How The White House Attacks Voters That Call It’s Bluff
The Most Secret Weapon that the White House has is not the legendary “Rod of God” kinetic satellite weapon. It is KIM KARDASHIAN!
The White House Press office is, according to Mitt Romney: “expert in Character Assassination Tactics”. They have Media Matters, Think Progress, Gawker Media, In-Q-Tel, New America Foundation, Sidney Blumenthal and the A.L.I.C.E. cartel of attack bloggers lined up with automated, Google-powered, Troll Farms, created to rain media hell on any adversary in the public.
The “Kardashian Engine” can make a non-issue into something, which the public believes is a big deal, by creating dialogue that does not actually exist. They use hired fake commenters, shill bloggers and the Google rigged web search engine.
Got a “problem person”? Robert Gibbs, at the White House, calls Nick Denton, at Gawker Media, and says: ”I have a target for you!”
Google is, now charged with, manipulating the web dialogue, and searches, about Obama, in the 2008 election, in order to get him elected. They use their high volume fake social media engines to also manufacture fake user testimonials about candidates. The GOP figured this out, though, and has put a counter-measures engine in place. Russia and China figured this out too, and copied it, while giving Google the Finger. Did Trump use his own “Kardashian Engine” to create his historic rise in the GOP ranks, and national polls? Why did Hillary wipe her server and her staff communications? Did she send emails coordinating hits on members of Congress, and the public, using the Kardashian Engine?
The following are related investigations into how they do it:
Did you piss off a corrupt White House politician and then have your life go to sh*t? Here is how they did it to you:
That corrupt Senator then had their chief of staff call either: In-Q-Tel, Tactical Resources or PsyoContract. These are consulting groups made up of former CIA operatives. Those kinds of services sell “hit-jobs”, using the latest government technology and psychological tactics. Here is what they did to you.
This activity is referred to as "Organized Corporate Stalking" - or "Political Gang Stalking" in the vernacular. Several million of Americans experience this type of activity in the US if they have been deemed a "dissident, activist, domestic threat or domestic terrorist."
There are dozens of websites and YouTube channels dedicated to these black ops which are perpetrated in every major city of the US (and small towns as well)
Moving objects around in someone's home is referred to as "gas-lighting" and is done so that the complainant/victim sounds delusional when they call the police for assistance.
After all, who is going to break into a home (usually without leaving a trace) and move a few objects around without stealing anything? It does not sound credible or believable.
Everything is done so there is plausible deniability, should the potential perpetrators ever be identified.
These tactics/techniques were used against American Embassy Staff in Cuba and Russia for years, however US authorities have been quite mum about it since the same techniques are used on a wide scale in the United States against "dissidents, activists" and anyone else who has been extra-judicially deemed a threat to the establishment, the status quo or large companies.
These activities are usually done in conjunction with vehicle vandalism/hacking, computer/e-mail/bank account hacking, mail tampering and untraceable, remotely-initiated damage to electronic devices and their power supplies.
Additionally victims of these covertly-styled assaults are also plagued by people passing by their residences at all hours and blowing their horns or revving their engines (referred to as a noise campaign).
Codes can be remotely stripped/read from computer keyboards, phones and alarm touch-pads since every key generates an electronic signature which can be read/culled from a distance - there are devices built specifically for this purpose.
Furthermore, these black ops are done while the victim’s name is simultaneously being slandered via false accusations of criminal activity, theft, violence, crimes of moral turpitude and prior mental health issues. The "teams" perpetrating these illegal acts will try and destroy every aspect of the target's life.
You are likely bugged and your vehicle tagged with a GPS, thus moving will not necessarily terminate the issue(s) you are experiencing - although if your experience(s) have been published it may alleviate some of the illegal activities.
These politicos will hire private security groups and criminals to follow their targets around in order to let them know that he/she is now "persona non grata" and being monitored.
Being a single woman - especially with a child makes these activities even more traumatizing.
These tactics were used by Hitler, Mao Tze Tung, the East German Stasi and the KGB.
All of these activities are done so that the perpetrators are hard to identify - and the criminal acts are hard to prove to the police - and in court. (plausible deniability).
You will find you can’t get a job. You will get many phone calls and emails from people with east indian accents asking you to approve submitting a resume for a great job. Each time you will never hear back from them. Your disappointment will increase. That is how they like it. Those were not real recruiters, they were operatives trying to build you up and let you down, over and over, in order to create a sense of self-doubt and a sense of personal failure, so that you will be too emotionally weakened to fight against the politician.
It is also referred to as "No-Touch Torture" and is used to intimidate the target in addition to making them psychologically more vulnerable. The technique was developed by the Stasi and is called Zersetzung
Zersetzung (German; variously translated as decomposition, corrosion, undermining, biodegradation or dissolution) was a working technique of the East German secret police, the Stasi. The "measures of Zersetzung", defined in the framework of a directive on police procedures in 1976,[1] were effectively used in the context of so-called "operational procedures" (in German Operative Vorgänge or OV). They replaced the overt terror of the Ulbricht era.
As to the practice of repressive persecution, Zersetzung comprised extensive and secret methods of control and manipulation, even in the personal relations of the target. The Stasi relied for this on its network of unofficial collaborators[2] (in German inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or IM), on the State's influence on institutions, and on "operational psychology". By targeted psychological attacks the Stasi tried in this way to deprive the dissident of any possibility of "hostile action".
Thanks to numerous files of the Stasi made public following "the turning" (Die Wende) of East Germany, the use of measures of Zersetzung is well documented. Estimates of the number of victims of such measures are on the order of a thousand, or even about 10,000,[3] of which 5,000 sustained irreversible damage.[4] Pensions for restitution have been created for the victims.
[Zersetzung is] an operational method of the Ministry for Security of State for an efficacious struggle against subversive doings, in particular in the treatment of operations. With Zersetzung, across different operational political activities, one gains influence over hostile and negative persons, in particular over that which is hostile and negative in their dispositions and beliefs, in such a way that these would be shaken off and changed little by little, and, if applicable, the contradictions and differences between the hostile and negative forces would be provoked, exploited, and reinforced.
The goal of Zersetzung is the fragmentation, paralysis, disorganization, and isolation of the hostile and negative forces, in order to impede thereby, in a preventive manner, the hostile and negative doings, to limit them in large part, or to totally avert them, and if applicable to prepare grounds for a political and ideological reestablishment.
Zersetzung is equally an immediate constitutive element of "operational procedures" and other preventive activities to impede hostile gatherings. The principal forces to put Zersetzung in practice are the unofficial collaborators. Zersetzung presupposes information and significant proof of hostile activities planned, prepared, and accomplished as well as anchor points corresponding to measures of Zersetzung.
Zersetzung must be produced on the basis of an analysis of the root of facts and the exact establishment of a concrete goal. Zersetzung must be executed in a uniform and supervised manner; its results must be documented.
The political explosivity of Zersetzung poses elevated imperatives in that which concerns the maintenance of secrecy.[5]
Political context
During the first decade of existence of the German Democratic Republic, political opposition was combatted primarily through the penal code, via accusations of incitement to war or boycott.[6] To counteract the isolation of the GDR on the international scene due to the construction of the Berlin wall in 1963, judicial terror was abandoned.[7] Especially since the debut of the Honecker era in 1971, the Stasi intensified its efforts to punish dissident behaviors without using the penal code.[8] Important motives were the desire on the part of the GDR for international recognition and rapprochement with West Germany at the end of the '60s. In fact the GDR was committed, in adhering to the Charter of the U.N.[9] and the Helsinki accords[10] as well as the fundamental treaty signed with the Federal Republic of Germany,[11] to respect human rights, or at least it announced its intention as such. The regime of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany decided thus to reduce the number of political prisoners, which was compensated for by practices of repression without imprisonment or judicial condemnation.[12][13]
In practice
The Stasi used Zersetzung essentially as a means of psychological oppression and persecution.[14] Findings of Operativen psychologie (psychological operations),[15] formulated into method at the Stasi's College of Legal Studies (Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit, or JHS), were applied to political opponents in an effort to undermine their self-confidence and self-esteem. Operations were designed to intimidate and destabilise them through subjection to repeated disappointments, and to socially alienate them through interference in and disruption of their relationships with others. The aim was to then induce personal crises in victims, leaving them too unnerved and psychologically distressed to have the time and energy for anti-government activism.[16] The Stasi intended that their role as mastermind of the operations remain concealed.[17][18] Jürgen Fuchs, a victim of Zersetzung who later wrote about his experience, described the Stasi's actions as “psychosocial crime”, and “an assault on the human soul”.[16]
Although its techniques had been established as effective by the late 1950s, Zersetzung was not defined in terms of scientific method until the mid-1970s, and only began to be carried out in a significantly systematic way in the 1970s and 1980s.[19] It is difficult to determine the number of people targeted, since source material has been deliberately and considerably redacted; it is known, however, that tatics were varied in scope, and that a number of different departments participated in their implementation. Overall there was a ratio of four or five authorised Zersetzung operators for each targeted group, and three for each individual.[20] Some sources indicate that around 5,000 people were “persistently victimised” by Zersetzung.[21] At the College of Legal Studies, the number of dissertations submitted on the subject of Zersetzung was in double figures.[22] It also had a comprehensive 50-page Zersetzung teaching manual, which included numerous examples of its practice.[23]
Institutions implementing and cooperating with Zersetzung operations
Almost all Stasi departments were involved in Zersetzung operations, although foremost among these in implementing them were the head department of the Stasi's directorate XX (Hauptabteilung XX) in Berlin, as well as its divisional offices in regional and municipal government. The function of the head and area Abteilung XXs was to maintain surveillance of religious communities; cultural and media establishments; alternative political parties; the GDR's many political establishment-affiliated mass social organisations; sport; and education and health services - effectively, as such, covering all aspects of civic life and activity.[24] The Stasi made use of the means available to them within, and as a circumstance of, the GDR's closed social system. An established, politically-motivated collaborative network (politisch-operatives Zusammenwirken, or POZW) provided them with extensive opportunities for interference in such situations as the sanctioning of professionals and students, expulsion from associations and sports clubs, and occasional arrests by the Volkspolizei[17] (the GDR's quasi-military national police). Refusal of permits for travel to socialist states, or denial of entry at Czechoslovakian and Polish border crossings where no visa requirement existed, were also arranged. The various collaborators (Partnern des operativen Zusammenwirkens) included branches of regional government, university and professional management, housing administrative bodies, the Sparkasse public savings bank, and in some cases head physicians.[25] The Stasi's Linie III (Observation), Abteilung 26 (Telephone and room surveillance) and M (Postal communications) departments provided essential background information for the designing of Zersetzung techniques, with Abteilung 32 procuring the required technology.[26]
The Stasi also collaborated with the secret services of other Eastern Bloc countries in implementing Zersetzung. One such example was the co-operation of the Polish secret services in actions taken against branches of the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation in the early 1960s, which would come to be known[27] as "innere Zersetzung"[28] (internal subversion).
Against individuals
The Stasi applied Zersetzung before, during, after, or instead of incarcerating the targeted individual. The "operational procedures" did not have as an aim, in general, to gather evidence for charges against the target, or to be able to begin criminal prosecutions. The Stasi considered the "measures of Zersetzung" rather in part as an instrument that was used when judiciary procedures were not convenient, or for political reasons such as the international image of the GDR.[29][30] In certain cases, the Stasi attempted meanwhile to knowingly inculpate an individual, as for example in the case of Wolf Biermann: The Stasi set him up with minors, hoping that he would allow himself to be seduced, and that they could then pursue criminal charges.[31] The crimes that they researched for such accusations were non-political, as for example drug possession, trafficking in customs or currencies, theft, financial fraud, and rape.[32]
…the Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it's described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally "biodegradation." But actually, it's a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn't try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions.
—Hubertus Knabe, German historian [33]
The proven forms of Zersetzung are described in the directive 1/76:
a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige in a database on one part true, verifiable and degrading, and on the other part false, plausible, irrefutable, and always degrading; a systematic organization of social and professional failures for demolishing the self-confidence of the individual; [...] stimulation of doubts with respect to perspectives on the future; stimulation of mistrust or mutual suspicion among groups [...]; putting in place spatial and temporal obstacles rendering impossible or at least difficult the reciprocal relations of a group [...], for example by [...] assigning distant workplaces. —Directive No. 1/76 of January 1976 for the development of "operational procedures".[34]
Beginning with intelligence obtained by espionage, the Stasi established "sociograms" and "psychograms" which it applied for the psychological forms of Zersetzung. They exploited personal traits, such as homosexuality, as well as supposed character weaknesses of the targeted individual — for example a professional failure, negligence of parental duties, pornographic interests, divorce, alcoholism, dependence on medications, criminal tendencies, passion for a collection or a game, or contacts with circles of the extreme right — or even the veil of shame from the rumors poured out upon one's circle of acquaintances.[35][36] From the point of view of the Stasi, the measures were the most fruitful when they were applied in connection with a personality; all "schematism" had to be avoided.[35]
For marketing and political manipulation, Google now maintains a sociogram of each user and manipulates each user via Stasi-like mood manipulation.
Moreover, methods of Zersetzung included espionage, overt, hidden, and feigned; opening letters and listening to telephone calls; encroachments on private property; manipulation of vehicles; and even poisoning food and using false medications.[37] Certain collaborators of the Stasi tacitly took into account the suicide of victims of Zersetzung.[38]
It has not been definitely established that the Stasi used x-rays to provoke long-term health problems in its opponents.[39] That said, Rudolf Bahro, Gerulf Pannach, and Jürgen Fuchs, three important dissidents who had been imprisoned at the same time, died of cancer within an interval of two years.[40] A study by the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik or BStU) has meanwhile rejected on the basis of extant documents such a fraudulent use of x-rays, and only mentions isolated and unintentional cases of the harmful use of sources of radiation, for example to mark documents.[41]
In the name of the target, the Stasi made little announcements, ordered products, and made emergency calls, to terrrorize him/her.[42][43] To threaten or intimidate or cause psychoses the Stasi assured itself of access to the target's living quarters and left visible traces of its presence, by adding, removing, and modifying objects.[32]
Against groups and social relations
The Stasi manipulated relations of friendship, love, marriage, and family by anonymous letters, telegrams and telephone calls as well as compromising photos, often altered.[44] In this manner, parents and children were supposed to systematically become strangers to one another.[45] To provoke conflicts and extramarital relations the Stasi put in place targeted seductions by Romeo agents.[31]
For the Zersetzung of groups, it infiltrated them with unofficial collaborators, sometimes minors.[46] The work of opposition groups was hindered by permanent counter-propositions and discord on the part of unofficial collaborators when making decisions.[47] To sow mistrust within the group, the Stasi made believe that certain members were unofficial collaborators; moreover by spreading rumors and manipulated photos,[48] the Stasi feigned indiscretions with unofficial collaborators, or placed members of targeted groups in administrative posts to make believe that this was a reward for the activity of an unofficial collaborator.[31] They even aroused suspicions regarding certain members of the group by assigning privileges, such as housing or a personal car.[31] Moreover the imprisonment of only certain members of the group gave birth to suspicions.[47]
Target groups for measures
The Stasi used Zersetzung tactics on individuals and groups. There was no particular homogeneous target group, as opposition in the GDR came from a number of different sources. Tactical plans were thus separately adapted to each perceived threat.[49] The Stasi nevertheless defined several main target groups:[50]
Prominent individuals targeted by Zersetzung operations included Jürgen Fuchs, Gerulf Pannach, Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann, Rainer Eppelmann, Reiner Kunze, husband and wife Gerd und Ulrike Poppe, and Wolfgang Templin.
Social and juridicial process
Once aware of his own status as a target, GDR opponent Wolfgang Templin tried, with some success, to bring details of the Stasi's Zersetzung activities to the attention of western journalists.[52] In 1977 Der Spiegel published a five-part article series (“Du sollst zerbrechen!” - "You're going to crack!") by the exiled Jürgen Fuchs, in which he describes the Stasi's “operational psychology”. The Stasi tried to discredit Fuchs and the contents of similar articles, publishing in turn claims that he had a paranoid view of its function,[53] and intending that Der Spiegel and other media would assume he was suffering from a persecution complex.[54][55] This, however, was refuted by the official Stasi documents examined after Die Wende (the political power shift in the GDR in 1989-90).
Because the scale and nature of Zersetzung were unknown both to the general population of the GDR and to people abroad, revelations of the Stasi's malicious tactics were met with some degree of disbelief by those affected.[56] Many still nowadays express incomprehension at how the Stasi's collaborators could have participated in such inhuman actions.[57]
Since Zersetzung as a whole, even after 1990, was not deemed to be illegal because of the principle of nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without law), actions against involvement in either its planning or implementation were not enforceable by the courts.[58] Because this specific legal definition of Zersetzung as a crime didn't exist,[59] only individual instances of its tactics could be reported. Acts which even according to GDR law were offences (such as the violation of Briefgeheimnis, the secrecy of correspondence) needed to have been reported to the GDR authorities soon after having been committed in order not to be subject to a statute of limitations clause.[60] Many of the victims experienced the additional complication that the Stasi was not identifiable as the originator in cases of personal injury and misadventure. Official documents in which Zersetzung methods were recorded often had no validity in court, and the Stasi had many files detailing its actual implementation destroyed.[61]
Unless they had been detained for at least 180 days, survivors of Zersetzung operations, in accordance with §17a of a 1990 rehabilitation act (the Strafrechtlichen Rehabilitierungsgesetzes, or StrRehaG), are not eligible for financial compensation. Cases of provable, systematically effected targeting by the Stasi, and resulting in employment-related losses and/or health damage, can be pursued under a law covering settlement of torts (Unrechtsbereinigungsgesetz, or 2. SED-UnBerG) as claims either for occupational rehabilitation or rehabilitation under administrative law. These overturn certain administrative provisions of GDR institutions and affirm their unconstitutionality. This is a condition for the social equalisation payments specified in the Bundesversorgungsgesetz (the war victims relief act of 1950). Equalisation payments of pension damages and for loss of earnings can also be applied for in cases where victimisation continued for at least three years, and where claimants can prove need.[62] The above examples of seeking justice have, however, been hindered by various difficulties victims have experienced, both in providing proof of the Stasi's encroachment into the areas of health, personal assets, education and employment, and in receiving official acknowledgement that the Stasi was responsible for personal damages (including psychic injury) as a direct result of Zersetzung operations.[63]
Modern use of techniques
Russia's secret police, the FSB, has been reported to use such techniques against foreign diplomats and journalists.[64]
See also
1. Jump up ^ Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge (OV)
2. Jump up ^ Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic: The Unofficial Collaborators (IM) of the MfS
3. Jump up ^ Süß, Strukturen, p. 217.
4. Jump up ^ Consider in this regard the written position taken by Michael Beleites, responsible for the files of the Stasi in the Free State of Saxony: PDF, visited 24 August 2010, as well as 3sat : Subtiler Terror – Die Opfer von Stasi-Zersetzungsmethoden, visited 24 August 2010.
5. Jump up ^ Ministry for Security of State, Dictionary of political and operational work, entry Zersetzung: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Hrsg.): Wörterbuch zur politisch-operativen Arbeit, 2. Auflage (1985), Stichwort: „Zersetzung“, GVS JHS 001-400/81, p. 464.
6. Jump up ^ Rainer Schröder: Geschichte des DDR-Rechts: Straf- und Verwaltungsrecht, forum historiae iuris, 6 avril 2004.
7. Jump up ^ Falco Werkentin: Recht und Justiz im SED-Staat. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn 1998, 2. durchgesehene Auflage 2000, S. 67.
8. Jump up ^ Sandra Pingel-Schliemann: Zerstörung von Biografien. Zersetzung als Phänomen der Honecker-Ära. In: Eckart Conze/Katharina Gajdukowa/Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten (Hrsg.): Die demokratische Revolution 1989 in der DDR. Köln 2009, S. 78–91.
9. Jump up ^ Art. 1 Abs. 3 UN-Charta. Dokumentiert in: 12. Deutscher Bundestag: Materialien der Enquete-Kommission zur Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland. Band 4, Frankfurt a. M. 1995, S. 547.
