Active Measures, Disinfo, Propaganda

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

This could go in the Belarus thread but it is pertinent to any fledgling democracy or in the case of America, a dying one.

Read the article and see what Pack has been up to since taking over VoA and other agencies. He shows a clear disdain for democratic governance.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Cambridge Analytica and Parscales came up on the DJT thread but rather than go off topic further, wanted to put this here. Nice to know the data people are looking for a hobby: radicalizing extremist terrorists.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

Social media is being militarized, which was always predictable.  

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

This was an unanswered conspiracy question, the possible synchronization of targeting on social media between the Russians and the Trump Campaign. 

 

[bolverk 29191]

Yeah, that's long been suspected. If I recall correctly, there were tons of fake BLM-related accounts on Twitter/Facebook sending out messaging that there wasn't a difference between Clinton and Trump, so why bother to go out and vote? I also want to say that there was a geographic component to those accounts that focused on Midwestern states that may have played a role in lowering enthusiasm among young Black voters.

Edit: A quick google search brought up this story. I'm sure there are more out there.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/28/media/blacktivist-russia-facebook-twitter/index.html

Edited September 29, 2020 by bolverk

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Foosters 17684]

Kinda on topic

 

[Brisketexan 104194]

Kinda on topic
 

Yeah...so, like I’ve been saying....a shitload of us have seen every bit of this coming, and....it doesn’t fucking matter.

We won’t acknowledge the rolling disaster until it’s all over.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

38 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah...so, like I’ve been saying....a shitload of us have seen every bit of this coming, and....it doesn’t fucking matter.

We won’t acknowledge the rolling disaster until it’s all over.

I think about this a lot. If you could see a genocide coming, how would you go about stopping it?  There are no easy answers. 

Edited October 1, 2020 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Brisketexan 104194]

I think about this a lot. If you could see a genocide coming, how would you go about stopping it?  There are no easy answers. 

I think it’s quite apparent. We can’t stop such a thing.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Oh God, I think I'm going to be sick.

My husband is like Brisket (w/o the emotion) and said it was going to be bad (like Brisket) and I love my husband but I didn't want to believe him and then slowly came around as the days and months went by. After all the stuff that's been coming out, the debates, and knowing there is no bottom and there will be blood and that we will probably not be able to overcome this from within is just too much. I vacillate with humor to keep my sanity and dejection (which lets those evildoers win). I'm going to vote, we all are, but viva the resistance because it is going to take an American uprising to quell this threat.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

So far, a few differences between 2016 and 2020:

1. Trump has home field advantage inside the government. He also has GOP guys in Congress to go along with his disinformation narratives. Also has Bill Barr. This is a bad thing. 

2. No Wikileaks or anything equivalent to that operation in 2016. This is a good thing.  

3. The watchdogs have lost credibility. Journalists are going to have to do more heavy lifting.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

So far, a few differences between 2016 and 2020:

1. Trump has home field advantage inside the government. He also has GOP guys in Congress to go along with his disinformation narratives. Also has Bill Barr. This is a bad thing. 

2. No Wikileaks or anything equivalent to that operation in 2016. This is a good thing.  

3. The watchdogs have lost credibility. Journalists are going to have to do more heavy lifting.

Ratcliffe you had to know was going to go along with this. He was on board during the Impeachment process.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

2 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Ratcliffe you had to know was going to go along with this. He was on board during the Impeachment process.

Yeah, him, Barr, Wolf, Kushner, Pompeo - all on same page. 

Wray and Haspel seem to be keeping their distance but who knows.  

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Back to your report about Russian trolls, Hugo. Thought you'd like his comment on that initial post about the story:

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Figliuzi is retired FBI.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Do you mess around on Reddit? I don't, but my kiddos do and we've had chats before about the pros and cons. It's got some issues and this is one of them. Long thread but very worth it.

In the wrong hands...not good. This fellow points out how people cannot tell the difference.

