The government figured out sockpuppet managment but not "persona management".

[starroute]

56. I've just been reading up on this stuff at Project PM

That's the wiki set up by Barrett Brown to analyze the HBGary emails. It's not as complete or as deep as it might be, but it's a good starting point.

http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Persona_management

In the wake of the HBGary investigation, it was discovered that the federal contractor had bid on a call for applications by the USAF to develop persona software for apparent propaganda and/or infiltration purposes. CENTCOM later admitted to using such capabilities abroad, but denies using them in the English language or in a way that would explicit target U.S. citizens, an action which would be illegal. Global Business Solutions and Associates LLC, Uk Plus Logistics, Ltd., NevinTelecom, Bunker Communications and Planmatrix LLC., were also among those bidding to provide such software, according to documents discovered by Raw Story. The contract was later discovered to have been won by Ntrepid, which still later was confirmed to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cubic Corporation and led in large part by execs and employees of the latter firm.

On October 15th, 2010, HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr emailed Mantech CEO Robert Frisbie about considering Palantir Technologies for help "..on some of the integration for link analysis and data correlation. We will likely be able to get into some of the persona management logic.." Barr here attached the PDF titled Social Media Persona Development. At some point, Barr also deployed a primitive single persona, intended to represent an intelligence contracting employee and USAF veteran, on Facebook and Twitter. During his attempt to infiltrate Anonymous, Barr also planned to create at least two fake personas with the intention of using the first to "discredit" the second in order to gain influence within the movement. In both instances, Barr seems to have relied on manual trickery rather than employing specialized software of the sort that's been developed elsewhere.

Patent 20090313274, created in an apparent join effort by IBM and the U.S. military (four members of which are listed as inventors), describes specific workings of a reasonably advanced persona management system, or at least a component thereof, providing software-based linguistic capabilities in order to retain "linguistic integrity" from conversation to conversation.

DARPA's July 2011 BAA (Broad Agency Announcement) entitled Social Media in Strategic Communications indicates that such software will increasingly form a broad programmatic area of military operations, rather than being acquired piecemeal or in covert dealings, as has been the case in the past.


http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Mantech

Mantech International Corporation describes itself as "a leading provider of advanced technology, technical services and security solutions to the U.S. national security community" employing "approximately 10,000 highly skilled people who manage our global operations" in 40 countries. Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia the firm's revenues have increased from $431 million in 2001 to $1.137 billion in 2006, mostly from providing IT and systems engineering services to intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, which together account for more than 90% of its revenue. It was founded in 1968 as a specialized military contractor that devised submarine war-game models for the U.S. Navy and was little-known outside the Pentagon until 1988 when (having previously grown by acquiring obscure professional services and engineering firms such as Mathetics Corp. and Energystics Corp) it acquired a subsidiary of Northrop Corp. In this way, Mantech continued to improve its position as a viable contender for further contracts. It was noted by the Washington Post at the time of the 1988 Northrop deal that chairman and co-founder George Pedersen would not let himself be photographed.[1] One of Mantech's many areas of expertise is "Policy Development, Planning, & Program Implementation"[2]

Mantech is of interest to this investigation due to its extremely close association with Aaron Barr and its interest in Persona Management, its status as major provider of services to the FBI, and its role in the Romas/COIN recompete lead by Barr and TASC.

In early 2011, Mantech won a five-year, $9.2 million dollar contract by which to "supply the FBI with security policies, procedures, training and planning, and manage security for FBI communications."

In early 2012, Mantech purchased HBGary, adding the firm to its Mission, Cyber & Intelligence Solutions unit.