How Facebook Changed the Spy Game. By ASHA RANGAPPA
Any doubt that Russia
has been running a strategically targeted disinformation campaign in the United
States was erased on Wednesday, when Facebook revealed that it had deleted 470
“inauthentic” accounts that were based in Russia and had paid $100,000 to
promote divisive ads during the 2016 presidential election.
Senator Mark Warner of
Virginia called Facebook’s report the “tip of the iceberg,” and he’s right. As
a former FBI counterintelligence agent who investigated foreign propaganda
cases, I’ve seen firsthand how foreign intelligence services leverage American
freedoms—and the constitutional limitations on the FBI’s investigative power—to
their advantage. The rise of social media platforms makes the pervasiveness and
impact of these operations today exponentially greater. And it leaves the FBI
without the legal tools to stop it.
The vast majority of
counterintelligence cases I worked in the FBI involved a foreign intelligence
service (FIS) conducting what we called “perception management campaigns.”
Perception management, broadly defined, includes any activity that is designed
to shape American opinion and policy in ways favorable to the FIS home country.
Some perception management operations can involve aggressive tactics like
infiltrating and spying on dissident groups (and even intimidating them), or trying to directly influence
U.S. policy by targeting politicians under the guise of a legitimate lobbying group. But
perception management operations also include more passive tactics like using
media to spread government propaganda—and these are the most difficult for the
FBI to investigate.
My experience investigating
foreign propaganda operations predated the proliferation of social media
platforms. But understanding how investigations worked before the information
explosion is critical to understanding the magnitude of the Russian threat
today. In the “old days” (i.e., 10-15 years ago), a disinformation operation
typically involved an FIS tasking one of its agents to recruit a journalist and
become his or her source. In this way, the FIS could essentially make the
journalist an unwitting mouthpiece for foreign government interests. The FBI has few
options in this kind of situation. There’s no law preventing a journalist from
publishing whatever they want.. read more:
