Information warriors
Military finances technology to collect social media data despite claims it was shutting down such efforts
Six months after National Defence claimed it was shutting down efforts to collect social media data of Canadians, the military was back again developing new technology to accomplish such tasks.
Defence firms and other companies were given almost $10 million to develop new ways to analyze social media and sift through accounts.
In November 2020, National Defence claimed it shut down a controversial plan that would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as collect and analyze information from the public’s social media accounts. The Canadian Forces had already spent more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, the company implicated in a 2016 data-mining scandal to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.
After details of the initiative became public, then chief of the defence staff Gen. Jon Vance ordered the program shut down, noting that information warfare capabilities should only be available for overseas missions and public affairs officers had no role in targeting Canadians.
But members of the same public affairs team behind the propaganda initiative were once again conducting activities under then acting chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News. A technology demonstration of new techniques to monitor and cull social media accounts, funded by National Defence, was held in May 2021.
National Defence, in a statement to Postmedia News, noted the technology demonstration day was for innovators, science evaluators and program representatives. “Public affairs is not involved,” it added.
That claim isn’t true.
In a May 3, 2021 email to senior military public affairs staff, including Brig.-Gen. Rick Perreault and then Brig. Gen. Jay Janzen, it was pointed out that the public affairs branch was a driving force with defence scientists and researchers behind many of the social media monitoring projects. The money spent to finance the projects was handled through Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the office of the Assistant Deputy Minister for Science and Technology (ADM (S&T).
“We have been partnering with ADM (S&T) DRDC on many of these initiatives,” Lt. Col. Doug Allison pointed out in a message to the public affairs senior leadership.
“The concept reached out
“Innovation is sometimes prone to being misunderstood.” Then Brig. Gen Jay Janzen
to private industry with some problem sets, and asked them to propose solutions. One of the problem sets was understanding and making sense of social media on any particular topic, and tools that would help focus on issue/topic.”
Three firms provided solutions. Allison noted that the new technology could be adopted across the federal government or in a particular sector. “This is an excellent opportunity to gain SA (situational awareness) on cutting edge technology,” he added.
The funding for the new technology came on the heels of a number of controversial propaganda initiatives. Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out new propaganda techniques on unsuspecting public, a 2021 internal Canadian Forces investigation into the initiatives concluded.
Amilitary team monitored and collected information from people’s social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops who were to work in long-term care homes during the COVID19 pandemic. That initiative involved collecting negative comments Ontarians made about Premier Doug Ford and the failure of his government to take care of the elderly and then forward those on to the Ontario government.
Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders, again supposedly to aid military commanders helping coordinate work in long-term care homes.
Military officers saw nothing wrong with such collection of data as it was already in the public domain on social media accounts. “This is really a learning opportunity for all of us and a chance to start getting information operations into our (CAF-DND) routine,” Rear Admiral Brian Santarpia later told investigators.
When Eyre was army commander, the service held an exercise in September 2020 where military information operations staff forged a letter from the Nova Scotia government warning about wolves on the loose in a particular region of the province. The plan was to test techniques on how to influence local populations. But the letter was inadvertently distributed to residents, prompting panicked calls to Nova Scotia officials who were unaware the military was behind the deception.
The new public affairs strategy would have seen staff move from traditional government methods of communicating with the public to a more aggressive methods of using information warfare and influence tactics on Canadians. Included among those tactics was the use of friendly defence analysts and retired generals to push military PR messages and to criticize on social media those who raised questions about military spending and lack of accountability.
A number of military public affairs officers embraced the initiative, viewing themselves as information warriors and the Canadian public as targets to manipulate. Some openly referred to the news media as the enemy.
But retired senior public affairs officers repeatedly warned the initiative was a recipe for disaster and could do serious harm to the military’s reputation.
Janzen who was leading the initiative — later described as weaponizing public affairs — said at the time the military was “on the leading edge, and we were exploring uncharted territory. Innovation is sometimes prone to being misunderstood.”
Janzen left the Canadian Forces and is now a communications director at NATO headquarters.
It is unclear why National Defence officials tried to mislead Postmedia News with its false claim public affairs branch was not involved in the technology initiatives.
But documents obtained under the Access to Information law show that the public affairs branch originally tried to limit reporting by Postmedia News on some of the controversial propaganda initiatives.
In one email, Lt. Col. Andre Salloum, citing discussions with then Brig. Gen. Janzen, noted that direction had come from Sajjan’s office as well as the office of Deputy Minister Jody Thomas to limit the information to be provided to Postmedia News.
The public affairs staff and Sajjan’s office were particularly worried about any references to a document which outlined how the military could take advantage of the pandemic to test new propaganda techniques on Canadians. Postmedia News eventually obtained that document and reported on it.