Keyword Hijacking

by **Dreams End** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:42 pm

Hugh, In all that research about stealth PR and propaganda, which we ALL agree happens, have you ever, just once, run across a discussion of the technique of "keyword hijacking" as you define it?

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:48 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>But you seem to think that the same centrally directed agenda of control extends to places like the Hollywood blockbuster industry, music videos, best-selling novels...right down to the choice of titles.<hr></blockquote> Some centrally-generated and some just basic PR and advertising buzz-mongering. It's hard to tell which is which but the CIA's history with publishing is well established. (See 'Allan Nevins and American Heritage Magazine' below.) Titles, like narcodollars, are too influential for the government to not get involved. Keywords trigger associations and emotions and that is the stuff of behavior modification and motivation. 'The Patriot Act,' what bastards. Titles of movies and books plus their covers and posters act like little billboards to even those who don't read the book or see the movie. They have a subconscious effect on other events. My favorite independent journalist, Robert Fisk, has been exposing the imperial atrocities perpetrated against the people of the middle east but he titled his recent book with exactly the theme the neocons are selling to the fundamentalist recruitables, a terrible mistake- 'The War for Civilisation.' He did this because this was inscribed on the medal his daddy got for being a British imperial soldier. But grazers at Borders are going to get exactly the wrong message from his title and it will reinforce what they are hearing from the NYTimes' Thomas Friedman or all the CFR experts that NPR is giving airtime to. Another example of subconscious influence- Just when Congress was debating renewal of the (un)Patriot Act in fall of 2005 there were billboards out advertising a Jodie Foster plane disaster movie called 'Flight Plan.' There was even some controversy to amplify its advertising-some airline attendents outraged at the movie's portrayal of airline attendents. What interesting timing to retrigger 9/11 images.  Yes, the movie could ride the legislation rather than the other way around. 'Snakes On a Plane.' Hmm. What does that trigger? And every presidential election season produces a wave of agit prop books to influence people we used to call voters. Candidates have official books ghost-written for them or they actually write them. Election propaganda examples from my collection: 1960 - The Strategy of Peace, by John F. Kennedy edited by Allan Nevins (Allan Nevins was the Chief Public Affairs Officer at the US embassy in London, 1946-1947 and helped start American Heritage Magazine doing Americana propaganda) 1960 - The Enemy Within, by Robert F. Kennedy 1964 - None Dare Call It Treason, by John A. Stormer 1968 - The Betrayers, by Phyllis Schlafly retired Rear Admiral Chester Ward 1968 - To Seek a Newer World, by Robert F. Kennedy (This one, despite the awkward youth-oriented title has a particularly apt dedication with quote in the front: "This book is dedicated to my children and yours." "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?" --Albert Camus Oh, RFK. If only you had a real bodyguard at the Ambassador Hotel. But you were "Seeking" when you were supposed to be saying: Strategy-Enemy-Treason-Betray Strategy-Enemy-Treason-Betray Wartime agit prop language. We here at RI use title framing when we start a thread or respond with a subject line. We want it read in the first place (competing for attention) and want people to see where we are going in our oh-so lengthy well-documented critical responses. lol. So I learned what the word-game was by posting on discussion boards like DemocraticUnderground where it is harder to get read at all, nevermind have someone bother to discuss things with you.

