US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

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From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

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The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

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The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

Source

A very interesting article worthwhile reading in its entireness.
I've seen this coming for a while.

Up till a decade ago the television and newspapers were the only main channels to indoctrinate and fully brainwash us in order to gain support for the actions taken by the elites ruling our countries. Since the television and newspaper are one-way information channels it hasn't been much of a problem to accomplish the goal of one big unity supporting everything. The opposition was rather small, particularly compared to nowadays.

No matter where you live, internet enables us to discuss, inform and share opinions in contrast to television and newspapers. It causes a growing discontent and support for the few elites is fading. An uprising is in the make and gradually accelerating. The only way to preserve power is to keep the commons stupid. As long as they are subjected to a one-way continous stream of governmental indoctrination no problems will arise.

Internet is a serious threat to some, keeping ''them'' stupid is by far a better alternative they must think.

Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government. - Thomas Jefferson

[edit on 2-2-2007 by Mdv2]

theres nothing new in that except for the fact that they say that they want weapons that can destroy electrical systems, i.e i assume emp weapons of some kind.

though i did find interesting the stuff about they planting stories abroad meant for foreign comsumption, coming back to america. how would they stop this in the future, with todays free web, one can only guess.

if this was a nazi germany report, they would just be called a propganda group, but psyops, sounds more friendly.

This article is from 1/2006 but its not telling us anything new. The Lincoln group and others such as Benador Associates are all examples that we have all seen, including you MDV, very much regarding the Middle East over the past summer. Its not only the USA , its other countries too. You have Foreign Relations Bureaus putting out software that seeks out forums and polls with specific topics and sends out hordes of cyber soldiers on combat missions to change poll results and spread propaganda in their favor wih pre-scripted messages and ideas on how to debate certain topics. (See sites like CAMERA,MEMRI and others)

Hell man do a Google search for Palestine and the majority of domain names that come up are not arab run sites but disinfo sites held by domain squatters that thought way ahead of their enemies. There are some countries that are WAY AHEAD OF THE USA in as far as Cyber combat goes.
Many countries employ hackers to tear down sites that they deem as being terrorist in nature. Britain has done this many times admittedly. DOS attacks are not just being used by cyberpunks to trash websites anymore. Our military systems are being hacked by IP addresses coming out of China and elsewhere

Just like in the real world they are gonna f* this up for everyone else too and make the net a warzone as well. Just not as bloody.