[Infowarrior] - Facespook: Russian spies order $1mln software to influence social networks

[Richard Forno]

Facespook: Russian spies order $1mln software to influence social networks

Published: 27 August, 2012, 13:13
Edited: 27 August, 2012, 13:23

 http://rt.com/politics/intelligence-orders-influencing-social-619/print/

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has ordered three systems worth about US$1 million that will automatically spread information on social networks.

The systems were ordered in a three separate tenders and the official client’s name is Military Unit 54939, but Kommersant Daily newspaper, which broke the news, writes that according to its sources this military unit belongs to the Foreign Intelligence Service’s structure.

The first system is called Dispute and is responsible for overall monitoring of the blogosphere and social networks in order to single out the centers where the information is created and the ways by which it is spread among the virtual society. It also looks at factors that affect the popularity of various reports among internet users.

The second system, Monitor-3, will develop the methods of organization and management of a “virtual community of attracted experts” – setting of tasks, control over work and regular reports on chosen issues.

The third, and probably most important, of the systems is Storm-12 – its task is to automatically spread the necessary information through the blogosphere, as well as “information support of operations with  pre-prepared scenarios of influence on mass audience in social networks.”

The first two systems are to be ready by the end of 2012 and the third by 2013.

According to Kommersant, all three tenders were won by the company Iteranet, headed by a former deputy head of the Russian Cryptography Institute, Igor Matskevich, who previously worked on top secret state orders.

The newspaper claims that the tenders were held in a top secret mode and does not specify how the information was obtained or the reasons for deciding to disclose it.

However, this could be connected with the fact that in August last year President Dmitry Medvedev signed several decrees ordering all state agencies, including the Foreign Intelligence Service, to publish reports on their activities on the internet.

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