Jim Korpov hovering over Ravenglass supervising an attack by the PNs and Woodbury and pretending he was monitoring it to control it.
I covered a little bit of this bizarre story about the purported plans for the use of Second Life by a private security contractor here on my other blog about gov 2.0 and tech police, Wired State. I think there's a number of "dogs that didn't bark" on that HBGary story and I wondered whether it was a possible sting. The story was supposedly that among the many "dirty tricks" that HBGary planned was the use of SL to perform psy-ops to test the spreading of various memes.
c3 has helpfully pointed to another story that digests this more clearly than the really long Ars Technica piece which I can't find now which has a blow-by-blow account about how the hack on HBGary was done. Ars Technica really pisses me off -- I tried to make an account there to comment on this story and it kept telling me my password wasn't the correct kind, I tried everything and it kept harassing and bouncing me. I tried logging in with what I thought was an account I made some time ago. It probably banned me or something, who the hell knows. These tech sites are for the birds. At some point I'll go back again but honestly, they are such thin-skinned geeks, forcing a registration to leave a comment on their damn blog and being too opensource geeky orthodox to put in a "walled garden" Twitter or Facebook sign-on system so I could use that identity.
And let me recommend this great piece on the longer history and deeper background of such ops.
I had to chuckle reading this story because it was EXACTLY LIKE the story Intlibber came to me with in 2007 when he claimed that a university -- Woodbury -- had a government contract to organize a psy-ops in SL -- to test griefing on people and see how they react. I remember sighing and listening to him rant, going to check out this strange Woodbury sim on my hippie alt Random -- and the rest is history. There was this story, too, "I'm sure Tizzers is in on it and works for the prof." This is before Intblub "coopted" Woodbury by hiring them (he thought capitalism would cure them) -- and wound up being coopted himself again, then hustling them back, then -- well, following that story is above my pay grade.
Anyway, interesting in October 2007, there was a discussion of how the government could run a program with a university to test psy-ops in SL -- but I think it was hyped and wasn't true for a number of reasons.
BTW here are some long pieces I've done lately on Anonymous in SL and the traits of Anonymous.
I wish I had the Photoshop chops to make a comic book like this -- maybe someday if I have 96 hours in a row to spend making another SL book, I'll make this, but it would look something like this, using the HPGary script:
Messages could be spread through Second Life via "an in-world advertising company, securing small plots of virtual land in attractive locations, which can be used to promote themes using billboards, autonomous virtual robots, audio, video, and 3D presentations,” according to the document examined by Ars Technica.
So, picture a shack on the frontier of Second Life (like that gold-digger's shack that Philip told us "not to get too attached to," remember lol?). But it's like really bleak -- sort of like the house that Courage the Cowardly Dog lived in with the old folks, remember? Maybe parched cracked earth and a windmill turning somewhere and the sound of creaking doors.
This bleak landscape -- it being Second Life -- has spinning for sale signs, AnnMarie Otoole's crashed vehicles upended in a slag heap, some bots clustered in the corner bobbing in the water, stuck, some discarded dicks and gift boxes -- the typical SL scene. Somewhere, you hear a noise griefer prim shouting FRIENDLY GREETINGS FRIENDLY GREETINGS FRIENDLY GREETINGS and you're afraid to zoom in because it probably goes with a blinding watermelon coloured prim on max GLOW.
There isn't a soul for miles. There's just AnnMarie's vehicles crashing, the bots bobbing up and down in the water...
It's that way on the next sim. And the sim after that.
The sign on the house says "HBGARY ADVERTISING INC" or something. And a guy emerges on the front porch and begins to fiddle with some Shared Media, swearing, rezzing it out again, having it return on autoreturn, switching the group, swearing some more, trying to put the texture on it, crashing, trying again to get it working, swearing.
Somebody TPs in and tells him that he needs Quicktime to be upgraded. Somebody else says go back to 1.23.
He's swearing and muttering. Finally he rezzes out his cartoon and perches it at the side of the road.
An hour goes by. Nothing. Two hours. He's AFK. Suddenly, he jerks to a start as his visitor sensor has dinged.
In the distance, a busty avatar sashays into view. She's chewing gum and actually trying to look at some of the big ad billboards but on some of them she crashes into ban lines on 16 m2 lol. She gives up looking after about 6 of those, but then she spots what HBGary has put up.
She flies up and crashes into it and says, "Oh, I don't have 2.5 on. I don't like it, it strips off my clothes."
HBGary guy: "Um, well, that's ok. Why don't you relog with 2.5 and I'll see if I can help you."
