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Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report/Disinformation and Influence

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DISINFORMATION AND INFLUENCE

27. The spreading of disinformation (by which we mean the promotion of intentionally false, distorting or distracting narratives) and the running of 'influence campaigns' are separate but interlinked subjects. An influence campaign in relation to an election, for example, may use the spreading of disinformation, but may also encompass other tactics such as illicit funding, disruption of electoral mechanics or direct attacks on one of the campaigns (such as 'hack and leak'). Equally, the spreading of disinformation is not necessarily aimed at influencing any individual outcome; it can simply have broad objectives around creating an atmosphere of distrust or otherwise fracturing society.[1]

28. Russia's promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas have been widely reported.[2] Examples include:

  • use of state-owned traditional media: open source studies have shown serious distortions in the coverage provided by Russian state-owned international broadcasters such as RT and Sputnik;[3]
  • 'bots' and 'trolls': open source studies have identified significant activity on social media;
  • 'hack and leak': the US has publicly avowed that Russia conducted 'hack and leak' operations in relation to its presidential election in 2016, and it has been widely alleged that Russia was responsible for a similar attack on the French presidential election in 2017; and
  • 'real life' political interference: it has been widely reported that Kremlin-linked entities have made 'soft loans' to the (then) Front National in France, seemingly at least in part as a reward for the party having supported Russia's annexation of Crimea,[4] and the GRU sponsored a failed coup in Montenegro in October 2016[5] – an astonishingly bold move in a country just a few months from its accession to NATO.

29. Russia may spread disinformation or seek to influence political events for a wide range of purposes, but all in support of its underlying foreign policy objectives:

  • direct support of a pro-Russian narrative in relation to particular events (whilst some of the outright falsehoods which are put forward may not be widely believed, ​they may still succeed in casting doubt on the true account of events: "When people start to say 'You don't know what to believe' or 'They're all as bad as each other', the disinformers are winning"[6]);
  • direct support of Russia's preferred outcome in relation to an overseas election or political issue; and
  • general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and 'wedge issues',[7] and by the 'astroturfing'[8] of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West.[9]

30. In terms of the direct threat to elections, we have been informed that the mechanics of the UK's voting system are deemed largely sound: the use of a highly dispersed paper-based voting and counting system makes any significant interference difficult, and we understand that GCHQ has undertaken a great deal of work to help ensure that the online voter registration system is safe.[10] Nonetheless, GCHQ informed us that "***",[11] and the Deputy National Security Adviser noted that "there is a lot of work going on [in relation to electoral mechanics] to map the end-to-end processes … *** and to make sure where we can we are mitigating the risks there".[12] This was reflected in the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) judgement in May 2017 that "the UK paper-based voting process is protected from cyber operations but ***".[13] ***. The Committee will expect an update on this in six months.

A 'hot potato'

31. The UK is clearly a target for Russia's disinformation campaigns and political influence operations[14] and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts. The Agencies have emphasised that they see their role in this as providing secret intelligence[15] as context for other organisations, as part of a wider HMG response:[16] they do not view themselves as ​holding primary responsibility for the active defence of the UK's democratic processes from hostile foreign interference, and indeed during the course of our Inquiry appeared determined to distance themselves from any suggestion that they might have a prominent role in relation to the democratic process itself, noting the caution which had to be applied in relation to intrusive powers in the context of a democratic process. They informed us that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) holds primary responsibility for disinformation campaigns, and that the Electoral Commission has responsibility for the overall security of democratic processes.

32. However, DCMS told us that its function is largely confined to the broad HMG policy regarding the use of disinformation rather than an assessment of, or operations against, hostile state campaigns. It has been surprisingly difficult to establish who has responsibility for what. Overall, the issue of defending the UK's democratic processes and discourse has appeared to be something of a 'hot potato', with no one organisation recognising itself as having an overall lead.

