Hillicon Valley: Facebook extends Trump’s suspension at least until Inauguration Day | Trump deletes tweets that led to Twitter lockout | Federal judiciary likely compromised as part of SolarWinds hack

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Welcome! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech team, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills) and Rebecca Klar (@rebeccaklar_), for more coverage.

 

FACEBOOK SUSPENDS TRUMP: The platform took the unprecedented step Thursday morning, locking the president out of his accounts for at least the next two weeks.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post explaining the decision that President Trump had used the social media site to “condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building.”

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” he continued.

The decision to suspend the president for an extended period is a first, but also was made at a convenient time for Facebook right after Democrats secured control of both chambers of Congress.

Facebook’s move puts pressure on Twitter, which initially suspended Trump for 12 hours but has not signaled whether it will put a longer limit in place.

Read more.

 

DELETED TWEETS: President Trump deleted the tweets that led to his lockout on the platform, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed Thursday.

Based on Twitter’s policy, Trump can gain access to his account within 12 hours of deleting the tweets that caused the temporary suspension. It is the first time Twitter has suspended Trump’s account, prompted by tweets the president posted in response to the riot at the Capitol. 

A spokesperson for the platform would not comment Thursday morning on whether the platform has plans to extend the ban on the president, as Facebook has done. 

Read more here. 

 

THREE STRIKES, YOU’RE OUT: YouTube on Thursday said it is updating its policies to implement a strike-based policy that could lead to accounts being suspended or permanently banned for violating guidelines. 

The Google-owned platform said the update was made “due to the disturbing events that transpired yesterday.” YouTube, along with Facebook and Twitter, had removed the president’s video on Wednesday that repeated disputed claims about the election as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol disrupting Congress’s effort to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. 

Under the new policy, an account with more than three violations within a 90-day period can be permanently suspended from YouTube. 

Read more about YouTube’s update here.  

 

SUSPENDING TRUMP: In addition to Facebook’s extended ban on President Trump’s account, other platforms took action against the president and accounts related to him. 

Snapchat on Thursday said it would be suspending Trump’s account indefinitely after the Capitol riot. 

Stores run by the Trump organization and Trump’s campaign were also taken off Shopify on Thursday for violating the company’s policy of supporting people who condone violence. 

Read more about the Snapchat and Shopify bans. 

 

PERMANENT REMOVAL: Twitter permanently removed pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood’s account, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed Thursday. 

The spokesperson said Wood’s account was permanently suspended for violating Twitter’s rules. The spokesperson also confirmed Wood’s second account, @fightbacklaw, was also removed, but the spokesperson would not share any further details about the suspension. 

Screenshots Wood shared of his tweets on Parler, a social media platform popular among conservative voices, showed him bashing Vice President Pence, calling him a “dark soul” and stating that “a very special place in Hell” awaits the Republican lawmaker. 

Read more here. 

 

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: The U.S. federal judiciary reported this week that it had suffered an “apparent compromise” as part of the recently discovered Russian hack of IT company SolarWinds. 

The announcement adds to a growing list of agencies impacted by the hack, one of the worst cyber incidents in U.S. history, that also include the Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, and Treasury departments. 

Read more here.

 

COMPARING NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS: Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat and likely incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that the nation’s adversaries “gained more” from rioters storming the Capitol than from the recently uncovered massive hack of the federal government. 

“If you walked around the floor of the Capitol and you see the destruction that took place in the last 24 hours, and you see the images around the world of what our democracy looks like, we all have got to step up,” Warner said at a virtual event hosted by the Aspen Institute. 

“The bad guys … gained a lot more long-term out of what happened in the last 24 hours than they are going to gain from this SolarWinds intrusion,” he added. 

Read more about Warner’s comments here. 

 

RESIGNATIONS ABOUND: John Costello, a senior official for intelligence and security operations at the Department of Commerce, on Thursday announced his resignation in the wake of the riots at the U.S. Capitol, placing the blame squarely on President Trump.

“Yesterday’s events were an unprecedented attack on the core of our democracy—incited by a sitting president,” he tweeted in announcing his resignation. “The president has long disregarded and diminished the rule of law and the constitution. Yesterday that culminated in violent sedition against the U.S. Congress for the purposes of overturning a legally recognized and valid election.”

Read more about the resignation here. 

 

CYBER GOES INTERNATIONAL: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday approved the creation of a new office at the State Department to address cybersecurity and emerging technologies.

The new Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) will help lead diplomatic efforts around these topics, including working to prevent cyber conflicts with potentially adversarial nations, and will replace an office eliminated by the agency four years ago.

Read more about the new office here. 

 

Lighter click: Accurate

 

An op-ed to chew on: Biden can do better on China if he learns from Trump’s mistakes

 

NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

We still don’t take online extremism seriously (Gen Mag / Jared Holt)

Apologists for Trump’s mob have tried to falsely blame the coup attempt on antifa (BuzzFeed News / Craig Silverman)

Online researchers scramble to identify Capitol raid participants (The Verge / Russell Brandom)