Month: January 2018

Bot Checking: It’s Not Easy, But Here’s Some Advice From Twitter Users

The “Release the Memo” hashtag has been suppressed by Twitter because Twitter suspects the topic is being artificially amplified by Russian-linked propaganda bots.

One of the sources used as a bot checker is “Hamilton 68,” a website maintained by The Alliance for Securing Democracy, which claims to have created an algorithm based on 600 accounts–which it will not identify—that seem to manipulate data and promote propaganda and disinformation.

http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/about

Media Bias Fact Check gives the Alliance for Securing Democracy a very good rating, but Julian Assange tweeted today that Hamilton 68 is biased and is itself a source of propaganda.

Based on Hamilton 68’s secretive methodology as explained on their website, it does seem as though it’s sort of a “trust us, we know what we’re doing” approach to its data analysis.

Twitter also began sending out emails warning users they may have been affected by disinformation:

The problem is that it is difficult to recognize a disinformation bot. Here are some tips from the Twitter account The Botline:

Twitter users seem enthusiastic about Botcheckme, but there are reports by some that they have checked their own accounts and the service has said they are themselves a bot, when they are in fact humans. Others say they will check on one day and they’re not classified as a bot–then the next day they are.

https://botcheck.me/

Botometer also gives likelihood of bot-like characteristics and allows you to check your followers.

https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/

A few users recommended makeadverbsgreatagain, but I personally did not find it helpful.

https://makeadverbsgreatagain.us/mlp/

So… I think the best advice is the one given by Botline—learn to recognize the signs and then employ these other services realizing they are imperfect.

This does not solve the issue of what is really trending however–Twitter is able to dismiss a trending hashtag at will–with an awful lot of conservative and centrist voices right now feeling a bias against their ability to speak freely under Twitter’s current rules. Which brings us back to “Release the Memo”–my opinion–when Wikileaks offers a one million dollar reward, yeah, the trending hashtag is legit.

“Release the Memo” Firsthand Reports; Wikileaks Offers $1million Reward

Security Alert – U. S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan; Intercontinental Hotel Attacked

View of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, Jan. 25, 2016.  (Reuters)

Security Alert – U. S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan

Security Alert – U. S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan (January 20, 2018)

Location: Kabul, Afghanistan

Event: At 9:00 pm, a series of explosions occurred at the Intercontinental Hotel in the PD-4 neighborhood of Kabul.  The attack is reported to be ongoing at this time.  Afghan authorities have announced they are reacting to the incident and a heightened police presence throughout the city is expected.  Please contact the U.S. Embassy at the numbers below if you are aware of any U.S. citizens at the hotel.

Actions to Take:

  • Avoid the area
  • Keep a low profile
  • Be aware of your surroundings
  • Monitor local media for updates

Assistance:

  • American Citizen Services Unit, U.S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan

Located at Great Massoud Road between Radio Afghanistan and the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul.

+93-700-114-000  or +93 -700-108-000 (after hours)

KabulACS@state.gov

https://af.usembassy.gov/

  • State Department – Consular Affairs

888-407-4747 or 202-501-4444

Films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media spread decadent ideologies, cultural poisoning

Photo courtesy KCNA.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun Calls for Foiling Ideological and Cultural Poisoning by Imperialism

Date: 20/01/2018 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, January 20 (KCNA) — For all the nations aspiring to independence and opposing imperialism to combat the poisoning of decadent ideologies and culture of every description precisely means a fierce struggle to defend their sovereignty and dignity, says Rodong Sinmun in an article Saturday.

The article goes on:

The imperialists regard the reactionary ideological and cultural poisoning as the most effective way for attaining their aggression and predatory aims with ease.

The degenerate reactionary ideology and the American outlook on value, which were employed as a guide to aggression, play the main role in aggression at present.

The imperialists consider the rising generation as the main target of their corrupt ideological and cultural poisoning.

Through films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media which the young people enjoy very much, the imperialists make them corrupt and degenerate and spread illusions about imperialism.

Those young people infected with luxury and enjoyment are reduced to renegades of their countries and stooges of imperialism unwittingly.

North Korean Defector: Return DPRK to State Sponsored Terrorism List

Some countries witnessed regime changes and government falls and the young people took the lead in causing such abnormal situations. That is because they were infected with the imperialist ideological and cultural poisoning.

The struggle in the ideological and cultural field is a war without gunfire. And a wrong struggle results in the worse consequences than the defeat in war.

The bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning is more dangerous than a formidable enemy coming in attack with guns.

Any hesitation and concession to the ideological confrontation would give way to the bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning and then it would make mess of the destiny of a nation and country.

The Amazing Kims: Mythology and the Cult of Personality in North Korea

North Korean Media: Americans Suffer from Nuclear-phobia, think everything’s a bomb

Pyongyang, January 19 (KCNA) — Nuclear-phobia by the nuclear force of the DPRK has now caused a tragicomedy in the U.S.

