Report Shows U.S. Citizens Helped Coordinate Online Disinformation Assault From Macedonia

from the disinformation-nation dept

You'll recall that even back in 2014 a lot was being made about Putin's troll factories, or the oodles of hired underlings paid by the Russian leader to fill the internet with bile and disinformation twenty-four hours a day. Much of what we originally learned about these disinformation shops came from Russian whistleblowers like Lyudmila Savchuk. Savchuk spent two months employed by the operation and was so disgusted that she quit, launched an anti-propaganda social activist campaign, and successfully sued the Russian government for one Ruble in a bid to expose the effort.

Over the last few years we learned that these online propaganda efforts were much larger and sophisticated that originally believed. Reports as early as 2015 had already highlighted how these also extended well beyond just routine shitposting and clever memes and into the real world; like the time Russia went so far as to open a museum in Manhattan to try and spin its "annexation" of Crimea.

Many tried to downplay the impact and scope of these efforts in the following years, insisting that no real damage could come from a bunch of marginally-competent Russians with broken english shitposting on the internet (a narrative that doesn't quite gel with the DOJ indictment or the whistleblower accounts that have emerged since, showing the efforts were notably more nuanced and sophisticated than initial 2014 and 2015 reporting suggested).

This week, a new report from Buzzfeed made it clear that 2016's disinformation wave wasn't just constrained to a few warehouses in St. Petersberg. Back in 2016, reports emerged suggesting that some entrepreneurial "teens in the Balkans" had been part of a broad effort to spread disinformation in support of Trump ahead of the 2016 election. The stories at the time identified more than 100 pro-Trump websites being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. At the time, these efforts were largely brushed aside as the result of local teens eager to cash in on Facebook monetization of garbage information:

"The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles."

But an investigation by Buzzfeed has since uncovered a notably more industrialized propaganda effort, aided, in part, by Americans:

"But after reviewing social media posts, government records, domain registry information, and archived versions of fake news sites, as well as interviewing key players, BuzzFeed News, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia can now reveal that Veles’ political news industry was not started spontaneously by apolitical teens.

Rather, it was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov — who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day.

The report states that Arsov, in turn, was working with Americans like Paris Wade, who is currently running for office in Arizona. It also notes that at least one member of Russia's Internet Research Agency indicted by Robert Mueller was in Macedonia three months before the first web domain for the country’s US-focused disinformation site was registered. And while there's no hard, public evidence yet linking Russia to the effort, the report heavily implied that American and European investigators are pretty clearly headed that general direction:

"Reporters did not find any evidence connecting the Russian, Anna Bogacheva, to the Veles sites. Arsov denies any links to Russia. But now Macedonian security agencies are cooperating with law enforcement in the United States and at least two Western European countries to probe possible links between Russians, US citizens, and the pro-Trump “fake news” websites, two senior Macedonian officials said.

A senior FBI agent familiar with the Macedonia case confirmed that the bureau is assisting with the investigations. The agent said that information determined to be of interest to Mueller is being shared with his office, but declined to comment further."

Granted that's not to say that much of the motivation wasn't just simple profit for folks like Arsov, who proclaimed that duping Americans into consuming bullshit was profitable -- at least until Facebook started weeding out garbage. But the story also makes it clear that Arsov was pretty cagey about his relationship with allies in the States, and quotes former FBI agents like Clint Watts, who suspect that much of the initial funding and analytics know how may have originated with people like Anna Bogacheva, who was among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by the Mueller probe back in February:

"According to the indictment, Bogacheva at one point oversaw the “data analysis group” for the agency’s US operation. Along with another agency employee, Bogacheva allegedly traveled around the United States for about three weeks in June 2014, gathering information for an intelligence report that was shared with her superior at the agency.

Exactly a year later, she arrived in Macedonia."

And while there's again no hard ties between Russia and the Macedonia efforts yet, the report makes it clear that multi-country law enforcement inquiries are in their very "early stages" as they try to unravel the scope of the disinformation assault. Meanwhile, if there's one thing that has been made clear since this wave of propaganda was first unearthed, it's that this entire affair keeps getting larger, weirder, and more complicated, in stark contrast to those intent on framing it as some meaningless trolling by a handful of innocuous, ineffective and hapless shitposters.