10. Jump up ^ Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa, Schlussakte, Helsinki 1975, S. 11.
11. Jump up ^ Art. 2 des Vertrages über die Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 21. Dezember 1972. In: Matthias Judt (Hrsg.): DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten – Beschlüsse, Berichte, interne Materialien und Alltagszeugnisse. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bd. 350, Bonn 1998, S. 517.
12. Jump up ^ Johannes Raschka: „Staatsverbrechen werden nicht genannt“ – Zur Zahl politischer Häftlinge während der Amtszeit Honeckers. In: Deutschlandarchiv. Band 30, Nummer 1, 1997, S. 196
13. Jump up ^ Jens Raschka: Einschüchterung, Ausgrenzung, Verfolgung – Zur politischen Repression in der Amtszeit Honeckers. Berichte und Studien, Band 14, Dresden 1998, S. 15.
14. Jump up ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke: Zur Nutzung und Auswertung der Stasi-Akten. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Nummer 4, 1993, S. 586.
15. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 229.
16. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 188.
17. ^ Jump up to: a b Jens Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 192f.
18. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Formen. S. 235.
19. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 202-204.
20. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 217.
21. Jump up ^ Siehe hierzu die schriftliche Stellungnahme des Sächsischen Landesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen Michael Beleites zur Anhörung des Rechtsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages zu den Gesetzentwürfen und Anträgen zur Verbesserung rehabilitierungsrechtlicher Vorschriften für Opfer politischer Verfolgung in der DDR vom 7. Mai 2007 (PDF, 682 KB), eingesehen am 24. August 2010, sowie 3sat: Subtiler Terror – Die Opfer von Stasi-Zersetzungsmethoden, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
22. Jump up ^ Günter Förster: Die Dissertationen an der „Juristischen Hochschule“ des MfS. Eine annotierte Bibliographie. BStU, Berlin 1997, Online-Quelle (Memento vom 13. Juli 2009 im Internet Archive).
23. Jump up ^ Anforderungen und Wege für eine konzentrierte, offensive, rationelle und gesellschaftlich wirksame Vorgangsbearbeitung. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam 1977, BStU, ZA, JHS 24 503.
24. Jump up ^ Jens Gieseke: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1950–1989/90 – Ein kurzer historischer Abriss. In: BF informiert. Nr. 21, Berlin 1998, S. 35.
25. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. In: Karsten Dümmel, Christian Schmitz (Hrsg.): Was war die Stasi? KAS, Zukunftsforum Politik Nr. 43, Sankt Augustin 2002, S. 31, PDF, 646 KB.
26. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 141–151.
27. Jump up ^ Waldemar Hirch: Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem ostdeutschen und dem polnischen Geheimdienst zum Zweck der „Zersetzung“ der Zeugen Jehovas. In: Waldemar Hirch, Martin Jahn, Johannes Wrobel (Hrsg.): Zersetzung einer Religionsgemeinschaft: die geheimdienstliche Bearbeitung der Zeugen Jehovas in der DDR und in Polen. Niedersteinbach 2001, S. 84–95.
28. Jump up ^ Aus einem Protokoll vom 16. Mai 1963, zit. n. Sebastian Koch: Die Zeugen Jehovas in Ostmittel-, Südost- und Südeuropa: Zum Schicksal einer Religionsgemeinschaft. Berlin 2007, S. 72.
29. Jump up ^ Richtlinie 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge vom 1. Januar 1976. Dokumentiert in: David Gill, Ulrich Schröter: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. Anatomie des Mielke-Imperiums. S. 390
30. Jump up ^ Lehrmaterial der Hochschule des MfS: Anforderungen und Wege für eine konzentrierte, rationelle und gesellschaftlich wirksame Vorgangsbearbeitung. Kapitel 11: Die Anwendung von Maßnahmen der Zersetzung in der Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge vom Dezember 1977, BStU, ZA, JHS 24 503, S. 11.
31. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 195f.
32. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Phänomen. S. 82f.
33. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: The dark secrets of a surveillance state, TED Salon, Berlin, 2014
34. Jump up ^ Roger Engelmann, Frank Joestel: Grundsatzdokumente des MfS. In: Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Siegfried Suckut, Thomas Großbölting (Hrsg.): Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden. MfS-Handbuch. Teil V/5, Berlin 2004, S. 287.
35. ^ Jump up to: a b Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. S. 27–29
36. Jump up ^ Arbeit der Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit in Potsdam aus dem Jahr 1978, MDA, MfS, JHS GVS 001-11/78. In: Pingel-Schliemann: Formen. S. 237.
37. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 266–278.
38. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 277.
39. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 280f.
40. Jump up ^ Der Spiegel 20/1999: In Kopfhöhe ausgerichtet (PDF, 697 KB), S. 42–44.
41. Jump up ^ Kurzdarstellung des Berichtes der Projektgruppe „Strahlen“ beim BStU zum Thema: „Einsatz von Röntgenstrahlen und radioaktiven Stoffen durch das MfS gegen Oppositionelle – Fiktion oder Realität?“, Berlin 2000.
42. Jump up ^ Udo Scheer: Jürgen Fuchs – Ein literarischer Weg in die Opposition. Berlin 2007, S. 344f.
43. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
44. Jump up ^ Gisela Schütte: Die unsichtbaren Wunden der Stasi-Opfer. In: Die Welt. 2. August 2010, eingesehen am 8. August 2010
45. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 254–257.
46. Jump up ^ Axel Kintzinger: „Ich kann keinen mehr umarmen“. In: Die Zeit. Nummer 41, 1998.
47. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 358f.
48. Jump up ^ Stefan Wolle: Die heile Welt der Diktatur. Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1971–1989. Bonn 1999, S. 159.
49. Jump up ^ Kollektivdissertation der Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit in Potsdam. In: Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 119.
50. Jump up ^ Jens Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 192f.
51. Jump up ^ Mike Dennis: Surviving the Stasi: Jehovah's Witnesses in Communist East Germany, 1965 to 1989. In: Religion, State and Society. Band 34, Nummer 2, 2006, S. 145-168
52. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
53. Jump up ^ Scheer: Fuchs. S. 347.
54. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
55. Jump up ^ Treffbericht des IMB „J. Herold“ mit Oberleutnant Walther vom 25. März 1986 über ein Gespräch mit dem „abgeschöpften“ SPIEGEL-Redakteur Ulrich Schwarz. Dok. in Jürgen Fuchs: Magdalena. MfS, Memphisblues, Stasi, Die Firma, VEB Horch & Gauck – Ein Roman. Berlin 1998, S. 145.
56. Jump up ^ Vgl. Interviews mit Sandra Pingel-Schliemann (PDF; 114 kB) und Gisela Freimarck (PDF; 80 kB).
57. Jump up ^ Vgl. Interviews mit Sandra Pingel-Schliemann (PDF; 114 kB) und Gisela Freimarck (PDF; 80 kB).
58. Jump up ^ Interview mit der Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen Marianne Birthler im Deutschlandradio Kultur vom 25. April 2006: Birthler: Ex-Stasi-Offiziere wollen Tatsachen verdrehen, eingesehen am 7. August 2010.
59. Jump up ^ Renate Oschlies: Die Straftat „Zersetzung“ kennen die Richter nicht. In: Berliner Zeitung. 8. August 1996.
60. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: Die Täter sind unter uns – Über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur. Berlin 2007, S. 100.
61. Jump up ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Stasi konkret – Überwachung und Repression in der DDR, München 2013, S. 211, 302f.
62. Jump up ^ Stasiopfer.de: Was können zur Zeit sogenannte „Zersetzungsopfer“ beantragen?, PDF, 53 KB, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
63. Jump up ^ Jörg Siegmund: Die Verbesserung rehabilitierungsrechtlicher Vorschriften – Handlungsbedarf, Lösungskonzepte, Realisierungschancen, Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung, Symposium zur Verbesserung der Unterstützung der Opfer der SED-Diktatur vom 10. Mai 2006, PDF (Memento vom 28. November 2010 im Internet Archive), 105 KB, S. 3, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
64. Jump up ^ Russian spy agency targeting western diplomats, The Guardian, 2011-7-23
How Do You Fight Back When Large Corrupt Entities Attack You: Your adversaries will hire private investigators known as “Opposition Researchers”. Regular people call them“hit-men”. From the famously vindictive SidneyBlumenthal, to the notorious Richard Berman, to unknown college kid junior “hit-men” in training; whenthey come for you it will be harsh, massively financed and driven by the madness of power-hungry campaign technology billionaires.
Your saving grace, though, will always be this: The “bad guys” are forced to operate in darkness and stealth, once exposed to the light, they will wither and crawl away. In this new Age of Transparency, the ability to shed light
on bad guys is more potent than ever! Look to major journalists, social networks and carbon-copy every law enforcement agency, so everyone knows what is going on, and so that no single entity can “stone-wall” or cover-up.
Tips for Tech Companies Under Attack – 1. Cooperate with every law enforcement agency request. Every law enforcement agency will have an interest in terminating felony-grade law-breaking.
2. When they seek to destroy your reputation. Prove them wrong in public. In our case, the volume of greatreferences and broadcast news acclaim, posted on this site, counters any credibility attacks. They will try to spin the phrase “scam” or “not credible” into their attacks. Prove them wrong with the facts. Offer to meet them in any federal court or live TV debate to prove the facts. If the “bad guys” are involved in crime, be sure to show those facts in your public debate, so that people consider the source of the attacks. It isn’t possible to take a considered read of our references and proven deliverable documentation and not realize that any “scam” attack media/blog clips are fabricated by the attackers. In our case, we have seen law enforcement records and investigator documents proving severe felony-level crimes were engaged in by the people suspected of attacking our Team. We are extremely confident about who will be looking bad when everything is all-said-and-done. In today’s total information world, you can hire thousands of services that can track the off-shore tax evasion accounts, escort services, political bribes and illegal PAC groups, kick-backs, insider trading and other criminal actions that any criminal billionaire, that is attacking you is involved in. If you find such information, help the law enforcement people by delivering it to all of them. The level of felony crimes, these kinds of people get involved in, are “felony-grade embezzlement and racketeering matters”, according to the FBI. They are going to get in pretty big trouble. In the cases where they used taxpayer money to stage their crimes, they are going to get in Super Big trouble.
3. Sue them. There are now contingency law firms who will cover the costs of going after big bad guys in exchange for a percentage of the judgement. For example: Many people, and countries, have now proven that Google rigs it’s search engines to harm it’s adversaries. If Google did that to you, the technical proof now exists and you can win in court and get compensated for the damages they caused you.
4. Watch out for “moles”. Crazy rich people have private eye’s and ex-employees that they pay to get a job at your company. They pretend that they are helping you, then they sabotage your effort. Consider past jobs that future employees had with your attackers.
5. Watch the news coverage for exposes about crimes that your attackers are suspected of being involved in and contact others that were harmed by the attackers. Form a support coalition with others that were damaged by the attackers.
6. Read about who does hired character assassinations, and how they do it, at THIS LINK and watch for the early signs of the attacks.
7. To understand the process, watch some of the movies about how the bad guys sabotage: Francis Coppola’s:Tucker, A Man and His Dream; Greg Kinear’s: Flash of Genius, and read some of the history of the “tech take-downs” at THIS LINK http://wp.me/P1EyVm-xH
8. Stay on the “side of the Angels”. Good eventually wins over evil. In this new “Age of Transparency”, evil is losing faster than ever.
9. As punishment against you, rich political campaign backers will try to have their federal lackey’s change the law to hurt you. If you are a tech group, for example, the “bad guys”, might organize to suddenly try to change the patent laws so that your business is destroyed. When billionaires put bribes in the right pockets, they accomplish sweeping policy change. Don’t let that happen. Expose the “who” and the “why” in such tactics.
10. Consider Quid-Pro-Quo. In many countries the rule is: “if they do it to you, you have every right to do it back to them”
11. Watch out for “honey traps” in your activities and in on-line sites. Read the Snowden/Greenwald reports on what “Honey Traps” are.
12. The Bad Guys are usually very involved in politics because they like to control things. In order to control politics they own many stealth tabloid publications where they can order attack stories written about you. Some of these kinds of people own famous online media tabloids (ie: Gawker Media Group) and stock tip publications which are really just shill operations for their agendas and attacks. Identify these publications and partner with every person, or company, who they have coordinated attacks on in the past. Read about their attacks on inventor Mike Cheiky, Gary D. Conley, Aaron Swartz, Stan Meyer, Preston Tucker and hundreds of other innovators ( http://wp.me/P1EyVm-xH ) that they wanted “out of the way”.
13. Certain “special interests” own, and control, the content on Google, Reddit, Hearst Publications, Motley Fool and other “publication outlets”. You will only see glowing reports about the “bad guys” on those. You will see no negative reports about the “bad guys”, allowed on those sites, and every bad report about you will be manually up-ranked and locked into the top slot on their page in order to damage you. The down-side for the bad guys, though, is that the internet remembers everything. You can now prove, in court, showing technical and historical metric data, that they intentionally locked and damaged you and you can get compensated for the damages.
14. Every single troll blog comment, every pseudo attack article about you, everything is already tracked back to the actual author. The NSA have done it, that is well known. NO amount of TOR, or VPN on top of VPN or stealthing software can hide a troll attacker any more. What is only now becoming known is that the official, and also the independent hacker, Chinese and Russian spies have got almost all of that information too. Hackers have broken into Sony, The White House, All of Target, All of the Federal Employee Records, everything. In a court case you can now, legally, subpoena NSA records to sue the attackers. Others, hearing of your filed case, may just show up and give you the information. Attackers cannot hide behind anonymity any more. Those who were blogging that you “sleep with goats” and “eat unborn children” can now be found out and delt with.
15. Do you have on-line stores and paypal or credit card accounts that take payments at those stores? Trying to make a little cash on the side? Confused about why you never get any orders? The attackers have DNS-re-routed your stores and payment certificates, spoofed your sites and turned off all of your income potential from those on-line options in order to damage your economic potential. Illegal? Yes. Happening to people every day? Yes. Get professional IT services to document the spoofs, and re-routes, and sue the operators of those tactics that are attacking your revenue stream.
16. It costs $50,000.00 to bribe a Senator. Some of these tech billionaires earn that much in 3 minutes. Beware of your Senator. Senators take stock options in tech companies as bribes, watch for linkages. See the 60 Minutes Episode called: Congress Trading On Insider Information.
17. Want a job? Forget about it! The bad guys went into Axciom, Oracle, SAP, and all of the Human Resources and Recruiter databases, and put “red flag notices” on your profile. You will get some great first interviews, but when they run your back-ground check, you will never hear back from that interviewer again. You got “HR Black-listed”, in retribution, for accidentally bothering a campaign billionaire. Hire an HR service to look and print out your false “red flag” HR data-base inserts and use those as evidence in your lawsuit.
18. (This one, submitted by a Washington Post reporter): They will anonymously put all of your email addresses on blacklists, and watch-lists, so that you can’t use services like craigslist, cafe press, zazzle or other on-line services to make money. If you try to open any accounts on those services, you either won’t be able to create an account or, you will get an account, but all of your orders will get “spoofed” into oblivion so you can’t make any money. The attackers believe that by causing you as much economic hard-ship as possible, they can get retribution for what-ever they have perceived that you have done to offend them. Again, use an IT forensic services group to get the data to show this is happening, trace it, and sue the perpetrators.
19. Their actions provide the proof. When you look out on the internet and add up the pronouncements of “scam”, “sleeping with goats”, etc. The volume of attack items proves that no mere mortal, or company, could have acquired that much media unless it was placed there by very wealthy parties. Everyone now knows that the web is controlled. The volume of attacks can often prove that those attacks are fabricated. Additionally, IP Trace Routing and digital tracking now can prove the attackers manipulation of your data, email and website traffic. One of your best sets of evidence will come from the attackers, themselves. The bad guys always leave a digital trail of bread-crumbs leading right back to themselves. You can hire an IT company to build a “tracking array” comprised of hundreds of websites which are bait to catch them in the act. Regarding: Paranoia vs. documented evidence. If you, and others have experienced the tactics, and the police have recorded the tactics being used against you, it isn’t paranoia to be cautious.
55 Savushkina Street, last known home of the Internet Research Agency. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
The Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
By ADRIAN
Читайте эту статью на русском.
Around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. “Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM,” the message read. “Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com.”
Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling
St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthur’s job. But he hadn’t heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadn’t even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But he’d heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?
If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. “A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals,” a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick
Dozens of journalists, media outlets and politicians, from Louisiana to New York City, found their Twitter accounts inundated with messages about the disaster. “Heather, I’m sure that the explosion at the #ColumbianChemicals is really dangerous. Louisiana is really screwed now,” a user named @EricTraPPP tweeted at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Heather Nolan. Another posted a screenshot of CNN’s home page, showing that the story had already made national news. ISIS had claimed credit for the attack, according to one YouTube video; in it, a man showed his TV screen, tuned to an Arabic news channel, on which masked ISIS fighters delivered a speech next to looping footage of an explosion. A woman named Anna McClaren (@zpokodon9) tweeted at Karl Rove: “Karl, Is this really ISIS who is responsible for #ColumbianChemicals? Tell @Obama that we should bomb Iraq!” But anyone who took the trouble to check CNN.com would have found no news of a spectacular Sept. 11 attack by ISIS. It was all fake: the screenshot, the videos, the photographs.
In St. Mary Parish, Duval Arthur quickly made a few calls and found that none of his employees had sent the alert. He called Columbian Chemicals, which reported no problems at the plant. Roughly two hours after the first text message was sent, the company put out a news release, explaining that reports of an explosion were false. When I called Arthur a few months later, he dismissed the incident as a tasteless prank, timed to the anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Personally I think it’s just a real sad, sick sense of humor,” he told me. “It was just someone who just liked scaring the daylights out of people.” Authorities, he said, had tried to trace the numbers that the text messages had come from, but with no luck. (The F.B.I. told me the investigation was still open.)
The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers. The YouTube video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A Wikipedia page was even created for the Columbian Chemicals disaster, which cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off.
And the hoax was just one in a wave of similar attacks during the second half of last year. On Dec. 13, two months after a handful of Ebola cases in the United States touched off a minor media panic, many of the same Twitter accounts used to spread the Columbian Chemicals hoax began to post about an outbreak of Ebola in Atlanta. The campaign followed the same pattern of fake news reports and videos, this time under the hashtag #EbolaInAtlanta, which briefly trended in Atlanta. Again, the attention to detail was remarkable, suggesting a tremendous amount of effort. A YouTube video showed a team of hazmat-suited medical workers transporting a victim from the airport. Beyoncé’s recent single “7/11” played in the background, an apparent attempt to establish the video’s contemporaneity. A truck in the parking lot sported the logo of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
On the same day as the Ebola hoax, a totally different group of accounts began spreading a rumor that an unarmed black woman had been shot to death by police. They all used the hashtag #shockingmurderinatlanta. Here again, the hoax seemed designed to piggyback on real public anxiety; that summer and fall were marked by protests over the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. In this case, a blurry video purports to show the shooting, as an onlooker narrates. Watching it, I thought I recognized the voice — it sounded the same as the man watching TV in the Columbian Chemicals video, the one in which ISIS supposedly claims responsibility. The accent was unmistakable, if unplaceable, and in both videos he was making a very strained attempt to sound American. Somehow the result was vaguely Australian.
Who was behind all of this? When I stumbled on it last fall, I had an idea. I was already investigating a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the Internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency. The agency had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.” The more I investigated this group, the more links I discovered between it and the hoaxes. In April, I went to St. Petersburg to learn more about the agency and its brand of information warfare, which it has aggressively deployed against political opponents at home, Russia’s perceived enemies abroad and, more recently, me.
