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By Steven Forti (*)
"With 300 or 400 euros you can create in one afternoon thousand verified Twitter accounts."
Alessandro Orlowski (Parma, 1967) was one of the first Italian hackers. In the 1990s, he began as director of advertising and video clip producer for indie-rock Italian and international artists. These two passions converged in his current activity, that of doctor in digital spin. A few years ago, he created WateronMars, an innovative digital communications start-up. Among his best-known experiences are campaigns in social networks to denounce the Vatican's tax evasion and the activities of extremist groups in the United States. and Europe. In addition, he set up the social network team that was crucial to take the presidency of Peru to Liberal Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in 2016.
We met in a bar in central Barcelona. We started talking about how political parties use social media. He explains the Cambridge Analytica scandal, doubts about the end of this data, the advantages and disadvantages of the new European Data Protection Act, trolling techniques and, of course, some pearls on the political situation of the Italian populist laboratory For example? The well known software that the League uses to control social networks. Your name? "The Beast"
We started with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. What happened exactly?
Since there was no legislation on data in social networks, Cambridge Analytica, without control by Facebook, did what is called growth piracy and profiling, namely the marketing techniques to increase the growth and sale of a product via digital systems. Cambridge Analytica has created a series of online surveys to build psychological profiles. He took advantage of the consent given to answer these polls and then used the data to analyze everything that a person did on Facebook. They have created profiles of millions of people to target content and direct it, first and foremost, to vulnerable people. An example: they knew that this million people had antipathy or hatred for Hispanics. They told Facebook to send alleged information – that is, fakenews – about the risk of an "invasion" of Mexicans.
An illegal practice
Yes, because in Facebook's policy, it was clearly stated that these data could not be used for different purposes of the application for which consent was requested, for example: who has managed the Trump campaign.
THUS CREATED MILLION PROFILES OF PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO TARGE CONTENT AND IT ADDRESSES, IN PARTICULAR, FRAGILE PEOPLE
How is it possible that no one has noticed?
This scandal is ridiculous because everyone The field of propaganda and digital marketing knew what they were doing even before the November 2016 US elections. Also, it seems impossible to me that did not realize how much data he was sucking. We are talking about 80-90 million data of US citizens!
What do not we know yet?
Various things. For example, Cambridge Analytica, after its bankruptcy, opened another company called Emerdata. Who assures me that the data that Cambridge Analytica possesses is not used? Where are these data? Zuckerberg said he sent an email to Cambridge Analytica asking him to delete them. It's as if the Civil Guard had sent an email to Pablo Escobar asking him to throw 500 kilos of cocaine in the trash and he tells you that he would do it. It's laughing.
More things?
There are voices circulating that before the Italian elections last March, Cambridge Analytica opened an office in Rome that was to close when the scandal broke out. An Italian party – we do not know which one – asked to work with them. He is known by the post on hacker sites that the League wanted to contact Steve Bannon. They exchanged emails with a collaborator from the Trump team. We know that they met after the Italian elections, when Bannon was in Italy. Surely the figure of Luca Morisi, the spin doctor liguista, very close to Salvini was the key. Morisi has created a software called "The Beast".
IT IS AS IF THE CIVIL GUARD SENDS A MAIL TO PAUL ESCOBAR WHO ASKS YOU TO PUT THE GARBAGE OF 500 KILOS FROM COCAINE AND HE TELLS IT TO YOU. THIS IS THE LAUGH
What is "The Beast"?
This is a system that controls Salvini's social networks and analyzes which posts and tweets work best and which people have the most interacted. Thus, they modify the political strategy of the propaganda. An example: the other day, they published something against immigration and the most controversial question was that immigrants "take away our work". Well, the next article on Facebook will talk about foreigners "taking our jobs". The League worked very well on social networks during the last election campaign
Does it evolve in the legality?
They walk on a tightrope between legality and illegality. The problem is that there is a problem of data management. They set up, for example, a contest called "Vinci Salvini". If you registered in this online game and the more content you published on the League, the more likely you were to talk on the phone with Salvini or have dinner with him. It was a huge success. The problem is that you do not know who is managing this data. Who am I giving them? For Salvini? For the league? For a ghost foundation? Nor should we forget that the League has many debts and many scandals for lost election funds, including investment in diamonds of dubious origin.