She logs back on with 2.5, naked, with her prim hair missing. "Waaaaaa" she cries and makes one of those giant AFSCME siggies with tears showering. QQQQQQ.
The guy is leering at her and finally she manages to tug a dress on herself out of the library.
She begins struggling, clicking on the ad board, trying to pull it up. He's swearing and crashes again.
They both get logged on. He tells her to look at the billboard and asks if she can take a copy and show it around to her friends in malls and stuff.
"It's still rezzing for me," she says.
Five minutes go by. Ten minutes. She's in IMs. You hear the sound of clattering keyboards.
"Well?"
"Oh! I forgot about you" she says. "*Giggles*". She looks at the board. "What's that?"
"It's Ahmadinejad. Holding a puppet."
"Who?
"You know. Ahmadinejad? Holding a puppet. See, so it's like..."
"OH! she says. I know what that is. That's Hazim's new alt. And that must be the Prok puppet."
"Huh?" says the HBGary guy, confused. "Whuhhh?" No. It's Ahmadinejad. And, well..."
She's bored. "I gotta take this TP," she says. And she's gone.
Another hour goes by. *There is not a soul in site*. The HBGary guy goes and puts an event on the calendar. He waits. No one comes. He goes back and adjusts the text to make another event. He offers freebies. He changes the event to M later and puts in a wet-t-shirt contest and rezzes a pool into the parched earth.
Finally a newbie drops down, and types, painfully slowly, "Do u know wher I can get the sex?" He spots a box with dicks and begins to stumble over to it.
"Look, I have this cartoon?" the HBGary starts in again.
"No, I want real girl," the newbies explains.
Well, you get the idea. The thought of trying to use Second Life sims with their "advertising capacity" to "spread memes" -- well, it's like those people who came in 2007 and thought they could do "marketing" in SL *bursts out laughing*.
Of course, many a meme has spread in SL. And many a meme-spreader has tried to spread them. I noticed there were anti-Mubarak cartoons on "copy" that the SL Unity or somebody was trying to flog. The WikiLeaks people are there with their hourglass on all perms which of course I *sell* for $2 at my shop, deliberately.
Certain memes do get around -- through groups, through events, through networks and Picks and such. Unfortunately, in my view, isolated and atomized groups in an authoritarian setting, where in fact it seems there aren't open lines of communication, can be very vulnerable to memes and manipulation of thought -- much more than in connected, open societies. For example, it only takes one actor to go to 100 closed islands as a griefer and override bans, or one hustler to get in bunches of groups and talk to people to spread just one idea.
For example, who spread the rumour -- and how -- that zFire Xue is about to dumb a huge dbase with thousands of people's names and their alts -- like those files that Julian Assange sent around as doomsdale files? The forums -- Twitter - IMs -- it gets around, everybody talks about it.
They pay attention to memes like that because it's about the politics and events of the world itself. But to try to get this world of a million disperate and diverse people to focus on and be influenced by some real-life political meme -- well, it would take extraordinary effort -- effort that no government or company could justify because they could reach the same people much easier through Twitter or Facebook.
But that doesn't stop these self-righteous folk from trying to roll the Lindens about this:
The Kanomi Express is a progressive content train, delivering original news and commentary to and from virtual worlds, online games, and social media.
sigh.
So they felt:
Given that firms like HBGary are, as Forbes' Andy Greenberg notes, involved in: “cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns, phishing emails and fake social networking profiles, pressuring journalists and intimidating the financial donors to clients' enemies including WikiLeaks, unions and non-profits" a statement from Linden Lab and new CEO regarding the HBGary Federal PsyOps proposal and related issues would probably be welcome at this time.
Oh, what prissy little net-nannies.
God bless Peter Linden, he didn't bite this progressive bait:
Hi Kanomi,
Apparently it never occurred to the goons at Kanomi that people like privacy from progressive content trains, too, and don't feel they have to comment on every single wacky idea that the hackerverse comes up with.
Peter -- never leave me. My invitation to the Press Club is lost in the mail, but I know someday, someday, you will send it.
There's a whole other way this has to be addressed. FOIAs should be filed with the request to release any and all Second Life avatar and real-life names of any and all government officials, because government officials in the line of duty should be showing their names, not nicknames unless of course they're involved in covert operations actually under the supervision of the CIA or something, but that isn't supposed to operate against its own civilians on U.S. territory, right? And the FBI can spy on people, but it needs some kind of probably cause of a crime committed or in progress.
There are hordes of government folk in SL. A lot of them are up to completely anodyne and politically correct crap. You know, there is a real preserver and disseminator of horrid political correctness -- and that's our government, if you ever actually watched them in action.
