Posted on 03/22/2017 6:24:38 AM PDT by Mariner
WASHINGTON
Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.
Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.
The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections.
Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives. Their participation, however, wasn’t necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook.
The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin’s cyber attack and determine ways to prevent another.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
so....where are the SWAT raids on RT studios??
But, of course not at the malware found on the Trump server in the search that never happened that turned up planted attempts to make it appear that there may be a link.
What “fictional” reports are they talking about?
Still absolutely ZERO information from this Department of Justice regarding the only documented HACK during the 2016 election.
That would be the Obama’s DHS attempting to gain access to the State of Georgia’s voter database.
Apparently no US based news organization has ever published "fictional" news stories. Based on that logic the New York Times news that Trump was "wiretapped" should put an end to the now obviously false stories told by the FBI and others that President Trump and his campaign were not wiretapped.
Now we have the spectacle, if the new story itself isn't fictional, of the FBI trying to figure out why so many people posted comments in favor of then candidate Trump. Maybe it was because internet savvy people liked him.
Any day now we'll hear the FBI claiming that we are all a bunch of Russian bots.
“InfoWars news site”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...(cough, sputter, gasp)...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
I seem to remember Hillary boldly claiming that she was going to win Georgia.
Connection to attempt to hack voter database in GA?
Well of course.
What exactly is to stop this from becoming an inquisition of conservative groups?
Someone speculated yesterday that the Russians were not stupid. They realized just like all the other brilliant pundits that Trump had no chance to win the Presidency.
So they simply aimed their dirty tricks machine at Hillary in order to bring her down a notch or two.
S.O.P
Michael Flynn had close ties to the Russia propaganda media outlet RT (Russia Today). Good thing he got the boot, as he was seriously at odds with Trump's top administration officials on the issue of KGB Putin. See my FR home page if don't know what I'm referring to.
LOL! Interfering in an election means posting links to positive articles? Who knew!
Stasi tactics bump for later....
Stop?
This is just another step in the decades long Federal/Rat inquisition of conservative groups.
With hard work the FBI can raise their credibility to the levels of the New York Times, it's already their choice of THE place to take a leak.
“Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction...”
That could describe pretty much any story on the NYT, Boston Globe, CNN, MSNBC,etc etc web sites. Were there bots placing links to Hillary friendly stories? Or do we just ignore those.
This is turning into the Spanish Inquisition
I WISH, when Comey said the FBI has been watching Trump since July, that Gowdy has responded with ‘so, Trump and his campaign have been a target of your surveillance since July?’. Does anybody with even half a brain think that Obama didn't authorize this???
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