{"id":9803,"date":"2017-11-01T17:30:18","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T17:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/on-russia-tech-doesnt-know-what-it-doesnt-know.html"},"modified":"2017-11-01T17:30:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T17:30:18","slug":"on-russia-tech-doesnt-know-what-it-doesnt-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/on-russia-tech-doesnt-know-what-it-doesnt-know.html","title":{"rendered":"On Russia, tech doesn\u2019t know what it doesn\u2019t know"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

While the Senate has spent the better part of a year making sense of Russia\u2019s actions to influence the 2016 election<\/a>, tech made quick work of its own analysis \u2014 or so it thinks.<\/p>\n

The glacial pace of Congress is often criticized, particularly contrasted to the tech industry which still moves fast and breaks things, although Facebook gave up that slogan in 2014.<\/a> But when it comes to examining a high stakes blind spot undermining governments and endangering users on the biggest social networks in existence, somehow Congress looks more prepared.<\/p>\n

After Facebook\u2019s September investigation revealed accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a detail that the company disclosed to Congress<\/a>\u00a0on September 6, all three companies have seized on that as both a starting and finishing place for their own investigations. Yesterday, in the first of three hearings<\/a> with Facebook, Twitter and Google, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch admitted that his company doesn\u2019t know if North Korea or Iran bought political ads on Facebook, while admitting that other U.S. adversaries \u201ccertainly potentially\u201d could.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Internet Research Agency<\/h2>\n

On Wednesday, Senate Intel Vice Chair Mark Warner voiced his ongoing disappointment with tech\u2019s narrow investigation parameters and their failure to proactively ferret out Russian active measures on their platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still find it very disturbing that it appears, at least from Twitter and Facebook, that the sense is that all the Russian active measures only originated with one single troll farm in St. Petersburg,\u201d Warner said. \u201cIt still appears that most of the work that you\u2019ve provided us is still derivative of your initial reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping very much that you would come in today and either say \u2018that was absolutely all of it\u2019 or \u2018we\u2019ve identified other troll farms or other entities.’\u201d<\/p>\n

When Warner pressed each company to answer in yes or no form if they\u2019d discovered the full extent of Russian active measures, all three eventually admitted that they haven\u2019t. Facebook claimed it hasn\u2019t \u201cwith certainty.\u201d Twitter admitted that it\u2019s \u201cstill working on it.\u201d Twitter called it \u201can ongoing investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner scolded Facebook leadership for \u201cbragging\u201d about how proactive they were in the French election without doing the due diligence on those accounts with regard to U.S. political activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve identified 470 accounts from one troll farm in St. Petersburg. There have been plenty of press reports of other troll farms in Russia,\u201d Warner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you became more aware of this problem, you aggressively promoted the fact that you took down 30,000 accounts around the French elections\u2026 have you gone back and cross-checked those Russian-related accounts that you took down in France to see if any of those accounts were active in the American election?\u201d<\/p>\n

Stretch couldn\u2019t answer, stating that he would get back to the panel, a response that Warner deemed \u201cvery disappointing\u201d given that the company has known about the hearing for months and that he has brought the issue up before. TechCrunch has also followed up with Facebook to see if they took this step.<\/p>\n

When asked by Idaho Senator Risch if Facebook, Twitter and Google agreed with his assessment that the issue at hand is \u201cmuch broader\u201d than just the 2016 election, all three companies did so reluctantly, with Google adding that it\u2019s \u201chard for us to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

A widening gyre<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s no surprise then that incremental updates to initial analyses that underreported the scope of Russia\u2019s efforts on the three platforms comes out every week now.<\/a> Just this morning, Facebook admitted that Instagram content purchased by Russian state-linked actors reached an additional 16 million Americans<\/a> between October 2016 and November 8.<\/p>\n

We can expect an ongoing controlled stream of similar updates as the three tech companies in Congressional crosshairs try to balance the appearance of cooperation with lawmakers with their refusal to fully admit the scope of systemic problems on their platforms. The inherent contradiction is akin to so many others we see in Silicon Valley, like the illusion of transparency in an industry culture of extreme secrecy or Facebook\u2019s conviction of its own political potency in ad sales at the same time that its chief executive waved off the notion that his company \u201cinfluenced the election in any way\u201d as a \u201ccrazy idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suggesting that the scope of foreign intelligence operations on U.S. based social platforms goes well beyond what we know now isn\u2019t meant to be scaremongering. More, it\u2019s an argument that these companies\u00a0\u2014 most notably Facebook with its historic, ironic insistence on \u201creal identity\u201d \u2014\u00a0 were blinded by growth in a way that made them fail to consider the future consequences of building the most\u00a0colossal, most efficient global\u00a0information delivery system of the present day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re talking about is a cataclysmic change\u2026 we are not gonna go away gentlemen,\u201d California Senator Feinstein said on Wednesday, beating the drums of regulation. \u201cThis is a very big deal. I went home last night with profound disappointment. I asked specific questions, I got vague answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou bear this responsibility. You\u2019ve created these platforms and now they\u2019re being misused. And you have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin\/TechCrunch<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/N-fNxT91lbM\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the Senate has spent the better part of a year making sense of Russia\u2019s actions to influence the 2016 election, tech made quick work of its own analysis \u2014 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-9803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t