But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet.
According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HBGary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.
Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use.
And all of this is for the purposes of infiltration, data mining, and (here's the one that really worries me) ganging up on bloggers, commenters and otherwise "real" people to smear enemies and distort the truth.
This is an excerpt from one of the Word Documents, which was sent as an attachment by Aaron Barr, CEO of HBGary's Federal subsidiary, to several of his colleagues to present to clients:
To build this capability we will create a set of personas on twitter, blogs, forums, buzz, and myspace under created names that fit the profile (satellitejockey, hack3rman, etc). These accounts are maintained and updated automatically through RSS feeds, retweets, and linking together social media commenting between platforms. With a pool of these accounts to choose from, once you have a real name persona you create a Facebook and LinkedIn account using the given name, lock those accounts down and link these accounts to a selected # of previously created social media accounts, automatically pre-aging the real accounts.
In another Word document, one of the team spells out how automation can work so one person can be many personas:
Using the assigned social media accounts we can automate the posting of content that is relevant to the persona. In this case there are specific social media strategy website RSS feeds we can subscribe to and then repost content on twitter with the appropriate hashtags. In fact using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example. There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas
... It goes far beyond the mere ability for a government stooge, corporation or PR firm to hire people to post on sites like this one. They are talking about creating the illusion of consensus. And consensus is a powerful persuader. What has more effect, one guy saying BP is not at fault? Or 20 people saying it? For the weak minded, the number can make all the difference.
via www.dailykos.com
And, another piece from Alternet:
As the Daily Kos has reported, the emails show that:
- companies now use “persona management software”, which multiplies the efforts of the astroturfers working for them, creating the impression that there’s major support for what a corporation or government is trying to do.
- this software creates all the online furniture a real person would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what look like authentic profiles, making it hard to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator.
- fake accounts can be kept updated by automatically re-posting or linking to content generated elsewhere, reinforcing the impression that the account holders are real and active.
- human astroturfers can then be assigned these “pre-aged” accounts to create a back story, suggesting that they’ve been busy linking and re-tweeting for months. No one would suspect that they came onto the scene for the first time a moment ago, for the sole purpose of attacking an article on climate science or arguing against new controls on salt in junk food.
- with some clever use of social media, astroturfers can, in the security firm’s words, “make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise … There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas”
But perhaps the most disturbing revelation is this. The US Air Force has been tendering for companies to supply it with persona management software, which will perform the following tasks:
a. Create “10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent. … 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.”
b. Automatically provide its astroturfers with “randomly selected IP addresses through which they can access the internet.” [An IP address is the number which identifies someone's computer]. These are to be changed every day, “hiding the existence of the operation.” The software should also mix up the astroturfers’ web traffic with “traffic from multitudes of users from outside the organization. This traffic blending provides excellent cover and powerful deniability.”
c. Create “static IP addresses” for each persona, enabling different astroturfers “to look like the same person over time.” It should also allow “organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization.”
Some of the comments on this great oped by Mark Bittman about repurposing farm-subsidies rather than getting rid of them could be a case in point for this persona-management stuff.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/dont-end-agricultural-subsidies-fix-them/
"Wow, agricultural subsidies have lead to bad outcomes due to rent seeking on behalf of (mainly) corporate farmers. So, the author proposes different subsidies targeted towards those foods/activities which he deems worthy. How about no subsidies for any farmers or particular foods period. Let the market sort it out and we will all be better off."
"I somewhat agree with subsidizing agriculture if it were done with a better objective. For me such an objective would be the promotion of healthful eating, small farms and clean-burning fuel (which would alleviate America's reliance on Middle Eastern fuel, a threat to national security in itself). However, I'm just as well with the simple abolishment of agricultural subsidies all together. I say, this is an area (like banking) in which we, as Americans, really should have a free-market, "shear-competition" attitude, without the thought of welfare."
Posted by: Joepdx | March 02, 2011 at 09:52 PM
While not surprising this is very disturbing. The fact that online "discussions" of political issues can now be dominated by corporate interest, and it can be done largely by software, may in fact be the end of democracy on the web. For all you know I am a computer generated persona who is supposed to sound leftist but is really a corporate shill. Jodi, are you a corporate sponsored radical, designed to give the impression that radical political thought is still tolerated?
Of course, I am being silly but at what point does this corporate saturation of communication eliminate the last vertiges of our humanity?
Posted by: Alain | March 03, 2011 at 12:03 PM
Fortunately, extensive exposure to popular culture has taught me that such a question will make a computer physically explode. So we are safe.
Posted by: Neographite | March 04, 2011 at 03:16 PM
Reality : one step ahead of your worst paranoid fantasies.
Posted by: The Mathmos | March 05, 2011 at 02:09 PM
that persona management software tender has been removed, new link here
http://www.seankerrigan.com/docs/PersonaManagementSoftware.pdf
Posted by: Permaculture Cooperative | March 10, 2011 at 03:06 PM