 

[Captainant 27215]

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Do you mess around on Reddit? I don't, but my kiddos do and we've had chats before about the pros and cons. It's got some issues and this is one of them. Long thread but very worth it.

In the wrong hands...not good. This fellow points out how people cannot tell the difference.

 

That's way more advanced than just markov chains to make funny sentences - very curious to see more info on his underlying linguistic model to synthesize these posts

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

That's way more advanced than just markov chains to make funny sentences - very curious to see more info on his underlying linguistic model to synthesize these posts

I don't understand most of it, but it's fascinating and terrifying. So much good can be done, but sadly so much evil. I am a sad cafeteria plan reader but information is power and the grip of who holds it, manipulates it, steals it, and so on will forever be compelling.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Captainant 27215]

4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Very aggy.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

My older children are aware of who TPUSA are and laugh at them. I've cautioned about not taking them seriously because they have some serious funding running their game.

[Degenerate Gardner 4065]

How Russia Today Skirts High-Tech Blockade to Reach U.S. Readers

The Kremlin-backed outlet has been boosted by a news aggregator dominated by conservative media sites

 

By

 

Keach Hagey , 

Emily Glazer and 

Rob Barry

Updated Oct. 7, 2020 6:07 pm ET

 

On any given day over the past two years, visitors to the home page of RealClearPolitics were likely to see its famous average of political polls, a roundup of news and center-right commentary—and, near the bottom, a link or two to stories from RT.com.

The provenance of the RT headlines was obscured. Readers didn’t immediately know they were clicking on headlines from a Russian state-backed publication that American intelligence officials considered the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet.” 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russia-today-skirts-high-tech-blockade-to-reach-u-s-readers-11602078094

Fascinating recent piece. It's behind a paywall and I don't have the time to track down the whole thing. Maybe someone else can post it.

[SydneyCarton 47808]

4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

THis seems...significant. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

The thread below was a good read regarding the ongoing battle that is NOT GOING TO END REGARDLESS OF NOV. 3RD. 

I don't know how many of you follow this Active measures, Disinfo thread but the agents depicted in it and the Extremist Violence thread could join hands and sing hate songs together at their next "we're just anarchists, not really white supremacist hate militia groups" meeting. But as Molly points out, imperative in this climate is the ability to notice that it is a multi front attack to which we are subjected and to be vigilant. Molly McKew is one of the two Molly tweeters that I enjoy reading. Not going to spoiler it this time and sorry, not sorry.

 

 

[Brisketexan 104194]

When we understand that 1) we are being attacked by asymmetric warfare that is 2) supported by a fifth column right here, then we can and should attack it.

It should be a national defense priority. If we can change regimes, maybe it will be.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Right wing prop machine working overtime:

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Twitter failing at keeping up with the disinfo campaigns part two:

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

Yep

[bolverk 29191]

Haven't been too active lately the past week and don't know if this has been posted elsewhere so SIAP. It seems fitting here though and is a pretty fucking disturbing demonstration of what is currently possible. Gawd knows what it'll be like in 10 years.

 

The ‘South Park’ Guys Break Down Their Viral Deepfake Video
In an interview, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and their collaborator Peter Serafinowicz discuss the back story of “Sassy Justice,” their deepfake video that used images of President Trump and others.

Like so many other things on the internet, the viral video “Sassy Justice” seemed too good to be true when it started showing up on television and then on the internet earlier this week. Presented as a local news broadcast from a station in Cheyenne, Wyo., the video is hosted by a reporter named Fred Sassy, who appears to be a dead ringer for President Trump — if he wore a cheap suit and a white wig and spoke with a campy accent.

Sassy conducts what he claims is an interview with Al Gore and spars with the unscrupulous owner of a dialysis center, who looks an awful lot like Mark Zuckerberg. All the while, he warns of the dangers of deepfakes: sophisticated computer-generated images that have been manipulated to look like familiar people engaging in actions that never happened and speaking words they never uttered.

