Majorityrights News > Category: Science & Technology

Taylor does some good work - bringing this lawsuit against Twitter is commendable - Twitter’s prohibition of free speech is a travesty given that it is functioning as a public utility; its having gotten its corporate start with US government help; its remaining dependent upon the US Government created and sponsored internet network; and public telecommunications lines. Taylor also handles with aplomb stigmatic issues of blacks and their hyper-assertive biopower, as he did in his debate with black nationalist Tariq Nasheed. Nevertheless, he yields to Jewish crypsis, infamously having said, “they look huWhite to me” ...and now that Jewish interests seek fusion with the White right, their media refers to Taylor as a “White Nationalist.”

BBC, “White nationalist Jared Taylor sues Twitter over ban”, 22 Feb 2018:

White nationalist Jared Taylor is suing Twitter after the social network banned his account as part of a crackdown on abusive content.

Mr Taylor’s lawyer says the suspension of his account is a form of censorship, accusing Twitter of discrimination.

Twitter declined to comment on the case but has previously said that its tools are “apolitical.”

Mr Taylor is head of American Renaissance, a website that champions “racial difference”.

He had his account suspended in December, with Twitter explaining that it prohibited accounts affiliated with the promotion of violence, something Mr Taylor denies applied to him.

Mr Taylor has filed his case in California, in the state Superior Court in San Francisco. He argued that Twitter violated Californian law protecting free speech in public spaces - a law that has not previously been applied to the internet.

His lawyer Noah Peters wrote online that everyone should be “terrified” about what he called Twitter censorship. “Our lawsuit is not about whether Taylor is right or wrong. It’s about whether Twitter and other technology companies have the right to ban individuals from using their services based on their perceived viewpoints and affiliations.

“Allowing Twitter to censor content is extremely troublesome given Twitter’s self-proclaimed mission to ‘give everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly, without barriers’.”

The Russia Investigations: Trump Reportedly Wanted To Fire Mueller; D.C. Dumbstruck. A journalist describes Robert Mueller, pictured in 2007 when he was FBI director, as “about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington.” (photo credit Susan Walsh/AP).

NPR, “Mueller’s Reputation In Washington Is ‘Stunningly Bipartisan,’ Journalist Says”, 1 Feb 2018:

As the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election forges on, Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation, has managed to stay largely out of public view.

Journalist Garrett Graff says that is in keeping with Mueller’s personality: “This is not someone who in any way has tried to grab the spotlight, but instead has kept his head down and worked hard throughout his career.”

Graff’s 2011 book, The Threat Matrix, explores the transformation of the FBI under Mueller’s leadership. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mueller took over as director of the FBI one week before the Sept. 11 attacks. After Mueller completed his 10-year term as FBI director, President Barack Obama reappointed him for a two-year term, which required a special act of Congress.

“Bob Mueller is probably about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington, particularly at the levels of government in which he has served,” Graff says. “This is someone who really, truly believes in truth, justice [and] in the American way, in a way that very few people in American life today anymore do.”

Interview Highlights

On Mueller’s bipartisan record

We know him most recently, obviously, as the FBI director, but his tenure in government really dates back to the Reagan years. And he’s been appointed or held top jobs in the administrations of all five of the last presidents, and was appointed to the Justice Department, the head of the criminal division, under George H.W. Bush’s administration, then was appointed a U.S. attorney by Bill Clinton, then appointed the acting deputy attorney general by George W. Bush, and then later FBI director — a position he was reappointed to, in an unprecedented move, by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote 100-0, a stunningly bipartisan track record in today’s times.

On Mueller’s military service

Part of what makes Bob Mueller such a fascinating character is he has dedicated his life sort of time and again to public service. ... Mueller and a handful of other colleagues ... [signed] up for Vietnam after college. This was early in the 1960s, so it was before Vietnam became the cultural touchpoint that it did later.

