National: Grand jury extended in U.S. special counsel’s Trump-Russia probe | Reuters

The term of the grand jury being used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign has been extended, an aide to the judge overseeing it said on Friday. The extension is a sign that Mueller is not done presenting evidence before the grand jury in his investigation of U.S. allegations of Russian interference in the election and any possible coordination between Moscow and Trump’s campaign. The grand jury was impaneled by the U.S. District Court in Washington in July 2017 for an 18-month term, the limit under federal rules. The term can be extended if the court determines it to be in the public interest to do so.

Editorials: Russia isn’t out to decide our elections, they want to divide us and damage our country | Eric Wang/USA Today

Like an Internet meme promoting a narrative, many now say Russia’s online propaganda in America was focused on interfering with the 2016 elections. Federal and state lawmakers introduced bills, some of which became law, on this predicate. But two reports recently released by the Senate Intelligence Committee suggest this premise is mistaken. As the 116th Congress and new state legislative sessions convene in 2019, lawmakers and their staff should carefully study these reports before they act. The reports reveal how the Russian efforts go far beyond election interference. The real goal is outright sabotage by tearing apart America’s social fabric.

Editorials: Trump illegally asked Russia to help him win in 2016. He shouldn’t get away with it. | Fred Wertheimer and Norman Eisen/USA Today

Prosecutors triggered a national firestorm last month when they asserted that President Donald Trump conspired with his ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, to commit campaign finance crimes involving hush money payments to two women. But the discussion has overlooked another Trump campaign finance offense — one that is even easier to prove because it occurred in plain sight. On July 27, 2016, Trump called on Russia to find presidential Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump proclaimed. He added, “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

National: House Democrats scoop up lawyers to power Trump investigations | CNN

The House Judiciary Committee is looking for a few good lawyers. A recent committee job posting reviewed by CNN asked for legislative counsels with a variety of expertise: “criminal law, immigration law, constitutional law, intellectual property law, commercial and administrative law (including antitrust and bankruptcy), or oversight work.” The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee needs lawyers, too, posting jobs for “executive branch investigative counsel.” The advertisements give a window into the Democratic recruiting that’s ramped up ahead of the party gaining subpoena power for the first time in eight years when it takes over the House in January.

Ukraine: Russian meddling in Ukraine’s presidential election will be ‘colossal,’ interior minister says | Kyiv Post

Russia will likely use propaganda in an enormous attempt to interfere in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election, the country’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said in a Dec. 29 interview with Kyiv-based news agency Interfax-Ukraine. “Ukraine actually has a common information field with Russia, and the (Russian) intervention will be colossal,” Avakov said. The minister added that Russia won’t interfere physically, but will certainly intensify its propaganda activity in Ukraine to achieve its goals. “They are already trying to show maximal activity in propaganda and then to see if we will ‘break our heads’ ourselves,” Avakov said. But Ukrainians should resist propaganda. “We, as a mature democratic society, should show wisdom and not give them that pleasure,” Avakov said.

National: Treasury sanctions Russians over alleged election interference, nerve-agent attack | The Hill

The Trump administration on Wednesday sanctioned nine Russian nationals for allegedly attempting to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The Treasury Department announced that the nine GRU officers, who had been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year for the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), are now facing penalties for “their direct involvement in efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election by targeting election systems and political parties, as well as releasing stolen election-related documents.” The department also sanctioned two GRU officers over the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a military-grade nerve agent in March.

National: Russia’s divisive Instagram memes are still racking up likes | Fast Company

It’s even worse than you think. One of the biggest revelations in Monday’s bombshell reports on Russia’s social media propaganda campaign was that Instagram played a much bigger role than previously known—resulting in 187 million engagements versus 76.5 million engagements on Facebook—at a scale far larger than parent company Facebook has acknowledged. And though the Russian Instagram accounts have since been deleted, they actually have had a greater impact than the new batch of Facebook data suggests: A search of Instagram reveals that at least hundreds of Internet Research Agency (IRA)-linked posts are still alive across the platform through legitimate U.S.-owned Instagram accounts, where they have racked up thousands of likes. Sen. Mark Warner, the Democrat Vice Chair of the Senate committee that commissioned the reports, told Fast Company that the lingering posts were a sign that more investigation is needed. “This is exactly why we thought it was important to release this information to the public—so that we can continue to identify what’s out there, and uncover additional IRA accounts that are still operational,” he said.

