LANSING — With the March 10 primary one week away and Michigan seen as a battleground state in November, voters and election officials should be on guard for Russian and other foreign interference, experts say.

Threats range, they say, from false information posted online about when and how to vote, to "fake news" Facebook posts intended to increase division and reduce voter turnout, to actual attacks on voter databases and other election-related infrastructure.

But they say, residents should be mindful that one of our greatest vulnerabilities is ourselves.

Ben Nimmo, an international internet sleuth whose work helped Facebook and other social media platforms ban thousands of accounts that spread disinformation during the 2016 election campaign, said it is the hyperpolarized nature of the U.S. political scene that makes the country more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, which are increasingly difficult to detect.

"Disinformation operations tend to target anger and fear," said Nimmo, who is based in Scotland as director of investigations for the social network analysis firm Graphika.

"If you see a post on social media that makes you angry or afraid, take a step back and ask, 'Why is someone trying to manipulate me?' "

Nimmo, a founder of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which seeks to expose and explain online disinformation, said if there were no American internet trolls, there could be no Russian trolls operating in the U.S., since Russian trolls pose as American trolls to exert influence on social media.

"Russian trolls did not create American trolls and they did not create the hyperpartisan atmosphere in the U.S.," he said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson encourages residents "to follow our social media and use our website to ensure they have accurate information about voting and voter registration," said Jake Rollow, a spokesman for Benson.

"We also direct voters to their local election clerks, as they often have the best local information," Rollow said. "Finally, when we are contacted about public misinformation — whether spread intentionally or not — we take action to have it corrected immediately."

Russian interests are not alone in spreading election-related disinformation on both sides of the political spectrum, but only Russia was identified by U.S. national intelligence agencies as having interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to help Republican Donald Trump and hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2018, a federal grand jury indicted 13 Russian intelligence agents and three Russian entities, accusing them of operating internet "troll farms" in an attempt to sow divisions and influence the election through social media.

According to the New York Times and other media reports, intelligence officials told House Intelligence Committee members in February that a similar effort is underway in 2020, aimed at helping Trump get reelected.

On Monday, in a rare joint statement that did not mention Russia, leaders of the departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, issued a fresh warning. "Foreign actors continue to try to influence public sentiment and shape voter perceptions,” the statement said. “They spread false information and propaganda about political processes and candidates on social media in hopes to cause confusion and create doubt in our system.”

John Hultquist, who tracks cyber espionage threats for government and private clients as director of intelligence analysis for FireEye, a California-based cyber threat company, said there has been relatively little election-related activity with links to Russia so far in the primary and caucus season. But he would expect such activity to ramp up as November approaches, he said.

"It's important to remember that these actions are attempts to undermine our democratic process by making it appear illegitimate," said Hultquist. "It's important to talk about this stuff, but it's important we don't do their job for them.

"Part of the intent here is to make us question everything, and we have to be very careful" only to make such connections when there is evidence to back it up, he said.

Nimmo said the last documented incident of Russian interference in the 2020 election cycle was October 2019, when Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, removed about 50 mostly Instragram accounts linked to Russia, which, according to multiple media reports, had names including @michigan_black_community.

Part of the Russian disinformation effort in 2016 targeted black voters in an attempt to reduce turnout for Clinton.

A report produced in 2018 for the Senate Intelligence Committee said that Russian messaging targeted at black voters, who tend to vote Democratic, stressed "that the best way to advance the cause of the African American community was to boycott the election and focus on other issues instead."

Nimmo said Russian operatives have a track record of focusing on swing states, which include Michigan. Since October, "not to say it's not happening, but we don't have proof," he said. It would make sense for any interference efforts to be concentrated closer to the November general election, rather than the primary elections, to maximize the impact, he said.

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The Internet Research Agency, the online propaganda arm of the Russian government, is making greater efforts to cover its tracks, including use of U.S. servers, rather than ones based overseas, Nimmo said. At the same time, Facebook and other platforms are trying much harder to catch any foreign interference efforts, he said.

In 2016, a Twitter account was set up as the unofficial account of the Tennessee Republican Party and was registered with a Russian cellphone number, he said. That would be very unlikely to happen in 2020, either on the Russian end or by the U.S. social media platform in allowing the registration.

With the verified activity in October 2019, the Russian-backed trolls were mostly copying and pasting content created by Americans, he said. This makes detection more difficult because one of the ways to flag Russian accounts was by the use of broken English language in content they created themselves.

The accounts taken down in October 2019 each had between 2,500 and 5,000 followers, he said. That's an order of magnitude below what the 2016 accounts had, he said.

"If you're only copying and pasting other people's words, you don't have your own personality," and it is more difficult to attract followers, he said.

Hultquist said another major element of Russian interference from 2016 that so far has not been seen in the U.S. in 2020 is the hacking, theft and dissemination of emails and other documents, as happened in 2016 with internal records from the Democratic National Committee.

There is some evidence, Hultquist said, that Russian-backed agents attempted a hack on Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian-based energy company that employed as a board member Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a Democratic candidate for president.

It's not clear whether the hack was successful, but if it was, it is possible records stolen in that attack could be released later in the election season, timed to have maximum impact, he said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, plus state election officials and a range of voter rights groups, say they are monitoring and working to combat any disinformation efforts, as well as any possible attacks on election infrastructure.

Michigan follows best practices by using paper ballots and tabulators that are not connected to the internet until voting is finished and unofficial results are recorded on paper, he said. Benson created a panel of experts to review the election system and appointed the state's first election security expert, Rollow said.

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized Congress for not approving more funding and action to combat the foreign threat.

"We know that (in 2016) Russia took aim at black voters in particular," and tried to "promote racial discord," Clarke said. "There is great urgency to this matter. The threat is very real."

Rollow also said Benson will be "issuing guidance" to local clerks later this week on how to prepare for other contingencies, such as power outages affecting voting precincts on Election Day.

Asked whether there had been strong or concerted efforts recently to hack into Michigan's voter database, Rollow said: "We would not speak to this with respect to Michigan specifically."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.

Media literacy

PEN America, a group that champions the freedom to write, is hosting an interactive media literacy session at the main branch of the Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward, on March 18.

The free workshop, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., will include strategies for avoiding disinformation and will provide participants with tools they need to become healthier news consumers.