New evidence suggests Russia interfered in Brexit referendum

[Deleted]

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-top-spy-says

Britain is so alarmed by the extent and scale of Russian interference that lawmakers are getting ready to interrogate Silicon Valley giants -- in person and in Washington.

At the same time, one of the country’s top spies took the unusual step of publicly declaring for the first time that the Kremlin carried out cyber attacks on Britain’s major energy, technology and media companies.

Alarmed by the mounting stack of revelations, a committee of U.K. lawmakers will travel in February to take evidence in person from Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google executives about Russian meddling, including in the Brexit referendum of last year.

“This is one of the biggest threats to democracy,” Damian Collins, the chairman of the U.K. parliamentary committee that overseas technology, said in a telephone interview outlining his plan. “People operating from a building in St. Petersburg can target fake news and hyper-partisan commentary at millions of people at a very low cost and quickly.”

If the committee takes evidence at the British embassy, then it is subject to the same legal status as testimony given to the House of Commons in London.

Greater scrutiny is also happening in the U.S., where Twitter’s acting general counsel -- Sean Edgett -- told lawmakers that the company found 2,752 accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency. Collins said that both countries are “in the early stages” of understanding the threat.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, part of the country’s communications interception agency, has dealt with more than 600 cyber attacks since it was created last year. The organization’s head, Ciaran Martin, said in a speech on Wednesday that “Russia is seeking to undermine the international system.”

It was only on Monday that Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of being behind “a sustained campaign” of cyber espionage and disruption. “We know what you are doing,” May said in a speech directed at Vladimir Putin, in which she warned the Russian leader that he would not succeed.

At the start of November, Britain’s Electoral Commission announced an investigation into Arron Banks, a millionaire insurance entrepreneur who funded campaigns in the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. The move followed calls by lawmakers for a probe into whether “dark money’’ played a role in the vote.

Foreign governments such as Russia and China may have been responsible for a crash in the voter registration website in the weeks before the referendum, according to a parliamentary committee.

The Times of London newspaper said Wednesday Russian Twitter accounts posted almost 45,000 messages about Brexit in 48 hours during the referendum campaign in an apparently coordinated attempt to affect the outcome of the vote, citing research for an upcoming paper by data scientists at Swansea University in Wales and the University of California, Berkeley.

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday May’s comments were “irresponsible and groundless” and argued she was trying to distract attention from internal government splits over Brexit.

[zmp]

Dont get what you want in democracy? #BlameRussia.

[Blur4stuff]

Hopefully democracies will start taking steps to limit the power of foreign propaganda whether it's Russian or other.

[Daelak]

Dont get what you want in democracy? #BlameRussia.

You're right, all of the western intelligence agencies are ran by Obama Killary World Government Holder Holdover Agent Conglomerate.

[Kalis]

Yeah, it's pretty clear the election results were invalid.

This is about a referendum, not an election.

[Kalis]

Referendum results then.

Except there is no reason to suspect the results are invalid, as the Russians did not interfere with the ballot boxes.

Whether voters are influenced by Russians, Gove, a slogan on a coach, the leaflet from the Government, some drunk bloke down the pub, or whatever, it doesn’t invalidate the result.

[cubby]

Dont get what you want in democracy? #BlameRussia.

You Trumpers are adorable. Regardless of fact, reason, analysis, or logic you'll just keep handwaving away whatever comes up, if it doesn't agree with what your god-king tweeted that morning.

How tough is it to keep up with his lies?

OP - this wouldn't surprise me a bit. Russia is all about destabilization.

- - - Updated - - -

Except there is no reason to suspect the results are invalid, as the Russians did not interfere with the ballot boxes.

Whether voters are influenced by Russians, Gove, a slogan on a coach, the leaflet from the Government, some drunk bloke down the pub, or whatever, it doesn’t invalidate the result.

How do you come to that conclusion? Let's say Russia heavily influenced the election process by putting out lies and deceiving posts. And people believed that and then voted accordingly.

And how do you know the Russians didn't interfere with the ballot boxes?

[Kalis]

How do you come to that conclusion? Let's say Russia heavily influenced the election process by putting out lies and deceiving posts. And people believed that and then voted accordingly.

I come to that conclusion because it doesn’t invalidate the result. The issue is about making sure foreign powers can’t exert influence on voters going forward, not about the validity of a referendum that has already taken place.

Obama gave an opinion on how people should vote, if Remain had won any objections that the result was invalid because of that would have been rightly rejected.

We lost because we couldn’t create a good enough argument to convince the majority of people to vote Remain. Hey ho, shit happens.

And how do you know the Russians didn't interfere with the ballot boxes?

Firstly, there is absolutely no credible suggestion that any interference in ballot boxes happened. Secondly, given the system in place, how would Russia manage to do that? It’s a paper ballot, they’d need to have infiltrated the voting system in ways that they would struggle to get away with in Russia, let alone in the UK. It’s tin foil hat territory.

[Deleted]

Wait how could Russia interfere? Sleeper Agents voting LEAVE?

[Kalis]

Wait how could Russia interfere? Sleeper Agents voting LEAVE?

Perhaps in the period between the referendum being announced and the vote taking place, roughly a year, the Russians kidnapped en masse people who deal with the ballot boxes and vote counting, replaced them with surgically altered Russians and nobody noticed.