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Seven months after the Columbian Chemicals hoax, I was in a dim restaurant in St. Petersburg, peering out the window at an office building at 55 Savushkina Street, the last known home of the Internet Research Agency. It sits in St. Petersburg’s northwestern Primorsky District, a quiet neighborhood of ugly Soviet apartment buildings and equally ugly new office complexes. Among the latter is 55 Savushkina; from the front, its perfect gray symmetry, framed by the rectangular pillars that flank its entrance, suggests the grim impenetrability of a medieval fortress. Behind the glass doors, a pair of metal turnstiles stand guard at the top of a short flight of stairs in the lobby. At 9 o’clock on this Friday night in April, except for the stairwell and the lobby, the building was entirely dark.
This puzzled my dining companion, a former agency employee named Ludmila Savchuk. She shook her head as she lifted the heavy floral curtain to take another look. It was a traditional Russian restaurant, with a dining room done up like a parlor from the early 1900s, complete with bentwood chairs and a vintage globe that showed Alaska as part of Russia. Savchuk’s 5-year-old son sat next to her, slurping down a bowl of ukha, a traditional fish soup. For two and a half months, Savchuk told me, she had worked 12-hour shifts in the building, always beginning at 9 a.m. and finishing at 9 p.m., at which point she and her co-workers would eagerly stream out the door at once. “At 9 p.m. sharp, there should be a crowd of people walking outside the building,” she said. “Nine p.m. sharp.” One Russian newspaper put the number of employees at 400, with a budget of at least 20 million rubles (roughly $400,000) a month. During her time in the organization, there were many departments, creating content for every popular social network: LiveJournal, which remains popular in Russia; VKontakte, Russia’s homegrown version of Facebook; Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; and the comment sections of Russian news outlets. One employee estimated the operation filled 40 rooms.
Every day at the Internet Research Agency was essentially the same, Savchuk told me. The first thing employees did upon arriving at their desks was to switch on an Internet proxy service, which hid their I.P. addresses from the places they posted; those digital addresses can sometimes be used to reveal the real identity of the poster. Savchuk would be given a list of the opinions she was responsible for promulgating that day. Workers received a constant stream of “technical tasks” — point-by-point exegeses of the themes they were to address, all pegged to the latest news. Ukraine was always a major topic, because of the civil war there between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army; Savchuk and her co-workers would post comments that disparaged the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, and highlighted Ukrainian Army atrocities. Russian domestic affairs were also a major topic. Last year, after a financial crisis hit Russia and the ruble collapsed, the professional trolls left optimistic posts about the pace of recovery. Savchuk also says that in March, after the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered, she and her entire team were moved to the department that left comments on the websites of Russian news outlets and ordered to suggest that the opposition itself had set up the murder.
Savchuk told me she shared an office with about a half-dozen teammates. It was smaller than most, because she worked in the elite Special Projects department. While other workers churned out blandly pro-Kremlin comments, her department created appealing online characters who were supposed to stand out from the horde. Savchuk posed as three of these creations, running a blog for each one on LiveJournal. One alter ego was a fortuneteller named Cantadora. The spirit world offered Cantadora insight into relationships, weight loss, feng shui — and, occasionally, geopolitics. Energies she discerned in the universe invariably showed that its arc bent toward Russia. She foretold glory for Vladimir Putin, defeat for Barack Obama and Petro Poroshenko. The point was to weave propaganda seamlessly into what appeared to be the nonpolitical musings of an everyday person.
In fact, she was a troll. The word “troll” was popularized in the early 1990s to denounce the people who derailed conversation on Usenet discussion lists with interminable flame wars, or spammed chat rooms with streams of disgusting photos, choking users with a cloud of filth. As the Internet has grown, the problem posed by trolls has grown more salient even as their tactics have remained remarkably constant. Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester. Any major conflict is accompanied by a raging online battle between trolls on both sides.
As Savchuk and other former employees describe it, the Internet Research Agency had industrialized the art of trolling. Management was obsessed with statistics — page views, number of posts, a blog’s place on LiveJournal’s traffic charts — and team leaders compelled hard work through a system of bonuses and fines. “It was a very strong corporate feeling,” Savchuk says. Her schedule gave her two 12-hour days in a row, followed by two days off. Over those two shifts she had to meet a quota of five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and 150 to 200 comments on other workers’ posts. The grueling schedule wore her down. She began to feel queasy, she said, posting vitriol about opposition leaders of whom she had no actual opinion, or writing nasty words about Ukrainians when some of her closest acquaintances, including her own ex-husband, were Ukrainian.
Employees were mostly in their 20s but were drawn from a broad cross-section of Russian society. It seemed as if the agency’s task was so large that it would hire almost anyone who responded to the many ads it posted on job boards, no matter how undereducated or politically ignorant they were. Posts teemed with logical and grammatical errors. “They were so stupid,” says Marat Burkhardt, who worked for two months in the department of forums, posting 135 comments a day on little-read message boards about remote Russian towns. “You see these people with a lot of tattoos. They’re so cool, like they’re from New York; very hip clothing, very hip tattoos, like they’re from Williamsburg. But they are stupid.” In office conversation, they used gay slurs to refer to Petro Poroshenko and called Barack Obama a monkey. Management tried to rectify their ignorance with grammar classes. Others had “politology” classes to outline the proper Russian point of view on current events. Yet the exact point of their work was left unclear to them. The handful of employees I spoke with did not even know the name of the company’s chief executive. They had signed a nondisclosure agreement but no official contract. Salaries were surprisingly high for the work; Savchuk’s was 41,000 rubles a month ($777), or as much as a tenured university professor earns. “I can’t say they clearly explain to you what your purpose there is,” Savchuk says. “But they created such an atmosphere that people would understand they were doing something important and secretive and very highly paid. And that they won’t be able to find a job like this anywhere else.”
Savchuk is 34, but her taste in clothes runs toward the teenage: The night of our dinner she wore a plaid dress and a billowing neon yellow jacket, and her head was swaddled in a fuzzy hood with animal ears. She credits her innocent appearance for allowing her to infiltrate the Internet Research Agency without raising alarms. While employed there, she copied dozens of documents to her personal email account and also plied her co-workers for information. She made a clandestine video of the office. In February, she leaked it all to a reporter for Moi Raion, a local newspaper known for its independent reporting. The documents, together with her story, offered the most detailed look yet into the daily life of a pro-Kremlin troll. Though she quit the agency the day the exposé was published, she was continuing her surveillance from the outside. She brought a camera to our dinner in hopes of documenting the changing of the shifts, which she planned to post to the VKontakte page of Information Peace, the group she founded to fight the agency. Her ultimate goal is to shut it down entirely, believing that its information warfare is contributing to an increasingly dark atmosphere in Russia. “Information peace is the start of real peace,” she says.
But at 10 minutes after 9 p.m., still no crowd had entered or left 55 Savushkina. Finally, around 9:30, a group of five young people approached the building and walked inside. Savchuk perked up, grabbed the camera and began to film the scene. Now more started filtering in, each of them stopping at the guard desk to check in. I counted at least 30 in all. Savchuk told me with pride that she believed the agency had changed its schedule to confound journalists, who began to stake out the place after her exposé.
Savchuk is accustomed to antagonizing powerful people. She has been a longtime environmental activist in the town of Pushkin, the suburb of St. Petersburg where she lives; her main cause before the troll farm was saving forests and parks from being paved over by well-connected developers. Last year she even ran for a seat on her municipal council as an independent, which in Russia requires a level of optimism bordering on delusion. On Election Day, she told me, state employees — health care workers, teachers, law enforcement, etc. — came to the polls wielding lists of candidates they had been “encouraged” to vote for, all of them associated with United Russia, the governing party of Vladimir Putin. (She lost her race.) Savchuk has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Research Agency for violating labor rights laws, citing the lack of official contracts. She has enlisted the help of a well-known human rights lawyer named Ivan Pavlov, who has spent years fighting for transparency laws in Russia; he took on Savchuk’s case in hopes that it would force the agency to answer questions about its business on the record.
Several Russian media outlets have claimed that the agency is funded by Evgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch restaurateur called “the Kremlin’s chef” in the independent press for his lucrative government contracts and his close relationship with Putin. When a reporter from the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta infiltrated the agency posing as a job seeker, she discovered that one of the team leaders was an employee of Prigozhin’s Concord holding company. (The reporter was familiar with her because the woman was famous among journalists for having been deployed by Prigozhin to spy on Novaya Gazeta.) The suspicion around Prigozhin was bolstered when emails leaked by hackers showed an accountant at Concord approving payments to the agency. If the speculation is accurate, it would not be the first time that Prigozhin has used his enormous wealth to fund quixotic schemes against his enemies: According to Novaya Gazeta, a documentary he backed, which later ran on the Kremlin-controlled NTV, claimed that the protesters who participated in the enormous anti-Putin demonstrations of 2011 were paid agents provocateurs, some of them bribed by United States government officials, who fed them cookies. “I think of him as Dr. Evil,” says Andrei Soshnikov, the reporter at Moi Raion to whom Savchuk leaked her documents. (My calls to Concord went unreturned.)
Savchuk’s revelations about the agency have fascinated Russia not because they are shocking but because they confirm what everyone has long suspected: The Russian Internet is awash in trolls. “This troll business becomes more popular year by year,” says Platon Mamatov, who says that he ran his own troll farm in the Ural Mountains from 2008 to 2013. During that time he employed from 20 to 40 people, mostly students and young mothers, to carry out online tasks for Kremlin contacts and local and regional authorities from Putin’s United Russia party. Mamatov says there are scores of operations like his around the country, working for government authorities at every level. Because the industry is secretive, with its funds funneled through a maze of innocuous-sounding contracts and shell businesses, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people are at work trolling today. But Mamatov claims “there are thousands — I’m not sure about how many, but yes, really, thousands.”
The boom in pro-Kremlin trolling can be traced to the antigovernment protests of 2011, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets after evidence of fraud in the recent Parliamentary election emerged. The protests were organized largely over Facebook and Twitter and spearheaded by leaders, like the anticorruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who used LiveJournal blogs to mobilize support. The following year, when Vyascheslav Volodin, the new deputy head of Putin’s administration and architect of his domestic policy, came into office, one of his main tasks was to rein in the Internet. Volodin, a lawyer who studied engineering in college, approached the problem as if it were a design flaw in a heating system. Forbes Russia reported that Volodin installed in his office a custom-designed computer terminal loaded with a system called Prism, which monitored public sentiment online using 60 million sources. According to the website of its manufacturer, Prism “actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremism.” Or, as Forbes put it, “Prism sees social media as a battlefield.”
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Ludmila Savchuk, an activist and a former mole in the Internet Research Agency. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
The battle was conducted on multiple fronts. Laws were passed requiring bloggers to register with the state. A blacklist allowed the government to censor websites without a court order. Internet platforms like Yandex were subjected to political pressure, while others, like VKontakte, were brought under the control of Kremlin allies. Putin gave ideological cover to the crackdown by calling the entire Internet a “C.I.A. project,” one that Russia needed to be protected from. Restrictions online were paired with a new wave of digital propaganda. The government consulted with the same public relations firms that worked with major corporate brands on social-media strategy. It began paying fashion and fitness bloggers to place pro-Kremlin material among innocuous posts about shoes and diets, according to Yelizaveta Surnacheva, a journalist with the magazine Kommersant Vlast. Surnacheva told me over Skype that the government was even trying to place propaganda with popular gay bloggers — a surprising choice given the notorious new law against “gay propaganda,” which fines anyone who promotes homosexuality to minors.
All of this has contributed to a dawning sense, among the Russian journalists and activists I spoke with, that the Internet is no longer a natural medium for political opposition. “The myth that the Internet is controlled by the opposition is very, very old,” says Leonid Volkov, a liberal politician and campaign manager to Alexei Navalny. “It’s not true since at least three years.” Part of this is simple demographics: The Internet audience has expanded from its early adopters, who were more likely to be well-educated liberal intelligentsia, to the whole of Russia, which overwhelmingly supports Putin. Also, by working every day to spread Kremlin propaganda, the paid trolls have made it impossible for the normal Internet user to separate truth from fiction.
“The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” Volkov said, when we met in the office of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “You have to remember the Internet population of Russia is just over 50 percent. The rest are yet to join, and when they join it’s very important what is their first impression.” The Internet still remains the one medium where the opposition can reliably get its message out. But their message is now surrounded by so much garbage from trolls that readers can become resistant before the message even gets to them. During the protests, a favorite tactic of the opposition was making anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Today, waves of trolls and bots regularly promote pro-Putin hashtags. What once was an exhilarating act of popular defiance now feels empty. “It kind of discredited the idea of political hashtags,” says Ilya Klishin, the web editor for the independent television station TV Rain who, in 2011, created the Facebook page for the antigovernment protests.
Russia’s information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history, and its target is nothing less than the utility of the Internet as a democratic space. In the midst of such a war, the Runet (as the Russian Internet is often called) can be an unpleasant place for anyone caught in the crossfire. Soon after I met Leonid Volkov, he wrote a post on his Facebook wall about our interview, saying that he had spoken with someone from The New York Times. A former pro-Kremlin blogger later warned me about this. Kremlin allies, he explained, monitored Volkov’s page, and now they would be on guard. “That was not smart,” he said.
The chain that links the Columbian Chemicals hoax to the Internet Research Agency begins with an act of digital subterfuge perpetrated by its online enemies. Last summer, a group called Anonymous International — believed to be unaffiliated with the well-known hacktivist group Anonymous — published a cache of hundreds of emails said to have been stolen from employees at the agency. It was just one hack in a long series that Anonymous International had carried out against the Kremlin in recent months. The group leaked embarrassing photos of Putin allies and incriminating emails among officials. It claimed to have hacked into Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s phone, and reportedly hacked his Twitter account, tweeting: “I’m resigning. I am ashamed of this government’s actions. Forgive me.”
The emails indicated that the Internet Research Agency had begun to troll in English. One document outlined a project called “World Translation”; the problem, it explained, was that the foreign Internet was biased four to one against Russia, and the project aimed to change the ratio. Another email contained a spreadsheet that listed some of the troll accounts the agency was using on the English-language web. After BuzzFeed reported on the leak, I used the spreadsheet to start mapping the network of accounts on Facebook and Twitter, trying to draw connections.
One account was called “I Am Ass.” Ass had a Twitter account, an Instagram account, multiple Facebook accounts and his own website. In his avatars, Ass was depicted as a pair of cartoon buttocks with an ugly, smirking face. He filled his social-media presences with links to news articles, along with his own commentary. Ass had a puerile sense of humor and only a rudimentary grasp of the English language. He also really hated Barack Obama. Ass denounced Obama in posts strewn with all-caps rants and scatological puns. One characteristic post linked to a news article about an ISIS massacre in Iraq, which Ass shared on Facebook with the comment: “I’m scared and farting! ISIS is a monster awakened by Obama when he unleashed this disastrous Iraq war!”
Despite his unpleasant disposition, Ass had a half-dozen or so fans who regularly liked and commented on his posts. These fans shared some unusual characteristics. Their Facebook accounts had all been created in the summer of 2014. They all appeared to be well-dressed young men and women who lived in large American cities, yet they seemed to have no real-life friends. Instead, they spent their free time leaving anti-Obama comments on the Facebook posts of American media outlets like CNN, Politico and Fox News. Their main Facebook interactions, especially those of the women, appeared to be with strangers who commented on their physical appearance. The women were all very attractive — so attractive, indeed, that a search revealed that some of their profile photos had been stolen from models and actors. It became clear that the vast majority of Ass’s fans were not real people. They were also trolls.
I friended as many of the trolls on Facebook as I could and began to observe their ways. Most of the content they shared was drawn from a network of other pages that, like Ass’s, were clearly meant to produce entertaining and shareable social-media content. There was the patriotic Spread Your Wings, which described itself as “a community for everyone whose heart is with America.” Spread Your Wings posted photos of American flags and memes about how great it was to be an American, but the patriotism rang hollow once you tried to parse the frequent criticisms of Obama, an incoherent mishmash of liberal and conservative attacks that no actual American would espouse. There was also Art Gone Conscious, which posted bad art and then tenuously connected it to Obama’s policy failures, and the self-explanatory Celebrities Against Obama. The posts churned out every day by this network of pages were commented on and shared by the same group of trolls, a virtual Potemkin village of disaffected Americans.
After following the accounts for a few weeks, I saw a strange notification on Facebook. One account, which claimed to be a woman from Seattle named Polly Turner, RSVPed to a real-life event. It was a talk in New York City to commemorate the opening of an art exhibit called Material Evidence. I was vaguely aware of Material Evidence, thanks to eye-catching advertisements that had appeared in subway stations and on the sides of buses throughout New York City: a black-and-white photo of masked men in camouflage, overlaid with the slogan “Syria, Ukraine … Who’s Next?” Material Evidence’s website described it as a traveling exhibition that would reveal “the full truth” about the civil war in Syria, as well as about 2014’s Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, through a combination of “unique footage, artefacts, video.” I clicked on the Material Evidence talk and saw that a number of other trolls had been invited, including my old friend I Am Ass.
Walking into Material Evidence, mounted last September in the cavernous ArtBeam gallery in Chelsea, was like walking into a real-life version of the hall of mirrors I’d stumbled into on Facebook. A sign at the front declared that the show did not “support a specific political goal,” but the message became clear as soon as I began to browse the images. Large, well-composed photos testified to the barbarity of the Syrian rebels, bent on slaughtering handsome Syrian soldiers and innocent civilians alike. A grim panorama showed a gymnasium supposedly used by rebels to torture prisoners. There was a heroic, sunlit portrait of a Syrian Army officer. A room hidden behind a curtain displayed gory photos of rebel-caused civilian causalities, “provided by the Syrian ministry of defense.”
Then there were the pictures from the Ukrainian revolution, which focused almost exclusively on the Right Sector, a small group of violent, right-wing, anti-Russian protesters with a fondness for black balaclavas. Russian authorities have seized upon Right Sector to paint the entire revolution, backed by a huge swath of Ukrainian society, as orchestrated by neo-fascist thugs. The show’s decision to juxtapose the rebellions in Syria and Ukraine was never clearly explained, perhaps because the only connection possible was that both targeted leaders supported by Russia.
On the floor in front of many of the photos sat the actual items that appeared in them, displayed under glass cases. How, exactly, did organizers procure the very same battered motorcycle helmet that a Ukrainian protester wore in a photo while brawling with riot police? Who had fronted the money to purchase a mangled white van, supposedly used by Syrian rebels in a botched suicide bombing, and transport it to New York City? Few answers were forthcoming from Benjamin Hiller, the Berlin-based German-American photojournalist who was put forth as the curator of Material Evidence. He sat at a table in the front of the gallery, a heavyset bearded man dressed entirely in black. He told me that the show had been organized by an independent collective of European, Russian and Syrian war photographers who were fed up with the one-sided view of conflicts presented by Western media. He said they simply wanted to show the “other side.” Hiller claimed that the funds to rent the space, take out the ads, transport the material and create a $40,000 grant advertised on the Material Evidence website had been raised through “crowdfunding.” (Hiller has since left the organization and says that because of the show’s “misinformations” and “nonjournalistic approach,” he “does not want to be affiliated anymore with the project.”)
When I got home, I searched Twitter for signs of a campaign. Sure enough, dozens of accounts had been spamming rave reviews under the hashtag #MaterialEvidence. I clicked on one, a young woman in aviator sunglasses calling herself Zoe Foreman. (I later discovered her avatar had been stolen.) Most of her tweets were unremarkable song lyrics and inspirational quotes. But on Sept. 11 of last year, she spent hours spamming politicians and journalists about a horrific chemical plant explosion in St. Mary Parish, La. The source field on Twitter showed that the tweets Zoe Foreman — and the majority of other trolls — sent about #ColumbianChemicals were posted using a tool called Masss Post, which is associated with a nonworking page on the domain Add1.ru. According to online records, Add1.ru was originally registered in January 2009 by Mikhail Burchik, whose email address remained connected to the domain until 2012. Documents leaked by Anonymous International listed a Mikhail Burchik as the executive director of the Internet Research Agency.
