Clean E-Reputation

Radio Télévision Suisse - Transcript

00:00:03,140 VO: -Imagine a world where corrupt politicians and crooked entrepreneurs have a magic tool at their disposal to erase unwanted posts published about them. Imagine a world where they could, with a simple click, erase their name from scandals and crimes. Imagine a world where they could rewrite their reputation by fake praiseworthy stories. This world exists. And Eliminalia sells it to its customers in its ads. This e-reputation company has about 1,500 clients.

0’05 Source: Eliminalia adverts

00:00:43,222 Eliminalia spokesperson: -Eliminalia is a company specialised in the suppression of undesirable web content. With Eliminalia, it's possible to delete all information that harms your reputation online.

00:00:55,162 VO: -Behind the smile are fraudulent technical means and threats that allow them to delete the investigative work of journalists. Welcome to the world of digital hitmen.

1’10 Title: Clean E-Reputation

00:01:17,151 VO: -In Paris, dozens of investigative journalists have gathered together to fight back. Welcome to the Story Killers project. An investigation conducted by RTS and Forbidden Stories, a group of reporters whose goal is to continue the work of threatened colleagues. To confront Eliminalia and reveal their methods, we have a great advantage: thousands of internal documents of the e-reputation company have been hacked and leaked. In these documents are the names of Eliminalia's 1,500 customers. Among them, many are criminals. Here are the top 10 in the world.

00:02:03,962 Corruption

00:02:05,741 Property scam

00:02:08,137 Fraud

00:02:09,917 Sexual exploitation of minors

00:02:12,830 Mexican drug cartel

00:02:15,425 Arms trafficker

00:02:17,487 Former torturer

00:02:19,743 Wanted by Interpol

00:02:22,093 Alleged assassin

00:02:24,741 An artist convicted for sexual intercourse with minors

00:02:33,705 VO: The Swiss clients are 43 in total. These individuals have been scrutinized by Swiss media investigations and other international newspapers. Yet on the Internet, error messages are only to be found now. There is nothing left on these people, nothing about their connection with the mafia nor their real estate scam. To clean up the Internet, Eliminalia uses state-of-the-art computer tools. Paul-Olivier Dehaye is a mathematician. He was among those who helped to reveal the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He seems the right person to explain Eliminalia's methods. The drowning technique is the first trick. Eliminalia has created more than 600 fake news sites. They look like online newspapers with articles, news and videos. However, everything is fake.

00:03:31,435 Reporter: -How does it work?

00:03:34,271 Paul-Olivier: -Take for instance an article like this one about a drug dealer. A real site documenting everything he did. Now you'll take other websites, copy their content, and pretend that we are dealing with a real sports site. All you have to do is change the footballer's name with the drug dealer's name. When you'll be looking for his name, you'll discover he can play soccer, or he is a prize-winning poet. You drown the real news in fake news. It's easy especially when drug traffickers are willing to pay big money for this.

3’48 Paul-Olivier Dehaye, Mathematician, founder of PersonalData.io

00:04:18,142 VO: -The second technique, is the use of fraudulent copyright claims. Take this article on Chilean torturers written on August 26, 2013. To delete it, Eliminalia copies the article and publishes it on one of its news websites. They change the publication date to earlier than August 18, 2013, The new article now appears older than the original. Then, a complaint is filed for alleged copyright infringement. A request to have the original article removed is filed. A few days later, Eliminalia deletes the copy. The trick is over, everything has been deleted.

00:05:02,301 Paul-Olivier: -What is important is that on the other side there are journalists who are working to tell these stories. Other people work to delete them. They're not big teams. You have technically skilful people getting together with little morals, who find customers, and simply delete content. It's not that difficult in a niche market.

00:05:34,202 VO: -These customers pay hundreds of thousands of francs to have their past cleaned up. But how legal are these unethical practices? To answer this question, we contacted lawyer Sébastien Fanti, an expert in technology law.

00:05:52,343 Sébastien: -They are tricksters who try to get around the right to be forgotten as defined by the law. These are people who have not legally obtained the right to erase their past. They will create a smoke cloud so that the original information will be relegated to the background. Typically to the fourth page of a Google result no one will read.

6’00 Sébastien Fanti, Specialist lawyer in technology law

00:06:19,951 VO: -The right to be forgotten is the right to ask for the removal from the Internet of compromising information from one's past. A kind of second chance for people who have committed minor offences and who have paid their debts to society.

00:06:33,624 Sébastien: -There are criteria that have been created. They depend on the seriousness of the offence, the reoffending risk. Whether you have committed several offenses in a row. Whether you are a public figure or not, whether you have exercised responsibilities. It is easier for an average person to be forgotten than for a minister.

