THE GOVERNMENT META-SPYING GAME
by Jon Rappoport
January 12, 2012
Reuters, the Atlantic Wire, and other outlets are running a story about the Dept. of Homeland Security monitoring websites and social networks.
A DHS document states this monitoring program is geared to keep the government tuned in to “situational awareness” and able to “establish a common operating picture.”
Which sounds like intentional gibberish. But these are technical terms. In its effort to track stories and traffic related to border security, terrorism, and bird flu (!), for example, DHS is trying to assess public perception of ongoing events.
With sites like Drudge, The NY Times, HuffPo at the top of the list, and FB, MySpace, and Twitter included, the government hopes to be able to estimate consensus reality, make no mistake about it.
What’s under the government’s magnifying glass here? Events? Not really. It’s the widespread PERCEPTION of events.
This is a form, if you will, of meta-spying.
DHS obviously has some kind of collating system and also algorithms to model the degree of consensus about a subject of interest.
What does the public think about border security at the moment?
What does the public think about bird flu right now?
I find this latter topic interesting, because for the past few months, I’ve had the sense the CDC might be getting ready to launch another phony epidemic—either a rerun of bird flu or a repeat of swine flu.
They were soundly defeated on the last swine flu go-around, largely because the internet (including this site) was alive with refutations of their nonsensical PR and invented case numbers.
In the wake of the defeat, they’ve been trying to figure out how to get another fake epidemic on the boards and make it seem much more real.
In order to do this, they need and want a system that can track and assess public opinion in tight increments of time, moving forward.
So here is the current game in a nutshell: there are events in the world (some of which are created or fabricated by governments); then there is the public perception of these events; then there is the government perceiving the public perception.
And now here I am perceiving the government.
It’s a perception-stack.
For instance, suppose next month the CDC gets up on its hind legs and announces there is an outbreak of a flu in, say, Arizona, and researchers have been dispatched to the area to carry out tests.
DHS would, day by day, or even hour by hour, monitor a huge amount of traffic and data on the Net, to gauge reaction, to gauge the level of belief, you might say.
Then the researchers announce it’s a mutated strain of bird flu, more dangerous than the last one. More monitoring of public reaction via the Net.
A rather high level of public disbelief? Carve out a new announcement. Try something a little more threatening, or bring in a politician who has a high level of credibility, and let him jump on the bandwagon. Then: how did that work out?
Getting the picture?
It’s the attempt to shape consensus reality through monitoring Net traffic and making adjustments.
With the enormous amount and speed of Facebook/Twitter data in the mix, DHS realizes they can keep updating consensus reality by the minute if they want to.
They can go a step further and set up FB/Twitter accounts and send out their own brands of data.
They can take this ball and run with it to the moon.
Of course, keep in mind that a significant slice of the US government has deceived ITSELF about the role Facebook/Twitter play in world events—like the fabled Arab Spring, which is really an op to put big chunks of the Middle East under Islamic control and jack up the price of oil and go green, “through necessity.”
Those marvelous intellectual students with iPhones sitting in cafes in Cairo running the revolution? I’ve got condos on Jupiter to sell you.
So you very well could get something like this—-
“I just got a text message that Chris Columbus landed in India,” said Queen Isabella. “Wow. We need to jack up the PR about those Hindus and Nehru jackets and ornate jewelry and so on.”
“Yes,” said her advisor. “And maybe we should have Chris disassemble a really big temple and bring it back here.”
“Wait a minute,” said the grand vizier. “Didn’t we float that Facebook post about India? I just heard a rumor he landed on some island in the Atlantic.”
“What!” said the queen. “What island?”
“I don’t know. Some of our citizens are confused. They’re wearing feathers on their heads. And leather britches.”
“They’ve gone crazy!”
“Nothing new there.”
No. Nothing new.
So if I write BIRD FLU HOAX BIRD FLOW HOAX BIRD FLU HOAX BIRD FLU HOAX BIRD FLU HOAX, does that interest anyone at DHS?
Have fun, fellas. You’re going to screw this up beyond belief. I know you are. By the time you’re through, you’re going to believe God just landed on Saturn in a spaceship with his mom and dad and a crew of Mormon singers.
Jon Rappoport