Tuesday, September 03, 2024

Four Pushing Russian Election Propaganda Go on Trial in FL

Four Americans face charges that they conspired to have other U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government, or that they acted as unregistered Russian agents themselves.

Posted by tonyroma at 07:30 PM | 12 COMMENTS | permalink

Comments

Prosecutors say that Russia, in relatively low-tech fashion, sought out a sympathetic group in the United States, invited its leader to visit Moscow and established a long-term relationship through calls, email and electronic messages. The group, which has long had a presence in St. Petersburg, Fla., then promoted Russian views on its website, social media accounts and radio station. One post argued that Russian athletes should be allowed to participate in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

"Infiltrating social movements has been core to Russian espionage since the 1950s," said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based research group that promotes democracy. Some of the infiltration attempts involve unwitting Americans, he added.

I heard that RCade has been turning over IP addresses to the FBI from some of our most prominent Russia-backers here on the Retort as they try to root out Americans spewing propagandistic anti-US talking points, often word for word, straight from RT and Pravda.

At least that's what some are saying, you know...

#1 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-03 12:27 PM

I heard that RCade has been turning over IP addresses to the FBI from some of our most prominent Russia-backers ...

Funny you should mention that.

Reverse lookups are not that difficult. Even if these troll farms try and hide their IP addresses you can still track them back to the server locations. If those servers are determined to be outside the U.S. and in particular in hostile countries they probably SHOULD be required to be reported.

Or at a bare minimum maybe the posts (or user accounts) should be flagged as to what its server country of origin really is. Then users can decide to trust them or not.

#2 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-03 12:42 PM

And the FBI is saying they can overcome VPNs to find the originating IPs as well.

Wow, I wouldn't want to be a Russian propaganda pusher trying to influence our elections on political news based sites. Club Fed is allegedly quite unforgiving these days ... or at least that's what some are saying ....

#3 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-09-03 12:45 PM

"And the FBI is saying they can overcome VPNs to find the originating IPs as well."

That's true.

If you are using a proxy server to download movies or songs or view blocked foreign websites I imagine they don't really care.

If you are trying to influence our elections then u bet they do.

#4 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-09-03 01:01 PM

Make an example of these traitors

#5 | Posted by Tor at 2024-09-03 02:57 PM

Interesting how much work our enemies are willing to do in order to get trump elected isnt it.

#6 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2024-09-03 07:40 PM

CLAUDIO's name seems to have disappeared from the Stats Page.

Good Riddance to bad rubbish.

#7 | Posted by Twinpac at 2024-09-03 09:59 PM

Good Riddance to bad rubbish.

His next username should be pretty easy to spot.

#8 | Posted by REDIAL at 2024-09-03 10:01 PM

Organ Bank?

#9 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-09-04 02:09 AM

Thought this was fun

The following users appear most often in killfiles.

sheepleschism, 23 plonks
shrimptacodan, 21 plonks
fishpaw, 21 plonks
dalton, 19 plonks
oneironaut, 18 plonks
effeteposer, 18 plonks
gracieamazed, 18 plonks
robson, 16 plonks
nullifidian, 16 plonks
bellringer, 15 plonks
visitor_, 15 plonks
bluewaffles, 14 plonks
billjohnson, 13 plonks
jakester, 13 plonks
tres_flechas, 13 plonks
gtjr, 12 plonks
monkeybars, 12 plonks
heliumrat, 12 plonks
msgt, 12 plonks
phesteroboyle, 12 plonks
willowby, 11 plonks
humtake, 11 plonks
legallyyourdead, 11 plonks
boaz, 11 plonks
sentinel, 11 plonks
snoofy, 11 plonks
madbomber, 10 plonks
patron, 10 plonks
rcade, 9 plonks
lfthndthrds, 9 plonks

#10 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-09-04 02:11 AM

Interesting but sadly not surprising that instead of going after the right-wing nutjobs spewing Russian propaganda they have instead decided to prosecute Black socialists.

#11 | Posted by DarkVader at 2024-09-04 08:20 AM

@#11 ... instead of going after the right-wing nutjobs spewing Russian propaganda ...

Related?

Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere
www.justice.gov

... Influence Operation Relied on Influencers, AI-Generated Content, Paid Social Media Advertisements, and Social Media Accounts to Drive Internet Traffic to Cybersquatted and Other Domains ...

#12 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-09-04 05:15 PM

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