Texas: Russian Trolls Successfully Peddled Texas Pride in 2016, Senate Reports Say | Dallas Observer

If you thought Texas’ Facebook fever swamp got especially weird as the 2016 election approached, you were right. According to a couple of new, third-party reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm behind the country’s fake news campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, specifically targeted Texas with one of its most successful pages. According to one of the reports — from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project — a page managed by the Russian agency called “Heart of Texas” racked up the third-most likes of any page managed by the group, with 5.5 million. Users shared posts from the page nearly 5 million times and made more than 400,000 comments before Facebook shut it down in September 2017. 

Editorials: Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable | The Washington Post

Two reports prepared for the Senate on Russian disinformation unfold a now-indisputable narrative: The Kremlin engaged in a coordinated campaign to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency, and this country’s technology companies were central to its strategy. The Russia operation is staggering in its scale, precision and deceptiveness. Pages generated by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency elicited nearly 40 million likes and more than 30 million shares on Facebook alone, reeling in susceptible users with provocative advertisements and then giving them propaganda to spread far and wide. The aim was not to toss the country into tumult, but to put the preferred candidate of a foreign adversary in the Oval Office. All the while, Americans were entirely unaware of what was happening: What seemed like local Black Lives Matter activists were actually Russian trolls well-versed in the buzzwords of social justice. Ostensible patriots for Second Amendment rights were broadcasting from St. Petersburg. Republicans have protested over the past year that election interference is neither unusual nor important. This week’s reports comprehensively put both arguments to rest. Russia waged an unprecedented campaign, targeting Americans across all segments of society, on platforms large and small. The studies do not even cover the entirety of Russia’s online tampering: The hack-and-leak operation that led to the release of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s private emails, orchestrated by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, was another crucial salvo in a pro-Trump onslaught.

National: Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media | The New York Times

The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day. “Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex., along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.

National: Voter Suppression and Racial Targeting: In Facebook’s and Twitter’s Words | The New York Times

A report submitted to a Senate committee about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election says that social media companies made misleading or evasive claims about whether the efforts tried to discourage voting or targeted African-Americans on their platforms. The report, which is based largely on data provided to Congress by companies such as Facebook and Twitter, was produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company, along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research. It found the Russian campaign focused on influencing African-Americans and also tried to suppress voting.

Editorials: Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump | Michelle Goldberg/The New York Times

This year, researchers at Ohio State University tried to measure the impact that fake news had on the 2016 election. They based their analysis on a postelection survey in which they’d asked voters 281 questions, three of which were intended to determine their exposure to online disinformation. Respondents were asked to rate the accuracy of statements claiming that Hillary Clinton was suffering from a serious illness, that she’d approved weapons sales to the Islamic State as secretary of state, and that Donald Trump had been endorsed by Pope Francis. “Belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters,” wrote the researchers, Richard Gunther, Paul A. Beck and Erik C. Nisbet. Even after controlling for variables like ideology, education, party identification and dislike of Clinton, they found that believing a fake news story made people who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 significantly less likely to vote for Clinton in 2016. The study’s authors don’t claim a clear causal link between propaganda and voting; it’s possible that people who rejected Clinton were more open to misinformation about her. It’s hard to believe, however, that at least some of them weren’t affected by a social media ecosystem saturated with deliberate lies.

Europe: EU Leaders Call for Steps to Tackle Election Disinformation | Associated Press

With European Union elections closing in, EU leaders are calling for measures to tackle the deliberate spread of disinformation. EU leaders said Friday that the threat “is an acute and strategic challenge for our democratic systems.” In a statement from their summit in Brussels, the leaders call for “an urgent response that needs to be sustained over time, in full respect of fundamental rights.”

National: New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep | The Washington Post

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office. The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.

National: What Putin knew on Election Day 2016 | The Washington Post

The National Rifle Association’s 2016 annual convention was held in May of that year in Kentucky. Donald Trump Jr. attended, as he had in the past. So did Alexander Torshin, also a regular at NRA events. The two ended up speaking briefly at a dinner in Louisville, though details of that encounter are sketchy. Why does it matter? Because Torshin is a Russian government official, a representative of the country’s central bank and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. How Torshin and Trump Jr. came to be in the same room together and why is one of the smaller mysteries orbiting the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, but not an insignificant one: Mueller is reportedly investigating whether the NRA specifically was used as a conduit for Russians to support Trump’s candidacy. There’s an interesting detail to that Torshin meeting, though, which hasn’t received much attention. On Thursday, a Russian woman named Maria Butina pleaded guilty in federal court to having engaged in a covert influence operation on behalf of Russia — an operation in which Torshin was involved. Part of Butina’s plea included a statement of offense, in which her criminal actions were stipulated.

