
No, MI5 should not have more control over social media - ml985
https://tech.newstatesman.com/policy/russia-report-mi5-social-media
======
rbecker
To give people a sense of how such capabilities are likely to be used:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-
Notice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-Notice):

 _In June 2013, a DA-Notice was issued asking the media to refrain from
running stories on the US PRISM surveillance programme, and on British
involvement therein.

In October 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron made a veiled threat to
newspapers over NSA and GCHQ leaks, stating in Parliament that the government
might use "injunctions or D-notices or the other tougher measures" to restrain
publication of leaked classified information if newspapers did not voluntarily
stop publishing them._

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
I recall when GCHQ forced The Guardian to destroy hard drives containing
materials leaked by Snowden: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2014/jan/31/footage-rele...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2014/jan/31/footage-released-guardian-editors-snowden-hard-drives-gchq).

Giving intelligence agencies more power over the media and speech is an
alarming idea.

~~~
bananapear
GCHQ apparently forced them to destroy several laptops using an angle grinder
(video in the link) while agents watched. Really wouldn’t fancy breathing in
all the dust/fumes created, likely full of heavy metals.

------
smileypete
Reminds me of:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-
ne...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-news-
salisbury-poisoning-twitter-bots-uk)

>But civil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after
the Salisbury poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on
Syria.

One account, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period
from 7 April, and reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended.
It focused on claims that the chemical weapons attack on Douma had been
falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another account, @Partisangirl,
reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.

Here's the Ian56789 bot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5NRD1OiZuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5NRD1OiZuU)

And here's the PartisanGirl bot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDsDTk9LCgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDsDTk9LCgs)

I just wonder WTF the government is on, and why the media don't apply the even
most cursory checks to what they're claiming.

Also note the following correction:

>This article was amended on 27 April 2018 to replace the word “bot” with
“account” in relation to @Ian56789 and @Partisangirl.

:-)

------
helsinkiandrew
I'm not sure what the issue is here - they wouldn't be deciding whether every
post gets posted or not. Presumably they would be using their 'intelligence
gathering facilities' to identify users that are likely Russian funded or
controlled which would get marked or taken down. In the same way that law
enforcement agencies might search for accounts undertaking criminal
activities.

If they start to get 'innocent' accounts taken down there will be a huge
uproar in the press.

~~~
machello13
I've seen plenty of actual people get called "russian bots" on social media
for no reason other than people disagreed with their politics. This sounds
like a terrible idea.

~~~
coolgeek
Do you not understand the difference between a rando making such an accusation
and a law enforcement or intelligence agency making a documented case?

This does, indeed, have the potential to be abused at some point in the
future. But at present there is a real, documented, problem that needs to be
solved. Let's solve the existing problem, and deal with the potential one if
and when it occurs.

~~~
machello13
That second paragraph could be said about literally anything. It's a very
convenient way to ignore potential problems in any solution.

------
neximo64
Isn't it an MI7 job?

------
tolien
Regardless of the pros and cons of letting the intelligence agencies have some
kind of moderating role on social media, they take a lot of pretty weird
positions (not helped that they were previously accused of distributing
disinformation for the KGB [1]). Their thesis seems to be:

* the report doesn't provide enough evidence that there are any bots (despite both Twitter and Facebook claiming to have removed thousands of bot accounts)

* the report doesn't do enough to assert that any bots, if they exist, are Russian in origin (despite the known existence of e.g. the Internet Research Agency)

* if there were bots, they weren't effective at manipulating elections/referenda

> Because despite near-constant braying from some corners of public life, the
> idea that Russia sustains prolonged, successful disinformation operations
> with the power to swing elections rests on a shaky evidence base.

Part of the problem is that we don't (and arguably can't) know if they
affected elections/referenda but we do know there's been attempts by Russian-
backed criminals to access data owned by political campaigns in the US and
France [2]. Were they doing that just for fun?

We do know that in, for example, the US elections, some counties/states swung
for Trump in 2016 by pretty narrow margins. Were those affected more by "but
her emails", some sort of disinformation campaign, or the general unpopularity
of Clinton? Maybe all of the above but it's a stretch to dismiss it all.

> This was the Robert Mueller inquiry, which didn’t turn up any evidence that
> Russia colluded with Trump to influence the outcome of the election.

