One could assume the existence of one such character, endowed with the 'phenomenon of absolute shamelessness' but the strangeness of the situation is that there are at least five to ten such individiums regular participants in discussions at every popular Russian, Belorusian, Ukrainan, Baltican political forums. Each of their false statements, which uniformly falsify reality and history, is repeated by them daily and sometimes verbatim in dozens and hundreds of forums.
# Technical methods of influence
One of the common methods of influencing stubborn opponents (especially those who suggest that there is a close-knit “brigade” on the forum) is sending junk mail by email, viruses and Trojans via IP. Our archive contains dozens of forum messages from various people with liberal views who, immediately after their speeches on forums against the ideological values of the totaritars regimes, received powerful virus attacks that practically destroyed computer software and block their access to the Internet.
Here, for example, is what one of the visitors to the DELFI.ru forums, DELFI.lt, reports:
'Immediately after my brief participation in the DELFI.lt forum on the topic of the need for FSB lustrations, a series of strong virus attacks penetrated all the security systems of my computer and completely blocked my access to the Internet for several days. Assuming that this was an accident, I returned to the discussion on this forum, on an unpleasant topic for the FSB. On the same day, the message appeared on the forum:
"Here you go! Veronica appeared again. I thought you already understood everything, Cheap Whore. Everything has been clear to everyone for a long time, but you are the only one who is not clear. Okay, we'll keep working. By the way, Veronica, just a question. The fact what that you write about the KGB, supposedly what beasts they are, and you write that you live in Lithuania. If all this is so, and I, for example, am an FSB major - Not scary? Or did you want the glory of the French Joan?"
Immediately after this message, a powerful virus attack on the computer was repeated. Apparently, this was the continuation of the work of the “FSB major”.
# Intrusive stories about yourself
Wanting to give credibility to their messages, brigadiers often and unsolicitedly talk about themselves, about their place of residence and work, about their relatives, and publish their work and home phone numbers, which is not at all typical for all other participants in discussions on forums of politic. At the same time, members of the brigade are often confused in the details of 'their' biographies, they know little about a professions that they call their own all, or about the country where they supposedly live. Very often they are emigrants in one of the European countries, or call themselves emigrants. However, in recent months this trend has been changing - now many brigadiers have begun to call themselves residents of the Belarusian or Lithuanian hinterland where, according to their stories, there is now 'a powerful economic, social, cultural avalanche-like increase and economy the well-being of, under the wise leadership of the administration of the Lukashenko, Putin, Janukovich, Gribauskaite, Nazarbaev and others regimes post Soviet space.'
# Brigade sagacity
One of the most interesting features of brigadiers is their ability to find out and publish in forums not only the places of residence of their anonymous opponents, but also their names, surnames, details of their biographies, place of work, and the names of their relatives. Of course, many questions are asked in advance about the country of residence, work, age, education, but even in cases where characters interested in personal information do not receive an answer from their opponents, they mysteriously find it's themselves.
Once we happened to witness how in the guest book of the Lithuanian newspaper '
15min.lt' one of the team members, allegedly, only by e-mail address and neutral nickname "Couture", identified and published the name, surname and place of work of one of the regular participants discussions an ardent supporter of the line of Gaidar, Chubais and the Union of Right Forces. It was a couple of years ago, when the Union of Right Forces sharply criticized Putin, his policy towards NTV and the war in Chechnya. The publication of the personal data of an ATP supporter on the forum was accompanied by threats of physical violence against him and his family, which forced him to leave the web forum and withdraw from any discussions for a long time.
The discovery and publication of an opponent’s personal data, in order to strengthen of the reality of the threats being sent, was all the more surprising since the “exposed” reader practically did not provide details about himself on the forum, and the site did not make it possible to see his IP. We have seen similar, but slightly less characteristic stories more than once on the forum of the Lenta.ru, DELFI.lt, DELFI.lv, DELFI.ru website, where Lukashenko’s and Lithuanian, others regimes supporters suddenly called data of oponents focusing only on a nicknames consisting of only of numbers or punctuation marks. We recently became aware of a case where a person who wrote under a pseudonym from North America on the political forum of the Russia Today website suddenly received from opponents from the brigade the publication on the forum of a detailed certificate with his biography, including medical diagnoses. And Here one involuntarily recalls the famous Belarusian joke about President Lukashenko’s online briefing:
"on-line"
We received the following question from an anonymous user:
- Alexander Grigorievich, aren’t you tired of answering pre-selected questions?