In early February, I called Burchik, a young tech entrepreneur in St. Petersburg, to ask him about the hoax and its connection to the Internet Research Agency. In an article for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German journalist Julian Hans had claimed that Burchik confirmed the authenticity of the leaked documents. But when I called Burchik, he denied working at the Internet Research Agency. “I have heard of it, but I don’t work in this organization,” he said. Burchik said he had never heard of the Masss Post app; he had no specific memory of the Add1.ru domain, he said, but he noted that he had bought and sold many domains and didn’t remember them all. Burchik suggested that perhaps a different Mikhail Burchik was the agency’s executive director. But the email address used by the Mikhail Burchik in the leak matched the address listed at that time on the website of the Mikhail Burchik I spoke with.
In St. Petersburg, I finally had a chance to compare notes with Andrei Soshnikov, the young investigative journalist at Moi Raion to whom Ludmila Savchuk leaked her documents. Soshnikov is an indefatigable reporter: During one investigation, he had gone so far as to create a 3-D computer model of a roadway in order to calculate how much asphalt had been stolen during its construction. He was one of the first journalists to expose the Internet Research Agency when he went undercover and got a job there in 2013. Since then, he had followed the agency’s Russian trolls as obsessively as I had been tracking their English counterparts.
I showed Soshnikov a YouTube video posted on Facebook by one of the trolls. The video was a slick animated infographic about the faults of the United States Secret Service. What had caught my attention was the narrator. He sounded just like the voice from the videos spread during the Columbian Chemicals and Atlanta shooting hoaxes: a man trying desperately to sound American but coming off as Australian instead.
Soshnikov instantly recognized the style of the animation. It was made, he said, by an outfit called Infosurfing, which posts pro-Kremlin infographics on Instagram and VKontakte. Soshnikov showed me how he used a service called Yomapic, which maps the locations of social-media users, to determine that photos posted to Infosurfing’s Instagram account came from 55 Savushkina. He had been monitoring all of the content posted from 55 Savushkina for weeks and had assembled a huge database of troll content.
He brought up Infosurfing’s YouTube channel, and as we scrolled down, I noticed several videos in the same style as the Secret Service animation. In fact, Infosurfing had posted the exact same video on its own account — except instead of the unfortunate Australian voice-over, it was narrated in Russian. It was the most tantalizing connection yet: It seemed as if the man in the hoax videos had worked for an outfit connected to the same building that housed the Internet Research Agency.
Still, no one had heard of any department that might have orchestrated the hoax. The English-language trolling team was an elite and secretive group. Marat Burkhardt, who worked in the forums department, was asked to try out for an English-language team but didn’t get the job. The only person I spoke with who worked in the English department was a woman named Katarina Aistova. A former hotel receptionist, she told me she joined the Internet Research Agency when it was in a previous, smaller office. I found her through the Anonymous International leak, which included emails she had sent to her bosses, reporting on the pro-Putin comments she left on sites like The Blaze and Politico. One of her assignments had been to write an essay from the point of view of an average American woman. “I live in such developed society, so that people have practically ceased to walk on foot,” she wrote. When I emailed Aistova, she wasn’t eager to talk. She told me she had been harassed by critics of the Internet Research Agency after her email appeared in the leak; some men had even come to her door. She would meet me for an interview, but only if she could bring her brother for protection. I agreed, and we met at an out-of-the-way Chinese restaurant.
The exact point of their work was left unclear to them. The handful of employees I spoke with did not even know the name of the company's chief executive.
Aistova and her brother made an unusual pair. She was a short young woman with midlength brown hair, dressed all in black: sweater, leggings, big wedge boots. She insisted on paying for my coffee. “You are a Russian guest,” she said. He, by contrast, was a hulking skinhead with arms full of Nazi-themed tattoos, most prominent among them a five-inch swastika on his left biceps. “My brother, he looks like a strongman,” Aistova said, giggling. He wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the SS Totenkopf division, which administered the Nazi concentration camps. I asked him what his T-shirt meant. “Totenkopf,” he grunted. During the interview he sat across the table from Aistova and me, smiling silently behind his sunglasses.
Aistova said that she worked for the Internet Research Agency for a month and a half. The majority of her work was translating news articles from English to Russian. The news articles covered everything from Ukraine to traffic accidents. On a few occasions, her bosses asked her to leave comments on American news sites about Russia, but she said that they never told her what to say. She loves Russia, she told me. She truly believes that Putin is just trying to help the people of Eastern Ukraine, and that his actions are being unfairly spun by the Western media. “I was like, Hey, you guys, you are saying these bad things about Putin, but people are suffering.”
But she claimed to harbor no ill will toward the United States. She wants to visit New York City, she said, and see the locations from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” one of her favorite films. “I don’t feel aggressive toward America. We’re the same people, we just speak different languages,” she said. After the interview, we shook hands outside the restaurant. “You seem like a journalist who will tell the truth,” she said. “I wish you luck on your story.”
On my last morning in St. Petersburg, I returned to 55 Savushkina. The clouds had lifted after a miserable week of snow and howling wind. At a few minutes before 10, my translator and I positioned ourselves on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, hoping to catch some of the trolls as they began the day shift. This was not a very well thought out strategy. Any employees arriving so close to the start of their shift didn’t have time to talk to a journalist even if they wanted to. A large van lurched to a halt in front of us and deposited a half-dozen young people, who hurried in the door before we had the chance to approach them. A bus stopped halfway down the block, and another gaggle of workers emerged. They waved off my translator’s inquiries with annoyed grunts or stone-faced silence. A young man smoking a cigarette said he didn’t work inside the building. He finished his cigarette and promptly went inside the building.
At 10 a.m. sharp, the flow of workers stopped. I decided we might as well try walking inside. I had read of other journalists who tried to enter the building, only to be kicked out immediately, so I entered with some trepidation. Two men in suits guarded the turnstiles. My translator and I approached a receptionist behind a desk and asked if we could speak with someone from Internet Research. (It dropped the “Agency” on moving to 55 Savushkina.) She informed us that Internet Research was no longer a tenant. “A couple of months ago, we had to say goodbye, because it was giving the entire building a bad reputation,” she said, matter-of-factly.
She pointed to a board that displayed a makeshift directory of the building’s current occupants. The names were printed out on small scraps of paper, and none of them were Internet Research. But I did recognize one: “FAN,” or Federal News Agency. I had read some news articles claiming that FAN was part of a network of pro-Kremlin news sites run out of 55 Savushkina, also funded by Evgeny Prigozhin. Former Internet Research Agency employees I had spoken to said they believed FAN was another wing of the same operation, under a different name. I asked to speak to someone from FAN. To my surprise, the receptionist picked up the phone, spoke into it for a few seconds and then informed us that Evgeny Zubarev, the editor in chief of FAN, would be right out to meet us.
Zubarev, who looked to be in his 50s, had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a weary face. He greeted me with a handshake and invited me into his office. We made our way through the turnstiles and signed in with the guards, then took a brief walk down a long hallway to FAN’s two-room office on the first floor. It was unusually quiet for an online news operation that, according to Zubarev, had a staff of 40 people. The newsroom was equipped for a sizable team, with about a dozen identical black desktop computers sitting on identical brown laminate desks, but only two young reporters sat at them. The shades were drawn and the furniture looked just barely unpacked.
As we sat at Zubarev’s desk, I told him about the articles I’d read accusing FAN of being a Kremlin propaganda outfit. He shook his head in indignation. He turned to his computer and brought up FAN’s website, pointing to the masthead and the certificate number that showed FAN was an officially registered Russian mass-media organization. “FAN is a news agency,” he declared. It had stringers and reporters in Ukraine, and in many former Soviet states; they did original reporting, sometimes at great personal risk. Zubarev himself was a veteran journalist who covered the annexation of Crimea for the Russian news agency Rosbalt before joining FAN. But ever since reports linked him to the Internet Research Agency, he had faced questions about his integrity.
“We understand being in this building may discredit us, but we can’t afford to move at the moment,” Zubarev said with a sigh. “So we have to face the situation where reporters like you, Mr. Chen, come in here and ask us questions every day.”
Zubarev said he believed that he and FAN were victims of a smear campaign. I asked him who would do such a thing.
“Listen, that’s my position, not a confirmed fact,” he said. “It’s possible that there are some business interests, I don’t know. Maybe it’s an attack on our investors.” But when I asked who those investors were, he declined to comment. “I can’t discuss the identities of investors,” he said. “That’s in my contract.”
I left St. Petersburg on April 28. One day later, FAN published an article with the headline “What Does a New York Times Journalist Have in Common With a Nazi From St. Petersburg?” The story detailed a mysterious meeting in St. Petersburg between a New York Times journalist — me — and a neo-Nazi. Its lead image was a photo of a skinhead giving an enthusiastic Nazi salute. But it was not just any skinhead. It was the skinhead whom Katarina Aistova brought to our meeting and introduced to me as her brother. As I learned from reading the article, Aistova’s “brother” was in fact a notorious neo-Nazi named Alexei Maximov.
The article explained that Maximov, who goes by the nickname Fly, is a member of Totenkopf, a prominent skinhead group in St. Petersburg. He reportedly served nine years in prison for stabbing a man to death. Just a month before I met him, Maximov again made headlines when, during an investigation into beatings of immigrants around St. Petersburg, the police found weaponry and Nazi paraphernalia in his apartment.
The story made no mention of Katarina Aistova or the Internet Research Agency. Instead, the article claimed I met with Maximov because I wanted his help in creating a provocation against Russia. Maximov told FAN that I requested to meet him because I was “very keenly interested in sentiment among Russian nationalists.” He continued: “He evidently needed stories about how the murderous Kremlin regime persecutes free Russian people. It’s not the first time I’ve come across such requests on the part of Western journalists, but I’m not going to help them with this. Many want to see in Russian nationalists a ‘fifth column,’ which will function on orders from the West and sweep away the Kremlin.” Apparently I was trying to foment a mini-Euromaidan, right there in St. Petersburg.
The article was illustrated with photos of my meeting with Aistova and Maximov. One photo appears to have been shot surreptitiously through the restaurant window while we sat and talked. The point of view is such that Aistova is barely visible; indeed, at first glance, I seem to be having a friendly chat with a skinhead over a cup of coffee. Another photo, this one taken outside the restaurant, somehow makes me look deep in conversation with Maximov, even though I distinctly recall that Aistova was standing between us.
I had to admire the brazenness of the scheme. I remembered how, at the restaurant, Aistova had sat next to me so I had to twist around to talk to her, while Maximov sat silently across from us. Apparently they had arranged themselves so it could appear, from the right perspective, that I was meeting Maximov alone. I emailed Aistova to ask her to explain what happened. She responded only: “I would also like you to explain yourself and the situation!!” (A few weeks later, when I tried calling her by phone, she pretended I had the wrong number.)
Over the course of a few days, the sensational story circulated among a network of small pro-Kremlin blogs. In fact, the FAN story itself had been aggregated from another pro-Kremlin news site called People’s News, which Andrei Soshnikov, the Moi Raion journalist, has reported also operates out of 55 Savushkina. As it spread, it mutated to become even more alarming. One website suggested I was working for the C.I.A.; another, the National Security Agency. A YouTube channel called Russia Today — not the well-known state television channel but a knockoff — posted a slick video about the meeting, set to a pounding dubstep soundtrack. Disconcertingly, it included a photo of me leaving my hotel. The video currently has more than 60,000 views. Many of those views were a result of a familiar pattern of social-media promotion: Dozens of trolls on Twitter began tweeting links to the video using the hashtag #ВербовкаНацистов — “Recruitment of Nazis.” The hashtag trended on Russian Twitter.
After recovering from the initial shock, I began to track the campaign against me. I had practice, after all, from my months spent on the trail of the Internet Research Agency. I Googled the various Russian spellings of my name every hour to catch the latest posts as soon as they surfaced on LiveJournal and VKontakte. I searched Twitter for the URL of the YouTube video to catch every post.
A few days later, Soshnikov chatted with me on Skype. “Did you see an article about you on FAN?” he asked. “They know you are going to publish a loud article, so they are trying to make you look stupid in front of the Russian audience.”
I explained the setup, and as I did I began to feel a nagging paranoia. The more I explained, the more absurd my own words seemed — the more they seemed like exactly the sort of elaborate alibi a C.I.A. agent might concoct once his cover was blown. The trolls had done the only thing they knew how to do, but this time they had done it well. They had gotten into my head.
Correction: June 21, 2015
An article on June 7 about Russian Internet ‘‘trolls’’ referred incorrectly to the Internet platform Yandex. It was subjected to political pressure, but it was not brought under the control of Kremlin allies.
Adrian Chen is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in Wired, New York magazine, and The New York Times. He is a contributing editor for The New Inquiry and a founder of I.R.L. Club, a regular gathering for people from the Internet to meet “in real life.”
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week.
A version of this article appears in print on June 7, 2015, on page MM57 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Agency.
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NYT Pick
Bob S
New Jersey June 2, 2015
What a strange article since it has been obvious that China for years has been using operatives to provide propaganda on the internet. And of course ISIS is using the internet to persuade young Muslims to join them.
For years everyone understood the idea of corporations that have been using expensive media to sell products and increase profits.
Time to wake up to the present where the internet offers a very low cost method for propaganda. Time to recognize that with the internet the costs of running an affective Ministry of Information are very low.
moosemaps
Vermont June 2, 2015
Crazy and awful and even rather literary but sadly not unexpected nor the least bit shocking. Putin and his cronies are such bad news and I'd rather see them spend their billions this way, on mostly failed silly web schemes then on executions and annexations (of course, they will just do it all). This article reminds me of those who have stood up so bravely to Putin's tyranny, such as Pussy Riot, and hope they are well and energized. Seems the world needs more Nadezhda Tolokonnikovas.
TK
MA June 2, 2015
This is a truly fascinating article that is well written and haunting. This is a good reminder to all of us to not trust everything that we see on the internet and to make sure we check a reliable source (not wikipedia) before believing something.
The ending is almost too perfect based on all of the evidence that you had been gathering! Excellent reporting and please continue your investigations.
TheraP
Midwest June 2, 2015
Trolling and impersonation, on a massive scale, is endemic all over now. It is integral to electoral campaigns, national and international politics, financial arenas, sports, you name it.
The Internet is both fascinating and frightening.
Charley
Connecticut June 2, 2015
The thing about the Internet Research Agency is that they have made any sort of harsh, humorless, stiffly ungrammatical criticism of United States policy open to suspicion. They have greatly weakened those in this country and elsewhere who might legitimately have the same sorts of views. It is a case of Russia hurting Russia and turning her own people into dupes - certainly not the first time that has happened.
Sharon
Chico, CA June 2, 2015
Ah, the Cold War. It never really ended; it's just with us in a different form.
Bob Woods
Salem, Oregon June 2, 2015
One of the most fascinating and chilling pieces of reporting I have ever read.
I thinks in the backs of our minds we know that there is a lot of intentional disinformation out there. But mostly we write it off as "some idiot" who is just clueless and spouting drivel.
This article shows how groups can plant and reinforce views that garner credibility from HOW they are posted. Playing on fears is always a good choice, I guess.
Yet so much of what is posted in political discussions is based on fear. Fear of the government; fear of corporations; fear of unions; fear of liberals; fear of conservatives.
The availability of access to information now is immediate and unfiltered. We see what can happen when things are taken at face value.
The future is a lot more scary than when I started reading this article.
Concerned Reader
Boston June 2, 2015
Much of the Internet traffic still flows through the US. And if the US decides that this e-terrorism means Russia can no longer connect to the US, they will drop off much of the global Internet. Russia had better watch how far they push this.
LM
Washington DC June 2, 2015
This is such an outstanding piece of reporting. I can't thank Adrian Chen or the NYT enough. I agree with other commenters that this piece should be the first in a series on trolling that includes a discussion on trolling in general, the independent trolls that troll for fun or out of spite to get a rise out of real commenters, the professional trolls that are essentially paid marketers promoting products and services, and the paid political trolls.
fromsc
Southern California June 2, 2015
A ridiculously great piece of meta journalism. There is no doubt in my mind that the author has written a truthful article and not an alibi. Still, it's scary to read how easily he was compromised. Just as scary is how widespread this business of paid trolling must surely be. Whatever shenanigans the Russians are good at, we're probably great at here in the U.S. It makes me hesitant to continue forwarding my opinions on the internet. Maybe the only safety is in being a well paid troll. But where does one apply for such a job?
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Monsanto and White House Politicos Caught Paying Internet ‘Trolls’ to Attack Activists
Companies desperate to fool public
by Anthony Gucciardi
Posted on April 20, 2015
Have you ever seen a post, comment, or reply that absolutely reeked of behind-the-scenes compensation by corporations like Monsanto? In the growing age of internet activism, and the expansion of social media as a tool to spread the word on real issues, paid internet trolling is becoming a new career path.
Now, in case you’re not familiar with what ‘trolling’ really is, I think Wikipedia has a great definition. According to Wikipedia, an internet troll is:
“…a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.“
Does this sound like some posts you’ve seen before? Now, let’s be clear: there are tons of internet trolls out there that are absolutely not on the pay roll. Most of these people are genuinely just messing with others to get a laugh, a reaction, or whatever. Not arguing on behalf of multi-billion dollar corporations for up to 8 hours per day.
There’s the real difference. And, besides common sense dictating that corporations would surely hire a fleet of internet warriors to protect their brand reputation in the age of open source online communication, we now know for sure that companies like Monsanto have in fact dedicated ‘entire departments’ to trolling scientists and ‘discrediting’ those who oppose their GMO creations.
Monsanto Paying Fleet of Trolls to ‘Discredit’
Surprisingly, it was actually a Monsanto employee that unintentionally let the truth behind their ‘discrediting operation’ slip in a conference with students that he may have forgotten was open to the public. In a conversation with students, Dr. William “Bill” Moar raved that Monsanto had established:
“An entire department” (waving his arm for emphasis) dedicated to “debunking” science which disagreed with theirs.”
That’s huge news. We told you about this first back on the 6th of April — but I am absolutely shocked how it has not been covered to the extent it should have. Because, after all, how does a company ‘discredit’ and ‘debunk’ those who go against their destructive, cancer-linked products? By attacking them online through blogs, comments, and character assassination. In other words, by internet trolling.
It’s so much easier to say someone is a ‘quack,’ or create some fictitious and anonymous accusation to plague their search data than it is to actually have a scientific debate on issues like Roundup’s admitted probable carcinogenic nature.
It also brings into question whether or not the Monsanto employee truly did ‘slip up’ or if he was attempting to help get the word out about the corporation he represents. You have to wonder if Dr. Moar was secretly passing off some information to the press in the form of a slip about his company.
This is a question I often wondered after hearing about Coca-Cola’s similar operations that extended deeper than just internet trolls. After reading the March 16th article in the Associated Press that broke down how Coca-Cola paid off health leaders in exchange for these ‘experts’ to back their chemical-laden sodas as health drinks.
The AP report reads:
“In February, several of the experts wrote online posts for American Heart Month, with each including a mini-can of Coke or soda as a snack idea. The pieces — which appeared on nutrition blogs and other sites including those of major newspapers — offer a window into the many ways food companies work behind the scenes to cast their products in a positive light, often with the help of third parties who are seen as trusted authorities.”
A mini-can of Coke as a ‘snack idea.’ What amazing health leaders these individuals truly are.
Next time you’re scrolling through social media, YouTube, or even this website’s comment section, remember that the trolls attacking you for no apparent reason may in fact be receiving an annual salary. Checkout my video report on Monsanto’s secret ‘discrediting’ department and what it truly means for the natural health and alternative news movement:
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The Most Secret Weapon that the White House has is not the legendary “Rod of God” kinetic satellite weapon. It is KIM KARDASHIAN!
The White House Press office is, according to Mitt Romney: “expert in Character Assassination Tactics”. They have Media Matters, Think Progress, Gawker Media, In-Q-Tel, New America Foundation, Sidney Blumenthal and the A.L.I.C.E. cartel of attack bloggers lined up with automated, Google-powered, Troll Farms, created to rain media hell on any adversary in the public.
The “Kardashian Engine” can make a non-issue into something, which the public believes is a big deal, by creating dialogue that does not actually exist. They use hired fake commenters, shill bloggers and the Google rigged web search engine.
