Shillong, October 24: Canada has uncovered a disinformation campaign believed to be orchestrated by China, specifically targeting its politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The campaign, known as “spamouflage,” involved a relentless stream of online posts designed to undermine Canadian Members of Parliament. According to reports quoting the Foreign Ministry in Ottawa, this campaign was executed to quell criticism of Beijing.
As per IANS, it’s important to note that China has consistently denied any involvement in Canadian affairs.
Global Affairs Canada, responsible for monitoring foreign state-sponsored disinformation efforts, detected the “spamouflage” campaign in August. The campaign gained momentum during the first weekend of September.
It featured a sophisticated bot network that inundated the social media accounts of Canadian politicians with thousands of comments in both English and French, the country’s official languages. These comments accused various politicians of criminal and ethical misconduct, allegedly at the behest of a critic of the Chinese Communist Party in Canada.
What’s particularly concerning is that this campaign also incorporated “deep fake” videos, which are digitally altered through artificial intelligence, targeting individuals. This revelation is just the latest in a series of claims made by Canadian intelligence agencies and officials, all suggesting that Beijing is actively interfering in Canada’s electoral processes.
A “spamouflage” campaign is a strategy that involves using a network of either new or hijacked social media accounts to disseminate propaganda messages across various platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
These same accounts were also responsible for spreading disinformation regarding the wildfires in Hawaii in August, falsely attributing their cause to a secret US military “weather weapon.”
The scope of the campaign was broad, reaching beyond Prime Minister Trudeau to include Conservative opposition leader Pierre Polievre and several members of Trudeau’s cabinet.