Please find below the full text of my latest story for the Washington
Times. I hope you find it interesting. It appears on A1 of today's paper. You
may link to it on the Web here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/1/us-central-command-friending-the-enemy-in-psycholo/
You can find a complete archive of all my articles on my staff page, here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/shaun-waterman/
As ever, feedback is more than welcome and if you wish to stop receiving
these occasional alerts, just let me know by reply e-mail.
Sincerely
Shaun Waterman
Reporter
The Washington Times
U.S. Central Command ‘friending’ the enemy in psychological war -- Software
helps crack terror cells
By Shaun Waterman, The Washington Times
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 ForceGen. 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 Porsche, 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. Porsche 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. Porsche 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."
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