Snippets from the linked articles are being used in the following summary under the Fair Use Clause of the U.S. Copyright Act, Title 17, Section 107.

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An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee's official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban


The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was put into place because of the recent memories of World War I and World War II. President Woodrow Wilson put into place the Committee for Public Information (CPI) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the Office for War Information (OWI).

Thornberry defended his support of the bill in a statement from his website, on the grounds that it provides for the common defense and is a positive for national security.

http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/05/22/domestic-propaganda-amendment-slipped-into-defense-bill/


The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/us-house-passes-propaganda-bill-h-r-4310-2932922.html


The Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media propaganda campaigns and spit some counter-spin right back at it… It’s an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media. SMISC has two goals. First, the program needs to help the military better understand what’s going on in social media in real time — particularly in areas where troops are deployed. Second, Darpa wants SMISC to help the military play the social media propaganda game itself… Darpa’s announcement talks about using SMISC “the environment in which [the military] operates” and where it “conducts operations.” That strongly implies it’s intended for use in sensing and messaging to foreign social media. It better, lest it run afoul of the law. The Smith-Mundt Act makes pointing propaganda campaigns at domestic audiences illegal.

http://blackmettle.com/2012/05/22/house-passes-amendment-that-allows-govt-backed-propaganda/


The Pentagon is already subject to a new investigation regarding a misinformation effort against media employees. A USA Today reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names. The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers' terms of service.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-04-19/vanden-brook-locker-propaganda/54419654/1


The Associated Press reports that although the bill passed in the Republican-controlled House, the Democratic-controlled Senate is “likely to scrap many of them and stick to the spending level in the deficit-cutting agreement.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/disconcerting-and-dangerous-house-passes-amendment-that-allows-govt-backed-propoganda/







"The truth is the greatest enemy of the State." -- Joseph Goebbels