The EconomistNovember 9th 2019 Europe 47O
n thedeskofa governmentbuild-
ing,a dioramaislaidout.Littlevehi-
clessitbythesideofa road,watchedover
bylittlepolicemen.Ontworecentmorn-
ings,thisscenewasrecreatedinreallife.
Driverscaughtspeedingalongtheroad
betweenTallinnandthetownofRapla
werestoppedandgivena choice.They
couldpaya fine,asnormal,ortakea
“timeout”instead,waitingfor 45 min-
utesoranhour,dependingonhowfast
theyweregoingwhenstopped.
Theaimoftheexperimentistosee
howdriversperceivespeeding,and
whetherlosttimemaybea stronger
deterrentthanlostmoney.Theprojectis
a collaborationbetweenEstonia’sHome
Officeandthepoliceforce,andispartof
a programmedesignedtoencourage
innovationinpublicservices.Govern-mentteamsproposea problemthey
wouldliketosolve—suchastrafficacci-
dentscausedbyirresponsibledriving—
andworkundertheguidanceofan“in-
novationunit”.Teamsareexpectedtodo
allfieldworkandinterviewsthemselves.
“Atfirstit waskindofa joke,”says
LauraAaben,aninnovationadviserfor
theinteriorministry,referringtothe
ideaoftimeouts.“Butwekeptcoming
backtoit.”ElariKasemets,MsAaben’s
counterpartinthepolice,explainedthat,
ininterviews,driversfrequentlysaid
thathavingtospendtimedealingwith
thepoliceandbeinggivena speeding
ticketwasmoreannoyingthanthecost
oftheticketitself.“Peoplepaythefines,
likebills,andforgetaboutit,”hesaid.(In
Estonia,speedingfinesgeneratedby
automaticcamerasarenotkeptonre-
cordandhavenocumulativeeffect,
meaningthatdriversdon’thavetheir
licencesrevokedif theygettoomany.)
Makingdriverswaitrequiresman-
power.Theteamacknowledgesthatthe
experimentisnotcurrentlyscalable,but
hopesthattechnologycouldmakeit so
inthefuture.Publicreaction,though,
wasnotwhattheyexpected.“It’sbeen
verypositive,surprisingly,”saysHelelyn
Tammsaar,whomanagesprojectsforthe
innovationunit.Estonianshavepraised
theideaforbeingmoreegalitarian—
monetaryfinesarenotadjustedaccord-
ingtoincome,asinneighbouringFin-
land,buteveryonehasthesamenumber
ofhoursintheday—andbecausethey
perceivethepunishmentasbeingdi-
rectlyrelatedtotheoffence,ratherthan
anexcusetofillstatecoffers.Thenickoftime
EstoniaTALLINN
Finingroadhogsinminutes,noteurosA
fter jessikka aro, a 38-year-old Finn-
ish journalist, exposed pro-Kremlin
trolls, they started trolling her. They re-
leased her medical history and her home
address. They created a music video mock-
ing her as a “Bond girl”. They claimed, with-
out basis, that she was a prostitute solicit-
ing male bigwigs from the ciaand nato,
who fed her lies about Russia. Some Finns
read and believed the bogus stories online,
then threatened to rape or kill her.
Sexual slander of the sort Ms Aro en-
dured is a hallmark of disinformation cam-
paigns. For the Kremlin, spreading such
lies advances two related aims, says Jakub
Janda, of the European Values think-tank
in Prague. It can help discredit individual
women who criticise the regime, and it can
aggravate political divides in societies it
wants to weaken.
Russian propaganda regularly dismiss-
es female critics in sexist ways. “Women
are targeted in cyberwars the same way
they are in kinetic wars,” says Ms Aro. After
Russian operatives carried out a nerve-
agent attack in 2018 in the British city of
Salisbury, pro-Kremlin sites concocted a
story that Yulia Skripal, a victim of the poi-
soning, had been raped and impregnated.
Russian state tvhas claimed that Ukrai-
nian protesters are plagued with sexual
“psychosis”, and that Ukrainian politicians
are closeted lesbians. When Svitlana Zal-
ishchuk, a female former parliamentarian
in Ukraine, publicly criticised Russia, doc-
tored nude images of her appeared online.
Nina Jankowicz of the Wilson Centre in
Washington has dubbed such tactical
smearing “sexualised disinformation”.
Sex-themed lies pervade pro-Kremlin
fake news. If they are to be believed, ridicu-
lous things are true: that the United Na-
tions mandates sex education which fos-
ters impotence and homosexuality among
the young, or that British government
funding has turned the whole of the Bela-
rusian opposition gay. Another common
narrative is of migrants sexually assaulting
European women. These stories are usual-
ly exaggerated or fabricated—how victims
are forced to apologise to their rapists, how
law enforcement and politicians turn a
blind eye to migrant crimes for fear of be-
ing labelled racist, how “semi-feminised”
Western men are too enfeebled to protect
women from such assaults.
Far-right political groups across Europe
emulate Russia’s disinformation tactics
and its themes. In Spain the populist Vox
Party has shared false statistics about sexu-
al assaults committed by migrants via its
official Twitter account. Ironically Vox—
which has made anti-feminism part of its
platform—frames hard-line stances
against migration as good for women. It is
not always so easy to determine the source
of fakery, though. Ms Jankowicz notes that
often the most convincing co-ordinated
disinformation blurs its origins. Luckily
suspicious patterns offer clues.
One red flag is when lots of pages pub-
lish the same inflammatory messages,
with the same captions, at roughly the
same time. This is, in part, how Avaaz, an
advocacy group, identified networks of
fake accounts spreading far-right mes-
sages in Poland, Britain, Spain, Germany,France and Italy ahead of this year’s Euro-
pean Parliament elections. In April, within
11 minutes, more than two dozen Facebook
pages, many since removed, “indepen-
dently” posted a Polish-language story
with warnings that migrant taxi drivers are
sexual assailants, accompanied by an im-
age of a woman lying limp by the road-
side—a screenshot that was lifted from a
fictional Polish film. And during cam-
paigns for Spain’s election, a blitz of disin-
formation on WhatsApp reached 9.6m peo-
ple, more than a quarter of potential voters.
According to one of the erroneous stories,
Manuela Carmena, then the left-leaning
mayor of Madrid, planned to set up zones
where gay people could have sex in public.
What she had actually said was that the city
should welcome gay people. 7How women are singled out for vile
abuse for political ends
Sexualised disinformation
Naked untruth