Special Counsel Robert Mueller handed down a set of indictments Friday that charge 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations with interfering in the 2016 United States presidential election.y
Included in the indictment was the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a notorious bot and troll farm known for spreading misinformation through fake accounts created on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
According to the allegations laid out in the indictment, 12 of the 13 individual defendants named worked at for the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency at some point. The lone defendant not associated with the IRA, Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin used a number of companies to help move money to find the conspiracy to interfere with the election.
The interference campaign was part of a larger operation known as “Project Lakhta.” The operation is alleged to have involved several components, including targeting foreign audiences in several companies—an accusation that appears to be in line with intelligence reports that accuse Russia of meddling at the time of the Brexit vote as well as trying to influence elections in France and Germany .
The indictment also revealed some new details about the operation of the Internet Research Agency. According to the Department of Justice, the IRA operated through Russian shell companies and operated with an annual budget in the millions of dollars.
With that funding, IRA ran operations that involved hundreds of people who were tasked with creating online personas to create and drive misinformation campaigns on social media. IRA operates as a multifaceted organization, with a management group overseeing operations, departments dedicated to producing graphics and performing search engine optimization, as well as groups who oversaw information technology and organization finances.
Source : ibtimes
Post a Comment