・・・ (NPR) Former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans. "So that way whenever you're trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it's much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures," Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia's role in interfering in the U.S. elections. Watts said the Russian misinformation campaign didn't stop with the election of President Trump. "If you went online today, you could see these accounts — either bots or actual personas somewhere — that are trying to connect with the administration. They might broadcast stories and then follow up with another tweet that tries to gain the president's attention, or they'll try and answer the tweets that the president puts out," Watts says."Every time a conspiracy is floated from the Trump administration, it provides every outlet around the world, in fact, an opportunity to amplify that conspiracy and to add more manipulated truths or falsehoods onto it." Watts says the effort is being conducted by a "very diffuse network." It involves competing efforts "even amongst hackers between different parts of Russian intelligence and propagandists — all with general guidelines about what to pursue, but doing it at different times and paces and rhythms." •••••••••••••••••••••••• #treason #notmypresident #TrumpRussia #HillaryWasRight #paulmanafort #michaelflynn #flynnghazi #flynngate #jeffsessions #whitehouse #donaldtrump #russianhacking #putinspuppet #corrupt #impeach #fakenews #imwithher #hillaryclinton #america #BarackObama #FBI #clintwatts
