The German intelligence confirmed the Russia’s hand behind Catalan separatists

Meanwhile the accusation to Russia for Salisbury attack’s and interference in US election was even over, when another accusation was made by the German intelligence. The German internal secret services have showed ‘concerns’ about the Russian support to the Catalans after receiving the information from their European colleagues, which consider ‘very plausible’ and ‘convincing’. It has been stated by the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of Constitution, Hans-Georg Massen during a symposium organized in Berlin.

“The interchange of information with European colleagues evince that they also experience similar experiences, which in particular Russia is trying to utilize the secret operations for influencing the public opinion through the radical and extremists organizations”, have said Massen in his speech. “In the case of Catalan Separatist, as informed, supporting its position through propaganda.” The President of internal secret service also clarified later that “the information that we have received about Russian involvement in Catalan separatist movement is not the first hand information but it has been extracted from different sources which sounds plausible and convincing and this worried us.”

Massen made this statement in a meeting dedicated for analysing the “hybrid threats” and in which Massen was quite critical of the activities carried out by Moscow and in which he warned of the threat of new cyber to key infrastructures. “We are more vulnerable,” he said.

The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of Constitution dedicated the special attention in his speech to the propagation of fake news. “Practically every citizen can be reached from the cyberspace and can be made victims of propaganda and misinformation. Many sectors and critical infrastructure can be sabotaged”, he warned, at that time he explained that “the citizens of liberal democracies need reliable information for deciding.” He later added, “May be there can be many opinions and evaluations but there can be only one truth and there cannot be any alternative facts.”
Addition to the individuals, the states can also be the victims of this type of threat. “We should realize how attractive it is for other states to use hybrid attacks to impose their own interests and to harm German and European interests.”

Massen recalled the cyber-attack to Bundestag, the German parliament in the spring of 2015 and explained how they immediately assumed that the abducted information can be used in the elections which was happening 2 years later. To avoid this, he explained that Berlin made the special mechanism of cyber vigilance, also the Russian mode of communication in German.

In the annual report of the German internal security services made public in last July made stress in the origin of the information attacks and the cyber espionage which have made the big German enterprises suffered and also signalled to China and Russia as the countries mainly responsible for such type of aggressions.

The German internal secret services have showed ‘concerns’ about the Russian support to the Catalans after receiving the information from their European colleagues, which consider ‘very plausible’ and ‘convincing’ | Getty Images

In the same symposium which took place in Berlin on last Wednesday also participated Andrew Parker, Director-General of the British Security Service, MI-5, who agreed to a point about Russia as a destabilizing element of Western democracies. “Our respect for the Russian population [….] cannot be and should not prevent that we denounce and stop flagrant violations of international standards by Kremlin”, said Parker, who asked the Brexit does not destroy the close cooperation between European Union for facing the common threats like Russian or the Islamic fanatics.

Parker considered Russia “a hostile state” and cited the recent attack on the spy Sergei Skirpal in Salisbury which happened in March. He said that the Russian authorities propagated the 30 different theories about the responsibility and the gestation period of the attack. Parker assured that Moscow is trying to recover its political influence prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union through the “aggressive and evil action.” The Director-General of MI-5 warned that Russia is in danger of becoming an “isolated state”. Parker also talked about the terrorist attacks from the self-dominated Islamic state that assured about the “most complex attacks and devastative consquences.

Also participated the European Commissioner of Security, Julian King, who said that the social media have become a platform for the various agents for propagating the misinformation. King cited the example of false videos and the case of Cambridge Analytica’s, an enterprise which manipulated the data of Facebook for influencing the political ideas of users.

The article has been written by Ana Carbajosa, a reporter of Spanish daily El Pais in Spanish and translated in English by Abhinav Kaushal from The Kootneeti Team.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflects the views of The Kootneeti Team