Revealed evidence of Russia's interference in elections: from a report to the US Senate

The Washington Post has published data from an investigation commissioned by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. The pages that supported Trump on social networks paid for advertising in rubles and used Russian phone numbers, writes RBC.

Фото: Depositphotos

Oxford University and Graphika’s analysts conducted an investigation into the technical side of the alleged Russian intervention in the US presidential election. About this writes The Washington Post, with reference to a copy of the document, which should be officially published this week.

The objectives of the investigation were the work of the Russian Internet Research Agency and the activities of Russian bots and fake pages. According to the analysis of several million posts in social networks, their activity coincided in time with key events in US political life. This, in particular, is about the dates of the debate of presidential candidates and party congresses.

The authors of the report claim that they managed to find direct traces of Russian intervention. So, in some cases, rubles were used to pay for advertising accounts. In the contact information of individual pages were Russian phone numbers. The computer logs also found IP addresses registered in St. Petersburg, where the Russian Internet Research Agency is based.

Data for analysis, researchers have received from companies Facebook, Twitter and Google. They cover the period up to the middle of 2017, when the Internet giants themselves began investigating the activities of Russian bots. Also analyzed were data transmitted by the intelligence committee of the US House of Representatives. The authors of the document did not study the alleged influence of Russia on recent political events in the United States and the November mid-term elections.

“It is clear that all the messages [on social networks] were clearly created in the interests of the Republican Party and especially Donald Trump ... Trump is most often mentioned in information campaigns aimed at the electorate of conservative and right-wing views, and these messages encouraged groups of voters to support him. For the main groups of voters who could pose a threat to Trump, other messages were prepared, with the help of which they were tried to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage them from voting, ”the report quotes the WP.

In particular, the purpose of such Internet activity was to intensify the struggle for the right to arms and against immigration. At the same time, the organizers of the information campaigns tried to weaken the activity of left-wing voters and the African-American population. For example, the BlackMatters US movement for the rights of the black population was promoted with the following advertising message on Google: “Cops kill black children. Are you sure your son will not be next? ”

In September, 2017 of the year Facebook reported that for two years, the accounts related to Russia, including in the year of the US presidential election, purchased a political advertisement on the social network. Russia-related accounts have spent $ 100 thousand for these purposes.

In February, the US Department of Justice 2018 accused 13 of Russians and 9 legal entities, including the Internet Research Agency (eliminated at the end of 2016), RBC sources had previously called him one of the legal entities "trolley factory"), intervening in US election 2016 of the year.

Earlier Senate Intelligence Committee опубликовал unclassified part of the investigation report of Russia's interference with the US presidential election in 2016.

Recall in April the Committee on Intelligence of the US House of Representatives saidthat established the fact of Russia's interference in the American elections, but did not find evidence of Trump’s conspiracy and his headquarters with Moscow.

Investigation of Russia's interference in the elections in the United States is also led by Special Prosecutor Robert Muller. is he conducts interrogations of the Russian oligarchs, makes accusations against Russians and trying to get an opportunity to talk on this topic with Trump, for which he prepared more xnumx questions.

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