The Russia watchRussia’s other troll team; cyber warfare & real warfare; Gore’s lessons for Trump, and more
• The Devin Nunes tape tells us what we all knew: his investigation is about protecting Trump
• Democrats want Facebook to identify Americans subjected to Russian disinformation so they can counteract it
• More than 40,000 Facebook users expressed interest in political protests with potential Russian ties
• White House drafting sanctions order to punish foreign interference in U.S. elections
• Trump could learn from Gore on how to handle an election interference scandal
• This is accused Russian spy Maria Butina’s secret money man in Moscow, sources say
• Russia’s other troll team
• This Russian spy agency is in the middle of everything
• The Kremlin is quaking as new sanctions multiply
• When would Russia’s cyber warfare morph into real warfare? Refer to the Tallinn manual
The Devin Nunes tape tells us what we all knew: his investigation is about protecting Trump (Andrew Prokop, Vox)
He’s been working tirelessly to shield Trump from the Russia probe for a year and a half.
Democrats want Facebook to identify Americans subjected to Russian disinformation so they can counteract it (Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News)
The Democratic National Committee is asking Facebook to identify American audiences subjected to Russian disinformation so it can provide those people with factually accurate alternatives. The proposal, drawn up by the DNC’s chief technology officer Raffi Krikorian, would enable political campaigns to autonomously counteract misinformation about their candidates and policies.
“We believe it is critical that Facebook and other social media outlets should notify campaigns about Russian propaganda and disinformation in order to make sure we’re combating these efforts and targeting voters with accurate information,” Krikorian told the Daily News on Wednesday.
More than 40,000 Facebook users expressed interest in political protests with potential Russian ties (Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post)
Over the past 15 months, at least 40,000 people said they were interested in attending anti-Trump rallies hosted by a group that Facebook banned last week, including a singalong in front of the White House and a protest in Rome when the president was meeting with the pope last year, according to archived pages.
The popularity of these events highlights a weakness in Facebook’s new mission to encourage users to join groups of like-minded people and meet up offline. “Resisters,” the group Facebook removed as part of a crackdown on inauthentic accounts ahead of the 2018 midterm election, organized at least 30 events, capitalizing on one of Facebook’s most powerful tools for political organizing.
The use of events to spread disinformation and further polarize the public builds on a tactic Russian operatives used around the 2016 election. Facebook stopped short of saying who was behind the 32 pages and accounts it removed last week, but some lawmakers and academics attributed it to Russia. (Cont.)