Got a “problem person”? Robert Gibbs, at the White House, calls Nick Denton, at Gawker Media, and says: ”I have a target for you!”
Google is, now charged with, manipulating the web dialogue, and searches, about Obama, in the 2008 election, in order to get him elected. They use their high volume fake social media engines to also manufacture fake user testimonials about candidates. The GOP figured this out, though, and has put a counter-measures engine in place. Russia and China figured this out too, and copied it, while giving Google the Finger. Did Trump use his own “Kardashian Engine” to create his historic rise in the GOP ranks, and national polls? Why did Hillary wipe her server and her staff communications? Did she send emails coordinating hits on members of Congress, and the public, using the Kardashian Engine?
The following are related investigations into how they do it:
Did you piss off a corrupt White House politician and then have your life go to sh*t? Here is how they did it to you:
That corrupt Senator then had their chief of staff call either: In-Q-Tel, Tactical Resources or PsyoContract. These are consulting groups made up of former CIA operatives. Those kinds of services sell “hit-jobs”, using the latest government technology and psychological tactics. Here is what they did to you.
This activity is referred to as "Organized Corporate Stalking" - or "Political Gang Stalking" in the vernacular. Several million of Americans experience this type of activity in the US if they have been deemed a "dissident, activist, domestic threat or domestic terrorist."
There are dozens of websites and YouTube channels dedicated to these black ops which are perpetrated in every major city of the US (and small towns as well)
Moving objects around in someone's home is referred to as "gas-lighting" and is done so that the complainant/victim sounds delusional when they call the police for assistance.
After all, who is going to break into a home (usually without leaving a trace) and move a few objects around without stealing anything? It does not sound credible or believable.
Everything is done so there is plausible deniability, should the potential perpetrators ever be identified.
These tactics/techniques were used against American Embassy Staff in Cuba and Russia for years, however US authorities have been quite mum about it since the same techniques are used on a wide scale in the United States against "dissidents, activists" and anyone else who has been extra-judicially deemed a threat to the establishment, the status quo or large companies.
These activities are usually done in conjunction with vehicle vandalism/hacking, computer/e-mail/bank account hacking, mail tampering and untraceable, remotely-initiated damage to electronic devices and their power supplies.
Additionally victims of these covertly-styled assaults are also plagued by people passing by their residences at all hours and blowing their horns or revving their engines (referred to as a noise campaign).
Codes can be remotely stripped/read from computer keyboards, phones and alarm touch-pads since every key generates an electronic signature which can be read/culled from a distance - there are devices built specifically for this purpose.
Furthermore, these black ops are done while the victim’s name is simultaneously being slandered via false accusations of criminal activity, theft, violence, crimes of moral turpitude and prior mental health issues. The "teams" perpetrating these illegal acts will try and destroy every aspect of the target's life.
You are likely bugged and your vehicle tagged with a GPS, thus moving will not necessarily terminate the issue(s) you are experiencing - although if your experience(s) have been published it may alleviate some of the illegal activities.
These politicos will hire private security groups and criminals to follow their targets around in order to let them know that he/she is now "persona non grata" and being monitored.
Being a single woman - especially with a child makes these activities even more traumatizing.
These tactics were used by Hitler, Mao Tze Tung, the East German Stasi and the KGB.
All of these activities are done so that the perpetrators are hard to identify - and the criminal acts are hard to prove to the police - and in court. (plausible deniability).
You will find you can’t get a job. You will get many phone calls and emails from people with east indian accents asking you to approve submitting a resume for a great job. Each time you will never hear back from them. Your disappointment will increase. That is how they like it. Those were not real recruiters, they were operatives trying to build you up and let you down, over and over, in order to create a sense of self-doubt and a sense of personal failure, so that you will be too emotionally weakened to fight against the politician.
It is also referred to as "No-Touch Torture" and is used to intimidate the target in addition to making them psychologically more vulnerable. The technique was developed by the Stasi and is called Zersetzung
Zersetzung (German; variously translated as decomposition, corrosion, undermining, biodegradation or dissolution) was a working technique of the East German secret police, the Stasi. The "measures of Zersetzung", defined in the framework of a directive on police procedures in 1976,[1] were effectively used in the context of so-called "operational procedures" (in German Operative Vorgänge or OV). They replaced the overt terror of the Ulbricht era.
As to the practice of repressive persecution, Zersetzung comprised extensive and secret methods of control and manipulation, even in the personal relations of the target. The Stasi relied for this on its network of unofficial collaborators[2] (in German inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or IM), on the State's influence on institutions, and on "operational psychology". By targeted psychological attacks the Stasi tried in this way to deprive the dissident of any possibility of "hostile action".
Thanks to numerous files of the Stasi made public following "the turning" (Die Wende) of East Germany, the use of measures of Zersetzung is well documented. Estimates of the number of victims of such measures are on the order of a thousand, or even about 10,000,[3] of which 5,000 sustained irreversible damage.[4] Pensions for restitution have been created for the victims.
[Zersetzung is] an operational method of the Ministry for Security of State for an efficacious struggle against subversive doings, in particular in the treatment of operations. With Zersetzung, across different operational political activities, one gains influence over hostile and negative persons, in particular over that which is hostile and negative in their dispositions and beliefs, in such a way that these would be shaken off and changed little by little, and, if applicable, the contradictions and differences between the hostile and negative forces would be provoked, exploited, and reinforced.
The goal of Zersetzung is the fragmentation, paralysis, disorganization, and isolation of the hostile and negative forces, in order to impede thereby, in a preventive manner, the hostile and negative doings, to limit them in large part, or to totally avert them, and if applicable to prepare grounds for a political and ideological reestablishment.
Zersetzung is equally an immediate constitutive element of "operational procedures" and other preventive activities to impede hostile gatherings. The principal forces to put Zersetzung in practice are the unofficial collaborators. Zersetzung presupposes information and significant proof of hostile activities planned, prepared, and accomplished as well as anchor points corresponding to measures of Zersetzung.
Zersetzung must be produced on the basis of an analysis of the root of facts and the exact establishment of a concrete goal. Zersetzung must be executed in a uniform and supervised manner; its results must be documented.
The political explosivity of Zersetzung poses elevated imperatives in that which concerns the maintenance of secrecy.[5]
Political context
During the first decade of existence of the German Democratic Republic, political opposition was combatted primarily through the penal code, via accusations of incitement to war or boycott.[6] To counteract the isolation of the GDR on the international scene due to the construction of the Berlin wall in 1963, judicial terror was abandoned.[7] Especially since the debut of the Honecker era in 1971, the Stasi intensified its efforts to punish dissident behaviors without using the penal code.[8] Important motives were the desire on the part of the GDR for international recognition and rapprochement with West Germany at the end of the '60s. In fact the GDR was committed, in adhering to the Charter of the U.N.[9] and the Helsinki accords[10] as well as the fundamental treaty signed with the Federal Republic of Germany,[11] to respect human rights, or at least it announced its intention as such. The regime of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany decided thus to reduce the number of political prisoners, which was compensated for by practices of repression without imprisonment or judicial condemnation.[12][13]
In practice
The Stasi used Zersetzung essentially as a means of psychological oppression and persecution.[14] Findings of Operativen psychologie (psychological operations),[15] formulated into method at the Stasi's College of Legal Studies (Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit, or JHS), were applied to political opponents in an effort to undermine their self-confidence and self-esteem. Operations were designed to intimidate and destabilise them through subjection to repeated disappointments, and to socially alienate them through interference in and disruption of their relationships with others. The aim was to then induce personal crises in victims, leaving them too unnerved and psychologically distressed to have the time and energy for anti-government activism.[16] The Stasi intended that their role as mastermind of the operations remain concealed.[17][18] Jürgen Fuchs, a victim of Zersetzung who later wrote about his experience, described the Stasi's actions as “psychosocial crime”, and “an assault on the human soul”.[16]
Although its techniques had been established as effective by the late 1950s, Zersetzung was not defined in terms of scientific method until the mid-1970s, and only began to be carried out in a significantly systematic way in the 1970s and 1980s.[19] It is difficult to determine the number of people targeted, since source material has been deliberately and considerably redacted; it is known, however, that tatics were varied in scope, and that a number of different departments participated in their implementation. Overall there was a ratio of four or five authorised Zersetzung operators for each targeted group, and three for each individual.[20] Some sources indicate that around 5,000 people were “persistently victimised” by Zersetzung.[21] At the College of Legal Studies, the number of dissertations submitted on the subject of Zersetzung was in double figures.[22] It also had a comprehensive 50-page Zersetzung teaching manual, which included numerous examples of its practice.[23]
Institutions implementing and cooperating with Zersetzung operations
Almost all Stasi departments were involved in Zersetzung operations, although foremost among these in implementing them were the head department of the Stasi's directorate XX (Hauptabteilung XX) in Berlin, as well as its divisional offices in regional and municipal government. The function of the head and area Abteilung XXs was to maintain surveillance of religious communities; cultural and media establishments; alternative political parties; the GDR's many political establishment-affiliated mass social organisations; sport; and education and health services - effectively, as such, covering all aspects of civic life and activity.[24] The Stasi made use of the means available to them within, and as a circumstance of, the GDR's closed social system. An established, politically-motivated collaborative network (politisch-operatives Zusammenwirken, or POZW) provided them with extensive opportunities for interference in such situations as the sanctioning of professionals and students, expulsion from associations and sports clubs, and occasional arrests by the Volkspolizei[17] (the GDR's quasi-military national police). Refusal of permits for travel to socialist states, or denial of entry at Czechoslovakian and Polish border crossings where no visa requirement existed, were also arranged. The various collaborators (Partnern des operativen Zusammenwirkens) included branches of regional government, university and professional management, housing administrative bodies, the Sparkasse public savings bank, and in some cases head physicians.[25] The Stasi's Linie III (Observation), Abteilung 26 (Telephone and room surveillance) and M (Postal communications) departments provided essential background information for the designing of Zersetzung techniques, with Abteilung 32 procuring the required technology.[26]
The Stasi also collaborated with the secret services of other Eastern Bloc countries in implementing Zersetzung. One such example was the co-operation of the Polish secret services in actions taken against branches of the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation in the early 1960s, which would come to be known[27] as "innere Zersetzung"[28] (internal subversion).
Against individuals
The Stasi applied Zersetzung before, during, after, or instead of incarcerating the targeted individual. The "operational procedures" did not have as an aim, in general, to gather evidence for charges against the target, or to be able to begin criminal prosecutions. The Stasi considered the "measures of Zersetzung" rather in part as an instrument that was used when judiciary procedures were not convenient, or for political reasons such as the international image of the GDR.[29][30] In certain cases, the Stasi attempted meanwhile to knowingly inculpate an individual, as for example in the case of Wolf Biermann: The Stasi set him up with minors, hoping that he would allow himself to be seduced, and that they could then pursue criminal charges.[31] The crimes that they researched for such accusations were non-political, as for example drug possession, trafficking in customs or currencies, theft, financial fraud, and rape.[32]
…the Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it's described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally "biodegradation." But actually, it's a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn't try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions.
—Hubertus Knabe, German historian [33]
The proven forms of Zersetzung are described in the directive 1/76:
a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige in a database on one part true, verifiable and degrading, and on the other part false, plausible, irrefutable, and always degrading; a systematic organization of social and professional failures for demolishing the self-confidence of the individual; [...] stimulation of doubts with respect to perspectives on the future; stimulation of mistrust or mutual suspicion among groups [...]; putting in place spatial and temporal obstacles rendering impossible or at least difficult the reciprocal relations of a group [...], for example by [...] assigning distant workplaces. —Directive No. 1/76 of January 1976 for the development of "operational procedures".[34]
Beginning with intelligence obtained by espionage, the Stasi established "sociograms" and "psychograms" which it applied for the psychological forms of Zersetzung. They exploited personal traits, such as homosexuality, as well as supposed character weaknesses of the targeted individual — for example a professional failure, negligence of parental duties, pornographic interests, divorce, alcoholism, dependence on medications, criminal tendencies, passion for a collection or a game, or contacts with circles of the extreme right — or even the veil of shame from the rumors poured out upon one's circle of acquaintances.[35][36] From the point of view of the Stasi, the measures were the most fruitful when they were applied in connection with a personality; all "schematism" had to be avoided.[35]
For marketing and political manipulation, Google now maintains a sociogram of each user and manipulates each user via Stasi-like mood manipulation.
Moreover, methods of Zersetzung included espionage, overt, hidden, and feigned; opening letters and listening to telephone calls; encroachments on private property; manipulation of vehicles; and even poisoning food and using false medications.[37] Certain collaborators of the Stasi tacitly took into account the suicide of victims of Zersetzung.[38]
It has not been definitely established that the Stasi used x-rays to provoke long-term health problems in its opponents.[39] That said, Rudolf Bahro, Gerulf Pannach, and Jürgen Fuchs, three important dissidents who had been imprisoned at the same time, died of cancer within an interval of two years.[40] A study by the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik or BStU) has meanwhile rejected on the basis of extant documents such a fraudulent use of x-rays, and only mentions isolated and unintentional cases of the harmful use of sources of radiation, for example to mark documents.[41]
In the name of the target, the Stasi made little announcements, ordered products, and made emergency calls, to terrrorize him/her.[42][43] To threaten or intimidate or cause psychoses the Stasi assured itself of access to the target's living quarters and left visible traces of its presence, by adding, removing, and modifying objects.[32]
Against groups and social relations
The Stasi manipulated relations of friendship, love, marriage, and family by anonymous letters, telegrams and telephone calls as well as compromising photos, often altered.[44] In this manner, parents and children were supposed to systematically become strangers to one another.[45] To provoke conflicts and extramarital relations the Stasi put in place targeted seductions by Romeo agents.[31]
For the Zersetzung of groups, it infiltrated them with unofficial collaborators, sometimes minors.[46] The work of opposition groups was hindered by permanent counter-propositions and discord on the part of unofficial collaborators when making decisions.[47] To sow mistrust within the group, the Stasi made believe that certain members were unofficial collaborators; moreover by spreading rumors and manipulated photos,[48] the Stasi feigned indiscretions with unofficial collaborators, or placed members of targeted groups in administrative posts to make believe that this was a reward for the activity of an unofficial collaborator.[31] They even aroused suspicions regarding certain members of the group by assigning privileges, such as housing or a personal car.[31] Moreover the imprisonment of only certain members of the group gave birth to suspicions.[47]
Target groups for measures
The Stasi used Zersetzung tactics on individuals and groups. There was no particular homogeneous target group, as opposition in the GDR came from a number of different sources. Tactical plans were thus separately adapted to each perceived threat.[49] The Stasi nevertheless defined several main target groups:[50]
- associations of people making collective visa applications for travel abroad
- artists' groups critical of the government
- religious opposition groups
- youth subculture groups
- groups supporting the above (human rights and peace organisations, those assisting illegal departure from the GDR, and expatriate and defector movements).
Prominent individuals targeted by Zersetzung operations included Jürgen Fuchs, Gerulf Pannach, Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann, Rainer Eppelmann, Reiner Kunze, husband and wife Gerd und Ulrike Poppe, and Wolfgang Templin.
Social and juridicial process
Once aware of his own status as a target, GDR opponent Wolfgang Templin tried, with some success, to bring details of the Stasi's Zersetzung activities to the attention of western journalists.[52] In 1977 Der Spiegel published a five-part article series (“Du sollst zerbrechen!” - "You're going to crack!") by the exiled Jürgen Fuchs, in which he describes the Stasi's “operational psychology”. The Stasi tried to discredit Fuchs and the contents of similar articles, publishing in turn claims that he had a paranoid view of its function,[53] and intending that Der Spiegel and other media would assume he was suffering from a persecution complex.[54][55] This, however, was refuted by the official Stasi documents examined after Die Wende (the political power shift in the GDR in 1989-90).
Because the scale and nature of Zersetzung were unknown both to the general population of the GDR and to people abroad, revelations of the Stasi's malicious tactics were met with some degree of disbelief by those affected.[56] Many still nowadays express incomprehension at how the Stasi's collaborators could have participated in such inhuman actions.[57]
Since Zersetzung as a whole, even after 1990, was not deemed to be illegal because of the principle of nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without law), actions against involvement in either its planning or implementation were not enforceable by the courts.[58] Because this specific legal definition of Zersetzung as a crime didn't exist,[59] only individual instances of its tactics could be reported. Acts which even according to GDR law were offences (such as the violation of Briefgeheimnis, the secrecy of correspondence) needed to have been reported to the GDR authorities soon after having been committed in order not to be subject to a statute of limitations clause.[60] Many of the victims experienced the additional complication that the Stasi was not identifiable as the originator in cases of personal injury and misadventure. Official documents in which Zersetzung methods were recorded often had no validity in court, and the Stasi had many files detailing its actual implementation destroyed.[61]
Unless they had been detained for at least 180 days, survivors of Zersetzung operations, in accordance with §17a of a 1990 rehabilitation act (the Strafrechtlichen Rehabilitierungsgesetzes, or StrRehaG), are not eligible for financial compensation. Cases of provable, systematically effected targeting by the Stasi, and resulting in employment-related losses and/or health damage, can be pursued under a law covering settlement of torts (Unrechtsbereinigungsgesetz, or 2. SED-UnBerG) as claims either for occupational rehabilitation or rehabilitation under administrative law. These overturn certain administrative provisions of GDR institutions and affirm their unconstitutionality. This is a condition for the social equalisation payments specified in the Bundesversorgungsgesetz (the war victims relief act of 1950). Equalisation payments of pension damages and for loss of earnings can also be applied for in cases where victimisation continued for at least three years, and where claimants can prove need.[62] The above examples of seeking justice have, however, been hindered by various difficulties victims have experienced, both in providing proof of the Stasi's encroachment into the areas of health, personal assets, education and employment, and in receiving official acknowledgement that the Stasi was responsible for personal damages (including psychic injury) as a direct result of Zersetzung operations.[63]
Modern use of techniques
Russia's secret police, the FSB, has been reported to use such techniques against foreign diplomats and journalists.[64]
See also
- Destabilisation
- Gaslighting
- Mind control
- Mind games
- Psychological manipulation
- Psychological warfare
- Stasi#Zersetzung
- COINTELPRO
1. Jump up ^ Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge (OV)
2. Jump up ^ Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic: The Unofficial Collaborators (IM) of the MfS
3. Jump up ^ Süß, Strukturen, p. 217.
4. Jump up ^ Consider in this regard the written position taken by Michael Beleites, responsible for the files of the Stasi in the Free State of Saxony: PDF, visited 24 August 2010, as well as 3sat : Subtiler Terror – Die Opfer von Stasi-Zersetzungsmethoden, visited 24 August 2010.
5. Jump up ^ Ministry for Security of State, Dictionary of political and operational work, entry Zersetzung: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Hrsg.): Wörterbuch zur politisch-operativen Arbeit, 2. Auflage (1985), Stichwort: „Zersetzung“, GVS JHS 001-400/81, p. 464.
6. Jump up ^ Rainer Schröder: Geschichte des DDR-Rechts: Straf- und Verwaltungsrecht, forum historiae iuris, 6 avril 2004.
7. Jump up ^ Falco Werkentin: Recht und Justiz im SED-Staat. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn 1998, 2. durchgesehene Auflage 2000, S. 67.
8. Jump up ^ Sandra Pingel-Schliemann: Zerstörung von Biografien. Zersetzung als Phänomen der Honecker-Ära. In: Eckart Conze/Katharina Gajdukowa/Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten (Hrsg.): Die demokratische Revolution 1989 in der DDR. Köln 2009, S. 78–91.
9. Jump up ^ Art. 1 Abs. 3 UN-Charta. Dokumentiert in: 12. Deutscher Bundestag: Materialien der Enquete-Kommission zur Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland. Band 4, Frankfurt a. M. 1995, S. 547.
10. Jump up ^ Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa, Schlussakte, Helsinki 1975, S. 11.
11. Jump up ^ Art. 2 des Vertrages über die Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 21. Dezember 1972. In: Matthias Judt (Hrsg.): DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten – Beschlüsse, Berichte, interne Materialien und Alltagszeugnisse. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bd. 350, Bonn 1998, S. 517.
