Critical Thinking

2018-02: Help! There's been a torrent of publications on fake news/post truth politics. We can't keep up...

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 12:37:50 GMT

We have been overwhelmed by the number of publications on fake news and post truth / post fact politics that have appeared over the last year or so. We have logged literally hundreds of articles and 30 books and have not yet been able to assess which of these are worth reading.

As an interim measure we have provided on our Resources Page four graphics showing the covers of the books that we have identified to date. (One is shown here). The selection of books in each graphic is effectively random.

If anyone would like to comment on any of these publications to help with this assessment we'd really appreciate it . Many thanks!

2018-01: Interpreting Events & Keeping Up With Developments

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 13:24:19 GMT

Last night (5 Feb) The Institute of Art and Ideas debated ‘The Future of the Post-Truth World’ at the ICA in London. Speakers included Steve Fuller, Rae Langton and Hilary Lawson, ably managed by Orwell prize-winning journalist Polly Toynbee. Much ground was covered but one comment caught my attention: reference to a BBC interview with Sean Spicer, President Trump’s first Press Secretary. It concerned Spicer’s now infamous description of the number of people who witnessed Trump’s inauguration.

The media made great play of the fact that the numbers attending were significantly fewer than at Obama’s inauguration. But one of the speakers pointed out that what had been meant by Spicer was the global media coverage not those present. Whether this is true or a convenient explanation of events is not clear. But it does raise the question of how you set the frame, and this was a major focus in the debate between the speakers. It's easy for both sides to believe they are right, and this is a recipe for misunderstanding and polarisation.

There's a Lot Going On!

There has been an enormous increase in the coverage of fake news and disinformation in the media in recent months. I’ve already identified and logged 24 items in the first 5 weeks of 2018, and this follows 217 items in 2017; 36 in 2016; 11 in 2015; 5 in 2014; and 3 in 2013. I haven't carried out a systematic study of publications on fake news / misinformation worldwide ; these are simply items that I personally have found interesting. There has also been a rapid increase in the number of initiatives taken by state and other actors to address the problem: I log these in the Critical Information database and have so far identified over 230 initiatives, no less than 70 in the UK.

These figures give an indication of size and complexity of the problems that we are facing.

It is to be welcomed that the topic of misinformation is getting more coverage, and that more people are becoming concerned about the consequences of lies and deception. What we need now is effective methods of neutralising the problem, and this is still a long way off...

Recent Developments

I’ve not been able to comment on developments for a couple of months because of other commitment (now virtually complete), but I have been following events. Here are some of main issues that have been in the media — I’ve identified just one representative article per topic:

Internet

· the repeal in the US of legislation on net neutrality ;

· the issue of controlling unaccountable algorithms ;

Social Media

· Obama warning against 'irresponsible' social media use;

· a prominent former Facebook exec saying social media is ‘ripping apart society’;

· Facebook conceding that using it (a lot) might make you feel bad; also cutting back on news (to give us more time with advertisers);

· calls for tech giants to face taxes over extremist content;

· LinkedIn revealed to have been ‘hosting jihadist lectures’;

Fake News & Conspiracy Theories

· the UK Government announcing the setting up of an anti-fake news unit ;

· the appearance of Deepfake , an app that enables hackers to face-swap Hollywood stars into pornography films;

· climate researchers bemoaning the fact that their work was turned into fake news;

· people believing conspiracy theories about mass shootings in the US being staged;

· how commercial brands secretly buy their way into legitimate publications with material that pretends to be objective;

Hate Speech & Counter-Extremism

· campaigner Sara Khan to lead new UK counter-extremism body;

· new report on hate speech / anti-Muslim messaging on social media [ Hope Not Hate ]

· England (and the US) opting out of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment on the issue of tolerance — PISA is a triennial international survey of some 72 countries which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students;

Information Warfare

· growing concern in the UK over information warfare — British Army Chief calling for investment to keep up with Russia.

We hope to cover these issues in the next few months.

2017-35: Misperception, Mistrust & Misinformation

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 11:51:38 GMT

The online public is frequently wrong, sometimes very wrong, about key global issues and features of the population in their country. This is the finding of Ipsos MORI’s latest Perils of Perception survey across 38 countries. Great Britain fares better than most, but we’re still some way behind the leading (best-informed) nations, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The worst on Ipsos’ Misperception Index are South Africa, Brazil and The Philippines.

In the run up to the Referendum last year, the MD of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute , Bobby Duffy, laid the blame for some of the misunderstanding at the door of politicians. In ‘ Wondering why Boris Johnson keeps mentioning bendy bananas & Brexit ’, Duffy raised questions about why people were getting their facts so confused. “Despite the best efforts of many organisations to present a fair reflection of sound evidence,” he opined, “the picture we’re getting is that the facts are messy and contested. Some things are known and relatively undisputed… But many of us are very wrong on the biggest issues, those that we say will settle our vote: immigration, the economy and sovereignty… First, we need to recognise that people overestimate what they worry about, as much as worry about what they overestimate [for example] we overestimate EU immigration but underestimate our reliance on investment from EU countries… Second, we know that we remember a vivid story much more than dry statistics. Bendy bananas and other extreme anecdotes stick — it’s not a media effect, it’s how we’re wired to think. So it’s not nearly as ludicrous as it may seem for Boris Johnson to come back to bananas — repeatedly.”

Mind Control

This issue of not hearing or believing what other say was explored a couple of days ago by Simon McCarthy-Jones in The Conversation. In social networking sites may be controlling your mind , he asks: “How can you live the life you want to, avoiding the distractions and manipulations of others?” and concludes that to do so we need to know ourselves much better. “Sadly, we are often bad at this,” he observes “By contrast, others know us increasingly well. Our intelligence, sexual orientation — and much more — can be computed from our Facebook likes. Machines, using data from our digital footprint, are better judges of our personality than our friends and family. Soon, artificial intelligence, using our social network data, will know even more. The 21st-century challenge will be how to live when others know us better than we know ourselves… There are industries dedicated to capturing and selling our attention — and the best bait is social networking. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have drawn us closer round the campfire of our shared humanity. Yet, they come with costs, both personal and political. Users must decide if the benefits of these sites outweigh their costs.” Humans, he opines, “have a fundamental need to belong and a fundamental desire for social status. As a result, our brains treat information about ourselves like a reward. When our behaviour is rewarded with things such as food or money, our brain’s ‘valuation system’ activates. Much of this system is also activated when we encounter self-relevant information. Such information is hence given great weight.”

McCarthy-Jones makes a number of interesting suggestions as to how we might benefit but not get consumed: “Companies could redesign their sites to mitigate the risk of addiction. They could use opt-out default settings for features that encourage addiction and make it easier for people to self-regulate their usage. However, some claim that asking tech firms ‘to be less good at what they do feels like a ridiculous ask’. So government regulation may be needed, perhaps similar to that used with the tobacco industry. Users could also consider whether personal reasons are making them vulnerable to problematic use. Factors that predict excessive use include an increased tendency to experience negative emotions, being unable to cope well with everyday problems, a need for self-promotion, loneliness and fear of missing out.” Users could also empower themselves. “It is already possible to limit time on these sites using apps such as Freedom, Moment and StayFocusd.”

Tacking ‘Useful Enemies’

Interesting to see that the BBC has just launched a new initiative to tackle some of these problems: it is outlined by its Media Editor, Amol Rajan, who sees fake news as “a useful enemy” for people like Trump, who use it to “motivate his base, obstruct scrutiny of his policies, and potentially undermine his opponents.” It also helps “ambitious politicians keen to flaunt their digital knowledge and boost their profile, the fake news phenomenon is a handy option,” and for “digital firms keen to display a social conscience, fake news provides an opportunity to clarify their purpose — ‘we're technology companies, not media companies’… even if their platforms are zones in which foreign autocrats interfere in domestic matters. And for the mainstream media, which is suffering from a crisis of trust, seeing traditional business models turn into air… the comparison with fake news is a way of making the case for professional journalists who go after the truth.”

The BBC initiative is focusing on young people and involves online mentoring and school visits to “promote better judgement about misinformation online… Teenagers have their news chosen for them by friends on some social media platforms, or chosen by those lovely people at Snapchat, according to their social preferences. They snack on news throughout the day (and) occasionally dip into the permanent stream of information on their mobiles and feeds.” To resist the obvious dangers, Rajan says, “requires knowledge (of the actual state of the world), intellectual tools (scrutiny to determine truth from falsehood), and courage (to call out liars). This trinity, when combined, produces news literacy — and it is this, rather than fake news itself, that the BBC's new initiative is aiming to promote.”

The Question of Trust

And finally there’s the question of trust… If you couple the above findings with those of the Edelman Trust Barometer (published earlier this year) an alarming picture emerges — perhaps another indication of how, as the world grows darker, we have become more and more absorbed in our own (safe) eco-chambers. The Barometer exposes just what little trust people today have in business, government, NGOs and the media; and with this collapse of trust, the majority of those polled: “now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them. In this climate, people’s societal and economic concerns, including globalization, the pace of innovation and eroding social values, turn into fears, spurring the rise of populist actions now playing out in several Western-style democracies.” Its conclusion is that: “To rebuild trust and restore faith in the system, institutions must step outside of their traditional roles and work toward a new, more integrated operating model that puts people — and the addressing of their fears — at the center of everything they do.” And that’s quite a challenge!

