USAF: We want PMS!
The U.S. Air Force is seeking “persona management software” to:
[...] enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.
In addition, the USAF wants to be able to set up virtual desktops with easily-manipulated IPs, revert to a “clean” image for each session, etc.
Now, who knows which “social media platforms” are meant, but it seems to me that, say, Facebook, might have a beef with this, since their Terms say that lying and having multiple accounts are very naughty:
Now, I’m no babe in the woods. It does not surprise me a whit that the USG would want to do this sort of thing. The questions I would like to see Facebook, Twitter, and others answer are: “Have you specifically told the USG that the actions they are seeking to perform are not permissible?” and “What would you do if you detected what you believed to be ‘PMS accounts’”?