On January 16 a meteor fell from the sky between Ohio and Michigan with a great bang, brightening the sky.

This sparked off the explosive postage of stories about the “fireball in the nocturnal sky” on the U.S. internet websites.

Internet users admitted that they worried the meteor in question could have been a nuclear bomb flown from north Korea.

A twitter user posted words that when meteor brightened the sky between Ohio and Michigan, all internet network users hoped that it would be a meteor, not north Korea’s missile.

Another twitter user wrote that it was sad to have taken the meteor as a bomb flown from north Korea and to have hurried the car in fear.

Lots of people were reported to have greatly worried about it, taking the meteor as an attack from north Korea.

A people said that it was greatly relieving that the meteor did not pass the sky last weekend when there was a misinformation about the flight of a nuclear bomb.

What was all the more irony was the fuss in Hawaii on January 13.

At 08:07 citizens and tourists on Hawaii received all at the same time the ballistic missile threat warning which urged them to evacuate as there was ballistic missile threat and which stressed that it was not just training.

The citizens and tourists in great disarray went busy evacuating amid the heightened fear and delusion of persecution about the nuclear force of the DPRK.

What is all the more ridiculous is that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission put it that the ballistic missile attack evacuation warning which threw the whole of Hawaii in a great chaos was caused by a mistake of a man who pressed the button during shift period.

The field repercussion is that it is quite natural that the whole state was thrown into fear as the citizens and tourists were fed the warning message as serious as the one warning of “imminent and actual drop of missile” which could be the most dreadful moment in life.

In recent days the U.S. forces in south Korea and their families were informed to leave south Korea by messages sent through hand phones or broadcasting means which made them get flurried in fear that a war may break out. In the U.S. people caught in extreme fear vied with each other to buy frozen foods, gas masks and goods for emergency use, indicative of the pain suffered by the Americans stricken by war-phobia.

The consecutive fuss in the U.S. and fear caused by even the natural phenomenon being mistaken as a rocket from the DPRK are the natural outcome of the acts done by the U.S. itself.

North Korea Abruptly Cancels Trip to Prepare for Olympics: Now Reschedules

This photo, provided by South Korea’s unification ministry on Jan. 15, 2018, shows Hyon Song-wol, the leader of the all-female Moranbong Band, attending inter-Korean talks on the North’s plan to send an art troupe to the South during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. (Yonhap)

UPDATE: NK has now rescheduled and the visit to South Korea is back on.

SEOUL, Jan. 20 (Yonhap) — South Korea on Saturday demanded North Korea explain the abrupt canceling of a visit by its team in preparing for performances during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics next month in the South.

“We sent a document (to the North) at around 11:20 a.m. via the Panmunjom communications channel demanding an explanation for the North’s cancellation to dispatch its cultural advance inspection team,” Unification Minister Cho Myung-gyon said in a press briefing at the ministry.

The minister’s remarks came as the North notified the South late Friday that it will suspend the seven-member team’s trip originally slated for earlier Saturday to check the venues for its proposed art performances in the South.

The two-day trip was originally arranged after Pyongyang said it would send a team led by Hyon Song-wol, leader of the North’s all-female Moranbong Band. The band was created by order of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in July 2012 and features Western-style music and outfits.

Meet the Moranbong Band: NK’s All Female Pop Group & Dennis Rodman Favorite

In working-level talks with the South held Monday, North Korea agreed to send a 140-member art troupe, consisting of an orchestra, singers and dancers, for concerts in Seoul and Gangnueng, 260 kilometers east of the capital, during next month’s Winter Olympics.

Twitter Updates Info on Propaganda, Internet Research Agency Linked Accounts, Russian Bots

Most user engagement was with a very small number of IRA-associated accounts.  Image above courtesy Twitter, example of Internet Research Agency disinformation campaign.
By Twitter PublicPolicy

Friday, 19 January 2018

When we appeared before the United States Congress last fall, Twitter publicly committed to regularly updating both congressional committees and the public on findings from our ongoing review into events surrounding the 2016 U.S. election.

Twitter is committed to providing a platform that fosters healthy civic discourse and democratic debate.  We have been cooperating with congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We have committed to be as transparent as possible about sharing what we have learned through our retroactive investigationinto activity related to the election.

Since we presented our findings to Congress last fall, we have updated our analysis and continue to look for patterns and signals in data. Today, we are sharing an update on several aspects of that ongoing work, as well as steps we are taking to continue to make progress against potential manipulation of our platform.

Informing People of Malicious Activity in the 2016 Election

As previously announced, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period. Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available.