2017-34: Western Dirty Tricks

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 10:58:13 GMT

Virtually every day we hear disturbing stories in the press about Russia interfering in Western politics, using fake news and a range of other nasty techniques to mislead and confuse the public. Today it’s “British citizens at risks from deadly diseases” because “the Kremlin is using the same techniques of misinformation over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine” (headline in The Express ). But what about Western dirty tricks?

In Britain we have the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group at GCHQ , whose existence only became public following the Edward Snowden revelations in February 2014. The Group’s mission is said to include using ‘dirty tricks’ to ‘discredit, disrupt, delay, deny, degrade, and deter’ opponents, planting misinformation, and shutting down their communications. This apparently includes the deployment of ‘honey traps’ (where an identified target is lured ‘to go somewhere on the internet, or a physical location’ to be met by ‘a friendly face’, with the aim to discredit them), and ‘credential harvesting’ (in which non-British journalists are manipulated with false leads).

According to Wikipedia campaigns operated by the JTRIG broadly fall into two categories, cyber-attacks and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (‘online covert action’) utilize ‘mass messaging’ and ‘pushing stories’ via the medium of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. Photographs may be manipulated on social media sites, and colleagues and neighbours of targeted individuals emailed or texted with ‘unsavoury information’ about them. There's also online ‘false flag’ operations, where covert operations over the internet are designed to look like they came from someone or somewhere else.* And then there’s the British Army’s 77th Brigade , which combines psychological and media operations, and civil-military operational units geared to stabilise areas of conflict as part of their remit to lead on ‘Special Influence Methods.’ The Brigade was once dubbed the ‘Twitter troops’.

And what about the United States? Channel4 FactCheck has just published a piece on ‘America’s long history of interference in other countries internal politics’ (23 Nov). The article lists many instances where it is claimed that the US “has rigged foreign polls, supported military coups, channeled funds and spread political propaganda in other countries.” According to one researcher (at Carnegie Mellon University ), there were no less than 117 ‘partisan electoral interventions’ between 1946 and 2000, and the majority of these (almost 70%) were cases of US interference. “60 different independent countries have been the targets of such interventions,” it notes, with targets ranging from “small states such as Iceland and Grenada to major powers such as West Germany, India, and Brazil.” Some of these cases “simply involved steps to publicly support one candidate and undermine another. But almost two thirds of interventions were done in secret, with voters having no idea that foreign powers were actively trying to influence the results.”

We live in dangerous times...

* In the cyber domain false flag work is somewhat easier to perpetrate than in physical theatres of war. Moreover, it can be very hard to conclusively attribute cyber-attacks to their perpetrators, and misdirection tactics can cause misattribution or misperception, which can lead to retaliation against the wrong adversary.

** 77th Brigade was formed in early 2015 from: the Military Stabilisation & Support Group; Media Operations Group; 15 Psychological Operations Group; and the Security Capacity Building Team. It describes itself as “an agent of change; through targeted Information Activity and Outreach it contributes to the success of military objectives in support of Land Component Commanders, whilst reducing the cost in casualties and resources… the Brigade (also) has a role in planning and advising both across the Army and wider Defence.”

[The photo is a Banksy artwork, painted on the gable wall of a house in Cheltenham a few miles from GCHQ. It appeared in 2014 but was later vandalised.]

2017-33: Computational Propaganda ‘powerful new tool against democracy’

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 15:43:20 GMT

Vitaly Bespalov was once one of hundreds of Russians employed to pump out misinformation online at the Internet Research Agency , Putin’s troll factory in St Petersburg. His story was told this week on the BBC's Profile * and also on NCB News .

The IRA, it appears, is housed in a four-story concrete building on Savushkina Street in St Petersburg, which is “secured by camouflaged guards and turnstiles.” There, bloggers and former journalists work “around the clock to create thousands of incendiary social media posts and news articles to meet specific quotas.” Those on the third level blog to undermine Ukraine and promote Russia; those on the first, to create news articles that refer to these blog. Workers on the third and fourth floor post comments on the stories and other sites under fake identities, pretending they were from Ukraine. And the marketing team on the second floor weaves all of this misinformation into social media.

Even though each floor works on material the other created, according to Vitaly "they don't have any contact with each other inside the building except for in the cafeteria or on smoke breaks…"

The Oxford Internet Institute has been studying "the purposeful distribution of misleading information over social media networks", and in July released a working paper on the topic which argues that computational propaganda (as it is known) is today "one of the most powerful new tools against democracy." The report makes chilling reading. It is based on research across 9 countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Poland, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine & the US) carried out “during scores of elections, political crises, and national security incidents.”

Among the study's main findings are that “in authoritarian countries, social media platforms are a primary means of social control”, and in democracies, they are “actively used for computational propaganda either through broad efforts at opinion manipulation or targeted experiments on particular segments of the public." In every country, it says, "we found civil society groups trying, but struggling, to protect themselves and respond to active misinformation campaigns.”

“The most powerful forms of computational propaganda involve both algorithmic distribution and human curation—bots and trolls working together… learning from and mimicking real people so as to manipulate public opinion across a diverse range of platforms and device networks... One person, or a small group of people, can use an army of political bots on Twitter to give the illusion of large-scale consensus... Regimes use political bots, built to look and act like real citizens, in efforts to silence opponents and to push official state messaging. Political campaigns, and their supporters, deploy political bots—and computational propaganda more broadly—during elections in attempts to sway the vote or defame critics. Anonymous political actors harness key elements of computational propaganda such as false news reports, coordinated disinformation campaigns, and troll mobs to attack human rights defenders, civil society groups, and journalists.”

The paper concludes that social media firms “may not be creating this nasty content, but they are the platform for it. They need to significantly redesign themselves if democracy is going to survive.” In this respect it is good to see Google announcing (21 Nov) that it is going to ‘derank’ stories from Kremlin-owned publications RT ( Russia Today ) and Sputnik in response to allegations about Russia meddling in western democracies. Not surprising the Kremlin says it is incensed by the move, and denies any knowledge of the activities of the St Petersburg troll factory. It has suggested that reports that it exists might be fake.

Apparently Vitaly Bespalov no longer believes anything he reads on social media. It would be helpful if more people could adopt this attitude -- and the social media platforms do more to remove the poison from people's phones and desk tops.

One can't help wondering where Vitaly is today, we assume he’s in hiding — that is, if he’s a real person and not the product of a fertile western imagination/dirty trick.

* The actually BBC profiled the man accused of funding the St Petersburg troll factory, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, as it says "has moved from jail to restaurateur and close friend of President Putin, but precious little is known about his personal life."

2017-32: Digital Warfare: The New Cold War

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 11:44:38 GMT

Earlier this week (14 Nov) Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of “carrying out cyber espionage,” “meddling in elections” and trying to "undermine free societies." She was addressing business leaders at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London. Putin, she said, was "planting fake stories" to "sow discord in the West". Russia could be a valuable partner, May said, but only if it "plays by the rules".

The following day (15 Nov) one of the UK's cyber-defence chiefs, Ciaran Martin, accused Russia of "seeking to undermine the international system" — over the past year it had “attacked Britain's media, telecommunications and energy sectors.” Indeed Martin, who is Chief Executive of the National Cyber Security Centre , revealed that his Centre (which was only set up a year ago) had already classed a total of 590 attacks — from a variety of perpetrators — as being "significant", and that more than 30 incidents had been judged serious enough to require a cross-government response.

He was speaking at an event organised by The Times , which released details of a new study into how Russia used Twitter to influence 2016's Brexit referendum. This suggested that more than 156,000 Russia-based accounts, many automated bots, mentioned #Brexit in original posts or retweets in the days surrounding the vote. [The cartoon is from this article ]

According to The Times, one account, Sveta1972, had shown itself to be “a voracious user of the social platform”, its architect, one ‘Svetlana Lukyanchenko’, had only signed up to Twitter in May 2016 — less than a month before Britain voted to leave the European Union. Svetlana “did not fit the profile of someone interested in British politics. Yet in the four days before the vote on June 23 she posted or retweeted at least 97 messages mentioning ‘#Brexit’. Her messages were mainly pro-Brexit and often repeated conspiracy theories. On June 21 she retweeted a story by the website Zero Hedge that said Britons were ‘appalled and disgusted’ by a Brexit postal ballot ‘fraud’. Later that day she tweeted that the EU was an ‘unelected assembly of corporatist agents’ imposing debt and austerity ‘on all member states’. After the vote she lost interest, confining her 12,000-plus tweets to subjects such as lighting design websites or free e-books on web traffic. Despite her Russian origins, most of her tweets were in English, Spanish or Italian.”

Responding to the Times report, the BBC’s Today Programme interviewed Jared Cohen, CEO of Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas).* Cohen drew comparisons between cyber- and conventional warfare "Think about how high the threshold is for a state to engage in violence against another state; the threshold is much lower for nefarious cyber-attacks… If violence is how you destabilise the physical state, the distortion of truth and the disruption of the free flow of information is how a foreign actor would seek to collapse the digital side."

