Government Trolls - Our Tax Dollars at Work

[The Bastard1]

Last week it was the revelation that the Department of Defense was going to be indexing blogs. Then it was the revelation that Marine recruiters were using My Space to lure people into the military. Now it seems our tax dollars are being used for military personnel to cruise blogs sites and spam the comment section. At least that is what it seems like after we received this comment today:

Greetings; my name is Spc. Patrick Ziegler with U.S. CENTCOM. While it is not my place to get involved in any political debates, I just wanted toinvite your readers to visit our website, www.centcom.mil . The CENTCOM website is a good place to get up-to-date news, press releases, video and audio from Iraq, Afghanistan and all other places within the Central Command Area of Responsibility.

We also received the same message from Spc. Patrick Ziegler in our administrative E-mail account here at Bring It On!. Certainly the E-mail was a more polite way to ask if we were interested than the drive-by spamming, but are either method an appropriate use of government time and money? I think fellow Bring It On! author Chris from Idaho summed it up best when he said:

http://www.teambio.org/2006/07/government-trolls-our-tax-dollars-at-work/

[yurbud]

1. When I posted an article by Gen. Odom to my blog, I got a Centcom comment

in 33 minutes.

Check it out at the bottom of the page:

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/05/gen-odom-on-why-we-should-pull-out-of.html

[The Bastard1]

2. No shiat!!!

When are we all going into the Concentration camps?

[yurbud]

3. right after the terrorist attack and before the war in IraN

[Reckon]

5. I'm pretty sure that is illegal

Congress should be made aware.

[yurbud]

8. what's illegal? They didn't post anything threatening and it's a public

blog--but it did give me a nice warm sense of being watched.

[Reckon]

10. IMO, the only way the US military could

function in this manner inside the USA is if we were under marshal law.

K&R.. maybe other DUers can give us the answer to this question.

[Reckon]

4. They are trying to get their propaganda out.

It could also be a form of intimidation. like "WE ARE WATCHING YOU!!!"

[tbyg52]

12. I don't know if it's *legal*

but I sure don't think it's *right* for our tax dollars (their salaries) to be spent trolling message boards. The only case is which I think that is justifiable is pursuing child pornographers.

[Ms. Clio]

6. I am certain they are here, too n/t

[AnnieBW]

7. It's not Agent Mike

It's Sergeant Mike! :D

[yurbud]

9. oh, you know me from Civil Air Patrol?

[blogslut]

11. Not trolling

Spamming :)