In these days when we get so much of our information from the internet, we need to be sensitive to how much manipulation of it can occur. While some of this is done by individuals, this Intercept article from 2014 based on information contained in the trove of secret documents released by Edward Snowden shows that government agencies, in particular the GCHQ (the UK’s intelligence arm), resort to all manner of dirty tricks to destroy the reputations of people and disrupt groups that merely oppose government policies and actions, even if they have never been convicted of any crime nor had any connection to any terrorist activity. The ostensible mission of these government agencies is to monitor terrorist activities not legitimate political activism that happens to be against government policies.
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