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nobbis writes "In an article entitled 'How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations' Glenn Greenwald publishes training material from the Snowden archive that illustrates how GCHQ uses "cyber-offensive techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats", for example against "Hacktivism".
These techniques include disseminating deception on-line and harming the reputations of their targets with a honey trap , a blog from a purported victim of the target, or 'changing their photos on social media sites'. Similarly companies are discredited by leaking of confidential information, or posting negative information on appropriate forums. The covert agents' play book includes infiltration, false flag, disruption and sting operations.
When questioned GCHQ replied "It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters""
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:20PM
Behavior like this - government agents astroturfing in internet comments - is dishonest and immoral no matter who does it.
Having said that, I've heard that this is regularly practiced by the Chinese government as well.
Reading internet comments on articles about China, in influential / respectable organs like The Economist, leads me to believe that the accusation against China is true. Most if not all articles on sensitive issues related to China elicit numerous pro-CCP policy comments. Perhaps it's the language barrier, but the tone and logic in the comments leads me to believe they don't represent individual opinions; they read like the words of someone who's job it is to argue a point.
None of the above excuses GCHQ's behavior. If anything, the similarity makes GCHQ look worse: a western government agency should not be behaving like the thought police of a undemocratic country.