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United States Government The Internet

US Treasury Goes After the Planes and Yacht of Russia's Troll Farm Founder (zdnet.com) 59

The US Treasury Department announced today the third set of sanctions against the Internet Research Agency (IRA), also known as Russia's troll farm. From a report: The Treasury previously sanctioned the IRA in March and December 2018. This time, the sanctions are being imposed because of the Russian company's involvement in the 2018 US midterm elections, when it used social media campaigns in an attempt to influence the election's outcome. But this time, Treasury officials are taking a new route. Besides imposing new sanctions on the IRA and the private property of six of its employees, Treasury officials today also went after the private possessions of Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the IRA's founder and primary financier. More specifically, US officials imposed sanctions on three companies that Prigozhin uses to manage three planes and a yacht. The first is Beratex Group Limited, a company registered in the Seychelles, which the Russian oligarch uses to manage a private jet with the tail number of M-VITO, and a private yacht under the name of St. Vitamin.
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US Treasury Goes After the Planes and Yacht of Russia's Troll Farm Founder

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  • by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:04PM (#59252990)
    If you post a story critical of certain companies, countries and people on Slashdot, it typically gets knocked out of the Popular section of the Firehose in about 5 minutes flat. Literally within minutes of first submitting. Then, if you are lucky, regular Slashdotters spot the story in the All section, and vote it back up into Popular. This happens without fail with certain types of stories. In the past things were even worse - the trollfarm would mark your submission as SPAM, and it would often disappear entirely.
    • But that is normal for Slashdot. And Slashdot had declined so much over the years, it doesn't really matter.

      A story on Slashdot no longer brings down web servers, the stories are now so delayed anyways that most of it is already old news. The moderating system barely gets rid of the obvious trolls.

      Attempts to modernize the site, to new technology has had brutal feedback and resistance.

      • Attempts to modernize the site, to new technology has had brutal feedback and resistance.

        Unicode? No thanks...

      • The moderating system barely gets rid of the obvious trolls.

        Attempts to modernize the site, to new technology has had brutal feedback and resistance.

        The modding system is the only thing that separates Slashdot from the total groupthink found elsewhere.

      • Attempts to modernize the site, to new technology has had brutal feedback and resistance.

        Usually because those attempts were rolled up with poison pills -- changes that break discussion or minimize it completely.
        Some of the technical changes are ill-advised, but others would be good ideas if there wasn't so much other crap to go with it.

    • ^ This is why I registered. Sick and tired of seeing factual, informed information being downvoted whilst the bullshit narrative of the US administration being posted consistently and upvoted. Nice to see I am not the only person getting sick of what's been going on at slashdot since it was recognised as an influential social media site.
      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Any story in the past three years discussing US politics (and many others besides) has become an immediate conflagration of diatribe, accusation and argument.

        That does rather suggest that multiple viewpoints are being expressed.

    • In the past things were even worse - the trollfarm would mark your submission as SPAM, and it would often disappear entirely.

      "In the past?" Exactly this happened to me less than a week ago.

      Remember that recent much-discussed front page story critical of the CRISPR gene drive against the malaria mosquito in Brazil? It dealt with a claim that in the process of reducing the Aedes population, a part of the mosquito-killing genome had subsequently been found transferred to an adjacent mosquito species.

      So I came across a rebutting story, which cited research showing that the transferred part of the genome was harmless 'background' rath

      • After I submitted this story, it was immediately stamped SPAM and disappeared. I'm not sure whose sensitive little political toesies I must have stepped on, because I have submitted stories a lot more controversial than that in the past, and the worst that happens is that it doesn't make the front page

        I've found Slashdot's biggest, number one problem is the complete absence of staff enforcement on, well, just about anything. They have editors that quickly post stories, and that is where Slashdot staff involvement ends. People have figured out how to manipulate flaws in the site (not hacking, just violations of the spirit of the rules) like misusing SPAM stamps to prevent stories from being posted, or using alt accounts to mod-bomb a foe into "terrible karma" territory, at which point the account is basic

        • I think if anyone actually poked their head inside the office at /., all they would find would be dessicated corpses.

          So it's a bit creaky around the edges since the caretakers died. Go ahead, try to convince me they're still alive. ;)

          • Maybe the "editors" are just one bot which occasionally creates new personas.
            I have seen the editors try new writing tactics. They're starting to employ some of the latest and greatest habits of writing low-information, super-clickbait headlines. So that's progress.

  • Piercing the corporate veil is apparently trivially easy when politics are involved. So tell us again why assholes like Eddie Lampert are allowed to continue to do what they do? Oh right. Because there's also big steaming piles of money involved.

  • by pakar ( 813627 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:07PM (#59253000)

    https://home.treasury.gov/news... [treasury.gov]

    Probably better to read it from the actual source...

