COINTELPRO: Mind control and Conspiracy Forums like ATS

reply to post by DocEmrick


Yeah, it's definitely interesting, but even more interesting that some are so obvious they can't help themselves. And most often they provide information that is no where near based in reality. Maybe it's me, but i can spot them every time.

AboveTopSecret.com is a site where many sensible, intelligent, and logical human beings come and share their opinions and thoughts on various topics.

It's also home to many delusional, paranoid, schizo, and mentally unstable men and women.

But that's what makes it so great and diverse. It's just another wacky and sometimes intelligent site.

It's highly doubtful there are any FBI or government agents on here posting. Although the idea is exciting and we're willing to claim someone who doesn't agree with our OPINIONS is a paid agent of the alien/kenyan/marxist/nazi/fascist/socialist/communist/muslim (did I get all of them, guys?) President Obama, it's just....so unlikely and most likely isn't true.

It's just a forum. Only mind control going on in here is ...well, there is none

Originally posted by SeventhSeal
[ATS is] also home to many delusional...
[snip]
It's highly doubtful there are any FBI or government agents on here posting. Although the idea is exciting and we're willing to claim someone who doesn't agree with our OPINIONS is a paid agent of the alien/kenyan/marxist/nazi/fascist/socialist/communist/muslim (did I get all of them, guys?) President Obama, it's just....so unlikely and most likely isn't true.

It's just a forum. Only mind control going on in here is ...well, there is none

You really are a bit slow on the up-take...

Have you read the thread at all or just the OP? The delusion is all yours, I'm afraid. The US military is aiming for full spectrum dominance. That includes in cyberspace intelligence operations. If you really want the truth you have to bother looking....

I find some stuff on ATS laugh out loud funny. Some doesn't interest me. Some captivates.
This is a top notch thread.

I play a kind of game of lets determine if that faceless person on the other side is "real" or not.
Am I real? Well I found this site searching out and drawing together theories of my own based on a bit of classified information that I do know and things I've heard and observed over the years. Everything is compartmentalized in the classified world. You have to cast a wide net to determine just a bit of the truth. Because I was involved in a situation that is still covered up and classified and have witnessed how that was handled, well I look for similarities. Again - I only know part of my own situation, I am still "mining" for other parts that sometimes make it on the web. Of course what is true for me might not be true for others. I don't have a clearance now and am retired so I am mining for "history" but its an interesting personal project.

I get a sense, and based on the language can "feel" for the validity of the person behind the keyboard. There have been a few interesting individuals on this thread IMHO. One came on to educate. One came on to play and I pitched to them and they caught. But one individual on this thead gave me the chills, it was the authoritarian "stop" by to see what we're up to and a sort of condescending "nice effort on the thread anyway" dismissiveness and an appeal to authority sign off - now I can't be certain about this individual but I became alert to language use after many years of working with Top Tier Military Officers - there is a kind of dismissiveness and confidence in the language used by those who have held or do hold positions of power or authority they go into a mode where they steer and control the dialog, with an "enough said" kind of tone. I have only noticed this through years of human observation. So when a random insertion post makes a thread and there is a "tone" to the language use, I notice. I have noticed it seems the most controversial threads often times have these visitors, they pop in to a large thread, make a comment, dismiss everyone sort of like children and then move on. What I can say is this behavior is familiar to me, and again usually by those in positions of authority or power.

reply to post by Pimander


If you think the government is targeting a conspiracy theory forum, then well, I guess you do belong here

No one is using mind control on ATS, so please, relax.

Originally posted by nh_ee
It's fairly obvious as to who at least funds ATS by the pro government oriented policies employed by the Site.

Amazing how something "fairly obvious" could be so incorrect, isn't it?

Any mention of Israel being remotely involved with 911 is axxed.
I remember several members like Mike Shah were banned because of it...and forever silenced from ATS.

Another false statement. Why don't you try a site search using the terms Israel 911? Se how easy that is to refute? And we've never had a member named "Mike Shah", unless he went by some other user name, obviously.

Any mention of news pertaining to the evil weed as in Ron Pauls Bill to Eliminate Federal Prohibition of the M-Word (don't wanna trigger any web bots) is instantly 404'd.

The Terms and Conditions are anything but ambiguous about that. You agree to them when registering. To now demonstrate some surprise is indicative of either your inability to comprehend what really is "obvious", or a desire to purposefully be disruptive. We address that in the T&C as well. Maybe you really should read it.

Originally posted by SeventhSeal
reply to post by Pimander

 

If you think the government is targeting a conspiracy theory forum, then well, I guess you do belong here

No one is using mind control on ATS, so please, relax.

How can you be so sure about it?

ATS is a mixture of anonymous social media site and conspiracy site. Much of the information here is subversive. States usually don't take it very well if subversive ideas and “truths” are spread.

Cass Sunstein has written a paper in which he encourages the government to secretly infiltrate chat-rooms, forums and real groups to disseminate “countermisinformation” and disrupt these groups. His focus are “conspiracy theorists”, especially those interested in 9/11. Now he is the current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I wonder if he responsible for the implementation of his "scientific" proposals.
www.salon.com...

