Thread by @MatthewBevan

#RUSSIAREPORT THREAD
Okey dokey, let's take a lookie-loo at the Russia Report from the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament. For reference, see all of Season 3 of Russia, If You're Listening, but episode 5 in particular: abc.net.au/radio/programs…

This report is very easy to read, and only 47 pages long, if you'd like to take a look. docs.google.com/a/independent.…

"It appears that Russia considers the UK one of its top Western intelligence targets ... witnesses have suggested that we would sit just behind the US and NATO in any priority list"
Hm. Seems like a big threat. Hope Downing St and MI5 are taking it seriously!

Turns out they're not!
"Most surprising, perhaps, was the extent to which much of the work of the Intelligence Community is focused on <REDACTED>. We had, at the outset of our Inquiry,
believed they would be taking a rather broader view"

The Report finds that nobody seems to know who is in charge cyber defence.

The Report says until recently, the UK Government didn't attribute blame for cyber attacks to foreign countries, even if they knew who the perpetrator was.

The Report says that's changed lately, for the better.

Quote @edwardlucas on the subject of @RT_com: There is an average of 1,300 people in this country watching RT ... the real point of RT is it is a way of gaining legitimacy in elite circles and ... saying to MPs ... ‘Here is [say] £2,000 in cash if you appear on our programme’

Meanwhile it quotes the Institute for Statecraft founder Chris Donnelly on the topic of @RT_com saying "“in the UK its main impact ... is through social media output. It gets
out its message on any serious activity that happens [on social media] within 20 minutes ...”

The Report deliberately avoids saying with any certainty whether Russian attempts to influence the 2016 Brexit Referendum had any impact.
"The impact of any such attempts would be difficult – if not impossible – to assess, and we have not sought to do so."

And yet when the Committee attempted to get information from MI5 about Russian trolls and bots, beyond what was reported in the newspapers "MI5 initially provided just six lines of text. It stated that <REDACTED>, before referring to academic studies."

The report says that the British Government didn't realise the threat of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum until the DNC hack in the US was made public via WikiLeaks. So... they realised there was a threat about 1 month before the referendum.

A government or intel witness, whose name has been redacted said "prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn’t generally
understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes"

So they were completely unprepared for any attack.

The Report says that the UK Gov had not "sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election"

So, we have no idea if Russia influenced any British elections, because nobody's bothered to check.

The Committee says as opposed to in the US, where intelligence community assessments have been done into Russian interference in the 2016 election, "We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference"

Now... virtually no experts think Russia altered the outcome of the Brexit referendum. But the Committee says an assessment should be done nonetheless to provide "helpful reassurance to the public that the UK’s democratic processes had remained relatively safe."

The report then goes into considerable detail about the incredible influence of Russian money in the UK and London in particular. We looked at that in detail in Episode 6 of Season 3. abc.net.au/radio/programs…

The committee appears to have taken evidence which furthers the @BuzzFeedNewsUK reports on 14 assassinations of Russians on UK soil by @HeidilBlake, @tombwarren, @Richard_AHolmes, @jasonleopold, @jane__bradley and @alexcampbell.

Any new info they have is redacted.

The Report says given the amount of hostile Russian activity in the UK over the last 15 years, the lack of attention given to Russia as a hostile foreign power could indicate that the government and Intel community "took their eye off the ball" (ya think?)

The Report notes that Intel community Heads "all sought to defend against this suggestion. MI5 was clear that there was an inevitable reprioritisation due to the terrorist threat"

So they missed the rise of Russia as a threat because they were focused on terrorism.

Ok the rest of the report appears to be recommendations for how things can be done better in future. I'll read those in the morning. But the TL;DR here is that the UK had no idea what was going on with Russias significant interference operation in their country until 2016.

They were ‘too focused on terrorism’ and addicted to Russian cash that they paid no attention til it until literally a MONTH before the Brexit referendum.

Also, we don’t know for sure what Russia did to that referendum because the government and MI5 haven’t bothered to check.

BUT they promise to do better in future!

Also, for reasons still unexplained, Boris Johnson decided the UK public didn’t need to see any of this before they voted in last year’s election despite the report being completed by then.