White House Touts ‘Unprecedented’ Cooperation Amid Mueller Interview Talks

Second Lt. Marine Corps Bob Mueller ended up leading a platoon in the jungles of Vietnam for a year and really distinguished himself in combat. He received a Bronze Star with valor for his leadership in an ambush that his unit suffered in the fall of 1968, and then was actually shot himself in a separate incident in April 1969 where he received, of course, the Purple Heart and was quickly back on patrol, serving out the remainder of his year.

He came into the F.B.I. in part, in the summer of 2001 because he was known inside the department as a computer-guy. He had help found the Justice Department’s first real computer crime unit. And, the FBI in the summer of 2001 had this incredibly outdated computer system…

On how the FBI changed after the Sept. 11 attacks

Bob Mueller, in the days after Sept. 11, sees this incredible sea change in the mission of the FBI, which until then for most of its first 90 years had primarily been a law enforcement agency focused domestically on solving crimes after the fact. And on Sept. 11, we saw an international plot that focused on a suicide attack with catastrophic results, and that that necessitated this top-to-bottom change in the way that the United States approached counterterrorism issues, that after-the-fact investigation was going to be inadequate in the face of these threats.

So Mueller was given a mission by [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft and President Bush to not just investigate attacks afterwards, but to stop plots in the first place, to disrupt the attack before it happened.

It led to this massive reorganization that Bob Mueller spent the next 12 years of his tenure working on, to move the FBI from what was traditionally a domestic law enforcement agency into something that is more akin to an international intelligence agency.

On how Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign is similar to other FBI investigations

This is, in many ways, a perfectly standard and routine FBI investigation. The FBI, as an investigative agency, takes down corrupt organizations, that’s what it’s designed to do, go after street gangs, drug cartels, organized crime families, and the way that they do that is by starting on the outside and working their way in. And so that can either mean starting at the bottom of an organization, or starting with ancillary charges and working their way inwards, the equivalent of getting Al Capone for tax evasion.

Bill Bailie, The Nation Revisited # 136 February 2018:

The British Aerospace Industry

Hundreds of jobs at BAE Systems are threatened by a lack of orders. Unfortunately, the Typhoon multi-role aircraft is not suitable for use on our new aircraft carriers which require planes capable of short take-off and vertical landing. Instead of developing our own aircraft we have ordered fourteen F35B’s from Lockheed Martin at a cost of £2.5 billion. We will eventually buy 48 planes, the cost of which will escalate as the pound falls against the dollar. We must also consider the cost of putting British aerospace engineers on the dole.

Our former Defence Minister, Michael Fallon, suggested that we support America by sending our new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to North Korea before she is properly commissioned and without aircraft. Perhaps he wants to ram the first North Korean ship that we encounter?

The government has wasted billions of pounds on two aircraft carriers with no means of launching or landing aircraft. Nuclear ships use steam to power ‘cat and trap’ equipment, but our new ships are diesels which generate no steam. We, therefore, have to use STOVL aircraft which are not readily available.

When we get our expensive American planes we will be capable of fighting all over the world but what we really need are more destroyers and frigates to defend the homeland. We are a European country with no empire to defend.

       
Michael Heseltine resigned from the Cabinet over the Westland helicopter affair in 1986. Margaret Thatcher wanted to sell the company to America but he insisted on keeping it in Britain. Today, Westland is part of Leonardo, an Italian company employing 3,300 workers in the UK

Airbus is a French company which employs 15,000 workers in the UK. They have just signed an order for thirty-six A320 superjumbos with the Emirates.

Bombardier is a Canadian company that employs 25,000 workers making trains and aircraft in the UK and Northern Ireland. 

The industry is led by BAE, a British company which employs 82,5000 workers making ships, tanks, missiles and aircraft. These companies employ British workers and pay their taxes. They are a vital part of our economy.