How was this activity financed in the social networks of the League? 19659003] The League wanted to create a just foundation to collect donations money in order to keep the social networks operational without going through the red accounts of the game. The Italian laws in this respect leave a lot of room: they allow to receive donations without having to publicly show the accounts. It is in a totally legal way. I would not be surprised if some donations came from Italian-Russian and Lombard-Russian associations linked to the League, if we take into account the proactivity of the foundations of Russian culture in Italy and the pressure that Salvini exerted against the boycott of the sanctions against Russia. Let us not forget that it was the Russians who invented the concept of hybrid war: General Gerasimov developed a theory that modern wars are not only fought with weapons, but with means of propaganda and piracy . A legend tells that on the outskirts of Moscow there is a small town where all the hackers work for the Russian government.
I could not have some donations provided by the associations italo-russia and lombardy-russia, related to the league
And the 5-star Movement (M5E)?
The M5E is not a party because the platforms for e-democracy are owned by a limited liability company, CasaleggioAssociati, which has worked with multinationals. There is a clear conflict of interest: the same company that owns the Mouvement's database and the Rousseau platform, CasaleggioAssociati, has managed marketing campaigns for multinational companies that have an interest in having Parliament Italian vote in a certain way. approve legislation or another. It is unconstitutional. Therefore, the M5E has no real status, no more than real congresses. That said, there is no doubt that the M5E has behind it a very good political marketing company. The 5 stars manage propaganda in a different way. It is more decentralized: it creates micro-networks by relying on grillini activists, which also allows them to save a lot of money. Beppe Grillo or Alessandro Di Battista do not pay to make the messages of their leaders viral. The propaganda of the League is more classic. Very direct and centralized: all control Luca Morisi.
And the traditional festivals? Have not they done all this?
Very little. The far right is the one that has penetrated the most and has made the most of it. The case of Bannon is a very clear example. Traditional festivals are not used. They did not know how to evolve. The league is one of the few who has managed to catch up in this regard. Salvini, who is 45 years old, is a super millenium: he saw table football, television, SpaceInvaders and social networks.
Much is said about fakenews, but a widely used technique is trolling. What influence does it have?
Depending on the political case and the country, it can be very, very violent. You can have dozens, hundreds of accounts. To set up Twitter accounts, there is a program that you buy on the Internet that can create you in three hours a thousand accounts, each with a picture and a different real name. We are talking about verified accounts with a mobile phone: there is a Russian service that, for ten cents, gives you a mobile phone number just to create internet accounts. In total, with 300 or 400 euros, you can create in one afternoon a thousand verified Twitter accounts. Then you tweet shelling and change the perception of a new or an event. It's as simple as that So you tweet the bombing and change the perception of a new or an event.
Another "unknown world" is the Dark Web.
Totally. In the black web, all extremist groups like ISIS move, with pages to coordinate activists and teach them how to organize attacks. However, you do not have to go that far. There is, for example, a parallel twitter called Gab.ai, where all extremists are those who have closed an account on Twitter. And it's not on the dark web, but on the freely accessible internet. We cross data between Twitter and Gab.ai to find the so-called WhitestRabbit (the whitest rabbit), that is, the profiles of the ultra-right supremacist, or foreign fighters. There are codes that are used to show your political position and that have been revived. Far-right groups put the name of one person they considered anti-Nazi among three parentheses ((())): now it is anti-Nazi activists who do for self-reporting. Another example: ISIS uses the Arabic letter "nun" (?) To refer to Christians. Now, those who fight against Islamic fundamentalism use this same symbol to identify themselves as Christians. Without going any further, take a look at the profile of Twitter of GiorgiaMeloni the leader of the Italian far-right party Frères d'Italie and, after his name, you will see this symbol.
The new European law Does data protection solve these problems?
The law is partially correct. But I see risks. On the one hand, the freedom of opinion in social networks and the freedom of social networks can be lost. On the other hand, it mostly hits small fish. Facebook has data from millions and millions of users: in early June, it was learned that he was selling them to Chinese company Huawei. Did Huawei sell them to the Beijing government? We do not know what you did or will do with this data! Also, has this law really been put into practice? In May, Facebook removed some 500,000 fake accounts. Are we sure that they have all been deleted? According to our analyzes, it seems no. Let's not talk about Instagram, although it is hardly used for political purposes: there are fashion bloggers who have 40,000 followers of which only 3 or 4,000 are real.
What is the margin to control all this?
Very little. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, what Facebook did was punish everyone, thus preventing a university researcher from studying these phenomena. And it has given a big advantage because they have money and automated analysis systems to do what they want.
(*) Steven Forti. Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the UniversitatAutònoma de Barcelona and researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Nova University of Lisbon
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