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:00 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>In all that research about stealth PR and propaganda, which we ALL agree happens, have you ever, just once, run across a discussion of the technique of "keyword hijacking" as you define it?<hr></blockquote> Does the mirroring of websites such as happened to RigorousIntuition count? I'd say so. Hijacking of url's with slight variations, hijacking of concepts, keyword hijacking, all infowar tactics where glyphs rule. There isn't 'hijacking' in this but keyword shenanigans are part of US infowar with China and Iran. "Us Blunders With Keyword Blacklist" <a href="http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5204405.html">news.com.com/2010-1028-5204405.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Perspective: U.S. blunders with keyword blacklist CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh explains how a U.S. government agency supposedly fighting Internet censorship is quietly engaging in censorship itself. The U.S. government concocted a brilliant plan a few years ago: Why not give Internet surfers in China and Iran the ability to bypass their nations' notoriously restrictive blocks on Web sites? Soon afterward, the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) invented a way to let people in China and Iran easily route around censorship by using a U.S.-based service to view banned sites such as BBC News, MIT and Amnesty International. But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes "ass" (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), "breast" (breastcancer.com), "hot" (hotmail.com and hotels.com), "pic" (epic.noaa.gov) and "teen" (teens.drugabuse.gov). "The minute you try to temper assistance with evading censorship with judgments about how that power should be used by citizens, you start down a path from which there's no clear endpoint," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard University law professor and co-author of the report prepared by the OpenNet Initiative. The report was financed in part by the MacArthur Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute. That's the sad irony in the OpenNet Initiative's findings: A government agency charged with fighting Internet censorship is quietly censoring the Web itself. The list unintentionally reveals its author's views of what's appropriate and inappropriate. The IBB has justified a filtered Internet connection by arguing that it's inappropriate for U.S. funds to help residents of China and Iran--both of which receive dismal ratings from human rights group Freedom House--view pornography. In the abstract, the argument is a reasonable one. If the IBB's service had blocked only hard-core pornographic Web sites, few people would object. Instead, the list unintentionally reveals its author's views of what's appropriate and inappropriate. The official naughty-keyword list displays a conservative bias that labels any Web address with "gay" in them as verboten--a decision that affects thousands of Web sites that deal with gay and lesbian issues, as well as DioceseOfGaylord.org, a Roman Catholic site. More to the point, the U.S. government could have set a positive example to the world regarding acceptance of gays and lesbians--especially in Iran, which punishes homosexuality with death. In order to reach the IBB censorship-evading service, people in China or Iran connect to contractor Anonymizer's Web site. Then they can use Anonymizer.com as a kind of jumping-off point, also called a proxy server, to visit Web sites banned by their governments. Ken Berman, who oversees the China and Iran Internet projects at IBB, said Anonymizer came up with the list of dirty words. "We did not," Berman said. "Basically, we said, 'Implement a porn filter.' We were looking for serious, hard-core nasty stuff to block...I couldn't come up with a list (of off-limits words) if my life depended on it." In an e-mail to the OpenNet Initiative on Monday morning, Berman defended the concept of filtering as a way to preserve bandwidth. "Since the U.S. taxpayers are financing this program...there are legitimate limits that may be imposed," his message said. "These limits are hardly restrictive in finding any and all human rights, pro-democracy, dissident and other sites, as well as intellectual, religious, governmental and commercial sites. The porn filtering is a trade-off we feel is a proper balance and that, as noted in your Web release, frees up bandwidth for other uses and users." OpenNet Initiative did its research by connecting to the Anonymizer service from computers in Iran and evaluating which Google Web searches were blocked that theoretically should not be. The report concludes: "For example, usembassy.state.gov is unavailable due to the presence of the letters 'ass' within the server's host name, and sussex.police.uk is unavailable for the same reason. In addition, the words 'my' and 'tv,' which are also domain suffixes, are filtered by IBB Anonymizer. As a consequence, all Web hosts registered within the domain name systems of Malaysia and Tuvalu are unavailable." "For example, usembassy.state.gov is unavailable due to the presence of the letters 'ass' within the server's host name." --OpenNet Initiative's report Harvard University's Berkman Center worked on the project, as did the University of Toronto's Nart Villeneuve and Michelle Levesque. They tested only connections from Iran, but Anonymizer said the same list of keywords was used for China. The U.S. government "asked us to filter broadly based on keywords to generally restrict" Web sites, says Lance Cottrell, founder and president of San Diego-based Anonymizer. "What they didn't want to get into was something complex, fine-grained filtering which is going to try to remove all the porn. What they wanted was something that would generally remove most of the adult content while not blocking most of the information that these people need." Cottrell said Anonymizer would manually unblock non-pornographic Web sites if requested by Chinese or Iranian Net surfers. "Literally, we have never been contacted with a complaint about overbroad blocking," he said. Monday's report also takes a swipe at IBB and Anonymizer for not using the SSL encryption method to scramble the Web browsing behavior of Iranian citizens. "I would think that if the U.S. government is going to go through the trouble of funding and offering the service, they might offer the more secure one," Harvard's Zittrain said. Anonymizer's Cottrell said he discontinued that feature because "it seemed to cause trouble for a lot of people. The utilization of the service went way down." Iran currently doesn't monitor the contents of Web pages downloaded. But if that changed, encryption would be turned back on, Cottrell said. (Because China does do that kind of monitoring, SSL is already enabled for Chinese users.) This episode represents a temporary black eye for IBB, but it should also serve as a permanent lesson to the agency. When American taxpayers are paying the bill, any "anticensorship" scheme needs to be beyond reproach. Biography Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's chief political correspondent. He spent more than a decade in Washington, D.C., chronicling the busy intersection between technology and politics. Previously, he was the Washington bureau chief for Wired News, and a reporter for Time.com, Time magazine and HotWired. McCullagh has taught journalism at American University and been an adjunct professor at Case Western University.<hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/6/06 7:15 pm

