Europe has been working to expose Russian meddling for years

[niyad]

Europe has been working to expose Russian meddling for years


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Participants of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum gather near an electronic screen showing Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)
By Dana Priest and Michael Birnbaum June 25 at 5:20 PM

RIGA, Latvia — As the United States grapples with the implications of Kremlin interference in American politics, European countries are deploying a variety of bold tactics and tools to expose Russian attempts to sway voters and weaken European unity. Across the continent, counterintelligence officials, legislators, researchers and journalists have devoted years — in some cases, decades — to the development of ways to counter Russian disinformation, hacking and trolling. And they are putting them to use as never before. Four dozen officials and researchers interviewed recently sounded uniformly more confident about the results of their efforts to counter Russian influence than officials grappling with it in the United States, which one European cyber-official described as “like watching ‘House of Cards.’ ”“The response here has been very practical,” observed a senior U.S. intelligence official stationed in Europe. “Everybody’s looking at it.”

In the recent French elections, the Kremlin-friendly presidential candidate lost to newcomer Emmanuel Macron, who was subjected to Russian hacking and false allegations in Russian-
sponsored news outlets during the campaign. In Germany, all political parties have agreed not to employ automated bots in their social media campaigns because such hard-to-detect cybertools are frequently used by Russia to circulate bogus news accounts.The best antidote to Russian influence, European experts say, is to make it visible. “We have to prepare the public,” said Patrick Sensburg, a member of the German Parliament and an intelligence expert.

President Trump’s embrace of the “fake news” label for traditional mainstream news outlets and his own record of unabashed distortions have, moreover, energized Western Europe against the threat of disinformation, said Claire Wardle, strategy and research director at Europe’s largest social media accountability network, First Draft News. “Now you’re seeing Western Europe wake up.’’

Methods vary. Sweden has launched a nationwide school program to teach students to identify Russian propaganda. The Defense Ministry has created new units to seek out and counter Russian attempts to undermine Swedish society. In Lithuania, 100 citizen cyber-sleuths dubbed “elves” link up digitally to identify and beat back the people employed on social media to spread Russian disinformation. They call the daily skirmishes “Elves vs. Trolls.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/europe-has-been-working-to-expose-russian-meddling-for-years/2017/06/25/e42dcece-4a09-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html?utm_term=.fe549c1595b6