All across the globe the major powers are participating in the game of deceit on the Internet with repercusions in real life. When truth is defeated, it’s the people that will come up short and suffer.
Britain’s ‘Twitter troops’ have ways of making you think … | The Guardian by Vaughan Bell | August 16, 2015 |
Amid disclosures of mass surveillance and government hacking, the Snowden revelations have exposed a hitherto unknown branch of the British intelligence services dedicated to influencing human behaviour with psychological science. Reporting has focused on the political implications of the revelation, but the leaked files also give a fascinating insight into new methods deployed by the secret services. The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, specialises in attempting to “discredit, disrupt, delay, deny, degrade, and deter” opponents and has been branded by the press as GCHQ’s “deception unit”.
Controversially, not only were terrorists and hostile states listed as opponents who could pose a national security threat, but also domestic criminals and activist groups. JTRIG’s work seems primarily to involve electronic communications, and can include practical measures such as hacking computers and flooding phones with junk messages. But it also attempts to influence people socially through deception, infiltration, mass persuasion and, occasionally, it seems, sexual “honeypot” stings. The Human Science Operations Cell appears to be a specialist section of JTRIG dedicated to providing psychological support for this work.
Indeed, JTRIG’s “10 principles of influence” include some taken from persuasion research by psychologist and bestselling author Robert B. Cialdini. These include the reciprocity principle – giving something to encourage the person to owe you something, and the social compliance principle – where people are more likely to do something that they believe people are already doing.
… a leaked 2011 report by Mandeep Dhami, professor of decision psychology at Middlesex University, reveals. She interviewed JTRIG operatives and made recommendations for how behavioural science could help with deception and infiltration.
○ TOP SECRET: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’s (Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group’s) Effects and Online HUMINT Operations By Mandeep K. Dhami PhD - Human Systems Group - March 10, 2011 [pdf]
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The leaks are interesting as a snapshot into the early stages of a much wider trend in managing security threats: the increasing use of psychology and behaviour-focused operations with the internet as a key battleground. Earlier this year, the British Army announced the creation of the 77th Brigade, which combines psychological and media operations, as well as civil-military operational units geared to stabilise areas of conflict as part of their remit to “[lead] on Special Influence Methods”. At the time, the press dubbed them “Twitter troops“, but expertise in online influence seems increasingly important now, given the online grooming efforts of Islamic State and the central role of internet propaganda in the Ukraine conflict.
Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research | The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman | June 22, 2015 |
The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counterterrorism operations.
Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online.
Early official claims attempted to create the impression that JTRIG’s activities focused on international targets in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Argentina. The closest the group seemed to get to home was in its targeting of transnational “hacktivist” group Anonymous.
While some of the unit’s activities are focused on the claimed areas, JTRIG also appears to be intimately involved in traditional law enforcement areas and U.K.-specific activity, as previously unpublished documents demonstrate. An August 2009 JTRIG memo entitled “Operational Highlights” boasts of “GCHQ’s first serious crime effects operation” against a website that was identifying police informants and members of a witness protection program. Another operation investigated an Internet forum allegedly “used to facilitate and execute online fraud.” The document also describes GCHQ advice provided “to assist the UK negotiating team on climate change.”
Particularly revealing is a fascinating 42-page document from 2011 detailing JTRIG’s activities. It provides the most comprehensive and sweeping insight to date into the scope of this unit’s extreme methods. Entitled “Behavioral Science Support for JTRIG’s Effects and Online HUMINT [Human Intelligence] Operations,” it describes the types of targets on which the unit focuses, the psychological and behavioral research it commissions and exploits, and its future organizational aspirations. It is authored by a psychologist, Mandeep K. Dhami.
Among other things, the document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather than intelligence agencies.