Well no, they didn't find evidence of direct collusion, but it also concluded
that they'd have indicted Trump for conspiracy to obstruct justice if he
weren't PotUS [3].

> There’s also the important point that the upcoming generation is far savvier
> at discerning ‘fake news’ or ‘disinformation’ than older generations. All of
> this begs the question, how much of a threat is so-called disinformation
> really?

We know that older generations are more inclined to turn out and vote [4], so
where is this going? If upcoming generations are better able to distinguish
'fake news' then do we need to prevent the older people who aren't from
voting?

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesman#After_Kingsley_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesman#After_Kingsley_Martin)

2:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39705062](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39705062)

3:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_Report#Episodes_of_all...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_Report#Episodes_of_alleged_obstruction)

4: [https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/insights/general-
electi...](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/insights/general-
election-2019-turnout/)

~~~
harry8
>We do know that in, for example, the US elections, some counties/states swung
for Trump in 2016 by pretty narrow margins. Were those affected more by "but
her emails", some sort of disinformation campaign, or the general unpopularity
of Clinton? Maybe all of the above but it's a stretch to dismiss it all

That which is asserted without evidence can and must be dismissed without
evidence.

"Drain the swamp" was the most effective political slogan for many decades.
It's a real shame Trump was not better than Clinton's corruption and neither
will Joe be. The corruption is the biggest threat to the USA for so many
reasons.

~~~
tolien
> That which is asserted without evidence can and must be dismissed without
> evidence.

TFA provides evidence for nothing, so I guess we just dismiss it all then?

My point was how do you even begin to assess to what extent slogans,
disinformation campaigns, apathy towards either candidate or some other factor
was effective in swinging the result? Demanding proof that disinformation
moved the result even a little verges on ludicrous.

~~~
harry8
>Demanding proof that disinformation moved the result even a little verges on
ludicrous.

Got some weapons of mass destruction over there. Just keep up the "evidence is
ludicrous" We'll need that to get the power to do more of what's right and get
it past the population, like the unqualified success invading Iraq has
unquestionably been. Or should we not take WMD on trust forever?

If you're not asking for evidence when people are justifying power grabs with
bogeyman stories, then when exactly should we?

~~~
tolien
I mean, the claim that Iraq had WMDs didn't change anyone's mind about
invading because it was prima facie nonsense, right? Unless you have direct
evidence that the claim was both accepted as true and moved the needle on
sentiment regarding the invasion?

Maybe everyone was just in favour of getting shot of Saddam because, like,
"drain the swamp [beside the Euphrates]"?

~~~
harry8
Lies don't matter. Truth doesn't matter. Sure. And so there's no point
discussing anything, ever.

~~~
tolien
I certainly feel enlightened.

------
ttctciyf
I doubt any serious journalist in the UK is unaware of HMG's previous
engagement with propagandising (or, if you're feeling generous, counter-
propagandising) its own electorate.

See for example Powerbase's piece on the "Information Research Department"
(IRD.) [1]

To take a random paragraph:

> The IRD was a top-secret, cold war propaganda unit headed by Norman
> Reddaway, one of Her Majesty's most experienced liars. Reddaway and his
> colleagues manipulated the "embedded" press and the BBC so expertly that he
> boasted to Gilchrist in a secret message that the fake story he had promoted
> - that a communist takeover was imminent in Indonesia - "went all over the
> world and back again". He described how an experienced Sunday newspaper
> journalist agreed "to give exactly your angle on events in his article . . .
> ie, that this was a kid-glove coup without butchery".

.. etc., etc.

Strangely, though, this historical context is almost never presented in any
contemporary reporting on state involvement in propaganda or "strategic
communications" as it's now called.

Though IRD is a historical enterprise and dealt with printed and broadcast
media, its successor organisations have carried the struggle well into the
internet era. Perhaps the latest is the "Integrity Initiative", on which there
is a very interesting report [2] detailing some of the cross-fertilization
between the British State, private sector disinformation "experts", the
strategic communications sector and journalists.

1:
[https://powerbase.info/index.php/Information_Research_Depart...](https://powerbase.info/index.php/Information_Research_Department)

2: [http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-
note...](http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-
integrity-initiative)

