The German secret services cite Catalonia as an example of a campaign of disinformation

The German secret services alerted this Monday of the growing global threats to cybersecurity, during a conference held by the German economic newspaper Handelsblatt in Berlin. The President of the Federal Office ...

The German secret services cite Catalonia as an example of a campaign of disinformation
The German secret services alerted this Monday of the growing global threats to cybersecurity, during a conference held by the German economic newspaper Handelsblatt in Berlin. The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen spoke of the Ciberespionaje and of the campaigns of disinformation. In this last section, Maassen mentioned the cases of the United States elections, the crisis of the refugees in Germany and the Catalan crisis, according to the agency EFE. "Democratic pluralism loses its meaning if it is not based on facts and if reality is reduced to opinions," said Maassen at the conference organized by the Handelsblatt in Berlin. The German secret services believe that the tracks of these campaigns "lead to Moscow", according to the pampering sources. The annual report of the German internal security services presented last July detailed the origin of the computer attacks and the ciberespionaje that have suffered in the last year the German authorities and companies. And he pointed to China and Russia as the main countries responsible for this type of aggression. A team of specialists created by the European Union in 2015 to detect and combat Russia's attacks over the Internet found a large increase in campaigns aimed at aggravating the crisis in Catalonia, according to revealed this diary. Pro-Russian profiles on Twitter managed to situate the Catalan conflict among the most relevant international issues in various Internet forums. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, recently warned of the danger of cyber and false news, which became "one of the biggest problems" of the European Union. During the meeting in Berlin, Maassen also criticized the technological giants, who accused them of not assuming their responsibilities. "Silicon Valley is very good at transforming the industrial landscape, but it is not as good at valuing the consequences." He described the big global companies that move the threads of the social networks "fifth power" and estimated that they "do not want to assume their social responsibility". Germany has proposed to eradicate racist and incitement to hate messages on the Internet and has drafted a law that has unleashed an intense debate on the limits of freedom of expression in social networks. This summer, the German parliament passed a controversial law that allows to impose millionaire fines to companies that do not delete within 24 hours racist comments or incite hatred. Fines can reach € 50 million.