This article is the second in the series and examines foreign interference: the clandestine actions of overseas actors to manipulate domestic politics.

Part I: The ‘Link Tax’ — Part III: The ‘Meme Ban’

Call Your Senator!

Wikipedia’s banner campaign, which ran across Europe.

During the peak of copyright campaigning activities this summer, the Wikimedia Foundation added a banner to Wikipedia asking readers to protest against the EU’s proposal. It linked to a website run by Mozilla, a software company, which provided visitors with a prepared script and invited them to enter their their phone number and be connected to the office of a randomly-selected MEP.

The concept, companies, and money behind this endeavour were American. Had Russian or Chinese groups made these efforts they would have been greeted with condemnation, but with the USA a close ally of Europe its citizens raise fewer eyebrows. Yet the scale of their involvement reveals the forces at work in the debate and raises difficult questions about where friendly cross-pollination of ideas stops and foreign interference begins.

A screenshot from Mozilla’s auto-dialler website (as recovered from the Internet Archive).

Attitudes toward private enterprise and freedom of speech differ between the old and new worlds. American culture idolises both to sometimes extraordinary degrees, whereas in Europe they are valued but negotiable. In America, enormous multinationals steer national policy. In Europe, they are fined billions for breaching competition law and squeezed with extensive privacy regulation. In America, society is driven apart by a divisive media landscape. In Europe, defamation law and broadcasting impartiality regulations act as moderators.

Copyright impinges on both freedom of enterprise and of speech, and on both counts finds European attitudes more favourable. It is therefore of little surprise that when Europe pushes ahead America pushes back.

In the case of the current proposals the push-back comes largely from Google, their thinly-veiled target. The search giant is chief among those standing to lose the immunity from copyright law generously granted to them in 2000, and facing greater obligations to rightsholders with whom they have not negotiated a license.

Google is the second-most prolific lobbyist of the European Commission overall, and its employees have held 29 meetings specifically on the topic of the Digital Single Market (under which the EU’s copyright proposal falls). In fact the list of top lobbyists on the subject is full of internet technology companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, and collective industry lobbying organisations. Supporters of copyright reform only start to appear further down the list.

The ten most prolific Digital Single Market lobbyists. Google is a member of both DigitalEurope and the CCIA.

There is nothing wrong with this activity in itself. Staff at the European Commission are not credulous, and not all of the meetings were about copyright issues. But their number provides an odd contrast to the vanishingly few public statements that Google have made on the topic. Their message is instead being delivered by proxies:

It is unclear how precisely Google direct these groups, or if they even do so at all. In many of the above cases it is plausible that they take a hands-off approach, already confident on the basis of each funding recipient’s prior output that they will support big internet platforms’ interests, at least most of the time.

But we do not need collusion to justify concern. Google using their $86bn cash pile to determine whose voice is heard in political debates is interference on its own terms.

The company’s attempts to co-opt academics and journalists are particularly toxic. It is easy enough to follow the money trail when a handful of registered charities receive millions of dollars each, or are staffed by former Google lobbyists. It is much harder to tease apart individual authors whose voice has been amplified, influenced, or even silenced by corporate money from those whose voice has not. The under-reporting of funding sources, as identified by the Campaign for Accountability, does not help to remove the whiff of suspicion that Google’s actions have cast over large swathes of academia.

Since criticising the proposal in 2016 Google themselves have kept very quiet indeed. A solitary beam of light shone when Mr. Chinnappa, presented with his leaked comments by the Financial Times, confirmed that the company was indeed moving against the proposed reforms. Disconcertingly, if not for the FT’s investigation there would be no tangible evidence of Google taking action against the reform whatsoever. Asking newspapers to lobby against their interests was a grave error on the company’s part.

Domestic Searchlights

Unlike disinformation, foreign interference and proxy lobbying is not an issue that the EU can tackle by itself. It would be inappropriate for the institution to comment on the matter unless incontrovertible and damning evidence came to light, something that the murky world of lobbying is naturally resistant to providing. Individual MEPs have more latitude to speak out but are obscure and distant.

Solving this problem is the domain of the press. While the claims made are often in themselves be too silly to be newsworthy, their provenance is not. The challenge for journalists is recognising this sooner.

In Britain, The Guardian had a senior moment in June when two articles on the proposals were published within ten minutes of each other. The first was slanted toward opponents and mentioned Google only as the legislation’s target. The second was slanted toward supporters and described YouTube “losing a crucial vote”. Somebody in editorial noticed, as by July the two writers had joined forces to create a much more balanced story.

Other news sources went through a similar process of discovery. The Times embarrassed themselves with a straight-faced ‘meme ban’ story in June, but by July were instead reporting on Google’s “behind-the-scenes campaign”. The BBC transitioned from repeating fake claims (June) to cynicism of Google’s influence (July). Le Monde fared slightly better by identifying Google as a beneficiary of the status quo early on, but still found room to refocus their later reporting on big internet platforms’ role in the campaign, albeit with scepticism over its impact.

Too slow. In this case Google and their proxies miscalculated, breaking cover for a procedural rather than substantial vote. With the press, parliament, and their opponents all now wise to their presence and tactics they will find controlling public opinion much harder come the parliamentary debates in September. But learning from this mistake to play one’s hand closer to the final hurdle is not difficult.

To speed the process of discovery, the tools that already exist to unpick lobbying influence must be strengthened. Websites like LobbyFacts.eu and Transparency International’s IntegrityWatch.eu perform an important role by presenting public data on lobbying activities in a digestible and navigable format, but there are many strands of influence missed by their remit.