An anonymous reader cites the Guardian's report. The US special envoy on the issue said a global coalition of democracies is being formed to protect their societies from disinformation campaigns by foreign governments. James Rubin, special envoy for combating non-state propaganda and disinformation at the U.S. Department of State's Global Engagement Center (GEC), said the coalition is “defining information operations and the rights that other governments have.” He said he hoped to agree on a “definition of common opinion.” If we disagree with their opinion. ” The US, UK and Canada have already signed a formal framework agreement, and the US government expects more countries to join.
GEC focuses exclusively on disinformation by foreign powers. Apart from attempts to develop a global strategy, it works to expose certain covert disinformation operations, such as Russia's operations in Africa to discredit US health services. The United States, United Kingdom and Canada this month signed a framework to counter foreign manipulation of states, aimed at combating disinformation as a national security threat that requires a coordinated response from governments and civil society. “Now is the time for a collective approach that builds a coalition of like-minded countries committed to responding to information operations and strengthening resilience to the threat of foreign operations,” the framework states. We also encourage information sharing and collaborative data analysis tools to identify foreign secret disinformation.
Rubin, a highly experienced U.S. government official and journalist who has worked with diplomats such as Madeleine Albright in the past, spent his first year as special envoy on a war on disinformation. He admitted that it was one of the most intellectually taxing periods due to the complex definitions. On the continuum between hostile opinion and disinformation, he sought to identify where and how the government could intervene without restricting free speech. The principle he arrived at was deception by foreign powers. “In principle, every government should be free to express its views, but it should also recognize who it is,” he said in an interview. “We want to promote more fact-based information, but we also want to find ways to label information operations that are produced by the Chinese government and the Kremlin, but which they do not approve of. At the end of the day, that's all I care about. We know what we can do right now without interfering with press freedom. We are not asking for such covert misinformation to be removed, but for a way to find and label the source. ”
