Spreading disinformation to influence elections: It’s not new that it’s happening, but the activities of an Israeli company revealed on Wednesday take this practice to a whole new level. Three journalists went undercover with the company, revealing that businessmen and politicians from around the world pay for the company’s services for personal gain. For example, the company would have tried to influence dozens of presidential elections worldwide.
“Even at the first appointment I didn’t believe what I saw,” says Israeli journalist Gur Megiddo. “I knew at the time that this was very big.” He was involved in the undercover operation and tells News hour how he and two colleagues – an Israeli and a Frenchman – worked.
The fact that these services exist makes elections a race to the bottom.
For six months, the journalists posed as clients interested in the services of the Israeli company, which operates under the code name “Team Jorge.” They spoke several times with ‘Jorge’, real name Tal Hanan, the boss of the company. During those meetings, Jorge showed his so-called new clients what he had to offer.
“In the first presentation we received, we saw e-mails and telegram messages from people close to the Kenyan presidential candidate,” says Megiddo. That presentation was a few days before the Kenyan presidential elections last summer. The accounts belonged to associates of candidate William Ruto, who later won the election.
Jorge showed the journalists that he could not only view the e-mails and Telegram messages, but also send messages. As a demonstration, he sent the number 11 to a contact of a hacked employee, but was unable to delete that message. Later, the journalists approached the recipient of the message, who agreed to share the chat conversation. There was the message with the number 11.
In addition to hacking accounts, Team Jorge developed a system that automatically generated fake profiles on social media. He called that system AIMS: Advanced Impact Media Solutions.
Here Megiddo talks about how AIMS works:
“You can’t believe the program isn’t human”
To show what AIMS is capable of, Jorge agreed to start a social media campaign centered around emu Emmanuel, which went viral last summer. “We decided to spread the rumor that he had passed away, so we asked Jorge to launch a campaign using the hashtag #RIP_Emmanuel.”
Internet hit Emmanuel with his owner:
This campaign allowed the journalists to check the profiles that spread this hashtag. “That’s how we found out that those avatars have been used for nineteen other campaigns in different places around the world. For business people, political campaigns, and so on.”
Megiddo emphasizes that not everything Jorge has said to the journalists should be taken for granted. For example, he claims that Team Jorge has tried to influence 33 presidential elections, 27 of them “successfully”. The researchers could not verify whether that is correct. “We know that he was involved as a hacker in the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria, along with Cambridge Analytica.”
Race to the bottom
The journalist emphasizes that Hanan’s service is not an isolated phenomenon, but the tip of the iceberg. “We wanted to dive into the ‘information industry’ world. We all know there are bots active on social media, but we wanted to show the world how this works on the back end. We’ve tried it with other companies as well But we didn’t get in there.”
Anat Ben-David, a digital media researcher at Israel’s Open University, is deeply concerned about the commercial spread of disinformation and hacking. “The fact that these services exist and that they are offered to people who work in election campaigns makes elections one race to the bottom.”
Ben-David hopes the revelations will lead to better regulation. “If we classify this under cybercrime, we can ensure that these methods can no longer be used to influence elections.”
