Digital Content

[Commentary] It is this committee’s mission to protect consumers, and in the coming months, we will be taking a more expansive look at the online experience to ensure safety, security, and an unfiltered flow of information. Recently, the Equifax data breach compromised the personal information of 145 million Americans, including social security numbers, addresses, credit card numbers, and more. This committee held a hearing on the breach and will continue to deeply scrutinize the staggering amount of personal information changing hands online and the business practices surrounding those transactions.

My colleagues and I will hold a separate hearing to assess identity verification practices, and determine whether they can be improved to protect personal data on the web even after a consumer’s information has been breached. These hearings are just the start of a long-term, thoughtful, and research-focused approach to better illuminate how Americans’ data is being used online, how to ensure that data is safe, and how information is being filtered to consumers over the web. While technology is responsible for a lot of positive change in our world, malignant behavior online can have consequences that are not fully disclosed to the American people.

At this moment, AI is at the center of every business conversation. Companies, governments, and researchers are obsessed with data. Not surprisingly, so are adversarial actors.

We are currently seeing an evolution in how data is being manipulated. If we believe that data can and should be used to inform people and fuel technology, we need to start building the infrastructure necessary to limit the corruption and abuse of that data — and grapple with how biased and problematic data might work its way into technology and, through that, into the foundations of our society.

On Sept. 15, nine days before the elections in Germany, the Green party complained to Facebook about a popular series of attack ads deriding its stances on gender-neutral bathrooms, electric cars and other topics. The party accused the advertiser, Greenwatch, of providing false contact information on its Facebook page and blog, which would violate a German Media Authority regulation requiring accurate contact information. But Facebook didn’t take down the ads or trace their origins. And after the election, Greenwatch disappeared. Its website and Facebook page were deleted, leaving behind only the nine Greenwatch ads that were captured by ProPublica’s Political Ad Collector, a tool that enables Facebook users to collect political ads that target them.

The Greenwatch episode illustrates that ads of dubious provenance aren’t just aimed at Facebook users in the US, but in Europe as well. Facebook’s failure to confront the advertiser — despite repeated complaints — raises questions about whether and how the world’s largest social network will deliver on its promise to monitor political advertising aggressively on its platform.

Twitter has has banned two Russian media outlets from advertising on the social network after concluding that they colluded with the Kremlin to influence the US election. Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, which have spent a combined $1.9 million on Twitter adverts, were blacklisted after an internal investigation into the two, following US intelligence reports saying they were part of a Russian effort to disrupt 2016’s vote. The decision prompted a furious response from the two news outlets, which are funded by the Russian government and seen as its mouthpieces in the West.

Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) is demanding Twitter provide information on Russia-linked accounts she says targeted her and her congressional district. In a statement released Oct 26, Rep Waters said she has never publicly discussed this before now but has suspected for a while that she was a target. "I have been aware for some time that I was targeted by Russian operatives whose interests were aligned with Donald Trump," Rep Waters said in the statement. "I have often noticed that every time I tweeted about Trump and Russia, dozens of strange accounts would immediately tweet various lies and falsehoods that fringe alt-right websites would subsequently use as a basis to write fake news stories." Rep Waters, a vocal critic of President Trump, said she wants the American people and Congress to understand they may also be "vulnerable to this type of foreign disruption."

Cambridge Analytica used its own database and voter information collected from Facebook and news publishers in its effort to help elect Donald Trump, despite a claim by a top campaign official who has downplayed the company’s role in the election. The data analysis company, which uses a massive database of consumer and demographic information to profile and target voters, has come under the scrutiny of congressional investigators who are examining the Trump campaign.

This week, the group became the focus of a new controversy after the Daily Beast reported that the company’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, had contacted Julian Assange in 2016. Nix allegedly asked the WikiLeaks founder whether he could assist in releasing thousands of e-mails that had gone missing on a private server that had been used by Hillary Clinton. Assange confirmed the contact but said the offer was rejected. The news prompted a top former campaign official, Michael Glassner, who was executive director of the Trump election campaign, to minimise the role Cambridge Analytica played in electing Trump, despite the fact that it paid Cambridge Analytica millions of dollars in fees. In a statement on Oct 25, Glassner said that the Trump campaign relied on voter data owned by the Republican National Committee to help elect the president. “Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false,” he said. But that claim is contradicted by a detailed description of the company’s role in the 2016 election given in May by a senior Cambridge Analytica executive.

[Commentary] Soon, a new law against hate speech will go into effect in Germany, fining Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media companies up to €50 million if they fail to take down illegal content from their sites within 24 hours of being notified. For more ambiguous content, companies will have seven days to decide whether to block the posts. The rule is Germany’s attempt to fight hate speech and fake news, both of which have risen online since the arrival of more than a million refugees in the last two years. Germany isn’t alone in its determination to crack down on these kinds of posts. For the past year, most of Europe has been in an intense and fascinating debate about how to regulate, who should regulate, and even whether to regulate illegal and defamatory online content.

Unlike the US, where we rely on corporate efforts to tackle the problems of fake news and disinformation online, the European Commission and some national governments are wading into the murky waters of free speech, working to come up with viable ways to stop election-meddling and the violence that has resulted from false news reports.

[Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.]

Twitter said it overstated its number of users for the past three years and committed to take advertising off its site from two Russian media outlets, even as it reported modest user growth for the third quarter. Twitter said it will no longer accept advertising from all accounts owned by Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik. Federal intelligence officials say RT is “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.“ Twitter’s decision marks a stark change to its previous stance of accepting advertising from these groups. The RT editor in chief said in a tweet on Oct 26 that Twitter approached RT ahead of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to pitch ways RT could advertise on Twitter during this period.

Social media has become an integral part of everyday life for individuals around the world. In light of the growing role of online communication, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented a notable change to its collection and record-keeping of social media information and search results of non-US persons (naturalized citizens, green card holders, immigrant visa holders, asylees, special immigrant juveniles, and student visa holders) in the United States. Per a notice issued in September, the information will be stored in DHS’ visa and immigration history records for each individual, also known as “Alien Files” or “A-Files.” Given the serious threats to freedom of association and privacy posed by this practice, OTI has signed onto a coalition letter expressing concern regarding DHS practices around social media collection and retention.

A coalition of right-leaning groups is pressing Congress to act on legislation that would create a new legal framework that allows law enforcement to access US electronic communications held on servers abroad. The bipartisan bill, called the International Communications Privacy Act (ICPA), has been introduced by Reps Doug Collins (R-GA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in the House and Sens Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Dean Heller (R-NV) in the Senate.

The bill seeks to clarify the process by which law enforcement obtains electronic data on US citizens for investigations, regardless of the location of the communications. It would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for all content. It would also allow law enforcement to, in certain circumstances, obtain electronic communications on foreign nationals. On Oct 25, right-leaning organizations including Americans for Tax Reform and the R Street Institute wrote to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees pressing them to swiftly consider the bill.