THE agency established by the French government as the country’s watchdog for foreign election interference reported last week that it had discovered that an Israeli company called BlackCore interfered in last month’s Holyrood election.
Viginum’s report said it had detected BlackCore-linked bot accounts on social media targeting John Swinney and the SNP from January 6 until May 8.
The company’s Scottish operation was part of a wider campaign, targeting politicians and political parties that have been critical of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
BlackCore, the report said, interfered in local elections in France – targeting left-wing candidates – and last year’s New York mayoral contest. It has also operated in the African countries of Togo and Angola.
READ MORE: Everything the French government report says on Israeli firm's meddling in Scotland
A joint investigation by the French newspaper Liberation and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which analysed the digital footprint of the company, discovered BlackCore had developed a toolkit of influence operation systems routed through servers located in Germany, Finland, Lithuania and, critically for Scottish interests, also in the UK.
BlackCore is now the subject of two investigations in France – one by Paris prosecutors and another by the domestic intelligence agency, which is probing who may have commissioned the campaign.
Compare and contrast that with the response in Scotland and the UK to the revelation that someone commissioned a foreign actor to interfere and attempt to influence the outcome of the democratic process in Scotland.
The British press, which has given us detailed daily reports on the Peter Murrell scandal, is remarkably blasé about the issue. Never mind any of that, look over there! Murrell’s expensive cruet sets are the real story.
This is, of course, not the first time that there have been allegations of foreign-operated bot accounts interfering in Scottish political discourse on social media. There have also been reports that Iranian-linked bot accounts are posing as supporters of Scottish independence on Twitter/X.
These accounts fell silent when the Iranian authorities cut off the country’s internet connection following the start of the recent war, which of course means they were inactive during the Scottish election campaign.
However, there is a significant difference between these reports and the revelations about BlackCore.
The Iranian bot accounts are believed to be part of an Iranian state attempt to weaponise the issue of Scottish independence in order to undermine the UK, its enemy.
The Iranians are running this campaign for their own reasons, independently of anyone in Scotland. It’s certainly not welcomed by the SNP or the Scottish independence movement.
The crucial difference is that no-one alleges that anyone, whether that’s an individual or an organisation based in Scotland or elsewhere, commissioned or paid money to the Iranian state to build a network of fake independence supporters on social media.
If there was even the merest hint of such a possibility, the response of the anti-independence media in Scotland would go into paroxysms of anti-SNP hysteria which would make their coverage of the Murrell scandal look sedate and restrained.
Yet the French authorities are alleging that someone or some organisation commissioned an Israeli company to engage in a campaign of electoral subversion in Scotland.
BlackCore is a private company, it doesn’t mount these campaigns for free, it does so because someone paid it to do so.
While it’s possible that BlackCore was acting at the behest of the Israeli government, which if true would raise serious questions for the Westminster government’s failure to protect Scottish elections from foreign interference, it is also entirely reasonable to suspect that whoever commissioned BlackCore may be based in the UK, or even in Scotland.
If some of BlackCore’s servers are situated in the UK, they are subject to the UK’s laws.
Yet in stark contrast to the French authorities, the UK Government, which is responsible for the intelligence services, has no interest in investigating an attempt to undermine the integrity of the democratic process in Scotland even though at least some of this interference was carried out on servers under its own jurisdiction.
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Westminster's reaction to the French report was the ironically Gallic response of shrugging its shoulders.
If someone paid an Israeli company to spread lies and misinformation about a major Scottish political party during a Scottish election, and has servers in the UK, the British intelligence services certainly know who it was.
The people of Scotland deserve to know who it was too. The silence of a Labour Government with deep ties to Israel speaks volumes.
Independently of the BlackCore scandal, it is widely suspected that the Labour Party in Scotland used some of the money which flooded into it from questionable donations to create a bot army of social media accounts which praised Anas Sarwar and attacked the SNP.
Much of the online presence of Reform UK is also believed to come from an army of bot accounts. The use of such bots by political parties on social media represents a conscious attempt to deceive the electorate and hollow out the democratic process.
Holyrood urgently needs to launch an independent inquiry into the use of fake social media accounts by political parties and above all to find out who paid a foreign actor to interfere in the recent Holyrood election.
The integrity of the democratic process in Scotland is a fundamental issue which affects everyone, irrespective of which party they vote for or their stance on the independence question.
It will be highly instructive to see which, if any, of the parties in Holyrood squirms at the prospect of an investigation into who has been lying to the electorate and undermining public trust in politics.
A bot social media account which purports to be a real member of the voting public is by definition a deceptive actor. If we want to restore trust and integrity in politics, a vital step is ensuring that political parties engage honestly with the electorate.
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