Trump talk: HOW MUCH for that inauguration?

[PerkingFaintly]

We can start whole new threads for less than $26,000,000.

This one only cost 23p I found down the back of the sofa:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3171217-Trump-Talk-or-Lift-every-voice-and-sing?pg=1

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Melania Trump has parted ways with adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff after news broke about Wolkoff’s firm reaping $26,000,000 in payments to help plan Trump’s inauguration, NYT reports.
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/us/politics/melania-trump-inauguration-adviser.html

Thanks, Lweji. I'm going to have to check the mirror to see whether my face has stuck in one look.

Lucas: "There's a malevolent ecosystem where Russia and China are learning techniques from each other."

(NB all quotes approx, as with Pain!)

"Money laundering official in Switzerland being used a Russian mole."

Lucas suggested people google "deep fake" to see what's coming in the windscreen. Said there is The Economist article on this, but is already out of date.

What is coming down the road?

It is going to be much worse. So called "deep fakes" with videos and photos to create fake images or videos of people saying or doing things they haven't done. Used in pornagraphy. Highly corrosive to public trust. This is going beyond the era of what happens in cartoons - it's going to be happening in audio and video and be very convincing.

How far are we from that?

Already happening. Google deep fakes. There's a video of Obama giving a speech that George Bush actually gave.

Other threats?

Chinese trying to shut down debate in Australia about immigration through exertion of Chinese state power on Chinese diaspora.

Is fake news just one weapon in Russia's armoury? What is their end game?

Hughe discussion on whether Russia is a huge kleptocracy and the other stuff is a design to disguise this. Whether it's an attempt to divide and rule the west so their cant constrain their activities.

BB - While the rest of the world's economies have been growing, Russia's has been stagnant because it's a dysfunctional place. Putin can't bring Russia up to the levels of the rest of the world so he wants to bring the other world down to their level.

One way is to get rid of rivals such as the US, the EU (he can pick off individual countries but can't pick off a large bloc such as EU) doesn't like NATO for similar reasons so wants to destroy confidence in NATO.

How does he do this? Fake news, yes, but he cut off gas to Ukraine for the umpteenth time. They use financial weapons all over the place.Russia has corrupted different officials in different countries eg Switzerland a senior federal police officer was a paid mole for Russia, there's a woman in the prosecutors office in Cyprus who is under Russian influence. Fake news, abusing interpol processes, gas, money all weapons and they're doing a good job, we're all at war with each other and nobody is paying attention to Russia.

It is not a strategy but it is a tactic. Putin's objective is to stay in power and keep his money. It is not easy with people in his country who are tired of him and the economy not doing well so he is starting wars, create foreign enemies, chaos. His strategy is to have foreign enenries who are not at war with his - it has to be asymmetric war because the would not survive an actually military conflict - but IRA and little green men in Ukraine that have huge effects but that are plausibly deniable are what they have become expert in. With our democracies and slow reactions, we can't react in time whereas he doesn't need parliamentary consent etc - he can make quick decisions and keep ahead but eventually democracies, though slow and frustrating and demoralising while it is happening, I am convinced that once we figure out how to use our power, he won't get away with it.

"We need to stop saying prosperity matters more than security. If we say only money matters, we will be attacked using money."

"That's made it very difficult to contain Putin on his only weakness."

"Some say Russia just a sideshow compared to private companies' influence on elections."

It's a fascinating thing to listen too. Comments about dirty money having flooded into London which means some are resistant to any change.

Browder disagrees that Russia is just a sideshow.

Talking about FARA in the US to identify who is trying to influence foreign policy. Transparency and disclosure gives the best way to assess information.

Russia attacking us on about twenty different fronts - universities, banks etc

Must pull this all together - look at propaganda, money, how they acquire weapons - and treat it as we do terrorism - as a whole threat.

We're eroded our capability to deal with this due to arrogance and complacency over the last 25 years.

Browder now finished, moved onto Information Commissioner.

Excellent reportage, Pain.

It's about time people said how it is. If we don't face up to the issue we can never tackle it.

It has often seemed odd to me that people thought that a collapse in Russia's economy would suddenly turn them benevolent.

They've finished with Browder and moved onto data analytics, microtargetting and partnerships between commercial campaigns and political parties who use personal information in ways people might not understand. Sounds fascinating and also touches on Cambridge analytica!

Team effort perking!

Lucas said: "Vulnerabilities exist; attacking actors exist; this is the intersection. Actors other than Russia will use these particular vulnerabilities. Russia would be looking for other ways to attack if these particular vulnerabilities didn't exist."

UKIP is the only organisation that has challenged the IC's information notice (legal request for data).

Surprise, surprise, UKIP have challenged the data notice issued to them (as is their right - everyone who has been issued one of these has the right to challenge it). Will be heard in May.

Worth bearing in mind this passage from the New Yorker's profile of Steele yesterday:

Even before Steele became involved in the U.S. Presidential campaign, he was convinced that the Kremlin was interfering in Western elections. In April of 2016, not long before he took on the Fusion assignment, he finished a secret investigation, which he called Project Charlemagne, for a private client. It involved a survey of Russian interference in the politics of four members of the European Union—France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany—along with Turkey, a candidate for membership. The report chronicles persistent, aggressive political interference by the Kremlin: social-media warfare aimed at inflaming fear and prejudice, and “opaque financial support” given to favored politicians in the form of bank loans, gifts, and other kinds of support. The report discusses the Kremlin’s entanglement with the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen. (Le Pen and Berlusconi deny having had such ties.) It also suggests that Russian aid was likely given to lesser-known right-wing nationalists in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Kremlin’s long-term aim, the report concludes, was to boost extremist groups and politicians at the expense of Europe’s liberal democracies. The more immediate goal was to “destroy” the E.U., in order to end the punishing economic sanctions that the E.U. and the U.S. had imposed on Russia after its 2014 political and military interference in Ukraine.

Although the report’s language was dry, and many of the details familiar to anyone who had been watching Russia closely, Project Charlemagne was the equivalent of a flashing red light. It warned that Russian intelligence services were becoming more strategic and increasingly disruptive. Russian interference in foreign elections, it cautioned, was only “likely to grow in size and reach over time.”

Yeah, I noticed those paragraphs.

Actually, the whole article is worth reading.

"What's even more powerful [than fines] is the ability to order a company to stop processing data. Because that's going to halt its ability to carry out its business."

IC on new powers coming in under the GDPR this year.

Ha! Am literally compiling a list of all the data we use as a company to review in preparation for GDPR. Admittedly it's going a lot slower what with listening to the committees

"I am constrained [in what I say] because I have an active investigation. But yes, we are looking at Cambridge Analytica."

"This is a really important inquiry [IC's inquiry into how social media Cos are processing data]. I know that my colleagues across Europe and in Canada are watching it."