There are also some useful programs, public diplomacy programs, for example, that are open to the public, such as some that were interacting and engaging with Egyptians more than a year ago, way, way before it was the cool thing to do for anybody, "hacktivists" included.
Another thing to be done to research this story properly is to go around to the solutions providers. They know where all the bodies are buried. They are a known quantity. Everybody knows that they know, and they know everything because they are like the bars around embassies in foreign countries, the barkeepers hear all the stuff from all the diplomats and become paid informants sometimes.
So you file some FOIAs, you flutter the SPs, you ask around to the bloggers and the sychophants that go to the Linden Office Hours, etc.
SL is a great prototyper and generator as I've always said, and such things as psy-ops can be generated too. They probably already are. Probably not in ways we think.
The only time I actually read anything about the FBI in SL was about 2 years back when they posted an update on their website. It was something about putting up "Wanted" billboards and recruiting information.
Most of us here are the odd bunch, I can't imagine the FBI finding any good hiring material in SL.
The last I heard about law enforcement in general in SL was that they were studying the formation of gangs. Our anonymous user names in SL, WOW etc., how we form groups and such closely mimics the way real gangs communicate. So they were using games to study that behavior.
Posted by: melponeme_k | February 25, 2011 at 03:15 AM
Why was I sent this link?
Do you guys think I enjoy the rantings of some freaking x-files, tin foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist?
Come on, let this illusionary dramatist to her rantings!
I'll go back to more important things (like seeing how many times I can push esc before triggering so sort of international security breach).
Posted by: Tux Winkler | February 26, 2011 at 07:05 PM
Um, I don't know who you are, and haven't sent you any link.
In fact, if you read this article, it very much challenges the idea of some sort of conspiracy to use people in SL -- in fact, it ridicules it and makes a parody story describing how silly it all is precisely because SL is hard to use.
But don't let the facts confuse you.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | February 26, 2011 at 07:08 PM
It is highly unlikely the USG or its contractors would engage in a psychological experiment of this nature on the unsuspecting public. In order to include humans in any ethical experimentation, a plan has to be submitted to an institutional review board (IRB). Additionally, participants are notified and give consent. This is a thorough process used to prevent harm to the participants as well as protects rights of the research subjects.
Posted by: Maccus McCullough | March 13, 2011 at 03:42 PM
Well, I'm someone who tends to trust government more than most of the lefty anarcho hippie BDSM types of Second Life.
I'm also a believer in seeing some credible reports first. So I would tend to agree that sure, the USG as such is not trying to do any psy war ops on an unsuspecting population.
Just think of the damages and the loss of credibility that the U.S. occurs when cases surface of old administrations having in fact done such experiments on people. They will not undertake such things lightly, and these outfits are very hobbled by oversight and bureaucracy and that can be a good thing, and of course there is the IRB.
BUT, here's the thing. Our government is not always as stellar as we might hope or believe. There are cases in recent memory of torture of people abroad and cover ups at home about this. And no country is perfect, even a good one like ours.
Furthermore, what I see this as about is not so much the formal structures of the USG, God bless them. They work, and they may maintain adequate oversight over those actually in uniform, so to speak.
But it's the scores of contractors, consultors, private security firms hired temporarily, etc. etc. that you cannot trust. That have no adequate oversight. That have no motivation to be good because they face no consequences.
And those folks may very well gin up some experiment to please their contract officers, or go beyond their scope even in an already approved program.
When I see how *those* people behave, for example on the NASA story, where their Co-Lab volunteer was an abusive and offensive ass; when I see the various other abusive, arrogant assholes floating around in the GSP and SP communities who work on these projects, I'm more given pause. I don't doubt for a minute that some of those abusive types will do whatever they need to do to get and keep the power they enjoy, with utter cynicism and nihilism.
We live in a world where a 22-year-old private thinks nothing of cynically and nihilistically -- even while coating it thinly with a bit of legit whistle-blowing conscience stuff -- stealing and publicizing a quarter of a million documents to harm the US with people bent on its deliberate harm.
So I think the public and the bloggers and the press have to keep asking this question.
There is a very basic unethical state of affairs going on now in Second Life, and that is that government employees, who are normally expected to show their name tags or badges with real life identity (name, job title) are flying around with anonymous SL names and no explanation of who they are on their profile. That's wrong. Ethically and likely legally.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 13, 2011 at 04:52 PM
The post is very intellectually written, with lots of valuable information
Posted by: H Miracle Review | April 21, 2011 at 08:47 PM