The Russian Propaganda Campaign

[Rational Poster]

I didn't say burn your assets, I said pull them out.

Yes, you lose valuable intelligence. You gain a unified home front against an external enemy.

By revealing our sources we'd be doing exactly that.

If they're lucky Putin would send them to Siberia forever.

 

[VivaRevolution]

By revealing our sources we'd be doing exactly that.

If they're lucky Putin would send them to Siberia forever.

What part of pull them out, is confusing to you?

 

[Rational Poster]

What part of pull them out, is confusing to you?

How do you propose pulling out deeply embedded Russian nationals from Russia? Why do you want to give up those resources when we still have a very active adversary on the board?

What about our cyber surveillance? You do understand we're watching every single bit of information that comes out of Russia and storing it and combing over it again and again, right? Do you think maybe something was gained there?

 

[VivaRevolution]

How do you propose pulling out deeply embedded Russian nationals from Russia?

What about our cyber surveillance? You do understand we're watching every single bit of information that comes out of Russia and storing it and combing over it again and again, right? Do you think maybe something was gained there?

For cyber they know we are watching everything. Lets not pretend Russian intelligence isn't competent.

As far as an internal source, only those at the highest level would have access to info that would incriminate that person alone. For that situation that might exist once, yeah, you probably can't release that, or lose that source.

Is this unique situation what you think is occurring here?

 

[Rational Poster]

For cyber they know we are watching everything. Lets not pretend Russian intelligence isn't competent.

As far as an internal source, only those at the highest level would have access to info that would incriminate that person alone. For that situation that might exist once, yeah, you probably can't release that, or lose that source.

Is this unique situation what you think is occurring here?

Mr. Skirpal is clear evidence that we have penetrated Russian intelligence services with double agents. I doubt he's the only one.

Do you think Mr. Skirpal is the only Russian double agent in service to the US or our allies?

 

[VivaRevolution]

Mr. Skirpal is clear evidence that we have penetrated Russian intelligence services with double agents. I doubt he's the only one.

Do you think Mr. Skirpal is the only Russian double agent in service to the US or our allies?

I think only a handful of agents would be involved in the information that would need to be released to prove what many claim.

The truth is that intelligence is very subjective. In real life, you will have an intelligence team that disagrees on conclusions based on limited verifiable information. Many times you have a great deal of dissent on conclusions. Intelligence reports are usually based on speculation, and majority rule, then they are secret double agents.

 

[Rational Poster]

I think only a handful of agents would be involved in the information that would need to be released to prove what many claim.

The truth is that intelligence is very subjective. In real life, you will have an intelligence team that disagrees on conclusions based on limited verifiable information. Many times you have a great deal of dissent on conclusions. Intelligence reports are usually based on speculation, and majority rule, then they are secret double agents.

So.. we should burn a handful of sources in order to believe Americans looking out for American interests over Russian obfuscation tactics?

 

[VivaRevolution]

So.. we should burn a handful of sources in order to believe Americans looking out for American interests over Russian obfuscation tactics?

Yes. Not my fault Emperor CIA is wearing no clothes.

Get caught over and over acting like a rougue paramilitary contractor, and don't be surprised when people demand proof of your claims.

 

[Rational Poster]

Yes. Not my fault Emperor CIA is wearing no clothes.

Get caught over and over acting like a rougue paramilitary contractor, and don't be surprised when people demand proof of your claims.

But what's the motive to lie here?

Do you really believe the conservative dominated intelligence agencies are actually trying to save face for Hillary fucking Clinton?

The FBI did their own meddling against her election. It doesn't seem reasonable.

 

[VivaRevolution]

But what's the motive to lie here?

Do you really believe the conservative dominated intelligence agencies are actually trying to save face for Hillary fucking Clinton?

You know, I typed out what I thought was going on, but then I realized you would just call me a nutter, and declare victory.

So instead, I will just say, I don't know.

What I do know, is that I believe nothing of what institutional power says, and about 50% of what institutional power actually has evidence of.

 

[Rational Poster]

You know, I typed out what I thought was going on, but then I realized you would just call me a nutter, and declare victory.

So instead, I will just say, I don't know.

What I do know, is that I believe nothing of what institutional power says, and about 50% of what institutional power actually has evidence of.

"I don't know but I'm going to make pretend anyway because I'm scared of Russian aggression"

 

[HomerThompson]

Who is Russia hostile to?

You and me?

Or Exxon, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs?

Don't you work for Boeing?

 

[Cuzcatlan]

@HomerThompson @Anung Un Rama @Trotsky @Cuzcatlan @luckyshot

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS
Someone automated dozens of accounts to amplify anti-Trump, anti-Sanders and pro-Democratic Party content.
When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.

Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.


But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.

Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

But like her, these accounts were all pro-Clinton, anti-Trump and anti-Sanders.