33. Whilst we understand the nervousness around any suggestion that the intelligence and security Agencies might be involved in democratic processes – certainly a fear that is writ large in other countries – that cannot apply when it comes to the protection of those processes. And without seeking in any way to imply that DCMS is not capable, or that the Electoral Commission is not a staunch defender of democracy, it is a question of scale and access. DCMS is a small Whitehall policy department and the Electoral Commission is an arm's length body; neither is in the central position required to tackle a major hostile state threat to our democracy. Protecting our democratic discourse and processes from hostile foreign interference is a central responsibility of Government, and should be a ministerial priority.

34. In our opinion, the operational role must sit primarily with MI5, in line with its statutory responsibility for "the protection of national security and, in particular, its protection against threats from espionage, terrorism and sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy … ".[17] The policy role should sit with the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) – primarily due to its ten years of experience in countering the terrorist threat and its position working closely with MI5 within the central Government machinery. This would also have the advantage that the relationship built with social media companies to encourage them to co-operate in dealing with terrorist use of social media could be brought to bear against the hostile state threat; indeed, it is not clear to us why the Government is not already doing this.

35. With that said, we note that – as with so many other issues currently – it is the social media companies which hold the key and yet are failing to play their part; DCMS informed us that ***.[18] The Government must now seek to establish a protocol with the social media companies to ensure that they take covert hostile state use of their platforms seriously, and have clear timescales within which they commit to removing such material. Government should 'name and shame' those which fail to act. Such a protocol could, usefully, be expanded to encompass the other areas in which action is required from the social media companies, since this issue is not unique to Hostile State Activity. This matter is, in our ​view, urgent and we expect the Government to report on progress in this area as soon as possible.

The Defending Democracy programme

36. The problems identified above regarding roles and responsibilities may be addressed by the Government's Defending Democracy programme, which was publicly announced in July 2019. We have been told that this will co-ordinate the Government's work on protecting democratic discourse and processes from interference under the leadership of the Cabinet Office, with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster[19] and the Deputy National Security Adviser holding overall responsibility at ministerial and official level respectively.

37. The aim is sound, but the response proposed is still rather fragmented (with at least ten separate teams within Government involved, as well as the Electoral Commission and Information Commissioner's Office). In addition, it seems to have been afforded a rather low priority: it was signed off by the National Security Council only in February 2019, almost three years after the EU referendum campaign and the US presidential election which brought these issues to the fore. In the Committee's view, a foreign power seeking to interfere in our democratic processes – whether it is successful or not – cannot be taken lightly; our democracy is intrinsic to our country's success and well-being and any threat to it must be treated as a serious national security issue by those tasked with defending us.

Political advertising on social media

38. The regulation of political advertising falls outside this Committee's remit. We agree, however, with the DCMS Select Committee's conclusion that the regulatory framework needs urgent review if it is to be fit for purpose in the age of widespread social media. In particular, we note and affirm the Select Committee's recommendation that all online political adverts should include an imprint stating who is paying for it.[20] We would add to that a requirement for social media companies to co-operate with MI5 where it is suspected that a hostile foreign state may be covertly running a campaign.

Case study: the EU referendum

39. There have been widespread public allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. The impact of any such attempts would be difficult – if not impossible – to assess, and we have not sought to do so. However, it is important to establish whether a hostile state took deliberate action with the aim of influencing a UK democratic process, irrespective of whether it was successful or not.

40. Open source studies have pointed to the preponderance of pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik, and the use of 'bots' and 'trolls', as evidence of Russian attempts to influence the process.[21] We have sought to establish whether there is secret intelligence which supported or built on these studies. In response to our request for written evidence at the outset of the Inquiry, MI5 initially provided just six lines of text. It stated that ***, before referring to academic studies.[22] This was noteworthy in terms of the way it was couched (***) and the reference to open source studies ***. The brevity was also, to us, again, ​indicative of the extreme caution amongst the intelligence and security Agencies at the thought that they might have any role in relation to the UK's democratic processes, and particularly one as contentious as the EU referendum. We repeat that this attitude is illogical; this is about the protection of the process and mechanism from hostile state interference, which should fall to our intelligence and security Agencies.

