder. A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this…but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.

The funny thing was, although I started the job with no strong opinions or political views, after a few weeks of this I became very emotionally wedded to the pro-Israel ideas I was pushing. There must be some psychological factor at work…a good salesman learns to honestly love the products he’s selling, I guess. It wasn’t long before my responses became fiery and passionate, and I began to learn more about the topic on my own. “This is a good sign,” my trainer told me. “It means you are ready for the next step: complex debate.”

The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom. There were a lot of details to this more advanced stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).

I was also given the job of tying to find new recruits, people “like me” who had the personality type, ability to keep a secret, basic writing/thinking skills, and desperation necessary to sign on a shill. I was less successful at this part of the job, though, and I couldn’t find another in the time I was there.

After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.

A few days ago I happened to be in the same neighborhood and on a whim thought I’d check out the old office. It turns out the operation is gone, having moved on. This, too, I understood, is part of their strategy: Don’t stay in the same place for too long, don’t keep the same name too long, move on after half a year or so. Keeping a low profile, finding new employees through word of mouth: All this is part of the shill way of life. But it is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.

This is my confession. I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether I want to talk more about this, so if I don’t respond to this thread, don’t be angry. But I think you should know: Shills exist. They are real. They walk among you, and they pay special attention to your popular gold-bordered WATS posters. You should be aware of this. What you choose to do with this awareness is up to you.

Yours,

ExShill

http://consciouslifenews.com/paid-internet-shill-shadowy-groups-manipulate-internet-opinion-debate/1147073/