The Far Right

The first fascist movement in Britain was the British Fascists, founded by Miss Rotha Lintorn-Orman in 1923. They were fiercely anti-communist and pro-monarchist. Arnold Leese, a former BF councillor for Stamford, called them “Tories with knobs on.” In 1929 he founded a rival movement called the Imperial Fascist League which was openly anti-Semitic. According to folklore, when Ron Hargrave applied to join the IFL Arnold Leese first measured his head with a tape measure and told him to report back in a week’s time. When he returned Leese said, “A lot of people here don’t like the look of you but I have decided to let you in.”

       
        Ron Hargrave guarding the platform for JT in 1960.

In 1932 Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascist which quickly became a mass movement but in 1940 it was banned and over a thousand Blackshirts were rounded up and thrown into prison under Defence Regulation 18B. After the war, he founded Union Movement to fight for ‘Europe a Nation’. He died in 1980 and UM was wound up in the nineties. Union Movement was never far-right but because it opposed Commonwealth immigration it was branded as such by the media.

The National Front was founded in 1967 to stop immigration, start repatriation, and get Britain out of the Common Market. It peaked in 1979 and its successor movement the BNP peaked in 2010. Both movements were eclipsed by UKIP which is now in steep decline.

The term ‘far-right’ includes everything from traditional conservatives to neo-Nazis. They command about ten to fifteen percent of the vote in most of Europe. Britain’s first-past-the-post system keeps them out of Parliament but in Germany, the AFD has won 94 seats in the Bundestag, in Austria the Freedom Party is part of the coalition government, and in the United States, Donald Trump, a billionaire Zionist warmonger, has promised to build a wall on the Mexican border and make America great again.

There is a crying need for a sensible patriotic movement to fight for Britain in Europe. Ukip and the remnants of the NF and the BNP are stuck in the past and incapable of change. Most of their members have got one foot in the grave and it’s only a matter of time before a new party emerges to cater for the younger generation.

Readers who are suffering from mental health problems, including paranoia, should ask their doctor for help. Conspiracy theory can be cured by talking therapy. If you think that “they are out to get you”, do not despair. The first step is to admit that you have a problem.

What is Nationalism?

We are familiar with Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalism but less so with English nationalism. My generation was brought up on imperialism which embraced the four nations of the British Isles and even included Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians. We were all subjects of the British Empire.

I was proud to salute the Union Jack in the school playground on Empire Day but the Second World War had already destroyed the British Empire. One of the first men to realise it was Oswald Mosley who proclaimed ‘Europe a Nation’ in his book ‘The Alternative’ in 1947. Those of us who share his vision of a united continent with a progressive government are European Socialists.

Nationalism is a mixed blessing. At its best, it’s a love of country, but at its worst, it’s a fear and hatred of foreigners. Celebrating sporting achievements and holidays is a harmless expression of patriotism but beating up immigrants is entirely negative.

Some people believe in a ‘Confederation of Europe’, in which fiercely independent nation-states would co-exist with each other. But history tells a different story. The German Nazis murdered the Austrian leader Englebert Dollfuss, and the Italian Fascists invaded Greece, which was a fascist state under General Metaxas. Nationalist states do not live happily with their neighbours; they invariably attack them.

Little states tend to swagger and act tough, but great empires are self-confident. In the Roman Empire every citizen was protected by the declaration: “Civis Romanus Sum”- I am a Roman Citizen. In 1850 Lord Palmerston stated in Parliament that every citizen of the British Empire should enjoy the same protection. Britain is going through a painful divorce from the European Union but we will still be Europeans, and when the current outbreak of tribalism has subsided, it will only be necessary to say “I am a European”.

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It was quite picky on its target. It went through several checks and when those checks failed, it would not implement the attack. It was obviously probing for a very specific target…you have to put this in context - this was the most sophisticated piece of malware that we have ever seen. So, its kind of strange that someone makes this huge effort to hit one specific target…well, that must be quite a significant target:

Whoever was behind Stuxnet hasn’t admitted they were behind it.