(i) Failure to prepare

41. There has been credible open source commentary suggesting that Russia undertook influence campaigns in relation to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.[23] However, at the time ***. It appears that *** what some commentators have described as potentially the first post-Soviet Russian interference in a Western democratic process. We note that – almost five years on – ***.[24]

42. It was only when Russia completed a 'hack and leak' operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US – with the stolen emails being made public a month after the EU referendum – that it appears that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, given that the risk thresholds in the Kremlin had clearly shifted, describing the US 'hack and leak' as a "game changer",[25] and admitting that "prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn't generally understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes".[26]

43. It appears that the Intelligence Community did learn lessons from the US experience, and HMG recognised the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political discourse. In May 2017, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) concluded that "***" and that "***".[27] Had the relevant parts of the Intelligence Community conducted a similar threat assessment prior to the referendum, it is inconceivable that they would not have reached the same conclusion as to Russian intent, which might then have led them to take action to protect the process.

(ii) Narrow coverage

44. The written evidence provided to us appeared to suggest that HMG had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election, for example influencing results.[28][29] ***. ***.[30] ​45. This focus on *** indicates that open source material (for example, the studies of attempts to influence the referendum using RT and Sputnik, or social media campaigns referred to earlier) was not fully taken into account. Given that the Committee has previously been informed that open source material is now fully represented in the Government's understanding of the threat picture, it was surprising to us that in this instance it was not.

46. Whilst it may be true that some issues highlighted in open source did not require the secret investigative capabilities of the intelligence and security Agencies or were at the periphery of their remits, the Agencies nonetheless have capabilities which allow them to 'stand on the shoulders' of open source coverage: for example, GCHQ might attempt to look behind the suspicious social media accounts which open source analysis has identified to uncover their true operators (and even disrupt their use), or SIS might specifically task an agent to provide information on the extent and nature of any Russian influence campaigns.[31] However, we have found *** which suggests that ***. ***.

(iii) Lack of retrospective assessment

47. We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference, ***.[32] This situation is in stark contrast to the US handling of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, where an intelligence community assessment[33] was produced within two months of the vote, with an unclassified summary being made public. Whilst the issues at stake in the EU referendum campaign are less clear-cut, it is nonetheless the Committee's view that the UK Intelligence Community should produce an analogous assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published.[34]

48. ***. Even if the conclusion of any such assessment were that there was minimal interference, this would nonetheless represent a helpful reassurance to the public that the UK's democratic processes had remained relatively safe.

