Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II

Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies.
The first propaganda movie of World War II was British.
At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity.
Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index.

U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools.

In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

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Content Choice and Selective Reporting

Media as today's main information sources unarguably have the power to influence political agenda-setting and public opinion. They decide which topics and issues are covered and how they are reported. Still, in many cases those decisions are not primarily determined by journalistic criteria, but affected by external factors. The importance of shareholders forces media to generate more profit every quarter, which can chiefly be raised by enlarging audiences and hence attracting more advertising money. Therefore the focus of media's programming in many cases shifts towards audience alluring content like entertainment, talk-shows, music and sports.

Further pressure regarding the selection of content occurs from advertisers and marketers, who often implicitly or explicitly suggest to refrain from programming which could show them or their products and services (e.g. tobacco) in an unfavorable light. Interlocking directorships and outright ownerships can moreover be responsible for a selective coverage. Financial connections with defense, banking, insurance, gas, oil, and nuclear power, repeatedly lead (commercial) media to the withholding of information, which could offend their corporate partners. In totalitarian regimes also pressure from political elites may be a reason for the suppression or alteration of certain facts.

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Key Recovery Systems

As stated before the sense of cryptography is a properly designed cryptosystem making it essentially impossible to recover encrypted data without any knowledge of the used key. The issue of lost keys and the being-locked-out from one's own data as a consequence favors key recovery systems. On the other hand the counter argument is confidentiality: as soon as a possibility to recover a key is provided, the chances for abuses grow.
Finally it is the state that does not want to provide too much secrecy. On the contrary. During the last 20 years endless discussions about the state's necessity and right to restrict private cryptography have taken place, as the governments rarely care for the benefit of private users if they believe in catching essential informations about any kind of enemy, hence looking for unrestricted access to all keys.

The list of "key recovery," "key escrow," and "trusted third-party" as encryption requirements, suggested by governmental agencies, covers all the latest developments and inventions in digital technology.
At the same time the NSA, one of the world's most advanced and most secret enterprises for cryptography, worked hard in getting laws through to forbid the private use of strong encryption in one way or the other. Still, it is also organizations like this one that have to admit that key recovery systems are not without any weaknesses, as the U.S. Escrowed Encryption Standard, the basis for the famous and controversially discussed Clipper Chip, showed. The reason for those weaknesses is the high complexity of those systems.

Another aspect is that key recovery systems are more expensive and certainly much less secure than other systems. So, why should anyone use them?

In that context, one has to understand the legal framework for the use of cryptography, a strict framework in fact, being in high contradiction to the globalised flow of communication.

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The Kosovo-Crisis

During the Kosovo Crisis and during the war that followed, and probably also after it, all sides of the conflict were manipulating their people and others as well, whenever they could. Some of the propaganda shown on TV was as primitive as in World War II, others were subtler. This propaganda started by telling the history of the geographic point of discussion from the own point of view, it went on with the interpretation of the motives of the enemy and finally came to censorship, manipulation of the number of victims ( for more information see: http://www.oneworld.org/index_oc/kosovo/kadare.html , spreading of atrocity stories and so on.
Many journalists and scientists are still working to detect more propaganda and disinformation stories.

An interesting detail about this war was that more people than ever before took their information about the war out of the internet. In part this had to do with the biased TV-reports on all sides. All parties put their ideas and perspectives in the net, so one could get an overview of the different thoughts and types of disinformation.
One of the big lies of NATO was the numbers of destroyed military facilities in Serbia. After the war the numbers had to be corrected down to a ridiculous number of about 13 destroyed tanks. At the same time the numbers of civilian victims turned out to be much higher than NATO had admitted in the first line. The method how European and American people had been persuaded to support the NATO-bombings was the promise to bomb only targets of the military or military-related facilities. Nearly every day NATO had to stretch this interpretation, as many civilian houses got destroyed. A cynical word was created for this kind of excuse: collateral damage.

The Serbs were not better than Western governments and media, which worked together closely. Serb TV showed the bombed targets and compared persons like Bill Clinton to Adolf Hitler and called the NATO fascist. On the other hand pictures from the situation in Kosov@ were left out in their reports.

More:
http://www.voa.gov/editorials/08261.htm (91)
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/vol3/prog3n22.html (92)
http://www.serbia-info.com/news (93)
http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/Belgrade041399.html (94)
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1999/08/SAID/12320.html (95)

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Sperry

Formerly (1955 - 1979) Sperry Rand Corporation, American corporation that merged with the Burroughs Corporation in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation, a large computer manufacturer.

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The story of Frank-N-furter, Brad and Janet ... Don't dream it, be it!

http://www.rockyhorrorpictureshow.com/

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User tracking

User tracking is a generic term that covers all the techniques of monitoring the movements of a user on a web site. User tracking has become an essential component in online commerce, where no personal contact to customers is established, leaving companies with the predicament of not knowing who they are talking to. Some companies, such as Red Eye, Cyber Dialogue, and SAS offer complete technology packages for user tracking and data analysis to online businesses. Technologies include software solutions such as e-mine, e-discovery, or WebHound

Whenever user tracking is performed without the explicit agreement of the user, or without laying open which data are collected and what is done with them, considerable privacy concerns have been raised.

http://www.redeye.co.uk/
http://www.cyberdialogue.com/
http://www.sas.com/
http://www.spss.com/emine/
http://www.sas.com/solutions/e-discovery/inde...
http://www.sas.com/products/webhound/index.ht...
http://www.linuxcare.com.au/mbp/meantime/
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Braille

Universally accepted system of writing used by and for blind persons and consisting of a code of 63 characters, each made up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-position matrix or cell. These Braille characters are embossed in lines on paper and read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript. Louis Braille, who was blinded at the age of three, invented the system in 1824 while a student at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children), Paris.

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