Lawmakers pressed Facebook to stay committed to proactive measures to prevent foreign actors from interfering in U.S. elections, including keeping Congress up to speed on the latest attacks, after the social media giant announced Tuesday that it uncovered a coordinated political influence campaign involving accounts suspected of attempting to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections.
“Today’s announcement from Facebook demonstrates what we’ve long feared: that malicious foreign actors bearing the hallmarks of previously-identified Russian influence campaigns continue to abuse and weaponize social media platforms to influence the U.S. electorate,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “Foreign influence actors remain readily capable of manipulating raw emotion and societal divisions to prey on unsuspecting Americans who use these same social media tools for legitimate political expression, organization, and advocacy.”
[Opinion: The Russians, or someone else, could really hack the 2018 midterm elections]
“Facebook must continue proactively identifying these actors, notifying Congress and law enforcement, and taking necessary steps to remove the foreign influence content and to notify legitimate Facebook users who fell victim to the same covert tradecraft that the Russian Internet Research Agency deployed through the 2016 election,” Schiff added.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said that Facebook’s announcement didn’t come as a shock. “It shouldn’t be a surprise — it’s what we said for some time, this was much more pervasive and ongoing than the companies understood. And now they’re beginning to understand it — and we will see how they react to it,” Burr said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Facebook revealed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram were removed “because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook has not been able to determine if the accounts are connected to Russia or Russian groups.
“It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past,” Facebook said in a blog post. “We believe this could be partly due to changes we’ve made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder.”
However, that didn’t stop Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., from pinning the blame on the Kremlin.
“More evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” Warner tweeted Tuesday.
“I’m glad Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint & address this activity,” Warner added. “I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress on updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.”
I’m glad Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint & address this activity. I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress on updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) July 31, 2018
The newly revealed operation has similarities to the Russian interference campaign from 2016, as it focuses on controversial social issues. For example, Facebook noticed organized activity surrounding a follow-up to the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., last August.
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office indicted multiple Russian nationals and groups for meddling in the 2016 election. The indictment said they created posts, ads, and organized events on social media platforms by using names of Americans and other entities. The ads were primarily opposed to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but at times were against President Trump.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned earlier this month that cyber threats against the U.S. could harm elections in the future and in the 2018 midterm elections.
“It was in the months prior to September 2001 when, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet, the system is blinking red. And here we are nearly two decades later, and I’m here to say, the warning lights are blinking red again,” Coats said at a conference in Washington earlier this month.
