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"If Sweden is attacked, resistance is needed," the Swedes warned this year.
A 20-page pamphlet, sent to all homes in Sweden and resembling a government wartime statement, was actually part of Sweden's efforts to combat Russian aggression. Sunday.
Swedish Civil Provident Agency
"Be on the lookout for false information," warned the brochure in its English translation. "Do not believe in rumors – use more than one reliable source to see if the information is correct."
Swedish schools received this spring a documentation from the Swedish Media Council to sensitize students to the detection of disinformation, in preparation for Sunday's elections.
Sweden may have reasons to worry.
Swedish Civil Provident Agency
According to a recent study by Oxford University, one in three articles shared with political hashtags in Sweden comes from "junk mail" news sites. The presence of Twitter robots seeking to influence Swedish politics doubled in August, according to the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
The agency, which has been studying accounts tweeting election-related hashtags, said bot suspicious accounts had gone from 500 to about 1,200 assets last month.
Their goal: to foment populism, to promote far-right alternative news sites and to support the Swedish Democrats – the far-right Swedish anti-immigrant party that won 12.9% of Sweden's national elections in 2014.
This percentage makes it the third party in the Swedish parliamentary system. It was before the 2015 European migration crisis resulted in a large number of asylum seekers in Sweden, which ranks among the leading European countries among non-EU migrants. European Union – and the party is expected to win seats this year.
And it was before the 2015 European migration crisis resulted in a large number of asylum seekers in Sweden, which ranks among the leading European countries among non-EU migrants. the European Union.
"We are witnessing an ongoing attempt to influence the Swedish elections in this direction," Swedish Justice Minister Morgan Johansson, a member of the center-left party, told ABC.
Hanna Franzen / TT Press Agency via Reuters
Sunday's vote has attracted attention and concern across Europe, as Sweden's far-right Democrats vie for support from the country's main party, the Social Democrats. center-left and the main opposition party, the moderates.
The Swedes will elect their representatives to parliament on Sunday, which in turn will elect a prime minister and form a government.
To combat the foreign attempts to exploit the division, Sweden has taken the problem as a whole.
"When the foreign influence has been successful, it is in countries little or not aware of the threat and their own vulnerabilities to this threat," said Mikael Tofvesson, head of the working group of the Swedish Civil Protection Agency against electoral interference. says ABC.
"Our point of view here is that we must have an approach to the whole of society," said Tofvesson.
The 2016 US presidential election has drawn attention to the piracy and misinformation of Russia around the world. Special adviser Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence agents for allegedly hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
US intelligence agencies have publicly accused Russia of ingesting it in the 2016 elections to try to help Donald Trump and harm Clinton, the Democratic candidate.
Russia denied any interference in the elections.
US efforts to counter influence have been more limited. The Department of Homeland Security has worked with state governments, which manage US elections independently of the federal government, to detect vulnerabilities and prevent piracy.
The FBI launched this month a Web page aimed at countering foreign influence, but the federal government has not made efforts to educate the public or coordinate measures to combat misinformation, as opposed to piracy.
In Sweden, Mr Tofvesson said he has seen attempts to influence the country since 2015 – and his agency has been mandated to tackle political interference in 2016.
Since then, he has trained 10,600 civil servants to spot foreign influence campaigns in a series of sessions lasting up to two days. He organized similar sessions with political parties and journalists, and coupled his counter-influence material with regular training in election administration for local officials involved in Sunday's polls.
A 24/7 communication line with social media companies allows government officials to report fake pages or fake accounts, and the MSB is in regular contact with Facebook, Twitter and Google.
Until now, Tofvesson said that he had only requested the removal of a page – an automated Facebook account meant to represent a municipality.
This spring, he convened a national conference with about forty different groups involved in the election, which has met again recently.
A 45-page manual, distributed to information managers inside and outside the government, describes the types of false accounts, hacking techniques, and social-psychological tricks seen in online misinformation campaigns. It also presents several ways to counter them, depending on the situation.
He recommends "a robust but measured response based on facts".
"In some ways, what Sweden is doing is akin to the security policies that were put in place during the Cold War," said Erik Brattberg, Europe Program Director and member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's kind of a broader effort of societal resilience, recognizing that the integrity of a democratic system, a political system, is essential for national security."
A non-NATO member on the periphery of Russia, Sweden retains its status as an "improved" partner of NATO and is getting closer to the Western alliance with a 2016 agreement facilitating the Hosting NATO troops for exercises and crisis scenarios. The influence of NATO that thwarted Moscow.
According to experts, anti-NATO messaging is a component of online misinformation in Sweden.
"A [message] is that Sweden is a country in chaos, there are far too many immigrants, crime is increasing, "said Brattberg about stories of misinformation, but also that there is a lot of misinformation about the kind of presence of NATO in Sweden put nuclear weapons in Sweden "and that the presence of NATO troops would pose problems.
Although Sweden's efforts have continued since 2016, Sunday's elections have focused on the government's goals. With regard to electoral piracy itself, Sweden enjoys two benefits touted by many US officials: a decentralized voting system, administered by local administrators, that uses ballot papers. totals.
"Other countries have digitized the electoral process, but we have gone in the other direction," said Johansson, the Swedish Minister of Justice. "It may be old-fashioned, but it's very difficult to play with."