Examples of IRA Content

Most user engagement was with a very small number of IRA-associated accounts.  Some examples of content which received significant engagement are:

Updated Numbers of IRA Accounts

As part of our ongoing review, we have identified both more IRA and automated Russia-based accounts. The results of this supplemental analysis are consistent with the results of our previous work: automated election-related content associated with Russian signals represented a very small fraction of the overall activity on Twitter in the ten-week period preceding the 2016 election.

We have identified an additional 1,062 accounts associated with the IRA. We have suspended all of these accounts for Terms of Service violations, primarily spam, and all but a few accounts, which were restored to legitimate users, remain suspended.  At the request of congressional investigators, we are also sharing those account handles with Congress. In total, during the time period we investigated, the 3,814 identified IRA-linked accounts posted 175,993 Tweets, approximately 8.4% of which were election-related.

We have also provided Congress with the results of our supplemental analysis into activity believed to be automated, election-related activity originating out of Russia during the election period. Through our supplemental analysis, we have identified 13,512 additional accounts, for a total of 50,258 automated accounts that we identified as Russian-linked and Tweeting election-related content during the election period, representing approximately two one-hundredths of a percent (0.016%) of the total accounts on Twitter at the time.  However any such activity represents a challenge to democratic societies everywhere, and we’re committed to continuing to work on this important issue.

Enhancing Information Quality

After the 2016 election, we launched our Information Quality initiative to further develop strategies to detect and prevent bad actors from abusing our platform. We have since made significant improvements, while recognizing that we have more to do as these patterns of activity develop and shift over time.

With our current capabilities, we detect and block approximately 523,000 suspicious logins daily for being generated through automation. In December 2017, our systems identified and challenged more than 6.4 million suspicious accounts globally per week— a 60% increase in our detection rate from October 2017. We have developed new techniques for identifying malicious automation (such as near-instantaneous replies to Tweets, non-random Tweet timing, and coordinated engagement). We have improved our phone verification process and introduced new challenges, including reCAPTCHAs to validate that a human is in control of an account.

Alongside these improvements, we’re continuing to expand enforcement of our developer and automation rules. Since June 2017, we’ve removed more than 220,000 applications in violation of our rules, collectively responsible for more than 2.2 billion low-quality Tweets.

In 2018, we will build upon our existing improvements. Our plans include:

  • Investing further in machine-learning capabilities that help us detect and mitigate the effect on users of fake, coordinated, and automated account activity;
  • Limiting the ability of users to perform coordinated actions across multiple accounts in Tweetdeck and via the Twitter API;
  • Continuing the expansion of our new developer onboarding process to better manage the use cases for developers building on Twitter’s API. This will help us improve how we enforce our policies on restricted uses of our developer products, including rules on the appropriate use of bots and automation.

Media Literacy and Partnerships

We recognize that Twitter is an important part of a larger ecosystem of how news and information spreads online, and that we have a responsibility to support external programs that empower our users, connecting them with resources to give them control over their online experience.

Our partners Common Sense Media, the National Association for Media Literacy, the Family Online Safety Institute and Connect Safely, amongst others, have helped us to craft materials and conduct workshops to help our users learn how to process online information and understand which sources of news have integrity. We focus on elements like verification of sources, critical thinking, active citizenship online and the breaking down of digital divides.

Learn more about our most recent efforts for Media Literacy Week in countries like the U.S., Canada and Ireland, and follow our partners @MediaLiteracyEd, @CommonSenseEdu and @ConnectSafely for new initiatives like the Teachers Institute at Twitter HQ.

Twitter is proud to partner with journalistic NGOs for trainings and outreach initiatives, including Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. We will keep working with reporters, journalism NGOs, and media organizations to ensure that Twitter’s full capabilities are built into newsrooms and established media outlets worldwide.

Moving Forward

Even as we continue to learn from the events of the 2016 U.S. election, we are taking steps every day to improve the security of our platform and stay one step ahead of those who would abuse it. As part of our preparations for the U.S. midterm elections, our teams are organizing to:

  • Verify major party candidates for all statewide and federal elective offices, and major national party accounts, as a hedge against impersonation;
  • Maintain open lines of communication to federal and state election officials to quickly escalate issues that arise;
  • Address escalations of account issues with respect to violations of Twitter Rules or applicable laws;
  • Continually improve and apply our anti-spam technology to address networks of malicious automation targeting election-related matters; and
  • Monitor trends and spikes in conversations relating to the 2018 elections for potential manipulation activity.

We are committed to ensuring that Twitter is safe and secure for all users and serves to advance healthy civic discussion and engagement. Our work on these issues will never be done, and we will continue in our efforts to protect Twitter against bad actors and networks of malicious automation and manipulation.

Wreckage of Soviet plane shot down over Auschwitz in 1945 found in Poland

© The Close Places of Memory Fund
The plane’s wreckage was found in a pond whose owner pumped water out of it in early winter
In Auschwitz-Birkenau, fascists killed in gas chambers and burnt in crematorium furnaces over 1 million Jews, and also dozens of thousands of representatives of the Polish intelligentsia and Soviet prisoners-of-war.

