Mystery of Russian web searches about Mannheim attack days before it happened
www.thetimes.com
Investigation into the 2024 mass stabbing in the German city raises fears about Kremlin intelligence and hybrid warfare

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[…]

On May 31 [2024], days before the European parliamentary election, an Afghan identified by the [German] authorities as Sulaiman Ataee, 26, attempted to kill a notorious Bavarian anti-Islam activist called Michael Stürzenberger.

As Stürzenberger addressed a small rally in Mannheim [a city in Germany], the knifeman went after him, wounding Stürzenberger and four others and killing a police officer called Rouven Laur. The attacker was then shot by another armed policeman.

Ataee is on trial for the attack in Stuttgart higher regional court, facing one charge of murder and five of attempted murder. He has admitted carrying out the violence and said he saw it as his “religious duty” after being radicalised by the war in Gaza.

In the days before the attack, however, there were internet searches from IP addresses in Russia for phrases such as “terror attack in Mannheim” and “Michael Stürzenberger attack”, according to ZDF’s Terra X History documentary. The same computers were also used to search for publicly available webcams on the central market square in Mannheim where the mass stabbing later took place.

[…]

Konstantin von Notz, a Green Party MP and head of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, said the “intensification” of the attacks in the run-up to the election had been suspicious and the internet searches were grounds for an official investigation.

“I think it’s totally obvious that these digital traces and their evaluation and analysis could be an important part of coming much closer to the truth, and so they should be included,” von Notz said.

[…]

[Edit title for clarity.]

  • Saleh@feddit.orgEnglish
    281·
    17 days ago

    This is likely a completely fabricated story by a marketing guy, who used gullible ZDF journalists for free exposure. He refers to himself as “Internet-Profiler” but is “Director Digital Strategy Consulting” of a digital marketing company called “cyberpromote”. He has no credentials in Forensics and the company normally provides search engine optimization.

    The BND, Germanys exterior intelligence, has voiced skepticism towards the claims and method used by the self proclaimed “expert”. The BND could reproduce similiar “search queries” for other nations too, because google does not give the exact results, but rather related results. Also no other expert was asked about this by the ZDF journalists. They solely rely on the single claims of a single person, who likely uses this as free marketing.

    https://www.n-tv.de/ticker/Sicherheitskreise-zweifeln-an-ZDF-Bericht-ueber-Russland-Bezug-bei-Anschlaegen-article25686014.html

    Deepl:

    However, security authorities doubt the informative value of the search: the results of the trend analysis do not refer to the number of searches actually carried out in a selected region and at a selected time, but to random samples and the probabilities calculated from them. ‘The exact terms entered are not necessarily analysed, but also word stems or even just individual words in the query,’ said the BND spokesperson.

    Trend analyses with search volumes that are too small result in so-called artefacts due to the algorithms, which are not designed for this type of use. ‘The supposed correlation with these artefacts and a reference to Russia can also be reproduced for numerous other countries, which makes an attribution to Russia appear less plausible,’ it said.

    In addition, anonymising VPN use is not reliably taken into account by Google Trends. ‘Search queries therefore allow only limited or no conclusions to be drawn about the actual location of the user,’ said the BND spokesperson, referring to the suspected Russian connection.

    Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

    I strongly recommend not to rush into a conspiracy theory that was most likely sawn by a person with financial interest. We already saw where this leads to during the COVID pandemic.