US Charges Russian Social Media Trolls Over Election Tampering (cnet.com)

The US Justice Department has filed charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. From a report: In an indictment [PDF] released on Friday, the Justice Department called out the Internet Research Agency, a notorious group behind the Russian propaganda effort across social media. Employees for the agency created troll accounts and used bots to prop up arguments and sow political chaos during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facebook, Twitter and Google have struggled to deal with fake news, trolling campaigns and bots on their platforms, facing the scorn of Capitol Hill over their mishandlings. The indictment lists 13 Russian nationals tied to the effort.

Comments

..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just the opening volley.

Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[gnick]

Democrats commissioned the dossier.

A conservative website (The Washington Free Beacon) initially hired Fusion GPS to do the research, largely backed by Rubio supporters. Then Hillary & the DNC took over. Then Fusion GPS hired Steele. So, yes Republicans kicked off the Fusion GPS investigation. No, the GOP did not fund the Steele dossier.

Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Name a piece of information, known by Christopher Steele to be false, spread as if it were true.

But first off, let's back up. Who is Christopher Steele? From Wikipedia:

From 1990 to 1992, Steele worked under diplomatic cover as an MI6 agent in Moscow, serving at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow.[7][9] Steele was an “internal traveller”, visiting newly-accessible cities such as Samara and Kazan.[4]

Steele's identity as an MI6 officer was one of 115 names Her Majesty's Government attempted to suppress through a DSMA-Notice in 1999.[10][11] He returned to London in 1993, working again at the FCO until his posting to Paris in 1998, where he served under diplomatic cover until 2002.[9][12][13][14] In 2003, Steele was sent to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan as part of an MI6 team, briefing Special Forces on "kill or capture" missions for Taliban targets, and also spent time teaching new MI6 recruits.[9] By 2006, Steele was heading the Russia Desk at MI6.[4][7][15]

Steele's expertise on Russia remained valued, and he served as a senior officer under John Scarlett, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2004 to 2009.[15] Steele was selected as case officer for Alexander Litvinenko and participated in the investigation of the Litvinenko poisoning in 2006.[9] It was Steele who quickly realised that Litvinenko's death "was a Russian state 'hit'".[15]

Not exactly some fly-by-night amateur. And rather amusing that you'd accuse someone whose job had been spying on Russia and later investigated the Litvinenko poisoning, determining it to be a Russian hit, of "spreading Russian propaganda"

Steele - again, the former head of MI6's Russia desk - had been an FBI source for years prior, where he had proved useful in a number of investigations unrelated investigations.

During the last election, Steele was hired - first by Republicans, then Democrats - to research Trump. And that he did. It's not even clear that he knew who was the source of his funding; he worked for Fusion GPS. The so-called "Steele Dossier" is not a curated/filtered "report", but rather a series of independent memos from varying sources - and was never presented as anything else. He was paid to collect information, not to analyze and curate it. Some of the information from the dosier that wasn't public at the time has since been independently confirmed. The vast majority has been neither confirmed or denied.

Concerning the Carter Page "memo" from Trump transition team member Devin Nunes (yes, he was part of Trump's own transition team... "Hey, let's investigate ourselves!") suggests that A) the Steele dossier was the foundation of getting a warrant on Page, B) it did not inform them that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity, and C) the fact that it had been noted that Steele made a statement about being worried about Trump becoming president disqualifies him as a biased source.

Except:

A) Page had been on the radar long beforehand, having previously been caught up in a Russian spy scheme and having not only made numerous statements condemning the US and supporting Russia (on Russian TV), but even claimed to be a Kremlin representative. (Seriously, if the FBI hadn't been spying on this guy they should all have been fired for incompetence)

B) The warrant application did state that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity; Nunes's complaint has now amusingly morphed into "the font size was too small".

C) Intelligence courts generally presume by default that sources have some sort of motive, because as a general rule, people who aren't motivated don't act as sources. Furth

Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[Straif]

The history of the dossier is now quite well documented and it had nothing to do with the GOP or Republican leaning groups.

Fusion was hired by The Washington Free Beacon to do some background research on Trump. This did not involve Russia but was more just general opposition research during the primaries. In 2016 they terminated the contract and that was the end of their involvement.

After that contract was over Fusion was then hired by the DNC and Hillary campaign (through their lawyers) to research Trump with specific interest in Russia. Fusion then hired Steele as part of the DNC contract.

This all came out during congressional testimony and as far as I know is not in dispute by any of the named parties.

Re:..and Mueller is just getting warmed up, folks

[tbannist]

Steele wasn't some random person who just sent Hillary an email, he was essentially her employee. Hillary's campaign specifically contracted the dossiers creation and then pushed it to the FBI to try and trigger an investigation without the slightest attempt at verification.

Steele worked for Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton's campaign contracted them to do opposition research on Trump. In no way was Steele "essentially her employee". Also, it was Fusion GPS, not Hillary nor Steele who made the decision to provide the dossier to the FBI.

You either very ignorant or deliberately lying.

How is she not responsible for it?

Clinton's campaign received the dossier and then did nothing with it. In what way are they responsible for things they didn't create and didn't publish?

There's also the very strong likelihood (due to the specific nature and wording of some of the details) that large parts or even the entire document was in fact created by people even closer to Hillary than just paid contractors (Blumenthal being the top suspect) and Steele was only used as a go between to give it a semi-respectable face.

Yeah, sure. Why don't you discredit yourself further with even more conspiracy theories?

No Americans involved who knew

[bobbied]

I heard the presser for this.. "No Americans involved who knew what was going on or that Russians where involved" is the key thing I took away from it.

Just pointing this important fact out.

Also, they are alleging that these Russians organized rallies for both sides. In one case, they organized two opposing rallies (one pro Trump, one pro Clinton) on the SAME day in the SAME city... Foreign nationals are not supposed to do that kind of thing, at least within our borders where our laws apply.

Re:What tampering? This is about memes

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, you should read the pdf. It's signed by Mueller.

Re:The Moscovian Candidate

[PopeRatzo]

Try again.. I just heard the presser for these charges. They where actively supporting BOTH sides

No, go read the actual indictment. It's very clear that the charges indicate help for Donald Trump only.

Read this section of the indictment:

"“included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J Trump ... and disparaging Hillary Clinton,”

It goes on to say that during the primaries, the indicted Russians sought to give support to Trump and disparage his GOP opponents (Cruz, et al). Here is a direct link to the indictment:

https://www.justice.gov/file/1...

Better article at WaPo

[Gravis Zero]

The Washington Post has a better article on this.

One bit of info missing from CNET is that these indictments are the direct result of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation.

Re:PopeRatzo is a moron

[PopeRatzo]

So now, no Americans involved

News is still breaking today. This came out like ten minutes ago:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

This is an American who just plead guilty to helping the Russians with the identity fraud part of the conspiracy. He is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.

When you say "no American involved", you should have said, "yet". Now we learn of the Americans involved.

You are the worst liar that has ever existed.

Don't try to flatter me.

Re:What tampering? This is about memes

[Smidge204]

And if they coordinated with Trump, what does Trump get out of it?

There's good reason to believe someone - likely multiple people - have a lot of leverage on Trump. There's a decent chance he's being straight-up blackmailed.

There's also a decent chance he's caught up in various illegal activities with the Russian mafia. Specifically there have been allegations that his properties were/are used to launder money.
=Smidge=

Re:What tampering? This is about memes

[mi]

- Paying for political advertisements
- Paying others to troll social media for you

Could you cite the actual statutes, please? The summary I read cites nothing of the kind — the individuals are indicted for fraud and identity theft. These are very real and nasty crimes, whether or not they are related to elections and regardless of whether perpetrators are Americans or foreigners.

- Making campaign contributions

Unless the donation is to a "charity", owned and run by a candidate, right?

I think we need to at least try

[rsilvergun]

or if nothing else to raise our voices and try to drown the shills out. Slashdot is a site full of older engineers and tech people (it's a site from the 90s after all). It's bound to be a prime target since older, well-to-do STEM professionals are going to prone to the right wing (since the right wing's co-opted conservatism and, well, like my history teacher used to say when you've got something to lose you get real conservative real fast). Our little community needs more voices of sanity to keep us away from the excesses of conservatism.