12. Jump up ^ Johannes Raschka: „Staatsverbrechen werden nicht genannt“ – Zur Zahl politischer Häftlinge während der Amtszeit Honeckers. In: Deutschlandarchiv. Band 30, Nummer 1, 1997, S. 196
13. Jump up ^ Jens Raschka: Einschüchterung, Ausgrenzung, Verfolgung – Zur politischen Repression in der Amtszeit Honeckers. Berichte und Studien, Band 14, Dresden 1998, S. 15.
14. Jump up ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke: Zur Nutzung und Auswertung der Stasi-Akten. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Nummer 4, 1993, S. 586.
15. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 229.
16. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 188.
17. ^ Jump up to: a b Jens Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 192f.
18. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Formen. S. 235.
19. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 202-204.
20. Jump up ^ Süß: Strukturen. S. 217.
21. Jump up ^ Siehe hierzu die schriftliche Stellungnahme des Sächsischen Landesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen Michael Beleites zur Anhörung des Rechtsausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages zu den Gesetzentwürfen und Anträgen zur Verbesserung rehabilitierungsrechtlicher Vorschriften für Opfer politischer Verfolgung in der DDR vom 7. Mai 2007 (PDF, 682 KB), eingesehen am 24. August 2010, sowie 3sat: Subtiler Terror – Die Opfer von Stasi-Zersetzungsmethoden, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
22. Jump up ^ Günter Förster: Die Dissertationen an der „Juristischen Hochschule“ des MfS. Eine annotierte Bibliographie. BStU, Berlin 1997, Online-Quelle (Memento vom 13. Juli 2009 im Internet Archive).
23. Jump up ^ Anforderungen und Wege für eine konzentrierte, offensive, rationelle und gesellschaftlich wirksame Vorgangsbearbeitung. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam 1977, BStU, ZA, JHS 24 503.
24. Jump up ^ Jens Gieseke: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1950–1989/90 – Ein kurzer historischer Abriss. In: BF informiert. Nr. 21, Berlin 1998, S. 35.
25. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. In: Karsten Dümmel, Christian Schmitz (Hrsg.): Was war die Stasi? KAS, Zukunftsforum Politik Nr. 43, Sankt Augustin 2002, S. 31, PDF, 646 KB.
26. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 141–151.
27. Jump up ^ Waldemar Hirch: Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem ostdeutschen und dem polnischen Geheimdienst zum Zweck der „Zersetzung“ der Zeugen Jehovas. In: Waldemar Hirch, Martin Jahn, Johannes Wrobel (Hrsg.): Zersetzung einer Religionsgemeinschaft: die geheimdienstliche Bearbeitung der Zeugen Jehovas in der DDR und in Polen. Niedersteinbach 2001, S. 84–95.
28. Jump up ^ Aus einem Protokoll vom 16. Mai 1963, zit. n. Sebastian Koch: Die Zeugen Jehovas in Ostmittel-, Südost- und Südeuropa: Zum Schicksal einer Religionsgemeinschaft. Berlin 2007, S. 72.
29. Jump up ^ Richtlinie 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge vom 1. Januar 1976. Dokumentiert in: David Gill, Ulrich Schröter: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. Anatomie des Mielke-Imperiums. S. 390
30. Jump up ^ Lehrmaterial der Hochschule des MfS: Anforderungen und Wege für eine konzentrierte, rationelle und gesellschaftlich wirksame Vorgangsbearbeitung. Kapitel 11: Die Anwendung von Maßnahmen der Zersetzung in der Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge vom Dezember 1977, BStU, ZA, JHS 24 503, S. 11.
31. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 195f.
32. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Phänomen. S. 82f.
33. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: The dark secrets of a surveillance state, TED Salon, Berlin, 2014
34. Jump up ^ Roger Engelmann, Frank Joestel: Grundsatzdokumente des MfS. In: Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Siegfried Suckut, Thomas Großbölting (Hrsg.): Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden. MfS-Handbuch. Teil V/5, Berlin 2004, S. 287.
35. ^ Jump up to: a b Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. S. 27–29
36. Jump up ^ Arbeit der Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit in Potsdam aus dem Jahr 1978, MDA, MfS, JHS GVS 001-11/78. In: Pingel-Schliemann: Formen. S. 237.
37. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 266–278.
38. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 277.
39. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 280f.
40. Jump up ^ Der Spiegel 20/1999: In Kopfhöhe ausgerichtet (PDF, 697 KB), S. 42–44.
41. Jump up ^ Kurzdarstellung des Berichtes der Projektgruppe „Strahlen“ beim BStU zum Thema: „Einsatz von Röntgenstrahlen und radioaktiven Stoffen durch das MfS gegen Oppositionelle – Fiktion oder Realität?“, Berlin 2000.
42. Jump up ^ Udo Scheer: Jürgen Fuchs – Ein literarischer Weg in die Opposition. Berlin 2007, S. 344f.
43. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
44. Jump up ^ Gisela Schütte: Die unsichtbaren Wunden der Stasi-Opfer. In: Die Welt. 2. August 2010, eingesehen am 8. August 2010
45. Jump up ^ Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 254–257.
46. Jump up ^ Axel Kintzinger: „Ich kann keinen mehr umarmen“. In: Die Zeit. Nummer 41, 1998.
47. ^ Jump up to: a b Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 358f.
48. Jump up ^ Stefan Wolle: Die heile Welt der Diktatur. Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1971–1989. Bonn 1999, S. 159.
49. Jump up ^ Kollektivdissertation der Juristischen Hochschule der Staatssicherheit in Potsdam. In: Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 119.
50. Jump up ^ Jens Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 192f.
51. Jump up ^ Mike Dennis: Surviving the Stasi: Jehovah's Witnesses in Communist East Germany, 1965 to 1989. In: Religion, State and Society. Band 34, Nummer 2, 2006, S. 145-168
52. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
53. Jump up ^ Scheer: Fuchs. S. 347.
54. Jump up ^ Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 196f.
55. Jump up ^ Treffbericht des IMB „J. Herold“ mit Oberleutnant Walther vom 25. März 1986 über ein Gespräch mit dem „abgeschöpften“ SPIEGEL-Redakteur Ulrich Schwarz. Dok. in Jürgen Fuchs: Magdalena. MfS, Memphisblues, Stasi, Die Firma, VEB Horch & Gauck – Ein Roman. Berlin 1998, S. 145.
56. Jump up ^ Vgl. Interviews mit Sandra Pingel-Schliemann (PDF; 114 kB) und Gisela Freimarck (PDF; 80 kB).
57. Jump up ^ Vgl. Interviews mit Sandra Pingel-Schliemann (PDF; 114 kB) und Gisela Freimarck (PDF; 80 kB).
58. Jump up ^ Interview mit der Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen Marianne Birthler im Deutschlandradio Kultur vom 25. April 2006: Birthler: Ex-Stasi-Offiziere wollen Tatsachen verdrehen, eingesehen am 7. August 2010.
59. Jump up ^ Renate Oschlies: Die Straftat „Zersetzung“ kennen die Richter nicht. In: Berliner Zeitung. 8. August 1996.
60. Jump up ^ Hubertus Knabe: Die Täter sind unter uns – Über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur. Berlin 2007, S. 100.
61. Jump up ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Stasi konkret – Überwachung und Repression in der DDR, München 2013, S. 211, 302f.
62. Jump up ^ Stasiopfer.de: Was können zur Zeit sogenannte „Zersetzungsopfer“ beantragen?, PDF, 53 KB, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
63. Jump up ^ Jörg Siegmund: Die Verbesserung rehabilitierungsrechtlicher Vorschriften – Handlungsbedarf, Lösungskonzepte, Realisierungschancen, Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung, Symposium zur Verbesserung der Unterstützung der Opfer der SED-Diktatur vom 10. Mai 2006, PDF (Memento vom 28. November 2010 im Internet Archive), 105 KB, S. 3, eingesehen am 24. August 2010.
64. Jump up ^ Russian spy agency targeting western diplomats, The Guardian, 2011-7-23
How Do You Fight Back When Large Corrupt Entities Attack You: Your adversaries will hire private investigators known as “Opposition Researchers”. Regular people call them“hit-men”. From the famously vindictive SidneyBlumenthal, to the notorious Richard Berman, to unknown college kid junior “hit-men” in training; whenthey come for you it will be harsh, massively financed and driven by the madness of power-hungry campaign technology billionaires.
Your saving grace, though, will always be this: The “bad guys” are forced to operate in darkness and stealth, once exposed to the light, they will wither and crawl away. In this new Age of Transparency, the ability to shed light
on bad guys is more potent than ever! Look to major journalists, social networks and carbon-copy every law enforcement agency, so everyone knows what is going on, and so that no single entity can “stone-wall” or cover-up.
Tips for Tech Companies Under Attack – 1. Cooperate with every law enforcement agency request. Every law enforcement agency will have an interest in terminating felony-grade law-breaking.
2. When they seek to destroy your reputation. Prove them wrong in public. In our case, the volume of greatreferences and broadcast news acclaim, posted on this site, counters any credibility attacks. They will try to spin the phrase “scam” or “not credible” into their attacks. Prove them wrong with the facts. Offer to meet them in any federal court or live TV debate to prove the facts. If the “bad guys” are involved in crime, be sure to show those facts in your public debate, so that people consider the source of the attacks. It isn’t possible to take a considered read of our references and proven deliverable documentation and not realize that any “scam” attack media/blog clips are fabricated by the attackers. In our case, we have seen law enforcement records and investigator documents proving severe felony-level crimes were engaged in by the people suspected of attacking our Team. We are extremely confident about who will be looking bad when everything is all-said-and-done. In today’s total information world, you can hire thousands of services that can track the off-shore tax evasion accounts, escort services, political bribes and illegal PAC groups, kick-backs, insider trading and other criminal actions that any criminal billionaire, that is attacking you is involved in. If you find such information, help the law enforcement people by delivering it to all of them. The level of felony crimes, these kinds of people get involved in, are “felony-grade embezzlement and racketeering matters”, according to the FBI. They are going to get in pretty big trouble. In the cases where they used taxpayer money to stage their crimes, they are going to get in Super Big trouble.
3. Sue them. There are now contingency law firms who will cover the costs of going after big bad guys in exchange for a percentage of the judgement. For example: Many people, and countries, have now proven that Google rigs it’s search engines to harm it’s adversaries. If Google did that to you, the technical proof now exists and you can win in court and get compensated for the damages they caused you.
4. Watch out for “moles”. Crazy rich people have private eye’s and ex-employees that they pay to get a job at your company. They pretend that they are helping you, then they sabotage your effort. Consider past jobs that future employees had with your attackers.
5. Watch the news coverage for exposes about crimes that your attackers are suspected of being involved in and contact others that were harmed by the attackers. Form a support coalition with others that were damaged by the attackers.
6. Read about who does hired character assassinations, and how they do it, at THIS LINK and watch for the early signs of the attacks.
7. To understand the process, watch some of the movies about how the bad guys sabotage: Francis Coppola’s:Tucker, A Man and His Dream; Greg Kinear’s: Flash of Genius, and read some of the history of the “tech take-downs” at THIS LINK http://wp.me/P1EyVm-xH
8. Stay on the “side of the Angels”. Good eventually wins over evil. In this new “Age of Transparency”, evil is losing faster than ever.
9. As punishment against you, rich political campaign backers will try to have their federal lackey’s change the law to hurt you. If you are a tech group, for example, the “bad guys”, might organize to suddenly try to change the patent laws so that your business is destroyed. When billionaires put bribes in the right pockets, they accomplish sweeping policy change. Don’t let that happen. Expose the “who” and the “why” in such tactics.
10. Consider Quid-Pro-Quo. In many countries the rule is: “if they do it to you, you have every right to do it back to them”
11. Watch out for “honey traps” in your activities and in on-line sites. Read the Snowden/Greenwald reports on what “Honey Traps” are.
12. The Bad Guys are usually very involved in politics because they like to control things. In order to control politics they own many stealth tabloid publications where they can order attack stories written about you. Some of these kinds of people own famous online media tabloids (ie: Gawker Media Group) and stock tip publications which are really just shill operations for their agendas and attacks. Identify these publications and partner with every person, or company, who they have coordinated attacks on in the past. Read about their attacks on inventor Mike Cheiky, Gary D. Conley, Aaron Swartz, Stan Meyer, Preston Tucker and hundreds of other innovators ( http://wp.me/P1EyVm-xH ) that they wanted “out of the way”.
13. Certain “special interests” own, and control, the content on Google, Reddit, Hearst Publications, Motley Fool and other “publication outlets”. You will only see glowing reports about the “bad guys” on those. You will see no negative reports about the “bad guys”, allowed on those sites, and every bad report about you will be manually up-ranked and locked into the top slot on their page in order to damage you. The down-side for the bad guys, though, is that the internet remembers everything. You can now prove, in court, showing technical and historical metric data, that they intentionally locked and damaged you and you can get compensated for the damages.
14. Every single troll blog comment, every pseudo attack article about you, everything is already tracked back to the actual author. The NSA have done it, that is well known. NO amount of TOR, or VPN on top of VPN or stealthing software can hide a troll attacker any more. What is only now becoming known is that the official, and also the independent hacker, Chinese and Russian spies have got almost all of that information too. Hackers have broken into Sony, The White House, All of Target, All of the Federal Employee Records, everything. In a court case you can now, legally, subpoena NSA records to sue the attackers. Others, hearing of your filed case, may just show up and give you the information. Attackers cannot hide behind anonymity any more. Those who were blogging that you “sleep with goats” and “eat unborn children” can now be found out and delt with.
15. Do you have on-line stores and paypal or credit card accounts that take payments at those stores? Trying to make a little cash on the side? Confused about why you never get any orders? The attackers have DNS-re-routed your stores and payment certificates, spoofed your sites and turned off all of your income potential from those on-line options in order to damage your economic potential. Illegal? Yes. Happening to people every day? Yes. Get professional IT services to document the spoofs, and re-routes, and sue the operators of those tactics that are attacking your revenue stream.
16. It costs $50,000.00 to bribe a Senator. Some of these tech billionaires earn that much in 3 minutes. Beware of your Senator. Senators take stock options in tech companies as bribes, watch for linkages. See the 60 Minutes Episode called: Congress Trading On Insider Information.
17. Want a job? Forget about it! The bad guys went into Axciom, Oracle, SAP, and all of the Human Resources and Recruiter databases, and put “red flag notices” on your profile. You will get some great first interviews, but when they run your back-ground check, you will never hear back from that interviewer again. You got “HR Black-listed”, in retribution, for accidentally bothering a campaign billionaire. Hire an HR service to look and print out your false “red flag” HR data-base inserts and use those as evidence in your lawsuit.
18. (This one, submitted by a Washington Post reporter): They will anonymously put all of your email addresses on blacklists, and watch-lists, so that you can’t use services like craigslist, cafe press, zazzle or other on-line services to make money. If you try to open any accounts on those services, you either won’t be able to create an account or, you will get an account, but all of your orders will get “spoofed” into oblivion so you can’t make any money. The attackers believe that by causing you as much economic hard-ship as possible, they can get retribution for what-ever they have perceived that you have done to offend them. Again, use an IT forensic services group to get the data to show this is happening, trace it, and sue the perpetrators.
19. Their actions provide the proof. When you look out on the internet and add up the pronouncements of “scam”, “sleeping with goats”, etc. The volume of attack items proves that no mere mortal, or company, could have acquired that much media unless it was placed there by very wealthy parties. Everyone now knows that the web is controlled. The volume of attacks can often prove that those attacks are fabricated. Additionally, IP Trace Routing and digital tracking now can prove the attackers manipulation of your data, email and website traffic. One of your best sets of evidence will come from the attackers, themselves. The bad guys always leave a digital trail of bread-crumbs leading right back to themselves. You can hire an IT company to build a “tracking array” comprised of hundreds of websites which are bait to catch them in the act. Regarding: Paranoia vs. documented evidence. If you, and others have experienced the tactics, and the police have recorded the tactics being used against you, it isn’t paranoia to be cautious.
55 Savushkina Street, last known home of the Internet Research Agency. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
The Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
By ADRIAN
Читайте эту статью на русском.
Around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. “Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM,” the message read. “Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com.”
Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling
St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthur’s job. But he hadn’t heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadn’t even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But he’d heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?
If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. “A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals,” a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick
Dozens of journalists, media outlets and politicians, from Louisiana to New York City, found their Twitter accounts inundated with messages about the disaster. “Heather, I’m sure that the explosion at the #ColumbianChemicals is really dangerous. Louisiana is really screwed now,” a user named @EricTraPPP tweeted at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Heather Nolan. Another posted a screenshot of CNN’s home page, showing that the story had already made national news. ISIS had claimed credit for the attack, according to one YouTube video; in it, a man showed his TV screen, tuned to an Arabic news channel, on which masked ISIS fighters delivered a speech next to looping footage of an explosion. A woman named Anna McClaren (@zpokodon9) tweeted at Karl Rove: “Karl, Is this really ISIS who is responsible for #ColumbianChemicals? Tell @Obama that we should bomb Iraq!” But anyone who took the trouble to check CNN.com would have found no news of a spectacular Sept. 11 attack by ISIS. It was all fake: the screenshot, the videos, the photographs.
In St. Mary Parish, Duval Arthur quickly made a few calls and found that none of his employees had sent the alert. He called Columbian Chemicals, which reported no problems at the plant. Roughly two hours after the first text message was sent, the company put out a news release, explaining that reports of an explosion were false. When I called Arthur a few months later, he dismissed the incident as a tasteless prank, timed to the anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Personally I think it’s just a real sad, sick sense of humor,” he told me. “It was just someone who just liked scaring the daylights out of people.” Authorities, he said, had tried to trace the numbers that the text messages had come from, but with no luck. (The F.B.I. told me the investigation was still open.)
The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers. The YouTube video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A Wikipedia page was even created for the Columbian Chemicals disaster, which cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off.
And the hoax was just one in a wave of similar attacks during the second half of last year. On Dec. 13, two months after a handful of Ebola cases in the United States touched off a minor media panic, many of the same Twitter accounts used to spread the Columbian Chemicals hoax began to post about an outbreak of Ebola in Atlanta. The campaign followed the same pattern of fake news reports and videos, this time under the hashtag #EbolaInAtlanta, which briefly trended in Atlanta. Again, the attention to detail was remarkable, suggesting a tremendous amount of effort. A YouTube video showed a team of hazmat-suited medical workers transporting a victim from the airport. Beyoncé’s recent single “7/11” played in the background, an apparent attempt to establish the video’s contemporaneity. A truck in the parking lot sported the logo of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
On the same day as the Ebola hoax, a totally different group of accounts began spreading a rumor that an unarmed black woman had been shot to death by police. They all used the hashtag #shockingmurderinatlanta. Here again, the hoax seemed designed to piggyback on real public anxiety; that summer and fall were marked by protests over the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. In this case, a blurry video purports to show the shooting, as an onlooker narrates. Watching it, I thought I recognized the voice — it sounded the same as the man watching TV in the Columbian Chemicals video, the one in which ISIS supposedly claims responsibility. The accent was unmistakable, if unplaceable, and in both videos he was making a very strained attempt to sound American. Somehow the result was vaguely Australian.
Who was behind all of this? When I stumbled on it last fall, I had an idea. I was already investigating a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the Internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency. The agency had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.” The more I investigated this group, the more links I discovered between it and the hoaxes. In April, I went to St. Petersburg to learn more about the agency and its brand of information warfare, which it has aggressively deployed against political opponents at home, Russia’s perceived enemies abroad and, more recently, me.
