Category: Liberation Technology

What does the Kremlin fear? How Russia’s disinformation model works

     

Russia’s attack on the West stems from its growing internal weakness, and the more the West treats Vladimir Putin as a 10-foot ogre, the better it is for him at… Read more »

Internet the ‘de facto forum’ for Vietnam’s dissenting voices

     

A prominent blogger and environmental activist in Vietnam was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison on charges of national security offenses, including sharing anti-state propaganda on social media, The New… Read more »

The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

     

Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest is a timely examination of the recent digital era of public protest. Moving through her analyses of the… Read more »

Elves vs. Trolls: Europe energized against disinformation threat

     

Russia has not hidden its liking for information warfare. The chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, wrote in 2013 that “informational conflict” is a key part of war, The… Read more »

Russian cyberattacks aimed at legitimacy of political process

     

Current and former government officials painted a sinister portrait Wednesday of Russian cyberattacks aimed at interfering in the U.S. presidential election last year, AP reports: Moscow stockpiled stolen information and selectively… Read more »

Political bots – ‘propaganda powerhouse’ threatens democracy

     

Bots airing pro-Kremlin views have flooded the Russian-language portion of the social media platform Twitter, in what researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda Research Project  say is an… Read more »

Russia’s test lab for cyberwar: social media ‘democratize propaganda’

     

In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality in Ukraine, Andy Greenberg writes for Wired: And the blackouts weren’t just… Read more »

‘Reckless Exploit’ – Mexican journalists, activists targeted by spyware

     

Mexican journalists, lawyers and activists were targeted by spyware that is sold exclusively to governments, according to an internet watchdog group’s investigation published Monday, AP reports: Titled “Reckless Exploit,” the… Read more »

How to combat disinformation without falling into trap of counter-propaganda

     

The recent decision by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ban popular Russian social networks VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, on May 15 (see EDM, June 7), provoked serious debate both inside Ukraine… Read more »

‘Like pre-9/11’? Making sense of hybrid warfare

     

You cannot write a credible National Security Strategy today that ignores one of the biggest ongoing current threats to American national security: Russia’s effort to undermine our democratic institutions and… Read more »