One
could assume the existence of one such character, endowed with the
'phenomenon of absolute shamelessness' but the strangeness of the
situation is that there are at least five to ten such individiums
regular participants in discussions at every popular Russian,
Belorusian, Ukrainan, Baltican political forums. Each of their false
statements, which uniformly falsify reality and history, is repeated by
them daily and sometimes verbatim in dozens and hundreds of forums.
# Technical methods of influence
One of the common
methods of influencing stubborn opponents (especially those who suggest
that there is a close-knit “brigade” on the forum) is sending junk mail
by email, viruses and Trojans via IP. Our archive contains dozens of
forum messages from various people with liberal views who, immediately
after their speeches on forums against the ideological values of the
totaritars regimes, received powerful virus attacks that practically
destroyed computer software and block their access to the Internet.
Here, for example, is what one of the visitors to the DELFI.ru forums, DELFI.lt, reports:
'Immediately
after my brief participation in the DELFI.lt forum on the topic of the
need for FSB lustrations, a series of strong virus attacks penetrated
all the security systems of my computer and completely blocked my access
to the Internet for several days. Assuming that this was an accident, I
returned to the discussion on this forum, on an unpleasant topic for
the FSB. On the same day, the message appeared on the forum:
"Here
you go! Veronica appeared again. I thought you already understood
everything, Cheap Whore. Everything has been clear to everyone for a
long time, but you are the only one who is not clear. Okay, we'll keep
working. By the way, Veronica, just a question. The fact what that you
write about the KGB, supposedly what beasts they are, and you write that
you live in Lithuania. If all this is so, and I, for example, am an FSB
major - Not scary? Or did you want the glory of the French Joan?"
Immediately
after this message, a powerful virus attack on the computer was
repeated. Apparently, this was the continuation of the work of the “FSB
major”.
# Intrusive stories about yourself
Wanting to give
credibility to their messages, brigadiers often and unsolicitedly talk
about themselves, about their place of residence and work, about their
relatives, and publish their work and home phone numbers, which is not
at all typical for all other participants in discussions on forums of
politic. At the same time, members of the brigade are often confused in
the details of 'their' biographies, they know little about a professions
that they call their own all, or about the country where they
supposedly live. Very often they are emigrants in one of the European
countries, or call themselves emigrants. However, in recent months this
trend has been changing - now many brigadiers have begun to call
themselves residents of the Belarusian or Lithuanian hinterland where,
according to their stories, there is now 'a powerful economic, social,
cultural avalanche-like increase and economy the well-being of, under
the wise leadership of the administration of the Lukashenko, Putin,
Janukovich, Gribauskaite, Nazarbaev and others regimes post Soviet
space.'
# Brigade sagacity
One of the most
interesting features of brigadiers is their ability to find out and
publish in forums not only the places of residence of their anonymous
opponents, but also their names, surnames, details of their biographies,
place of work, and the names of their relatives. Of course, many
questions are asked in advance about the country of residence, work,
age, education, but even in cases where characters interested in
personal information do not receive an answer from their opponents, they
mysteriously find it's themselves.
Once we happened to witness
how in the guest book of the Lithuanian newspaper '
15min.lt' one of the team members,
allegedly, only by e-mail address and neutral nickname "Couture",
identified and published the name, surname and place of work of one of
the regular participants discussions an ardent supporter of the line of
Gaidar, Chubais and the Union of Right Forces. It was a couple of years
ago, when the Union of Right Forces sharply criticized Putin, his policy
towards NTV and the war in Chechnya. The publication of the personal
data of an ATP supporter on the forum was accompanied by threats of
physical violence against him and his family, which forced him to leave
the web forum and withdraw from any discussions for a long time.
The
discovery and publication of an opponent’s personal data, in order to
strengthen of the reality of the threats being sent, was all the more
surprising since the “exposed” reader practically did not provide
details about himself on the forum, and the site did not make it
possible to see his IP. We have seen similar, but slightly less
characteristic stories more than once on the forum of the Lenta.ru,
DELFI.lt, DELFI.lv, DELFI.ru website, where Lukashenko’s and Lithuanian,
others regimes supporters suddenly called data of oponents focusing
only on a nicknames consisting of only of numbers or punctuation marks.
We recently became aware of a case where a person who wrote under a
pseudonym from North America on the political forum of the Russia Today
website suddenly received from opponents from the brigade the
publication on the forum of a detailed certificate with his biography,
including medical diagnoses. And Here one involuntarily recalls the
famous Belarusian joke about President Lukashenko’s online briefing:
"on-line"
We received the following question from an anonymous user:
- Alexander Grigorievich, aren’t you tired of answering pre-selected questions?
