This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create a Twitter-like Cuban communications network" run through "secret shell companies" in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service's Cuban users was the fact that "American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes"-specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. This sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for "propaganda," "deception," "mass messaging," and "pushing stories." One previously undisclosed top-secret document-prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual "SIGDEV" gathering of the "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.-explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda. Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability ... threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.