The 2nd Chechnya-War In the summer of 1999 between 1.200 and 2.000 Muslim rebels from Chechnya fell into Dagestan. Rumors say that Russian soldiers closed their eyes pretending not to see anything. During the fightings that started soon, many persons got killed. The hole issue was blamed on Chechnya. At that time there were rumors that there would be heavy bombing in Moscow in September. And there was. Those two things together brought back the hatred against the Chechnya rebels. The 2nd War between Russia and the Muslim country began. While the first war was lost at home, because the Russians, especially mothers, did not understand why their sons should fight against Chechnya, this time the atmosphere was completely different. In the cities 85% and all over Russia 65% of the Russian population agreed with the war. This time the war was a national issue, a legitimate defense. The media emphasized this. Alexander Zilin, a journalist, found out that the truth was far from the one presented in the media: First of all there was no evidence that the Moscow-bombings were organized by Chechnyans. On the contrary it is more than probable that the crimes were organized by a governmental institution for national security. The disinformation was part of the strategy to make the population support another war with Chechnya. The media were part of the story, maybe without knowing. They kept on the government's and army's side, showing only special and patriotic parts of the war. For example the number of dead Russian soldiers was held back. The U.S.-behavior on this: The USA would like to intervene but they are afraid of ruining the weak relation to Russia. For years the main topic of U.S.-politics has been the struggle against terrorism. Now Russia pretends to be fighting terrorism. How could it be criticized for that? The reason for this war is rather cynical: it worked as a public relations-campaign for Vladimir Putin, candidate for the president's elections in. When Putin came into power as minister-president of Russia in August 1999, opinion polls gave him 2% for the elections in summer 2000. By the end of November he got already 46%! And finally he won. The public relations war worked well. At the same time a propaganda-campaign against his rival Y. Primakov (98), formerly the most popular candidate, was spreading lies and bad rumors. Opinion-polls showed very fast that he had lost the elections because of this black propaganda, even before the elections took place.

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Further Tools: Photography Art has always contributed a lot to disinformation. Many modern tools for disinformation are used in art/photography. Harold D. Lasswell once stated that propaganda was cheaper than violence. Today this is no longer true. Technology has created new tools for propaganda and disinformation - and they are expensive. But by now our possibilities to manipulate pictures and stories have gone so far that it can get difficult to tell the difference between the original and a manipulation. Trillions of photographs have been taken in the 20th century. Too many to look at, too many to control them and their use. A paradise for manipulation. We have to keep in mind: There is the world, and there exist pictures of the world, which does not mean that both are the same thing. Photographs are not objective, because the photographer selects the part of the world which is becoming a picture. The rest is left out. Some tools for manipulation of photography are: retouch cutting colouring blue box montage morphing (71) wet operation (73) neutralizing (74) masks (75) damnatio memoriae (78) Some of those are digital ways of manipulation, which helps to change pictures in many ways without showing the manipulation. Pictures taken from the internet could be anything and come from anywhere. To proof the source is nearly impossible. Therefore scientists created on watermarks for pictures, which make it impossible to "steal" or manipulate a picture out of the net.

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Center for Democracy and Technology The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. With expertise in law, technology, and policy, the Center seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies. The Center is dedicated to building consensus among all parties interested in the future of the Internet and other new communications media. http://www.cdt.org

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Chappe's fixed optical network Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores. Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best. Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the Roman smoke signals network and Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system. For more information on early communication networks see Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks.

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