And don't believe Sunstein is just a special case of the ivory tower scientist whose proposals are unique. We have enough past cases were COINTELPRO-tactics were applied against fringe-groups. One example came from the CIA which adivsed their media assets to silence the debate about the JFK-assassination.
mtracy9.tripod.com...

I can give you other links which show, that the DoD is very interested in using the web for propaganda purposes.

The main purpose of COINTELPRO was not just to spy on those groups which tried to fight for a social change. The main purpose was to discredit and disrupt these groups. Subversive ideas should be suppressed. If I look at the 9/11 truth movement I can see a similar process. Instead for a real investigation much of the energy is wasted in infighting.

Thanks for this thread. I am grateful to be reminded, that it is often better to walk away than to engage in a fruitless discussion.

reply to post by SeventhSeal

You are either badly informed or deliberately misleading members.

Thanks for your input.

Government Seeking Persona Management Software (Fake Web Users) to manufacture concent

The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All

US government wages sock puppet war against its own citizen

I hope this helps anyone who doubts that there is government interest in influencing content on the net.

reply to post by Pimander


You see my friend , the hass leeckers will always support the site, rather not knowing the deeper truth or even if you right, so my conclusion is, NVM if its owned by sputnecks,Play the "Rev - Psychology" Game.Investigate or study "Simon Grey". If he's legitimate individual, the site is live

Originally posted by Pimander
reply to post by SeventhSeal

 

You are either badly informed or deliberately misleading members.

Thanks for your input.

Government Seeking Persona Management Software (Fake Web Users) to manufacture concent

The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All

US government wages sock puppet war against its own citizen

I hope this helps anyone who doubts that there is government interest in influencing content on the net.

I'll forgive you because this is a Conspiracy Theory website. But please, it's doubtful and most likely ..actually, No. I'll just say it:

The government is not watching ATS.

Calm down, kiddies

reply to post by SeventhSeal


BIG LOL

AboveTopSecret is the largest conspiracy theory-centered forum online.

The goverment is watching mate , even CIA or NSA ,even barak obama too , and BBC where i usually log on.

Seen him lately?

Originally posted by Pimander
I think Schuyler has some views on all this. I will PM him and ask him for a few comments. I promised him I would stick my neck out on this topic ages ago so he really ought to join in.

(Note: this will be too long for some of you.) Umm, oh, pooh. What do I do now? Let's see if I can stay focused and not be repetitive because a lot of what I suspect has already been said here. I think the BIGGEST problem we face here is separating cold, hard fact from fancy. What are our standards of proof? To some of us it is a cold, hard fact that chemtrails exist and a cold, hard fact that 9/11 was an inside job. To others of us those two cold, hard facts are absolute speculative nonsense with no real proof whatsoever. So right away we have a problem with what constitutes proof. I don't see us as coming to a consensus on this--ever. In other words, proof is overrated.

So all we can really do is pool our collective personal experiences and see if we can come up with something. But even that is suspect. In every one of these discussions we have people posting here who allude to the "fact" that they are somehow "connected" and therefore in a position to know for certain what is really going on. We have one on this thread who claims to be connected with a TLA we've never heard of. I'm guilty of that myself. For example, I have held a SECRET security clearance. To anyone who actually knows how these things work, that’s not saying much, if anything at all, so for me to use it to bolster my position on ATS is really kind of cheating.

I know a little bit about the NSA. (There I go again!) You may recall a few years ago when the NSA was caught spying on American citizens' domestic telephone calls. We had discussions on it here and it got as far as Congress. This consensus was that this dastardly deed was proof that TPTB were using sinister methods to spy on ordinary citizens, that this proved a police state, etc. Lots of anger and hand-wringing over that one.

What really happened? A couple of kids, E-4's in the service with access to some pretty sophisticated equipment, listened in to some phone calls as a joke. They were bored on night shift at an NSA facility on an Army base. I did the exact same thing when I worked for the phone company. We could put conversations on the speaker. Once one guy found a conversation of a guy talking to his girlfriend. He said, "Boy, you were really hot last night!" I was 19 years old. You bet I listened in! In fact, it was hysterical. The boss wasn’t there.

Was it illegal? Absolutely! It was totally against the rules in both cases. We had been briefed. We had signed statements, but we did it anyway. It's a firing offense. I didn't get caught. Those boys did and it became a national news story about the evil Bush administration. But was it an organized, authorized attempt to spy on American citizens? No, not at all. A couple of fairly immature guys screwed up. That's what happened.

I bring this up for two reasons. One is that the stories we get are usually incomplete and "spun" before we get them. I think the Washington Post did that one, an enterprising ‘investigative’ reporter. In many cases we do the spinning. Two, I think we have to be careful accepting "insider" stories like the one I just gave you. Is it real inside information, or is it the poster attempting to elevate himself on the thread as a voice of authority? We get so little real information, yet we still must discriminate about it because that which is presented as real may not be at all.

