Air Force Wants Hundreds of Fake Online Identities 124
bizwriter writes "Bad enough that spammers are creating fake Facebook accounts that acquire connections with unsuspecting people, then inundate them with crap. Now, the US military wants software and services to manage upwards of 500 fake online personas designed to interact with social media, presumably including such sites as Facebook and Twitter."
Re:What is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worse than spam. It's coordinated government propaganda on a large scale...
Re:Not fake IDs, corporate IDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, you didn't read the article. Which I know is an absurd thing to do on /.
However.. this is not about making an account for @Area51 or a Facebook page, so you can Like the Marine Corps.
The USAF wants a software package that will allow a user to create and manage 10 separate accounts that are geograhically and culturally correct for the area the account is supposed to be from. And they want the package to be able to handle at least 50 such users.
They want the ultimate in internet troll technology.
Re:If WE did it, we could be jailed for "hacking". (Score:4, Insightful)
OH get off it. We have a Constitution which defines how our officials are elected and the President is selected.
Don't bitch and moan that the government followed the Constitution, Following the rules and limitations set forth in the Constitution is EXACTLY what we need the government to do. It is the rules that WE place on the government. You can't get mad for the government following the rules.
This is the reason why a lot of us (advocates of limited government) when people work to have the government do things it isn't authorized to do. Even if it is a 'good' thing to do, we shouldn't let them do it if it isn't in their authorization. If we think they should do it, then we need to give them the authorization by amending the Constitution. Otherwise, the Constitution is pointless. And advocating that the government should ignore the Constitution no matter how 'noble' the cause would be just like advocating for the government to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worse than spam. It's coordinated government propaganda on a large scale...
And even worse, it is not the government, it is an unelected body of the executive branch, hopefully controlled by the government.
If they want to take part in the public debate, they should do it in an open fashion.
But also for their own well being: what if after some years information about these secret dealings get (wiki)leaked? Political interventions by the military are symptoms of a dictatorship.
Re:the gov is drooling over this (Score:4, Insightful)
As nice as that does sound it's not true. The egyptian protests had at the most 300 000 people involed. Now, while that's a lot of people we must remember that Egypt has nearly 80 million inhabitants so compared to thatt the protests were actually pretty small. And more importantly: most of the people arrived to the streets after the social networking sites had been blocked.
The media seems to be painting a picture of some sort of revolution facilitated by social networking sites while completely forgetting the fact that no revolution actually took place: Mubarak is gone but the millitary regime that he hailed from is still in power and in fact stronger than ever (actually, the reason the millitary allowed and even endorsed the protests was that Mubarak wanted his son - who has no ties with the military - to be his successor and that angered most of the people in the armed forces). In addition, as I alreasdy stated the 300 000 protestors is not a major achievement for "social media". There have been protest even in middle-east before the era of the internet where millions of people joined the protests, such as the 1979 revolution of Iran. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.