Operation Earnest Voice (OEV) is a communications program by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM).[1] Initially, the program was developed as a psychological weapon and later thought to have been directed at jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan as well as countries in the Middle East.[2]
OEV was first used in Iraq.[3] 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.[2]
Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software development request, are:
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".[2] 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."[1]
