Russia Contacts US Scientist About Government Raid and Other Disinformation Efforts Aimed at the US
By: E. Rosalie
Tags: Politics, Government, News, Science, Foreign Policy

Russia Contacts US Scientist About Government Raid and Other Disinformation Efforts Aimed at the US

Prominent disinformation campaigns, where they appeared, and what they may mean

DISINFO: We Don’t Assault Freedom of Expression in Russia

STORY: Why are Latvian citizens kept in custody, why are they threatened with legal persecution? They have shared pictures and exercised self-expression. What is wrong with that?

Russia finds the approach needlessly brutal and does not practice such censorship. Everyone writes where they want and what they want in Russia.

DISPROOF: Alexei Navalny would disagree. The leading political opponent to Putin nearly died earlier this year when a Russian agent put a toxic agent in his underwear. Navalny survived and got his assailant to admit it on the phone earlier this week by calling him and impersonating a high-ranking Russian aide.

DISPROOF CONTINUED:

Recurring pro-Kremlin narrative aimed at portraying Russia as protector of freedom of speech and the press.

Contrary to the claim, the Kremlin organizes regular briefings with the leading media outlets to hand out instructions on how to write and about what and independent journalists are subjected to frequent threats, attacks and prosecution if not more.

According to the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, Russia is in 149th place out of 180 countries. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 83 journalists and have killed media representatives in Russia since 1993. Out of them, 38 have been murdered directly for being engaged in investigative journalism related to corruption, politics, and human rights violations. According to the report, the murders can be traced to the Government. According to Reporters Without Borders, pressure on the independent media, blocking websites, and draconian laws became even more severe in the last years. Leading independent news outlets either ended up in governmental control or were shut down under suspicious circumstances. That comes in addition to the 2020 report by “RWB that states that “at least 37 Russian professional journalists have been killed in connection with their work since 2000,” compared with 40 reporters killed in 1992–9

The Russian parliament conversely passed a law in 2019 criminalizing “public insult of a representative of power” and stipulating up to one year of “corrective labor” (i.e. penal colony) upon conviction (Art. 319). Although the law criminalizes not only insults directed at the Russian president, half of all cases (51 out of 100) and three-quarters of all convictions (38 out of 51) between March 2019 and March 2020 concerned individuals who criticism including at least two journalists. See here and here.

A variation on this is playing out right now.

A data scientist who refused to manipulate data in the state of Florida received a visit from police with a warrant. DeSantis has said she was fired because “she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors,” USA TODAY reports. In the case of scientists, they have a duty to speak the truth, and dismissal for defending information integrity is telling.

Although there was no reason to suspect she would be violent, a camera in her home-recorded police pointing their guns at both her and her children. The highly-publicized search and seizure, for which the state of Florida is now facing a lawsuit, drew outrage from Americans.

It also drew the Russian state-owned media outlet, Russia Today.

Sarasota attorney Ron Filipkowski, the now-former Republican who was reappointed by DeSantis to the 12th Judicial Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission last year, had this to say:

“I have handled a lot of these kinds of cases in my career, and generally, the way that this statute is used, is to prosecute people who are hacking into other people’s systems to steal their identity, to steal their money, to crash their servers, to cause some sort of harm to that person or entity, which is not present here.”

Filipkowski resigned after he reviewed the warrant and said the raid was “unconscionable.

When they released the body cam video from serving the warrant, they left her name, phone number, and license plate in the video — normally retracted — putting the scientist’s family at risk from extremists in the area.

While this case has yet to see a jury, it would not be the first case in the pandemic where political figures have coerced or punished scientists.

If I were the Kremlin — I wouldn’t hold my breath on that interview.