Even after the cyberweapon had penetrated computers all over the world, no one was willing to admit that it was loose, or talk about the dangers that it posed.

Stuxnet first surfaced with a Belarusian security company servicing Iran.

“Had you ever seen anything quite so sophisticated before?”

“Not with this kind of ‘zero-day’ capacity…......... it was the first time in my practice.”

... a third kind of hactivist is sponsored by state governments…

It went beyond our worst fears… our worst nightmares ..and this continued the more we analyzed….

The first time we opened up Stuxnet there was just bad things everywhere.

Just to give you some context, we can go through and understand every line of code for the average threat in minutes… and here we are one month into this threat and we are just beginning to discover what we call its payload, or its whole purpose…

When looking at the Stuxnet code, its twenty times the size of the average piece of code but contains almost no bugs inside of it, which is extremely rare, code always has bugs inside of it. It’s dense and everything does something or does something right in order to conduct its attack.

One of the things that surprised us was that Stuxnet utilized what is called a zero day exploit.

...its a piece of code allows it to spread without you having to do anything…

A zero day is an exploit which nobody knows about except for the attacker; so there’s no protection against it, there’s been no patch released.

There’s been zero days protection against it. That’s what attackers value because they know 100 percent that if they have this zero day that they can get in whenever they want

They’re actually very valuable - you can sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Then we became worried because immediately we discovered we had more zero days, and again, these zero days are extremely rare.

Inside Stuxnet we had four zero days, and for the entire rest of the year we only saw twelve zero days used.

It blows everything else out of the water ..we’ve never seen this before and never seen it since, either.

Seeing one in a malware you could understand because the malware offers a means to make money, they’re stealing people’s credit cards so its worth their while to use it, but seeing four zero days…could be worth half a million dollars right there in one piece of malware ..this is not your ordinary criminal gang doing this, this is someone bigger.

It’s definitely not traditional crime. Not hacktivists.

It was evident early on, just given the sophistication of this malware that there must have been a nation state involved - at least one nation state involved in the development.

However, there were “breadcrumbs” left…they had to have some human assets steal certificates, which they did, traceable from two companies in close proximity in a business park in Taiwan.

Eventually we were able to see that Iran was the number one infected country in the world.

That immediately raised our eyebrows.

...we’d never seen a threat before where it was predominantly in Iran.

So we began to follow what was going on in the geopolitical world, what was happening in the general news.

At that time there were actually multiple explosions of pipelines going in and out of Iran.

And we noticed that there had been assassinations of nuclear scientists

More breadcrumbs showed that Stuxnet was targeting Siemans progammable logic controllers.

The PLC is like a very small computer attached to physical equipment like pumps, like valves, like motors.

So, this little box is running a digital program and the actions of this program turns that motor on, off, or sets the specific speed.

They control things like power plants, power grids… things in factories… in critical infrastructure ...critical infrastructure is everywhere around us ...transportation, telecommunication, financial services, health care..

So the payload of Stuxnet was designed to attack some very important part of our world.

The payload was going to be very important..

We knew that Stuxnet could have very dire consequences.

Stuxnet caused the centrifuges (of Iranian nuclear reactors) to spin much faster (than programmed for, to the point where they would explode).

Pence owes his position to doing the dirty bidding of the Koch brother’s interests, starting with lobbying against carbon tax, an initiative that wound up putting oil man Scott Pruitt in charge of EPA - the proverbial fox in charge of the hen house. That’s not the half of Pence’s classic story of right wing corruption.

NPR, “Understanding Mike Pence And His Relationship To Trump: ‘His Public Role Is Fawning”, 18 Oct 2017:

Though President Trump ran as an outsider, New Yorker writer Jane Mayer describes his vice president as “the connective tissue” between Trump and the billionaire donors in the Republican party.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Many of President Trump’s critics are hoping he won’t serve his full term, but what kind of president would Mike Pence make? That’s one of the questions Jane Mayer sets out to answer in her new article about Pence titled “The President Pence Delusion.” It’s published in the current issue of The New Yorker.

