begin quote from:
Russian Twitter accounts push #releasethememo conservative meme ...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/.../russian...releasethememo.../1053315001/
Missing: fakebots
WASHINGTON
(AP) — Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations are
pushing a conservative meme related to the investigation of Russian
election interference, researchers say.
The
purported Russian activity involves the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo, a
reference to a secret congressional report about President Donald
Trump's allegations that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration. A
group that tracks Russian-linked social media influence campaigns says
the volume of Russian-related #ReleaseTheMemo traffic represents the
most coordinated such effort since their website launched in early
August.
"I've never seen any single hashtag that has had this amount of activity behind it," said Bret Schafer, an analyst who helps runs the Hamilton 68 dashboard,
a project with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German
Marshall Fund. It tracks about 600 accounts that it says are tied to
Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns; most of those
accounts were promoting the same meme Friday.
What is the memo?
The
underlying #ReleaseTheMemo drama started Thursday after Rep. Peter
King, a New York Republican, revealed a brief report produced by
Republican staff dealing with Trump's wiretapping allegations. The
report stems from a lengthy investigation House Intelligence Chairman
Devin Nunes conducted into the alleged surveillance of Trump transition
aides and the revealing of names — or "unmasking" — of Trump aides in
classified reports.
Republicans on the House
Intelligence Committee voted on party lines — over Democratic member
objections — early Thursday to make the brief, 3-page report available
to members of Congress. But the same Republican members have said they
cannot say what exactly the report shows because it is classified — and
revealing classified information is a federal crime.
Committee
officials who reviewed the documents said that they revolve around a
dossier on Trump produced by former British intelligence officer
Christopher Steele, and questions over whether it was used to obtain
surveillance warrants. The report also relies on classified intelligence
that is only available to a select group of lawmakers known as the
"Gang of Eight" — a sign that some of the information is highly
sensitive.
Throughout the day Thursday and Friday,
lawmakers walked in and out of a classified room in the Capitol to
review the report — but never leaving with a copy because of the
sensitive contents.
ADVERTISING
Wikileaks promotion
As
with previous spikes of coordinated activity tracked by the Hamilton 68
group — such as one surrounding the national anthem protest controversy
at NFL games — it's hard to trace back to how it started, and how much
the Russian-linked network might simply be mimicking a U.S. trend.
"My
guess is this started organically," Schafer said. The website WikiLeaks
was an early big promoter of #ReleaseTheMemo, and it received attention
Thursday night from conservative personalities including the
president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King.
It's possible that the Russian-affiliated accounts simple "hopped on it,
promoted it, amplified it," Schafer said.
On
Friday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted Hamilton 68 — where
else? — on Twitter, calling its work "propaganda" and its methodology
"unfalsifiable" and "appalling."
Veil of secrecy
Rep.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, said Friday that lawmakers
had to sign a waiver produced by the House Intelligence Committee that
barred them from obtaining copies of the report, taking notes about the
report or discussing anything they read in the report. Krishnamoorthi
said he did not know what the penalty was if anyone violated that
waiver.
House Russia investigation chairman Michael
Conaway, a Texas Republican, said the intelligence committee could make
this report available to the public directly. If the committee votes to
"override" the classification of the material in the report, it would
then move to the president, who would have five days to decide whether
the classified material poses a national security risk. The full House
could vote to override the president if he opted to keep the material
secret.
Conaway said late Friday that he would like
to make this report public, but declined to say if the intelligence
committee would exercise its classification override powers.
Another Twitter clampdown
Meanwhile,
Twitter said in a blog post Friday that it would email nearly 678,000
people in the U.S. to notify them they had followed accounts linked to
Russian propagandists or had retweeted or liked a tweet sent out by them
around the 2016 election.
It also said it had
found 1,062 new accounts associated with the Russian troll farm known as
the Internet Research Agency. That brings the total to 3,814; Twitter
has suspended those accounts.
Twitter
also identified another 13,500 automated accounts — for a total of
50,258 — that were linked to Russia and tweeting out election-related
material. "Any such activity represents a challenge to democratic
societies everywhere, and we're committed to continuing to work on this
important issue," the company said.
Sen. Mark
Warner, the Democratic U.S. Senator from Virginia who's harshly
criticized Twitter's lackluster investigation into Russian meddling,
tweeted Friday that he was "encouraged to see the company beginning to
take responsibility" in dealing with the issue.
O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP technology writer Ryan Nakamura contributed to this report from San Francisco.
O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP technology writer Ryan Nakamura contributed to this report from San Francisco.
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