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A texting company run by one of President Donald Trump’s top campaign officials sent thousands of anonymous and targeted text messages urging supporters to demonstrate where the votes were counted in Philadelphia, falsely claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the presidential election.
The messages directed Trump fans to converge on a downtown intersection where hundreds of protesters from opposing candidates’ camps clashed on Thursday afternoon (local time). Pennsylvania is a crucial state on the battlefield where former Vice President Joe Biden stepped forward on Friday and in a later televised speech predicted a victory that would give him the presidency.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrate outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
“This kind of message plays with fire, and we’re very lucky that it doesn’t seem to have generated more conflict,” said John Scott-Railton, principal investigator at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab for online surveillance. Scott-Railton helped locate the source.
The text messages were sent using phone numbers rented from the Opn Sesame texting platform, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition that they were not identified. The CEO of the company is Gary Coby, digital director of the Trump campaign. Provides text messaging services to Republican clients, including the Republican National Committee.
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“ALERT: Radical Liberals and Democrats are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need you! “Read the text, directing recipients to” show your support “on a corner near the Philadelphia Convention Center, where votes were being counted and tension built.
A senior Trump campaign official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the message did not come from the campaign. Because Opn Sesame is used by multiple customers, none of whom the company would identify, it could not be determined exactly who sent the message. Coby declined to comment.
Chris Bray / AP
This image provided by Chris Bray on Friday shows a message he received Thursday through a texting company run by Gary Coby, one of President Donald Trump’s top campaign officials.
Opn Sesame’s connection to the messages was first reported by The Washington Post.
Among those who received the text of the rally was Chris Bray, who lives in rural Bucks County, about 25 miles from Philadelphia.
A registered independent who said he voted for Biden, Bray said he was very surprised to see the message appear on his phone as he never signed up for anything related to the Trump campaign.
“I actually texted several friends to say ‘hey, have you gotten automated text messages like this?'” Bray said Friday. “It was a call to action. It borders on the rhetoric that we’ve been hearing about for months and that’s really dangerous if you get the right people together with a little screw loose, we just don’t know what can happen.”
Later Thursday night, two men were arrested near the convention center for carrying loaded pistols without a permit, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said. District Attorney Larry Krasner said there was no indication they were part of an extremist group. His vehicle had a right-wing conspiracy theory window decal QAnon and an AR-style rifle and ammunition inside, Outlaw said.
The text messages were sent using 13 different phone numbers identified by RoboKiller, a mobile phone app that allows users to block text messages and voice spam, said the company’s vice president Giulia Porter. RoboKiller traced the numbers back to Twilio, a gateway for mass messaging services.
John Minchillo / AP
A Trump supporter stands outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes are being counted.
After being notified, Twilio closed the numbers and said in a statement that the text messages “were sent without consumer opt-out language, which is in direct violation of our policies.” A company spokesman declined to comment further.
Around 80 million political text messages have been sent daily since September in the US, many of those in Trump’s camp echoing his unsubstantiated claims that Democrats were trying to steal the election, said Porter of RoboKiller. They are very specific.
Political texting campaigns can exploit the same flaws in the telecommunications infrastructure that allow robocallers to hide their origin. They can spoof the numbers they are calling from and automatically send thousands of text messages with a single mouse click.
Opn Sesame has made millions as the hub of texting efforts for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in this election cycle, said a Republican online strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of political retaliation.
Facebook and Twitter cracked down on misinformation in the lead-up to the elections, making texting and robocalls more attractive to those looking to spread false and sometimes dangerous messages directly to voters via Their phones.
“The extent to which these companies rely on loopholes and the lack of regulation in this space has really blown me away,” said Sam Woolley, a researcher on misinformation and computational propaganda at the University of Texas at Austin.
“They really want to circumvent the need to rely on social media companies, so they are using these private mechanisms,” he added. “They’re using technology that we don’t think is particularly new, texting, calling, but using it.” in ways that are very Machiavellian. “