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:23 pm

Do you think the White House's recent use of the expression "Islamofascism" might be an effort to hijack what they really are, fascists? (on edit: Forgot to mention that 'fascist' is lately becoming a mainstream word to describe this administration. Molly Ivins and others have used it and it is coming up much more frequently on Air America Radio, speaking of keyword hijacking, named after the largest airline in the world during the Cold War run by the CIA to carry drugs, weapons, and mercenaries.) John Dean's latest book 'Conservatives Without Conscience' has him giving interviews talking about the Authoritarian Personality. And that personality is the sociologically-agreed on precursor to... fascism receptivity. So trying to grab 'fascism' for the War on Terra now would be a way to head off this awareness of the modern relevence of the 'F' word. Then there's the hijacking of the 'N' word. For years black Americans have taken back the slur 'nigger' to reclaim it for their own use amongst themselves, usually as a term of familiarity and sometimes as a putdown. Richard Pryor made headlines when he finally declared he was going to bury the word. That was keyword hijacking. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/6/06 10:42 pm

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:28 pm

"Tracking and vigilance..." Yup. <a href="http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2005/02/impression_frau.html">www.straightupsearch.com/..._frau.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Impression Fraud, I Dub Thee Keyword Hijacking! Last month, in writing about click fraud, I had briefly touched on the idea of 'Impression Fraud'. At the time, there had been very little talk of it, and even through today, we haven't really seen any evidence that leads us to believe any of our clients have been a victim of this attack. It comes as no surprise though, that this tactic is already picking up speed and gaining attention. Several sources, beginning early this month, have been talking about this. The tag being applied is 'Keyword Hijacking'. Bots are being written to take advantage of primarily Google AdWords and the relevancy formula with that engine. These bots perform keyword searches over and over, exposing the ads, but never taking action on them. Eventually, the AdWords system makes the assumption that 'searchers' see no value in the ad, because it's been shown potentially thousands of times with few or no clicks. While this won't cost an advertiser any money directly, it is extremely damaging as it stops ad delivery. Many times, that means no one will visit an advertisers site since they'll never know it exists. A direct impact on the bottom line. Again, it comes down to tracking and vigilance. It's like a mantra. Repeat it to yourself over and over; tracking and vigilance.<hr></blockquote>

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:34 pm

<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/03/google_adwords_attack/">www.theregister.co.uk/200...ds_attack/</a> Botnets strangle Google Adwords campaigns Keyword hijacking risk By John Leyden Published Thursday 3rd February 2005 17:14 GMT Security researchers have discovered a way to shut down or seriously impair a Google Adwords advertising campaign by artificially inflating the number of times an ad is displayed. By running searches against particular keywords from compromised hosts, attackers can cause click-through percentage rates to fall through the floor. This, in turn, causes Google Adwords to automatically disable the affected campaign keywords and prevent ads from being displayed. By disabling campaign keywords using the technique, cybercrimals could give their preferred parties higher ad positions at reduced costs, according to click fraud prevention specialists Clickrisk. "By disabling targeted keywords across many advertisers' campaigns simultaneously by artificially inflating the number of times an ad is displayed an attacker can secure a higher ad position," explains Clickrisk.com chief exec Adam Sculthorpe. The attack - dubbed keyword hijacking - is difficult to prevent because it takes advantage of a design feature of Google Adwords rather than a flaw, he added. Clickrisk came across the attack in investigating why the click through rates of one of its clients - which had been running at a steady rate - dropped to zero for no apparent reason. Subsequent monitoring and forensic testing revealed that a botnet made up of open proxies in China was responsible for the attack. High—cost-per-click (CPC) advertisers in niche markets are particular vulnerable to the keyword hijacking attack. "Once keywords are disabled they can't be re-enabled and attacks can go undetected for some time," Sculthorpe told El Reg. When keywords are disabled an advertiser must erase all campaigns featuring the affected keywords and create a new campaign as a workaround. Although the true scope of the problem remains unclear, Clickrisk security analysts believe the keyword hijacking attack may be widely exploited. Clickrisk advises users to monitor click-through rates and traffic levels, log into Google Adwords campaign frequently and check that keywords are not disabled. The incidence of click fraud risk exposure in general is on the rise. According to Clickrisk’s chief risk officer, Jack Bensimon, "our clients have experienced substantial losses ranging from 20 – 65 per cent of their total click costs." Bensimon believes that "managing business risk is a critical component of online advertising" and further recommends that "online marketers should be vigilant and regularly monitor keywords".

