From the looks of it, the early warning system Developed by the European Union that was supposed to “prevent election interference” seems to not be working as expected.
Records reveal that the new system has become just storage of information, failed to produce alerts and is now in danger of getting abolished.
The New York Times suggests that the Rapid Action System is “not rapid. There are no alerts. And there’s no system.”
The European Union has been aggressively demanding changes from social media companies to combat “disinformation” which could severely affect candidates performance during the election.
Unfortunately for the EU, efforts to identify and counter disinformation is not only a complicated matter but more importantly it is politically charged.
What was once highly touted network that would notify governments about the efforts of the Russian government before they metastasized is now reduced to a useless, disoriented and ill-functioning system.
Officials declared that they have supported the elections and contributed to its success and yet, deliberating on the system elicited disagreements.
The system has become a mixture of unanalyzed information that has resulted from bulk data collection and that lacks the ability to do anything with it.
What’s off here is the fact that senior official of the EU said that they have received good feedback on the system. Mr. Güllner, the senior counter-disinformation official said that the real benefit of RAS is that it links up all the 28 member states on a common platform. “We agreed we need to be careful,” he said. With each new piece of propaganda, he added, analysts ask “What do we do with this? How do we define it?””
The European Union’s effort has become spotty. In fact, only a third of European nations contributed to it before the election. Those who contributed often simply uploaded random news clippings, or reports from nongovernmental organizations.
The recent Czech report said the R.A.S. is at risk of becoming defunct. Additionally, the report said they are calling for defined standards on what information to share. Russia’s use of European websites and social media accounts, and the rise of populist political parties, whose messages often converge with Russia’s, have only complicated such calculations for the EU.
But those election campaigns are off-limits to European analysts. They cannot call out or debunk propaganda that was produced by European websites.