    • So when we invade the Seychelles to seize stuff, what happens if France objects to this?

      • by pakar ( 813627 )

        I was just trying to point out a better place to get the facts on this since the link to the source-material was not obvious in the article.

        It is up to you to decide if you think this is a good or bad thing.

  • by Lucas123 ( 935744 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:10PM (#59253012) Homepage
    I know the whole "troll farm" thing is much sexier from a political perspective, but I think most Americans would appreciate our government shutting down robocalls more.
  • But everyone knows, once you start cutting off parts of a Troll, they will just regenerate, and you will get more Trolls.
  • Really??! Buying ads is a real crime?!

    That must mean they believe the readers are complete idiots, unable to care for themselves. Not that I disagree sometimes (when 95% will only vote for republicans or democrats), but I wonder how they feel about that.

    • I'm not sure what the answer is, and I agree with you that this may not be it, but I for one am stunned at the level of stupidity the internet has revealed about my fellow countrymen. It seems any utterly insane thing that is read on the internet, someone, somewhere will come to absolutely believe as the truth, even when presented with a crushing preponderance of facts - audio, video, transcripts - the old saw about who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes comes to mind. Maybe we've dumbed
      • Citizens United was basically an admission by the Supreme Court that the general public is too stupid to be allowed to choose our leaders hence people who have proven their intelligence through amassing fortunes should be allowed to choose the acceptable candidates by using dark money. Once acceptable candidates are chose in the primaries , the idiots are free to choose either of them in the elections. Neither will really change anything of note and the bureacrats and professionals can continue to run the c

      • Yeah, it's the age old argument against majority rule. I'm open to a lottery system. You serve once and back to the farm. That way thieves and drunks don't get a 40 year career out of it.

  • If "using social media to try to influence the outcome of an election" is an actual crime, then we are all in trouble, because we all do it every time we post something on IG or FB about candidates we like or don't like.

    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      Free speech and human rights are something USA is supposed to use to influence elections abroad. Turnabout is not fair.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      The FEC has deemed it Illegal for anyone who is a Foreign National to attempt to influence a US Election [fec.gov], unless the foreign national is a US citizen or Greencard holder.

      Based on their definition: this would include foreigners who are legally present in the US on a visa, Etc, who have not been admitted as a permanent resident.

      I am not sure why the FEC or the Congress believe they have this authority, because the 1st amendment protections of our constitution apply to ALL persons: not just US citizens ---

      • As explained on the page you linked to, the law says foreign nationals can't *spend money* to influence an election. So they can write a pamphlet, they just can't go to OfficeMax make copies of it. They could make a video - as long as they don't buy a lightbulb in order be visible in the video.

        That was the old interpretation of the law, of course. There was a Supreme Court case a few years ago in which changed that. The court held that freedom of speech implies the freedom to spend money to produce and d

        • by mysidia ( 191772 )

          That non-news over-shadowed the important ruling of Citizens United, which is that people can exercise their first amendment rights *together*, as a *group*. And they can do so by buying blank DVDs on which to put copies of their movie

          Yes... they can do so by buying blank DVDs to put copies of a Movie, Or they can do so by paying another group to produce their movie,
          Or they can do so by uploading a copy of their video to their website and buying an advert linking the Movie on Facebook.

          An abridgement of f

  • Watch this activity get shut down silently now that it's come to light.

    This administration has been more noisy about covert activities than you think for the word covert.

  • ,,, you know, the US based sheisters trying to sell a social media monitoring system to the US government that hired the Russian PR company to run ads that they then claimed were election interference - which the US media and government then used as proof that Russia was interfering with the election?
  • Any aircraft or ship seized by the U.S. government may be used by the President of the United States at his discretion.

  • It's a shame (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tomhath ( 637240 )
    They really should be able to do the same with George Soros.
    • Re:It's a shame (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:34PM (#59253594)

      They really should be able to do the same with George Soros.

      Sure, if they can also go after Murdoch and the Koch Brother.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Works for me.

        While I think the average voter is an imbecile that can't be trusted to make a sane electoral decision I'd still rather have them choosing who runs the country than billionaires.

  • In other news - Putin's presidential jet was confiscated when he visited UN. Whoops.
  • what to really fear (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:13PM (#59253498)
    You can dodge law enforcement, politics is fluid and even U.S. presidents can be temporarily bought. But if you tangle with U.S. financial power, you get your pretty little head handed to you. Sooner or later, they will get you. Lookin' at you Iran, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea. You can't wait us out.

    We win most conflicts by slowly strangling our adversaries bank accounts. Sooner or later, everybody has to breathe.
  • Can other countries go after american companies for trying to influence their elections? Isn't social media not THE place where politicians campaign? And how can they go after property of someone who isn't an US national and it's company is not US-based? I think I've missed some note on the US being the world goverment..

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