Hillicon Valley: Big Tech hearing the most partisan yet | Rubio warns about foreign election interference | Trump campaign site briefly hacked
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BIG TECH GOES TO CAPITOL HILL…AGAIN: The chief executives of Silicon Valley’s most influential tech companies fielded markedly partisan questions Wednesday in a high-profile hearing less than a week before an election where their content moderation decisions have become a campaign issue.
Members of the Senate Commerce Committee largely stayed away from the advertised purpose of the hearing – discussing a federal statute that provides a liability shield for internet companies for content posted on their sites by third parties and lets them make “good faith” efforts to moderate content – and instead used the venue to engage in political attacks.
For Republicans, most of those attacks were focused on lobbing unfounded accusations of anti-conservative bias at the witnesses: Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) set the tone for Republicans when he spent his opening round of questioning needling Twitter’s Jack Dorsey about his company’s decisions on when to slap labels on tweets.
“Mr. Dorsey, your platform allows foreign dictators to post propaganda, typically without restriction, yet you typically restrict the president of the United States,” Wicker said, pointing to tweets by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei that remain on the platform.
Dorsey, in defending his company’s policies, noted that Twitter has attached labels to Khamenei’s posts, just like it has with some of Trump’s. But unlike Trump, some of Khamenei’s tweets have been removed.
The Twitter CEO did, however, acknowledge his company mishandling of a recent New York Post story about Hunter Biden with dubious sourcing. Twitter initially prevented the spread of the article on its platform, sparking particularly harsh criticism from conservatives.
In a heated exchange Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked Dorsey: “Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?”
Dorsey said that’s not what Twitter is doing, adding that his company wants to be more transparent about its policies.
Several Republicans at the hearing focused on the ideological makeup of Silicon Valley, suggesting the deck is stacked against conservatives. Zuckerberg said his staff might skew left and Pichai said Google was probably the same, based on the areas they recruit from. Dorsey said he didn’t ask potential hires about their political affiliations.
All three insisted that the personal opinions of their workers did not affect platform moderation decisions.
ELECTION DAY WARNINGS: Acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Wednesday said that adversaries were working to interfere in U.S. elections either on or after Election Day, adding to recent warnings from other top federal officials about election threats.
“WARNING. The bulk of disinformation attacks prepared by our adversaries were designed for the days before & just after Election Day,” Rubio tweeted. “They may come faster than they can be spotted & called out, so word to the wise, the more outlandish the claim, the likelier it’s foreign influence.”
A spokesperson for Rubio did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on Rubio’s tweet.
A spokesperson for Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) told The Hill that Warner “concurs wholeheartedly with Senator Rubio’s tweet.”
Rubio’s warning comes a week after Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, alongside other top officials including FBI Director Christopher Wray, announced that Russia and Iran had gained access to U.S. voter registration data and in Iran’s case were using it to target potential U.S. voters with threatening emails.
Rubio and Warner issued a joint statement following the announcement underscoring Senate unity around combating foreign election interference threats.
DON’T EVER COUNT OUT IRAN: Microsoft on Wednesday reported that an Iranian hacking group had attempted to target high-ranking attendees of international security conferences, including the upcoming Munich Security Conference.
Tom Burt, the corporate vice president of Customer Security and Trust at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post that the Iranian hacking group known as “Phosphorus” had “masqueraded” as conference organizers in order to target around 100 high profile individuals who are set to attend the Munich Security Conference or the Think 20 (T20) Summit in Saudi Arabia.
The hacking group sent phishing emails, written in English, inviting recipients to attend the conferences and giving details on travel logistics and potential remote sessions. According to Burt, the group was able to successfully compromise the accounts of “several victims,” including those belonging to former ambassadors and other foreign policy experts.
“We believe Phosphorus is engaging in these attacks for intelligence collection purposes,” Burt wrote. “We’ve already worked with conference organizers who have warned and will continue to warn their attendees, and we’re disclosing what we’ve seen so that everyone can remain vigilant to this approach being used in connection with other conferences or events.”
The annual Munich Security Conference is due to take place over three days in February next year, while the T20 Summit will take place beginning later this week.
TRUMP SITE TARGETED: The Trump campaign’s website suffered a brief, apparent hack on Tuesday evening, though the campaign said no important data was exposed.
“Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack,” Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement.
“There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored,” Murtaugh added.
The campaign did not immediately provide additional details regarding the incident.
Screenshots taken before the site was restored showed a message reading “this site was seized,” with a message apparently from hackers stating, “the world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded daily by president donald j trump. it is time to allow the world to know truth.”
The message claimed that those behind the cyberattack had “compromised” several devices to obtain “full access to trump and relatives,” going on to claim that the administration is “involved in the origin” of the coronavirus.
HEATED HEARING: Sen. Ted Cruz during a hearing on Wednesday accused Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey of censoring content with an anti-conservative bias, with the Texas Republican focusing his argument around a policy the tech company has since changed.
Cruz slammed Dorsey during the Senate Commerce Committee hearing over the company’s decision earlier this month to limit the spread of a New York Post report that included allegations about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden that have been disputed by the former vice president’s campaign.
The company initially blocked users, including the New York Post, from tweeting links to the article, citing Twitter’s hacked material policy. The company later amended the policy and allowed users to share the links.
“Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear, and why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?” Cruz asked Dorsey during a heated exchange on Wednesday.
“We’re not doing that,” Dorsey responded. “This is why I opened this hearing with calls for more transparency. We realized we need to earn trust more, we realized that more accountability is needed to show our intentions and to show the outcomes. So I hear the concerns and acknowledge them, but we want to fix it with more transparency.”
ELECTION WARNINGS: The widely popular video-sharing app TikTok said Wednesday it will limit the spread of content that prematurely claims election victories before races are confirmed by The Associated Press.
TikTok will also add a banner pointing viewers to its election guide on content with unverifiable claims about voting, premature declarations of victory or attempts to dissuade people from voting by “exploiting COVID-19 as a voter suppression tactic,” the company said in a blog post.
“Interest in the US elections is palpable, with many Americans having already cast ballots and many more preparing to exercise their right to vote in the coming days,” TikTok’s head of safety, Eric Han, said in the post.
SPOTIFY’S NEW STANCE: Spotify has reportedly taken a new stance against banning guests following podcast host Joe Rogan’s interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on an episode this week.
Horacio Gutierrez, Spotify’s chief legal officer and head of global affairs, wrote in an internal email to managers obtained by BuzzFeed News that anyone with content concerns should report them to the company’s Trust & Safety team, but noted “[i]t’s all too common that things are taken out of context.”
“We are not going to ban specific individuals from being guests on other people’s shows, as the episode/show complies with our content policies,” read one of several “talking points” outlined in the email Wednesday, though it did not names Jones directly, BuzzFeed reported.
Gutierrez also reportedly emphasized the importance of the platform sharing diverse points of view.
“Spotify has always been a place for creative expressions. It’s important to have diverse voices and points of view on our platform,” the email stated, according to BuzzFeed.
“In closing, we appreciate that not all of you will agree with every piece of content on our platform,” Gutierrez wrote, according to the outlet. “However, we do expect you to help your teams understand our role as a platform and the care we take in making decisions.”
Lighter click: Museum of Modern Memes
An op-ed to chew on: The U.S. must not lose the cyberwar with Russia
NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:
Why the grandiose promises of multilevel marketing and QAnon conspiracy theories go hand in hand (The Atlantic / Kaitlyn Tiffany)
Monero scam was at the center of Trump campaign website defacement (CyberScoop / Joe Warminsky)
Families turn to ‘Animal Crossing’ for trick-or-treating amid COVID-19 fears (The Washington Post / Elise Favis)
The Latest Tech Hearing Is About Helping Trump on Election Day (Slate / Danielle Keats Citron and Spencer Overton)
Is Twitter Going Full Resistance? Here’s the Woman Driving the Change. (Politico / Nancy Scola)
Spy agency ducks questions about ‘back doors’ in tech products (Reuters / Joseph Menn)