Doppel Fake News Clone

forbes 9 24

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Tangent

In a separate announcement on Wednesday, the DOJ said it seized 32 internet domains that were being used to carry out “Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as ‘Doppelganger’.” The websites “covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine” and influence voters in U.S. and foreign elections “including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.” The Treasury Department sanctioned Russian non-profit Autonomous Non-Profit Organization (ANO) Dialog and state media outlet RT (formerly known as Russia Today) for allegedly conducting a disinformation campaign.

Further Reading

U.S. Sanctions Russia For 2024 Election Meddling (Forbes)

Siladitya Ray is a reporter on the Forbes news team who covers major world news stories breaking overnight with a focus on technology and online... Read More

an 9 24

former Trump DHS cybersecurity director Chris Krebs says Wednesday’s massive bombshell DOJ indictment alleging Kremlin funds have been supporting a right-wing pro-MAGA U.S. media outlet to influence the 2024 election is merely the first part of what he expects to be an even larger scandal.

“I’ve been talking about this for years. It’s disinformation, it’s propaganda, and it’s all about power and influence and money. Take your pick of those three. Something’s in play here. And if the Russians are going to drop 10 million into a single outlet for a few million dollars or a few million views, I’ve got to expect they’ve got 100 million plus more that is distributed somewhere else. So this is the first shoe to drop,” said Krebs on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday (video below).

Calling the indictment itself “a fascinating read,” Krebs compared it to spy novels.

“I mean, it is this almost Ludlum-like, Tom Clancy-like story of foreign security services and foreign interests manipulating the U.S. political discourse.”

Krebs explained that instead of Russia just relying on social media, what “we’ve seen is this evolution now where they diversified their platforms, and now they’re using podcasters, they’re using YouTube, they’re using fake news sites. Remember, there is a second part of this that talks about Doppelganger, which is a disinfo-for-hire organization that has these pink-slime fake websites that look a lot like Washington Post, CNN and others, and they boost fake news, AI generated content, videos, images. It is a very, very complex scheme that DOJ the intelligence community are working hard to unravel.”

“I was over the moon with these documents yesterday that we can expose them and start tearing down this infrastructure,” Krebs rejoiced.

“So we know that they are fully engaged and attempting to manipulate U.S. political discourse. They’re going after influential members of the elite. And you know, look, whether you want to call the podcasters or YouTubers, ‘the elite,’ it doesn’t matter they have reach. They have the ability to reach out and touch minds.”

Krebs suggested none of this is by accident.

“There are very complex strategies behind the scenes. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg, and there will be more,” Krebs warned.

Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs as the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) after he produced a report stating the 2020 election was the most secure in the nation’s history, contrary to Trump’s false “Big Lie” allegations of election fraud and election rigging.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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wapo

...In 2009, he moved briefly to Windham, Maine, to work in another small-town police department. There he faced a complaint of sexual harassment that resulted in his dismissal before he completed his probationary period.

Mr. Dougan started a website called WindhamTalk to defend himself. The website foreshadowed others he would create, including one devoted to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, PBSOTalk.

After moving back to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment in particular the department’s elected sheriff, Ric L. Bradshaw, whom he accused of corruption. He posted the unlawful recordings of “Jessica” chatting with a former detective commander, Mark Lewis, who, Mr. Dougan claimed, was investigating the sheriff’s critics, including himself. As Mr. Dougan acknowledged in a video interview last year, it is illegal in Florida to record a telephone conversation without permission.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, Therese C. Barbera, said Mr. Dougan was “a wanted felon for cyberstalking using unsubstantiated and fabricated claims that have NO factual basis.”

In February 2016, PBSOTalk posted confidential information about thousands of police officers, federal agents and judges. The next month, F.B.I. agents and local police officers searched Mr. Dougan’s home, seizing all of his electronic equipment.

Fearing arrest, he said, he made his way to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony charges the next year.

Peddling Russia Propaganda

Image

An array of fake news site logos.

Dozens of fake news sites included The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times, The Flagstaff Post, The Houston Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York News Daily.Credit...via European External Action Service

In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a kind of journalist, documenting his travels around the country, including Lake Baikal in Siberia and Crimea, the peninsula in Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014 in violation of international law.

He posted photographs and videos from those trips on YouTube, which suspended his channel after NewsGuard’s report last year. He also appeared regularly on state media, including with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina, who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman, one of 10 spies who inspired the television series “The Americans.”

In 2021, as Mr. Putin began mobilizing the military forces that would invade Ukraine, Mr. Dougan posted a video that the Kremlin would cite as one justification for its attack. In it, he claimed that the United States operated biological weapons factories in Ukraine, an accusation that Russia and its allies have pushed without ever providing evidence.

Once the war started, Mr. Dougan recounted in his written responses to questions, he traveled to Ukraine 14 times to report from the Russian side of the front lines. He appeared in Russian government hearings purporting to expose Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some level of cooperation with the government authorities.

He has faced criticism for the reports, including in a profile in The Daily Beast, that he posted on YouTube and other platforms. Mr. Dougan has portrayed the war much as Russia’s propaganda has: as a righteous battle against neo-Nazis backed by a decadent West, led by the United States and NATO.

“The West has consistently lied about every aspect of this conflict,” he wrote. “Why does only one side get to tell their story?”

Fake News Sites in the U.S.

In April 2021, Mr. Dougan revived a website called DC Weekly, which had been created four years earlier and published fake articles about the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. According to a report last December by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, the domain and internet protocol address were shared by PBSOTalk and Mr. Dougan’s personal website, as well as two marketing books he wrote in exile and a security firm he operated, Falcon Eye Tech, which offered “offshore security monitoring services.”

After Russia’s assault on Ukraine began in 2022, the site carried articles about the war.

Then, last August, the site began to publish articles based on elaborate fabrications that the Western government officials and disinformation researchers said came from Russia’s propaganda units. They often appeared first in videos or audio recordings on obscure X accounts or YouTube channels, then spread to sites like DC Weekly and then to Russian state media as if they were authentic accusations, a process researchers call “narrative laundering.”

The baseless narratives included claims that relatives or cronies of Ukraine’s leader secretly bought luxury properties, yachts or jewelry, and that Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III of Britain, had abducted and abused children during a secret visit to Ukraine.

Dozens of new sites have appeared in recent months. They included ones made to look like local news outlets: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times, The Flagstaff Post and The Houston Post. Some hijacked names of actual news organizations, like The San Francisco Chronicle, or approximated them, in the case of one called The New York News Daily.

When The New York Times reported on the new sites in March, DC Weekly published a lengthy response in a stilted style that indicated the use of artificial intelligence. It was written under the name Jessica Devlin, one of the fictitious journalists on the site. “I’m not a shadowy foreign actor,” the article said.

At the end, the article invited media inquiries at an email address with the domain Falcon Eye Tech.

Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.

103 New Sites in Two Days...