No, MI5 should not have more control over social media | Hacker News Reader

No, MI5 should not have more control over social media

tech.newstatesman.com

86 pointsml98530 comments

To give people a sense of how such capabilities are likely to be used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSMA-Notice:

In June 2013, a DA-Notice was issued asking the media to refrain from running stories on the US PRISM surveillance programme, and on British involvement therein.

In October 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron made a veiled threat to newspapers over NSA and GCHQ leaks, stating in Parliament that the government might use "injunctions or D-notices or the other tougher measures" to restrain publication of leaked classified information if newspapers did not voluntarily stop publishing them.

I recall when GCHQ forced The Guardian to destroy hard drives containing materials leaked by Snowden: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/31/footage-rele....

Giving intelligence agencies more power over the media and speech is an alarming idea.

GCHQ apparently forced them to destroy several laptops using an angle grinder (video in the link) while agents watched. Really wouldn’t fancy breathing in all the dust/fumes created, likely full of heavy metals.

Reminds me of:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-ne...

>But civil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after the Salisbury poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on Syria.

One account, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It focused on claims that the chemical weapons attack on Douma had been falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another account, @Partisangirl, reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.

Here's the Ian56789 bot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5NRD1OiZuU

And here's the PartisanGirl bot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDsDTk9LCgs

I just wonder WTF the government is on, and why the media don't apply the even most cursory checks to what they're claiming.

Also note the following correction:

>This article was amended on 27 April 2018 to replace the word “bot” with “account” in relation to @Ian56789 and @Partisangirl.

:-)

I'm not sure what the issue is here - they wouldn't be deciding whether every post gets posted or not. Presumably they would be using their 'intelligence gathering facilities' to identify users that are likely Russian funded or controlled which would get marked or taken down. In the same way that law enforcement agencies might search for accounts undertaking criminal activities.

If they start to get 'innocent' accounts taken down there will be a huge uproar in the press.

There are 2 issues. Mainly Mi5/6 can find out who is Russian funded as is, right now. Lastly, the worst problem would be what we dont know they are compiling for example BLM "activists" and even those journalists who are deemed sympathetic to BLM, who are finding out they have had dossiers compiled on them for the past few years. (See the federal green men "Snatching" certain people off the street)

I dont see anyway to stop that abuse.

Aren’t you mixing the U.K. with the US? What is MI5 doing to local press?

"I dont see anyway to stop that abuse"

Is this abuse happening though?

Are CNN reporters getting harassed by the NSA or FBI because they cover BLM?

I know probably some in the system would like that, but that does not mean it's happening.

this speaks to an enormous amount of faith in both the security services and the press - the report seems to suggest that the security services are somehow inept and have let their guard down, and yet they should also be handed more power and control. let alone that their activity, by its nature, would be unmonitored and unaccountable

Don't they have special letters (I can't remember the name) to prevent articles being run in the press?

Don't they have separate courts?

The Security Services and other national security apparatus have "DSMA notices" for the media, yes, but they're not legally binding.

They would have to seek an injunction to legally prevent anything being published.

There are no separate courts for the intelligence community here. The court hearings themselves can be held in camera and with specially cleared lawyers, but that's all.

> If they start to get 'innocent' accounts taken down there will be a huge uproar in the press.

Not so sure about that. The US President has been falsely accused of colluding with Russia and the press (both in America and beyond incl. the UK) cheered these allegations on. Even after they've been disproved by Mueller there haven't been too many retractions (if any?).

If the MI5 takes down accounts the press already doesn't like it will probably similarly be welcomed by them.

"What evidence do you have that these accounts are Russian funded or controlled?" -> "That's classified for national security reasons."

"Have they published something which is actually false or misleading, or is it just something which the UK government finds inconvenient?" -> "No further questions at this time."

I've seen plenty of actual people get called "russian bots" on social media for no reason other than people disagreed with their politics. This sounds like a terrible idea.

I experience this fairly regularly. My views tick a few of the boxes that result in me being called a Nazi among other things. Truly radical ideas like 'I believe every single American, including people of color and transfolk, should be armed to the teeth to prevent against evil government' will put me in that category for some people.

Your politics are definitely out of the liberal mainstream, but they don't have to be to get labeled a bot. Just criticizing the current democratic nominee will do it.

It's absolutely true that liberalism has changed shape dramatically. It's almost unrecognizable in it's current form.

I wouldn't expect that most people would object to something like this (wikipedia):

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.[1][2][3] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

But even the above comment I made was downvoted, so I guess this is just where we are now.

Do you not understand the difference between a rando making such an accusation and a law enforcement or intelligence agency making a documented case?

This does, indeed, have the potential to be abused at some point in the future. But at present there is a real, documented, problem that needs to be solved. Let's solve the existing problem, and deal with the potential one if and when it occurs.

That second paragraph could be said about literally anything. It's a very convenient way to ignore potential problems in any solution.

Isn't it an MI7 job?

