U.S Air Force has big plans for “Earnest Voice” Feb 26

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Contained within a PowerPoint presentation provided to Cryptocomb. The U.S Air Force has some very ambitious plans for it’s “Earnest Voice” program. Earnest Voice

Page 11 of the presentation reflects the U.S Air Force has been provided with 30 Million Dollars in baseline funding and has it’s fingers crossed and hopes to gather congressional support and receive 136 Million Dollars per year. Keep in mind this was 2012′s Execution Plan, at this point they may have received the funds and much more.

FY12 Execution Plan

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http://cryptocomb.org/zine/?p=67

Operation Earnest VoiceFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Operation Earnest Voice is a planned astroturfing campaign by the US government. The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites based outside of the US.[1][2][3][4] According to the United States Military Central Command

(CENTCOM), the US-based Facebook and Twitter networks are not targeted by the program because US laws prohibit US state agencies from spreading propaganda among the US citizens.[5]

However, Isaac R. Porche, a researcher at the RAND corporation, claims it would not be easy to exclude US audiences when dealing with internet communications.[4]

[edit] Details of the program

The US government signed a $2.8m contract with the Ntrepid web-security company to develop a specialized software, allowing agents of the government to post propaganda on "foreign-language websites".

Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software development request,[6] are:

50 user "operator" licensies, 10 sockpuppets controllable by each user. Sockpuppets are to be "replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber

presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent". Sockpuppets are to "be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world".

A special secure VPN, allowing sockpuppets to appear to be posting from "randomly selected IP addresses", in order to "hide the existence of the operation".

50 static IP addresses to enable government agencies to "manage their persistent online personas", with identities of government and enterprise organizations protected; allowing for different state agents to use the same sockpuppet, and easily switch between different sockpuppets to "look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization".

9 private servers, "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"; should use commercial hosting centers around the world.

Virtual machine environment, deleted after each session termination, to avoid interaction with "any virus, worm, or malicious software".

[edit] See also

Astroturfing Sockpuppet (Internet)

50 Cent Party

Internet Water Army

Web brigades

[edit] References

1. ̂ "US spy operation that manipulates social media" (The Guardian on the US Operation Earnest Voice)

2. ̂ "U.S. Military Launches Spy Operation Using Fake Online Identities " (The Huffington Post on the US Operation Earnest Voice)

3. ̂ "Pentagon buys social networking 'spy software'" (The Telegraph on the US Operation Earnest Voice)

4. ^ a b "U.S. Central Command ‘friending’ the enemy in psychological war" (The Washington Times on the US Operation Earnest Voice)

5. ̂ Guardian on US Operation Earnest Voice

6. ̂ The request for web-brigade software development by US government, June 2010

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice