{"id":229683,"date":"2023-02-20T12:01:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=229683"},"modified":"2023-02-20T12:58:49","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:58:49","slug":"story-killers-part-2-team-jorge-in-the-heart-of-a-global-disinformation-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/02\/story-killers-part-2-team-jorge-in-the-heart-of-a-global-disinformation-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Killers (Part 2): \u201cTeam Jorge\u201d–In the Heart of a Global Disinformation Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Part 2 of the <\/em>\u201cStory Killers\u201d project, the <\/em>Forbidden Stories consortium investigated an ultra-secret Israeli company involved in manipulating elections and hacking African politicians. We took an unprecedented dive into a world where troll armies, cyber espionage and influencers are intertwined.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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15 Feb 2023 – <\/em>\u201cThings don\u2019t necessarily have to be true, as long as they are believed\u201d is a quote that could be attributed to many philosophers, but instead originates from a man named Alexander Nix. If his name is unfamiliar, the company he ran is not: Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n

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In 2018, the eponymous scandal<\/a> revealed how the British company acquired the personal data of nearly 87 million Facebook users to influence voters on \u201can industrial scale.\u201d The company, which sold its services in some 60 states\u2014from the Iranian regime to the Malaysian national oil company\u2014is accused of manipulating numerous elections; it contributed to Donald Trump\u2019s 2016 victory in the US and the Brexit vote in England. When the affair made headlines, the name Cambridge Analytica became synonymous with disinformation worldwide.<\/p>\n

However, not everything about this scandal has been revealed. Some of the most feared culprits inside this world have managed to hide in the shadows, among them mysterious Israeli hacking experts. Brittany Kaiser, the company\u2019s former development director and one of the now-famous whistleblowers in the scandal, described the hackers as a team in charge of \u201copposition research.\u201d In anonymous testimonies published in the British press in 2018, former employees describe \u201cIsraeli hackers\u201d barging into the company\u2019s offices with USB drives loaded with what appeared to contain hacked private emails of politicians. \u201cPeople panicked, they wanted nothing to do with it,\u201d a former employee told the Guardian at the time. According to the Guardian\u2019s reporting, these \u201chackers offered personal data about future Nigerian president and future PM of St Kitts and Nevis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed the existence and methods of these mysterious hackers. But until now, the press has been unable to pierce the anonymity of these shady \u201copposition researchers\u201d or attribute them to a company. When he refers to \u201cIsraeli black ops\u201d in an internal e-mail, Nix mentions neither an identity nor a company name. Instead, he designates an alias for the boss of this ultra-secret entity: \u201cJorge.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The trailer for \u201cTeam Jorge\u201d.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For over six months, Forbidden Stories and its partners followed Jorge\u2019s trail. In this parallel market of disinformation, companies\u2014both official and underground\u2014have become masters in the art of manipulating reality and diffusing misleading stories. Continuing the work of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist murdered in 2017 who investigated disinformation and \u201clie factories,\u201d the \u201cStory Killers\u201d project penetrated an industry that uses every weapon at its disposal to manipulate the media and public opinion at the expense of information and democracy.<\/p>\n

Almost five years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, journalists from the Forbidden Stories consortium managed to identify and track down Jorge. Using dubious methods, the Israeli \u201cconsultant\u201d still goes by this same pseudonym and continues to sell his influence and manipulation services to the highest bidder. His tools, though, have since adapted to the latest technological developments: artificial intelligence now writes on-demand viral posts and the remote hacking of Telegram accounts has enriched his catalog of services.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2022, a potential client, presenting himself as a representative for an African leader hoping to postpone, or even cancel, an election, asked Jorge for a demonstration. The job, Jorge told him, would cost some 6 million euros. During several Zoom discussions, Jorge maintained his anonymity.<\/p>\n