  1. ↑ Promoting disinformation does not usually lead to any criminal or civil liability under UK law, but an influence campaign which interferes in a democratic process could (this is considered further in the Legislation section of this Report).
  2. ↑ We note that Russia's disinformation efforts against the West are dwarfed by those which the Russian state conducts against its own population.
  3. ↑ A survey of some such studies can be found in the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee's report Disinformation and 'Fake News', HC 1791, 18 February 2019. In the case of RT, Edward Lucas informed the Committee that the direct "impact of RT … is tiny … Any one time … there is an average of 1,300 people in this country watching RT … the real point of RT is it is a way of gaining legitimacy in elite circles and not least saying to MPs and Peers 'Here is [say] £2,000 in cash if you appear on our programme'" and Christopher Donnelly explained that "in the UK its main impact … is through social media output. It gets out its message on any serious activity that happens [on social media] within 20 minutes …" (oral evidence – 12 July 2018).
  4. ↑ ***
  5. ↑ Written evidence – HMG, 29 June 2018.
  6. ↑ The Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation, 2018 (the Integrity Initiative is a project run by the Institute for Statecraft, a UK-based think-tank and charity, aimed at countering Russian disinformation campaigns).
  7. ↑ 'Wedge issues' are highly divisive subjects which bifurcate a country's population, often (but not always) into socially liberal and socially conservative camps, and which often to at least some degree transcend traditional political party boundaries. Examples of wedge issues include abortion and gun control in the US and Brexit in the UK.
  8. ↑ 'Astroturfing' is a propaganda technique whereby a viewpoint is falsely presented as belonging to a certain group. In this instance, employees of the Russian state and Russian-controlled bots may masquerade as ordinary British citizens on social media and give the UK's politicians, journalists and other people who may have power and influence the impression – simply via the sheer quantity of posts – that the views espoused are genuinely those of a majority of their country's public.
  9. ↑ Whilst the purpose of this sort of campaign is sometimes to directly damage Western positions, some of this effort is aimed at ensuring that the nature of Russia's ruling elite is not exposed. In the words of Edward Lucas in his evidence to the Committee: "If you believe that the West is run by hypocritical, incompetent, greedy politicians, then it becomes much harder to take any kind of moral high ground about Russia which really is run by very, very bad people."
  10. ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** December 2018; oral evidence – NSS, *** February 2019.
  11. ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** February 2019.
  12. ↑ Oral evidence – NSS, *** February 2019.
  13. ↑ JIC(17)053.
  14. ↑ We note that the formal HMG assessment categorises the UK as a "***" target for political influence operations.
  15. ↑ In addition to providing secret intelligence, the Agencies may ***.
  16. ↑ We note that the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) also support the Government security architecture and play a role in protecting the mechanics of elections, including informing improvements to electoral management software and through protective security advice to political parties.
  17. ↑ Section 1(2), Security Service Act 1989; MI5 has informed us that it currently has a role to (i) "investigate leads to any of this sort of clandestine activity by foreign states"; (ii) "translate [the] intelligence picture into protective advice to defend our systems"; and (iii) "provide assessed intelligence reporting into the policy system to assist in policy formulation" (oral evidence – MI5, *** December 2018).
  18. ↑ Written evidence – DCMS, 13 February 2019.
  19. ↑ The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster delegates to the Minister for the Constitution as appropriate.
  20. ↑ DCMS Select Committee, Disinformation and 'Fake News', HC 1791, 18 February 2019.
  21. ↑ The DCMS Select Committee's report Disinformation and 'Fake News' (HC 1791, 18 February 2019) surveys and comments on some of these studies.
  22. ↑ Written evidence – HMG, 3 April 2018.
  23. ↑ For example, it was widely reported shortly after the referendum that Russian election observers had suggested that there were irregularities in the conduct of the vote, and this position was widely pushed by Russian state media. We understand that HMG viewed this as being primarily aimed at discrediting the UK in the eyes of a domestic Russian audience. More recently, we note the study by Ben Nimmo – #ElectionWatch: Scottish Vote, Pro-Kremlin Trolls, 12 December 2017.
  24. ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** December 2018 ***.
  25. ↑ ***
  26. ↑ ***
  27. ↑ JIC Key Judgement, ***, 26 May 2017.
  28. ↑ *** (written evidence – HMG, 29 June 2018).
  29. ↑ We note that Arron Banks became the biggest donor in British political history when he gave £8m to the Leave.EU campaign. In October 2018, the Electoral Commission – which had been investigating the source of this donation – referred the case to the National Crime Agency, which investigated it ***. In September 2019, the National Crime Agency announced that it had concluded the investigation, having found no evidence that any criminal offences had been committed under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 or company law by any of the individuals or organisations referred to it by the Electoral Commission.
  30. ↑ ***
  31. ↑ ***
  32. ↑ ***
  33. ↑ Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, 6 January 2017.
  34. ↑ We note that the DCMS Select Committee has called on the Government to launch an independent investigation into foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data in relation to the Scottish independence referendum, the EU referendum and the 2017 General Election. If the Government were to take up this recommendation for a wider investigation, the assessment we recommend should take place could feed into it (DCMS Select Committee, Disinformation and 'Fake News', HC 1791, 18 February 2019, recommendation 39).

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