In what's already been known here and discussed in numerous diaries about HBGary, the Washington Post finally picked up the story about corporations using internet firms to undermine their opponents by "trolling" them.
This little-discussed aspect of the influence business came into view in recent weeks with the release of thousands of hacked corporate e-mails, which detail a pair of high-tech dirty-tricks campaigns aimed at supporters of WikiLeaks and foes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The plans were pitched by three federal contractors to lawyers at Hunton & Williams, a top-flight D.C. law and lobbying firm that works for the chamber. Proposed tactics included creating fake personas online to fool chamber critics; planting false electronic documents to undermine the credibility of activists; and using powerful computer tools to "scrape" Facebook and other social media sites for personal information about chamber foes, according to the e-mails.
The Chamber of Commerce, so far, claims "innocence" in not knowing about the paid trolling and astroturfing of liberal websites and social media outlets. I'm certainly not buying their claims of innocence, and many other people aren't falling for it either here on Dailykos and other sites.
Greenpeace is filing a lawsuit against these corporations and their technology firms, alleging two years of corporate espionage:
In a federal lawsuit filed last fall, Greenpeace alleges that Dow Chemical, Sasol North America and their contractors waged a two-year campaign of illegal corporate espionage against the environmental group and its allies. The alleged tactics included break-ins, surveillance, infiltration of community groups and rifling through garbage, according to the lawsuit. The defendants have not commented on the case.
It's been stated by conservatives that liberals are much better at using social media to organize advocacy campaigns, and this is the course of action they took against us instead of using organic activity---fake trolling activity paid for with millions of dollars of corporation money against democratic expression on the Internet. It's why we need to be very much aware of specific trolling, and certain arguments being employed against progressive issues on progressive websites that we visit.
For further background on this story, please check out these diaries on Dailykos below:
I haven't heard anything further about the investigation wanted by House Dems into this scandal. I have questions to which there are no answers yet:
1. Should our federal government take a further role by investigating corporate espionage of public citizens?
2. Will anyone in the Senate Democratic Caucus speak up on this issue other than our Bernie Sanders?
3. What can we do as citizen activists to recognize corporate trolling and to call it out? Should we voice our suspicions when we see trolling of progressive issues here?
It's nice to finally see the Washington Post picking this story up, after an entire month in which this story was covered in detail on progressive news outlets.
