Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2013 (GIJC13)
GLOBAL: Great Investigations You Should Know About
Tuesday, October 15 9:00am
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KCIJ(Korea Center for Investigative Journalism) exposed the National Intelligence Service(NIS), South Korea's spy agency illegally did political campaigning and manipulated public opinion during presidential election in 2012. KCIJ found out that the spy agency had formed secretive cyber psychological warfare unit, created at least 660 Twitter accounts. KCIJ identified those accounts posted or re-tweeted 280,000 tweets usually criticising the opposition candidates for helping the ruling party candidate.
HARNESSING AI FOR ENHANCED MEDIA ANALYSIS A CASE STUDY ON CHATGPT AT DRONE EM...
Exposing S Korea Spy Agency's Election Meddling
1. REPORTING ON
MANIPULATION OF INTERNET PUBLIC OPINION
BY SOUTH KOREA’S SPY AGENCY
BEFORE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
KCIJ-NEWSTAPA.ORG
2. OUTLINE
Alleged online smear campaign
by the National Intelligence Service (NIS)
to influence the 2012 presidential election
3. OUTLINE
Some 600 Twitter accounts
used by spy agents detected
A network of 10 groups confirmed
Major Twitter account holders
confirmed as spy agents
7. REASONABLE DOUBTS
It couldn‟t be done alone if it really were a normal operation
It must have been conducted on other websites as well
8. Googled some 100 postings on the website “Today Humor”
Found online postings with similar contents on Twitter,
written during the same period
9. Traced Twitter accounts that retweeted the online postings.
A total of 65 Twitter accounts uncovered
Criticizing North Korea, promoting government policies, denouncing opposition parties, etc
Twitter postings coincide with online postings on “Today Humor”
10.
Online posting activities stopped simultaneously
on Dec 11, 2012, the day when an NIS official was caught
Confirmed core Twitter accounts
that mainly produced contents without retweeting : nudlenudle, taesan4
First reporting on Mar 15, 2013
Twitter account holders which remained active
before the first reporting deleted postings or withdrew
11. Revelation by an opposition lawmaker about orders
made by former NIS chief to meddle in politics
(Mar 18, 2013)
Confirmed online postings
made by suspected Twitter accounts
in line with the orders
Confirmed 600 suspicious Twitter accounts
12. Retrieved postings made by deleted Twitter accounts
Collected Tweets from weblog with the use of crawler
Succeeded in collecting 280,000 postings
from some 450 Twitter accounts
Obtained information about content producers,
retweeters as well as postings and dates.
13. NETWORK ANALYSIS
Analyzed relations among retweets
Completed making a network map with Twitter accounts with more than 10 retweets
Calculated with the help of “MODULARITY” on SNA analysis program
17. Remaining problem :
Lack of compelling evidence that confirms
Twitter account holders as NIS officials
Difficulty :
Need to obtain information
about the identities of Twitter accounts holders
from Twitter headquarters in the U.S.
18. EMBARKED ON THE PROCESS OF
IDENTIFYING THE TWITTER ACCOUNT HOLDERS
Use of e-mail address when registering a Twitter account
Possibility of using e-mail accounts from local portal sites
Entered some 660 IDs into the account registration section of major portal sites
Found same 160 IDs
19. SEARCHED E-MAIL ADDRESS
THAT HAVE THE SAME IDS
THROUGH PEOPLE SEARCH WEBSITES
Confirmed real names of account holders with unique IDs
Major account “nudlenudle” included
Confirmed the identity of a 43-year-old man surnamed Lee
His bio introduced him as a Korean Air captain, but Korean Air confirmed it as a lie
20. Confirmed through multiple sources
that Lee is a member of a warfare psychological team of the NIS
Reported that the major Twitter account
belongs to the NIS official, Lee, on May 17, 2013
21. INFLUENCE AND CONSEQUENCES
OF THE REPORTING
The main opposition Democratic Party reported Lee
to the prosecutors’ office on charges of violating NIS and election laws
22. INFLUENCE AND CONSEQUENCES
OF THE REPORTING
Prosecutors started a probe into social network sites
- Searched big data companies
- Requested the U.S. for judicial cooperation
23. INFLUENCE AND CONSEQUENCES
OF THE REPORTING
Prosecutors indicted former NIS chief Won Se-hoon
for violating election laws on June 17, 2013
- Secured some 320 Tweets suspected of meddling in the presidential
election
- Tracing the identities related to some 400 accounts accused of having
been used by NIS officials (70 percent of such accounts coincide with the
Twitter accounts revealed by our reporting)
- Confirmed the creation of a separate team in Feb 2012 to strengthen
the SNS activities of the warfare psychological team of the NIS
24. THE SIGNIFICANCE
Revealed the secret, organized online smear campaigns
by the NIS to meddle in the presidential election
First reporting based on SNS data collection and analysis