Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former tech exec, is calling on Facebook, Twitter and Google to implement "robust accountability and transparency standards" in the run-up to the November election. 

He said that should include requirements in his Honest Ads Act, which has yet to pass the Congress.

Warner sent individual letters to the companies' CEOs outlining the ways he thinks they continue to contribute to the spread of "disinformation, viral misinformation, and voter suppression."

The companies appeared to have already gotten the message. Twitter flagged a COVID-19-related tweet from the President as misinformation and Facebook restricted the account of conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin for "repeatedly sharing false news," a charge Levin disputes.

Warner warned of the "imminent risk of bad actors once again weaponizing American-bred social media tools to undermine democracy ahead of the November election."

Warner's committee conducted an extensive investigation into Russian election meddling in the 2016 election, including via social media.

“The pervasiveness of political misinformation on Facebook – and the ways in which your company chooses to amplify it – was on display just this week, when a baseless conspiracy about Vice President Biden was highlighted on Facebook’s own News Tab, a result of Facebook choosing to amplify The Daily Caller as a verified news publisher and fact-checker despite its long track record of promoting false information,” wrote Warner in the letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Warner gave Twitter props for the efforts it has taken to flag content, but wanted more. “I appreciate the leadership Twitter has demonstrated to take steps against the promotion of false, deceptive, and manipulated political content," he wrote CEO Jack Dorsey. "[H]owever, more must be done to secure our political discourse from disinformation on digital platforms like yours."

Warner praised Facebook for another move, its banning of accounts connected to the QAnon conspiracy theory, but with a caveat.

“I’m pleased to see Facebook take action against this harmful and increasingly dangerous conspiracy theory and movement," said Warner, pointing out he had encouraged the company to take the threat of QAnon more seriously since Facebook had a role in its growth. "Ultimately the real test will be whether Facebook actually takes measures to enforce these new policies – we’ve seen in a myriad of other contexts, including with respect to right-wing militias like the Boogaloos, that Facebook has repeatedly failed to consistently enforce its existing policies.”

A report released by the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday (July 25), one of the more bipartisan committees in Congress, says the government should come up with an "overarching cyber doctrine." 

That was one of the recommendations in a voluminous report on Russian election meddling focused on infrastructure.

The report concluded that the U.S. should make it clear to its adversaries, in a sort of "this could mean war" declaration, that it will treat an attack on election infrastructure as a hostile act, whose response may not be limited to cyber activity. 

Further, it said, "[i]deally, this principle of deterrence should be included in an overarching cyber doctrine for the U.S. Government. That doctrine should clearly delineate cyberespionage, cybercrime, and cyber attacks.  

"Further, a classified portion of the doctrine should establish what the U.S. Government believes to be its escalation ladder in the cyber realm—what tools does it have, what tools should it pursue, and what should the limits of cyber war be. "[P]olicymakers should consider what steps the U.S. will need to take to outstrip the capabilities of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other emerging hostile actors in the cyber domain," it said.  

It also suggests the world community needs to get together to talk about cyber norms, "[j]ust as the international community has established norms and treaties about the use of technologies and weapons systems." 

It said the U.S. should lead the conversation about both the norms and the limits of cyber activities (say, declaring tampering with nuclear reactors off limits, as the world did with chemical warfare after the First World War).  

The report was released by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.). 

An independent report on the Russian election interference online released by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee Monday (Dec. 17) revealed an extensive, multi-pronged effort to sew division in America, including efforts to affect U.S. elections, 2016 and beyond, one where Instagram played a major part, though a part Facebook did not reveal to Congress during hearings earlier this year on the topic.

It also concluded there was a concerted effort to suppress the vote of African Americans, to support eventual surprising winner Donald Trump and a "comprehensive anti-Hillary campaign."

The report, from New Knowledge, focused on the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) using data from the committee provided by Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet and others.

That means this report was focused on one of three major forms of interference, what the report called "a sweeping and sustained social influence operation consisting of various coordinated disinformation tactics aimed directly at U.S. citizens, designed to exert political influence and exacerbate social divisions in U.S. culture," conducted by the IRA. The other two are attempts to hack voting systems, and the hack of DNC emails.

Among the key takeaways: "Instagram was a significant front in the IRA’s influence operation, something that Facebook executives appear to have avoided mentioning in Congressional testimony," the report said. It also said that was a shift in IRA strategy after the media started covering their Facebook and Twitter operations.

The report also found that the biggest target of the IRA was African American communities as part of a voter-suppression effort, including sewing confusion about voter rules, trying to get those voters to support a third party, and discouraging voting.

Democrats traditionally get the majority of African American votes, while Putin is on record saying he wanted Republican Donald Trump to win. "The IRA had a very clear bias for then-candidate [Trump] that spanned from early in the campaign," the report said.

New Knowledge said there were clearly voter-suppression narratives being spread on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube "despite statements from Twitter and Facebook debating whether it was possible to gauge whether voter suppression content was present..."

Committee leadership focused on the divisiveness of the effort rather than the election implications of who was targeted.

“Increasingly, we’ve seen how social media platforms intended to foster open dialogues can be used by hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate and subvert public opinion," said Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). "This newly released data demonstrates how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology, and how the IRA actively worked to erode trust in our democratic institutions. Most troublingly, it shows that these activities have not stopped. As we work to address these threats, these reports are proof positive that one of the most important things we can do is increase information sharing between the social media companies who can identify disinformation campaigns and the third-party experts who can analyze them.”

“These reports demonstrate the extent to which the Russians exploited the fault lines of our society to divide Americans in an attempt to undermine and manipulate our democracy," said Committee vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.). "These attacks against our country were much more comprehensive, calculating and widespread than previously revealed. This should stand as a wake up call to us all that none of us are immune from this threat, and it is time to get serious in addressing this challenge.  That is going to require some much-needed and long-overdue guardrails when it comes to social media.  I hope these reports will spur legislative action in the Congress and provide additional clarity to the American public about Russia’s assault on our democracy.”

“These reports powerfully confirm some old news: Russia attacked America in 2016. It used every social media trick and platform, and then some, to sabotage our elections and democracy," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). "The sophistication and scope of this coordinated campaign to stoke racial tensions, suppress voters, and sow division should alarm every American."

"More than two years later, President Trump has still failed to hold Russia accountable for any of this despicable interference, which directly benefited his campaign. Protecting the integrity of our democratic institutions should be non-partisan. In the face of the Trump Administration’s failure to stand up to Russia, my Republican colleagues should muster the will to join us in punishing foreign interference and deterring future threats. Facebook, Twitter, and Google must also recognize their responsibility.”

Trying to determine online friend from foe, and who makes that call, is an enormous, perhaps impossible task, and implicates both online and traditional news and information outlets. But the problem starts with non-neutral social media platforms.

That was a big takeaway from the Hill Wednesday (Aug. 1).

"I just want to be clear, as the author of Sec. 230 [of the Communications Decency Act], the days when these 'pipes' are considered neutral are over because the whole point of 230 was to have a shield and a sword, and the sword hasn't been used," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday. 

Section 230 provides liability carve-outs for the content posted on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook (the "pipes" in this case a designation more often reserved for ISPs, which are regulated) under the theory they were simply the online public square for those ideas and that to make them liable would blow up their business model. 

The witnesses for the Intelligence Committee hearing on "foreign influence operations and their use of social media platforms" did not include any of the major social platforms being discussed. They were instead academics and researchers: Dr. Todd Helmus, senior behavioral scientist, RAND Corp.; Renee DiResta, director of research, New Knowledge; John Kelly, CEO, Graphika; Laura Rosenberger, director, Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States; and Dr. Philip Howard, director, Oxford Internet Institute.

Rosenberger echoed the idea of edge provider non-neutrality: "These platforms are not neutral pipes. Information is not being served up without some kind of algorithm deciding, for most of the platforms, what is served up at the top."

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chair of the committee, said nothing less than the integrity of democratic institutions is at stake. Burr summed up the challenge, asking, "How do you keep the good while getting rid of the bad?" 

Video: UK Politicians Say Facebook Creating 'Crisis in Democracy'

Burr said that was the fundamental question before not just the committee but the American people. He called it a complex problem that "intertwines" First Amendment freedoms, corporate responsibility, regulations, and the right of innovators to profit from their innovation.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) said he thought the takeaway from all the testimony was how difficult the problem is. "We know the problem," he said. "We have bad [foreign] actors putting out bad information. The difficulty is segregating those people from Americans who have the right to do this, whether or not it is disgusting or untrue or with a bad motive. It is protected by the First Amendment."