Ukraine: Response team to monitor Russian meddling efforts into Ukraine’s 2019 election | KyivPost

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed Russia’s interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries: from meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, to the military occupation of Ukrainian territories. In its subversive operations the Kremlin hacked into servers, subjected infrastructure and organizations to cyberattacks, and deployed legions of internet trolls on social media to spread lies and disinformation. In response to Kremlin threat, an international rapid-response team will monitor and expose any attempts by Russia to interfere in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential elections in 2019. The team is comprised of experts from the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, the Razumkov Center, a Ukrainian think tank, and Stop Fake, a multilingual volunteer project for debunking Russian propaganda.

Moldova: Election campaign starts, some fear Russia influence | Associated Press

Moldova’s parliamentary election campaign began Monday amid concerns that Russia is seeking to influence the results in the former Soviet republic. Citizens will vote on Feb. 24 ballot for the 101-seat legislature that is currently controlled by a broadly pro-European coalition. Concerns arose after Russia’s interior ministry on Dec. 3 said that Moldovans who have overstayed their residence permits in Russia can return to Moldova from Jan. 1 to Feb. 25 and re-enter Russia without being penalized. The ministry said Moldova’s pro-Russian President Igor Dodon had requested the measure. Dodon enjoys close relations with the Kremlin and regularly travels to Moscow.

Editorials: The sad truth about Russian election interference | Robby Mook/The Washington Post

New filings by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Friday provided fresh clues about where the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is headed. Mueller’s filing said President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was contacted in 2015 by a “Russian national” seeking “synergy” between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. The special counsel’s team also said Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, lied about meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the U.S. government has linked to Russian intelligence. The Mueller filings made news, of course. But how much has what we know about Trump and Russia really changed since 2016? Not as much as you might think. On the Friday before the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, Russian agents released, through WikiLeaks, thousands of emails stolen from the DNC. The timing caused maximum harm at a critical moment in the Democratic contest. As campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, I appeared two days later on two Sunday political talk shows, ready for an avalanche of questions about the emails, which I got. But rather than focusing on the content of the documents, I thought it was important to discuss why they were released in the first place.

National: Rosenstein urges tech to step up against disinformation | The Hill

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday said social media companies need to protect their platforms from disinformation campaigns and properly police false or misleading content or they will face government regulation. “I think the companies now do understand if they do not take it upon themselves to self-regulate — which is essentially the theme of my talk today — they will face the potential of government regulation,” he said. Rosenstein’s remarks come amid fears that Iran and other countries are looking to take a page from Russia’s 2016 playbook and carry out sophisticated disinformation campaigns in the next presidential campaign.

National: Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told. Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House. In a statement, Manafort denied meeting Assange. He said: “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.” It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Europe: EU Voters Worried About Election Hacking and Disinformation | Infosecurity Magazine

UK voters are among the most concerned in Europe that elections could be sabotaged by cyber-attacks, according to a new European Commission study. The survey polled over 27,000 citizens across the EU with face-to-face interviews to better understand their concerns ahead of upcoming European elections in May 2019. While an average of 61% said they were worried about potential cyber-attacks manipulating the results of the election, the figure rose to 67% in the UK — one of the highest of any country. UK voters (64%) were also more likely than most Europeans (59%) to fear foreign actors and criminal groups influencing elections covertly. Across Europe, 67% said they were concerned that their personal data could be used to target the political messages they see — a reference to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that may have impacted the results of the US presidential election and Brexit referendum in 2016.

Taiwan: Beijing likely meddled in Taiwan elections, US cybersecurity firm says | Nikkei Asian Review

Beijing probably targeted Taiwan with cyber operations to help the pro-China opposition Kuomintang win a swathe of midterm elections across the island, according to a leading U.S. cybersecurity company. Fred Plan, senior analyst at FireEye, told the Nikkei Asian Review that while his firm is still investigating possible attacks that occurred ahead of last Saturday’s vote, experience shows that China conducts cyber espionage in Taiwan, especially ahead of major political events. “Elections are typically preceded by an increase in cyber operations targeting Taiwan and we expect this to be the case again,” Plan said. “Taiwan has always been a primary target of malicious cyber operations, especially from actors aligned with the People’s Republic of China.” “I’d be very surprised if China wasn’t doing that” in the recent elections, he added.