To which the president replied:
- No, Sidorov Nikolai Petrovich from Mogilev of living on Lenin Street, building 16, apt. 2, IP number (such and such), provider (such and such), I feel like it at all at answering only pre-selected questions.
# Administrative resources
At the end of January 2003, quite unusual events occurred on one of the popular sites - the electronic version of the liberal newspaper Moscow News. The new administrator of the site unexpectedly began to actively help the team of 'brigade' this forum. The new admin, a person who clearly has little understanding of computer science and ethics, suddenly, contrary to the rules of the site, categorically refused to remove from the forum the repeatedly repeated anti-Semitic flood and obscene language of members of the this brigade. In response to the requests of many readers of the newspaper to take action against the foul-mouthed anti-Semites from the brigade who wrote obscenities and appropriating the nicknames of other people, the forum administrator publicly replied: “You make me sick.” After which, without explanation, he closed access to the forums to all participants in the discussions who criticized Totalitarian regimes and the Intelligence them Services.
The next action of the Moscow News site administrator, unprecedented in Runet, was to clean out the forum’s archives for two years. The administrator of the website was not too lazy to carefully cut out several tens of thousands of readers’ texts directed against regimes of Putin, Lukashenko and other Totalitarian Regimes. And again, once again, many regular participants in discussions on the website expressed their indignation to the admin - then the latter reported that a number to the participants of past discussions he closed access (among whom were only people of liberal and democratic views who had never violated the rules of forum) - 'them had been denied access to the site by personal order of the newspaper's editor-in-chief V. Loshak.'
Then one of the blocked readers was to publicly express his protest from another computer, on a forum, promising to make public the facts of political censorship in Moscow News. Then he was given access to the site, but the site editor took an unprecedented step by publishing the individual IP codes of his two computers. Publishing IP codes for computer users is highly undesirable; it makes the work of hackers easier, and for an administrator it is an absolutely immoral action, a violation of the fundamentals of professional ethics. The paradox was that the same administrator of the website several months earlier publicly explained the undesirability and harmfulness of publishing IP codes.
After this reader left the Moscow News forums censored by the brigade, the brigadiers “followed up” him with the addresses of his Internet providers located in Lithuania and found by IP codes, and a transparent hint about the opportunity to contact his managers and inform them about him pastime on the forums during working hours.
The admin’s reference to the order of the newspaper’s editor-in-chief to block access to the site to all “anti-Lukashen, anti-Putin”-minded readers, as well as to cut out all their texts for the last year from the archives of discussions, speaks for itself. Let us note that the “censored” readers never violated the rules of the site, did not use obscene expressions, etc.. Moreover, all obscenities and threats of physical harm made against them by the “brigade” were left by the editor in archive of forum, ore every single one of their well-reasoned texts directed against Putin, Lukashenko and Regime of Baltick countres were carefully destroyeds.
And it seems absolute nonsense that the editors of MN are currently openly survive from people's site with liberal views to survive from the site, most often those who stand in the positions of authors and journalists of this still relatively liberal publication, for the sake of participants of discussion who simply mock the authors of the newspaper , showering them with all sorts of insults and obscene language.
# Impressions of a newcomer on the forums of totalitarian publications
'When am first time went to one of the DELFI.ru forums, I saw a “discussion” there, consisting of dialogues between a female nickname and a close-knit group of comrades, who in chorus dirtyly insulted this woman. The lady wrote correct and reasoned texts about the totalitarian essence of Islam and the historical connection of the totaritar regims with the Middle Eastern Arab dictatorships. In response, she received only obscenities from several male characters who praised the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate.
I was outraged by the ugly picture of bullying and made a remark about the inadmissibility of such methods of discussion and insults of the girl. After that, letters from two forum participants arrived in my email inbox - a certain pianist from Vilnius and from a lady of considerable age from Minsk. In them, uninvited correspondents reported that the woman for whom I stood up was supposedly an evile provocateur, engaged in targeted persecution of honest, decent people. I was offered a picture of events exactly opposite to what I saw with my own eyes. The elderly lady attached her photograph and invited me to visit. The musician suggested meeting in one of the restaurants in Vilnius.