Jared said that "Fake news is the digital equivalent of what we're always thought of as propaganda. There's two other categories that don't get as much attention: one is when cyber bullies become better organised, better funded and state sponsored.” They use ‘patriotic trolling’, “the equivalent of taking key influences off the battlefield.” He said that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses this in Turkey to silence female journalists, he “activates trolling armies to hit [them] with dozens of rape threats every minute.” He said this is a highly effective tactic, and one that we are seeing governments around the world use. The third tactic he described was “the digital equivalent of paramilitary activity, when a foreign actor identifies the different interest groups, constituencies and parties in another country, combs social media for photos, looks for someone who would be a part of one of those interest groups or parties or constituencies, and then fabricates an identify around them… sometimes they'll spend months engaging in the conversation, building credibility and only at a certain moment decide to exacerbate the conversation.”

Worryingly we don’t as yet have “norms that govern how states respond to each other when attacked; you don't have deterrence in the cyber domain; you don't have doctrines of proportional response. Until states figure out what these norms look like you're going to have a rather chaotic geopolitical situation.”**

* The interview runs from 07.21 for 7 minutes.

** Back in 2010, Cohen co-authored an visionary paper on ‘Digital Disruption’ with Google CEO’s Eric Schmidt . Another important paper on the topic appeared in Time Magazine in March 2016, The Unseen Threat of Digital Warfare . You might also like to look at four previous Blogs on this site, 31, 29, 27 and 23.

2017-31: Russia’s Troll Factory in St Petersburg

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 20:30:58 GMT

The main backer behind what is reputed to be Russia’s main ‘troll factory,’ the ‘ Internet Research Agency ’ (IRA), has just been revealed by CNN following an in-depth investigation. He’s oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is in the Kremlin's inner circle, and known in the Russian Press as President Putin's ‘Chef’.

US Investigators now believe that it was Prigozhin's company that financed the use of social media to spread fake news during the 2016 US presidential elections. According to internal IRA company documents obtained by CNN “one part of the factory had a particularly intriguing name and mission: a ‘Department of Provocations’ dedicated to sowing fake news and social divisions in the West.”

Before it officially ceased operations in December 2016, The Internet Research Agency was based at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, but CNN’s investigations suggest that another company Glaset has replaced it. Glavset — which is registered at the same address — lists the ‘creation and use of databases and information resources’ as well as the ‘development of computer software, advertising services and information placement services’ among its activities. It is said that the IRA made its employees watch the US TV series ‘House of Cards’ to improve their English.

Yesterday US Senators on the Subcommittee on Intelligence put on show examples of what they believe to be Russia's attempt to influence the election. The material was provided by Facebook, Twitter & Google. It was the first time it had been made public. One tweet falsely suggested citizens could vote via text message during the run up to the election; another targeted Facebook users identified as being supportive of army veterans; an account titled ‘Being Patriotic’ was used to publicise a ‘miners for Trump’ event held in Pennsylvania (in Oct 2016); and there were also headlines like ‘Infidels Against Islam’, ‘Fed-up with Illegals’, and ‘Stop Killing White People’. Another fake account was used to place an advert to publicise an anti-Muslim event; and yet another, a Facebook page designed to appeal to Christians which lured in users with Bible and other benign quotes; and there were anti-Clinton memes, which attracted tens of thousands of followers...

2017-30: Mozilla’s Internet Health Report

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 21:20:15 GMT

The Internet is an open system, free for anyone anywhere to learn and build on. Without this, platforms like Wikipedia, Facebook and WordPress would never have gotten off the ground. The big question now is whether this openness will last given the growing policy threats in areas like copyright and new technologies, like machine learning or the Internet of Things, which are not based on the same model of open standards as the World Wide Web.

Last year Mozilla* launched an open source initiative to document and explain what’s happening to the health of the Internet. Its report , published earlier in the year, is both fascinating and disturbing . It explores five main issues: 1) how open is the internet? 2) who is welcome online? 3) who controls the internet? 4) is it safe and secure? and 5) who can succeed online?

Mozilla is now working to an update, and asking for feedback. So download the report and email your comments, thoughts and suggestions to the editor, Solana Larsen, on internethealth@mozillafoundation.org. Join in the fight to keep the internet open!

* Mozilla’s mission is to ensure that the Internet remains a global public resource, open and accessible to all. It is working with technologists, thinkers and builders across the network "to keep the Internet alive and accessible.”

2017-29: Online Information & Fake News

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 21:17:52 GMT

In 2017 the proportion of adults in the UK consuming news online exceeded those who watched TV news (74% versus 69%). This was one of many interesting facts contained in a POSTnote [No 559], ‘Online Information & Fake News’, published in July by the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology.

The POSTnote considers inter alia how people access news online, how algorithms and social networks influence the content that users see, and options for mitigating any negative impact. In particular, it explores:

how people in the UK access and share news online
the effects of filtering
the factors driving fake news and its effects
approaches to addressing the challenges

One interesting idea briefly mentioned in the POSTnote is that put forward by Sander Van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab , who argues that it may be possible to ‘inoculate’ against misinformation by pre-emptively warning people about politically motivated attempts to spread misinformation.

Van der Linden explained the idea in a Sunday Lecture he gave in Conway Hall in May, entitled ‘ Beating the Hell Out of Fake News ’. He says he started thinking about the vaccine metaphor when he “came across some interesting work that showed how models from epidemiology could be adapted to model the viral spread of misinformation, i.e. how one false idea can rapidly spread from one mind to another within a network of interconnected individuals. This led to the idea that it may be possible to develop a ‘mental’ vaccine.”

His team tested the idea in a study that focused on disinformation about climate change. There was “a debunked petition that formed the basis of a viral fake news story that claimed that thousands of scientists had concluded that climate change is a hoax.” The challenge was to see if it would be possible to “inoculate the public against this bogus petition”, and to some extent, he succeeded. “Vaccines do not always offer full protection,” he notes, “but the gist of inoculation is that we need to play offence rather than defence and that it’s better to prevent than cure. It is one tool, among many, to help each other navigate this brave new world.”

2017-28: Fake News in the Classroom

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 17:52:52 GMT

How do teenagers get their news, and more importantly, can they distinguish fact from fiction? These were the questions posed by the BBC’s Media Editor, Amol Rajan, in a recent article . He asked teenagers at Cardinal Wiseman school in Birmingham if they could tell whether three stories he told them were true or fake. Apparently, the students knew the phrase fake news and “didn't associate it particularly with Donald Trump." They were "profoundly sceptical about the news they get from what they didn't quite refer to as the mainstream media." These young people, he notes, “spend hours and hours, and hours and hours, online from morning to night. Leave aside what this does to the wiring of their brains, which is beyond my expertise; it creates such an avalanche of facts, opinions, images and conflicting messages that it is a challenge even for a discerning reporter or a judicious philosopher to know what can and can't be trusted online.”

And the result? The teenagers “mostly gave wrong answers”, and while they “asked all the right questions" they drew "all the wrong conclusions, seeing lies where truth resided, and truth where lies ran rampant.”

The article contains an excellent short interview with the head and some of the students who took part (who looked genuinely surprised at getting it wrong).

2017-27: New Dashboard Follows Russia’s Disinformation Tweets Real-time

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 16:52:41 GMT

Over the summer senior security figures in the US launched a new initiative to "track and ultimately counter Russian political meddling, cyber-mischief and fake news." It is called the Alliance for Securing Democracy , and it is a who’s who of former senior national security officials from both parties.*

The Alliance is housed at the German Marshall Fund and run by a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, Laura Rosenberger, and Jamie Fly, former national security counsellor to one of the US Presidential Election hopefuls, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Rosenberger is reported as saying that: “Russia is waging a war on us. They are using different kinds of weapons than we are used to in a war. We need to do a much better job understanding the tools the Russians are using and that others could use in the future to undermine democratic institutions and we need to work closer with our European allies who also are subjected to this threat.”

According to The Washington Post : “The idea is to create a platform and repository of information about Russian political influence activities in the United States and Europe that can be the basis for cooperation and a resource for analysts on both sides of the Atlantic to push back against Russian meddling. The project aims to be able to eventually map out Russian disinformation on social networks, cyber-efforts, financial flows, broader state-level cooperation and even Russian government support for far-left or far-right parties in other countries."

Recently the Alliance set up an online digital dashboard that tracks “Russian disinformation through fake news stories as well as narratives being pushed by Russian-sponsored social media figures.” It is reporting what are believed to be Russian-inspired Tweets in real time. The ultimate intention is “to map how Russian government-promoted information is spread though the American and European media landscapes.”

Watch this space…

* For a detailed discussion of what Russia is believed to be up to see this chilling article in warontherocks.com (from Dec 2016).

2017-26: Is Privacy Dead in Our Online World?

