Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Presidential Election

Overview

Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Presidential Election, sometimes referred to as the 2016 United States Presidential Election Hack, is an ongoing dispute between the United States and Russian governments in the wake of the U.S. intelligence community's allegations of Russian cyber-espionage and interference in the 2016 United States election aimed at swaying the outcome in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Background

NATO Supreme Allied Commander's Email Leak

In April 2016, the website DC Leaks was launched, where several hacked emails from the Gmail account of retired United States General Philip Breedlove were published. In August, the internet security company ThreatConnect^[7] published a blog post speculating that DC Leaks was a “Russian-backed” influence outlet and connecting the website to the mysterious hacker Guccifer 2.0.

DNC Email Leak

On July 22nd, 2016, Wikileaks published a collection of nearly 20,000 e-mails exchanged among key staff members within the Democratic National Committee, the governing body of the U.S. Democratic Party, as well as unofficial correspondences with members of the press, between January 2015 and May 2016. The emails detailed how several officials within the DNC, which is supposed to remain neutral during the primary electoral process, had attempted to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in order to secure the victory of Hillary Clinton.

Developments

Allegations of Russian Involvement

On July 24th, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook publicly alleged that the leak was orchestrated by Russian hackers in an effort to help Donald Trump win the election. On July 25th, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began investigating a possible Russian involvement in the breach of the DNC’s email servers on June 14th. In the following months, allegations of Russian cyberattacks continued to gain momentum across the U.S. intelligence agencies to the White House. By October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had jointly stated that Russia was responsible for the DNC e-mail leak.

Russian Response

The Russian officials promptly rejected the allegations. On September 2nd, Bloomberg released an interview with Vladimir Putin, in which he denied that the Russian government was involved in the DNC hack (shown below). That month, The Washington Post reported that several United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies were investigating if the Russian government was attempting to disrupt the presidential election. On September 7th, The Wall Street Journal^[8] reported that Guccifer 2.0 was angry that Moscow was receiving credit for his hack.

U.S. Intelligence Reports

On December 9th, The Washington Post^[4] reported that the CIA concluded "Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency." The following day, The Washington Post^[11] published a follow-up article reporting that the FBI disagreed with the CIA's conclusion, arguing that Russia's intentions were unclear. In response, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump dismissed the Washington Post's reports of Russian election interference as "ridiculous."

Brexit Speculation

On December 13th, former Labour Party minister Ben Bradshaw speculated that Russia may have been involved in swaying the United Kingdom's referendum to leave the European Union.^[5]

Russian-Owned Facebook Ads

On September 8th, 2017, Facebook disclosed that a Russian agency with Kremlin ties spent more than $100,000 in advertisements between June 2015 and May 2017. The more than 3,000 ads did not mention single candidates, but rather promoted hot-button issues, like gun control, racism, LGBTQ issues and immigration.^[13] The ads were linked to some 470 fake accounts that have since been shut down by Facebook.^[14]

Tech Executives Testimony

On October 31st, executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google appeared on Capitol Hill for the first of three hearings on sites' role in the Russia's misinformation campaign during the 2016 election.^[15] A Senate Judiciary subcommittee expected the sites' to acknowledge that Russia used the sites to sway the election and information on how it can be prevented in the future to protect elections. According to the subcommittee, Russian ads reached more than 126 million people on Facebook last year and 150 million people if you include the Facebook-owned Instagram. ^[16]

However, the overall impression of the hearing is that the subcommittee was not satisfied with the companies' responses, particular Senator Al Franken. The companies agreed to look more closely at advertisers and currency in the future but offered few of the concessions the subcommittee asked for, such as Franken asking to Stretch to deny advertisers buying political ads with foreign currency.

During the hearing, Sen. Franken asked, "How did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were coming from Russia? Those are two data points! American political ads, and Russian money, rubles. How could you not connect those two dots?"

