Slashdot Mirror
Is Russia Conducting A Social Media War On America? (time.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Time magazine ran a cover story about "a dangerous new route for antidemocratic forces" -- social media. "Using these technologies, it is possible to undermine democratic government, and it's becoming easier every day," says Rand Waltzman of the Rand Corp., who ran a major Pentagon research program to understand the propaganda threats posed by social media technology." The article cites current and former FBI and CIA officials who now believe Russia's phishing emails against politicians were "just the most visible battle in an ongoing information war against global democracy." They cite, for example, a March report by U.S. counterintelligence which found "Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department."
Each message contained links tailored to the interests of the recipient, but "When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow's hackers to take control of the victim's phone or computer -- and Twitter account...
"In 2016, Russia had used thousands of covert human agents and robot computer programs to spread disinformation referencing the stolen campaign emails of Hillary Clinton, amplifying their effect. Now counterintelligence officials wondered: What chaos could Moscow unleash with thousands of Twitter handles that spoke in real time with the authority of the armed forces of the United States?" The article also notes how algorithms now can identify hot-button issues and people susceptible to suggestion, so "Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior. That is what Moscow is doing, more than a dozen senior intelligence officials and others investigating Russia's influence operations tell Time."
The article describes a Russian soldier in the Ukraine pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife. Meanwhile, this week Time's cover shows America's White House halfway-covered with Kremlin-esque spires -- drawing a complaint from the humorists at Mad magazine, who say Time copied the cover of Mad's December issue.
"In 2016, Russia had used thousands of covert human agents and robot computer programs to spread disinformation referencing the stolen campaign emails of Hillary Clinton, amplifying their effect. Now counterintelligence officials wondered: What chaos could Moscow unleash with thousands of Twitter handles that spoke in real time with the authority of the armed forces of the United States?" The article also notes how algorithms now can identify hot-button issues and people susceptible to suggestion, so "Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior. That is what Moscow is doing, more than a dozen senior intelligence officials and others investigating Russia's influence operations tell Time."
The article describes a Russian soldier in the Ukraine pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife. Meanwhile, this week Time's cover shows America's White House halfway-covered with Kremlin-esque spires -- drawing a complaint from the humorists at Mad magazine, who say Time copied the cover of Mad's December issue.
My understanding is that most of the emails were in fact true. The DNC never claimed the emails were false, just complaining that their dirty laundry got out for everyone to see.
An advice for you, Ivan — do not post anonymously. Don't you have access to some stolen /.-accounts as described in TFA? Use that — you will be believed for a 5 seconds longer...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is mental insanity because there isn't any evidence at all of electoral fraud, vote rigging or coercion of voters. You know, the kind of hard evidence you'd need to substantiate an allegation of 'hacking' or 'influencing' the election.
All we get is this kind of brain damage about completely unsubstantiated Russian 'bots' and some bizarrely incredibly mind control project Putin has.
I think we've known for a while that various governments pay people to enter forums and post messages trying control the narrative.
I haven't heard of any other nation coming close to the scale of Russia:
"Russia's information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history,"
There is a paragraph about phishing that largely is quoted in the summary. The article doesn't make clear whether these are phishing attacks from the Russian government, or just from Russia.
Uh, yes, TFA does say it came straight from Russian soldiers:
In one case last year, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, a Russian soldier based in Ukraine successfully infiltrated a U.S. social media group by pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife and weighing in on political debates with specially tailored messages.
Overall, the article is an example of the breathless hyperbole that fills every news article these days.
Heh TFA says "the Russians would consider it a success if you questioned the truth of your news sources". Hrm.
There are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
No, of course not. All those freshly dug graves of Russian soldiers suddenly appearing and reporters being attacked investigating the sudden increase in dead Russian soldiers mean absolutely nothing.
Don't forget the Russian special forces soldiers captured in Ukraine, the Russian officer captured while transporting ammunition and supplies, the Russian soldiers who have dropped the pretense they're not fighting in Ukraine while others have quit the army because they don't want to fight in Ukraine like their comrades. Then there are the terrorists themselves who fully admit Russian soldiers have been fighting for them.
So yeah, no evidence whatsoever of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
There is not, and has never been, any evidence, large or small, connecting Donald Trump to Russia,
Shut the fuck up.
http://time.com/4433880/donald...
http://www.politico.com/magazi...
http://www.latimes.com/politic...
This is perfectly sane because there's a massive amount of evidence of Russia running propaganda farms pushing specific messages over the internet. Our intelligence community has come right out and said they're doing this. None of this is unsubstantiated. Spend 20 minutes on google and you can prove that to yourself. There are tons of meticulously sourced articles about it.
Also, you're straw manning. We're not discussing vote rigging or coercion, we're discussing propaganda campaigns.
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Actually, it's obvious that Russia (or some country, but let's assume Russia) is conducting such a campaign. Just look at the post of Fox News, for example. You'll run into posts that sound like they were supposed to be written by an American, but have phrases that no American would ever write. It's pretty clear sometimes that you are dealing with someone who didn't get the top grade in the Russian info-war school.
Thank you for that source.
You are welcome. Meanwhile, have you noticed that it's just the latest article in a series of (currently) six? There are links to other articles at the bottom of the page, some of which are more in line with the series name ("Russia blog").
While it's an interesting piece about the FBI, the major strength of Mark Ames as a journalist comes from the fact that he ran a newspaper in Russia in 1990s. In 2000s they got some issue with the Russian Government and preferred to shut down (or as Mark Ames puts it, his newspaper was closed). Nevertheless, he knows a great deal about 1990s Russia, and that's a great context most U.S. journalists just don't get. That's why Ames is unique, more or less.
That being the sole consideration, his writing would be just another opinion. But since he knows a vast amount of facts about Russia's most recent history, he is able to make a damn good point.
It's worth noting that whatever Time might have intended, the error here isn't just on the part of the Slashdot summary. Just about every media outlet that mentions the Time cover calls it the Kremlin.
This reflects a truth about the depth of the media's knowledge and understanding of Russia.
Switzerland has a GDP of around $650B. There are only 6 _states_ in the US that have more and only 3 states have more than double that. Now, I did not fund a list of US GDP by country, but unless, for example, California manages to have about 25% of its total GDP in only one county, your numbers are complete bullshit.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Switzerland has a GDP of around $650B. There are only 6 _states_ in the US that have more and only 3 states have more than double that. Now, I did not fund a list of US GDP by country, but unless, for example, California manages to have about 25% of its total GDP in only one county, your numbers are complete bullshit.
The funny part is if you wanted to take the county or state comparison all the way, then a good chunk of the US would be considered third world.
Actually that's not funny at all, it's really quite sad...
GDP per capita of Mississippi (50th in US): ~35k
France: ~38k
Italy: ~30k
Guess it depends on where you draw the line.
Link to the NSA demonstrating that? I seem to recall the report came from the CIA, and their "evidence" amounted to "this is in line with the sort of things Russians want to do," plus some Cyrillic characters left over in files and some timestamps that corresponded to Russian working hours. Of course, one of the leaked CIA hacking tools, UMBRAGE, does exactly this. You press a button for "make it look like the Russians did it" and it makes it look like the Russians did it, "make it look like the Chinese did it" and it makes it look like the Chinese did it. These tools were available on the black market for over a year before the DNC hack, so literally anyone could have done this.
The CIA and the media want you to believe the Russians did it, but it is by no means proven.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.