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Seven months after the Columbian Chemicals hoax, I was in a dim restaurant in St. Petersburg, peering out the window at an office building at 55 Savushkina Street, the last known home of the Internet Research Agency. It sits in St. Petersburg’s northwestern Primorsky District, a quiet neighborhood of ugly Soviet apartment buildings and equally ugly new office complexes. Among the latter is 55 Savushkina; from the front, its perfect gray symmetry, framed by the rectangular pillars that flank its entrance, suggests the grim impenetrability of a medieval fortress. Behind the glass doors, a pair of metal turnstiles stand guard at the top of a short flight of stairs in the lobby. At 9 o’clock on this Friday night in April, except for the stairwell and the lobby, the building was entirely dark.
This puzzled my dining companion, a former agency employee named Ludmila Savchuk. She shook her head as she lifted the heavy floral curtain to take another look. It was a traditional Russian restaurant, with a dining room done up like a parlor from the early 1900s, complete with bentwood chairs and a vintage globe that showed Alaska as part of Russia. Savchuk’s 5-year-old son sat next to her, slurping down a bowl of ukha, a traditional fish soup. For two and a half months, Savchuk told me, she had worked 12-hour shifts in the building, always beginning at 9 a.m. and finishing at 9 p.m., at which point she and her co-workers would eagerly stream out the door at once. “At 9 p.m. sharp, there should be a crowd of people walking outside the building,” she said. “Nine p.m. sharp.” One Russian newspaper put the number of employees at 400, with a budget of at least 20 million rubles (roughly $400,000) a month. During her time in the organization, there were many departments, creating content for every popular social network: LiveJournal, which remains popular in Russia; VKontakte, Russia’s homegrown version of Facebook; Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; and the comment sections of Russian news outlets. One employee estimated the operation filled 40 rooms.
Every day at the Internet Research Agency was essentially the same, Savchuk told me. The first thing employees did upon arriving at their desks was to switch on an Internet proxy service, which hid their I.P. addresses from the places they posted; those digital addresses can sometimes be used to reveal the real identity of the poster. Savchuk would be given a list of the opinions she was responsible for promulgating that day. Workers received a constant stream of “technical tasks” — point-by-point exegeses of the themes they were to address, all pegged to the latest news. Ukraine was always a major topic, because of the civil war there between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army; Savchuk and her co-workers would post comments that disparaged the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, and highlighted Ukrainian Army atrocities. Russian domestic affairs were also a major topic. Last year, after a financial crisis hit Russia and the ruble collapsed, the professional trolls left optimistic posts about the pace of recovery. Savchuk also says that in March, after the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered, she and her entire team were moved to the department that left comments on the websites of Russian news outlets and ordered to suggest that the opposition itself had set up the murder.
Savchuk told me she shared an office with about a half-dozen teammates. It was smaller than most, because she worked in the elite Special Projects department. While other workers churned out blandly pro-Kremlin comments, her department created appealing online characters who were supposed to stand out from the horde. Savchuk posed as three of these creations, running a blog for each one on LiveJournal. One alter ego was a fortuneteller named Cantadora. The spirit world offered Cantadora insight into relationships, weight loss, feng shui — and, occasionally, geopolitics. Energies she discerned in the universe invariably showed that its arc bent toward Russia. She foretold glory for Vladimir Putin, defeat for Barack Obama and Petro Poroshenko. The point was to weave propaganda seamlessly into what appeared to be the nonpolitical musings of an everyday person.
In fact, she was a troll. The word “troll” was popularized in the early 1990s to denounce the people who derailed conversation on Usenet discussion lists with interminable flame wars, or spammed chat rooms with streams of disgusting photos, choking users with a cloud of filth. As the Internet has grown, the problem posed by trolls has grown more salient even as their tactics have remained remarkably constant. Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester. Any major conflict is accompanied by a raging online battle between trolls on both sides.
As Savchuk and other former employees describe it, the Internet Research Agency had industrialized the art of trolling. Management was obsessed with statistics — page views, number of posts, a blog’s place on LiveJournal’s traffic charts — and team leaders compelled hard work through a system of bonuses and fines. “It was a very strong corporate feeling,” Savchuk says. Her schedule gave her two 12-hour days in a row, followed by two days off. Over those two shifts she had to meet a quota of five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and 150 to 200 comments on other workers’ posts. The grueling schedule wore her down. She began to feel queasy, she said, posting vitriol about opposition leaders of whom she had no actual opinion, or writing nasty words about Ukrainians when some of her closest acquaintances, including her own ex-husband, were Ukrainian.
Employees were mostly in their 20s but were drawn from a broad cross-section of Russian society. It seemed as if the agency’s task was so large that it would hire almost anyone who responded to the many ads it posted on job boards, no matter how undereducated or politically ignorant they were. Posts teemed with logical and grammatical errors. “They were so stupid,” says Marat Burkhardt, who worked for two months in the department of forums, posting 135 comments a day on little-read message boards about remote Russian towns. “You see these people with a lot of tattoos. They’re so cool, like they’re from New York; very hip clothing, very hip tattoos, like they’re from Williamsburg. But they are stupid.” In office conversation, they used gay slurs to refer to Petro Poroshenko and called Barack Obama a monkey. Management tried to rectify their ignorance with grammar classes. Others had “politology” classes to outline the proper Russian point of view on current events. Yet the exact point of their work was left unclear to them. The handful of employees I spoke with did not even know the name of the company’s chief executive. They had signed a nondisclosure agreement but no official contract. Salaries were surprisingly high for the work; Savchuk’s was 41,000 rubles a month ($777), or as much as a tenured university professor earns. “I can’t say they clearly explain to you what your purpose there is,” Savchuk says. “But they created such an atmosphere that people would understand they were doing something important and secretive and very highly paid. And that they won’t be able to find a job like this anywhere else.”
Savchuk is 34, but her taste in clothes runs toward the teenage: The night of our dinner she wore a plaid dress and a billowing neon yellow jacket, and her head was swaddled in a fuzzy hood with animal ears. She credits her innocent appearance for allowing her to infiltrate the Internet Research Agency without raising alarms. While employed there, she copied dozens of documents to her personal email account and also plied her co-workers for information. She made a clandestine video of the office. In February, she leaked it all to a reporter for Moi Raion, a local newspaper known for its independent reporting. The documents, together with her story, offered the most detailed look yet into the daily life of a pro-Kremlin troll. Though she quit the agency the day the exposé was published, she was continuing her surveillance from the outside. She brought a camera to our dinner in hopes of documenting the changing of the shifts, which she planned to post to the VKontakte page of Information Peace, the group she founded to fight the agency. Her ultimate goal is to shut it down entirely, believing that its information warfare is contributing to an increasingly dark atmosphere in Russia. “Information peace is the start of real peace,” she says.
But at 10 minutes after 9 p.m., still no crowd had entered or left 55 Savushkina. Finally, around 9:30, a group of five young people approached the building and walked inside. Savchuk perked up, grabbed the camera and began to film the scene. Now more started filtering in, each of them stopping at the guard desk to check in. I counted at least 30 in all. Savchuk told me with pride that she believed the agency had changed its schedule to confound journalists, who began to stake out the place after her exposé.
Savchuk is accustomed to antagonizing powerful people. She has been a longtime environmental activist in the town of Pushkin, the suburb of St. Petersburg where she lives; her main cause before the troll farm was saving forests and parks from being paved over by well-connected developers. Last year she even ran for a seat on her municipal council as an independent, which in Russia requires a level of optimism bordering on delusion. On Election Day, she told me, state employees — health care workers, teachers, law enforcement, etc. — came to the polls wielding lists of candidates they had been “encouraged” to vote for, all of them associated with United Russia, the governing party of Vladimir Putin. (She lost her race.) Savchuk has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Research Agency for violating labor rights laws, citing the lack of official contracts. She has enlisted the help of a well-known human rights lawyer named Ivan Pavlov, who has spent years fighting for transparency laws in Russia; he took on Savchuk’s case in hopes that it would force the agency to answer questions about its business on the record.
Several Russian media outlets have claimed that the agency is funded by Evgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch restaurateur called “the Kremlin’s chef” in the independent press for his lucrative government contracts and his close relationship with Putin. When a reporter from the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta infiltrated the agency posing as a job seeker, she discovered that one of the team leaders was an employee of Prigozhin’s Concord holding company. (The reporter was familiar with her because the woman was famous among journalists for having been deployed by Prigozhin to spy on Novaya Gazeta.) The suspicion around Prigozhin was bolstered when emails leaked by hackers showed an accountant at Concord approving payments to the agency. If the speculation is accurate, it would not be the first time that Prigozhin has used his enormous wealth to fund quixotic schemes against his enemies: According to Novaya Gazeta, a documentary he backed, which later ran on the Kremlin-controlled NTV, claimed that the protesters who participated in the enormous anti-Putin demonstrations of 2011 were paid agents provocateurs, some of them bribed by United States government officials, who fed them cookies. “I think of him as Dr. Evil,” says Andrei Soshnikov, the reporter at Moi Raion to whom Savchuk leaked her documents. (My calls to Concord went unreturned.)
Savchuk’s revelations about the agency have fascinated Russia not because they are shocking but because they confirm what everyone has long suspected: The Russian Internet is awash in trolls. “This troll business becomes more popular year by year,” says Platon Mamatov, who says that he ran his own troll farm in the Ural Mountains from 2008 to 2013. During that time he employed from 20 to 40 people, mostly students and young mothers, to carry out online tasks for Kremlin contacts and local and regional authorities from Putin’s United Russia party. Mamatov says there are scores of operations like his around the country, working for government authorities at every level. Because the industry is secretive, with its funds funneled through a maze of innocuous-sounding contracts and shell businesses, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people are at work trolling today. But Mamatov claims “there are thousands — I’m not sure about how many, but yes, really, thousands.”
The boom in pro-Kremlin trolling can be traced to the antigovernment protests of 2011, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets after evidence of fraud in the recent Parliamentary election emerged. The protests were organized largely over Facebook and Twitter and spearheaded by leaders, like the anticorruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who used LiveJournal blogs to mobilize support. The following year, when Vyascheslav Volodin, the new deputy head of Putin’s administration and architect of his domestic policy, came into office, one of his main tasks was to rein in the Internet. Volodin, a lawyer who studied engineering in college, approached the problem as if it were a design flaw in a heating system. Forbes Russia reported that Volodin installed in his office a custom-designed computer terminal loaded with a system called Prism, which monitored public sentiment online using 60 million sources. According to the website of its manufacturer, Prism “actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremism.” Or, as Forbes put it, “Prism sees social media as a battlefield.”
Photo
Ludmila Savchuk, an activist and a former mole in the Internet Research Agency. Credit James Hill for The New York Times
The battle was conducted on multiple fronts. Laws were passed requiring bloggers to register with the state. A blacklist allowed the government to censor websites without a court order. Internet platforms like Yandex were subjected to political pressure, while others, like VKontakte, were brought under the control of Kremlin allies. Putin gave ideological cover to the crackdown by calling the entire Internet a “C.I.A. project,” one that Russia needed to be protected from. Restrictions online were paired with a new wave of digital propaganda. The government consulted with the same public relations firms that worked with major corporate brands on social-media strategy. It began paying fashion and fitness bloggers to place pro-Kremlin material among innocuous posts about shoes and diets, according to Yelizaveta Surnacheva, a journalist with the magazine Kommersant Vlast. Surnacheva told me over Skype that the government was even trying to place propaganda with popular gay bloggers — a surprising choice given the notorious new law against “gay propaganda,” which fines anyone who promotes homosexuality to minors.
All of this has contributed to a dawning sense, among the Russian journalists and activists I spoke with, that the Internet is no longer a natural medium for political opposition. “The myth that the Internet is controlled by the opposition is very, very old,” says Leonid Volkov, a liberal politician and campaign manager to Alexei Navalny. “It’s not true since at least three years.” Part of this is simple demographics: The Internet audience has expanded from its early adopters, who were more likely to be well-educated liberal intelligentsia, to the whole of Russia, which overwhelmingly supports Putin. Also, by working every day to spread Kremlin propaganda, the paid trolls have made it impossible for the normal Internet user to separate truth from fiction.
“The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” Volkov said, when we met in the office of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “You have to remember the Internet population of Russia is just over 50 percent. The rest are yet to join, and when they join it’s very important what is their first impression.” The Internet still remains the one medium where the opposition can reliably get its message out. But their message is now surrounded by so much garbage from trolls that readers can become resistant before the message even gets to them. During the protests, a favorite tactic of the opposition was making anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Today, waves of trolls and bots regularly promote pro-Putin hashtags. What once was an exhilarating act of popular defiance now feels empty. “It kind of discredited the idea of political hashtags,” says Ilya Klishin, the web editor for the independent television station TV Rain who, in 2011, created the Facebook page for the antigovernment protests.
Russia’s information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history, and its target is nothing less than the utility of the Internet as a democratic space. In the midst of such a war, the Runet (as the Russian Internet is often called) can be an unpleasant place for anyone caught in the crossfire. Soon after I met Leonid Volkov, he wrote a post on his Facebook wall about our interview, saying that he had spoken with someone from The New York Times. A former pro-Kremlin blogger later warned me about this. Kremlin allies, he explained, monitored Volkov’s page, and now they would be on guard. “That was not smart,” he said.
The chain that links the Columbian Chemicals hoax to the Internet Research Agency begins with an act of digital subterfuge perpetrated by its online enemies. Last summer, a group called Anonymous International — believed to be unaffiliated with the well-known hacktivist group Anonymous — published a cache of hundreds of emails said to have been stolen from employees at the agency. It was just one hack in a long series that Anonymous International had carried out against the Kremlin in recent months. The group leaked embarrassing photos of Putin allies and incriminating emails among officials. It claimed to have hacked into Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s phone, and reportedly hacked his Twitter account, tweeting: “I’m resigning. I am ashamed of this government’s actions. Forgive me.”
The emails indicated that the Internet Research Agency had begun to troll in English. One document outlined a project called “World Translation”; the problem, it explained, was that the foreign Internet was biased four to one against Russia, and the project aimed to change the ratio. Another email contained a spreadsheet that listed some of the troll accounts the agency was using on the English-language web. After BuzzFeed reported on the leak, I used the spreadsheet to start mapping the network of accounts on Facebook and Twitter, trying to draw connections.
One account was called “I Am Ass.” Ass had a Twitter account, an Instagram account, multiple Facebook accounts and his own website. In his avatars, Ass was depicted as a pair of cartoon buttocks with an ugly, smirking face. He filled his social-media presences with links to news articles, along with his own commentary. Ass had a puerile sense of humor and only a rudimentary grasp of the English language. He also really hated Barack Obama. Ass denounced Obama in posts strewn with all-caps rants and scatological puns. One characteristic post linked to a news article about an ISIS massacre in Iraq, which Ass shared on Facebook with the comment: “I’m scared and farting! ISIS is a monster awakened by Obama when he unleashed this disastrous Iraq war!”
Despite his unpleasant disposition, Ass had a half-dozen or so fans who regularly liked and commented on his posts. These fans shared some unusual characteristics. Their Facebook accounts had all been created in the summer of 2014. They all appeared to be well-dressed young men and women who lived in large American cities, yet they seemed to have no real-life friends. Instead, they spent their free time leaving anti-Obama comments on the Facebook posts of American media outlets like CNN, Politico and Fox News. Their main Facebook interactions, especially those of the women, appeared to be with strangers who commented on their physical appearance. The women were all very attractive — so attractive, indeed, that a search revealed that some of their profile photos had been stolen from models and actors. It became clear that the vast majority of Ass’s fans were not real people. They were also trolls.
I friended as many of the trolls on Facebook as I could and began to observe their ways. Most of the content they shared was drawn from a network of other pages that, like Ass’s, were clearly meant to produce entertaining and shareable social-media content. There was the patriotic Spread Your Wings, which described itself as “a community for everyone whose heart is with America.” Spread Your Wings posted photos of American flags and memes about how great it was to be an American, but the patriotism rang hollow once you tried to parse the frequent criticisms of Obama, an incoherent mishmash of liberal and conservative attacks that no actual American would espouse. There was also Art Gone Conscious, which posted bad art and then tenuously connected it to Obama’s policy failures, and the self-explanatory Celebrities Against Obama. The posts churned out every day by this network of pages were commented on and shared by the same group of trolls, a virtual Potemkin village of disaffected Americans.
After following the accounts for a few weeks, I saw a strange notification on Facebook. One account, which claimed to be a woman from Seattle named Polly Turner, RSVPed to a real-life event. It was a talk in New York City to commemorate the opening of an art exhibit called Material Evidence. I was vaguely aware of Material Evidence, thanks to eye-catching advertisements that had appeared in subway stations and on the sides of buses throughout New York City: a black-and-white photo of masked men in camouflage, overlaid with the slogan “Syria, Ukraine … Who’s Next?” Material Evidence’s website described it as a traveling exhibition that would reveal “the full truth” about the civil war in Syria, as well as about 2014’s Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, through a combination of “unique footage, artefacts, video.” I clicked on the Material Evidence talk and saw that a number of other trolls had been invited, including my old friend I Am Ass.
Walking into Material Evidence, mounted last September in the cavernous ArtBeam gallery in Chelsea, was like walking into a real-life version of the hall of mirrors I’d stumbled into on Facebook. A sign at the front declared that the show did not “support a specific political goal,” but the message became clear as soon as I began to browse the images. Large, well-composed photos testified to the barbarity of the Syrian rebels, bent on slaughtering handsome Syrian soldiers and innocent civilians alike. A grim panorama showed a gymnasium supposedly used by rebels to torture prisoners. There was a heroic, sunlit portrait of a Syrian Army officer. A room hidden behind a curtain displayed gory photos of rebel-caused civilian causalities, “provided by the Syrian ministry of defense.”
Then there were the pictures from the Ukrainian revolution, which focused almost exclusively on the Right Sector, a small group of violent, right-wing, anti-Russian protesters with a fondness for black balaclavas. Russian authorities have seized upon Right Sector to paint the entire revolution, backed by a huge swath of Ukrainian society, as orchestrated by neo-fascist thugs. The show’s decision to juxtapose the rebellions in Syria and Ukraine was never clearly explained, perhaps because the only connection possible was that both targeted leaders supported by Russia.
On the floor in front of many of the photos sat the actual items that appeared in them, displayed under glass cases. How, exactly, did organizers procure the very same battered motorcycle helmet that a Ukrainian protester wore in a photo while brawling with riot police? Who had fronted the money to purchase a mangled white van, supposedly used by Syrian rebels in a botched suicide bombing, and transport it to New York City? Few answers were forthcoming from Benjamin Hiller, the Berlin-based German-American photojournalist who was put forth as the curator of Material Evidence. He sat at a table in the front of the gallery, a heavyset bearded man dressed entirely in black. He told me that the show had been organized by an independent collective of European, Russian and Syrian war photographers who were fed up with the one-sided view of conflicts presented by Western media. He said they simply wanted to show the “other side.” Hiller claimed that the funds to rent the space, take out the ads, transport the material and create a $40,000 grant advertised on the Material Evidence website had been raised through “crowdfunding.” (Hiller has since left the organization and says that because of the show’s “misinformations” and “nonjournalistic approach,” he “does not want to be affiliated anymore with the project.”)
When I got home, I searched Twitter for signs of a campaign. Sure enough, dozens of accounts had been spamming rave reviews under the hashtag #MaterialEvidence. I clicked on one, a young woman in aviator sunglasses calling herself Zoe Foreman. (I later discovered her avatar had been stolen.) Most of her tweets were unremarkable song lyrics and inspirational quotes. But on Sept. 11 of last year, she spent hours spamming politicians and journalists about a horrific chemical plant explosion in St. Mary Parish, La. The source field on Twitter showed that the tweets Zoe Foreman — and the majority of other trolls — sent about #ColumbianChemicals were posted using a tool called Masss Post, which is associated with a nonworking page on the domain Add1.ru. According to online records, Add1.ru was originally registered in January 2009 by Mikhail Burchik, whose email address remained connected to the domain until 2012. Documents leaked by Anonymous International listed a Mikhail Burchik as the executive director of the Internet Research Agency.
