Wanted: Brit Facebook and Twitter trolls for counter-jihad psyops

GCHQ monitors all El Reg posts

Allah Snackbar

am I hired?

How very Orwellian...

"The modern-day 77th Brigade will be tasked with influencing public opinion "

The beginning of the end? V For Vendetta, anyone?

Has anyone asked how do the actual chindit regiment feel about this rebrand?

Not at all sure myself, the original chindits were formed and fought out of bases india in the most horrible conditions of ww2, often deep in jungle territory inside burma often cut off from supplies or support for weeks on end, suffering malaria and side effects with each small team equipped with a mule to carry the team member that was sickest that day, which was permanently occupied. The japanese were a cruel enemy to be captured and would often cut off limbs with tattoo's and treat any POWS extremely badly as they considered them cowards.

I can recount many other tales which attribute to the grit of the regiment and the men which made it up as I'm the offspring of a heavily tattoo'd ex chindit (and the entire regiment went out and got tattoo's when they got this warning from their CO in defiance to the enemy, thats the kind of spirit they had, or were a daft bunch of blokes as my mum used to say when the topic of drawing on yourself permanently came up). I can't ask my dad as the side effects resulted in massive health problems and he fell to them eventually when I was a youngster.

I know about security at a low level, I'd happily play my part supporting whatever is needed from a technical point of view and I am not unskilled in the area, but I wouldn't want to go associating mealymouthed psyops done by blog postings by graduates tucked safely away in cube farms with the history of what my dad and others of his ilk did. Just doesn't seem right.

Anon, because, intent is not to stir up any resentment to other nations.

It goes without saying

that many other countries have similar units, some defensive, some not.

Many also tolerate sites that are hotbeds for nationalistic trolling and hacking.

Israel seems to be the keenest on stealing commercial and industrial secrets, including from their benefactors in the USA.

The USA is pretty keen on stealing that and diplomatic info. from everywhere but Israel. They already know pretty well what Israel has as far as military tech., because much of it was stolen from the US.

This new unit as described sounds more like Israel's Internet megaphone than anything else, differences being that it is under army control instead of Interior Ministry (Home Office for the British) control.

Why would a troll operation (albeit in a good cause, except that it is impossible to forget the UK govt's role in creating the hellish conditions in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other places in central to northern Africa, and the groups this '77' is said to be intended to troll) be made an army regiment?

Maybe the intention for the members in uniform is entirely different from the stated intention.

This 77 designation is also an insult to the soldiers who risked all fighting the equally brave soldiers of the Imperial Army.

At last

A British regiment that I can join!

Sign me up sir!

Probably missing something but.....

I'm finding this rather odd. Why the army? Why not civil servants, spooks and such? It's not as if they are going to order these people to attack a hill or whatever, surely military discipline is totally unnecessary when all you are faced with is facebook. Also, are highly trained squaddies who can shoot people in the face etc, going to be best employed sat behind a web browser? Not seeing why this is necessary at all, plenty of civil servants with security clearance, and expanding their number would be easy. Or, is this about getting this done as part of the defence budget, thus it being a real terms cut for defence? Baffling.

And what the Army thinks.

Always good for a read is what the Brit Army's unofficial social media thinks of the situation

http://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/the-chindits-are-back.225808/

I do like the comment on page 4

"Is it a good sign when an information operation outfit starts off by oddly appropriating the name of a respected behind the lines mob from WWII? It's a bit like when they put a MG badge on a Mini Metro. "

Forced marches through Wikipedia?

I was wondering what sort of exercises they think up for training.

15 (UK) Information Ops Group

Does this mean the PsyOps group has been disbanded or just re-rolled for the new world order?