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:06 pm

Here are more internet shenanigans like those nomorefascizm referred to- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The popularity of domain names also led to uses which were regarded as abusive by established companies with trademark rights; this was known as cybersquatting, in which somebody took a name that resembled a trademark in order to profit from traffic to that address. To combat this, various laws and policies were enacted to allow abusive registrations to be forcibly transferred, but these were sometimes themselves abused by overzealous companies committing reverse domain hijacking against domain users who had legitimate grounds to hold their names, such as their being generic words as well as trademarks in a particular context, or their use in the context of fan or protest sites with free speech rights of their own.<hr></blockquote>

by **orz** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:07 pm

As i've pointed out before, by your own standards your use of the term Keyword Hijacking IS IN ITSELF KEYWORD HIJACKING! Its legitimate meaning in IT circles specifically refers to the practice of dishonestly preventing internet advertisters from benefiting from their paid ads. By using it to refer to subliminal messages planted in popular culture, you yourself are confusing matters in the same way you accuse others of!! :-S If the term (god forbid) became widespread in alternative politics discussion online, it could rob google traffic from articles related to the original meaning, and thus harm small businesses by preventing them finding info to help deal with this real problem. ... my god you even used the same article i facetiously posted with random bold emphasis! <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eyes.gif ALT=":rolleyes"> Do you think the White House's recent use of the expression "Islamofascism" might be an effort to hijack what they really are, fascists? Can't say i do exactly but we're very close on this one; I think it's more a case of classic Orwellian newspeak... a made up word with with vague and contradictory meaning, designed to stifle sensible discussion. They aren't sitting there thinking "wow we're a bit Fascist aren't we, how can we distract the people from this fact?" Rather they want people to hate and fear Islam so append the word Fascism, as Orwell points out in "Politics and the English Language" has long ago completely lost all real meaning beyond "something undesirable" <blockquote>Quote:<hr>a terrible mistake- 'The War for Civilisation.' He did this because this was inscribed on the medal his daddy got for being a British imperial soldier. But grazers at Borders are going to get exactly the wrong message from his title and it will reinforce what they are hearing from the NYTimes' Thomas Friedman or all the CFR experts that NPR is giving airtime to.<hr></blockquote> But wait... why doesn't it work the other way? Why isn't Fisk's title a clever reversal of keyword Hijacking, taking the neocon buzzword and applying it to a genuine and realistic reporting of the situation? Oh, and don't forget my question about Jack Black.....? <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)">

by **orz** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:11 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>'Snakes On a Plane.' Hmm. What does that trigger?<hr></blockquote>Internet meme in-joke hilarity amongst internet hipsters resulting in reshoots and subsequent increased ticket sales for a movie that would otherwise have been a complete flop....?

by **Prac** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:29 pm

"Air America" and "gay". Different eteologies but highjacking, me thinks, and quite likely for purposes.

