Bojan Pancevski @bopanc
People from around the world are bypassing Putin’s censorship to send millions of text messages/emails about the invasion of Ukraine to ordinary Russians by using a new tool developed by Poland-based @squad3o3 & disseminated by @YourAnonNews via @WSJ
www.wsj.com/articles/using-a-new-cyber-tool-westerners-have-been-texting-russians-about-the-war-in-ukraine-11647100803
People around the world are using a new website to circumvent the Kremlin’s propaganda machine by sending individual messages about the war in Ukraine to random people in Russia.
The website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies. The site randomly generates numbers and addresses from those databases and allows anyone anywhere in the world to message them, with the option of using a pre-drafted message in Russian that calls on people to bypass President Vladimir Putin’s censorship of the media.
Since it was launched on March 6, thousands of people across the globe, including many in the U.S., have used the site to send millions of messages in Russian, footage from the war, or images of Western media coverage documenting Russia’s assault on civilians, according to Squad303, as the group that wrote the tool calls itself.
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“Our aim was to break through Putin’s digital wall of censorship and make sure that Russian people are not totally cut off from the world and the reality of what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” a spokesman for Poland-based Squad303 said.
The spokesman, a programmer who asked not to be identified, likened the effort to such Cold War-era projects as the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe, which beamed radio programs in several languages across the Iron Curtain. Nearly seven million text messages and two million emails have been sent using the website since it was created a week ago, he said.
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Mr. Crawford, 38 years old, said he had messaged 2,000 mobile-phone numbers in Russia. Most people never responded, others reacted with expletives, but 15 people engaged in conversation, he said.
To prove that he is an ordinary American, Mr. Crawford said, he sent a Russian engineer photos from his vacation in Hawaii. The man responded with pictures of his family holiday in Estonia on the Baltic Sea. Mr. Crawford then sent images of Ukraine coverage by mainstream U.S. broadcasters such as CNN.
His intention was, he said, to gain the trust of the Russian people he communicates with so they could come to him for uncensored information about what Mr. Putin was doing in Ukraine.
“The whole idea is to educate Russian people about what’s going on so they can rise up and stop their government from invading countries,” Mr. Crawford said.
“Having lived in the U.S. all my life, only now I am starting to understand the concept of not having freedom of speech. My heart goes out to the Ukrainians, but now I have some sympathy for the Russians, too, because they have been brainwashed.”
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A law student from Moscow, age 25, who also engaged with a Western person to say that she didn’t support Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine, told The Wall Street Journal that she had no interest in publicly speaking up against the war for fear of retribution.
“Am I supposed to risk my education, my future?” she said.
“I know Putin is killing people in Ukraine, but it is not my fault, I am not killing anyone, and I am not supporting any wars,” she said.