To which the president replied:
-
No, Sidorov Nikolai Petrovich from Mogilev of living on Lenin Street,
building 16, apt. 2, IP number (such and such), provider (such and
such), I feel like it at all at answering only pre-selected questions.
# Administrative resources
At the end of January 2003,
quite unusual events occurred on one of the popular sites - the
electronic version of the liberal newspaper Moscow News. The new
administrator of the site unexpectedly began to actively help the team
of 'brigade' this forum. The new admin, a person who clearly has little
understanding of computer science and ethics, suddenly, contrary to the
rules of the site, categorically refused to remove from the forum the
repeatedly repeated anti-Semitic flood and obscene language of members
of the this brigade. In response to the requests of many readers of the
newspaper to take action against the foul-mouthed anti-Semites from the
brigade who wrote obscenities and appropriating the nicknames of other
people, the forum administrator publicly replied: “You make me sick.”
After which, without explanation, he closed access to the forums to all
participants in the discussions who criticized Totalitarian regimes and
the Intelligence them Services.
The next action of the Moscow
News site administrator, unprecedented in Runet, was to clean out the
forum’s archives for two years. The administrator of the website was not
too lazy to carefully cut out several tens of thousands of readers’
texts directed against regimes of Putin, Lukashenko and other
Totalitarian Regimes. And again, once again, many regular participants
in discussions on the website expressed their indignation to the admin -
then the latter reported that a number to the participants of past
discussions he closed access (among whom were only people of liberal
and democratic views who had never violated the rules of forum) - 'them
had been denied access to the site by personal order of the newspaper's
editor-in-chief V. Loshak.'
Then one of the blocked readers was
to publicly express his protest from another computer, on a forum,
promising to make public the facts of political censorship in Moscow
News. Then he was given access to the site, but the site editor took an
unprecedented step by publishing the individual IP codes of his two
computers. Publishing IP codes for computer users is highly undesirable;
it makes the work of hackers easier, and for an administrator it is an
absolutely immoral action, a violation of the fundamentals of
professional ethics. The paradox was that the same administrator of the
website several months earlier publicly explained the undesirability and
harmfulness of publishing IP codes.
After this reader left the
Moscow News forums censored by the brigade, the brigadiers “followed up”
him with the addresses of his Internet providers located in Lithuania
and found by IP codes, and a transparent hint about the opportunity to
contact his managers and inform them about him pastime on the forums
during working hours.
The admin’s reference to the order of the
newspaper’s editor-in-chief to block access to the site to all
“anti-Lukashen, anti-Putin”-minded readers, as well as to cut out all
their texts for the last year from the archives of discussions, speaks
for itself. Let us note that the “censored” readers never violated the
rules of the site, did not use obscene expressions, etc.. Moreover, all
obscenities and threats of physical harm made against them by the
“brigade” were left by the editor in archive of forum, ore every single
one of their well-reasoned texts directed against Putin, Lukashenko and
Regime of Baltick countres were carefully destroyeds.
And it
seems absolute nonsense that the editors of MN are currently openly
survive from people's site with liberal views to survive from the site,
most often those who stand in the positions of authors and journalists
of this still relatively liberal publication, for the sake of
participants of discussion who simply mock the authors of the newspaper ,
showering them with all sorts of insults and obscene language.
# Impressions of a newcomer on the forums of totalitarian publications
'When
am first time went to one of the DELFI.ru forums, I saw a “discussion”
there, consisting of dialogues between a female nickname and a
close-knit group of comrades, who in chorus dirtyly insulted this woman.
The lady wrote correct and reasoned texts about the totalitarian
essence of Islam and the historical connection of the totaritar regims
with the Middle Eastern Arab dictatorships. In response, she received
only obscenities from several male characters who praised the Russian
Main Intelligence Directorate.
I was outraged by the ugly picture of
bullying and made a remark about the inadmissibility of such methods of
discussion and insults of the girl. After that, letters from two forum
participants arrived in my email inbox - a certain pianist from Vilnius
and from a lady of considerable age from Minsk. In them, uninvited
correspondents reported that the woman for whom I stood up was
supposedly an evile provocateur, engaged in targeted persecution of
honest, decent people. I was offered a picture of events exactly
opposite to what I saw with my own eyes. The elderly lady attached her
photograph and invited me to visit. The musician suggested meeting in
one of the restaurants in Vilnius.
