Hillicon Valley: Senate panel votes to subpoena Big Tech executives | Amazon says over 19,000 workers tested positive for COVID-19 | Democrats demand DHS release report warning of election interference
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Welcome! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech reporter, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills), for more coverage.
SUBPOENA THREAT ACTIVATED: The Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to subpoena the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) had threatened to subpoena Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai last week but was required to hold a vote after ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) opposed the plan.
The unanimous vote will compel the CEOs to appear for a hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which is considered the bedrock of the modern internet.
The 1996 law, which has come under increased scrutiny since President Trump targeted it in an executive order in May, gives internet companies immunity from lawsuits for content posted on their sites by third parties and allows them to make “good faith” efforts to moderate content.
Wicker made it clear during Thursday’s executive business meeting that the hearing is required because of allegations of anti-conservative bias on their platforms.
Conservative voices actually dominate many platforms on social media including Facebook, the most powerful of them all.
AMAZON WORKERS HIT HARD BY COVID: More than 19,000 Amazon workers contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic, the company revealed in an update on testing released Thursday.
It is the first time Amazon has publicly shared case numbers among its more than 1.3 million Amazon and Whole Foods Market front-line employees across the U.S.
The company said in a press release that the 19,816 positive tests means the rate of infection among employees was 42 percent lower than expected, compared to the “general population rate” in the U.S.
Amazon also offered updates on its testing capacity, sharing a goal of 50,000 tests per day across 650 facilities by November.
The release of the data comes a day after an NBC News report detailed a lack of transparency in Amazon’s coronavirus response and after employees criticized the company’s handling of the virus.
Warehouse workers have gone on strike at multiple facilities to protest implementation of safety measures. The company has fired several of those employees, as well as ones on the technology side of the operation who have spoken up.
DEMOCRATS DEMAND MORE PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY: A group of key Senate Democrats on Thursday demanded that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) publicly release a bulletin that said a foreign actor is working to undermine faith in voting by mail this fall.
The senators, who included Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), said acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf should release the “widely distributed” Sept. 3 analysis compiled by the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A).
“This document demonstrates that a foreign actor is attempting to undermine faith in the US electoral system, particularly vote-by-mail systems, in a manner that is consistent with the rhetoric being used by President Trump, Attorney General [William] Barr, and others,” the senators wrote in a letter to Wolf.
“The document has been marked ‘Unclassified/For Official Use Only,’ meaning that its release would not pose a risk to sources and methods and that it has already been widely distributed around the country through unclassified channels,” the senators added. “It is now critical and urgent that the American people have access to this document so that they can understand the context of Trump’s statements and actions.”
Other lawmakers who signed the letter include Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; Senate Rules Committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar (Minn.); and Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
DHS did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the letter.
The document the senators were referring to was likely the assessment, first reported by ABC News last month, where I&A determined that Russian media and other groups were intentionally “amplifying” concerns around mail-in voting to undermine U.S. elections.
LAWMAKERS TARGET DISINFO: Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and John Katko (R-N.Y.) on Thursday introduced legislation intended to cut down on foreign disinformation on social media ahead of the election.
The Foreign Agent Disclaimer Enhancement (FADE) Act targets influence campaigns by requiring political content on social media to include a disclaimer if it is produced or sponsored by foreign groups, with the disclaimers remaining if the post is shared.
The legislation would also expand language in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to clarify that political ads and other content funded by a foreign source posted to social media that is meant to influence U.S. citizens must also be reported to the Department of Justice. FARA currently generally does not extend to social media posts.
The Department of Justice would also be required to notify social media platforms if posts that fall under the bill do not have disclaimers, with the agency then directing the social media groups to remove the posts.
Spanberger, a former CIA officer, said Thursday that “our nation is always under siege from foreign adversaries who seek to sow division and spread false information. However, social media networks remain especially vulnerable to foreign campaigns.”
“Disclaimers on social media posts are often non-existent, particularly when content is shared or linked,” Spanberger said in a statement. “This means that social media can serve as an ideal rumor mill for disinformation, as nefarious actors are able to leverage the rapid transfer of information from person to person.”
DON’T PAY UP: The Treasury Department on Thursday issued two advisories highlighting the dangers of ransomware cyberattacks and warning against paying ransoms demanded by hackers.
Both the agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCIN) issued alerts around ransomware attacks, which have been increasingly widespread over the past two years and have ramped up during the COVID-19 crisis.
“Cybercriminals have deployed ransomware attacks against our schools, hospitals, and businesses of all sizes,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Justin Muzinich said in a statement. “Treasury will continue to use its powerful tools to counter these malicious cyber actors and their facilitators.”
OFAC warned that paying a ransom demanded by hackers in order to gain back access to encrypted systems could lead to federal repercussions.
“Demand for ransomware payments has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as cyber actors target online systems that U.S. persons rely on to continue conducting business,” OFAC wrote in its advisory. “Companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber actors on behalf of victims, including financial institutions, cyber insurance firms, and companies involved in digital forensics and incident response, not only encourage future ransomware payment demands but also may risk violating OFAC regulations.”
FinCEN issued a second advisory to provide information on various types of ransomware attacks, red flag indicators of attack, and how to report and share information if attacked.
TWITTER TAKEDOWN: Twitter removed approximately 130 accounts linked to Iran that were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first presidential debate, the company said Wednesday.
The social media network said it removed the accounts “based on intel” provided by The FBI.
“We identified these accounts quickly, removed them from Twitter, and shared full details with our peers, as standard,” the company tweeted.
Twitter said the posts from the removed accounts had “very low engagement and did not make an impact on the public conversation.”
