While the Bronner Commission submitted its report on the fight against online disinformation to Emmnuel Macron on Tuesday, January 11, the correspondents’ club takes us to Sweden and India where the threat of fake news is at the heart of the news.
Sweden wants to fight fake news from Russia and China
In Sweden, the government has just created an agency dedicated to identifying and tracking down fake news, a first in Europe. This new agency of psychological defense, it is its official name, is responsible for preserving the “democratic society” and “the free formation of opinion”. It must fight against disinformation that crosses borders, via social networks.
Inaugurated on January 1, this agency already employs 45 people and has a dual vocation. On the one hand, it is a question of working in collaboration with the municipalities, regions, associations, companies, in order to sensitize the groups which could be targeted and affected by this misinformation. And on the other hand to identify upstream these disinformation campaigns, the countries which organize them and to counter them with diplomatic or technological means.
>>> “True or Fake”, the franceinfo fact-checking platform
But how do you define fake news? Doesn’t this agency risk representing a threat to freedom of expression? This is a line not to be crossed in a country where freedom of expression is very, very extensive. The authorities say they are well aware of this. The objective of this new agency is not to regulate the debate between Swedes but to identify the disinformation campaigns launched from abroad by other countries which want to harm Sweden and Swedish interests.
What are the targets of the authorities? The new director of this agency, Henrik Landerholm, gave some answers to Swedish television. This former military officer and former ambassador does not bother with diplomatic precautions: “We usually try to avoid pointing fingers at countries, but it is well known that reports from our secret services show that security threats against Sweden come to a large extent from the former eastern countries, and also from the China”. And to be clear, in the immediate future, it is Russia that Sweden wants to counter. She remembers Russian interference in the American elections in 2016 or warnings from the European Union.
The Indian nationalist party accused of harassment on the networks
In India, attempts to manipulate public opinion come not from abroad but from the government itself, according to an investigation by online media The Wire. The article reveals that the ruling Hindu Nationalist Party (BJP) uses software to manipulate social media, launch hate campaigns or illegally use someone’s Whatsapp account.
This application, called Tek Fog, is formidable: in a few clicks, its user can create thousands of fake accounts on Twitter and launch a campaign there to bring up a keyword, thus making people believe that a political theme is popular. Tek Fog thus circumvents the security measures of social networks that prohibit these practices. Worse still, the application allows you to take control of an inactive Whatsapp account and send messages to your regular contacts, without the owner realizing it. A technique similar to that used by the famous Pegasus spy software, but more accessible, therefore more dangerous.
EXCLUSIVE |
A two year investigation by The Wire revealed the existence of a highly sophisticated secret app called ‘Tek Fog’, used by cyber troops to hijack major social media and encrypted messaging platforms. | @kaulayush and @onosmosis report. https://t.co/KpohMV6MWj pic.twitter.com/pMVUnLc9Lr
— The Wire (@thewire_in) January 6, 2022
According to the survey (in English) conducted by two data analysis specialists for the Indian media The Wire, the BJP has been using Tek Fog for several years. The application would thus have contributed to reversing popularity trends on Twitter to counter the opposition’s proposals. The party would also have a database of people, categorized by their professions, gender, or physical characteristics, and would use Tek Fog to launch targeted attacks on the networks and humiliate female journalists who criticize the BJP, for example.
For Devesh Kumar, who co-signs this survey, this technique is demonic: “You just need to connect a user category to a response keyword category and the software will automatically bombard messages to those people. calling someone a ‘prostitute’ more than 100 times in a row. Tek Fog is an online harassment tool.”
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One of the officials implicated in the investigation denied the BJP’s use of the app. However, The Wire journalists show screenshots of Tek Fog where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party servers are mentioned. Tek Fog was developed by the Indian multinational Persistent, listed on the Bombay stock exchange and which has offices in France. But the company did not deign to respond to investigators. These acts of harassment or identity theft, if proven, are punishable by several years in prison in India.