When Facebook's general counsel Colin Stretch responded, "In hindsight, should have had a broader lens. There were signals we missed. Franken interrupted, "People are buying ads on your platforms with rubles…You put billions of data points together all the time. You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go, hmm, those two data points spell out something bad?"

Tumblr Activity

On February 6th, 2018, BuzzFeed ^[17] reported that starting in early 2015, Russian trolls posed as Black activists on Twitter to help sway potential voters away from supporting Hillary Clinton. The attacks were, in general, pro-Bernie Sanders and anti-Hillary, according to Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

These accounts were operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency operated in a similar way to their Facebook and Twitter counterparts, using the same usernames and/or profile pictures in the case such accounts as "4mysquad" (examples below).

The posts were widely shared, according to the report. One image of Hillary Clinton embracing Ku Klux Klan leader Robert Byrd, who later disavowed the K.K.K. and was honored by the N.A.A.C.P. after his death.^[18][19] The post (shown below, left) received more than 23,000 notes. Another post, which featured a video of Clinton using the racially insensitive term "superpredtors" (shown below, center) received more than 44,000 notes.^[20] One of the most popular posts featured a clip from the sketch comedy television series Saturday Night Live.^[21] The post (shown below, right) received more than 240,000 notes.

In the months since the election, these accounts have begun to deactive and are likely obtained by other users.

Despite having been reached for comment, Tumblr has yet to comment on the accounts. According to BuzzFeed, tracking software shows that the emails sent to Tumblr "were opened more than 290 times, and the included links were clicked more than 70 times."

2018 Election

On February 6th, 2018, in an interview with Fox News, ^[22] Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the United States is vulnerable to more attacks in 2018 and is not "better prepared" defend itself against coordinated Russian attacks.

He said:

"I don't know that I would say we are better prepared, because the Russians will adapt as well. The point is, if it's their intention to interfere, they are going to find ways to do that. We can take steps we can take but this is something that, once they decide they are going to do it, it's very difficult to preempt it."

Document Leak

On March 1st, 2018, the Daily beast reported that a leak of documents from the Internet Research Agency had been made available online. The leak confirms a list of targets for the troll farm.

The information was supposed to be auctioned off on Joker.Buzz, where stolen and confidential information is often auctioned off under the title "Savushkina 55," a reference to the physical address in St. Petersburg where the IRA operates by the seller AlxDA. This cache, dated February 2017, included "names of Americans, activists in particular, whom the organization specifically targeted; American-based proxies used to access Reddit and the viral meme site 9Gag; and login information for troll farm accounts."^[26]

The leak outlines the Russian plan to manipulate online discourse on Tumblr, Reddit, 9GAG as well as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. They essentially attempted to amplify hot-button issues in the United States, such as white supremacy and climate change, as well as attempt to enlist activists in the United States to act as proxies.

Reddit and 9GAG

On October 25th, 2017, an email from self-professed Russian Trolls emailed a group of journalists to announce a Reddit AMA. The email came from "Joshua Smith," an editor of BlackMattersUs.com. It says, "We have been following your work concerning Internet Research Aency with great interest. We will be glad to answer your questions on AMA Reddit Session soon. You can ask your question via the special form on blackmattersus.com. These questions will have top priority during the AMA Reddit session. We will send you more information soon. Your sincerely, Russian Trolls."^[24]

On March 2nd, 2018, The Daily Beast^[23] reported that a leak from the Internet Research Agency confirmed the presence of online agitators working for the IRA on Reddit and 9GAG. The leak shows that content from IRA-backed websites like BlackMattersUs.com received hundreds and thousands of upvotes on pro-Trump subreddits /r/The_Donald and /r/HillaryForPrison.

Neither 9GAG nor Reddit have commented on the accounts.

On Reddit, Redditor^[25] burned_hard_rust posted about the report on the /r/worldnews subreddit. The post received more than 35,000 points (79% upvoted) and 4,700 comments. Additionally, Redditor^[26] accountabilitycounts posted the news in the /r/politics subreddit, where it received more than 20,000 points (93% upvoted) and 2,000 comments.

