Regular people organizing themselves through social media are credited with propelling the wave of anti-government protests across North Africa and the Mideast in recent weeks.

But, given the anonymity of the Internet and the growing sophistication of tools designed to exploit it, what if the activists behind the upheaval aren't who they say they are? Or, more alarmingly, what if they aren't people at all?

That's the chilling prospect raised in recent weeks, in the wake of revelations the U.S. Air Force has purchased software to generate fake online identities, complete with a credible backstory, email addresses, and even IP addresses that can situate the persona geographically or make them appear to have been online for some time.

The news came to light after tens of thousands of documents and e-mails were obtained and published by the loose association of hackers that bills itself as "Anonymous."

Incensed by the treatment of the U.S. Army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, "Anonymous" hackers made headlines with their denial of service attacks against credit card companies seen to be persecuting the whistleblowing website and its embattled founder Julian Assange.

More recently, spurred by reports the private American cyber-security firm HBGary was working with the FBI to uncover the hackers' identities, they mounted an attack against the company's websites.

In addition to electronically defacing HBGary websites, they downloaded tens of thousands of e-mails and then published them online where the details of the so-called "persona management software" were included alongside reams of classified and commercially sensitive information including company financials and research, product source code, and personal correspondence.

That's where a writer for the U.S.-based, left-leaning political blog Daily Kos came across emails discussing use of the software designed to create and manage fake personas, or online identities, with the aim of infiltrating, gathering information from and shaping the discussion on social media sites.

Beyond pointing to the technical possibilities, however, the documents included a U.S. Air Force request for tender that outlines exactly what the military hoped such software might achieve.

"Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly (sic) consistent," the document states, explaining that the program should also be able to make those personas falsely appear to be located in "nearly any part" of the world.

"Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries."

According to the contracting officer who handled the file at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, the software is simply a commercial product purchased "for use by the government."

When asked whether the Air Force is in fact using it, Contracting Officer Russell Beasley told CTV.ca that, "This contract supports classified social media activities outside the United States intended to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda."

Old hat, new tool

Considering the possibility Canada's closest ally is eyeing the social media landscape as a public relations battlefield, a former officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said he's not surprised.

"It was to be expected," former CSIS agent Michel Juneau-Katsuya told CTV.ca in an interview from his home in Ottawa. "That a state takes control of the media, or that public opinion is monitored in this way is definitely plausible. It's just a new means."

Now, we look back at historical examples of propaganda such as the wartime broadcasts of Tokyo Rose -- with her pro-Japan reports packaged to appeal to Allied forces fighting in the Pacific -- with a certain measure of fond nostalgia.

But the fact is, every nation mindful of its political interests today remains actively engaged in shaping how it is perceived by the world.

And as the means of communication change, so must the methods of controlling it.

China, for example, where Juneau-Katsuya says controlling all forms of media "is in their blood," was revealed in published reports dating back to 2005, to be employing close to 300,000 people who monitored and shaped online discussion of the state and its policies on an ongoing basis.

Even the Taliban, which outlawed access to the Internet during its rule in Afghanistan, has since become skilled at communicating on and disseminating its message through blogs, websites and social media.

According to Juneau-Katsuya, "Both sides understand the power of manipulating messages."

In that light, he said, word the U.S. or any other democratic nation is pursuing the means to shape the flow of ideas in the emerging social media is neither surprising nor shocking.

The social media twist

As executive producer of the boutique marketing firm Frank, Richard Carmichael is well aware of the benefits to any organization, including governments, who seek to take control of their image.

"We all know they've been doing it for centuries," Carmichael said, adding that the fact it has been going on so long doesn't take the sting out of the prospect governments may now be wading into the sea of social media.

"It's just that the platform they're using now is the one that was freeing us, that was giving us back our voice and our platform to be heard above the noise," he lamented in a telephone interview from his office in Toronto.

Of course, politicians are people too, and as such have gravitated towards social media alongside the general population.

Minister of Industry Tony Clement springs immediately to mind as a leader among Canadian politicians using social media, as does Prime Minister Stephen Harper's communications director Dimitri Soudas.

"Mr. Soudas has a lot of friends of on Facebook," Juneau-Katsuya remarked.

"The reason why he's got so many friends is that he wants to communicate messages," the former spy said.

"Some people call it propaganda, some people call it marketing, some people call it sales, give it the twist you want, but the mechanism is basically the same at the end of the day."

The difference lies in the potential effectiveness of a single, personally targeted status update sent to your inbox, versus the scattershot chances through more traditional media.

From private to public

Corporations have long understood the distinction and have sought to seize on the value and benefits of social media by controlling it for their own purposes.

