Thread by @fascinatorfun

If you do not have time to read the FULL ⁦@CommonsCMS⁩ report at least read this excellent ⁦@Byline_Media⁩ summary that points out the interim report was read more in Russia than the U.K. bylinetimes.com/2019/02/18/exp…

2/ The committee estimates that the state-controlled channels RT and Sputnik’s pro-Leave websites garnered 134 million potential impressions, nearly five times the reach of the two domestic campaigns combined. (Vote Leave with 33 million impressions and Leave EU with 11 million).

3/ The IRA russian troll farm was ..intervening in British politics..stirring up Islamophobia & racial hatred. It “tried to fuel social divisions, including religious tensions, in the aftermath of the Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks”

4/ “The Kremlin’s attempts to intervene continue. Last October, Twitter closed down 3,613 new Internet Research Agency accounts. A brief analysis of the data reveals these accounts tweeted about Brexit 1,525 times.”

5/. Chris Vickery, Security expert, handed over 20,000 folders & 113,000 files to the committee which suggest a common data set – the DataBase of Truth – shared between employees of the 3 companies, & also used by Donald Trump’s campaign. He found these in an AiQ security breach

6/. The AIQ database was also shared with a Ukrainian oligarch planning to run for president this year on a more pro-Putin, anti-NATO platform.
Also exposed in the new report is more forensic traces suggesting how CA worked in close concert with the news website Breitbart.

7/. “Previous evidence has shown that the data firm had unique reselling rights to Breitbart’s data, but a newly discovered executable “config” file suggests the coordination of targeting data and news stories was automated by AIQ”....

8/ “Trump’s former National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, awaiting sentencing for various counts of lying to the FBI, was also a consultant to Cambridge Analytica during the Trump campaign.

9/ “In a speech days after Trump’s win he described the surprise victory as an “insurgency… irregular warfare at it’s finest” run by “an army of digital soldiers”

10/ The parliamentary report examines evidence that Russia had access to the CA database, itself compiled through the hacking of between 50 to 170 million Facebook users, and reveals this has been referred to the NCA by the Information Commissioner Elisabeth Denham.

11/. There is plenty more about Facebook, describing them as digital gangsters providing pretty free access to “white listed companies” that they regarded as safe

I must find out whether Yandex, The Russian Google, was one of those White listed as they were operating on FB 2014

12/.2014 was when Kogan, of GSR was scraping millions of data fields for SCL/CA including unconsenting friends data using a backdoor access via consenting individuals

Yandex was indicted by the Ukraine for handing over data they had obtained to the Russian Security Agency -GRU

14/. You May remember that Rees Mogg’s company Somerset Capital is invested in Yandex to the tune of £84 million. (Part of its £217 mill stake in Russian companies).

Critics say Yandex news section trumpets pro-Kremlin stories.

15/. It has also been accused of providing the Russian secret service with the bank account details and phone numbers of supporters of one of Putin’s political opponents.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5…

16/. I seem to remember @RealBristolNews finding evidence that Breitbart allowed a Yandex tracker on its IT systems.

17/ @peterjukes and @Byline_Media have done a good job with summarising the @CommonsCMS report and I apologise for bastardising it for quick reading.

If you do not follow both, you should.

18/. It is worth remembering that Ress Mogg’s Moggmentum account appears to have been amplified very significantly from Russia.

@Byline_Media article 5/2/2019

https://twitter.com/bylinefest/status/1092152062157172738?s=21