As it turned out later, these two characters are one of the most key on the Moscow News forums and on some other liberal forums. They always act in tandem, being online for many hours every day (under different nicknames, of course). If at first I had doubts about the existence of the brigade, the brigadiers themselves very quickly dispelled it with their methods. I was especially impressed by the active participation of the newspaper’s editors in expelling dissidents from the site - to please those who systematically hooligan and insult others.'
After the administrator and the team expelled intelligent readers from the forums totalitary pressa and only texts with dirty obscene language addressed to the expelled people were posted in the comments on the forum, mixed with anti-Semitic flood, praises of totalitar liders and curses against Jews from the USA and Germany. The site administrator - did his job and by eliminating the brigade troublemakers from the forum, after which he and own left the forum to the mercy of fate.
# "Gift of Prophecy" of Brigade
Due to a specific mentality and Soviet-style upbringing, brigadiers often slack and work carelessly, making annoying mistakes, which site administrators then have to sort out and erase along with large chunks of the forums.
For example, in October 2002, several brigadiers from the Moscow News forum, positioning themselves as “patriotically minded emigrants”, without any reference to the topics of discussion, suddenly started a campaign of denunciation of the unknown Mr. Limarev. Subsequently, it turned out that this is the owner of the RusGlobus website, which is opposed to the current Russian regime.
Speeches on this topic by “ordinary readers from different countries” were unusually rich in private information; the forum published details of the biography, business, personal life of this unknown Mr. Limarev, his home address and telephone number, his pseudonyms, the names of his family members , his bank account numbers. Particularly zealous in exposing the mysterious Limarev were two ladies, constant participants in the forums, who stated that one of them was a doctor from Latvia, the other was a Lithuanian real estate dealer, both passionate admirers of Lukashenko, Putin and Landsbergis diaspora.
All this caused some bewilderment on the forum, since none of the discussion participants understood why it was necessary to discuss or expose this unknown person about whom so much personal information had been posted.
The reasons for this premature “leaking of compromising evidence” on the forum became clear only two weeks later, when the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper published an article by journalist Khinshtein about how a certain Sultanov, an Russian Main Intelligence Directorate agent, was deliberately sent to France at to the creators of the RusGlobus website, and secretly found out the details for six months biographies of the creators of the anti-KGB emigrant site. Among the creators of the RusGlobus website and was the mysterious Mr. Limarev, whose address and account numbers were published by the team on the Moskovsky Komsomolets forum.
This premature publication FSB from Russian Main Intelligence Directorate operational materials on the Internet, two weeks before their first publication in the oficial media, caused a local Internet scandal. Many readers have wondered - who exactly are their constant opponents, who seem to be well-intentioned residents of different countries, if information from the depths of the FSB becomes known to them earlier than even to the journalist Khinshtein with his specific reputation? The “previsions” of the insightful ladies could put even the grand soviet soothsayer Wolf Messing to shame, if all their previous propaganda activities on the site, which had not made readers doubt their place of work.
After this scandal, the administrator of the Moskovsky Komsomolets website simply cleaned out the entire archive of forums where their texts were published and there were no traces left of the premature information leak.
Another equally characteristic story happened in the Novaya Gazeta forum in February 2002, where someone under the nickname “Stunned by Anna” to posted the following text reviews of A. Politkovskaya’s article:
'George Soros allocated a large loan to Novaya Gazeta to create a database on abducted people in Chechnya, hostages and others military crimes. And now The deadline for checking how the grant has been spent has - There was no database, and there isn’t. So our Anka, the machine gunner, and undergrstend everything make sense - 'How can such databases be created when the nasty FSB threatens to encroach on the life and dignity of Ms. Politkovskaya?' But, apparently, this time the number will not work. Soros intends to stop funding Novaya Gazeta due to “misuse of the grant.” Like this. And also - for major specialists. Why would the FSB protect the GRU? They are initially the biggest competitors in all areas of activity - both intelligence and sabotage. They are like the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office, ready to grab each other's throats at any moment. And if the GRU special forces really committed a crime, then the FSB will put all its efforts into exposing them. The GRU are warriors, white bones, and the FSB is the successor to the KGB. There will never be peace between them, they will never eat from the same bowl'.
