RUSSIA FILES - Spammer Ties 4/10/2017 (Reminder)

Spammer's Arrest Eyed For Donald Trump-Russia Ties

Rachel Maddow reports on the latest developments in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility of coordination with the Donald Trump campaign, including the arrest of a Russian hacker in Spain.

RUSSIAN ATTACK - Right-Wing Internet Bots

"Pro-Russian Bots Take Up the Right-Wing Cause After Charlottesville" by Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica 8/23/2017

Analysts tracking Russian influence operations find a feedback loop between Kremlin propaganda and far-right memes.

Angee Dixson joined Twitter on Aug. 8 and immediately began posting furiously — about 90 times a day.  A self-described American Christian conservative, Dixson defended President Donald Trump's response to the unrest in Charlottesville, criticized the removal of Confederate monuments and posted pictures purporting to show violence by left-wing counterprotesters.

“Dems and Media Continue to IGNORE BLM and Antifa Violence in Charlottesville,” she wrote above a picture of masked demonstrators labeled “DEMOCRAT TERROR.”

But Dixson appears to have been a fake, according to an analysis by Ben Nimmo and Donara Barojan of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council think tank.  The account has been shut down.  Dixson's profile picture was stolen from a young Instagram celebrity (a German model rumored to have dated Leonardo DiCaprio).  Dixson used a URL shortener that is a tell for the sort of computer program that automatically churns out high volumes of social media posts whose authorship is frequently disguised.  And one of her tweets attacked Sen. John McCain for his alleged support of Ukrainian neo-Nazis, echoing language in tweets from Russian outlets RT and Sputnik.

The same social media networks that spread Russian propaganda during the 2016 election have been busily amplifying right-wing extremism surrounding the recent violence in Charlottesville, according to researchers who monitor the activity.  It's impossible to tell how much of the traffic originates from Russia or from mercenary sources.  But there were hordes of automated bots generating Twitter posts and much more last week to help make right-wing conspiracy theories and rallying cries about Charlottesville go viral.

A sample of 600 Twitter accounts [Hamilton 68 - Tracking Russian Influence Operations on Twitter] linked to Russian influence operations have been promoting hashtags for Charlottesville such as “Antifa,” a term for activists on the far left; and “alt-left,” a term Trump used, which was interpreted by many as suggesting an equivalence between liberal demonstrators and white nationalists in the so-called alt-right.

The sample includes accounts that are openly pro-Russian like state-controlled outlets RT and Sputnik, which a joint U.S. intelligence assessment concluded are “part of Russia's state-run propaganda machine.”  The sample also includes those, like “Angee Dixson's,” that seem to be written by typical Americans.  And it follows automated bots that help make messages go viral and even users around the world who spread the Kremlin's messages whether or not they mean to support Russia.  The network is tracked by four researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund that seeks to expose efforts to undermine Western democracy.

(A spokesperson for Sputnik took issue with the assertions about it in this article, providing 22 links to the news service's articles that she called “highly critical of the president's response to Charlottesville.”  She argued that to “ignore that reality … would only mean that you are fixing the facts to push a false narrative.”  The spokesperson also disputed that Sputnik is a vehicle for any purported Russian disinformation campaign.)

“The Russian influence networks we track are definitely amplifying the broader alt-right chatter about Charlottesville,” one of the researchers, J.M. Berger, said.  “The major themes they have been pushing are the 'both sides are violent' argument and conspiracy theories that George Soros was behind the counter-protests, although the latter has been trending more sporadically.”

The latest Soros accusation, which PolitiFact found to be baseless, shows another aspect of how messages snowball as they pass between the American right-wing and Russian propagandists, according to Nimmo.  A U.S. right-winger asserts a “fact,” a Russian news agency fuses it with a Kremlin narrative, and then American right-wing websites parrot the Russian news agency's assertion.

Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and major Democratic donor, long ago became a frequent bugaboo for the Kremlin and for Republicans.  He funds the Open Society Foundations, which support democracy and development around the world — and they have given money to ProPublica, including its Documenting Hate project, while accounting for less than 3 percent of ProPublica's revenue so far this year.  Many recipients of Soros' contributions are viewed as politically liberal, but some right-wingers and the Kremlin tend to see his hand (or more precisely, his wallet) in any action they perceive as left-wing.

The accusation that Soros was behind the Charlottesville counter-protesters appeared to have been first uttered by Alex Jones, the conservative conspiracy theorist and provocateur, on Aug. 14.  The next day, Lee Stranahan, a host for Sputnik, repeated the claim in several YouTube videos, according to Nimmo.  Stranahan was previously a prominent advocate for the #FireMcMaster campaign against national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

The pro-Russian networks are also injecting Russian propaganda about other countries into U.S. far-right circles.  After Jones' InfoWars interviewed Stranahan on Aug. 15, Stranahan's charge that the U.S. is hypocritical for supporting Nazis in Ukraine (a years-old Kremlin line) while condemning them at home appeared on fringe websites such as Mint Press News, TheLastAmericanVagabond.com, BBSNews and JewWorldOrder, Nimmo found.