Definers Public Affairs Controversy

On November 14th, 2018, The New York Times^[34] reported that, in dealing with the public fallout from the election interference, Facebook hired the conservative consultancy group Definers Public Affairs to help discredit Facebook's detractors and deflect criticism. These tactics included painting these detractors as employees of George Soros, who the Times describes as, "longtime boogeyman to mainstream conservatives and the target of intense anti-Semitic smears on the far right." The Times writes:

"While Mr. Zuckerberg conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. [Sheryl] Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic."

During a July congressional hearing, at which Facebook testified, protestors for the action group Freedom from Facebook held signs depicting both Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg, both Jewish, as octopuses reaching their tentacles around the earth (shown below). While the group's organzier Eddie Vale maintained that the images were meant to "to evoke old cartoons of Standard Oil, the Gilded Age monopoly," a Facebook official called the Anti-Defemation League. The Anti-Defemation League denounced the signs: "Depicting Jews as an octopus encircling the globe is a classic anti-Semitic trope. Protest Facebook -- or anyone -- all you want, but pick a different image."

According to the report, Definers used Soros as a means of discrediting groups like Freedom from Facebook by pressing "reporters to explore the financial connections between Mr. Soros’s family or philanthropies and groups that were members of Freedom from Facebook, such as Color of Change, an online racial justice organization, as well as a progressive group founded by Mr. Soros’s son."

The reaction to the story was mostly one of outrage. That day, HuffPost writer Ashley Feinberg tweeted,^[35] "Hard to think of any single action that would be better for the health of our democracy than just dissolving facebook entirely." The tweet received mroe than 1,800 retweets and 12,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, left). Washington Post reporter Hamza Shaban tweeted,^[36] "NYT: Over and over, Facebook made key decisions with huge implications for the country and the world because their public policy exec was afraid the alternative would trigger conservative backlash. (Former Bush official, same guy who sat behind Kavanaugh)." The tweet received than 110 retweets and 110 likes in 24 hours (shown below, right).

The following day, The Daily Beast^[37] reported that Facebook had cut ties with Definers.

Online Reaction

On October 28th, the Occupy Democrats Logic Facebook^[9] page posted an MS Paint illustration of a Hillary Clinton children's book cover titled "Everyone I Don't Like Is a Russian Hacker" (shown below, left). On November 4th, Redditor viralijzad submitted another version of the children's book image (shown below, right). Within one month, the post gained over 750 votes (77% upvoted) on /r/russia.^[6]

On December 12th, 2016, Redditor dances_with_ibprofen submitted a composite image of Vladimir Putin and William Wilson (a.k.a. CIA) from the 2012 superhero film The Dark Knight Rises to /r/memeeconomy,^[3] where it received upwards of 15,300 votes (86% upvoted) and 130 comments within 24 hours. The following day, Redditor crackie_chan posted a photoshopped picture of Putin as the "Man Behind the Curtain" in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, controlling a disembodied Trump head (shown below, right). In four hours, the post received more than 31,400 votes (67% upvoted) and 1,500 comments on /r/funny.^[10]

House Intelligence Committee Ad Release

On May 10th, 2018, House Democrats released 3,519 ads run by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency. That day, The Washington Post^[31] published an article about the ads, which included a statement from California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff:

“They sought to harness Americans’ very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior. The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see first-hand the types of messages, themes and imagery the Russians used to divide us.”

Meanwhile, Shiff posted a tweet which included several example ads (shown below).

Meanwhile, The Daily Dot published an article about the release titled "House Democrats release 3,400 Facebook ads from Russian trolls," which included a collage of examples (shown below). Also on May 10th, posts about the news reached the front page of the /r/politics^[33] and /r/news^[32] subreddits.

Search Interest

External References