WARSAW, January 19. /TASS/. The wreckage of an Ilyushin Il-4 bomber that was shot down in January 1945 during the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet troops has been found in Poland, member of the Close Places of Memory Fund Artur Chongala told TASS on Friday.

The plane’s wreckage was found in a pond whose owner pumped water out of it in early winter and noticed the bomber’s fragments protruding from the silt. He told the Fund about his discovery. The Fund started examining the plane’s wreckage.

“We recovered several fragments, by which we were able to make it clear that this was precisely an Il-4 plane [a two-motor bomber of the period of the Soviet Union’s 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany],” the Fund’s representative said.

“A legend had long been circulated in Auschwitz about a wrecked Soviet plane but no one knew where it was,” he stressed.

“Now it is known that the plane fell short of a couple of kilometers to fly to the Birkenau camp,” he added.

Nothing is known about the fate of the bomber’s pilots. No remains were found inside it. An effort is under way to identify the names of the pilots with the help of the Russian embassy.

“We would very much like to learn their names,” Chongala said, adding that the Fund would demonstrate the plane’s discovered wreckage at an exhibition.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, fascists killed in gas chambers and burnt in crematorium furnaces over 1 million Jews, and also dozens of thousands of representatives of the Polish intelligentsia and Soviet prisoners-of-war. Estimates indicate that overall from 1.5 million to 2 million people of various nationalities died in that camp. The concentration compound was liberated by the Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp was liberated in the course of the Vistula-Oder operation by Soviet divisions making part of the 60th army of the First Ukrainian Front.

According to the 60th army’s roster (the document was declassified several years ago), Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by combatants of 39 nationalities. Various estimates indicate that from 234 to 350 Soviet soldiers and officers died during the liberation of the concentration camp.

 

Putin takes icy plunge into waters of Lake Seliger

All photos courtesy Alexei Druzhinin, Russian Presidential Press and Information Office, TASS.

Putin often attends church services during major Orthodox Christian holidays, but this is the first time the Kremlin has reported that the president has participated in the ice swimming event

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a monastery to the northwest of Moscow on Thursday and took a dunk in the icy waters of Lake Seliger to celebrate the Epiphany, which commemorates the baptism of Jesus Christ, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“On the occasion of Epiphany, Putin attended a liturgy and also took part in the Epiphany bathing in Lake Seliger,” Peskov said.
Putin visited the Nilo-Stolobensky monastery in the Tver Region after wrapping up his working visit to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.

TVER REGION, RUSSIA – JANUARY 19, 2018: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin dips in the icy waters of Lake Seliger during the celebration of Epiphany. In Eastern Christianity, the feast of Epiphany commemorates the Baptism of Jesus. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the holiday according to the Julian calendar. Alexei Druzhinin/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/TASS
Ðîññèÿ. Òâåðñêàÿ îáëàñòü. 19 ÿíâàðÿ 2018. Ïðåçèäåíò Ðîññèè Âëàëèìèð Ïóòèí âî âðåìÿ êðåùåíñêèõ êóïàíèé íà îçåðå Ñåëèãåð. Àëåêñåé Äðóæèíèí/ïðåññ-ñëóæáà ïðåçèäåíòà ÐÔ/ÒÀÑÑ
TVER REGION, RUSSIA – JANUARY 19, 2018: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is about to dip in the icy waters of Lake Seliger during the celebration of Epiphany. In Eastern Christianity, the feast of Epiphany commemorates the Baptism of Jesus. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the holiday according to the Julian calendar. Alexei Druzhinin/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/TASS
Ðîññèÿ. Òâåðñêàÿ îáëàñòü. 19 ÿíâàðÿ 2018. Ïðåçèäåíò Ðîññèè Âëàëèìèð Ïóòèí âî âðåìÿ êðåùåíñêèõ êóïàíèé íà îçåðå Ñåëèãåð. Àëåêñåé Äðóæèíèí/ïðåññ-ñëóæáà ïðåçèäåíòà ÐÔ/ÒÀÑÑ

This winter season, central Russia has not encountered traditionally cold weather and this night the temperature failed to go below minus 6-7 degrees Celsius, Peskov said. This is not the first time Putin has gone for such icy ritual immersions. The president has taken part in the ice-hole bathing event “for several years already,” he added.

Putin often attends church services during major Orthodox Christian holidays, but this is the first time the Kremlin has reported that the president has participated in the ice swimming event.

The ritual dunks in frigid waters take place overnight to January 19 on one of Orthodox Christianity’s major holidays, Epiphany. However, ice swimming is a folk custom rather than a religious ritual.

“Release the Memo” Firsthand Reports; Wikileaks Offers $1million Reward