Who decides who are the bad actors, he asked, and how do you protect the anonymity of, say, activists in authoritarian regimes while trying to fight bad actors? 

"How in the world do you do this?" Risch said. "The takeaway here has got to be that this is just an enormous, if not an impossible, thing."

Related: Pew Survey Finds Users Distrust Social Media Platforms

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) pointed out that the traditional media were also part of the problem, unwittingly amplifying fake news and social media posts.

Rosenberger agreed. She pointed out that a Twitter account created by Russian meddler IRA focused on the NFL "take a knee" controversy had been cited by more than a dozen major news outlets, including the BBC, Huffington Post and Wired.

Collins said reading about such posts in credible sources make people more likely to believe them.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, took aim at the edge, as well, but took some of the edge off.

Related: Sen. Warner Says Facebook Page Deletions Show Ongoing Election Meddling Threat

"All the evidence this Committee has seen to date suggests that the platform companies – namely, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google and YouTube – still have a lot of work to do," Warner said, but then added, sounding like a parent disciplining an unruly child, "I’ve been hard on them – that’s true. But it’s because I know they can do better to protect our democracy. They have the creativity, expertise, resources and technological
capability to get ahead of these malicious actors."

And while Wednesday's hearing focused on academics and researchers, Warner said executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google will be in attendance for a hearing Sept. 5 to provide "the plans they have in place, to press them to do more, and to work together to address this challenge."

Fox News Channel won the cable ratings race around fired FBI director James Comey’s testimony in the Senate Thursday (June 8), with 3.1 million total viewers, just ahead of CNN’s 3.06 million. MSNBC drew 2.74 million viewers.

ABC topped all networks airing the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing live, pulling in 3.3 million total viewers, just barely beating CBS’s 3.29 million, while NBC was at 2.72 million. Univision had 624,000 total viewers.

Related: Comey Says Many Stories About Russia Investigation 'Dead Wrong'

Comey answered questions from the committee about his interactions with President Trump. Special coverage aired from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday.

Cable news network CNN took the race among viewers 25-54, drawing 1.02 million of them, ahead of NBC’s 859,000; ABC’s 854,000; CBS’s 784,000; MSNBC's 633,000; FNC's 600,000; and Univision's 258,000.

Related: President Asserts Comey Testimony Totally Vindicates Him

Former FBI director James Comey said in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that many news stories about the investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election have been dead wrong.

Comey was testifying on private conversations he had with President Donald Trump before being fired and the FBI's Russian investigation.

Comey was asked by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) whether there had been news accounts about "the Russian investigation, about collusion, about this whole event or accusations" that "stunned" him with how wrong they had gotten the facts.

Comey answered yes almost immediately. "There have been many, many stories purportedly based on classified information about lots of stuff, but especially about Russia, that were just dead wrong," Comey said.

WASHINGTON — Last week's rollback of the FCC's privacy rules spurred legislative action in the Minnesota State Senate, while in the U.S. Senate, the Intelligence Committee launched hearings on Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department tapped AT&T to build and maintain the nation's first-responder network. Following are highlights from last week in D.C.

Minnesota Adopts Own Privacy Rules
The Minnesota State Senate had its own exclamation point for Congress’s move to roll back broadband privacy rules. In light of Congress’s approval of the Congressional Review Act, and the president’s expected signoff, the state Senate voted to adopt its own version of the regulations, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

Republicans had argued that state privacy laws would remain in effect even after the Federal Communications Commission’s rules were scrapped. Minnesota’s Senate took that cue and added its own.

An amendment to an economic development bill passed the Minnesota Senate with the help of one Republican vote. A similar amendment was added to the House bill, which must now be reconciled with the Senate bill.

The Minnesota amendment would prevent any ISP with a franchise agreement in the state from collecting personal information from customers “without express written approval from the customer” or from denying service if that approval was not given.