She writes about how Pence became an evangelical Christian and how he became a favored candidate of billionaire backers, most especially the Koch brothers. She traces how religion and money shaped his ideology. She investigates how Pence became Trump’s running mate and how much power he has in the White House and how he’s used it.

Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She’s also the author of the bestseller about the Koch Brothers titled “Dark Money: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right.” Last March in The New Yorker, she profiled another billionaire funder of right-wing causes, Robert Mercer, who she says has become a major force behind the Trump presidency.

Jane Mayer, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So I feel like I don’t see Mike Pence very much, and I often wonder if he’s a power behind the scenes or if he really doesn’t matter that much within the Trump administration. So what’s your impression?

JANE MAYER: Well, it’s really hard to tell. He is - as Joel Goldstein, a specialist in the vice presidency, told me, he calls him the sycophant in chief because when you do see him, he’s usually acting as an emcee to Trump or kind of echoing Trump and praising Trump. So his public role is really fawning. Behind the scenes, though, according to Newt Gingrich, he’s 1 of the 3 people who have the most power in the Trump administration along with the chief of staff, John Kelly, and Trump himself.

GROSS: What are the signs that he’s that powerful?

MAYER: Well, (laughter) that’s a good question - because I think he acts as the connective tissue between the Trump administration and Congress, between the Trump administration and the - kind of the socially conservative base of the party. And most importantly, he is the connector between the Trump administration and the billionaire donors in the Republican Party. He is the guy who does most of the fundraising and outreach to the money.

GROSS: And the money includes the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer.

MAYER: It does. And one of the interesting things to me in writing about Pence is it poses such a juxtaposition between the way that Trump ran, which was as a populist outsider who was attacking the big-money forces in the Republican Party as corrupt and saying that they were puppeteers trying to control the candidates as puppets. And Trump made a huge point of saying, I’m my own man; I’m so rich; no one controls me. Yet as his vice president, he chose Mike Pence. And you could hardly find a candidate in the American political scene who has closer ties to the big donors and particularly the Koch brothers. He’s been sponsored by them for years.

GROSS: So how do the Kochs first start backing Mike Pence?

MAYER: So this was when Pence was in Congress in 2009. He really did the Kochs a big favor. There was legislation pending that might have put a tax on carbon pollution, and it would have been terrible for Koch Industries. And Pence took up the cause and tried to help defeat that legislation and specifically carried around a pledge that the Kochs had created, trying to get people to sign it. And after he was successful in that, the Kochs invited him to come to their secret donor summits. And at that point on, they started showering him in money. So it was - it’s really became a working relationship then. And I hadn’t realized that until recently.

GROSS: One of the things you say Mike Pence is responsible for is bringing the Kochs and Donald Trump together. The Kochs didn’t support Trump’s candidacy. Charles Koch described the choice between Trump and Hillary as one between cancer or a heart attack. (Laughter) So what did Pence do to bring the Kochs and Trump together?

MAYER: Well, so this is what was interesting to me - is that Pence has been very close with the Kochs, and they have just showered money on his campaigns. And he’s kind of act as a peacemaker between the Kochs and Trump. And but in that process, what interested me most was that I really do think that Trump ran as a different kind of Republican. He ran against the big-donors orthodoxy and kind of libertarian vision of people like the Kochs. He said he was going to deliver something for the little guys and build infrastructure all across the country and use the government in various ways that the Kochs disapprove of.

And what you’ve seen with Pence is that in many ways, Pence has brought in a ton of people who are allied with the Kochs into the government, and he’s brought a lot of their policies in - so whether it’s on environmental issues or tax policy now where the Kochs are working very closely with the Trump White House on the Trump tax plan. And it is a tax plan that the Kochs love, and it’s a tax plan that’s going to help the super-rich according to many nonpartisan analyses and not do very much for the middle class. So you’re beginning to kind of see the government moving in the direction of the Kochs.