Regardless of the pros and cons of letting the intelligence agencies have some kind of moderating role on social media, they take a lot of pretty weird positions (not helped that they were previously accused of distributing disinformation for the KGB [1]). Their thesis seems to be:

* the report doesn't provide enough evidence that there are any bots (despite both Twitter and Facebook claiming to have removed thousands of bot accounts)

* the report doesn't do enough to assert that any bots, if they exist, are Russian in origin (despite the known existence of e.g. the Internet Research Agency)

* if there were bots, they weren't effective at manipulating elections/referenda

> Because despite near-constant braying from some corners of public life, the idea that Russia sustains prolonged, successful disinformation operations with the power to swing elections rests on a shaky evidence base.

Part of the problem is that we don't (and arguably can't) know if they affected elections/referenda but we do know there's been attempts by Russian-backed criminals to access data owned by political campaigns in the US and France [2]. Were they doing that just for fun?

We do know that in, for example, the US elections, some counties/states swung for Trump in 2016 by pretty narrow margins. Were those affected more by "but her emails", some sort of disinformation campaign, or the general unpopularity of Clinton? Maybe all of the above but it's a stretch to dismiss it all.

> This was the Robert Mueller inquiry, which didn’t turn up any evidence that Russia colluded with Trump to influence the outcome of the election.

Well no, they didn't find evidence of direct collusion, but it also concluded that they'd have indicted Trump for conspiracy to obstruct justice if he weren't PotUS [3].

> There’s also the important point that the upcoming generation is far savvier at discerning ‘fake news’ or ‘disinformation’ than older generations. All of this begs the question, how much of a threat is so-called disinformation really?

We know that older generations are more inclined to turn out and vote [4], so where is this going? If upcoming generations are better able to distinguish 'fake news' then do we need to prevent the older people who aren't from voting?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesman#After_Kingsley_M...

2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39705062

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_Report#Episodes_of_all...

4: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/insights/general-electi...

>We do know that in, for example, the US elections, some counties/states swung for Trump in 2016 by pretty narrow margins. Were those affected more by "but her emails", some sort of disinformation campaign, or the general unpopularity of Clinton? Maybe all of the above but it's a stretch to dismiss it all

That which is asserted without evidence can and must be dismissed without evidence.

"Drain the swamp" was the most effective political slogan for many decades. It's a real shame Trump was not better than Clinton's corruption and neither will Joe be. The corruption is the biggest threat to the USA for so many reasons.

> That which is asserted without evidence can and must be dismissed without evidence.

TFA provides evidence for nothing, so I guess we just dismiss it all then?

My point was how do you even begin to assess to what extent slogans, disinformation campaigns, apathy towards either candidate or some other factor was effective in swinging the result? Demanding proof that disinformation moved the result even a little verges on ludicrous.

>Demanding proof that disinformation moved the result even a little verges on ludicrous.

Got some weapons of mass destruction over there. Just keep up the "evidence is ludicrous" We'll need that to get the power to do more of what's right and get it past the population, like the unqualified success invading Iraq has unquestionably been. Or should we not take WMD on trust forever?

If you're not asking for evidence when people are justifying power grabs with bogeyman stories, then when exactly should we?

I mean, the claim that Iraq had WMDs didn't change anyone's mind about invading because it was prima facie nonsense, right? Unless you have direct evidence that the claim was both accepted as true and moved the needle on sentiment regarding the invasion?

Maybe everyone was just in favour of getting shot of Saddam because, like, "drain the swamp [beside the Euphrates]"?

Lies don't matter. Truth doesn't matter. Sure. And so there's no point discussing anything, ever.

I certainly feel enlightened.

I doubt any serious journalist in the UK is unaware of HMG's previous engagement with propagandising (or, if you're feeling generous, counter-propagandising) its own electorate.

See for example Powerbase's piece on the "Information Research Department" (IRD.) [1]

To take a random paragraph:

> The IRD was a top-secret, cold war propaganda unit headed by Norman Reddaway, one of Her Majesty's most experienced liars. Reddaway and his colleagues manipulated the "embedded" press and the BBC so expertly that he boasted to Gilchrist in a secret message that the fake story he had promoted - that a communist takeover was imminent in Indonesia - "went all over the world and back again". He described how an experienced Sunday newspaper journalist agreed "to give exactly your angle on events in his article . . . ie, that this was a kid-glove coup without butchery".

.. etc., etc.

Strangely, though, this historical context is almost never presented in any contemporary reporting on state involvement in propaganda or "strategic communications" as it's now called.

Though IRD is a historical enterprise and dealt with printed and broadcast media, its successor organisations have carried the struggle well into the internet era. Perhaps the latest is the "Integrity Initiative", on which there is a very interesting report [2] detailing some of the cross-fertilization between the British State, private sector disinformation "experts", the strategic communications sector and journalists.

1: https://powerbase.info/index.php/Information_Research_Depart...

2: http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com