Russia exploiting U.S. racial divisions; disinformation: Moscow style; Reddit’s “war room,” and more

Reddit has dedicated ‘war room’ to fight Russian misinformation (Brett Samuels, The Hill)
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on Wednesday detailed the “war room” the company has created to fend off foreign misinformation campaigns on the fifth most-visited U.S. site, saying the collaborative effort has helped the company address the issue. Huffman told NBC News that the company has multiple teams dedicated to addressing the spread of misinformation and protecting the site from manipulative behavior.

Why Russia may have already hacked the 2018 midterms (9News)
Russian hackers who hacked into the DNC’s computers, ran social media disinformation campaigns, and attacked election management systems in 39 states during the 2016 presidential election may have their sights set on the 2018 midterms.

States seek to reassure voters’ cyber concerns ahead of critical midterms test (Jacqueline Thomsen, The Hill)
Officials are speaking out about the security of election systems amid fears cyberattacks could deter Americans from voting. Claims of voter suppression traditionally center around practices like voter roll purges and ID laws.

Disinformation: Moscow style (ABC News)
Ever since the 2016 US Presidential election, the problem of Russian disinformation and hacking has spooked Western and Eastern European governments. The historian Timothy Snyder has argued after Trump’s election, post-truth is pre-fascism. With a lack of trust in traditional media, governments are struggling to battle the new wave of disinformation.

An Army veteran wages war on social-media disinformation (By Ben Kesling and Dustin Volz, Wall Street Journal)
Kris Goldsmith hunts fake Facebook pages that try to sow strife by deceiving veterans

Ex-CIA chief’s take on election security: Don’t panic, do stay paranoid (Rob Pegoraro, Yahoo Finance)
With the midterm elections three weeks out, how antsy should we be about the security of our vote?
The past two years provide little ground for optimism. In 2016, we learned that foreign hackers, believed by the FBI to be Russian, had cracked two state voter-registration databases. Last summer, the Department of Homeland Security reported that 21 states’ election systems had been targeted by Russian hackers.
But in an interview last week, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, a longtime security expert, refrained from retreating into fingernail-chewing anxiety. Instead, Brennan said he’s confident in the work being done to secure voting systems—even as he harbors doubts about security leadership in President Trump’s White House, and people’s ability to focus on threats beyond those we’ve already seen.
In other words: Don’t panic, but don’t stop being paranoid.

EU to boost defenses to curb Russian cyberattacks (Business Day)
Russia-backed operatives and their copycats are expected to unleash cyber meddling ahead of the bloc’s elections

U.S. libel case over Russian poisoning takes aim at Kremlin propaganda (Viola Gienger, Just Security)
A lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleges defamation by two Kremlin-controlled television stations widely available in the United States concerning the infamous poisoning of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in the U.K. 12 years ago. But the litigation has a much larger aim: to highlight the scope and danger of Russian propaganda today.
The case, Alex Goldfarb v. Channel One Russia and RT America, contends that the two channels maligned the plaintiff, a retired professor of microbiology and human rights activist. The complaint cites repeated broadcasts of false accusations in March and April this year that it was Goldfarb who had killed Litvinenko, who was his close friend. They also suggested Goldfarb even murdered his own wife. A formal British inquiry had concluded beyond a reasonable doubt in 2016 that two Russian former KGB agents poisoned Litvinenko with radioactive Polonium-210. The well-publicized inquiry also found a “strong probability” that the murder was committed at the behest of the Russian government and probably on the personal orders of Vladimir Putin. As for Goldfarb’s wife, she died of cancer in 2012.