Now let me try to bring this home. The NSA listens. That's its mandate. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan it listens to EVERYTHING: all cell phone calls, all land line calls, all frequencies, literally everything. These calls are monitored by people fluent in the local dialects. They have specialized training in military terms, for example, which are different in Egyptian Arabic versus Syrian Arabic. If they get something interesting they pass it up the chain of command. Maybe something actionable will come from it, maybe not. Most of it is utterly and completely boring. "Where can I buy some saffron?" Even, "You were really hot last night!" gets boring after awhile. And, once in a great while, you find Osama bin Laden.

Now we come to the Internet and the vast amount of data that flows across it. The NSA is having a lot of difficulty keeping up with the vast exponential increases in terabytes of data. It is not an all-knowing agency that has super powers. So how would they handle a place like ATS? First if all, let the computer do it. I do not know for sure, but I suspect these forums are monitored by computer. The computer looks for key phrases that may be of interest. When it finds a key phrase the computer spits it out for review. It may go to a secondary computer review, or it may go to a human, an E-4, 20 years old, who takes a brief look and decides whether it is important enough to pass on. If there is real, actionable, important intelligence found in this review process, it can be VERY fast. Seconds can count. 99.9% of it, maybe another few decimals, is utterly trivial, boring, nonsensical, and irrelevant. That’s true of ATS.

Now all of you on this thread must evaluate whether what I am saying is reasonable or not. You will decide based on how I write, what my reputation is in numbers (Posts, stars, etc.), what you have read that I wrote previously, and whether it passes your BS detector. The first story I told you is the truth as I know and believe it, but it's still second hand and I must withhold a couple of points which would make it a more believable story simply because I don't want to compromise anyone. The second story I told you is what I would call informed speculation, but the fact is I do not know whether it is true or not. It's just that given what I know about NSA capabilities, issues, and constraints, this would seem a prudent way to approach the matter.

The question actually on the floor is, are there disinfo agents engaged in COINTELPRO on this site? From my point of view there is very little, if any, data to back up this claim. It's completely speculative. I agree with several people here who have said it is unnecessary because we do it so well ourselves. It also would be very expensive, so from a cost-benefit point of view it seems unlikely. “Assets" are very expensive and as an operative, if you ask for assets, you’d darn well better have a good reason. To put it in another perspective, the stars have to be in alignment and you have to have a lot of rank before you can get a satellite moved.

There are some things that make my personal BS detector to off immediately, though.

“I can tell this person is a disinfo agent just by what they say.”
“ATS IS a honey pot and/or owned by the CIA.”
“It’s obvious disinfo agents are trolling this site.”

SURE you can, buddy. That statement and those like it tell me you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If I could put a dunce cap on your avatar I would simply to remind me never to take you seriously ever again. But putting those kind of statements aside, what really is the issue?

To me the basic issue is that we often confuse speculation, even informed speculation, with proven fact. If we are clear and preface our statements with the disclaimer that it IS speculation, however informed, I don’t have a problem with that. That seems a proper amount of humility and a license to engage in as much speculation as you desire. But I do have a problem with presenting speculation as fact.

Schuyler’s Law: The less people know about how the universe works, the more they think they know how the universe works.

Originally posted by solid007
The government is not watching ATS.

Calm down, kiddies

Are your seriously convinced..!. The government is using watch programs like the usaonwatch to spy on citizens and you think they don't care about the #1 conspiracy site where all freedom fighters gets together to standup against government conspiracies and abuse of power...

And what about TPTB, do you really think they don't use conspiracy sites

www.usaonwatch.org...

reply to post by Isaacland


Care? Care is one thing. Doing anything about it is something else. Somebody, anybody show me One Thing the government does intelligently, efficiently, and purposefully. One.

I'll wait...

In the meantime, no I don't think there are "paid shills" sent here to disrupt threads. That would be like paying people to get drunk and stupid at a NASCAR race. Stupid runs freely and naturally and unfortunately, abundantly. All you have to do is provide the platform, open a metaphorical if not literal microphone, and nature takes its course.

Originally posted by TheBirdisDone
...it was the authoritarian "stop" by to see what we're up to and a sort of condescending "nice effort on the thread anyway" dismissiveness and an appeal to authority sign off - now I can't be certain about this individual but I became alert to language use after many years of working with Top Tier Military Officers

Did sort of have that Colonel sound to him, didn't he? What was puzzling was the odd "mistake" about the NSA mandate, don't know if he was tossing bait or what.

Ah, well, I worked for a living anyway.

No way

Governments and delegated forces would not do these things
they know nothing about spying




www.disclose.tv...

Originally posted by yeahright
reply to post by Isaacland

 

Care? Care is one thing. Doing anything about it is something else. Somebody, anybody show me One Thing the government does intelligently, efficiently, and purposefully. One.

Wars...

reply to post by Isaacland


You consider those to be intelligent and efficient?

reply to post by yeahright


Intelligent?...NO but US strategy and military intelligence is among the highest level of intelligency in the world

efficient?....oh YES USA is the most powerful military power of the world..Timeline of United States military operations

I am suprised you did not at first understood what i wanted to say, escuse me if i didn't explain my self well enought.

Originally posted by Isaacland
efficient?....oh YES

Maybe we define the term differently.