Call for denunciation – Wrong energy-saving campaign is fake – a search for clues – News

One should blacken one’s neighbors, it says on the supposed poster: A fake, as it turned out. But where does it come from and who is behind it? A search for clues on the net and with a cyber expert.

In the past few days, images of an alleged federal poster have appeared on the internet, calling for denunciation of neighbors who use too much electricity.

The action is fake. Fedpol is now investigating the case. But before that, the news had been haunting social media for days – and was particularly popular in one country: Russia.

That’s how the news got around

It was probably the reporting on the federal government’s energy strategy that got the ball rolling.

On September 6, “Blick” looked into the question of whether someone who violates the savings targets should expect a prison sentence. The answer: probably not. Nevertheless, international media picked up the story – including the British “Daily Mail” and the Russian state broadcaster “Russia Today”.

Four days later, on the afternoon of September 10, a picture of the supposed authority poster appeared on the Telegram messenger service in Russian-language channels.

A day later, Vladimir Solovyov’s post was shared. A million followers follow what the popular TV presenter has to say.

The news also spread on Twitter – and here, too, Russian voices participated. A portal for Eurasian news with a manageable number of followers was the first to share the news on the afternoon of September 11th. Users in Germany, the Czech Republic and Great Britain then recorded them. Even Russian UN delegate Dmitry Polyansky retweeted the message, but later deleted it.

The newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, the Belarusian news agency Belta and the Slovakian publication Zem&Vek, which is known for conspiracy theories, also took up the topic. The Russian television station Sputnik had already reported on the alleged Swiss denunciation poster on the evening of September 10th.

This is how the false poster was debunked

The responsible Department for the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) then explained to the newspaper “20 Minuten” on Sunday that no such posters existed in this country: the alleged poster campaign is a fake.

in one In an interview with the Ticino television RSI, the Italian investigative journalist David Puente explained how the makers of the fake poster used Photoshop and freely accessible stock images. He received support from several “debunkers” from the OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) community.

Both on Google and on its Russian counterpart Yandex, a reverse image search can be used to find out that the poster site in the wrong DETEC poster is available as a license-free image on the Rawpixel platform. It is not clear where the picture was originally taken and who the author is. Rawpixel left a request from SRF unanswered. The woman on the phone in the supposed poster also comes from an image database.

That’s what the expert says

Lennart Maschmeyer, cybersecurity expert at ETH Zurich, warns SRF not to jump to conclusions about authorship: “Basically, you just have to master Photoshop – which is not that difficult.” The fact that initially only small accounts, with relatively few followers, spread the message does not suggest a targeted campaign.

According to Maschmeyer, Switzerland also plays a subordinate role for Russia and its secret services when it comes to so-called “subversion”, i.e. the targeted spreading of false information. But the expert also says: The action is similar to the actions of Russian actors in the past.

The effect of this action on the Swiss population will be very small.

However, according to Maschmeyer, there is no need to worry about a manipulated public in this country. International studies have shown that almost nowhere in the world is the population’s trust in their own government as great as in this country. “The effect of this action will be very small.”