Of course, “Sassy Justice” itself is an elaborate series of deepfakes — starting with its host — designed to mock leaders and celebrities while calling out the risks that such videos pose to our understanding of truth and reality.

And although its creators did not immediately identify themselves when it first appeared, the video is the handiwork of experienced satirists: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” and Peter Serafinowicz, the actor and voice artist.

As these collaborators explained in a recent video call, “Sassy Justice” is partly their attempt to educate their viewers about deepfakes and demystify a potentially terrifying subject.

Spoiler

 

“Before the big scary thing of coronavirus showed up, everyone was so afraid of deepfakes,” Stone said. “We just wanted to make fun of it because it makes it less scary.”

The project is also their way of immersing themselves in the technology — to see what it can do as an art form and also to salvage the investment they made in a deepfake feature film that was shelved as the pandemic spread.

As Parker said, “It really is this new form of animation for people like us, who like to construct things on a shot-by-shot level and have control over every single actor and voice. It’s a perfect medium for us.”

Serafinowicz, a star of TV shows like “The Tick” and “Miracle Workers” and of films like “Shaun of the Dead,” has also built a formidable roster of celebrity impressions he has performed on British sketch shows and political satires.

But the voice of President Trump, he said, has proved difficult to master. “Paradoxically, for somebody who’s so exaggerated, it’s almost impossible to do an accurate impression of him, Serafinowicz said. “There are so many enigmas wrapped up in that man.”

Taking a different approach, Serafinowicz created a series of viral videos in which he replaced Trump’s voice with various stock accents and voices he performed, including Sophisticated Trump, Cockney Trump and Sassy Trump.

He also started experimenting with his own deepfake videos, though he found it difficult at first to find reputable instructors on the internet. “There’s a little community of deepfakers who were almost exclusively using it to put celebrities in porn videos,” he said. (Eventually he found more conscientious trainers and learned to use open-source code.)

Serafinowicz (who has voiced characters on “South Park”) began working with Parker and Stone on a script for a full-length deepfake movie; in the spirit of comedies like “The Great Dictator” and “Dave,” it would chronicle Fred Sassy, a mild-mannered character who looks like Trump and who accidentally gets drawn into the president’s administration.

The filmmakers — who financed the project independently with the intention of finding a distributor later — created a studio they called Deep Voodoo and hired a staff of about 20 deepfake artists and technicians. They began preliminary work on the film earlier this year, hoping to finish it before the presidential election and before Parker and Stone had to start new episodes of “South Park.”

Only a few days of preliminary filming were completed when the pandemic forced a halt to the production in mid-March. “Everybody’s like, the Covid thing might delay us a week,” Stone recalled. “And we’re like, how are we going to survive that? We were already up against it.”

After their shock and disappointment subsided, and after Serafinowicz hurried home to London, the three of them were determined not to let their time and energy go to waste. They had their deepfake crew, the Fred Sassy character and some props that had already been created for the film (like his news van, which had cost them $30,000) — why not create a TV show for him instead?

With Parker in Los Angeles, Stone in New York and Serafinowicz in London, they spent the next several months remotely writing and producing the 15-minute “Sassy Justice” video, employing their deepfake artists to digitally graft famous faces onto footage they shot of themselves.

They recruited their own family members into the project: Serafinowicz (whose characters include Fred Sassy, President Trump and Michael Caine) drafted his wife, the actress Sarah Alexander, to play Julie Andrews, while Parker (who plays Gore) cast his 7-year-old daughter, Betty, as an eerie, childlike version of Jared Kushner.

Segments were rewritten and jokes were fine-tuned on the fly as the team continued to figure out the deepfake process. But when Parker got to see himself digitally altered to look like Al Gore, he said, “It was the first time I had laughed at myself in a long time.”

Parker added: “I always hate watching myself. Even with ‘South Park,’ I have a perfect image of what it’s going to look like in my head all the time. But on this, there were moments where we felt like kids in our basement again.”

To Parker and Stone, the experience also reminded them of “The Spirit of Christmas,” their 1995 homemade short film that became a viral sensation in a more primitive age of the internet and paved the way for “South Park.”

Channeling that same energy, they paid to promote the “Sassy Justice” video this past weekend on Wyoming television (including a commercial on CBS’s broadcast of the NFL game between the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs), on local radio, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle newspaper and on billboards. None of these ads fully explained what “Sassy Justice” was.

“You know there’s at least six or seven super-high people in Cheyenne who just lost their minds,” Parker said. “To us, it’s almost worth it.” He, Stone and Serafinowicz also tipped off a few close friends and industry peers about the video.

Technology ethicists, public-policy advocates and journalists have been sounding the alarm bells on deepfakes for years, and Congress has held hearings on the subject amid concerns that the rapidly improving technology could be used to influence financial markets and elections, or otherwise threaten national security.

(Keep this in mind as you’re watching a highly exaggerated sequence in “Sassy Justice” that presents a fake interview between Chris Wallace and President Trump, where the president appears to have a stroke and tells Wallace, “I’m a terrible person. I’ve led a horrible life.”)

The “Sassy Justice” creators said that they trusted their audience to figure out what is real and what is manipulated, and to understand that everything in their video is offered to entertain, not to deceive.

While they acknowledged the potentially treacherous power they have at their disposal, the creators said that their decisions are guided by whatever they think is funniest.

“There is something anxiety-producing about it,” Stone said. “You could call it a moral question — we call it a comedy question. Just ripping something off and trying to fool somebody for more than a second, we have no interest in that.”

Parker added, “What we want to do is put Mark Zuckerberg in a turkey suit.”

Serafinowicz said that he thinks of deepfake technology as a high-tech form of makeup or costumes — simply another element that he can use to enhance his acting.

When he performs one of his impersonations, Serafinowicz explained: “I imagine myself looking like the person that I’m doing. Now that’s become real. It’s like wearing the most realistic mask possible. When it works, it’s just startling. It’s like magic.”

The “Sassy Justice” creators said they had spent “millions” of dollars to make the video, including the initial investments to produce the halted movie and set up the Deep Voodoo studio, though they declined to specify the exact cost. “It’s probably the single most expensive YouTube video ever made,” Parker said.

Now that they have spent that money and created “Sassy Justice” as a proof of concept, they are considering what they will do next with the project, whether they return to their original film idea or continue to produce it as a television show.

No matter who is president next year, Parker said that a “Sassy Justice” series could continue to lampoon “whatever’s going on in the world, although I think Trump will remain a great character for a long time, regardless.”

In the meantime, Parker said, “We’re waiting for Steven Spielberg to call us and say, hey, we need your deepfake company to make my movie.”

 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by bolverk

[SydneyCarton 47808]

Oh fuck that’s Mack Brown. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Thanks for posting that @Hugo Stiglitz but now I'm even more insulted.  The campaign trotting out this Hunter stuff via Rudy and they give us this artificially created "intel guy from Switzerland" (thanks to @Bama Chick for the original post on the Joe thread where I snagged this) who is now the lead informant on The Fishstick Papers? "Martin?" Really?

When they could have made the story a lot more believable by using someone from Switzerland that everyone would know is Swiss Intelligence:

Lara, Alpine Skier extraordinaire:

C'mon Man. Soap operas have beautiful people, living their beautiful lives...until it all comes crashing down. We might have believed Lara, but "Martin"?  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, everything about this administration has been C list from the get go.

[washparkhorn 9926]

On 10/11/2020 at 5:37 AM, Mrs Whiggins said:

Right wing prop machine working overtime:

 

Yeah - that one didn't make sense. He was security for a news crew in a large city. Hot on the trigger, not ideological. Thanks for following up on that one.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Molly's great, I enjoy reading her takes.

Guess who "got took" by Andy Ngo, peddler of half-truths and disinfo? He's moving up in the world

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

The NYT has gone downhill fast during the Trump Era.  I ended up canceling my subscription a few years ago.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Also this:

Brandy Zadrozny is amazing but she is frequently a target for the right. Oh and does anyone else think that Darren resembles the govt guy who harassed the Ghostbusters?

[atomheartbevo 89288]

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-groundwork-hunter-biden-conspiracy-deluge-n1245387
good article on the fake persona that started the conspiracies around Hunter.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Last minute thread to share with family or acquaintances that have gone off the social media deep end. They may not pay attention, but if you quietly reinforce resistance tactics and tools, you may break through.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

The storming of the US Capitol by angry Qtards, nazis, and militarized larpers has to be the mother of all active measures.  
 

Many saw it coming.  Many know how it happened and hopefully now you appreciate why I focused so much on this shit years ago.  
 

This thread is long but like a frontline documentary about how the digital army manifested into a physical army to overtake the heart of American democracy last week.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The storming of the US Capitol by angry Qtards, nazis, and militarized larpers has to be the mother of all active measures.  
 

Many saw it coming.  Many know how it happened and hopefully now you appreciate why I focused so much on this shit years ago.  
 

This thread is long but like a frontline documentary about how the digital army manifested into a physical army to overtake the heart of American democracy last week.

 

Yes; she's a great one to read--I also read Molly McKew and some of the others on a regular basis--plus Anne Applebaum,  Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and Teri Kanefield.

Strong group of women who along with many men have been chronicling the rise of fascism, nationalism, and the influence of propaganda and the web.

 

[Biff Tannen 45384]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The storming of the US Capitol by angry Qtards, nazis, and militarized larpers has to be the mother of all active measures.  
 

Many saw it coming.  Many know how it happened and hopefully now you appreciate why I focused so much on this shit years ago.  
 

This thread is long but like a frontline documentary about how the digital army manifested into a physical army to overtake the heart of American democracy last week.

 

This is fucking infuriating.  

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

12 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is fucking infuriating.  

Have you ever read the book, Code Girls? It's by Liz Mundy and details the recruitment and assistance women gave during WWII to crack Axis codes. When I've followed these folks over the years, it's reminded me of that book (it came out three or four years ago IIRC). What these folks have done is probably just as valuable, but the difficulty has been that no one in government and few outside of it are listening to them. (they've been listen to Ben-Ghiat more lately because she wrote Strongmen).

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

 

[Degenerate Gardner 4065]

Too fucking late, American Thinker.

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Degenerate Gardner

[Grandioso 2592]

Dominion's lawyers are going to put together quite a trophy room.

1. Obtain retractions and apologies.

2. Nail the fuckers to the wall in court.

3. ????

4. Profit

[Hugo Stiglitz 23355]

Florida man, 2016 election 

A Florida man was arrested this morning on charges of conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to use various social media platforms to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.

Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, 31, of West Palm Beach, was charged by criminal complaint in the Eastern District of New York. He was taken into custody this morning in West Palm Beach and made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart of the Southern District of Florida.

“According to the allegations in the indictment, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” said Nicholas L. McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This indictment underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens’ voting rights.”

“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

“Protecting every American citizen’s right to cast a legitimate vote is a key to the success of our republic,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office. “What Mackey allegedly did to interfere with this process – by soliciting voters to cast their ballots via text – amounted to nothing short of vote theft. It is illegal behavior and contributes to the erosion of the public’s trust in our electoral processes. He may have been a powerful social media influencer at the time, but a quick Internet search of his name today will reveal an entirely different story.”

The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141).

As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the Nov. 8, 2016, U.S. Presidential Election, Mackey conspired with others to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting.

For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign.  The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.”  The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”

The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.

The charges in the complaint are allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Erik Paulsen and Nathan Reilly of the Eastern District of New York, and Trial Attorney James Mann of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Hugo Stiglitz