US military buys social networking spy software

The US military has procured a 'spy software', which will let it secretly manipulate social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter, by using fake identities to spread propaganda, a media report said.

The US Central Command has purchased the $2.7-million programme -- developed by San Diego firm Ntrepid -- which allows one military user to create multiple personas on internet and engage in extended online communications with terror suspects, The Washington Times reported.

In fact, the programme is aimed at helping troops create and maintain realistic online personalities that would persuade extremists to allow them into chat rooms and bulletin boards by creating the appearance that they are logging on and posting messages from anywhere in the world, the report said.

According to military procurement documents, seen by the US newspaper, the software will 'enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and

without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries'.

"People must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world," the documents stated.

The software generates false IP addresses that are not linked to the US military, thus making them appear to originate from specified parts of the world, the military documents added.

"The software is used for what the military calls 'information operations' that use 'classified social media activities outside the United States to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda'.

"The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US," Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said.