Operation Earnest Voice

CIA troll farms; not a hoax!

In 2011 the US Government paid the company NTrepid $2.8 million to develop a software which would allow government agents to spread pro-American propaganda on non-English websites via sockpuppets, the article describing this program reads as follows:

"The $2.7 million (£1.7 million) programme developed by San Diego firm Ntrepid allows one military user to create multiple personas on the internet and engage in extended online conversations and communications with suspects.

According to military procurement documents seen by the Washington Times, 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.

A spokesman for the US Central Command region, which includes the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said that psychological warfare scheme was operating only on overseas social media sites.

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

Interventions would not be conducted in English, but languages such as Arabic, Urdu and Pashto.

The new scheme is believed to be part of Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first used in Iraq against various forums used by al-Qaeda members and insurgents communicating online.

General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom and now leading Nato forces in Afghanistan, said that the aim of the US military was to be 'first with the truth'.

American concern about the power of the internet as a recruiting tool for terrorists has only increased in recent years as it emerged that planners of attacks on US soil had communicated with al-Qaeda figures in Yemen and Pakistan."

Notice how CENTCOM says that the operations won't be conducted domestically but rather abroad in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan to combat the online presence of Jihadists. But considering that they need to "spread the truth" in these regions using astroturfing and fake names, it makes me very critical of this claim.

But what are the full capabilities of OEV? Well let's just read them right from the software development request:

Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent. Individual applications 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 and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.

VPN provides the ability for users to daily and automatically obtain randomly selected IP addresses through which they can access the internet. The daily rotation of the users IP address prevents compromise during observation of likely or targeted web sites or services, while hiding the existence of the operation. In addition, may provide traffic mixing, blending the user s traffic with traffic from multitudes of users from outside the organization. This traffic blending provides excellent cover and powerful deniability. Anonymizer Enterprise Chameleon or equal.

Licence protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise organizations. Enables organizations to manage their persistent online personas by assigning static IP addresses to each persona. Individuals can perform static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time. Also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization. Anonymizer IP Mapper License or equal.

Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer. Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated CONUS Light Geosite or equal.

Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup for each customer based on the geographic area of operations the customer is operating within and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to originate from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured using commercial hosting centers around the world and which are established anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and integrated within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer. Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for use by each customer and never shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated OCONUS Light Geosite or equal.

Secure Operating Environment provides a reliable and protected computing environment from which to stage and conduct operations. Every session uses a clean Virtual Machine (VM) image. The solution is accessed through sets of Virtual Private Network (VPN) devices located at each Customer facility. The fully-managed VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is an environment that allows users remote access from their desktop into a VM. Upon session termination, the VM is deleted and any virus, worm, or malicious software that the user inadvertently downloaded is destroyed. Anonymizer Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Solution or equal.

It's very, very clear that OEV is incredibly sophisticated and was/is being used on a widespread scale in the Middle East and potentially regions of Europe, and while CENTCOM denies any and all allegations of being utilized in English speaking circles or on Twitter/Facebook, I have my doubts that they'd simply not use it here.

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