These websites may not appear to have deliberately ramped up operations in a way that might instantly undermine social cohesion or resilience in Singapore, said Dr. Shashi Jayakumar, senior director of protection consultancy SJK Geostrategic Advisory.
” But, the websites in question had been pre-emptive nodes that could be triggered as and when required.”
In light of the rising political conflict, he added that those behind information activities will always want an outlet and a chance to control Singaporeans.
Adding UP A Before
According to Assoc Prof. Tan, they are “probably state actors or state-affiliated actors” who frequently use intermediaries like real public relations firms, given the resources required and the effort put into such a long-term technique.
Mr. Ang pointed out that the sites in this instance appear to be owned by public relations firms, which is in line with a design found both nationally and in the East Asian area.
In its Adversarial Threat Report from November next year, Meta highlighted the increase of coordinated inauthentic behavior online, which involves coordinated efforts to control public discourse to achieve a desired outcome.
” When we check and replace these businesses, we focus on behavior more than willing – no matter who’s behind them, what they publish or whether they’re foreign or domestic, “it said.
These systems generally use a newswire services, which facilitates the distribution of media releases to various internet retailers, according to a report from the Joint Analysis Team for the National Cyber Security Center in South Korea.
Public relations firms that run their own websites frequently run these newswire services, directly distributing users ‘ content to affiliated stores after editing it, while keeping track of the outcomes and delivering the benefits to the client.
Function OF Rules
The government on Tuesday said it will review the Foreign Interference ( Countermeasures ) Act ( FICA ), to see how it could be used to take pre-emptive action against websites.
” Regulation is a necessary part of the solution, but it’s not enough,” said Assoc Prof Tan, adding that online education among the people is also most important.
” The government is set the laws in place, but if people believe the falsehoods, next there’s little the laws can do about that.”
Mr. Ang claimed that regulation will always be required to provide platforms and internet service providers with a legal foundation to “assist and act in such circumstances.”
However, regardless of how many websites appear to be displaying it,” we all have a role to play in being careful about what we read and share,” he said.