How Undercover Reporters Caught ‘Team Jorge’ & What This Means for India https://www.thequint.com/amp/story/explainers/undercover-reporters-caught-team-jorge-disinformation-elections-india-cambridge-analytica#read-more Team Jorge is said to have interfered with more than 30 elections around the world. SMITHA TK 18 Feb 2023
The secretly recorded six hours of meetings revealed he offered services such as open source intelligence (OSINT), cybersecurity, special operations, intelligence, and hacking activities, including extracting sensitive documents by exploiting vulnerabilities in the global signalling system that are available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns, and private companies interested in secretly manipulating the elections or framing public opinion, reported The Guardian.
A key tool used by Team Jorge is AIMS (Advanced Impact Media Solutions), a sophisticated software package that controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, and can be used to spread disinformation. Each avatar is given a multifaceted digital backstory and made to mimic human behaviour. Hanan claimed that AIMS bots were linked to SMS-verified phone numbers, some had credit cards; some had a role to play in a dispute in California over nuclear power, a MeToo controversy in Canada, a campaign in France involving a Qatari UN official named Roger Noriega, who served under George Bush, and was even used to discredit the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
DATA OF INDIANS COMPROMISED?
While The Guardian report has not revealed the details of the group's operations in India, a purported video showed that the Israeli group’s cyber tools were used in India too. The opposition Congress party on Thursday, drew parallels between the modus operandi of the Israel-based firm and the IT cell of the BJP.
The Congress demanded a probe into the alleged interference in Indian elections and asked the ruling party to respond to the exposé. Congress leader Supriya Shrinate said "If the government is not doing anything on this, it means it is seeking help to interfere in the country's democracy and elections. The data of Indians is being compromised by handing it over to a foreign firm."