Very sneaky those Russians.

[cubby]

I come to that conclusion because it doesn’t invalidate the result. The issue is about making sure foreign powers can’t exert influence on voters going forward, not about the validity of a referendum that has already taken place.

Obama gave an opinion on how people should vote, if Remain had won any objections that the result was invalid because of that would have been rightly rejected.

We lost because we couldn’t create a good enough argument to convince the majority of people to vote Remain. Hey ho, shit happens.

But part of losing was being unduly influenced by a foreign agent lying to you. The creation of a good argument was made perhaps impossible because of all the crap/lies perpetuated by a foreign government. You say there is a way people should vote, and I agree, but does that include being lied to?

Is there any point in which an vote is invalid?

Firstly, there is absolutely no credible suggestion that any interference in ballot boxes happened. Secondly, given the system in place, how would Russia manage to do that? It’s a paper ballot, they’d need to have infiltrated the voting system in ways that they would struggle to get away with in Russia, let alone in the UK. It’s tin foil hat territory.

Agreed - and good points, all around. I wish the U.S. would adopt something similar.

[Kalis]

But part of losing was being unduly influenced by a foreign agent lying to you. The creation of a good argument was made perhaps impossible because of all the crap/lies perpetuated by a foreign government. You say there is a way people should vote, and I agree, but does that include being lied to?

Both sides lied, both sides had foreign powers trying to influence the result, Russia did it more covertly than most.

Is there any point in which an vote is invalid?

If the votes themselves had been tampered with.

Agreed - and good points, all around. I wish the U.S. would adopt something similar.

I don’t know how it works in the US, but in the UK they have local polling centres that are open for about 12 hours. The US is far larger physically than the UK, so that has to be taken into account.

[cubby]

I don’t know how it works in the US, but in the UK they have local polling centres that are open for about 12 hours. The US is far larger physically than the UK, so that has to be taken into account.

I wasn't being sarcastic - I wish the U.S. would adopt a 100% nation wide paper mail-in ballot system, with actual voting day being a national holiday.

[Snorkles]

Crashing the voter registration website (if true) is far more tangible than putting out fake news/trolling on twitter or whatever. So I think both sides (who both supposedly relish democracy) should be against a foreign entity trying to reduce people's ability to vote.

And, evident by the 2nd post of this very thread, we seem to be reaching a point where people dismiss facts out of hand because it makes them uncomfortable.

[BrerBear]

Dont get what you want in democracy? #BlameRussia.

Or do get what you want, still blame Russia.

Remember France?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-...ar-pawn-storm/

It's almost as though Russia is systematically attacking the elections of its enemies, and only sometimes succeeding.
We're going to call them out each time.

[Themius]

Odd.. why do people want to write off interference by Russia?

[Elba]

Imagine my shock.

[Kalis]

Sure, but I'd like to put some question marks to that idea.

What constitutes a good enough argument? It seems that the winning arguments are a whole load of fearmongering, sensationalism and populist bollocks. So whatever change will need to happen will need to happen in the form of teaching people to see through superficial false arguments, and the road to that seems unlikely considering it requires a strong focus on education spending and the likes.

In your opinion, but there were valid arguments for Leave, e.g. immigration effects on jobs and infrastructure, cultural issues, sovereignty issues, the EU heading in a direction that many British people weren’t comfortable with. Many of these issues were a concern for Remain voters as well.

The economic claims of leaving, on a national scale, were overplayed, but the same could be said of remaining.

In my personal opinion the effort required to leave didn’t outweigh any benefit from leaving, hence I supported and voted Remain, but to claim all the arguments were bollocks is not true.

Blair should have given us the referendum years earlier, as he said he would and he should have negotiated a better immigration policy, such as an exemption from freedom of movement. We are an island nation, our borders have prevented us from being overrun by the likes of Hitler and Napoleon, control of them is psychologically important, to sign that control away was a balls up.

Add to that Merkel’s utterly retarded decision to let in so many people claiming to be Syrian refugees, many of whom clearly weren’t Syrian and who could eventually obtain EU passports, and you end up with Brexit.

The current levels of immigration are detrimental to Britain, that should have been addressed and we could have avoided Brexit.

At the same time, while worrying about the future, in the here and now there is a snowball effect going on. Uninformed voters elect politicians who keep them misinformed or make sure that the false influence in their favor remains intact. May calling out Putin might be one of the last few politicians who might bother doing that, because soon the avalanche is coming and it might be better for election results to keep silent about it.

Not voting how you wanted them to vote does not mean they were uninformed. Not understanding the variety of reasons for the Leave vote, as you clearly don’t, doesn’t exactly suggest that you are informed.

Politicians ruining their own country and countrymen for personal gain has always been one of the great threats to democracy. In that sense they're no better than ISIS warlords who due it through violence instead of politics.

Importing lots of cheap foreign labour that screws over the working class and disrupts cultural cohesion, simply because it is of economic benefit to the middle class, could be regarded as ruining the country for personal gain. To equate any of them with ISIS warlords is idiotic.

[NM 156]

No shit Sherlock. Every country with the power to do so tries to manipulate other countries and bend them to their perceived interests.

[CostinR]

It wasn't just Russia though that tried to influence Brexit. The US did, every other EU member did.