As it turned out later, these two
characters are one of the most key on the Moscow News forums and on some
other liberal forums. They always act in tandem, being online for many
hours every day (under different nicknames, of course). If at first I
had doubts about the existence of the brigade, the brigadiers themselves
very quickly dispelled it with their methods. I was especially
impressed by the active participation of the newspaper’s editors in
expelling dissidents from the site - to please those who systematically
hooligan and insult others.'
After the administrator and the team
expelled intelligent readers from the forums totalitary pressa and only
texts with dirty obscene language addressed to the expelled people were
posted in the comments on the forum, mixed with anti-Semitic flood,
praises of totalitar liders and curses against Jews from the USA and
Germany. The site administrator - did his job and by eliminating the
brigade troublemakers from the forum, after which he and own left the
forum to the mercy of fate.
# "Gift of Prophecy" of Brigade
Due to a specific
mentality and Soviet-style upbringing, brigadiers often slack and work
carelessly, making annoying mistakes, which site administrators then
have to sort out and erase along with large chunks of the forums.
For
example, in October 2002, several brigadiers from the Moscow News
forum, positioning themselves as “patriotically minded emigrants”,
without any reference to the topics of discussion, suddenly started a
campaign of denunciation of the unknown Mr. Limarev. Subsequently, it
turned out that this is the owner of the RusGlobus website, which is
opposed to the current Russian regime.
Speeches on this topic by
“ordinary readers from different countries” were unusually rich in
private information; the forum published details of the biography,
business, personal life of this unknown Mr. Limarev, his home address
and telephone number, his pseudonyms, the names of his family members ,
his bank account numbers. Particularly zealous in exposing the
mysterious Limarev were two ladies, constant participants in the forums,
who stated that one of them was a doctor from Latvia, the other was a
Lithuanian real estate dealer, both passionate admirers of Lukashenko,
Putin and Landsbergis diaspora.
All this caused some bewilderment
on the forum, since none of the discussion participants understood why
it was necessary to discuss or expose this unknown person about whom so
much personal information had been posted.
The reasons for this
premature “leaking of compromising evidence” on the forum became clear
only two weeks later, when the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper published
an article by journalist Khinshtein about how a certain Sultanov, an
Russian Main Intelligence Directorate agent, was deliberately sent to
France at to the creators of the RusGlobus website, and secretly found
out the details for six months biographies of the creators of the
anti-KGB emigrant site. Among the creators of the RusGlobus website and
was the mysterious Mr. Limarev, whose address and account numbers were
published by the team on the Moskovsky Komsomolets forum.
This
premature publication FSB from Russian Main Intelligence Directorate
operational materials on the Internet, two weeks before their first
publication in the oficial media, caused a local Internet scandal. Many
readers have wondered - who exactly are their constant opponents, who
seem to be well-intentioned residents of different countries, if
information from the depths of the FSB becomes known to them earlier
than even to the journalist Khinshtein with his specific reputation? The
“previsions” of the insightful ladies could put even the grand soviet
soothsayer Wolf Messing to shame, if all their previous propaganda
activities on the site, which had not made readers doubt their place of
work.
After this scandal, the administrator of the Moskovsky
Komsomolets website simply cleaned out the entire archive of forums
where their texts were published and there were no traces left of the
premature information leak.
Another equally
characteristic story happened in the Novaya Gazeta forum in February
2002, where someone under the nickname “Stunned by Anna” to posted the
following text reviews of A. Politkovskaya’s article:
'George Soros
allocated a large loan to Novaya Gazeta to create a database on abducted
people in Chechnya, hostages and others military crimes. And now The
deadline for checking how the grant has been spent has - There was no
database, and there isn’t. So our Anka, the machine gunner, and
undergrstend everything make sense - 'How can such databases be created
when the nasty FSB threatens to encroach on the life and dignity of Ms.
Politkovskaya?' But, apparently, this time the number will not work.
Soros intends to stop funding Novaya Gazeta due to “misuse of the
grant.” Like this. And also - for major specialists. Why would the FSB
protect the GRU? They are initially the biggest competitors in all areas
of activity - both intelligence and sabotage. They are like the
Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office, ready to grab
each other's throats at any moment. And if the GRU special forces really
committed a crime, then the FSB will put all its efforts into exposing
them. The GRU are warriors, white bones, and the FSB is the successor to
the KGB. There will never be peace between them, they will never eat
from the same bowl'.
