04.01.08
I haven’t been hired, honest
But why not?, I wonder. Are they hiring?
“Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” suggests a 2006 study written for the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command. “Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence … to pass the U.S. message.” However, the study warns, “people do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.” In addition to recruiting, building or promoting blogs friendly to the U.S. military, the study suggests hacking an “enemy blog” to use it “covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. … Subtly changing the messages and data — merely a few words or phrases — may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility. … The enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and [may] take down the site (and the blogger) themselves.” A U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson told Wired that the study’s suggestions “are not ‘actionable,’ merely thought provoking.”
