Prague, May 20 (CTK) – The activities of various disinformation webs which accompany every important political event will increase before the Czech general election in October, Benedikt Vangeli, head of the Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH), has said in an interview with CTK.
If the disinformation threatens the country’s internal security, his team is ready to react, Vangeli said.
The CTHH has been part of the Interior Ministry since the beginning of the year based on a recommendation by a national security audit aimed to check the country’S readiness for current serious security threats and the resistance of the state in a possible direct confrontation with danger.
The centre focuses on terrorism, extremism, disinformation, security aspects of migration, armed groups and other matters that can seriously endanger the country’S security.
It passes its findings to the police, military and secret services. One section specialises in uncovering disinformation from open sources and its refuting.
Vangeli said the centre develops contacts with foreign partners and builds a network of similar workplaces at ministries that also must be able of discerning hybrid threats and strategically reacting to them.
“Cooperation between individual players is of key importance,” Vangeli explained the building of the network of centres.
The CTHH at the Interior Ministry now has about 20 experts.
Vangeli said a coordinating group has been created in reaction to hybrid threats. It falls under the National Security Council.
Another group focuses on the protection of elections from computer attacks.
A general election will be held in the Czech Republic in October and a direct presidential election in early 2018.
President Milos Zeman criticised the emergence of the CTHH saying that the staff of the institution are not capable of uncovering real disinformation.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka’s (Social Democrats, CSSD) government, on the contrary, supported the establishment of the centre.
Vangeli said verification of disinformation forms 5 to 10 percent of the work of his team.
The centre mainly focuses on internal security which it helps create.
The centre has, for instance, refuted the information that a terrorist attack threatens the country or that the 2013 first direct presidential election was influenced, Vangeli said.
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