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 11:21:14 GMT

In September 145 million Americans discovered they were victims of one of the biggest data breaches in history, after the credit rating agency Equifax was hacked. “Social security numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers and, in some cases, driver's licence and credit card numbers were exposed, leaving people vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.” Today companies know more about individuals than they ever have. So does this mean that the age of personal privacy is over? This was the question the BBC put to four privacy experts from the American Civil Liberties Union, Amazon, ARD (Germany's national broadcaster), and Privacy International . Here are some clips:

Ben Wizner (ACLU): “People should be able to control information held on them, as well as with whom they share it. Information harvested from the web, mobile phones or social media creates vast amounts of data from consumers held by corporations. And with the advent of smart appliances, this will only increase… You will be watching your television, your television will be watching you. Personal information… allows corporations to make highly accurate predictions about a person's life, including their sexuality and any health problems they may have…For every single one of us, there is some pile of aggregated data that exists, the publication of which would cause us enormous harm and, in some cases, even professional and personal ruin.”

Andreas Weigend (former Amazon Chief Scientist) said that “the time has come to recognise that privacy is now an illusion... I think we don't have the time in the day to know everything that's being created about us.” There is ‘no way’ he would publish his browsing history: "I think our browsing histories are way more personal than what we share with our partners. Our most secret questions in our mind, our most secret desires, they end up at Google and where Google takes us… What the KGB wouldn't have gotten out of people under torture, now people knowingly and willingly publish on Facebook."

Svea Eckert (ARD) last year decided to set up a fake company and website. “Her target? Detailed information showing which web pages individuals had visited, offered for sale by companies who gather data about people's internet use. [She] was able to view the internet browsing histories of about 20 people, all in high-profile positions in Germany… The URLs pointed to details of a criminal investigation, a senior executive's complete financial records, a judge's daily porn viewing habits and the browsing histories of politicians… It emerged that all this data had come from a browser plug-in that these users had installed.”

Gus Hosein ( Privacy International ) observed that “some of the companies who are core now to the delivery of the internet as we know it have taken security and privacy much more seriously… [but] below the waterline… [they] have doubled-down or tripled-down on the extent to which they are grabbing data and doing things with that data without you ever being able to see… Almost every positive move that Facebook and Google and the other large companies have taken… has been as a result of regulatory pressure." His worry is that “we'll become desensitised and… resigned to the fact that, 'Yeah, our data is harvested, and, yeah, I guess it is not secure, and, yeah, I guess any criminal who wanted to can get access to it.'” which is why he argues so passionately for our privacy to be protected far more than it is.

2017-25: Professional & Sustained Phishing Attack on Civil Liberties Activists in the States

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 10:00:17 GMT

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has just published a chilling description of a determined spearphishing campaign targeting civil liberties activists at two organisations in the US. During a one month period over the summer the EFF logged almost 70 spearphishing attempts against employees of internet freedom NGOs Fight for the Future and Free Press , all coming from the same attackers. The campaign appears to have been aimed at stealing credentials for various business services including Google, Dropbox and LinkedIn — at least one account was compromised and used to send out additional spearphishing emails to others in the organization. Here are some extracts from the article. Take Heed (watch out)!

“Some of the attacks were generic, such as a link to view a Gmail document supposedly sent by a co-worker or a LinkedIn notification message from a colleague. Other spearphishing attempts demonstrated quite a bit more ingenuity. One attempt, which targeted Evan Greer, Campaign Director of Fight For The Future, pretended to be a question about where to find the link to buy her music, which is available online. Evan replied with a link. The attacker replied with an email in which they complained that the link was not working correctly, having replaced the link with a phishing page made to look like a Gmail login. Another attack pretended to be from a target’s husband, sharing family photos; the email was forged to include the husband’s name. Yet another attack pretended to be a YouTube comment for a real YouTube video that the target had uploaded...

Other attacks involved sending clickbait headlines to try to get the targets’ interest. Some of the headlines are designed to appeal to the political interests of the targets... While others are lurid clickbait, presumably designed to embarrass the recipient into clicking a fake unsubscribe link such as … ‘Reality show mom wants to hire a hooker for her autistic son.’ The combination of headlines which would appeal to leftist activists and tabloid clickbait which is embarrassing to be found in one’s work email seems well designed to attract the attention of the targets. Each of the emails contained an ‘unsubscribe’ link which lead the user to a gmail credential phishing page such as the one above.

At one point the attackers got extremely creative, preying on anxiety about pornographic content showing up in work email. The attackers sent emails titled ‘You have been successfully subscribed to Pornhub.com’ and ‘You have been successfully subscribed to Redtube.com’ to the victims. This was followed up minutes later with several emails all disguised as coming from Pornhub or Redtube with explicit subject lines. Each of the emails contained an unsubscribe link which directed the target to a Google credential phishing page.

The sophistication of the targeting, the accuracy of the credential phishing pages, the working hours, and the persistent nature of the attacks seem to indicate that the attackers are professionals and had a budget for this campaign. The working hours, as determined by the times the emails were sent seem to indicate that the attackers are working for hire out of an office, they took Saturday and Sunday off… A login IP from the only account that was compromised successfully did not reveal the physical location of the attackers, as it belonged to AirVPN.

Although this phishing campaign does not appear to have been carried out by a nation-state actor and does not involve malware, it serves as an important reminder that civil society is under attack. It is important for all activists, including those working on digital civil liberties issues… to be aware that they may be targeted by persistent actors who are well-informed about their targets’ personal and professional connections.”

2017-24: Cambridge Analytica taken to Court over how it Profiled US voters during Election

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:43:30 GMT

A US citizen, David Carroll, is suing Cambridge Analytica for not releasing information that it holds on him. According to lawyers this could be a landmark case.

Cambridge Analytica , the company at the heart of Trump’s data operation, is reported to have created profiles of 240 million Americans. In January, Carroll discovered that he had the right under UK law to ask for his personal data back from the company, and when it failed to supply it, he started filing pre-trial actions to sue the company.

Carroll was shocked when CA sent him a ‘profile’ that it had created about him though not the data it was created from. “It was very strange and unsettling because they had given me ‘scores’ for different issues but I had no idea what they’d based this on.” The company scored him 3/10 on 'Gun Rights Importance', 7/10 on 'National Security Importance' and 'unlikely' to vote Republican!

Wondering how they had come up with this information, Carroll reported the firm to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office , which is investigating the use of data in political campaigning; he also launched a CrowdJustice campaign and is appealing to the public to help him take the case as far as he can through the British courts.

Carroll’s solicitor, Ravi Naik, observed that, “In the US, Americans have almost no rights over their data whatsoever, but the data protection framework is set up in such a way that it doesn’t matter where people are: it matters where the data is processed.” When it became clear that CA had processed Americans’ data in Britain, it suddenly opened up a window of opportunity.

2017-23: Information & Warfare

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 10:03:55 GMT

A recent piece in The Conversation asks: ‘what would it take to trigger war between Russia and NATO?’ and concludes ‘just a spark’: “A crisis could be precipitated from at least three different types of events: unattributable attacks, unilateral actions by anxious allies, and military accidents. Such dangerous situations could quickly produce unintended consequences that slip Russia and the West into armed confrontation. Major cyber-attacks, such as the one that shut down Estonia’s government in 2007, could be particularly dangerous during an ongoing military exercise. Russia’s use of so-called hybrid warfare in Ukraine have fuelled NATO fears that a Russian military attack might be presaged by offensive actions against information systems, while Russian military planners now assume “information wars” will be part of the initial phase of every conflict.”

Readers who are interested/disturbed by these comments/developments may ‘like’ to read the ‘ Handbook of Russian Information Warfare ’ by Keir Giles, which is both riveting and shocking. Here's a small extract (from p47) : it refers to a study published in an authoritative Russian military source lists "the primary methods of manipulating information used by the mass media in the interests of information-psychological confrontation objectives as:
● Direct lies for the purpose of disinformation both of the domestic population and foreign societies;
● Concealing critically important information;
● Burying valuable information in a mass of information dross;
● Simplification, confirmation and repetition (inculcation);
● Terminological substitution: use of concepts and terms whose meaning is unclear or has undergone qualitative change, which makes it harder to form a true picture of events;
● Introducing taboos on specific forms of information or categories of news;
● Image recognition: known politicians or celebrities can take part in political actions to order, thus exerting influence on the world view of their followers;
● Providing negative information, which is more readily accepted by the audience than positive.”

The Handbook concludes with the following chilling observation: “in information warfare, there are no rear areas. According to Russian (Chief of the General Staff) Valeriy Gerasimov, a key feature of modern warfare is 'simultaneous effects to the entire depth of enemy territory, in all physical media and in the information domain.' If and when information warfare with Russia moves to an overt phase, it is not just NATO servicemen that will be the targets; but their families, their communities, their societies and their homelands, no matter how safely far away from Russia they may presently consider themselves to be.”

2017-22: ‘The Pro-Kremlin Pulp Mill’

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 12:56:49 GMT

The EU vs Disinformation website monitors pro-Kremlin disinformation.* It's haul of fake news/disinformation over the last week was entitled ‘The Pro-Kremlin Pulp Mill’. And one of the main stories covered was the recent report on Crimea by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights .

According to the UN, the human rights situation in Crimea has significantly deteriorated under Russian occupation. “Grave human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment and torture, and at least one extra-judicial execution were documented”, the report says .

But apparently the report is “based on lies”, or so pro-Kremlin sources maintain — the argument goes as follows: the UN experts haven’t been to Crimea, so they received all the information from Ukraine and those who “haven’t visited Crimea for a long time and judge the situation based on Ukrainian TV channels.” However, the EU counters that: “the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has been collecting information throughout Ukraine, including in Crimea – where the Russian authorities provided it access only once. Part of the documentation was in the form of direct interviews and fact-finding missions at the Administrative Boundary Line between mainland Ukraine and Crimea.” This is a good example of how basic facts are interpreted by the different sides.

This is now one of over 3,300 cases of disinformation held on the website. A breakdown of ‘key statistics of disinformation’ on the site shows that Ukraine is the main focus for stories, with no fewer than 643 this year and counting. This compares with 494 for Russia; 285 (US); 265 (EU); 117 ( Syria); 84 (Germany): and 73 (Czech Republic) -- and that's for just 9 months. This is industrial scale disinformation!

You can see Ukraine's significance in the Wordcloud , which a useful summary of the main areas of interests for pro-Kremlin sources.

* The EU vs Disinformation Campaign’s 'Disinformation Review' carries “examples of how pro-Kremlin disinformation finds its way into the international information space, as well as news and analysis on the topic. The Review focuses on key messages carried in the media, which have been identified as providing a partial, distorted or false view or interpretation and/or spreading key pro-Kremlin messaging… The Review analyses messages, not the messenger. If the message is a) false, which is determined by the facts and b) originating and/or in line with usual pro-Kremlin disinformation messaging, it is included in the product. The website posts details of about 20 disinformation stories each week .

2017-21: 'Fake news' kingpin Paul Horner found dead at 38

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 07:51:14 GMT

Paul Horner, who became notorious for peddling ‘fake news’ during the 2016 US election campaign has died at 38. He was found dead in his bed after a suspected drug overdose.

A BBC Report notes that “Horner, who published fraudulent articles on Facebook and websites he set up, claimed he was the reason Donald Trump was elected in November… Among Horner's creations was a false claim that former President Barack Obama was both gay and a radical Muslim. Mr Trump's son Eric, and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, posted one of Horner's fake news items about protesters being paid $3,000 to demonstrate against the Republican candidate.”

"My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time... His followers don't fact-check anything - they'll post everything, believe anything. But asked whether he targeted fake news at Hillary Clinton's supporters to help her rival, he answered: "No. I hate Trump."

2017-20: Movie Classic ‘Gone With The Wind’ Banned in the US!

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:17:40 GMT

This is a story from Russia carried by EU vs Disinfo.* It’s about how fake news / disinformation is used in subtle ways in dictatorships like Russia to undermine dissent, for example by showing those who might have concerns about freedom of expression in their country that it is ‘everywhere the same’ — in this case that the United States has banned ‘Gone with the Wind’!

As this report explains, this iconic film (of a romance set in the American Civil War) has one actually banned: “What we see is just another example of taking an element of truth from a story, detaching it from all necessary context, and hiding it in a pile of nonsense. Gone with the Wind was just not included in the program of the 2018 Summer Movie Series festival in the Orpheum theatre in Memphis.”

This ‘story’ was then used by propagandist Dmitri Kiselyov, head of the state international media agency Rossiya Segodnya , to spread falsehoods. Kiselyov announced that “the movie had been banned in the US and described the decision as a ‘nationwide catastrophe’. For unclear reasons, he put the blame on Barack Obama. Kiselyov concluded that there is a risk that the classic will entirely disappear from the American movie theaters.” Some chance!

* The EU vs Disinformation website is part of “a campaign to better forecast, address and respond to pro-Kremlin disinformation”. It is run by the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force (set up by the EU in 2015). Amongst other things EU vs Disinfo collates misinformation stories gathered by a network of more than 400 experts, journalists, officials, NGOs and Think Tanks from over 30 countries.

2017-19: BBC Poll Suggests Fake News Worries 'are growing'

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 09:58:57 GMT

In a BBC survey of 18 countries, almost 80% of respondents said they worried about what was fake and what was real on the internet. The survey also indicates mounting opposition to governments stepping in with regulation. Only in two countries, China and the UK, did a majority want their governments to regulate the internet — 67% of Chinese respondents liked the idea, while opinion was more finely balanced in the UK, with 53% in favour. Also, British women were more concerned about fake content than men, and more keen to see some regulation of the internet.

The countries where people were most hostile to regulation were Greece with 84% and Nigeria, where 82% of people opposed the idea.

“Concerns about what is real and what is not on the internet have mounted after a year in which the term fake news has become both commonplace and profitable, with false stories shared on Facebook earning their creators hefty sums through advertising.

Brazilians were most worried about the hazy line between the real and the fake, with 92% reporting some concern. In a number of other developing countries there was a high level of unease, with figures of 90% in Indonesia, 88% in Nigeria and 85% in Kenya.

Germany was the only nation surveyed where a narrow majority - 51% - said they were not worried about this issue. In the run-up to the country's election there have been determined efforts in Germany to root out fake news.”

As global use of the internet grows, there also appears to be mounting enthusiasm for it to be seen as something to which everyone should be entitled. Just over half of those questioned agreed that access to the internet should be a fundamental right, with much bigger majorities agreeing in Brazil, Greece and India.

[Several countries have adopted laws that require the state to work to ensure that Internet access is broadly available — or prevent the state from unreasonably restricting an individual's access to information and the Internet. These include: Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, and Spain — for more information see here .]

2017-18: Facebook to Share Russia-linked political ads with US investigators

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 09:05:11 GMT

In a landmark decision, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced that his company will share 3,000 Russia-linked political adverts with US investigators. He also pledged to make political advertising more transparent on his network in future. Here’s an extract from a BBC report on the development:

"We will work with others to create a new standard for transparency for online political ads," he said in a live address on his Facebook profile. He said political advertising will now carry disclaimers about which campaign or organisation paid for it. He added that the company was continuing to investigate instances of foreign actors abusing its advertising platform, including Russia and other 'former Soviet states'.

The move to share details with investigators comes after considerable public pressure for Facebook to be more transparent - and is being interpreted by some as an attempt to fend off any potential regulation from the US government. Earlier this month it was revealed that politically-charged advertising had been targeted at American voters, paid for, Facebook believed, by Russian actors with links to the Kremlin.

The adverts did not support a specific candidate, Facebook said, but instead posted inflammatory information on hot topics, such as immigration."

A report in The Guardian commented that: “This proactive approach to a growing public relations problem is par for the course for Facebook. The company has a tendency to respond to negative press, and with US lawmakers making noise about the $100,000 in Facebook ads purchased by a Russian influence operation during the election, Zuckerberg may hope that he can pre-empt regulation… Facebook grew to its current size, influence and wealth by selling advertisements. And it sold those advertisements by convincing users to provide it with incredibly intimate information about our lives so that advertisers could in turn use that information to convince us to do things.

But the CEO of an advertising company can’t afford to denigrate the power of advertising too much; his revenues depend on his actual paying customers believing that Facebook can influence behavior.” *

More recently , Zuckerberg has said that he regretted dismissing concerns about the Facebook’s role in influencing the US presidential race: “After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea. Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it... This is too important an issue to be dismissive.” The Guardian reported earlier this year that a series of Conservative party attack ads in the UK were sent to voters in a key marginal constituency, utilizing dummy Facebook accounts.

* For an interesting update on this story see this piece bu Dave Lee which makes the point that: " If Facebook’s algorithms were executives, the public would be demanding their heads on a stick, such was the ugly incompetence on display this week... Facebook didn’t create a huge advertising service by getting contracts with big corporations. No, its success lies in the little people. The florist who wants to spend a few pounds targeting local teens when the school prom is coming up, or a plumber who has just moved to a new area and needs to drum up work. Facebook’s wild profits - $3.9bn (£2.9bn) between April and June this year - are due to that automated process. It finds out what users like, it finds advertisers that want to hit those interests, and it marries the two and takes the money. No humans necessary. But unfortunately, that lack of oversight has left the company open to the kinds of abuse laid bare in ProPublica’s investigation into anti-Semitic targeting."

2017-17: EU Disinformation Review Launches New Website

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 12:55:47 GMT

EUvsDisinfo has just launched a new website which is full of interesting — and deeply troubling — material, including a searchable database of fake news.

EUvsDisinfo is an initiative run by the East Stratcom Task Force , which was set up in 2015 as part of a “campaign to better forecast, address and respond to pro-Kremlin disinformation.” The team was established after EU Heads of State and Government stressed the need to challenge Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns. It is part of the European External Action Service (EEAS).

The Disinformation Review collects examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation sent in from a network of over 400 journalists, civil society organisations, academics and public authorities in over 30 countries. It “focuses on key messages carried in the international information space, which have been identified as providing a partial, distorted or false view or interpretation and/or spreading key pro-Kremlin messaging.”