Those were two key elements of the FCC regulations that were rolled back. (Pictured: The Minnesota State Capitol)

9/11 Overhaul
More than 15 years after 9/11, the Commerce Department last week announced that AT&T had been awarded the 25-year, $46.5 billion contract to build out and maintain FirstNet, the interoperable broadband first responder network. AT&T will invest $40 billion, and in exchange will get access to the network during nonemergencies.

The network is being built using 20 MHz of spectrum set aside from the FCC’s 700-MHz auction and the government’s $6.5 billion contribution to the cause came from the FCC’s AWS-3 wireless spectrum auction.

Smaller and rural broadband providers were looking to get in on some of that action. “NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association and its members, network operators in rural areas of the country with substantial assets and infrastructure, are eager to partner with AT&T to leverage this infrastructure and to promote success in the quest to build, operate and maintain a ubiquitous public safety network throughout the country,” said association CEO Shirley Bloomfield after the announcement. Read more here.

Fake News, for Real
Broadband was much on the minds of the Senate Intelligence Committee as it launched a series of hearings on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. That included both cybersecurity issues and the proliferation of fake news that has been amplified by mainstream, and nonmainstream, media chasing the latest story.

Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) cited the media “echo” chamber as partly to blame.

“The Russians employed thousands of Internet trolls and botnets to push out disinformation and fake news at high volume, focusing this material onto your Twitter and Facebook feeds and flooding our social media with misinformation,” Warner said. “[T]his fake news and disinformation was then hyped by the American media echo chamber and our own social media networks to reach — and potentially influence — millions of Americans.” Read more here.

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) cited the media "echo" chamber at the first day of a week-long committee hearing Thursday (March 30) on Russia's attempts to influence the presidential election.

"Russia continually sought to diminish and undermine our trust in the American media by blurring our faith in what is true and what is not," he said in his opening statement. "Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik successfully produced and peddled disinformation to American audiences in pursuit of Moscow’s preferred outcome," he said.

But Warner suggested Russia had help in this country as well.

"The Russians employed thousands of Internet trolls and botnets to push out disinformation and fake news at high volume, focusing this material onto your Twitter and Facebook feeds and flooding our social media with misinformation," he said. "[T]his fake news and disinformation was then hyped by the American media echo chamber and our own social media networks to reach – and potentially influence – millions of Americans."

And as to President Donald Trump's tweets about Russian influence investigations being 'fake news," Warner had a response, though he did not make it personal: "This is not innuendo or a false allegation. This is not fake news. This is what actually happened to us."

The Senate Intelligence Committee is taking the lead after a House Intelligence Committee inquiry into Russian interference was sidelined by the chairman of that committee, Rep. Devin Nunes.

"This investigation is NOT about whether you have a “D” or an “R” next to your name. It is NOT about re-litigating last fall’s election.  It is about clearly understanding and responding to a very real threat," said Warner.

Committee chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said the role of Russia in the 2016 elections was a "critical intelligence question." Most of the committee's investigation will not be in public, but said it was crucial to take the "rare step" of publicly discussing the investigation. He said there would be more open hearings. He said "malign actors are using old techniques and new platforms to undermine our democratic institutions."

The hearing was to essentially provide a baseline understanding of Russian disinformation campaigns and the role of cyber efforts, including social media and other online activities. He said the takeaway from the hearing was that we are all targets of active Russian efforts. "The public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections," he said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and do it right,” said Warner.

Clinton Watts, who was testifying as a senior fellow at the George Washington Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, put what he said was a cyber imbalance between Russia and the U.s. this way: "[Russia] has the best hackers that are out there...We, on the other hand, worry a lot about who we are going to bring into the cyber field because they might have smoked weed one day or they can't pass a security clearance."

Asked by Burr what the takeaway for U.S. media outlets was from that Russian hacking supremacy in terms of disniformation, Watts said: "They [the media] have to improve their editorial processes, and they also have to take a step back from the 'I gotta get it out first' competitive environment."

He said part of the reason the Russian system of disinformation works is that with every outlet racing to get the story out first--in an age when stories can be turned around and posted in minutes--"they put themselves at risk to fall for these sorts of schemes.

He said until that improves, or until "they collectively have some sort of standard that the public or the media holds to itself, we're going to keep seeing them fall for these campaigns," and not just from Russia. "The playbook has been thrown out there, he said, and many other nations are going to pick it up.