Want To Talk? FBI Trolls Russian Embassy for Disgruntled Would-Be Spies (washingtonpost.com) 37
Recruitment ad hits social media feeds of mobile phones located outside or inside the diplomatic compound. From a report: The FBI is trying a novel strategy to recruit Russian-speaking individuals upset about the country's invasion of Ukraine: aiming social media ads at cellphones located inside or just outside the Russian Embassy in Washington. The ads, which appear on Facebook, Twitter and Google, are carefully geographically targeted. A Washington Post reporter standing next to the embassy's stone walls on Wednesday morning received the ad in their Facebook feed. But the ads did not appear in the feed when the reporter stood on the other side of Wisconsin Avenue NW, in the District's Glover Park neighborhood.
The ads are designed to capitalize on any dissatisfaction or anger within Russian diplomatic or spy services -- or among Russian emigres to the United States -- over the invasion of Ukraine, an event that counterintelligence experts call a huge opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to recruit new sources. The unlikely star of the campaign is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose own words are used to encourage people working in or visiting the embassy to talk to the FBI. The ad quotes Putin at a meeting last month where he publicly chastised his intelligence chief, Sergey Naryshkin, correcting the spy boss's position on Russian policy toward the separatist eastern regions of Ukraine. Naryshkin, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, stammered at the meeting and seemed unsure of what Putin wanted him to say.
The ads are designed to capitalize on any dissatisfaction or anger within Russian diplomatic or spy services -- or among Russian emigres to the United States -- over the invasion of Ukraine, an event that counterintelligence experts call a huge opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to recruit new sources. The unlikely star of the campaign is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose own words are used to encourage people working in or visiting the embassy to talk to the FBI. The ad quotes Putin at a meeting last month where he publicly chastised his intelligence chief, Sergey Naryshkin, correcting the spy boss's position on Russian policy toward the separatist eastern regions of Ukraine. Naryshkin, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, stammered at the meeting and seemed unsure of what Putin wanted him to say.
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Ukraine is a large hub for human trafficking. Putin may actually be helping with that along with getting rid of some actual nazies in the process.
Must be why pedo-joe had so many backroom deals there.
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There are more nazis in Russia than in Ukraine.
also a good way (Score:2)
to recruit moles
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Anyone could be a mole. Even Presidents.
He was a useful idiot, not a mole. To be a mole you have to be aware that you're assisting the other side.
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He definitely owes something, favours if not money, to Putin and the oligarchs, and he had no trouble selling the US and allies out for it.
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They're not recruiting active agents. You're right, trying to get agents with such a broad net is asking the enemy to plant moles. They just want people to come in and give them whatever information they have. They're already assuming some of it will be deliberate misinformation. It'll all go into a file with evaluations on how reliable it is. No part of the US intelligence operation will be exposed to these people.
Nice to know (Score:2)
Finally a confirmation that brexit referendum was in no way manipulated
Isn't the word "trawl", not troll? (Score:2)
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The problem is that Trump took all of the best words, leaving us with the substandard and slightly damaged words.
But actually, in some places trawl and troll are pronounced the same way. So there's confusion about the origin of the word "trolling", even from the early days, did it refer to fishing for suckers, or did it refer to hiding under a bridge to trick passers by?
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To troll is to make fun of.
To troll is to bait. The meaning comes from fishing and was established literally before the wide spread of the internet, on USENET. The whole troll-under-bridge thing came after. Thanks for proving you're a newbie.
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To troll is to make fun of.
Noope, this is definitely 'trolling', in the internet sense of that word ...
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Depends. In fishing trawling is scraping the bottom for everything, trolling is dangling fishing lines behind a boat.
Since this is baiting and not just scapping up bottom feeders, it would be better described as trolling.
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Trawling: [wikipedia.org]
Since the FBI is using "bait" to "lure" people, it is trolling. If they rounded them up in a police van, it would be trawling.
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Trawling is dragging a net around to scoop up all the fish. Trolling is drawing a baited line through the water past fish to encourage them to bite.
Trolling definitely seems more apt, here.
CIA makes it better (Score:2)
Your boss is an a**hole? (Score:1)
And just like that... (Score:3)
...it suddenly became a goodthing for one government to use targeted Facebook ads and propaganda to interfere in the operation of another government.
Now that it's open season, the 2024 USA election cycle ought to be the best season of "Survivor: White House Edition" ever.
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...it suddenly became a goodthing for one government to use targeted Facebook ads and propaganda to interfere in the operation of another government.
Gosh, what a discovery. Context matters. Generally shooting people is a bad thing. When you have a murderer who's attempting rape and you can't just arrest the person, suddenly shooting that person can make you a hero. There are some things which are clearly criminal and unreasonable and should never be done by anyone, - child rape, using chemical weapons etc. etc. There are plenty of things which can be good in one context and bad in many other contexts.
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You're conflating an identified advert having an identified owner with an anonymous sock-puppet. The intent may be the same but one of them has the integrity to admit it has has an agenda. Frequently, the intent is very different: A sock-puppet wants the audience to ignore facts, avoid compromise and choose violent tribalism.
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You're conflating an identified advert having an identified owner with an anonymous sock-puppet. The intent may be the same but one of them has the integrity to admit it has has an agenda. Frequently, the intent is very different: A sock-puppet wants the audience to ignore facts, avoid compromise and choose violent tribalism.
So you are saying that a government using targeted social media to meddle in the operations of another country is in fact okay?
That is, you believe that the problem with the "Russian interference in the election" that happened in 2016 wasn't that it was Russian, that it interfered, or that it may have affected the election. The problem was that the content was sneaky.
Russian Intelligence (Score:2)
Or you could just get the agent to debrief the guy he tried to poison (via his briefs) [theguardian.com].
In retrospect the debacle of the Russian military could probably have been predicted.
Either way, I expect Russian embassy to leak like an open fire hydrant.
It's only bad when the US does it (Score:2)
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This is the previous campaign in 2019.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/02/politics/fbi-facebook-russia-ads/index.html
3 ads. First - 4 spelling mistakes in one sentence with 7 words. Second - clearly demonstrating that the assigned value of the recruit is zero and he will be sent to die. Third - opposite to the intended meaning due to pathetic knowledge of the language.
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where's Jacob Smirnov? (Score:2)
This news headline is screaming for a stack of "...in Soviet Russia..." memes
Bravo! (Score:1)