Our Orwellian world. But wait ... We the People can spy on Big Brother too

Edward Snowden's revelations have made us wiser in the ways Big Brother holds sway over us. Now with that added knowledge of how the government manipulates our thoughts and actions, we can find our own ways to deter  the powers-that-be from spreading their nets even further. (see second link)

James Ball writing at TheGuardian:
GCHQ has tools to manipulate online information, leaked documents show
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal programs to track targets, spread information and manipulate online debates.

The leaked document details a range of programs designed to collect and store public postings from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ and to make automated postings on several of the social networks.......

..........Among the programs revealed in the document are:

• GATEWAY: the "ability to artificially increase traffic to a website".

• CLEAN SWEEP which "masquerade[s] Facebook wall posts for individuals or entire countries".

• SCRAPHEAP CHALLENGE for "perfect spoofing of emails from BlackBerry targets".

• UNDERPASS to "change outcome of online polls".

• SPRING BISHOP to find "private photos of targets on Facebook".

The document also details a range of programs designed to collect and store public postings from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, and to make automated postings on several of the social networks.

Capabilities to boost views of YouTube videos, or to boost the circulation of particular messages are also detailed...........

Patrick McGuire writing at VICE
A new  Twitterbot is tracking the Canadian government's Wikipedia edits. We live in exciting times, where robots that operate Twitter accounts are trendsetters, and governments are held to a new standard of transparency—despite operating massive surveillance agencies that would make George Orwell have a panic attack while giving J. Edgar Hoover a major spy boner.

Last week, a string of Twitterbots made headlines for tracking Wikipedia edits coming from known government IP addresses. It started in the UK, with @ParliamentEdits, which then blossomed into a string government-tracking copycats after its source code was released on GitHub. The goal of these Twitterbots is to make sure governments aren’t drastically revising history on everyone’s favourite free encyclopedia, while gauging the amount of time our public officials spend grooming and altering Wiki pages in the first place.

It didn’t take long for Canada to get its own watchdog Twitterbot: @GCCAEdits. So far, GCCAEdits hasn’t caught Stephen Harper editing in phony compliments about his hairstyle, nor has it detected any nefarious change-ups from government agencies trying to rewrite history, but it’s caught some odd alterations nonetheless.......