The Art of Deception Training for Online Covert Operations Pdf
Last February, a file from the Edward Snowden leaks was released from a 2012 GCHQ presentation called 'The Fine art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations'. It describes the 'Online Covert Action Accreditation' course which draws heavily on the psychology of influence and persuasion. This post will await at how they're piecing together the science that forms the basis for these online operations.
The work seems to have been put together by GCHQ'southward Homo Scientific discipline Operations Jail cell which presumably exists as an internal consultancy to let the relevant cerebral and social sciences to be applied to practical covert operations.
One of the early on slides lists the subjects the HSOC draws on which stretch from psychology to political science to neuroscience. At the current time, neuroscience has nothing practical to contribute, so they're clearly bravado their neurological trumpets to sound a bit more high-tech only it'south worth noting the breadth of disciplines they draw on meaning they've got a broad and comprehensive vision of homo behaviour from the micro to the macro.
Nevertheless, one of the key slides has a road map of how everything fits together. It's shown below and it's quite dense and then you can click the image below if you lot want a larger version.
One of the start thing that stands out is the advert-hoc-ness of their arroyo. They've appropriated a patchwork of relevant theories equally a guide to exercise with goose egg being drawn from their own information.
You tin can see the main areas they're cartoon from – which includes profiling cultures and personality, enquiry on persuasion, cognitive biases and scams, research on the psychology of stage magic, and organisational psychology or management science more generally.
Perhaps the weakest elements here are the cultural and personality profiling using Hofstede's cultural dimensions and a Big Five personality traits. The trouble is that while these are statistically reliable on the group level they predict very little on the private level because the furnishings are swamped by individual variation.
This means it may exist more useful in the domain of PSYOPS, which attempts to influence groups, rather than targeting individuals.
The slide beneath details the general psychological framework for deception. As far equally I can tell, this is the merely original slice of psychological theory in the presentation.
It's more a useful way of organising dissimilar approaches to charade rather than a theory in itself. It's what clinical psychologists would call a 'formulation'. It's a way of organising bear witness-based effects that may not be thoroughly tested itself but works well enough to aid agreement.
Perhaps the key matter to notation is the sensemaking component. Sensemaking is a fundamental concept in direction scientific discipline that just describes the different ways in which people come to conclusions about the meaning and significance of things.
It should exist a well-known concept in intelligence circles considering it is used both in war machine people direction and military machine intelligence analysis. Interestingly, they care for individuals as like naive intelligence analysts who are trying to piece together their own understanding of the world and aim to exploit some of the weaknesses in this process. The big messy 'concept map' slides mentions 'destructive organisational psychology' which presumably refers to using the understanding of what keeps organisation together to pause them autonomously.
All the same, in terms of the psychological scientific discipline which underlies their approach, the next slide is fundamental.
Yous can see several influences here. The techniques listed under 'attention' are all taken from research on the psychology of magic tricks, particularly from Susana Martinez-Conde'southward piece of work on how sleight-of-hand artists manipulate attention. Near of it is reviewed in a paper she wrote with a serial of co-authors including pickpocket Apollo Robbins.
The HSOC spooks clearly honey the idea of the psychology of magic and they refer to it a lot in their presentation. One slide just says 'We want to build Cyber Magicians', but it'due south actually not clear how it applies online. The whole point of sleight-of-hand is that information technology is dynamic and takes reward of how you lot pay attention. When online, however, users' attention doesn't necessary flow in a predictable pattern because you tin wander off from the screen, intermission, grab screenshots and so on. In other words, individuals take ameliorate command over the flow of information because online interaction is designed for information command and therefore fractional staggered attention.
The 'perception' techniques listed on the slide are largely taken from Stefano Grazioli and Sirkka Jarvenpaa'south archetype paper [pdf] on online deception entitled 'Deceived: Under Target Online'. The newspaper looks at how internet scammers rip people off and assuming that successful online con artists accept found useful techniques past natural choice, HSOC simply borrow them.
The techniques to exploit sensemaking are largely based on theories of sensemaking itself although the story fragments components seems to be drawn from enquiry on relational agents that are designed 'to form long-term, social-emotional relationships with their users'. Rather than actually deploying democratic relational agents, I suspect it'due south but a example of using enquiry insights from the area that suggests, for case, that presenting fragments of the agent's backstory and letting the other person piece them together makes the person seem more believable.
The techniques in the 'impact' department are some general points taken from a vast experimental literature on the psychology of marketing and persuasion that describes how emotion modulates the heuristics (judgement processes) involved in persuasion.
The 'behaviour' section is the but office I don't recognise as coming from the psychological literature. This makes me suspect it comes from PSYOPS or IO practise, but if yous recognise it, get out a comment below.
The '10 Principles of Influence' is perhaps 1 of the nearly interesting slides in terms of illustrating the empirical basis for their approach as they use research both on the strategies of honest persuasion and dishonest scammers.
'Principles are influence' are largely associated with the work of consumer psychologist Robert Cialdini simply the list really consists of three of his six principles (Reciprocity, Social Compliance / Potency, Consistency).
Another half-dozen are taken from Stajano and Wilson'due south classic study 'Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security' which describes six methods used by con artists. One item overlaps with the Cialdini principles and additionally they've included flattery (known to be an constructive persuasive tool) and time – although it'south not clear whether they're referring to giving people fourth dimension and putting people under time pressure.
This section seems to exist about gaining people's trust to encourage disclosure and the slide y'all see above refers to social penetration theory which describes how relationships progress to increased levels of intimate connection through self-disclosure. The slide that follows this gives some basic communication about encouraging this: mirroring communication cues, adjust oral communication patters then on – the sort of things you get taught in the starting time calendar week of a psychotherapy course.
So hither'south what the Online Covert Action Accreditation' grade looks like: like a PhD psychologist was given the task to come up up with a plausible psychological framework for applied deception and influence online. It draws on a mix of persuasion psychology from marketing, studies on scammers and con-men, the social psychology of trust and disclosure, studies of how stage magic works psychologically, and work on what makes organisations work effectively and what degrades their functioning.
This is a comprehensive approach to the trouble, but the problem is, this probably only translates approximately and probably rather poorly into practical effects.
In place of this, HSOC would be better of doing research and lots of it. They could do lots of informal RCTs online and gather a large amount of data quite quickly to test out which techniques actually increment influence or atomic number 82 to successful charade. What behaviours on the role of the thespian pb to increased self-disclosure the quickest? Does a laggy internet connection mean people'south increased frustration affects their evaluation of honest? and and then on.
I suspect, nevertheless, that the Man Science Operations Cell were, and mayhap nonetheless are, quite a small-scale outfit and so they're restricted to a consultancy role which will ultimately limit their effectiveness.
We tend to think that the secret services are super efficient experts with an space budget, simply they probably just piece of work like whatsoever other system. HSOC were probably told to deliver an Online Covert Action Accreditation course with few resources and non enough time and came upwards with the nigh sensible thing in the time immune.
Oh, and by the way, hello spooks, and welcome to Listen Hacks.
Link to re-create of slides.
Link to coverage from The Intercept.
Source: https://mindhacks.com/2014/06/28/a-spooks-guide-to-the-psychology-of-deception/
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