Remember This Next Time You're Tempted To Respond To A Troll

In a Los Angeles Times article, Senate panel criticizes anti-terror data-sharing centers, the Times reports that "the scores of 'fusion centers' across the country threaten civil liberties while doing little to counter terrorism, a two-year study by a Senate subcommittee finds."

The article does a fair job of indicting the wasteful and unconstitutional actvities of the centers, but the real eye-opener is a user comment: 

chanteuse at 1:34 AM October 03, 2012
I spent 2 years at the Fusion Center in Austin, TX and spent most my time on social media. Using my native language skills my job was to "create sparks" (as my manager liked to say) by deliberately infuriating other users on facebook, comments sections (like this one), etc. in an effort to manipulate users and gain intelligence information. We used an automated system that created fake profiles on thousands of social media outlets and, based on scripts I wrote, generated comments, videos, etc. to provoke people. If someone took the bait, we'd use a system that obtains their real identity (from the Internet Service Provider) and then put them on a watch list. This watch list (when I left) had hundreds of thousands of names on it.

Remember that. I have little doubt that this is a true account. This is not the sort of activity the government of the U.S. should be doing.