GROSS: You say 16 high-ranking officials in the Trump White House have ties to the Koch brothers.

MAYER: Well, and that’s according to a study by a group called the Checks And Balances Program. And you can count them. You can see it online. They’re - that’s in the White House. There are also many, many people who’ve worked for the Kochs in the government at large, in the cabinet, in the other departments. And a tremendous number of people who work with and for Pence have gone in and out of working for the Kochs to the point that you had Politico saying - they quoted a Republican operative saying that the Koch operation really was the shadow campaign for Pence for president.

And chief among them really has been Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, who went - after working for Pence in Congress, he went to run the Koch’s political operation, Freedom Partners. And then when Pence was chosen as vice president on the ticket, Marc Short came back, worked with Pence in the campaign and is now the head of Congressional Liaison in the Trump White House. So the man that actually ran the Koch’s political operation is a key player inside the Trump White House.

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ABC.Net.Au, “Twitter shuts down 201 accounts linked to Russian propaganda operatives who posted to Facebook”, 29 Sept 2017:

Twitter has shut down hundreds of accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads to Facebook during the 2016 US election.

The company said it found 22 accounts which were directly linked to the 450 Facebook accounts, found earlier this month.

It also found a further 179 accounts related or linked to those Twitter accounts.

None of these accounts had been registered as advertisers, and all of them had already been or were immediately suspended, most for violating spam rules.

Twitter said Russian media outlet RT — which has strong links to the Kremlin — spent at least $274,100 on advertisements on the platform in 2016.

The three accounts — @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT — also promoted 1,823 tweets the company says “definitely or potentially targeted” the US market.

Those ad buys alone topped the $100,000 that Facebook had linked to a Russian propaganda operation, a revelation that prompted calls from some Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

Although Twitter’s disclosures in briefings to US congressional staff and a public blog post were its most detailed to date on the issue, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee called the company’s statements “deeply disappointing”.

Senator Mark Warner, whose panel is investigating alleged Russian interference in the election, said Twitter officials had not answered many questions about the Russian use of the platform and that it was still subject to foreign manipulation.

Twitter has been criticised as being too lax in policing fake or abusive accounts.

Technology companies including Twitter, Facebook and Google were asked by intelligence committees earlier this week to testify at a public hearing on November 1 about alleged Russian interference.

The pressure on the companies reflects growing concern among politicians in both parties that social networks may have played a key role in Moscow’s attempts to spread disinformation and propaganda to sow political discord in the United States and help elect President Donald Trump.

Moscow denies any such activity and Mr Trump has denied any talk of collusion.

In front of building at 55 Savushkina Street in St Petersburg, Russia, where the Kremlin has a workforce of hundreds patrolling the internet as trolls. Youtube video

ABC.Net.Au, “Inside Russia’s Troll Factory: Controlling debate and stifling dissent in internet forums and social media”, 12 Aug 2015 -

Inside an anonymous building in St Petersburg, the Kremlin commands a workforce of hundreds that patrol the internet as trolls — assuming false identities online.

Their task is to control debate and stifle dissent in forums and on social media.

The department at the centre of this effort is officially known as the Internet Research Agency.

But its reputation has earned it another name by which it is widely known: the Troll Factory.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“Generally, they produce lies in a 24-hour regime, seven days a week,” said Andrei Soshnikov, the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“In the morning, in the day, at night, something going on in world, or in Russia or St Petersburg, you will always find the comments from the Troll Factory.”

Soshnikov started monitoring the activities at the Internet Research Agency a few years ago, not long after he graduated from journalism school.

After his first reports were published, he hit the jackpot.

He was contacted by activist Luda Savchuk, who had been hired to work as a troll.

“I spent two months there,” Ms Savchuk told 7.30.