In early February, I called Burchik, a young tech entrepreneur in St. Petersburg, to ask him about the hoax and its connection to the Internet Research Agency. In an article for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German journalist Julian Hans had claimed that Burchik confirmed the authenticity of the leaked documents. But when I called Burchik, he denied working at the Internet Research Agency. “I have heard of it, but I don’t work in this organization,” he said. Burchik said he had never heard of the Masss Post app; he had no specific memory of the Add1.ru domain, he said, but he noted that he had bought and sold many domains and didn’t remember them all. Burchik suggested that perhaps a different Mikhail Burchik was the agency’s executive director. But the email address used by the Mikhail Burchik in the leak matched the address listed at that time on the website of the Mikhail Burchik I spoke with.
In St. Petersburg, I finally had a chance to compare notes with Andrei Soshnikov, the young investigative journalist at Moi Raion to whom Ludmila Savchuk leaked her documents. Soshnikov is an indefatigable reporter: During one investigation, he had gone so far as to create a 3-D computer model of a roadway in order to calculate how much asphalt had been stolen during its construction. He was one of the first journalists to expose the Internet Research Agency when he went undercover and got a job there in 2013. Since then, he had followed the agency’s Russian trolls as obsessively as I had been tracking their English counterparts.
I showed Soshnikov a YouTube video posted on Facebook by one of the trolls. The video was a slick animated infographic about the faults of the United States Secret Service. What had caught my attention was the narrator. He sounded just like the voice from the videos spread during the Columbian Chemicals and Atlanta shooting hoaxes: a man trying desperately to sound American but coming off as Australian instead.
Soshnikov instantly recognized the style of the animation. It was made, he said, by an outfit called Infosurfing, which posts pro-Kremlin infographics on Instagram and VKontakte. Soshnikov showed me how he used a service called Yomapic, which maps the locations of social-media users, to determine that photos posted to Infosurfing’s Instagram account came from 55 Savushkina. He had been monitoring all of the content posted from 55 Savushkina for weeks and had assembled a huge database of troll content.
He brought up Infosurfing’s YouTube channel, and as we scrolled down, I noticed several videos in the same style as the Secret Service animation. In fact, Infosurfing had posted the exact same video on its own account — except instead of the unfortunate Australian voice-over, it was narrated in Russian. It was the most tantalizing connection yet: It seemed as if the man in the hoax videos had worked for an outfit connected to the same building that housed the Internet Research Agency.
Still, no one had heard of any department that might have orchestrated the hoax. The English-language trolling team was an elite and secretive group. Marat Burkhardt, who worked in the forums department, was asked to try out for an English-language team but didn’t get the job. The only person I spoke with who worked in the English department was a woman named Katarina Aistova. A former hotel receptionist, she told me she joined the Internet Research Agency when it was in a previous, smaller office. I found her through the Anonymous International leak, which included emails she had sent to her bosses, reporting on the pro-Putin comments she left on sites like The Blaze and Politico. One of her assignments had been to write an essay from the point of view of an average American woman. “I live in such developed society, so that people have practically ceased to walk on foot,” she wrote. When I emailed Aistova, she wasn’t eager to talk. She told me she had been harassed by critics of the Internet Research Agency after her email appeared in the leak; some men had even come to her door. She would meet me for an interview, but only if she could bring her brother for protection. I agreed, and we met at an out-of-the-way Chinese restaurant.
The exact point of their work was left unclear to them. The handful of employees I spoke with did not even know the name of the company's chief executive.
Aistova and her brother made an unusual pair. She was a short young woman with midlength brown hair, dressed all in black: sweater, leggings, big wedge boots. She insisted on paying for my coffee. “You are a Russian guest,” she said. He, by contrast, was a hulking skinhead with arms full of Nazi-themed tattoos, most prominent among them a five-inch swastika on his left biceps. “My brother, he looks like a strongman,” Aistova said, giggling. He wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the SS Totenkopf division, which administered the Nazi concentration camps. I asked him what his T-shirt meant. “Totenkopf,” he grunted. During the interview he sat across the table from Aistova and me, smiling silently behind his sunglasses.
Aistova said that she worked for the Internet Research Agency for a month and a half. The majority of her work was translating news articles from English to Russian. The news articles covered everything from Ukraine to traffic accidents. On a few occasions, her bosses asked her to leave comments on American news sites about Russia, but she said that they never told her what to say. She loves Russia, she told me. She truly believes that Putin is just trying to help the people of Eastern Ukraine, and that his actions are being unfairly spun by the Western media. “I was like, Hey, you guys, you are saying these bad things about Putin, but people are suffering.”
But she claimed to harbor no ill will toward the United States. She wants to visit New York City, she said, and see the locations from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” one of her favorite films. “I don’t feel aggressive toward America. We’re the same people, we just speak different languages,” she said. After the interview, we shook hands outside the restaurant. “You seem like a journalist who will tell the truth,” she said. “I wish you luck on your story.”
On my last morning in St. Petersburg, I returned to 55 Savushkina. The clouds had lifted after a miserable week of snow and howling wind. At a few minutes before 10, my translator and I positioned ourselves on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, hoping to catch some of the trolls as they began the day shift. This was not a very well thought out strategy. Any employees arriving so close to the start of their shift didn’t have time to talk to a journalist even if they wanted to. A large van lurched to a halt in front of us and deposited a half-dozen young people, who hurried in the door before we had the chance to approach them. A bus stopped halfway down the block, and another gaggle of workers emerged. They waved off my translator’s inquiries with annoyed grunts or stone-faced silence. A young man smoking a cigarette said he didn’t work inside the building. He finished his cigarette and promptly went inside the building.
At 10 a.m. sharp, the flow of workers stopped. I decided we might as well try walking inside. I had read of other journalists who tried to enter the building, only to be kicked out immediately, so I entered with some trepidation. Two men in suits guarded the turnstiles. My translator and I approached a receptionist behind a desk and asked if we could speak with someone from Internet Research. (It dropped the “Agency” on moving to 55 Savushkina.) She informed us that Internet Research was no longer a tenant. “A couple of months ago, we had to say goodbye, because it was giving the entire building a bad reputation,” she said, matter-of-factly.
She pointed to a board that displayed a makeshift directory of the building’s current occupants. The names were printed out on small scraps of paper, and none of them were Internet Research. But I did recognize one: “FAN,” or Federal News Agency. I had read some news articles claiming that FAN was part of a network of pro-Kremlin news sites run out of 55 Savushkina, also funded by Evgeny Prigozhin. Former Internet Research Agency employees I had spoken to said they believed FAN was another wing of the same operation, under a different name. I asked to speak to someone from FAN. To my surprise, the receptionist picked up the phone, spoke into it for a few seconds and then informed us that Evgeny Zubarev, the editor in chief of FAN, would be right out to meet us.
Zubarev, who looked to be in his 50s, had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a weary face. He greeted me with a handshake and invited me into his office. We made our way through the turnstiles and signed in with the guards, then took a brief walk down a long hallway to FAN’s two-room office on the first floor. It was unusually quiet for an online news operation that, according to Zubarev, had a staff of 40 people. The newsroom was equipped for a sizable team, with about a dozen identical black desktop computers sitting on identical brown laminate desks, but only two young reporters sat at them. The shades were drawn and the furniture looked just barely unpacked.
As we sat at Zubarev’s desk, I told him about the articles I’d read accusing FAN of being a Kremlin propaganda outfit. He shook his head in indignation. He turned to his computer and brought up FAN’s website, pointing to the masthead and the certificate number that showed FAN was an officially registered Russian mass-media organization. “FAN is a news agency,” he declared. It had stringers and reporters in Ukraine, and in many former Soviet states; they did original reporting, sometimes at great personal risk. Zubarev himself was a veteran journalist who covered the annexation of Crimea for the Russian news agency Rosbalt before joining FAN. But ever since reports linked him to the Internet Research Agency, he had faced questions about his integrity.
“We understand being in this building may discredit us, but we can’t afford to move at the moment,” Zubarev said with a sigh. “So we have to face the situation where reporters like you, Mr. Chen, come in here and ask us questions every day.”
Zubarev said he believed that he and FAN were victims of a smear campaign. I asked him who would do such a thing.
“Listen, that’s my position, not a confirmed fact,” he said. “It’s possible that there are some business interests, I don’t know. Maybe it’s an attack on our investors.” But when I asked who those investors were, he declined to comment. “I can’t discuss the identities of investors,” he said. “That’s in my contract.”
I left St. Petersburg on April 28. One day later, FAN published an article with the headline “What Does a New York Times Journalist Have in Common With a Nazi From St. Petersburg?” The story detailed a mysterious meeting in St. Petersburg between a New York Times journalist — me — and a neo-Nazi. Its lead image was a photo of a skinhead giving an enthusiastic Nazi salute. But it was not just any skinhead. It was the skinhead whom Katarina Aistova brought to our meeting and introduced to me as her brother. As I learned from reading the article, Aistova’s “brother” was in fact a notorious neo-Nazi named Alexei Maximov.
The article explained that Maximov, who goes by the nickname Fly, is a member of Totenkopf, a prominent skinhead group in St. Petersburg. He reportedly served nine years in prison for stabbing a man to death. Just a month before I met him, Maximov again made headlines when, during an investigation into beatings of immigrants around St. Petersburg, the police found weaponry and Nazi paraphernalia in his apartment.
The story made no mention of Katarina Aistova or the Internet Research Agency. Instead, the article claimed I met with Maximov because I wanted his help in creating a provocation against Russia. Maximov told FAN that I requested to meet him because I was “very keenly interested in sentiment among Russian nationalists.” He continued: “He evidently needed stories about how the murderous Kremlin regime persecutes free Russian people. It’s not the first time I’ve come across such requests on the part of Western journalists, but I’m not going to help them with this. Many want to see in Russian nationalists a ‘fifth column,’ which will function on orders from the West and sweep away the Kremlin.” Apparently I was trying to foment a mini-Euromaidan, right there in St. Petersburg.
The article was illustrated with photos of my meeting with Aistova and Maximov. One photo appears to have been shot surreptitiously through the restaurant window while we sat and talked. The point of view is such that Aistova is barely visible; indeed, at first glance, I seem to be having a friendly chat with a skinhead over a cup of coffee. Another photo, this one taken outside the restaurant, somehow makes me look deep in conversation with Maximov, even though I distinctly recall that Aistova was standing between us.
I had to admire the brazenness of the scheme. I remembered how, at the restaurant, Aistova had sat next to me so I had to twist around to talk to her, while Maximov sat silently across from us. Apparently they had arranged themselves so it could appear, from the right perspective, that I was meeting Maximov alone. I emailed Aistova to ask her to explain what happened. She responded only: “I would also like you to explain yourself and the situation!!” (A few weeks later, when I tried calling her by phone, she pretended I had the wrong number.)
Over the course of a few days, the sensational story circulated among a network of small pro-Kremlin blogs. In fact, the FAN story itself had been aggregated from another pro-Kremlin news site called People’s News, which Andrei Soshnikov, the Moi Raion journalist, has reported also operates out of 55 Savushkina. As it spread, it mutated to become even more alarming. One website suggested I was working for the C.I.A.; another, the National Security Agency. A YouTube channel called Russia Today — not the well-known state television channel but a knockoff — posted a slick video about the meeting, set to a pounding dubstep soundtrack. Disconcertingly, it included a photo of me leaving my hotel. The video currently has more than 60,000 views. Many of those views were a result of a familiar pattern of social-media promotion: Dozens of trolls on Twitter began tweeting links to the video using the hashtag #ВербовкаНацистов — “Recruitment of Nazis.” The hashtag trended on Russian Twitter.
After recovering from the initial shock, I began to track the campaign against me. I had practice, after all, from my months spent on the trail of the Internet Research Agency. I Googled the various Russian spellings of my name every hour to catch the latest posts as soon as they surfaced on LiveJournal and VKontakte. I searched Twitter for the URL of the YouTube video to catch every post.
A few days later, Soshnikov chatted with me on Skype. “Did you see an article about you on FAN?” he asked. “They know you are going to publish a loud article, so they are trying to make you look stupid in front of the Russian audience.”
I explained the setup, and as I did I began to feel a nagging paranoia. The more I explained, the more absurd my own words seemed — the more they seemed like exactly the sort of elaborate alibi a C.I.A. agent might concoct once his cover was blown. The trolls had done the only thing they knew how to do, but this time they had done it well. They had gotten into my head.
Correction: June 21, 2015
An article on June 7 about Russian Internet ‘‘trolls’’ referred incorrectly to the Internet platform Yandex. It was subjected to political pressure, but it was not brought under the control of Kremlin allies.
Adrian Chen is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in Wired, New York magazine, and The New York Times. He is a contributing editor for The New Inquiry and a founder of I.R.L. Club, a regular gathering for people from the Internet to meet “in real life.”
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week.
A version of this article appears in print on June 7, 2015, on page MM57 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Agency.
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Bob S
New Jersey June 2, 2015
What a strange article since it has been obvious that China for years has been using operatives to provide propaganda on the internet. And of course ISIS is using the internet to persuade young Muslims to join them.
For years everyone understood the idea of corporations that have been using expensive media to sell products and increase profits.
Time to wake up to the present where the internet offers a very low cost method for propaganda. Time to recognize that with the internet the costs of running an affective Ministry of Information are very low.
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moosemaps
Vermont June 2, 2015
Crazy and awful and even rather literary but sadly not unexpected nor the least bit shocking. Putin and his cronies are such bad news and I'd rather see them spend their billions this way, on mostly failed silly web schemes then on executions and annexations (of course, they will just do it all). This article reminds me of those who have stood up so bravely to Putin's tyranny, such as Pussy Riot, and hope they are well and energized. Seems the world needs more Nadezhda Tolokonnikovas.
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TK
MA June 2, 2015
This is a truly fascinating article that is well written and haunting. This is a good reminder to all of us to not trust everything that we see on the internet and to make sure we check a reliable source (not wikipedia) before believing something.
The ending is almost too perfect based on all of the evidence that you had been gathering! Excellent reporting and please continue your investigations.
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TheraP
Midwest June 2, 2015
Trolling and impersonation, on a massive scale, is endemic all over now. It is integral to electoral campaigns, national and international politics, financial arenas, sports, you name it.
The Internet is both fascinating and frightening.
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Charley
Connecticut June 2, 2015
The thing about the Internet Research Agency is that they have made any sort of harsh, humorless, stiffly ungrammatical criticism of United States policy open to suspicion. They have greatly weakened those in this country and elsewhere who might legitimately have the same sorts of views. It is a case of Russia hurting Russia and turning her own people into dupes - certainly not the first time that has happened.
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Sharon
Chico, CA June 2, 2015
Ah, the Cold War. It never really ended; it's just with us in a different form.
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Bob Woods
Salem, Oregon June 2, 2015
One of the most fascinating and chilling pieces of reporting I have ever read.
I thinks in the backs of our minds we know that there is a lot of intentional disinformation out there. But mostly we write it off as "some idiot" who is just clueless and spouting drivel.
This article shows how groups can plant and reinforce views that garner credibility from HOW they are posted. Playing on fears is always a good choice, I guess.
Yet so much of what is posted in political discussions is based on fear. Fear of the government; fear of corporations; fear of unions; fear of liberals; fear of conservatives.
The availability of access to information now is immediate and unfiltered. We see what can happen when things are taken at face value.
The future is a lot more scary than when I started reading this article.
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Concerned Reader
Boston June 2, 2015
Much of the Internet traffic still flows through the US. And if the US decides that this e-terrorism means Russia can no longer connect to the US, they will drop off much of the global Internet. Russia had better watch how far they push this.
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LM
Washington DC June 2, 2015
This is such an outstanding piece of reporting. I can't thank Adrian Chen or the NYT enough. I agree with other commenters that this piece should be the first in a series on trolling that includes a discussion on trolling in general, the independent trolls that troll for fun or out of spite to get a rise out of real commenters, the professional trolls that are essentially paid marketers promoting products and services, and the paid political trolls.
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fromsc
Southern California June 2, 2015
A ridiculously great piece of meta journalism. There is no doubt in my mind that the author has written a truthful article and not an alibi. Still, it's scary to read how easily he was compromised. Just as scary is how widespread this business of paid trolling must surely be. Whatever shenanigans the Russians are good at, we're probably great at here in the U.S. It makes me hesitant to continue forwarding my opinions on the internet. Maybe the only safety is in being a well paid troll. But where does one apply for such a job?
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Monsanto and White House Politicos Caught Paying Internet ‘Trolls’ to Attack Activists
Companies desperate to fool public
by Anthony Gucciardi
Posted on April 20, 2015
Have you ever seen a post, comment, or reply that absolutely reeked of behind-the-scenes compensation by corporations like Monsanto? In the growing age of internet activism, and the expansion of social media as a tool to spread the word on real issues, paid internet trolling is becoming a new career path.
Now, in case you’re not familiar with what ‘trolling’ really is, I think Wikipedia has a great definition. According to Wikipedia, an internet troll is:
“…a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.“
Does this sound like some posts you’ve seen before? Now, let’s be clear: there are tons of internet trolls out there that are absolutely not on the pay roll. Most of these people are genuinely just messing with others to get a laugh, a reaction, or whatever. Not arguing on behalf of multi-billion dollar corporations for up to 8 hours per day.
There’s the real difference. And, besides common sense dictating that corporations would surely hire a fleet of internet warriors to protect their brand reputation in the age of open source online communication, we now know for sure that companies like Monsanto have in fact dedicated ‘entire departments’ to trolling scientists and ‘discrediting’ those who oppose their GMO creations.
Monsanto Paying Fleet of Trolls to ‘Discredit’
Surprisingly, it was actually a Monsanto employee that unintentionally let the truth behind their ‘discrediting operation’ slip in a conference with students that he may have forgotten was open to the public. In a conversation with students, Dr. William “Bill” Moar raved that Monsanto had established:
“An entire department” (waving his arm for emphasis) dedicated to “debunking” science which disagreed with theirs.”
That’s huge news. We told you about this first back on the 6th of April — but I am absolutely shocked how it has not been covered to the extent it should have. Because, after all, how does a company ‘discredit’ and ‘debunk’ those who go against their destructive, cancer-linked products? By attacking them online through blogs, comments, and character assassination. In other words, by internet trolling.
It’s so much easier to say someone is a ‘quack,’ or create some fictitious and anonymous accusation to plague their search data than it is to actually have a scientific debate on issues like Roundup’s admitted probable carcinogenic nature.
It also brings into question whether or not the Monsanto employee truly did ‘slip up’ or if he was attempting to help get the word out about the corporation he represents. You have to wonder if Dr. Moar was secretly passing off some information to the press in the form of a slip about his company.
This is a question I often wondered after hearing about Coca-Cola’s similar operations that extended deeper than just internet trolls. After reading the March 16th article in the Associated Press that broke down how Coca-Cola paid off health leaders in exchange for these ‘experts’ to back their chemical-laden sodas as health drinks.
The AP report reads:
“In February, several of the experts wrote online posts for American Heart Month, with each including a mini-can of Coke or soda as a snack idea. The pieces — which appeared on nutrition blogs and other sites including those of major newspapers — offer a window into the many ways food companies work behind the scenes to cast their products in a positive light, often with the help of third parties who are seen as trusted authorities.”
A mini-can of Coke as a ‘snack idea.’ What amazing health leaders these individuals truly are.
Next time you’re scrolling through social media, YouTube, or even this website’s comment section, remember that the trolls attacking you for no apparent reason may in fact be receiving an annual salary. Checkout my video report on Monsanto’s secret ‘discrediting’ department and what it truly means for the natural health and alternative news movement:
About Anthony Gucciardi:
Other Popular Stories:
- Gagging the Nation: Government and Corporate Trolls on the Internet
- Coca-Cola Caught Paying ‘Health Leaders’ to Say Soda is ‘Healthy Snack’
- Monsanto Secretly Gave Money to Farmer Caught Contaminating Organic Farms with GMOs
- Monsanto Caught Pushing GMOs on Independent African Farmers
- Anthony Gucciardi to Talk Solutions at March Against Monsanto 2015
- Facebook Knows About Your Health-Related Internet Searches
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-and-others-caught-paying-internet-trolls-to-attack-activists/#ixzz3jNfjyHhR
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