“Given the number of channels that propagated the narrative at the same time, it is not possible to say whether a single channel or many different channels inspired the American actors' linkage of Charlottesville and Ukraine,”  Nimmo wrote in a blog post.  “What does appear probable is that the U.S. activists derived their narrative directly from the Kremlin and its supporters?  —?  and thus amplified Russian disinformation in America.”

Some in the self-described alt-right have embraced Russian support.  At an earlier protest of the removal of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville in May, people chanted “Russia is our friend!”

Tracking disinformation online is challenging because it can be hard to discern users' motivations and affiliations.  But Congressional investigators probing Russia's interference in the 2016 election are interested in how social networks spread fake news and propaganda, such as documents stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.

“The Internet and social media provide Russia cheap, efficient and highly effective access to foreign audiences with plausible deniability of their influence,” another of the researchers working with the Alliance to Secure Democracy, Clint Watts, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in March.  “This pattern of Russian falsehoods and social media manipulation of the American electorate continued through Election Day and persists today.”

RUSSIA - Political Espionage

"Russian think tank planned to influence the U.S. election, new documents reveal" PBS NewsHour 4/20/2017

REMINDER:  Russia is doing the same thing to other nations in Europe and Asia.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A Russian government-controlled think tank had outlined plans on how to swing the 2016 U.S. election toward Donald Trump, according to a Reuters report Thursday.  New documents reveal a strategy of using social media to bolster Mr. Trump and undermine faith in America's electoral system.  William Brangham learns more from former CIA officer John Sipher and Ned Parker of Reuters.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Reuters reported today that a think tank controlled by the Russian government outlined detailed plans how to swing the 2016 U.S. election toward Donald Trump.

In two different papers, the think tank said Russia should use social media and Russian-backed media to bolster Trump and to undermine faith in America's electoral system.

For more on these developments, I'm joined now by Ned Parker — he's one of the reporters who broke the story — and by John Sipher.  He served 28 years in the CIA's clandestine service, stationed in Russia and Eastern Europe.  He's now with the consulting firm CrossLead.

Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

Ned Parker, I would like to start with you.

Can you tell us a little bit more?  What is it that you found?  What did you report today?

NED PARKER, Reuters:  Right.

Well, we found are that there are two documents drafted by an in-house policy shop for the Kremlin that reports back to President Vladimir Putin.  And this organization is also headed by former foreign intelligence service officers.

This organization called the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies drafted two reports last year, one in June and one in October.  The first in June talked about, how do you influence the U.S. electorate through a media and social media campaign to overturn the policies of then-President Obama and promote — persuade the U.S. public to chose a new U.S. administration that would promote policies beneficial to both Russia and the United States?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  And, Ned, just staying with you for a second, is this evidence, is this in line with what U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russians did, in fact, do during the election?

NED PARKER:  Right.

I think that's the significance of these documents.  They came in after the election.  The second document, which is from October, talked about how Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election, so it made sense to change tack in terms of propaganda, and rather than work for her defeat and a new administration under Donald Trump, instead, they should push for a weak Clinton administration, and to bring question about the integrity of the U.S. electoral process through different media and social media information packets.

Now, getting these two documents after the election, it sort of crystallized what the U.S. already knew about motive and intent, including the hacking, for instance, which there was forensics all over the place linking the hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaign to Russia's military intelligence.

SPY GAMES - Alexander Litvinenko

"Russian security service blamed for defector’s high-profile death" PBS NewsHour 1/21/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The findings of a British inquiry into the demise of former Russian spy and high-profile defector Alexander Litvinenko were released Thursday, concluding that Litvinenko's 2006 death by polonium poisoning was the result of a Russian government operation, likely personally approved by President Vladimir Putin.  Chris Ship of Independent Television News begins our coverage.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The death by poisoning of a former Russian spy in London was thrust back into the headlines today, as a British inquiry into his killing released its report.

Alexander Litvinenko fled Russia nearly 20 years ago and accused the former chief of Russia’s spy agency, now-President Vladimir Putin, of corruption.  In 2006, he met two Russian spies at a London hotel, and three weeks later, he was dead.

Chris Ship of Independent Television News begins our coverage.

CHRIS SHIP, Independent Television:  We were reminded today that the radioactive poison inside Alexander Litvinenko's body was so strong, he had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin.  Today, the Russian security service the FSB was blamed for his killing.  And the orders, concluded the man who led the inquiry, most likely came from the top, the very top, he said.

SIR ROBERT OWEN, Litvinenko Inquiry Chairman:  The operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin.

"What the Litvinenko assassination accusation means for the Kremlin" PBS NewsHour 1/21/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A British investigation is pointing the finger at the Russian state and President Vladimir Putin for the 2006 assassination of a former spy and defector.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times and Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia.