Russian electoral interference reappears in the United States

Example of a story shared by the supposed news site 'Peace Data' Image shared by Ben Nimmo on Twitter

The specter of Russian interference in the US elections looms again.

Facebook and Twitter reported the closure of several false accounts with disinformation targeting left-wing voters.

The FBI alerted the technology companies of the profile of those pages.

The operation is linked to the Internet Investigation Agency, a St. Petersburg-based company that was key in the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 elections, which, according to the US intelligence services, sought to favor Donald Trump.

The information revealed by social media is the first public evidence that the Russian-backed agency is trying to repeat the interference of four years ago.

The scope of the operation, from what is known so far, is significantly less than that of the previous presidential elections, when publications of Russian origin reached 126 million Facebook users and the accounts created on Twitter exceeded 2,700.

Tech companies admitted the facts nearly a year after those elections and have been under scrutiny ever since for their late reaction.

The operation known on Tuesday details that the Internet Investigation Agency has published content with disinformation in 13 fake Facebook accounts and two pages of the social network with 14,000 followers where they promoted the supposed news portal

first activity

started in October 2019, when they shared only articles published by other media.

Last March they began to publish their own stories in English, which they shared on Facebook groups such as Democratic Socialists, Progressive Party or Progressives against Neoliberalism.

On August 14, for example,

published a piece titled "The Biden-Harris Ticket Summarizes How The Western Left Will Give In To Right-wing Populism."

In a few minutes they had already shared it in six different Facebook groups, followed by thousands of people.

Ben Nimmo of Graphika, a social media analytics firm that has worked with Facebook on the report on this operation, pointed out that while most of the articles were about the US, only 5% were related to the presidential elections, the candidates or the campaign.

"When they talked about [Joe] Biden or [Vice President Kamala] Harris, they were hostile," she explained on Twitter.

Nimmo stressed that this type of content is similar to that released by the agency in 2016, which attacked then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Armed conflicts

Peace Data

used computer-generated images to create fake profiles of its three alleged editors and appear to be a legitimate news organization.

Armed conflicts were the main subject of articles in English, followed by human rights-related topics, which were published half in English and half in Arabic, the language in which they began publishing in April.

They also shared pieces about capitalism, racism and the military interventions of the West, as well as the Turkish government, Israel and the Saudi intervention in Yemen.

According to the report, the Russians hired real people to write in English, paying them $ 75 (63 euros) per piece.

They posted ads to hire journalists on Twitter, where they had nearly 3,000 followers, and on job posting sites like UpWork.com or Guru.com.

Intelligence agencies have warned for months that Russia and other countries were actively trying to interfere in the November 3 elections.

John Ratcliffe, national intelligence director since May, said on Fox News on Sunday that China, and not Russia, presented the greatest threat of interference heading into the election.

Trump took months to acknowledge Russian interference in 2016, something the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

The Republican president finally gave in to pressure from his own party and backed the conclusions of the US intelligence services, although he has argued that they had no effect on the result that led him to the White House.

The security of voting by mail

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, dozens of states have relaxed the requirements to vote by mail in the presidential elections on November 3.

President Donald Trump has reiterated, without evidence, that this system can lead to fraud.

Historically, vote-by-mail has favored Democratic Party candidates.

Even the attorney general, William Barr, has questioned the security of the elections if voting by mail.

However, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen has said it would be "extraordinarily difficult for foreign opponents to change the vote count."

An FBI agent consulted last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies agreed that foreign governments would have great difficulties in carrying out electoral fraud that could affect the election.