Timeline masters of the internet

This page contains links gathered and shared by anonymii over four years (crowdsourced as it were) on "things", told and leaked stories and whistle spit, for further investigation into and analysis of "things" to find (counter) moves healthy for self, life, and others, moves aiding survival of the greatest scope of life to a greater degree than any associated destruction.

Glimpses of planned information operations

Propaganda for the middle east

In 2005 the BBC reports that the US military is planning to win the hearts of young people in the Middle East by publishing a new comic in order to "achieve long-term peace and stability in the Middle East" .

Fight the net

In 2006 the BBC reveals US plans to 'fight the net': 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 on guard

The Raw Story reports in 2007 that CENTCOM sent emails to "bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information" .

In 2009 the US Air Force releases ‘Counter-Blog’ marching orders to its airmen as part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force"

Wargame simulations

More alarming seems to be the article from the Register on wargame simulations: Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale informing us that the US DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and artificial reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda .

Surveillance is about control, not security

2013, Surveillance Blowback: The Making of the U.S. Surveillance State, 1898-2020: The American surveillance state is now an omnipresent reality, but its deep history is little known and its future little grasped. Edward Snowden’s leaked documents reveal that, in a post-9/11 state of war, the National Security Agency (NSA) was able to create a surveillance system that could secretly monitor the private communications of almost every American in the name of fighting foreign terrorists. The technology used is state of the art; the impulse, it turns out, is nothing new. For well over a century, what might be called “surveillance blowback” from America’s wars has ensured the creation of an ever more massive and omnipresent internal security and surveillance apparatus. Its future (though not ours) looks bright indeed.

2014, NSA Surveillance is about Control & Leverage, not Security: For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line — like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

Related

• Timeline merchants of death
• Petty tyrants
• Covert operations
• Psychological warfare
• Propaganda
• Surveillance
• Biometrics
• Censorship