What \u201cJorge\u201d didn\u2019t know is that the man on his screen was not an intermediary, nor did he work in Africa. He was, in fact, a journalist from Radio France and was soon joined by colleagues from TheMarker and Haaretz, reporters who are members of the Story Killers project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Excerpt from Team Jorge’s presentation.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c33 presidential campaigns, 27 of which were successful\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Between July and December 2022, journalists posing as clients attended several meetings with Jorge: three online and one in his office in Israel. The consortium decided it was in the public interest to go undercover, which was the only method to gain access to this closed world and obtain evidence of global manipulation. To reach Jorge, reporters needed to pass through a series of intermediaries, from former intelligence officers to communications and security experts. This method presented an otherwise-impossible opportunity to discuss Jorge\u2019s manipulation services\u2013\u201cmainly intelligence and influence,\u201d he said\u2013and attend live demonstrations. Apart from the \u201ctechnological\u201d \u201ccapacities\u201d Jorge presented, he explained how to \u201cbuild a narrative,\u201d which he could then propagate with an impressive range of services: bot networks, false information, and hacking of opponents.<\/p>\n

Jorge boasted of having used such tactics on \u201c33 presidential campaigns, 27 of which were successful,\u201d a claim that is difficult to verify. Jorge did not reveal any details about his clients, preferring instead to demonstrate his impressive range of services.<\/p>\n