Filed Under: anna bogacheva, election trolling, fake news, macedonia, paris wade, politics, russia, trajche arsov, troll factory

Macedonia Copyright Collection Group Forces All Macedonian Music Off Of All Macedonian Broadcasts

from the that'll-teach-'em dept

This is a strange one, for sure. Often times when we discuss disputes from copyright licensing or collection groups, which will universally complain that they are not collecting enough money when given any opportunity, some will comment that the artists should just pull their music from all broadcasts if they're not happy with the arrangement. This kind of nuclear option is rarely, if ever, invoked for a whole host of reasons that include compulsory licensing arrangements and rules, the sincerity of the complaints from the licensing groups, and the simple business interests behind the benefits of having music heard on the radio.

But in Macedonia, one such licensing group has quite literally taken its musical ball and stomped home. This whole spat has been initiated by ZAMP, previously the sole music copyright collection organization in all of Macedonia, all because a second collection group has been started in the country, alongside more strict rules governing how much money ZAMP can collect for the artists it represents. As a result, ZAMP has informed Macedonia's broadcasters that they are henceforth banned from playing any music created by Macedonian artists, whom ZAMP claims to represent.

The ban came after the culture ministry gave a licence to the newly-formed SOKOM MAP association to collect songwriters’ and performers’ fees from TV and radio broadcasters.

“Their goal is to divide the authors and to put a hand on the money collected by ZAMP. Thus the new association, SOKOM MAP, has become an instrument in the culture ministry’s hands,” ZAMP said in a statement.

SOKOM MAP, the new collection group, has insisted that it is not in fact an arm of the Macedonian government, but another collection group representing artists. Based on a frustrating Google translation of SOKOM MAP's website, it appears to have nothing to do with the government at all, instead being a non-profit group representing songwriters.

Complicating all of this is a law in Macedonia that requires broadcasters to include 40% Macedonian-made music within their music broadcasts. Thus, broadcasters are currently screwed either way: they risk fines from ZAMP if they play Macedonian music, or risk fines from the government if they don't. To give you an idea of just who the broadcasters are afraid of most in this equation, they've pretty much universally bent to the demands of ZAMP.

“As of today, we decided to stop playing Macedonian music. Either way, we risk legal repercussions and steep fines,” one editor-in-chief of a regional radio station told BIRN under condition of anonymity.

And so, if you happen to be reading this in Macedonia at the time of this writing, you apparently can't hear any music made within that country on the radio. ZAMP took a dispute over how much money it got to collect as the only collection group in the country and managed to reduce that amount of money to absolutely zero by banning that music from broadcasts entirely. Seems like a recipe for new legislation that will further neuter ZAMP, as one imagines the artists it represents will be screaming bloody murder any moment now.

But, yeah, copyright doesn't hinder culture at all.

Filed Under: collection societies, copyright, macedonia, music, pros, rights organizations
Companies: sokom map, zamp

Political Meltdown In Macedonia Shows Destabilizing Effect Of Massive Government Surveillance

from the what-a-mess dept

Techdirt writes a lot about surveillance and its potential dangers. But if you want to see the reality of abusive governmental spying, look no further than Macedonia, where a huge surveillance scandal is unfolding (original in German, found via @Netzpolitik):

In a press conference announced weeks ago, opposition leader Zoran Zaev accused Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of being responsible for a massive wiretapping scandal. Those spied upon include government ministers, opposition politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs and many members of the judiciary and the security apparatus.

"More than 20,000 people in Macedonia have been monitored over the years," said Zaev. "We have evidence that there has been a comprehensive, illegal wiretap program, on the direct instructions of the head of intelligence Saso Mijalkov and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski."

With targeted surveillance affecting 1% of the population, it is hard to believe that alongside immediately useful information about what political opponents and key figures in society were saying and doing, a certain amount of blackmail material wasn't collected by the government spies and squirrelled away for future use. According to the Deutschlandfunk story translated above, for his part, Gruevski alleges that Zaev threatened to release damaging material he had obtained unless elections were called immediately.

The whole situation is a mess, and at its heart lies uncontrolled, abusive surveillance, where the inevitable leaks of incriminating material have now destabilized the entire political system. Sadly, there's no obvious way out. As the article notes, the lack of press freedom or even an independent judiciary in Macedonia means that it will be very hard to get to the bottom of what is happening here, and then move on.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: macedonia, privacy, surveillance