'THE ISRAELIS DESTABILISING DEMOCRACY'

No morals, no qualms, no borders: 

Tal Hanan and the Jorge Team have turned chaos into business.

Haaretz - The Israelis Destabilizing Democracy ...



Unknown commented -

A hacking team, Demoman International, linked, to the Israel's Ministry of Defence and its Special Forces, has been meddling in elections worldwide.

- ‘Israel exports cyber-weaponry that undermines democracy and human rights’

- Demoman International is registered on a website run by the Israeli Ministry of Defense

- Unit is run by former Israeli Special Forces operative

“The team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed …


Tal Hanan, former Israeli special forces operative.

“The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym ‘Jorge’, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades …

“Hanan told [undercover reporters] that his services, which others describe as ‘black ops’, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. 

"He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.



“One of Team Jorge’s key services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims. It controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. 

"Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts …


Hanan claimed he disseminated false info to an ABC journalist against former President Hugo Chavez, in an attempt to influence the 2012 elections

Journalists from The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Le Monde, the international organization of investigative journalists OCCRP, Radio France, Haaretz, TheMarker and other media outlets worked in France, Kenya, Israel, the United States, Indonesia, Germany, Tanzania and Spain to examine the veracity of Jorge’s claims about his worldwide deeds. Shockingly, many of the allegations were corroborated.

“… Hanan and his team spoke of how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by using hacking techniques to access Gmail and Telegram accounts. They boasted of planting material in legitimate news outlets, which are then amplified by the Aims bot-management software.



“Much of their strategy appeared to revolve around disrupting or sabotaging rival campaigns: the team even claimed to have sent a sex toy delivered via Amazon to the home of a politician, with the aim of giving his wife the false impression he was having an affair 

“The Team Jorge revelations could cause embarrassment for Israel, which has come under growing diplomatic pressure in recent years over its export of cyber-weaponry that undermines democracy and human rights.

“Hanan appears to have run at least some of his disinformation operations through an Israeli company, Demoman International, which is registered on a website run by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to promote defence exports …

In 2021, Hanan's avatar network were involved in a positive campaign about a U.K. clinic under investigation for providing false COVID results

“Hanan described his team as ‘graduates of government agencies’ … as well as ‘psychological warfare’, operating from six offices around the world …

“Hainan said in an email that [the social media disinformation software his team now markets as Aims], which enabled users to create up to 5,000 bots to deliver ‘mass messages’ and ‘propaganda’, had been used in 17 elections …

“Team Jorge’s bot-management software appears to have grown significantly by 2022 … Hanan said it controlled a multinational army of more than 30,000 avatars, complete with digital backstories that stretch back years … [Images] have been harvested from the social media accounts of real people …



“In addition to Aims, Hanan told reporters about his ‘blogger machine’ – an automated system for creating websites that the Aims-controlled social media profiles could then use to spread fake news stories across the internet …

“No less alarming were Hanan’s demonstrations of his team’s hacking capabilities, in which he showed the reporters how he could penetrate Telegram and Gmail accounts. In one case, he brought up on screen the Gmail account of a man described as the ‘assistant of an important guy’ in the general election in Kenya …

“‘One of the biggest thing is to put sticks between the right people, you understand,’ he said. ‘And I can write him what I think about his wife, or what I think about his last speech, or I can tell him that I promised him to be my next chief of staff, OK?’ …”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan