Surreptitiously affecting online discourse (especially through the deceitful practice of mocking identities) constitutes propaganda and a manner of censorship (in that it prevents sentiments from forming organically).

This story is a corollary argument for why identity on the web is important -- and why it should not be solved by government (as it has been in places like South Korea). Because, who can trust a government with representing identities, if they are known to mock identities under any circumstances?

The capacity to "change the conversation" on a societal level (in this remarkably nefarious manner) represents a tool of which there is ostensibly no oversight -- at least no oversight the People of any democracy should trust.

IMHO, there is great naiveté in the assumption that these tools (which are immensely powerful) will continue to be used in an ethical (or legal) manner (without proper oversight).

So how can there be proper oversight of a program such as this without ruining its efficacy? It seems impossible--here we have a catch-22 -- one that draws parallels to the lawsuits filed against metadata collection which couldn't proceed because of the lack of legal standing. In this case, we have an enormously powerful program that can't have proper oversight, because then: "how does the government wreck everybody's shit?" That's power trip logic, but it seems to be the leading rationale in the justification of policy, as well as its advocation. That. Is. Some. Scary. Shit. Hopefully, in light of the Snowden revelations, the public is more suspicious of the way programs like this will be spun/argued-for.

The 'will' has always existed in government (in fact its pursuit is ubiquitous) to control the public conversation for political purposes--purposes sometimes tangential to the best interests of the democracy. What happens when entities have access to tools which can be used to propagandize? They find ways to use them. History is bound to repeat itself.

Take the Red Peril or Red Scare (McCarthyism/J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI) -- periods spanning several years of Fear-Uncertainty-and-Doubt where the 'societal narrative' was affected by state propaganda. One of the greatest casualties of the two periods was: Freedom of Speech--strangely, the same cross which is carried by the fighters for an open and uncensored internet.

However - these are just the most well known periods of propaganda -- I encourage you read up on Edward Bernays [0], if you're interested in the topic. This US government has a long (and official) interest in changing the course of the public conversation through unabashed deceit -- from Woodrow Wilson's plight to overcome Isolationism to the pro-Vietnam war-statistics propaganda, and literally countless other incidents.

Moral of the story: the desire for state propaganda has shown to be ever-present in the United States, at least over the course of the past century.

Is it wise to simply hope to avoid "bad apple" (McCarthy, J Edgar Hoover) scenarios in the NSA/GHCQ/ETC? Can we risk having such powerful programs operating in complete secrecy.... in perpetuity?

"The greatest instrument used in the societal tragedies of the last century has (undoubtedly) been state delivered propaganda." - The first line of my most upvoted comment on HN. State propaganda of any kind is the most dangerous medium known to the survival of the enlightened man.

Another note on 'capacity': while I was not surprised by the 'will' of intelligence communities to have tools such as these -- the very nature of its operational status (and future development) sheds more light on the vast scope of the programs which have been "realized."

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays