Securing Democracy Dispatch

News and Commentary

Social media companies respond to U.S. Congress: Facebook, Twitter, and Google are again in the spotlight following submission of responses to questions from the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees on Russia’s use of these platforms during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook’s responses show previously unreported Russian efforts: “Russian operatives used Facebook to publicize 129 phony event announcements during the 2016 presidential campaign,” with “about 62,500 users mark(ing) that they would attend the event, and an additional 25,800 express(ing) an interest in attending.” In one instance, Russian trolls created opposing events on the same day: One was promoted to "Stop Islamization of Texas,” while the other was created to "Save Islamic Knowledge." CNN this weekend posted video of these events, which took place at the same location, at the same time on May 21, 2016 — a clear illustration of Russia’s goal of sowing discord and pitting Americans against one another. Clint Watts, non-resident fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, explains in Politico “Not only did they influence how people viewed Russian policy, they got people to take physical action. That’s unprecedented.” Twitter divulged that Russian-linked bots retweeted Trump “almost half a million times during the final months of the 2016 election.” According to CNN, “The accounts retweeted then-candidate Donald Trump 10 times more than they retweeted his rival Hillary Clinton.” Twitter’s response also showed that “50,000 accounts retweeted Wikileaks almost 200,000 times.” In response to a question about whether foreign actors sought to influence U.S. elections in 2017, Google and Twitter said that they “aren’t aware” of any suspicious state-sponsored activity, while Facebook declined to respond directly. Experts are questioning whether this response means the companies are actively monitoring their platforms or passively looking for meddling retroactively. Further complicating the discussion, The New York Times reported on a U.S. company named Devumi that “sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses, and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online” — exposing a phenomena that foreign intelligence services could also use to acquire fake accounts. (Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg, The New York Times)

Facebook’s news feed changes: BuzzFeed posted the news survey that Facebook will ask users to complete in order to gauge the trustworthiness of publications — it has two questions: 1) Do you recognize the following websites and 2) How much do you trust each of these domains. Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of news feed, explained the survey’s simplicity, stating "meaningful patterns can emerge from broad surveys." According to Casey Newton in the Verge, “no one knows how important the survey rankings will be to the distribution of news on Facebook.” As Casey Michel writes in Think Progress, “In theory, the move should help gut outlets known for outright fabrication;” however, a NewsWhip study found that since Facebook’s changes, one of the “top four stories with the most engagement” is actually from “YourNewsWire, a notorious fake news factory.” The story, which claimed that the CDC blamed the influenza vaccine for the “deadly flu outbreak,” received “more overall engagements than any story from outlets like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, CNN, NPR, or even Fox News.” Michel cautions that Facebook’s changes are no “remedy,” stating “the swirl fake news … is far from over.” (BuzzFeed, BBC, The Verge, Think Progress)

Democracy and technology — Facebook is thinking about the nexus: Facebook is engaged in some soul-searching as it unveiled a new series of blog posts addressing the nexus between social media and democracy. Samidh Chakrabarti, product manager for civic engagement, states that he is “not blind to the damage that the Internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy,” since social media “amplifies human intent — both good and bad.” Citing Russia’s use of Facebook to interfere in the 2016 election, he says the company is committed to “transparency” in order to tackle foreign interference and also to hold our elected officials accountable. Responding to the question “Is Social Media Good or Bad For Democracy?” are Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School; former Estonian president and Alliance for Securing Democracy Advisory Council member Toomas Hendrik Ilves; and Ariadne Vromen, professor of political sociology at the University of Sydney. Sunstein responds to the question by stating, “On balance, they are not merely good; they are terrific;” reminding us that “social media can prod citizens to seek solutions.” Ilves finds that “The power of social media today mirrors the power of companies during the Industrial Revolution — railroads, energy, and water companies that we know today as ‘utilities’ deemed so vital that they need to be regulated. This may be the direction liberal democratic governments take with social media companies — deeming them too big, too powerful, potentially too threatening for politicians to tolerate;” stating, while ”the effect on electoral democracy has been profound,” “where there is no electoral democracy, there is no debate.” And Vromen, while recognizing the challenges posed by disinformation, believes social media “has the capacity to expand and diversify political equality around the world [which] is a net good.” (Facebook)

Czech and Bosnian elections: Incumbent Czech president Miloš Zeman won a second five-year term this weekend while reports continued to grow of disinformation targeting his opponent Jiri Drahos. According to RFE/RL, Drahos was portrayed as “a pedophile, a thief, and a communist collaborator,” as well as a supporter of immigration, which played on the Czech public’s fears of “a possible influx of Muslim extremists.” The Atlantic Council finds that “at least 8 million Czech koruna has been provided by the secretive organization Friends of Miloš Zeman,” in a “scheme organized by Zeman’s chief advisor, who has direct Kremlin links.” According to the Atlantic Council, Zeman is the “Kremlin’s most important ally: He regularly repeats Kremlin narratives about the inefficiency and absurdity of anti-Russian sanctions, and surrounds himself with people who have strong personal and business ties with Russia.” Mark Galeotti, speaking of the domestic conditions that support the rise of populist, anti-liberal candidates, cautions “all those who decry the elections of the Zemans of this world should look to closing this political and cultural chasm. Moscow exploits this gap — but it is we who are failing to close it.” An initiative set up by European Values Think-Tank and the Prague Security Studies Institute to debunk the disinformation being promoted about Drahos garnered over 100,000 visitors to its Facebook page in its first twenty-four hours — perhaps a sign that citizens are beginning to question the source of information they receive. Russia is also turning its sights on Bosnia ahead of elections there in October — Jane’s 360 reports that there has been an “increase in activity on Twitter by accounts promoting a narrative that is distinctly pro-Russian and favorable to the two main parties that advocate separatism and increased decentralization in Bosnia,” pointing to Russia’s use of bots and trolls to influence the conversation on social media in favor of pro-Russian parties. (RFE/RL, Atlantic Council, Raamop Rusland, Jane’s 360)

Spain and the U.K. confront disinformation: A new report by Spain’s Defense Ministry’s Center for Strategic and Defense Studies warns that “Russian hacking operations to support Catalonian independence continue and could intensify.” Josep Basques, University of Barcelona political scientist who wrote the report, said “Russia is using Spain's conflict to weaken NATO,” and warned that “similar efforts could be repeated in other European countries with pro-independence movements.” In order to combat disinformation, Tech Crunch reported that the U.K. is establishing a “dedicated national security unit to combat state-led disinformation campaigns,” to address what Prime Minister May’s spokesperson described as an “interconnected complex challenge” of “fake news and competing narratives.” The unit, which will be called the National Security Communications Unit, will be based in the Cabinet Office. (VOA, Tech Crunch, Reuters)

A helping hand from Dutch intelligence and new cyber threats in the United States and the U.K.: A Dutch publication de Volkskrant reported that “Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with crucial information about Russian interference with the American election” that they gleaned from infiltrating Russian hacking group Cozy Bear, which carried out the attacks on the DNC in 2016. Discussing whether the Kremlin is behind the Russian hacking, Rob Bertholee, the head of the AIVD, said there is “no question.” A Reuters investigation found that technology widely used by the U.S. government, including SAP, Symantec, and McAfee, which protect sensitive national security agencies allowed “Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software.” Reuters spoke with private sector cyber experts, former U.S. security officials, and some U.S. tech companies who believe “that allowing Russia to review the source code may expose unknown vulnerabilities that could be used to undermine U.S. network defenses.” The head of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, warned of a major cyber-attack against the U.K., stating “I think it is a matter of when, not if and we will be fortunate to come to the end of the decade without having to trigger a category one attack.” According to The Guardian, a category one attack could include an attack against critical infrastructure, election interference, or a provocative move by a hostile state; “Intrusions have been blamed on Russia, China, and Iran,” with some “espionage-based, scouting out vulnerabilities in infrastructure for potential future disruption.” (de Volkskrant, Reuters, The Guardian)

The information ecosystem: DFR Lab presented a case study of the recent anti-Morgan Freeman campaign on social media after Freeman appeared in a video “warning that Russia launched an information war against the United States” in order to show how information is laundered throughout the media ecosystem, finding that “The Russian government’s propaganda and influence operations use a full spectrum model which spans social and traditional media. Some of the channels it uses are overt and official; others are covert and claim to be independent. They all work together to create the appearance of multiple voices and points of view, masking a coordinated approach.” (DFR Lab)

Department of Commerce and DHS issue joint report on defending against botnets: The report, which was released for public comment, is entitled “Draft Report on Enhancing Resilience Against Botnets,” issued in response to Executive Order 13800, Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure. The report cites botnet threats as “used for a variety of malicious activities, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that overwhelm networked resources, ransomware attacks that hold systems and data hostage, and computational propaganda campaigns to manipulate and intimidate communities through social media.” While the use of social media is listed as a botnet threat, their one recommendation for defending against and deterring such activity in the future is to invest “in innovative technologies to address computational propaganda.” A new paper by New America, while recognizing the importance of investments in research, also recommends “changes to election law, data privacy protections, and competition policy,” due to the “nature of this crisis” which “requires an ambitious approach to reform from Silicon Valley C-Suites to Capitol Hill to the handsets of everyday Internet users.” (Information Technology Laboratory, New America)

Dashboards Hamilton 68 and Artikel 38

Hamilton 68 dashboard: Hamilton 68 was thrust into the media spotlight this week after data from the dashboard was included in a Congressional letter sent to the social media giants over the pro-Russian influence network’s attempts to amplify the #releasethememo hashtag. As noted in the last dispatch, the network monitored on Hamilton 68 was extremely active in promoting the hashtag — a trend that continued throughout last week. It should be reiterated that the presence of a hashtag on the Hamilton 68 dashboard does not necessarily suggest that the success of a hashtag is the result of Russian influence operations, nor does it mean that hashtag originated with the Russian-linked influence operation network we monitor. Interestingly, Wikileaks’ offer to pay for a copy of the memo was also among the top URLs on the dashboard, continuing a trend of pro-Russian accounts promoting Wikileaks content and defending its creator, Julian Assange.

Artikel 38 dashboard: While a great deal of activity on the dashboard last week focused on the ongoing coalition talks in Germany, an old favorite Kremlin talking point was also resurrected, as conspiracy theories over the downing of MH17 over Eastern Ukraine bubbled to the surface yet again. After a damning report from Bellingcat on Russia’s MH17 deceptions, the Russian-influence network in Germany participated heavily in both the generic #mh17 hashtag as well as the more pointed #ukrainekillermh17. The Kremlin’s efforts to discredit the various multinational investigations into the tragedy continues to be a major theme in both the United States and Germany, and, as a result, a not-infrequent topic bandied about pro-Russian networks online. (Bellingcat)

Quotes of the Week

“There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.”

– Pope Francis, Twitter, January 24, 2018

“And so I’m vastly oversimplifying, but I think there’s a basic decision that they cannot compete against a unified West. I think that is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s judgment. And so everything he can do to dismantle the post-World War II liberal world order, including NATO and the EU, I think, is viewed as in their immediate self-interest.”

– Former Vice President Joe Biden, Council on Foreign Relations, January 23, 2018 

Worst of the Week

In a week of bad news for those seeking to dismiss Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, several sites focused their efforts on discrediting the various think tank initiatives — including our own — that work to expose Russian propaganda and active measures. Starting with a tweet from Julian Assange that directly attacked Hamilton 68 as a propaganda tool of the deep state, the Russian network online amplified several stories that took shots at various foreign policy initiatives. A ZeroHedge article that was among the most popular URLs on Hamilton 68 last week attempted to sully the reputations of almost every Russian initiative, from PropOrNot to the Atlantic Council’s DFR lab. This effort is consistent with the Russian media strategy of discrediting negative voices through personal smear campaigns, proving yet again, if you don’t like the message it’s always easier to go after the messenger. (ZeroHedge)