"Hacking, Faking, Manipulating: The Business of Elections" -
"An Israeli company offers disinformation campaigns for money - worldwide. Joint research by ZDF, SPIEGEL and ZEIT with the investigative network Forbidden Stories reveals the extent."

#Documentary in #German with #English subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg0okVa6sSU

Three journalists go undercover to meet men who operate in secret and claim they can manipulate any election in the world. On offer: the complete package. Sowing doubt, causing unrest, ultimately torpedoing democracy. They call it electronic warfare. Their tools are an army of avatars.

The research on Team Jorge, the secretive force from Israel, took several months. Journalists from more than 30 editorial offices around the world were involved - including the Israeli daily Haaretz, Radio France, Le Monde and the Guardian.

#Disinformation #DisinformationIndustry #Hacking #Desinformation #FakeNews #Israel #Wahlmanipulation #ElectionManipulation
#ForbiddenStories
#StoryKillers #CambridgeAnalytica
#Elections
#Africa
#SocialMedia
#FakeAccounts

"‘Aims’: the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles - [Guardian] Exclusive: Team Jorge disinformation unit controls vast army of avatars with fake profiles on Twitter, #Facebook, #Gmail, #Instagram, #Amazon and #Airbnb

"At first glance, the Twitter user “Canaelan” looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl.

Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread “propaganda”.

Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel.

Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. One appears to have been sold to a client who wanted to discredit the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), a statutory watchdog.

On 18 October 2020, the ICO ruled that the government should reveal which companies were awarded multimillion-pound contracts to supply PPE after being entered into a “VIP” lane for politically connected companies. “This is politically motivated, it’s clear!” Canaelan lamented on Twitter two days later."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/aims-software-avatars-team-jorge-disinformation-fake-profiles

#Disinformation #DisinformationIndustry #FakeNews #FakeProfiles #UK #UKPolitics #AIMS #TeamJorge #TalHanan

"“Team Jorge”: In the heart of a global #disinformation machine - In Part 2 of the “Story Killers” project, which continues the work of assassinated Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh on disinformation, the Forbidden Stories consortium investigated an ultra-secret Israeli company involved in manipulating elections and hacking African politicians. We took an unprecedented dive into a world where troll armies, cyber espionage and influencers are intertwined."

"In 2022, Jorge had a catalog of more than 30,000 automated profiles of virtual people with real accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and Bitcoin. Jorge used these fake accounts to post a flurry of comments on social networks, stir up controversy and even purchase sex toys on Amazon. Jorge recounted how one pretty, blond-haired avatar named Shannon Aiken used an Amazon account to order sex toys to the house of a political rival of one of his clients, leaving the rival candidate’s wife to believe he had been unfaithful. “After that, the story was leaked, and he couldn’t go home. The campaign turned around,” Jorge said."
...
"The AIMS tool doesn’t just offer avatar creation. The latest version, shown to the undercover journalists, can also create and disseminate automated content. Using keywords, the tool can create posts, articles, comments or tweets in any language with a “positive,” “negative,” or “neutral” tone. After entering the words “Chad,” “president,” “brother,” and “Déby,” for instance, Jorge commanded the tool to produce 10 negative tweets about the Chadian government. Twelve seconds later, they appeared. “Enough is enough, we need to put an end to incompetence and nepotism of president of Chad brother Déby,” one read. “The Chad people have suffered enough under the rule of President Brother Déby,” read another. “One operator can hold 300 profiles, so in two hours, all the country will speak the messages or the narrative [we] want,”one of Jorge’s associates said."

#AIMS #Disinformation #DisinformationIndustry #FakeNews #StoryKillers #India #Chad #Israel #Lankesh #GauriLankesh

Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
"‘Team Jorge’ unit exposed by undercover investigation - Group sells hacking services and access to vast army of fake social media profiles
- Evidence unit behind disinformation campaigns across world
- Mastermind Tal Hanan claims covert involvement in 33 presidential elections
"A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.

The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.

He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian."

"Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across #Africa, South and Central America, the #US and #europe

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan

#Elections #FakeNews #FakeAccounts #Disinformation #DisinformationIndustry #ElectionManipulation #Hacking #SouthAmerica #CentralAmerica #Sabotage #AutomatedDisinformation #AutomatedFakeNews #Israel