The tobacco industry is held up as a leader in the manipulation of public opinion to support attitudes that flies in the face of medical evidence, for instance.

"We call it reputation management, but it's really kind of the same thing," Mindshark Marketing CEO Zamir Javer told CTV.ca. "It's helping to control what's being propagated on the Internet."

As an example, Javer said his company has long handled corporate clients eager to counteract the effects of disgruntled customers who post their negative opinions online.

Given that an outspoken individual can wield the same influence online as an entire corporation when it comes to someone researching a potential purchase on the Internet, Javer says businesses are highly motivated to ensure their message is out there too.

"Corporations and companies have realized that there's something that they need to try and take control of here to see if they can manipulate or somehow contribute to this swaying of decisions," Javer told CTV.ca in a telephone interview from his company's headquarters in Scarborough, Ont.

It works, Javer says, because the masses are hard-pressed to avoid the herd mentality.

But even though we're aware of society's collective fallibility, we've become so accustomed to the technique in its varying degrees that many people choose to "friend" corporations fully aware they will be subjected to marketing messages.

The distinction, Carmichael said, is that we sign on understanding the consequences.

We may go out and 'friend' Starbucks, he continued, "but at least we know what we're getting ourselves into. When you elect a government or stand behind a candidate you believe that what you're getting is what you see."

If we later discover that a politician's tweets are actually the product of a deliberate deception, a marketing team, or some sort of automated bot, it amounts to a betrayal of trust.

Remote-controlled revolution

And what if the stakes are even higher than promoting a purchase or soliciting a vote? Could a shadowy band of foreign intelligence operatives somehow propel an entire country to revolution?

Juneau-Katsuya said we now know Mubarak supporters were active online during the recent uprising in Egypt, attempting to split the rebellion. But, when asked if a broader, covert manipulation may have been in play in the recent uprisings that spread across North Africa and the Mideast, Juneau-Katsuya said without any solid indications that was the case, "anything is possible."

That doesn't necessarily mean a keyboard jockey sitting in a darkened office can spark a revolution with a few 140-character messages sent from half-a-world away, though.

"To be able to telecontrol a demonstration from Washington or Virginia or Beijing you cannot simply do it through Twitter," he told CTV.ca.

"If someone is seeking to control at a distance or provoke at distance a revolution, you definitely still need people on the ground the old fashioned way."

That means 'agents agitateurs' on the scene, ready to stimulate or prime whatever crowd accepts the invitation to join a Facebook revolution.

In light of what we now know about covert CIA operations throughout Central America and elsewhere, however, is the possibility really that far fetched?

Innocence lost

No matter what's actually going on behind the scenes, just considering the possibilities is enough to darken Carmichael's mood.

"If these people are able to go and use surreptitious tools that can amplify what real, genuine people are doing and drown it out, it will become a battle of who can spend the most money to drown everybody else out. Then it just becomes like any other media form," he lamented.

"The social media was supposed to be the medium that gave the power back to the little guy to be able to speak freely, communicate and have a platform to be heard. Now somebody's found a way to drown out those little voices."

But Juneau-Katsuya's not convinced the end of social media is nigh.

Even if half of all social media personas were in fact organs of foreign government, that would still leave half as real living, breathing, thinking people.

For that group, and whatever percentage of social media chatter they represent, he believes there's a positive consequence to the rise in unfiltered global communication.

"It allowed the people to communicate, and gave power to the real people to go around what the government was not necessarily capable of stopping," he said.

Taken in the context of the post-9/11 paradigm, Juneau-Katsuya says citizens are not only more interested than ever in their own collective security, they don't trust governments to handle it in their best interests.

Until the social media companies come up with their own identity verification policies, when it comes to assessing whether you're being duped by a fake persona, Carmichael suggests applying a simple "sniff test" based simply on gut instincts.

"You can sniff out ambiguous, generic enough information in profiles to realize if someone was a real person," he said. "I don't know how many people are going to be detectives like that, but I've done it before."

Javer's suggestions follow the same tack.

"The reality is a lot of the personas that are out there, the ones that are not real, you'll find that if you dig deeper and try to engage with them in conversation, it'll really lead to nothing," he said. "If you're finding that you're seeing a lot of fluff out there, it's sometimes just a matter of digging a little bit deeper to see if there's true conversations and engagement happening."

Whether you actually investigate each of your followers' authenticity or not, however, Carmichael says it boils down to having a "critical eye" and bearing in mind what's now technically possible.

"I think it's a good lesson for anyone to always, always think before you react to anything that you receive, or see, or read and use good judgment."