Photo: Luda Savchuck said she accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls. (7.30)

“I saw that this is really a big factory to produce paid comments, posts, pictures, video, any content we face on the internet is produced there.

“There are four floors there, very many departments dealing with social networks, LiveJournal (the popular Russian online forum), YouTube, forums with the websites of different cities.”

Working together, Ms Savchuk and Soshnikov published details of the Troll Factory’s operations.

At least 300 employees are believed to work in the building.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

“News is sent to your computer with instructions about how it should be presented,” she said.

“It is not just objective information that is required, but in which tone it should be presented, to which conclusion one should drive a reader.”

When opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead within sight of the Kremlin in March, suspicion immediately fell on those with links to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ms Savchuk said the orders at the Troll Factory were handed down quickly.

“They were just told: ‘Nemtsov is killed. Everyone should urgently concentrate on this job. We shall write this and that’,” she said.

“On that day they were writing that it was a provocation against the authorities, that he was killed by ‘his own people’.”
Kremlin moves focus to social networks

After smothering political dissent, the Kremlin is now targeting social networks.

They have been viewed as a threat since anti-Putin protests seemingly sprung up out of nowhere in late 2011.

The driving force behind the brief opposition surge was social media.

Journalist Andrei Soldatov writes about Russia’s security agencies and their extensive online surveillance.

“You don’t need any kind of organisations to do these things,” he told 7.30.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory

“And that frightened the Kremlin in 2011.

“They still believe social networks [are] a major tool that might, if you have any kind of crisis, help people to send people in the thousands to the streets.”

Right now, the priority topic for the Kremlin’s trolls is Ukraine.

As the war in eastern Ukraine has dragged on, the Troll Factory has played a key role in the huge Russian propaganda campaign to demonise the Ukrainian government.

“In Ukraine, you don’t have people, you don’t have someone you can talk to,” Soldatov said summing up the stereotypes reinforced by the Kremlin’s trolls.

“You have only fascists.”

The Troll Factory’s actual address is 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg.

The building is surrounded by cameras, and employees do not appreciate being filmed.

Consequences for revealing secrecy behind trolls

“You have not just enemies, but someone who [is] completely unhuman.”

7.30 tried to speak with someone from the Internet Research Agency, but the request was denied.

All of the companies listed in the directory in the building’s foyer are fake.

Soshnikov said none of them could be found on St Petersburg’s corporate register.

The secrecy makes Ms Savchuk’s revelations about the work going on here all the more exceptional.

“I think Luda is a hero,” Soshnikov said.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now.” - Luda Savchuk.

“Here in Russia is big atmosphere, strange atmosphere, of fear, of lies. And not everyone will act as a normal citizen, or patriot, in this situation.”

Ms Savchuk and others are prepared to fight back against the methodical re-establishment of the security state in Russia.

She accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now. Because the people who run this factory are quite serious,” she said.

But she has no regrets.

“I did this with my eyes open.”

Equifax announced Thursday that its systems were hacked in May, exposing 143 million consumers’ personal information.

NPR, “Hackers Accessed The Personal Data Of 143 Million People, Equifax Says”, 7 Sept 2017:

Equifax, an international credit reporting agency, has announced that a cybersecurity breach exposed the personal information of 143 million U.S. consumers. In a statement released Thursday, the Atlanta-based agency acknowledged that “criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files.”

Those files include data such as Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses and, Equifax adds, “in some instances, driver’s license numbers.”

For a span of roughly two months — from mid-May through July 29, when Equifax says it uncovered the breach — hackers had access to this information, as well as the credit card numbers of about 209,000 consumers and “certain dispute documents with personal identifying information” of about 182,000.

All told, the number of American consumers affected constitutes about 44 percent of the U.S. population.

Equifax did not explain why more than two months passed before it discovered the hack, which also affected an unspecified number of consumers from Canada and the U.K.

Rick Smith, Chairman and CEO of Equifax, on Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Data.