Russian web brigades

The Internet brigades or Web brigades (Russian: Веб-бригады simplified Chinese: 网特；; traditional Chinese: 網特) are governmental teams of on-line commentators that participate in political blogs and Internet forums to promote disinformation and prevent free discussions of undesirable subjects. Such teams are allegedly affiliated with Russian state propaganda department and security services and with Chinese government. They are known as 50 Cent Party in China. The state-sponsored "web brigades" exist along with other organized teams of information fighters that may push private political agendas, be involved in astroturfing, or participate in election campaigns.

Teams of governmental bloggers in mainland China

It has been reported that in 2005, departments of provincial and municipal governments in mainland China began creating teams of Internet commentators from propaganda and police departments and offering them classes in Marxism, propaganda techniques, and the Internet. They are reported to guide discussion on public bulletin boards away from politically sensitive topics by posting opinions anonymously or under false names. "They are actually hiring staff to curse online," said Liu Di, a Chinese student who was arrested for posting her comments in blogs.

Chinese Internet police also erase anti-Communist comments and posts pro-government messages. Estimates of the number of personnel varies, and has been reported as 30000 though this number was disputed. Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao has declared the party's intent to strengthen administration of the online environment and maintain the initiative in online opinion.

Internet brigades in Russia

First publication

This alleged phenomenon in RuNet was first described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They claimed the appearance of organized and fairly professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet. Prior to 1998-1999 about 70% of audience of Russian Internet were people of liberal views, composed of Russian middle class and people in emigration; but already in 2003 according to authors there were about 60-80% of "totalitarian" posts at Russian forums. They ascribe the phenomenon to activity of Internet teams which allegedly appeared in 1999 and were organized by FSB.

Behavior

According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the Internet brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:

• Propaganda of the Communist ideology, and constant attempts to present in a positive light the entire history of Russia and the Soviet Union, minimizing the number of people who died in repressions.
• Boundless loyalty to Vladimir Putin and his circle.
• Respect and admiration for the KGB and FSB. The key word which "will force them to reveal their true colors is lustration"; the brigade will cry out in a choir about "bloody repressions by democratic murderers" and "witch hunts" after mentioning this word.
• Hatred of dissidents and human rights organizations and activists, political prisoners and journalists, especially Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Kovalev, Elena Bonner, Grigory Pasko, Victor Shenderovich, and Valeria Novodvorskaya.
• Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
• Accusation of Russophobia against everyone who disagrees with them.
• Tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.
• Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.

Tactics

• Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments."
• Accusations that opponents are working for “enemies”. The opponents are accused of taking money from Berezovskiy, the CIA, the MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, the Zionists, or the Chechen rebels.
• Making personally offensive comments, especially of sexual nature.
• Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.
• Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day."
• Appealing to the Administration. The members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic."
• Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator."

Criticism

Alexander Usupovski, head of the analytical department of the Federation Council of Russia (Russian Parliament) claimed Web brigades are conspiracy theory in his article published in "Russian Journal".

Yusupovskiy's points included:

• He supposed, that officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems, than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants.
• There is difference between "dislike of hegemonic policy of the United States" at Russian forums and "quite friendly attitude towards usual Americans". Aggression and xenophobia doesn't characterize one side but is a common place of polemics, well met not only among Russian patriots, but also Russian emigrants from US, Israel, or other countries.
• Change of attitude of virtual masses in 1998-1999 could be caused by Russian financial collapse which "crowned liberal decade", rather than "mysterious bad guys".
• Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
• According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".

Usupovski concluded: "We would never make our country's military organizations and security services work under the rule of law and legal control, if won't learn to recognize rationally and objectively their necessity and usefulness for the country, state, society and citizens. Sweeping defamation and intentional discreditation with the help of "arguments", which are obviously false, only contribute to the extrusion of security services outside of rule of law and instigates them to chaos".

Support

The findings of Polyanskaya and her colleagues have been supported by writer Grigory Svirsky and psychologist Vladimir Bagryansky. They claimed that "the Internet brigade led by Alexander Usupovski is probably the most incompetent team of Russian state security services in RuNet".

Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov made the following points when asked by Yevgenia Albats about "web brigades" :

• Russian state security teams actively disrupt work of certain political blogs;
• One of the teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq;
• The teams are also involved in hacker attacks, and they have probably attacked his own web site during the Moscow theater hostage crisis;
• Some of the "web brigades" are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB and has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department;
• There are also such teams from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Discussion

The discussion began in the Internet forum of the "Russian Journal", just a few days after the first publication by Polyanskaya and others, and it lasted for two months. Bloggers claimed that Usupovsky and his supporters are the governmental "Internet brigade", "FSB agents", and "bastards of SMERSH". A discussion was also conducted on the Internet forum of Moscow News [2]. Usupovsky supporters suggested to sue Ivan Lomko for libels and defamation [3] and issued various threats.[4]

In 2007 sociological analysis of big groups in Russian society published at Russian resource RIO-Center, it's mentioned that idea of existence of web-brigades is a widespread point of view in RuNet. Authors say "it's difficult to say whether hypothesis of existence of web-brigades corresponds to reality", but claim that users professing views and methods that are ascribed to members of "web-brigades" may be found in vast amounts at various opposition forums.

Brigades on the Polish Internet

Russian "Internet brigades" reportedly appeared in Poland in 2005. According to claims of anonymous "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, "at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. They are claimed to scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also to perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web."

LiveJournal fighters

A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov worked as a "spy" in a recently created organization "Russia the young", directed and paid from the Kremlin. He reported, among other things, that "LiveJournal fighters" are sponsored by "Russia the young". Roman Sadykhov described a "secret speech" of Vladislav Surkov, who among other things called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" and said that people's brains must be "nationalized" (Russian:"Надо мозги национализировать"). He cited Vladislav Surkov who allegedly said the following about nationalistic Movement Against Illegal Immigration, addressing activists of "Russia the young":

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. It's jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them. It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."

Internet brigades in Russian literature

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work. He wrote: "It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".

Netherlands

It was reported that Dutch police have set up an Internet Brigade to fight cybercrime. Among its planned actions are to infiltrate internet newsgroups and discussion forums for intelligence gathering, to make pseudo-purchase and to provide services..

Internet brigades in Wikipedia?

A number of publications suggested that intelligence agents may have infiltrated Wikipedia to remove undesirable information The design and application of WikiScanner technology proved such suspicions to be well founded, although it remains unknown how many agents from around the world operate in Wikipedia

See also

• Information warfare
• Harassment by computer
• Jingjing and Chacha
• Computer crime
• Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
• Astroturfing
• Political repression of bloggers and cyber-dissidents

See also discussions of existence of web-brigades in RuNet:

• Discussion of the article Red Web Brigades at Nnov.Ru (in Russian)
• Discussion of control over internet and personal security with Yevgeniya Albats at Moscow-based radio channel Echo Moskvy. (in Russian)