The Team says its main task is “to proactively promote the European Union's policy towards the Eastern Neighbourhood. When appropriate, it also identifies and seeks to correct disinformation.” Often, outright lies are deployed, aimed at denigrating a particular person, political group, government, intergovernmental organisation or NGO, mainstream media, and anyone taking initiatives to counter disinformation. Another strategy that Russia uses is spreading as many conflicting messages as possible, in order to persuade the audience that there are so many versions of events that it is impossible to find the truth. "Particularly obvious examples include the clear obfuscation over the downing of flight MH17, Boris Nemtsov’s assassination and the bombing of a humanitarian convoy in Syria.” The Team says that it does not itself engage in counter-propaganda.

If you’re not convinced about the nature of the threat from Russian disinformation just read through the poisonous stories that are being put about — there are well over 3,000 listed on this site. Here are some examples from just the last week:

'EU integration has become a disaster for Moldova'; 'Angela Merkel has admitted that reconsolidation of Crimea with Russia is irreversible'; 'Poland was the initiator of the WWII'; 'NATO's hybrid centre has a license to kill'; 'American nuclear fuel will cause a second Chernobyl'; 'Moldovan workers live in poverty after the European integration has started'; 'Donbas soldiers and Russian volunteers are fighting to prevent a genocide of the people of Donbas'; 'Laundromat: Azerbaijani targeted with fake news inspired by Soros'; 'If the country refuses to join the EU, it is punished with a Maidan';* 'US and the EU are ready to give up Ukraine in exchange for Russia's help with North Korea'.

* Maidan is an open space in or near a town, used as a parade ground or for events such as public meetings.

2017-16: 'Betrump' & Other Forgotten Words Fit for the Post-Fact Era

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 11:18:33 GMT

Language experts at the University of York have come up with a list of 30 lost words that they suggest could have a great deal of relevance in the Post Fact Era. Here are some of the main contenders — 'betrump' takes the biscuit!:

Ambodexter — one who takes bribes from both sides
Betrump — to deceive, cheat, elude, slip from
Coney-catch — to swindle, cheat, trick, dupe, deceive
Hugger-mugger — concealment, secrecy
Nickum — a cheating or dishonest person
Quacksalver — a person who dishonestly claims knowledge of or skill in medicine; a pedlar of false cures
Rouker — a person who whispers or murmurs; one who spreads tales or rumours
Losenger — a false flatterer, a lying rascal, a deceiver
Peacockize — to behave like a peacock, to pose or strut ostentatiously
Percher — a person who aspires to a higher rank or status; an ambitious or self-assertive person
Sillytonian — a silly or gullible person, one considered as belonging to a notional sect of such people
Teen — To vex, irritate, annoy, anger, enrage, to inflict suffering upon
Tremblable — causing dread or horror

2017-15: The Internet of Things & Other Web Updates

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 11:07:04 GMT

We have recently added to the website:

a short description of The Internet of Things , which explores some of the security concerns;
a timeline graphic which shows when how the internet has evolved from ARPANET (in 1969) and when Google, Facebook and YouTube got started;
a note on concerns about the impact of smartphones on people’s concentration;
reference to the series Aleks Krotoski has been running on BBC Radio 4 under the title ' Aleks in Wonderland: the Story of the internet , aired in Aug 2017;
a note of the difference between ‘fake’ and ‘fraud’; and last but not least
some FAQs .

Words added to the Glossary include: Cyberchondriac; Dark Social, De-anonymization; Emotional Anaemia; Halo Effect; Maven; Mythomania, POPS and Reflexive Control.

2017-14: Pro-Russia Twitter bots have a new strategy

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:58:55 GMT

BBC Trending reports that co-ordinated groups of Twitter bots pushing pro-Russian propaganda have “developed an odd but occasionally effective strategy — retweeting messages that the bot-makers disagree with and flooding their enemies with followers.” The Russian government denies that they operate or fund bot networks — automated or semi-automated accounts which tweet or retweet automatically. It's possible that they could be operated by ‘patriotic’ Russian citizens acting independently , as President Vladimir Putin once proposed, although this seems unlikely. Who knows?

Anyway, one researcher in the States, Ben Nimmo, published a report comparing far-right commentators in the US with pro-Kremlin commentators who wrote about the war in Ukraine. His report was picked up by ProPublica , an investigative newsroom, who put out a Tweet, which was then retweeted 23,000 times (which wasn’t normal for a relatively unknown Tweeter). Their Tweet had clearly been targeted by bots.

Nimmo commented that it is a form of intimidation that also makes it very hard for you to use your Twitter notifications because they're just overwhelmed. And the bots weren't done. "After Nimmo published his findings about ProPublica , he was targeted by several accounts — one of which faked his death with a message which read: ‘Our beloved friend and colleague Ben Nimmo passed away this morning...’

2017-13: Troops, Trolls & Troublemakers

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 10:03:22 GMT

In July the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) released a Working Paper on the activities of ‘cyber troops’ — government, military or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media. The OII describes the report as “the first comprehensive inventory of the major organizations behind social media manipulation.” It compares organisations across some 28 countries and finds that “cyber troops are a pervasive and global phenomenon” and that “many different countries employ significant numbers of people and resources to manage and manipulate public opinion online, sometimes targeting domestic audiences and sometimes targeting foreign publics.”

The propagandists are exploiting every social media platform — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and beyond — and rely on human users and computerized 'bots' that can dramatically amplify the power of disinformation campaigns by automating the process of preparing and delivering posts. The bots interact with human users and also with other bots.

Here are the reports main conclusions:

· The earliest reports of organized social media manipulation emerged in 2010, and by 2017 there are details on such organizations in 28 countries.

· Looking across the 28 countries, every authoritarian regime has social media campaigns targeting their own populations, while only a few of them target foreign publics. In contrast, almost every democracy in this sample has organized social media campaigns that target foreign publics, while political-party-supported campaigns target domestic voters.

· Authoritarian regimes are not the only or even the best at organized social media manipulation. The earliest reports of government involvement in nudging public opinion involve democracies, and new innovations in political communication technologies often come from political parties and arise during high-profile elections.

· Over time, the primary mode for organizing cyber troops has gone from involving military units that experiment with manipulating public opinion over social media networks to strategic communication firms that take contracts from governments for social media campaigns.

2017-12: China Tightens Grip over Cyberspace & Chat Group Users

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 10:48:59 GMT

China’s Internet Watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has just released new rules that govern who can say what in instant messaging chat groups.

It is reported that the rules “require internet companies to establish credit rating systems for chat group users, and provide services to them in accordance with their credit scores. Those who violate Chinese laws and regulations will see their credit scores lowered and their cases reported to authorities — exactly what many feared would happen when China started pushing for the creation of a ‘social credit’ system two years ago.”

“The new rules are the latest example of China’s tightening grip over cyberspace in the run up to a crucial Communist Party meeting in mid-October. In July, the Chinese government cracked down on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which many Chinese internet users rely on to access banned foreign sites. Last month, the CAC released new rules to expand real-name registration to online communities and discussion forums, effectively killing anonymity on the Chinese internet.”

“Chat group administrators who violate the rules will be barred from establishing new chat groups and their authorization to manage existing groups will be suspended. Service providers must also keep records of group chats for no less than six months, and establish a ‘black list’ of users who have ‘serious violations of [Chinese] laws and regulations’.”

2017-11: Facebook uncovers Russia-funded misinformation campaign

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 21:57:13 GMT

The BBC is reporting that Facebook has "discovered a Russian-funded campaign to promote divisive social and political messages on its network. The company said $100,000 (£77,000) was spent on about 3,000 ads over a two-year period, ending in May 2017... The campaign was uncovered as part of Facebook's internal investigation into ways in which the network may have been abused during the last US presidential election campaign. The advertisements directed users towards around 470 accounts that spread false information or were otherwise in breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions, the site said..." Facebook is said to be co-operating with a US investigation into the matter.

More to follow shortly...

8 September: Bell Pottinger's Asian unit has said it will separate from its British parent, amid reports the public relations firm is nearing collapse. The UK side of the business is expected to go into administration as early as next week, the firm said.

2017-10: Mozilla: 'Building a movement to fight misinformation'

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 08:41:17 GMT

In August Mozilla launched its Mozilla Information Trust Initiative (MITI), which it describes as “a comprehensive effort to keep the Internet credible and healthy.” It is “developing products, research, and communities to battle information pollution and so-called ‘fake news’ online.”

It explains why as follows: “Imagine this: Two news articles are shared simultaneously online. The first is a deeply reported and thoroughly fact checked story from a credible news-gathering organization. Perhaps Le Monde, the Wall Street Journal, or Süddeutsche Zeitung . The second is a false or misleading story. But the article is designed to mimic content from a credible newsroom, from its headline to its dissemination.

How do the two articles fare? The first article—designed to inform—receives limited attention. The second article—designed for virality—accumulates shares. It exploits cognitive bias, belief echos, and algorithmic filter bubbles. It percolates across the Internet, spreading misinformation.