He eventually divulged information on secret operations, including one that had provoked a recent media storm in France. Earlier this month, the French press<\/a> disclosed the existence of an internal investigation at BFM TV, a popular television channel after one of its most prominent figures, Rachid M\u2019Barki, allegedly broadcast unverified content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What the French press didn\u2019t know was that Jorge, a loquacious salesman, was simultaneously bragging to undercover journalists at an office in Modiin, Israel, that he could get his stories placed on French television. To prove his point, he pulled up an excerpt of a report broadcast on BFM TV in December 2022. \u201cThe European Union announces a new set of sanctions against Russia,\u201d it read, adding that the sanctions \u201cmake yacht builders in Monaco fear the worst\u201d and that \u201cthe freezing of assets of oligarchs puts their sector in great difficulty.\u201d The text of this brief broadcast \u2013 not in keeping with the channel\u2019s editorial line \u2013 was read by M\u2019Barki at midnight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rachid M’Barki, well-known BFM TV host currently at the heart of the scandal.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Facebook).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To verify the authenticity of this video and others that Jorge\u2019s network of bots had shared, the consortium submitted them to BFM TV\u2019s management in January, which quickly suspended the journalist and launched an internal audit. In a statement to Forbidden Stories, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, the channel\u2019s managing director, said: \u201cI have an ethical suspicion [about why the] news was broadcast while it had no editorial consistency with the rest of the channel.\u201d In response, M\u2019Barki asserted his \u201ceditorial free will\u201d and explained that he had followed the instructions of Jean-Pierre Duthion, an intermediary. Media consultant and lobbyist, Duthion is known in the world of influence agencies. In internal documents, one agency described him as a disinformation \u201cmercenary,\u201d who is \u201cmainly motivated by profit.\u201d When contacted by Forbidden Stories, he confirmed that he \u201cworked on the seizing of Russian yachts in Monaco, which led to job losses at the local level,\u201d but declined to reveal his client, arguing such a deal goes through a series of intermediaries, \u201cwho do not themselves know who the final client is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He claims he did not pay M\u2019Barki, who also told BFM TV management that he did not receive payment to broadcast these stories. According to a source familiar with the industry, such services could be worth some \u20ac3,000 for a journalist. M\u2019Barki, who declined to answer our questions, acknowledged that he \u201cdid not necessarily follow the usual editorial line,\u201d and said: \u201cMaybe I was tricked. I did not have the impression that was the case, or that I was participating in an operation, otherwise I wouldn\u2019t have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The AIMS platform, which hosts Jorge’s army of avatars. The profile pictures seem to have been stolen.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Advanced lie-spreading technologies<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The BFM TV example, meant to illustrate Jorge\u2019s ability to reach French news channels, is not the only selling point he advanced. In addition to having journalists on his payroll, Jorge also explained how he could spread stories using an army of avatars hosted in and run with an online platform. (Forbidden Stories and its partners subsequently verified the existence of these fake accounts.) This tool, not searchable on the web, is called AIMS: \u201cAdvanced Impact Media Solutions.\u201d As early as 2017, Jorge had offered Cambridge Analytica a \u201cSemi-Auto Avatar creation and network deployment system,\u201d accompanied by a demo video illustrating how simple it was to create avatars on a platform that allowed for seamless navigation from one account to another. In 2022, Jorge had a catalog of more than 30,000 automated profiles of virtual people with real accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and Bitcoin. Jorge used these fake accounts to post a flurry of comments on social networks, stir up controversy and even purchase sex toys on Amazon. Jorge recounted how one pretty, blond-haired avatar named Shannon Aiken used an Amazon account to order sex toys to the house of a political rival of one of his clients, leaving the rival candidate\u2019s wife to believe he had been unfaithful. \u201cAfter that, the story was leaked, and he couldn\u2019t go home. The campaign turned around,\u201d Jorge said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To prove the effectiveness of his digital army, Jorge agreed to trend a hashtag on behalf of the undercover reporters. The journalists suggested \u201c#RIP_Emmanuel,\u201d named after an emu that became an internet star in the summer of 2022. The goal: spread a rumor about the death of the animal to test the success of the AIMS avatars. (The emu\u2019s owner has since been notified.) With the social media campaign fully rolled out, our consortium then traced the hashtag to identify additional accounts controlled by Team Jorge. From here, we tracked some 20 disinformation campaigns on almost every continent. (Identifying the clients of these campaigns, however, was not always possible.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the UK, in Fall 2021, AIMS avatars took a hard line against the UK Health Safety Agency. The agency had launched an investigation into a laboratory accused of providing some 43,000 false negative Covid test results<\/a> to its patients. The group that owns this laboratory denied any link with \u201cJorge,\u201d arguing that it was unaware of his existence. In 2020, some of the same avatars participated in an aggressive smear campaign against Hong Kong businessman George Chang, who owns 90 percent of the Port of Panama. The same year, AIMS bots came to the rescue of Tom\u00e1s Zer\u00f3n de Lucio, a former high-level Mexican official who was the subject of an international arrest warrant. The former director of the agency in charge of criminal investigations in Mexico between 2013 to 2016, Zer\u00f3n is accused of kidnapping, torture and tampering with evidence in the investigation of the disappearance of 43 students in 2014. Zer\u00f3n authorized the acquisition of Pegasus spyware in Mexico and is now on the run in Israel, which has refused to extradite him. But according to Jorge\u2019s bots, these accusations are merely a campaign orchestrated against an \u201cinnocent\u201d man by Mexico\u2019s \u201ccorrupt president,\u201d Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador. (\u201cM. Zer\u00f3n is not responsible for any advertising campaign on his behalf, and doesn\u2019t know who is behind each comment on social media,\u201d his lawyer Liora Turlevsky said.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tom\u00e1s Zer\u00f3n, the former director of Mexico’s criminal investigation agency from 2013 to 2016, is accused of kidnapping, torture and tampering with evidence in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014. (Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The AIMS tool doesn\u2019t just offer avatar creation. The latest version, shown to the undercover journalists, can also create and disseminate automated content. Using keywords, the tool can create posts, articles, comments or tweets in any language with a \u201cpositive,\u201d \u201cnegative,\u201d or \u201cneutral\u201d tone. After entering the words \u201cChad,\u201d \u201cpresident,\u201d \u201cbrother,\u201d and \u201cD\u00e9by,\u201d for instance, Jorge commanded the tool to produce 10 negative tweets about the Chadian government. Twelve seconds later, they appeared. \u201cEnough is enough, we need to put an end to incompetence and nepotism of president of Chad brother D\u00e9by,\u201d one read. \u201cThe Chad people have suffered enough under the rule of President Brother D\u00e9by,\u201d read another. \u201cOne operator can hold 300 profiles, so in two hours, all the country will speak the messages or the narrative [we] want,\u201done of Jorge\u2019s associates said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ministry of hacking<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – forbiddenstories.org<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Translation by: Annie Hylton<\/em><\/p>\n

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This article is Part II of the <\/span>Story Killers<\/span> project \u2013 a global investigation into disinformation mercenaries.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read Part 1<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 Feb 2023 – In Part 2 of the \u201cStory Killers\u201d project, the Forbidden Stories consortium investigated an ultra-secret Israeli company involved in manipulating elections and hacking African politicians. We took an unprecedented dive into a world where troll armies, cyber espionage and influencers are intertwined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":229685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2314,550,1138,1748,2607,728,1678,2881,1855,234,2462,2571,1365],"class_list":["post-229683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-corporate-media","tag-corruption","tag-fake-news","tag-fake-report","tag-forbidden-stories","tag-integrity","tag-investigative-journalism","tag-journalistic-ethics","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-media","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-war-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}