This text was a verbatim retelling of the statement by FSB representative Ilya Shabalkin on the same topic. Everything would be fine, but Comrade Shabalkin’s speech took place nine days AFTER the appearance of this forum posting.
There is probably no need to even writing that the premature information of an anonymous person from the Novaya Gazeta forum and the statement that followed 9 days later from a high-ranking FSB officer were absolutely untrue and were soon refuted by both the redaction of Novaya Gazeta and the Foundation of Soros.
Another “premature” Internet publication of the same kind occurred on the forum of the Moscow News newspaper. It is curious that its author has always presented himself as a Georgian artist with pro-communist views living in Europe. Here is his text, in which the most interesting thing is the publication date - April 13, 2002:
'As for skinheads and fascists in Russia - maybe, to complete the picture, think about the fact that Western intelligence services also had a hand in this, huh? According to the principle of “divide and conquer”. The same as with ultra-nationalist or fundamentalist organizations in other parts of the former USSR.
Why not assume that the Chechen "freedom fighters" and the "Moscow skins" are organized by the same force? The KGB officers do not need ultra-nationalism, because it will destabilize the situation in the region, and they will not cut the branch on which former KGB officers are sitting.
But the West at well-organized neo-Nazis in Sovka very need. By the word West I do mean the people of North America and the West of Europe, and the intelligence services there, the elite and the military. Well, and different political technologistes'.
Six days have passed. The date is April 19, 2002. The following, very dubious message appeared on the Lenta.ru website:
'LENTA.RU: RUSSIAN SKINHEADS ARE HELPED FROM ABROAD.
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has information that Russian skinheads can be financed from abroad. This was stated on April 19 in an interview with Interfax by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Chekalin. He believes that “they couldn’t do without foreign countries, and it is possible that young skinheads will have both their own patrons and well-wishers from overseas. Our task today is to confirm or refute this together with the special services,” the deputy Minister'.
The “Georgian emigrant artist”, always and in everything in solidarity with the pro-KGB brigade of the site, managed to predict in advance, word for word, on the forum a funny and very dubious statement by a representative of Ministry of Internal Affairs , what then did not find any confirmation or development.
And recently there was not a local, but a very extensive Internet scandal on a similar topic. A group of very knowledgeable people appeared on a number of Russian forums, and at the same time, under the common nickname “Ramzai”, and this groop to gave very specific intelligence information.
The sites lenta.ru and gazeta.ru did reported that under the name “Ramzai”, since the beginning of the war in Iraq, intelligence information on various military and military-historical of forums and websites from the GRU about the US military actions in Iraq. Analysts from Gazeta and Lenta carefully compared these messages with reports from European&American media and the army command of the coalition forces and came to the conclusion that all these materials were not only confirmed by official sources, but were also published on Russian forums ahead of their first in European&Alerican MASS MEDIA. The online publications Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru suggested that in this way the Russian special services are waging their virtual war for Iraq, against America. If in Soviet times disinformation and leaks were provided by the relevant intelligence services through popular word of mouth and political information at enterprises, today the Internet has provided simply unheard of opportunities for such manipulations of mass consciousness.
After these publications about “Ramzai”, a justifying posting by a permanent member of the brigade from Irkutsk appeared on the Civitas.ru forum:
'The GRU in Iraq is operating at full capacity - this structure, thank God, was not destroyed by the Democrats... They also leak something to me, to a limited extent, of course. They themselves said it frankly - only what you can know. No surprises, everything is natural...'
It is quite difficult to imagine GRU officers from Iraq “leaking” their intelligence data to a modest Irkutsk engineer, who immediately posts this information on forums.
The most routine manifestation of hack work is that many brigadiers are too lazy to check their typical mistakes and slightly rearrange the style to suit different images and “legends”. As a result, they make themselves recognizable, like portraits on a dollar bill, reducing the “effectiveness” of their work. For example, a male character repeats word for word what he once told on behalf of a lady. It also happens that something touches one of them personally (nothing human is alien to them), and then suddenly, from the restrained image of a noble widow, the alcohol-soaked face of a retired sergeant of the internal troops suddenly emerges.