FACEBOOK CRACKS DOWN ON QANON: Facebook is taking steps to hide content from groups affiliated with QAnon, a conspiracy theory that revolves around President Trump fighting a group of highly connected public figures including a secret global cabal of child traffickers.
The company announced in a blog post on Thursday that it will ban all advertising that expresses “praise, support or represent militarized social movements and QAnon.”
It also announced that users who follow groups restricted under the company’s past policies aimed at tamping down on conspiracy groups will see posts from restricted pages far lower down their news feed than before.
“On September 16, we started down-ranking content in the Pages and Groups that have been restricted but not removed. Now, people who are members of Groups that have been restricted and follow Pages that have been restricted, will see content from these Groups and Pages further down in their News Feed,” said Facebook.
“We are taking steps to address evidence that QAnon adherents are increasingly using the issue of child safety and hashtags like #savethechildren to recruit and organize. Starting today, we will direct people to credible child safety resources when they search for certain child safety hashtags,” the company continued.
FACEBOOK CHANGES AD POLICY, TOO: A Facebook official on Wednesday announced changes to the platform’s ad policy, pledging that the site would remove political ads that baselessly link certain kinds of voting to allegations of widespread voting fraud, such as false claims about mail-in voting.
The move comes as President Trump has regularly made claims without evidence that the practice of mail-in voting leads to widespread election fraud, and goes into effect immediately, according to the company’s director of project management, Rob Leathern.
“As we get closer to Election Day we want to provide further clarity on policies we recently announced. Last week we said we’d prohibit ads that make premature declarations of victory. We also won’t allow ads with content that seeks to delegitimize the outcome of an election,” he tweeted.
“For example, this would include calling a method of voting inherently fraudulent or corrupt, or using isolated incidents of voter fraud to delegitimize the result of an election,” Leathern added.
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION ON 5G: A group of 19 senators is calling on President Trump to bolster private-sector deployment of 5G, expressing concerns about a request for information from the administration that they felt contradicted a free-market strategy.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet, led a letter to Trump on Wednesday following a recent request for information (RFI) released by the Pentagon regarding 5G.
“Rather than rely on private industry and market forces to foster multiple, facilities-based 5G networks, the RFI seeks information on a government-managed process for 5G networks,” the senators wrote. “Nationalizing 5G and experimenting with untested models for 5G deployment is not the way the United States will win the 5G race.”
GOP Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), John Cornyn (Texas), Ron Johnson (Wis.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.), among others, also signed the letter.
The Defense Department issued the RFI on Sept. 18 from industry, seeking insight into accelerating spectrum sharing and 5G deployment.
GOOD NEWS FOR TIKTOK (FOR ONCE): TikTok was again the highest earning social media app in the last three months, despite uncertainty over the fate of the popular video sharing platform in the U.S. due to challenges posed by the Trump administration.
It was the second consecutive quarter TikTok ranked above other non-game apps, according to data released by marketing intelligence group Sensor Tower on Thursday.
YouTube, Tinder, Tencent Video and Disney+ round out the top five grossing non-game apps in the last three months, according to the data, which does not include revenue from in-app advertising.
TikTok was also the most downloaded nongame app in the third quarter, followed by Facebook, Zoom, WhatsApp and Instagram.
President Trump has pushed to overhaul how the Chinese-owned platform operates in the U.S., due to potential national security concerns. The administration’s concerns around TikTok are related to the Trump administration’s larger efforts to clamp down on Chinese tech companies amid increasing tensions between China and the U.S.
SNAPCHAT GETS OUT THE VOTE: More than 1 million people have registered to vote this year through the Snapchat app, the company said Thursday.
The number of voters who registered through Snapchat’s in-app tool, in partnership with TurboVote, is already more than double the approximately 450,000 voters that registered through the app during the 2018 midterm elections.
More than half of the 1 million people who registered to vote on Snapchat did so in less than a month. The company said 400,000 had registered to vote as of mid-September.
Fifty-six percent of people who registered to vote through Snapchat this year are first-time voters, and about 65 percent are aged 18 to 24, a Snapchat spokesperson estimated according to data from TurboVote.
AMAZON PULLS ‘STAND BY’ MERCHANDISE: Amazon and other online stores on Wednesday reportedly stopped the sale of shirts and other products displaying “stand back” and “stand by,” as well as the logo for the far-right extremist group Proud Boys.
Groups started selling the products after President Trump said the two phrases during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Trump’s comments came after moderator Chris Wallace asked if Trump would be willing to condemn white supremacists.
The president responded, “sure,” although he never explicitly condemned the group after this.
“Almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” Trump responded.
Trump asked Fox News’s Wallace to “give me a name,” then Biden chimed in and noted the Proud Boys, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group.
“Proud Boys — stand back and stand by,” Trump said.
Following the debate, T-shirts, tank tops and other products with the verbiage and the Proud Boys insignia appeared on Amazon and Teespring, a website that allows users to create and sell their own merchandise.
Lighter click: Choosing to believe this is true 🙂
An op-ed to chew on: How to fight the onslaught of election disinformation
NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:
At White House’s urging, Republicans launch anti-tech blitz ahead of election (Politico / Cristiano Lima and John Hendel)
Bird Is Quietly Luring Contract Workers Into Debt Through a New Scooter Scheme (OneZero / Amy Martyn)
Democratic Party leaders are “banging their head against the wall” after private meetings with Facebook on election misinformation (Recode / Shirin Ghaffary)
As QAnon grew, Facebook and Twitter missed years of warning signs about the conspiracy’s violent nature (Washington Post / Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin)
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