Twitter allows users to automate their accounts, includingsetting up automatic retweeting and liking of other accounts. This increases activity on the platform, something Twitter obviously wants to do, and allows busy users to promote messages or businesses that they support. Presumably Twitter did not anticipate that users would simply hand their accounts over to another person or campaign to artificially spread the latter’s tweets.

The ability to swamp a debate with automated messages is a problem for political discourse around the world. Twitter is a vital platform for political debate. Automating Twitter accounts to retweet or otherwise promote specific messages thus becomes a tactic to silence political debate and squelch free speech.

In Mexico, allies of President Enrique Peña Nieto have deployed swarms of Twitter bots to overwhelm and effectively shut down online debates. Journalists in the U.S. experienced a similar flood during the 2016 election from pro-Trump, neo-Nazi sock-puppet accounts posting anti-Semitic death threats. Often instead of suppressing speech it doesn’t like, the Chinese government these days drowns it on local social media platforms with a flood of pro-government content. University of North Carolina scholar Zeynep Tufecki has labeled this tactic a new form of censorship.

What the automated accounts deployed by Albright’s unnamed client did was similar.


Over the course of the last year or so, Albright was their favorite account to retweet ― almost always as a group. The fake accounts also retweeted people who responded to Albright’s tweets ― again, usually as a group, and often while in a debate with other users.

The writers at Shareblue, a pro-Democratic Party news site that supported Clinton in the primary and general elections, were also frequently retweeted by the network of fake accounts, particularly when the Shareblue folks had something negative to say about Sanders. A spokeswoman for Shareblue told HuffPost that the company does not create sock-puppet accounts and has never worked with Albright.

These accounts also liked #resistance celebrities like liberal conspiracy theorist Eric Garland (“Time for some game theory”) and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. And they were often deployed in intra-Democratic Party battles.

When Albright led a Twitter campaign to attack a 2017 women’s conference for inviting Sanders to speak ― after Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had turned them down ― the automated account network deployed to retweet her and any positive responses to her tweets.


Albright probably didn’t need those retweets, as there were actual people opposing the conference’s decision. Still, someone questioned her campaign to block Sanders from speaking, describing it as similar to “Russian division strategy.” She wrote back, “Nyet. I am not Russian.”

Then over a dozen fake accounts retweeted her.

INSTAGRAM/TWITTER
The original image from skater Sara Hurtado's Instagram account (left) and the image used on the fake Twitter account named Iris Winter.
Within this pro-Albright Twitter force, many of the accounts have taken on false personas with stolen photographs ― just like the Russian trolls that tried to interfere in the 2016 election.


The account named for Iris Winter, which is temporarily suspended, uses a picture of Spanish ice dancer Sara Hurtado. Minnie Casera’s supposed picture comes from the Facebook account of Martina Painter, an Alaskan who died on Jan. 11, 2017. The picture used by Georgia Miles is actually Deja Farrior-Quinones, a New Jersey woman who was killed in September 2016 by a car involved in a high-speed police chase. Maggie Campell’s picture is one of Deb Solsrud, a Florida woman who died in a plane crash in December 2016. Madeleine Ware’s photo is really Mary Knowlton, a retired librarian who was killed in August 2016 by a police officer in a practice drill.

Allison Rowe’s account uses the picture of Dr. Roberta Guilizzoni, an Italian physicist who works at the National Physical Laboratory in London. Baylee Allmon’s picture is actually the Bosnian model Nejla Hadzic. The account of Callie Calloway uses a picture of Kelsey Lundy, a lobbyist in Arizona for Compass Strategies. Cameron Gibson offers an image of the freelance travel writer Sarah Gordon that appeared in the Daily Mail. Francie McCormack has taken her picture from the Twitter account of Callie Maries. The photo of Lena Robinson is actually Ashlynn Sparks, an Alabama teenager who was shot to death in 2016.

The account of Gwen Barstow is temporarily restricted, probably because it used an image of Meaghan Delcourt, an Ottawa woman who was in the local news in 2015 after her apartment balcony collapsed underneath her

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023/amp

And what the fuck! Free college for all is racist!?

 

[Cuzcatlan]

@VivaRevolution Turn down your font size when you're talking to me.

Yeah, I copied the title, pasted, and then did the article, so it switched the font.

I'm not yelling.

 

[ShinkanPo]

I heard CNN reported that the Republican investigation about the collusion is over and that there was no collusion between tbe Trump team and Russian government or Putin?

 

[HomerThompson]

I heard CNN reported that the Republican investigation about the collusion is over and that there was no collusion between tbe Trump team and Russian government or Putin?

Sounds like alternative CNN.

 

[ShinkanPo]

Sounds like alternative CNN.

CNN= Chinese News Network or the Conservative News Network.

Lol.