Mueller's Has Indicted: Russian Internet trolls

A federal grand jury indicted 13 Russians and three Russian entities in February 2018 for what Rosenstein described to reporters as "information warfare" with "the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general."

At the center of the indictment was the work the Internet Research Agency, the notorious Russian troll farm based in St. Petersburg. It was there, Rosenstein said, that the suspects "took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists."

They created "hundreds of social media accounts" to divide Americans around polarizing issues, and according to the indictment, "engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton … and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

The indictment doesn't assess whether the disinformation scheme succeeded in swaying votes, and the U.S. intelligence community also says it hasn't assessed what kind of effect the scheme had on the outcome of the 2016 White House race. Barring Russia's cooperation in extraditing the accused disinformation specialists, they are unlikely to face trial.

Case 1:18-cr-00032-DLF Document 1 Filed 02/16/18

https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download

Excerpt:

1. Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. persons to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants’ means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including the presidential election of 2016.

2. Certain Defendants traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform Defendants’ operations. Defendants also procured and used computer infrastructure, based partly in the United States, to hide the Russian origin of their activities and to avoid detection by U.S. regulators and law enforcement.

3. Defendant ORGANIZATION had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.

It looks like Russia hired internet trolls to pose as pro-Trump Americans - Natasha Bertrand - Jul. 27, 2016, 8:23 AM

Russia's troll factories were, at one point, likely being paid by the Kremlin to spread pro-Trump propaganda on social media.

That is what freelance journalist Adrian Chen, now a staff writer at The New Yorker, discovered as he was researching Russia's "army of well-paid trolls" for an explosive New York Times Magazine exposé published in June 2015.

"A very interesting thing happened," Chen told Longform's Max Linsky in a podcast in December.

"I created this list of Russian trolls when I was researching. And I check on it once in a while, still. And a lot of them have turned into conservative accounts, like fake conservatives. I don't know what's going on, but they're all tweeting about Donald Trump and stuff," he said.

Inside Russia's internet 'troll factory': CNN's Matthew Chance tracked down a woman who says she worked as a Russian sponsored internet troll to spread false information online.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/10/26/russia-trolls-hack-us-election-chance-pkg-nr.cnn

Video images include tanks firing weapons, rocket launchers firing, Russian Internet Trolls have some really good gear.

Why all of the WAR footage for a story about IT people. Russian Trolls biggest weapons were 'SEND', 'Like' or 'Tweet'. WOW, a Very dangerous group. Glad to see Mueller has indicted them. :D