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Government Censorship Communications Social Networks United States Politics

More On the "Cuban Twitter" Scam 90

We mentioned a few days ago the USAID-funded SMS social network that was connecting Cubans against the wishes of the Cuban government. Now Glen Greenwald's The Intercept has more on this kind of back-channel government intervention via what he characterizes as "the Internet propaganda bucket." Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes with an excerpt: "These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to "discrediting" the agency's enemies with false information spread online.

The documents in the archive show that the British are particularly aggressive and eager in this regard, and formally shared their methods with their U.S. counterparts. One previously undisclosed top-secret document–prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual "SIGDEV" gathering of the "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.–explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda."
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More On the "Cuban Twitter" Scam

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  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday April 05, 2014 @05:06PM (#46672189)

    Did he ever have legitimacy ?

    There was never any doubt that this was being done. The questions is do you want the NSA having your info or Facebook and Google.

  • Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Saturday April 05, 2014 @05:36PM (#46672343)

    This is just a mountain made out of a molehill by leftists who are fans of the government of Cuba ...

    False dichotomy. Rejecting A does not mean accepting B.

    ... and don't like when Western governments try to undermine it.

    See above.

    I have news for them: doing things like this is the intelligence agencies' *job*.

    Just because someone is paid to do something does not mean that anyone has to support that.

    They're supposed to spy; that's why they're called spy agencies, and Cuba couldn't be a more deserving target.

    Since Cuba is not a threat to the USofA in any way that statement is incorrect. There are many ways Cuba could be "a more deserving target".

    If Cuba doesn't do such things itself, it's only because of lack of budget in these post-Soviet days, not lcak of scruples.

    Circular reasoning. And you even admit that Cuba is not doing the same to the USofA.

    But I wouldn't like it if Cuba dropped bombs on us either, yet I'm not foolish enough to say that it's immoral to drop bombs on another country.

    That entirely depends upon how YOU define YOUR "morality".

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

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