This text was a verbatim retelling of the
statement by FSB representative Ilya Shabalkin on the same topic.
Everything would be fine, but Comrade Shabalkin’s speech took place
nine days AFTER the appearance of this forum posting.
There is
probably no need to even writing that the premature information of an
anonymous person from the Novaya Gazeta forum and the statement that
followed 9 days later from a high-ranking FSB officer were absolutely
untrue and were soon refuted by both the redaction of Novaya Gazeta
and the Foundation of Soros.
Another “premature” Internet publication of the same kind occurred
on the forum of the Moscow News newspaper. It is curious that its author
has always presented himself as a Georgian artist with pro-communist
views living in Europe. Here is his text, in which the most interesting
thing is the publication date - April 13, 2002:
'As for skinheads
and fascists in Russia - maybe, to complete the picture, think about
the fact that Western intelligence services also had a hand in this,
huh? According to the principle of “divide and conquer”. The same as
with ultra-nationalist or fundamentalist organizations in other parts of
the former USSR.
Why not assume that the Chechen "freedom fighters"
and the "Moscow skins" are organized by the same force? The KGB officers
do not need ultra-nationalism, because it will destabilize the
situation in the region, and they will not cut the branch on which
former KGB officers are sitting.
But the West at well-organized
neo-Nazis in Sovka very need. By the word West I do mean the people of
North America and the West of Europe, and the intelligence services
there, the elite and the military. Well, and different political
technologistes'.
Six days have passed. The date is April 19, 2002. The following, very dubious message appeared on the Lenta.ru website:
'LENTA.RU: RUSSIAN SKINHEADS ARE HELPED FROM ABROAD.
The
Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has information that Russian
skinheads can be financed from abroad. This was stated on April 19 in an
interview with Interfax by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the
Russian Federation Alexander Chekalin. He believes that “they couldn’t
do without foreign countries, and it is possible that young skinheads
will have both their own patrons and well-wishers from overseas. Our
task today is to confirm or refute this together with the special
services,” the deputy Minister'.
The “Georgian emigrant artist”,
always and in everything in solidarity with the pro-KGB brigade of the
site, managed to predict in advance, word for word, on the forum a funny
and very dubious statement by a representative of Ministry of Internal
Affairs , what then did not find any confirmation or development.
And recently there was not a local, but a very extensive Internet
scandal on a similar topic. A group of very knowledgeable people
appeared on a number of Russian forums, and at the same time, under the
common nickname “Ramzai”, and this groop to gave very specific
intelligence information.
The sites lenta.ru and gazeta.ru did
reported that under the name “Ramzai”, since the beginning of the war in
Iraq, intelligence information on various military and
military-historical of forums and websites from the GRU about the US
military actions in Iraq. Analysts from Gazeta and Lenta carefully
compared these messages with reports from European&American media
and the army command of the coalition forces and came to the conclusion
that all these materials were not only confirmed by official sources,
but were also published on Russian forums ahead of their first in
European&Alerican MASS MEDIA. The online publications Gazeta.ru and
Lenta.ru suggested that in this way the Russian special services are
waging their virtual war for Iraq, against America. If in Soviet times
disinformation and leaks were provided by the relevant intelligence
services through popular word of mouth and political information at
enterprises, today the Internet has provided simply unheard of
opportunities for such manipulations of mass consciousness.
After these publications about “Ramzai”, a justifying posting by a
permanent member of the brigade from Irkutsk appeared on the Civitas.ru
forum:
'The GRU in Iraq is operating at full capacity - this
structure, thank God, was not destroyed by the Democrats... They also
leak something to me, to a limited extent, of course. They themselves
said it frankly - only what you can know. No surprises, everything is
natural...'
It is quite difficult to imagine GRU officers from
Iraq “leaking” their intelligence data to a modest Irkutsk engineer, who
immediately posts this information on forums.
The most routine
manifestation of hack work is that many brigadiers are too lazy to check
their typical mistakes and slightly rearrange the style to suit
different images and “legends”. As a result, they make themselves
recognizable, like portraits on a dollar bill, reducing the
“effectiveness” of their work. For example, a male character repeats
word for word what he once told on behalf of a lady. It also happens
that something touches one of them personally (nothing human is alien to
them), and then suddenly, from the restrained image of a noble widow,
the alcohol-soaked face of a retired sergeant of the internal troops
suddenly emerges.