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-Analysis-
PARIS — Since the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, we all know that the age of the Internet has now taken manipulation of public opinion to industrial capability. Thus the lesson of the “Team Jorge” affair — revealed yesterday by a world consortium of journalists — shouldn’t be that these practices exist: it’s that they’re scaling up.
What is at stake right here is not any extra or a minimum of the survival of our democratic societies. Yes, our democracies are removed from excellent, however at the moment are clearly threatened by practices of clandestine buy of affect, large-scale digital manipulation, and destabilization of various nature.
Some will play down these threats, saying that they’ve all the time existed, even earlier than the Internet. They will say that so-called democratic states typically do the identical factor themselves. And that it’s too simple to denounce these practices when cash already performs such an enormous position in politics.
All that is true, however the practices that have been revealed yesterday are considerably extra particular. They clearly level out the passivity of the states, and the complicity — energetic or not — of a few of the largest tech multinationals, that are principally American.
Cyber military veterans
The investigation, spearheaded by the French NGO Forbidden Stories, revealed the existence of an Israeli firm based by former troopers. The firm sells providers, like others, however these similar providers embody the destabilization of an African state, the manipulation of nationwide elections and the acquisition of affect on-demand.
The tech giants’ accountability is obvious.
Part of Israel’s financial success is attributed to its tech trade, via former members of the Israeli Defense Force’s cyber-warfare items, one of the best recognized of which is Unit 8200. Most of this exercise is official: the world-famous site visitors data software program Waze, for instance, originated there.
But there are additionally much less clear actions, such because the well-known spy software program Pegasus, designed by NSO. Thanks to that software program, the Saudis have been capable of observe down the journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier than murdering him. The software has additionally allowed Moroccan secret providers to hear in to Emmanuel Macron’s cellphone. Israel‘s laissez-faire perspective on privateness is an open door to each form of abuse.
Regulation for actual
The tech giants’ accountability seems much more clearly, since it’s on their platforms that Team Jorge operates. Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal — the British firm linked to the U.S. far proper, responsible of large-scale manipulations — the bosses of those Silicon Valley giants have had a tough time. We keep in mind some painful Congressional hearings for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The public more and more expects that these firms, from Facebook to Twitter to TikTok, take responsibility. And the States can’t ignore that: the platforms need to be accountable, and increasingly more are saying measures to fight manipulation.
Still, we are able to see right now that they gained’t be almost sufficient.
All the bulletins of the previous couple of years are simply smoke and mirrors after we hear the revelations of this investigation. Either states regulate and management, or we our democracies will perish in a flood of misinformation. Nobody will have the ability to say we weren’t warned.
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