National: Russian hacking group ‘Cozy Bear’ likely responsible for phishing campaign, US security firm says | The Hill

A U.S. security firm on Monday said a Russian hacker group is likely responsible for a phishing campaign that used emails to impersonate a State Department employee. FireEye researchers tied the spear phishing campaign to APT29, a group often referred to as “Cozy Bear.” The hackers were targeting U.S. think tanks, the military, federal government and law enforcement, among other sectors, the security firm said in a blog post. Monday’s finding comes just days after FireEye and another U.S. cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, publicly confirmed the phishing campaign. The companies did not attribute the actions to the hacking group at the time, but noted similarities to previous activity by Cozy Bear. FireEye said the hacking group created emails that gave the impression of coming from a State Department public affairs official who was trying to share an official document. The attached document included links and a file hosted on a domain that was likely compromised, FireEye said.

Canada: The next federal election will be a target for Russian meddling: Sajjan | Montreal Gazette

With a federal election less than a year away, Canada’s defence minister is warning voters they will be targeted by online cyber-attacks and fake news as Russia steps up its efforts to undermine western democracies. “We have taken this into account very seriously in our defence policy,” Harjit Sajjan said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “We need to further educate our citizens about the impact of fake news. No one wants to be duped by anybody.” Sajjan made the comments while attending a defence and security conference in Halifax, where experts, military officers and politicians representing democracies from around the world spent a great deal of time discussing cyber-warfare. “When we stand up for human rights, and when we stand up … to nations like Russia who are going against the rules-based order … you become a target,” Sajjan said, adding that Canada’s decision to protest Russia’s annexation of Crimea has also raised Russia’s ire.

Europe: EU Official Names Russia As Main Disrupter Of Elections In Europe | RFE/RL

A top EU official has named Russia as the main source behind activities interfering with elections in Europe but noted that others are also learning from Moscow. “Crucial electoral rules have been breached or circumvented, in particular existing rules on transparency of campaign financing,” Vera Jourova, European commissioner for justice and consumer policy, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on November 14. “The most cited source of activities interfering with elections in Europe is Russia,” Jourova said, adding also that “other countries and private interests increase their capabilities for election interference.” “Investigations are ongoing into allegations of dark financing from undisclosed third-country sources,” she told EU lawmakers.

National: Russian Hackers Largely Skipped the Midterms, and No One Really Knows Why | Wall Street Journal

After unleashing widespread cyberattacks and disinformation warfare on the U.S. during the 2016 presidential election, Russia’s trolls and hackers mostly appeared to have sat on the sidelines during the campaign ahead of last week’s midterm elections. No one is sure why. Federal agencies, state election officials and social-media companies spent the past two years working to bulletproof voting systems and better address online disinformation in preparation for Election Day. Voting largely came and went without major incident, according to U.S. officials and cybersecurity companies looking for evidence of Russian interference. Several factors may have reduced Moscow’s impact. Clint Watts, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the diffuse nature of congressional and state races makes them a harder target than a single presidential election.

International: Election meddling to become more sophisticated, forum hears | The Irish Times

“My fellow Americans, an hour ago I learned that Russia had begun preparing its nuclear arsenal. I immediately ordered the United States’ armed forces to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Seconds ago I was told that Russia has launched a counterstrike at the continental US. We anticipate that many of these missiles will reach their targets. Make peace with God and your family. God bless America.” The voice is that of US president Donald Trump, reshaped by artificial intelligence software to pronounce a pre-written script. A data scientist with two hours of recorded Trump speech processed it through an algorithm. The chilling announcement, reminiscent of Orson Welles’s 1938 radio broadcast about an invasion of earth by Martians, was played on Monday at the Paris Peace Forum to show the challenge faced by the newly formed Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity.

National: Foreign adversaries will ‘continue to push misinformation’ after Election Day, official says | The Washington Post

Election Day is over, but government officials are still watching out for potential interference in the political process after detecting online disinformation that was meant to undermine yesterday’s midterms. Foreign adversaries will “continue to push misinformation” even after the election results are fully reported, a Department of Homeland Security official told reporters in a series of briefings on election security that lasted well into the night. While DHS made clear it did not detect any breaches that would affect the casting or counting of votes, the official expressed concerns that bad actors could create the perception that the election was not secure — or  “enhancing or overstating” how successful hacking attempts were.  “We’re talking about propaganda machines,” the official said, “that are trying to divide the American people and undermine their confidence in election systems.”