This isn’t a hypothetical scenario—it’s happening now in the U.S., in the U.K., in France, in Germany, and beyond. The Pope did not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate, nor does India’s 2000-rupee note contain a tracking device. But fabricated content, misleading headlines, and false context convinced millions of Internet users otherwise.”

“The impact of misinformation on our society is one of the most divisive, fraught, and important topics of our day. Misinformation depletes transparency and sows discord, erodes participation and trust, and saps the web’s public benefit. In short: it makes the Internet less healthy. As a result, the Internet’s ability to power democratic society suffers greatly.”

So Mozilla is “investing in people, programs, and projects that disrupt misinformation online” and it isseeking partners and allies to help it do so.

2017-09: Bell Pottinger Implicated in Major Fake News Scandal in South Africa

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 15:48:44 GMT

UK PR firm Bell Pottinger has been accused of masterminding a campaign to stir up anger about ‘white monopoly capital’ and the ‘economic apartheid’ in South Africa to draw attention away from the wealthy and controversial Gupta family, which is accused of exploiting its friendship with President Jacob Zuma to extract billions of dollars from the state. Bell Pottinger — which was being paid £100,000 a month by the Guptas’s Oakbay company — allegedly orchestrated the creation of fake Twitter accounts to target prominent white business people in South Africa (some of whom were Bell Pottinger clients). The TimesLive described it as: “the first large-scale fake news propaganda war in South Africa” and claimed that between July 2016 and July 2017, this “network of fake news produced at least 220,000 tweets and hundreds of Facebook posts to confuse the public.” This, it said had "adversely affected the country’s politics and economy."

The longest period of sustained activity was spent attacking former finance minister Pravin Gordhan to create a climate conducive to forcing his removal from office. Attention then turned to Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and his race for the ANC presidency. Over the weekend, Ramaphosa was “forced to defend himself in the face of private emails which had been apparently hacked and leaked to the Sunday Independent and which claimed he has had a string of extra-marital affairs.”

The fake news network also had a “separate and well-funded campaign to respond to the tranche of #GuptaEmails in the form of #WMCLeaks, which features websites as well as social feeds that spew out a daily range of propaganda. Analysts say it would require a full-time army of IT technologists, writers, editors and graphic artists to produce a volume of material like this.”

The story comes from ANCIR, the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting, an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms which “works to strengthen investigative journalism.”

[ Bell Pottinger has been expelled from the UK public relations trade body for its work on the controversial contract in South Africa (and blatant disregard for its code of conduct). It is the first time that the Public Relations & Communications Association has ejected a PR firm as prominent as Bell Pottinger .]

2017-08: Should the Internet be Regulated?

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 11:36:27 GMT

We have recently uploaded a new page onto the website. It explores the question: Should the Internet be Regulated? Here's a short extract: "The internet has completely transformed our world and now dominates nearly every aspect of our lives. It has facilitated a sea change in how we communicate and interact with each other. But whilst the internet has revolutionised access to a vast array of services, including education and entertainment, it has also enabled children and vulnerable people to access inappropriate material; it has enabled bullies to make other people's lives miserable, sometimes suicidal; it has enabled criminals to supply drugs and weapons, launder money, and it has created new opportunities to groom, abuse or steal; and for terrorists, to indoctrinate and recruit. What then is the case for some form of regulation?"

There are summaries of the case for, and the case against regulation, as well as a note on 'net neutrality' and a summary of the different forms of regulation that have been adopted by different countries.

This section is a heavily truncated version of an excellent paper by Roger Darlington, who is himself “totally opposed to all forms of state blocking of generic categories of material on the Internet." Darlingotn says he is "most uncomfortable with the use of a constitution or statute to regulate such a fast-moving and complex medium as the Internet. My strong preference is for co-regulation by industry bodies with government support plus — in the case of children on the Net — the appropriate use of filtering software supported by adult supervision and more public awareness. Also I believe that there is considerable potential for resolving certain problems of Internet content — especially civil issues like defamatory libel and copyright infringement — using on-line mediation and arbitration procedures.”

2017-07: Myanmar conflict: Fake photos inflame tension

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 08:26:25 GMT

This is a new report by the BBC's Jonathan Head who writes: "A recent surge in violence in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine state has been accompanied by a slew of misleading images being shared on social media. Photos and video purporting to be from the conflict have been circulated widely. Much of it is gruesome and inflammatory, and much of it is wrong. Deep-seated mistrust and rivalry between Rohingya Muslims and the majority Buddhist population in Rakhine have led to deadly communal violence in the past. The Rohingya have faced decades of persecution in Myanmar where they are denied citizenship...

Fake photos? : There is now a frenzied social media war around the Rohingyas as the rival stories of each side battle for supremacy. I have personally been bombarded with gruesome images, purporting to show victims of massacres, most of which are difficult to verify. But some of the images are clearly wrong. One image I was sent (below), supposedly showing Rohingya militants training with rifles, turned out to be a photograph of Bangladeshi volunteers fighting in the 1971 independence war."

[Ed: If you're curious how they check the authenticity of photos, check out Google Images and TinEye , free software that enables you to perform a ‘reverse image search’. ]

2017-06: The Best & Worst of Times [Jon's Snow's Edinburgh Lecture]

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 13:37:58 GMT

Channel 4’s award-winning anchor-man, Jon Snow, gave the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at Edinburgh last week. It’s a beautifully-written, hard-hitting and very moving presentation in which he aims his criticism at the media and also the internet barons, Google and Facebook.

“The explosion of digital media,” Snow argues, “has filled neither the void left by the decimation of the local newspaper industry, nor connected us any more effectively with ‘the left behind’, the disadvantaged, the excluded. Never have we been more accessible to the public nor in some ways more disconnected from the lives of others. Over this past year, we … media pundits, pollsters and so-called experts, have got it wrong. Yet I believe that we have, by the nature of our business, an obligation to be aware of, connect with, and understand the lives, concerns, and needs of those who are not.”

He maintains that “our connectivity – life on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more – has so far failed to combat modern society’s widening disconnection,” and he made Grenfell Tower a ‘wounding centerpiece’ of his talk. His two main themes were: first, that “in the age where everyone is a publisher, public service broadcast journalism has never been more vital,” and second, “humanity needs to match the dramatic growth of social media with a rebirth of social mobility.” He also attacked the internet barons. Indeed, his acid comments about Google and Facebook received widespread media coverage (and a lightening response from Mark Zuckerberg).

“We are in an age when everyone from Trump downwards is a publisher; where in every given year more photos, more information, is published than in any decade of the 20th century. Never since the rise of the printing press have two companies held such a monopoly over the world’s information. Never have such organisations taken so little responsibility for it either.”

Mark Zuckerberg “says he cares about news, but does he really? Or does he care about keeping people on Facebook? Many news organisations including our own, have asked too few questions about the apparent miracle of Facebook’s reach. For us at Channel 4 News, it (Facebook) has been invaluable in helping us to deliver our remit – to reach young viewers, to innovate, and to get attention for some of the world’s most important stories. But the other side of the issue – the dark, cancerous side – Facebook enabled the story: “Pope endorses Trump for President”. That engaged more than a million people during the US Elections. That same algorithm that prioritised many amazing reports of ours, also prioritised fakery on a massive scale.”

“Facebook has a moral duty to prioritise veracity over virality. It is fundamental to our democracy. Facebook’s lack of activity in this regard could prove a vast threat to democracy. Facebook’s principles are seldom explained in detail and can change overnight at Mr Zuckerberg’s whim.”

Snow also warns about the potential threat to journalists in the UK from new legislation: “The Law Commission is consulting on a new espionage bill. It follows on from the Snooper’s Charter which enables the police to access private communications data without judicial oversight. It’s now proposed effectively to criminalise journalists, and their sources, treating us like spies. It suggests anyone publishing or broadcasting leaked government information could land in jail for up to 14 years. Economic and financial data fall within this ‘national security’ legislation, thus impacting upon our ability to report – for example – leaked Brexit deals. No wonder in recent years that the World Press Freedom Index finds UK journalists are now less free to hold power to account than those working in South Africa, Chile, or Ghana.”

And here’s more bad news: “Earlier this year a YouGov survey for Channel 4 revealed only 4% of people can actually distinguish between fake news from truth. This is what we’re up against… While the reach of Facebook video exceeds that of conventional broadcasting, the revenue provided doesn’t even come close. And Facebook themselves have provided publishers with the most nominal of sums and certainly not the rate for the job. Rather than simply trying to take down the fakery, there has to be an incentive for Facebook to pay the rate for high quality news and encourage the development of a global bedrock of truths rooted in their offer to the quarter of the world’s online audience that consume them, and use them.”

“I’m a fan of Facebook — it’s great, it’s terrific — but I’m not a fan of playing fast and loose with the products that we in this room generate at great expense. But this is the challenge for us all here. Yes, we embrace and revel in the digital age. But no, we cannot let the massive power of its barons devour our local and national sources of information. That’s why it will take the effort of every single one of us – the producers, the journalists, the platforms, the politicians and the public – to reconnect our disconnected world.”