00:07:01,269 VO: -For the lawyer, the right to be forgotten does not justify the deleting of these articles. Eliminalia, however, guarantees the contrary.

00:07:10,386 Sébastien: -There's no way this company can only act legally. No one can guarantee this kind of results. This is the work of digital hitmen. They will remove any opposition given a certain fee.

00:07:26,882 Reporter: -Do they risk anything legally?

00:07:29,747 Sébastien: -Of course they do. If they lied, cheated, stole information, they risk being brought before court.

00:07:46,629 VO: -To fully understand the dangers induced by these digital hitmen, We go to Venezuela. This is where Eliminalia seeks to suppress the work of journalists for the account of a private bank in Geneva. The investigations of Patricia Marcano have been the target of Eliminalia's computer techniques. More seriously, the company also threatened the journalist directly. She had to delete her articles or face legal action.

00:08:15,938 Patricia: -We felt threatened. It's scary. They wanted to sue me.

00:08:26,190 VO: -In Venezuela, this kind of threat is sometimes very meaningful. Many journalists have had to flee the country for their safety.

00:08:34,587 Patricia: -Eliminalia's mission was censorship, pure and simple. The goal was to prevent information of public interest from being available to readers. It's like hiding the truth and promoting impunity.

8’41 Patricia Marcano, Investigative journalist, Armando Info, Venezuela

00:08:52,821 VO: -Patricia has been investigating for several years the Swiss bank CBH, a private bank in Geneva.

00:09:02,120 Patricia: -The article that CBH did not like was part of a series of investigations that we had called "Swiss connection". This is a series of articles on corruption that has emerged thanks to data leaks from within the CBH bank. What particularly displeased the Geneva bank was the part about the banker Charles Henri D, and how he managed to recruit wealthy clients in Venezuela.

00:09:31,314 VO: -The company deleted articles about the CBH bank. It cleared the bank's name from corruption scandals in Venezuela and court cases in other countries. Some articles regarding the bank and FINMA disappeared. The Swiss financial watchdog gave several reprimands to CBH for failure in the fight against money laundering.

00:09:54,260 Patricia: -This corruption money, is public money that has been embezzled. It should have been used differently than landing in an international bank, in Switzerland at the CBH bank.

00:10:16,768 VO: -Back in Switzerland, we tried to contact the private bank CBH. In front of the Geneva establishment, our camera irritates them. A security guard asked us to follow him inside. A rather surprising method of intimidation for Switzerland. We had to wait alone in a room. After waiting a long while, we were allowed to leave without explanation. By e-mail, the CBH bank sent us the following message.

00:10:52,536 Letter, onscreen: -"CBH considers that including its name in an article related to Eliminalia would constitute an attack on its reputation. The bank will react against this attack by all legal means available."

00:11:03,837 VO: -The Geneva bank would have signed a contract with a company of e-reputation for more than 200,000 francs. The latter has subcontracted the work to Eliminalia. The Geneva bank claims to know nothing about this process.

00:11:21,226 Letter, onscreen: -"The contract is limited to the implementation of CBH rights in accordance with prevailing legislation. CBH has never accepted that part or the whole of the mission could be subcontracted to Eliminalia."

00:11:32,781 Sébastien: -It seems to me a very borderline case that a bank submitted to a legal authorization, the FINMA, may use such a company. If the bank has been subject to foreign proceedings, or any enforcement procedures, the regulatory authority is watching how it is working. If the company is indeed using these technologies, it is subject to sanction by the FINMA because the bank must have a perfect reputation. Using these methods to conceal true information, doesn't seem an option to me. And that would be extremely risky in terms of legal standards. If the regulator knew that it did so, the bank would be held accountable.

00:12:28,164 VO: -To this day, FINMA has not yet analyzed the confidential documents, nor reacted to these revelations. We did not manage to obtain an interview with Eliminalia. There are 3 offices in Switzerland, but its Spanish founder, Didac Sanchez, did not want to answer to our questions. On the Internet, there are only glowing articles and advert-like videos of the young boss.

13’00 Source: YouTube, El Secreto del Éxito Dídac Sánchez

00:13:04,629 VO: His e-reputation company seems to have done its job well. No doubt Eliminalia is going to try to make these revelations disappear too. Any journalist investigation can be a target for such misinformation companies. For whoever controls the past, also controls the future.

13’29 Credits:

François Ruchti
Dafina Gervalla
Stéphane Saporito
Frédéric Delaloye
Bruno Rochet
Fanny Lelong
Benoît Mayer