by **robertdreed** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:35 pm

Hugh, you keep shifting criteria and juggling examples as part of your effort to validate your position- from referring to undeniable instances of propaganda efforts on the part of the government or unscrupulous big business, to...Snakes On A Plane? That sort of ill-logical leap-frogging tends to invalidate everything in your commentary, even your use of germane and verifiable information and your intermittent insights on the subject. But I have to say, even at those points when your commentary sounds sensible to me, there isn't anything ground-breaking about it. Have you ever heard of Situationism, for instance? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Spectacle">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soc..._Spectacle</a> Guy DeBord was covering the same subject matter as yourself almost 40 years ago, in his book Society Of The Spectacle. And he managed to make a coherent and rational case, avoiding the temptation to go off the deep end on the topic. <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle">en.wikisource.org/wiki/Th..._Spectacle</a> It's a subtle book, often epigrammatic. Short passages often require substantial reflection in order to grasp. My guess is that you haven't read it, because your thoughts on this topic so often strike me as unleavened and ungrounded. DeBord can help supply you with some intellectual balance on this stuff. I think you'll dig him. ( But who knows... maybe your conclusion upon reading will be to classify DeBord as one of THEM. ) And if you only found out about Project Mockingbird a few years ago from the Internet, you should be advised that at least some of the people offering a skeptical critique of your views on RI were aware of it many years before you. As Daniel Brandt, founder of CIAbase and Namebase, once put it, "After reading and indexing 700 investigative books, there aren't too many surprises about what the ruling class is up to." I haven't read as many investigative books as Daniel Brandt- probably only about 200-300. Less than half of his syllabus...I'm still trying to catch up. But that was sufficient study to get me to adopt a similar attitude. That said, I think you go overboard- particularly in your attempts to lump all sorts of disparate events and symbolism together as part of a single organized plot. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 10/6/06 8:36 pm

by **robertdreed** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:40 pm

221 The self-emancipation of our time is an emancipation from the material bases of inverted truth. This “historic mission of establishing truth in the world” can be carried out neither by the isolated individual nor by atomized and manipulated masses, but only and always by the class that is able to dissolve all classes by reducing all power to the de-alienating form of realized democracy — to councils in which practical theory verifies itself and surveys its own actions. This is possible only when individuals are “directly linked to universal history” and dialogue arms itself to impose its own conditions. Welcome to the Internet. Welcome to the RI board.

by **dugoboy** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:41 pm

i feel like i need to defend HMW because so many people seem to think he's full of crap. you people act as if he's some schitzophrenic saying things out of context and making things up but the fact is he is saying things within context. he isn't suggesting there is some omnipresent panopticon of media manipulation going on that some of you are, we aren't there yet but it is getting worse with each corporate media merger. this is what we are heading towards, yes. he is making note of how far they've come and all he can do is point us to evidence of paste research and operations. as time passes these guys get better with it and soon it will be very hard to know whats the truth or not. and societys will collapse. it scares the shit out of me. ___________________________________________ "BushCo aren't incompetent...they are Complicit!" -Me "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always." -Mahatma Gandhi

by **Dreams End** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:52 pm

Hugh, I was talking about "keyword hijacking" as YOU define it. The examples you gave are of keyword hijacking as it is ACTUALLY defined. Prac...."Air America" is by far the best case I've seen so far. For those not in on the joke, the "progressive" radio station, run by people who should know better, given that there is a freaking movie about it by the same name, named their station after the CIA drug and gun running airline. I commented on that at the time on my old blog. Too bad Hugh didn't grab that one. Bonus points were on the line.

by **medicis** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:57 pm

I haven't read every post so some may have expressed similar thoughts. You guys don't realize how useful Hugh is. Think of the evolutionary process of ideas.... and how useful what Hugh does is. Look at how many posts there are. These ideas make you think. When is the last time? Out of the box. Remember, the folks who do psyops are just as smart as anybody here. Probably smarter....... and certainly more knowledgeable. They have had years since Bernays to figure it out much better than we have because there has been a group of them workin on this forever. Has anybody here done the same. .... Mockingbird, disinfo, psyops, ..... dah dah dah. Arrogance pays a price. I don't think the government's analysts are particularly arrogant. They have done pretty well up till now. Will they continue to do so? In the cognitive science of creative thought, you really need somebody who can think the odd thoughts. Sometimes true, sometimes not. But the questions have to be raised. To make us think outside the box....

Keyword Hijacking

Re: Prof Pan's comment

Re: Robert Reed's ? on titles. > Unbought billboards.<

Re: Dreams End asks me

Re: Dreams End asks me

Re: Dreams End asks me

Re: Dreams End asks me "seen keyword hijacking before?&

Re: Dreams End asks me "seen keyword hijacking before?&

no

snakes

Spurious Highjacking egs

...

The Conclusion of [i]Society Of The Spectacle[/i]

Re: no

Re: no

Re: no

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