Operation Earnest Voice
Operation Earnest Voice (OEV) is a communications program by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM). Initially, the program was developed as a psychological weapon and later thought to have been directed at jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East. Details. OEV was first used in Iraq. In 2011, the US government signed a $2.8 million contract with the Ntrepid web-security company to develop a specialized software, allowing agents of the government to post propaganda on "foreign-language websites". The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American  propaganda on social networking services based outside of the United States. Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software development request, are: Statements. USCC commander David Petraeus, in his congressional testimony, stated that Operation Earnest Voice would "reach [a country's] regional audiences through traditional media, as well as via Web sites and regional public-affairs blogging," as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda". However, his successor, Jim Mattis, altered the program to have "regional blogging" fall under general USCC public-affairs activity. On how they would operate on these blogs, Petraeus explained: "We bring out  the moderate voices. We amplify those. And in more detail, we detect and we flag if there is adversary, hostile, corrosive content in some open-source Web forum, [and] we engage with the Web administrators to show that this violates Web site provider policies."