A little lite listening or not!

For the fun of it check this out http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cftq8 its a reading of Pattern Recognition written by the famous writer William Gibson.  While fictional much of it has bearing on SMiSC objectives 

Memes shut down Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)

What does Twitter, Cell Phone access, Anonymous and BART have in common? Today it is SMiSC. Starting last week, a few people picked up on BART's shutting down their wireless/cell phone connection across their routs. BART did this out of fear of protest over the shooting of a man by a BART officer. Hitting fast forward, we see Anonymous has hacked BART website; blasting the account information of thousands and calling on supporters  to show up Monday to protest the shut down.  BART  then went into damage control as protesters closed in. Transit stations are shut down as protesters demand open access to their cell phones and wireless networks. Gone is the justice shooting victim.  It has been replaced, instead by an overwhelming need, for the protesters to connect with their European and Arab world protesters.  Internet radicals tweet tenuous connections to the Egyptian cell shut down and BART's lack of judgment.

How do I know all this? Not from the news but a series of tweets sent out during a four hour period. My favorite quote “Anonymous carried off a physical denial of service” But it wasn’t Anonymous. It was a series of people seeking to feel part of the years' protesting. These people have been yelling for American's to wake up and join their downtrodden brothers. Today this finally happen. No matter how small it was, the Twitter/Internet radicals joined forces physically to “shutdown” the BART.

Looking at SMiSC premises we see some issues. First how memes may evolve as they come into contact with other memes. Second, we have multiple memes...protestesters, social justice, Anonymous and cellular shutdown. Third, we can see how key people help to transfer memes. 

In the end we see that all of these are related to issues brought up by DARP's introduction.

1. Detect, classify, measure, and track memes and purposeful or deceptive misinformation.

In this case we have three memes that need to be tracked. Looking at Twitter it started with social justice, moved to phone service being cut off, followed by Anonymous. Measuring these, one can estimate that phone service being cut off and linked to global protest movements was the strongest meme.

2. Recognize persuasion campaign structure.

There were two persuasive campaigns being played out Monday. First, the call to protest social injustice that was linked to the global protest movements. Second, was Anonymous' message “down with oppressive regimes."

3. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaign.

While there were hundreds of of people messaging on the subject...oddly only stations were closed Monday not the cellular/wireless networks...I found two primary meme carriers. One is a famous writer, and the other an editor for an online Internet news magazine. Through these two people, who have hundreds of thousands of followers, flowed messages encouraging the protesters and berating BART. The most direct affect was the connecting of a local issue with the global protest movement.

4. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.

BART did poorly in this area. First they did not foresee the consequences of threatening to shutting down the networks. Second, the fear of Anonymous and protesters turned BART into their own worse enemy. While they kept the networks open Monday, closing down different BART stations, just embolden the protesters. If they would have chosen to under react what was a virtual protest would have passed.

I watched this event in real time. SMiSC would have to be able to do this automatically or with personal. To accomplish this thousands of existing meme's will have to be identified and classified, so computers or analysis can spot old memes in operation or new memes being developed. The latter being the hardest.   I am not so certain the persuasion campaign is that important, unless your talking about an intentional launching of memes in a pattern to create a desired outcome. In the BART example, only Anonymous seemed to come anywhere close to a coordinate meme attack. Even then it was just to cause chaos. While, classifying memes is important, SMiSC needs to identify people who can spread memes. The people are the linch pin of any meme operation. SMiSC needs to either have these people in a database linked to existing memes or find ways to identify them through some measurement (number of followers?).  The capabilities of a meme carrier to infect people maybe more important than the meme. If a meme is launched into only a small social network of a a few dozen it goes no where. If picked up by a carrier connected to thousands  if not millions of people it becomes a movement.   

Let's shut them down-- SMiSC becomes irrelevant

Well, just when we thought it was worth a 42 million dollar contract, the brits want social media shut down. The Wired blogger makes a comment that the TV needs to go, too.  That's a new twist for an open culture.

For good or bad?

There are lots of good and bad things about the efforts here; there is no doubt that these tools and techniques can be on the immoral side if used incorrectly.  Social disruptions-as-weapons are like bullets-- it depends on why they are used-- and I can fully imagine a world where the intentional state-to-state social disruption will be viewed as at least a violent act.  There were plenty of comments in this vein at this Wired article.

Meme Bibilography

A nice start for this section is the Wikipedia entry on memes; it has a reference section that's worth looking at.  I've not read many of these works but I intend to do so over time.  Here are some that look juicy and relevant to the SMiSC efforts:

1. Can we measure memes? by Adam McNamara
2. Lynch, Aaron (1996), Thought contagion: how belief spreads through society, New York: BasicBooks, pp. 208, ISBN 0-465-08467-2
3. Godwin, Mike. "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired. 

Hopefully Tim will add an academic search result list here or in a comment.

Technical Area 3 (TA 3): Algorithm Integration, Test and Evaluation

The TA 3 performer will work with TA 1 performers to develop appropriate performance metrics and develop, execute and evaluate the results of corresponding test and evaluation procedures. Test and evaluation procedures will include red team activity involving strategic communication and influence operations in the closed environment developed by the TA 2 performer.

Technical Area 2 (TA 2): Data Provision/Management

The TA2 performer will create a closed and controlled environment where large amounts of data will be collected and experiments will be performed in support of the development and testing of TA 1 algorithms. One example of such an environment could be a closed social media network made up of two to five thousand people where participants have agreed to conduct a significant portion of their social media based activities within the network and agree to participate in the required data collection and experiments. Such a network might be formed within a single government, industrial or academic organization or across multiple such organizations. Another example of such an environment would be a massively multiplayer on-line role playing game where the use of social media is of central importance to game play and with tens of thousands of players that agree to participate in the required data collection and experiments.

The TA 2 performer will work closely with TA 1 and TA 3 performers to support the type of data collection, experimentation and evaluation required.

The type of data required for SMISC research potentially contains Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The TA 2 performer will be required to certify that no PII for U.S. persons was collected, stored or created in contravention to federal privacy laws, regulations and Department of Defense (DOD) policies. Proposers must address the collection and use of PII, if any, in their technical proposal. PII will not be provided to SMISC from another Government agency or from an outside source.

SMiSC Technical Area 1 (TA 1): Algorithm/Software Development

TA1 performers will develop automated and semi-automated operator support tools and techniques for the systematic and methodical use of social media at data scale and in a timely fashion to:
1. detect, classify, measure and track the

• formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes) and,
• purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation;

2. recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across social media sites and communities;
3. identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaigns; and
4. counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.

TA 1 performers are required to define and validate appropriate performance metrics for algorithms and techniques developed. This will require TA 1 performers to also develop measures of the effectiveness of strategic communication and influence operations.

Discussing the DARPA Social Media in Strategic Communications Initiative and Related Technologies

The US DARPA has released the Social Media in Strategic Communication solicitation.  The solicitation is located here: .  In case you are just passing through, this is the summary:

"DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of social media in strategic communication. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice"

This blog will focus on the solicitation, its efforts and products, and the technologies related or adjacent to this work.

Hopefully, our posts won't be so dry that the blog becomes too journal-like.