NATO countries use cyberattack ploys to mask their own policies

MOSCOW (/TASS): NATO countries use fakes about alleged foreign hackers as ploys to distract attention from their unlawful actions towards their citizens and at the same time foment fears of a foreign threat, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday.

“They [NATO countries] try to completely control their citizens and to make them accept certain stereotypes and behavioral models. And whenever they feel they may be exposed or the exposure is already beginning, they hurry to think up fakes about Russian hackers, Chinse IT specialists, or whatever in order to make their population think there is a threat not from the special services of the EU or NATO countries, but from abroad. Moreover, the people are expected to think there are good reasons for the emergence of ever new such watchdogs … that keep an eye on them,” Zakharova said following reports the Dutch Interior Ministry had created a special center for gathering data about the kingdom’s subjects amid the pandemic.

“They are being told that the task of such agencies is not to keep an eye on them, but to prevent some Russian hackers from meddling in the private lives of the Netherlanders,” Zakharova said, “This mythmaking has reached a point of absurdity.”

Zakharova stressed that such actions were evidence of the existence in the NATO space of the worst police state practices that were very reminiscent of George Orwell’s anti-utopias.