2017-05: Fake ‘Fact-Checkers’ Peddling Lies & Misinformation

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:04:12 GMT

There is growing concern in the fact-checking community about the introduction of state-sponsored fact-checking websites, not least those run by Russia and Turkey. In March RT (formerly Russia Today ) set up FakeCheck to "debunk fakes that are extensively distributed across the mainstream media." The development has been met with considerable sarcasm from some in the West.* Indeed it raises all sorts of questions, not least whether FakeCheck (and its Turkish equivalent) will discredit the fact checking movement by focusing on ideologically convenient material or peddling lies and misinformation.

The image is a screen-dump from FactCheckArmenia.com , another website which is being treated with understandable suspicion. (It has hidden its sponsorship but is believed to be sponsored by Turkey). Here’s an extract from a disturbing article on what the website has been up to:

“The Turkish government’s dominance over TV and print media — and its intimidation of critical journalists with arbitrary detentions and trials — is well known. Less known is a sweeping campaign of misinformation orchestrated by bogus fact-checking groups with ties to the government that propagate explosive claims: The Armenian genocide is a lie; the government didn’t try to censor Wikipedia; thousands of government employees who were fired for political reasons have an effective appeals procedure. These fake ‘fact-checkers’ aim to ‘refute’ critical stories about Turkey’s government — even when they contain verified facts.

Last year an aerial stunt spelled out ‘101 YEARS OF GENO-LIE,’ and promoted the website ‘FACT CHECK ARMENIA.COM’ in the skies of Manhattan. The website was also advertised on Google results for search queries on Armenian Genocide.

FactCheckArmenia.com does not reveal who actually owns or runs the website. The whois records, which show ownership of registered websites, are hidden via a company in Bahamas. But their Facebook page say they are funded by the “Turkic Platform.” That platform, with similarly undeclared owners, is “an NGO based in Istanbul” according to the Turkish pro-government media, but many activities seem to take place in the United States.

Just like Fact Check Armenia, ‘FactCheckingTurkey.com,’ launched in 2016, is not a fact-checking service. Instead, it is a project to counter articles critical of Turkey’s government. Unlike nonpartisan fact-checkers, FactCheckingTurkey does not use a transparent methodology to adjudicate claims. Conclusions are usually reached by making reference to government statements.”

* RT has itself been accused of spreading misinformation (a position it vigorously denies).

2017-04: Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:28:13 GMT

Useful article by Mark Lorch on why people believe in conspiracy theories and how to try to change their minds. If you’re tempted to confront them with plain facts, think again. You may simply solicit the 'backfire effect' whereby the myth ends up becoming more memorable than the fact. Lorch notes that one of the most striking examples of this was seen in a study evaluating a ‘Myths and Facts’ flyer about flu vaccines. “Immediately after reading the flyer, participants accurately remembered the facts as facts and the myths as myths. But just 30 minutes later this had been completely turned on its head, with the myths being much more likely to be remembered as ‘facts’. The thinking is that merely mentioning the myths actually helps to reinforce them. And then as time passes you forget the context in which you heard the myth – in this case during a debunking – and are left with just the memory of the myth itself.”

To make matters worse, he argues "presenting corrective information to a group with firmly held beliefs can actually strengthen their view, despite the new information undermining it. New evidence creates inconsistencies in our beliefs and an associated emotional discomfort. But instead of modifying our belief we tend to invoke self-justification and even stronger dislike of opposing theories, which can make us more entrenched in our views. This has become known as the as the ‘boomerang effect’ – and it is a huge problem when trying to nudge people towards better behaviours."

So Professor Lorch asks “if you can’t rely on the facts how do you get people to bin their conspiracy theories or other irrational ideas?” What is needed is "literacy in the scientific method, such as analytical thinking. Most people will never do science, but ... citizens do need the skills to critically assess scientific claims." And to avoid the backfire effect, he advises “ignore the myths. Don’t even mention or acknowledge them. Just make the key points (for example)' vaccines are safe and reduce the chances of getting flu by between 50% and 60%,' full stop. Don’t mention the misconceptions, as they tend to be better remembered.”

One other suggestion is to use stories to make your point... People engage with narratives much more strongly than with argumentative or descriptive dialogues. “Stories link cause and effect making the conclusions that you want to present seem almost inevitable.”

Mark Lorch is Professor of Science Communication & Chemistry at the University of Hull.

2017-03: Everybody Lies

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 15:20:19 GMT

Interesting book review of S eth Stephens-Davidowitz (SSD) new book: ‘ Everybody Lies ’. It’s by Galen Strawson, who notes that when SSD set up as a data scientist, his “first source was Google Trends, which records the relative frequency of particular searches in different places at different times. He soon added Google Adwords, which registers the actual number of searches. Then he moved on to other vastnesses: Wikipedia, Facebook and then PornHub, one of the largest pornographic sites in the world. PornHub gave him its complete data set, duly anonymised: every single search and video view. He also ‘scraped’ many other sites, including neo-Nazi sites such as Stormfront, which account for the internet’s resemblance to the box jellyfish, a highly poisonous predator with 60 anuses.

Ignoble metadata flowed in. He found that searches for racist jokes rise about 30% on Martin Luther King Day in the US, and that in the recent Republican primaries, regions that supported Donald Trump in the largest numbers made the most Google searches for ‘nigger’. Data from Prosper, a peer-to-peer loan website, showed that there are five expressions in particular that one should beware of when reviewing applications for loans: ‘God’, ‘promise’, ‘will pay’, ‘hospital’ and ‘thank you’. Making promises ‘is a sure sign that someone will … not do something.’ ‘God’ is particularly bad news.”

Strawson notes that, for a social scientist such as SSD “big data has four central virtues. First, it’s a ‘digital truth serum’: it supplies honest data on matters people lie about in surveys, for instance racist attitudes, but above all (to quote Mick Jagger) ‘sex and sex and sex and sex’. Second, it offers the means to run large-scale randomised controlled experiments – which are usually extremely laborious and expensive – at almost no cost, and in this way uncover causal linkages in addition to mere correlations. Third, the sheer quantity of data allows us to zoom in precisely on small subsets of people in a way that was previously impossible. Finally, it provides new types of data.”

Strawson does not share SSD’s general optimism and ends on a chilling note: “I suspect the easy availability of pornography is turning out to be one of the great tragedies of human history, destructive of the best kind of sexual relations. If we had an infallible happyometer that could measure the overall gains and losses to human existence caused by the internet, I think we’d find that the balance was – will increasingly be – negative.”

Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are is published by Bloomsbury [RRP £20]

2017-02: Scam-Baiting

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:18:26 GMT

Scam-baiting is feigning interest in the financial hook in a scammer’s email and then leading the perpetrator on a wild goose chase.* The intention is to waste the scammer’s time and money, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer, possibly by live-streaming. Some do it out of a sense of civic duty, others as a form of amusement. 419eater.com is one of the first scam-baiting websites — the name 419 is derived from the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code. Among other things, the website chronicles various reverse scams (‘baits’) and identifies and takes down fake banks and other illicit websites. It puts photos of scammers in a Trophy Room — the one shown was obtained by the website's founder who goes by the alias ‘Shiver Metimbers’. We don't know how he managed to get the guy to pose with two dead fish...

We like the report of the hapless Nigerian scammer who was talked into traveling from Port Harcourt to Darfur to pick up a non-existent $500,000, a 3,000-mile round trip. The scammer was stranded there for two weeks before managing to make it home. We don’t know whether this is true, but it’s a nice story! [15]

* If you are lucky enough never to have seen an email scam, here’s a recent example .
** There is an Anonymous Postmaster Early Warning System , which replaced SPEWS (Spam Prevention Early Warning System) in 2007. It is an anonymous service which maintains a list of IP address ranges belonging to ISPs which host spammers and show little action to prevent their abuse of other networks' resources.

2017-01: GPS Spoofing Comes of Age

mike@powerfulinformation.org (Mike Flood) — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 09:21:27 GMT

Recent reports of satellite navigation problems in the Black Sea suggest that Russia may be testing a new system for spoofing GPS (Global Positioning System). This could be the first hint of a new form of electronic warfare available to everyone from rogue nation states to petty criminals.

The New Scientist reports that on 22 June the master of a ship off the Russian port of Novorossiysk discovered his GPS put him more than 30 kilometres inland, at Gelendzhik Airport ! The captain contacted other vessels nearby and they all reported similar readings on their Automatic Identification Systems. At least 20 ships were affected… The article suggests that spoofing technology is “within the scope of any competent hacker". It doesn't bear thinking about what might be the consequences.

The New Scientist observes that it should not be difficult for criminals to use GPS spoofing to divert a driverless vehicle or drone delivery, or to hijack a ship. It also suggests that spoofing by a state operator could affect safety-of-life operations over a large area. “In congested waters with poor weather, such as the English Channel, it would likely cause great confusion, and probably collisions.” Apparently GPS spoofing has been causing chaos in central Moscow over the last year: a fake signal, which seems to centre on the Kremlin, relocates anyone nearby to Vnukovo Airport, 32 km away. This is probably for defensive reasons to confuse drones or incoming missiles. It has also been suggested that the capture of a Lockheed RQ-170 drone aircraft in northeastern Iran in December, 2011 was the result of such an attack.