Subpoenas likely if Facebook resists Russia inquiries
BY GREG GORDON AND PETER STONE
ggordon@mcclatchydc.com
SEPTEMBER 07, 2017 10:48 PM
WASHINGTON
The discovery that a Russian company bought election-related Facebook ads in last year’s presidential race opens new avenues for Justice Department and congressional investigators and likely will lead to subpoenas for confidential records of social media advertisers, former prosecutors say.
Facebook’s disclosure, which a key Senate Democrat called “the tip of the iceberg,” appears to show that Russians searching for ways to harm Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects broke criminal laws barring foreigners from attempting to influence U.S. elections.
The findings could ease investigators’ efforts to win Facebook’s voluntary release of records showing whether Russian intelligence agencies went even further to boost Donald Trump’s chances – by buying far more ads with much stealthier methods than the easily traceable $150,000 in purchases that the company divulged on Wednesday.
If Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms don’t cooperate, subpoenas could be in the offing.
The evidence of Russian ad buys on Facebook "is likely to be of great interest to all of the entities investigating Russian interference with last year’s election,” said Jennifer Rodgers, a former assistant U.S. attorney who now heads the Columbia University law school’s Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity.
“To the extent that Facebook and other social media companies don’t voluntarily cooperate, I would expect subpoenas to be issued and other legal avenues to be pursued," she added -- though it’s uncertain whether the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees would oblige Democrats' push to compel cooperation.
Russia’s use of social media is a focus of investigations into the Kremlin’s massive, multi-pronged cyberattack by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the congressional intelligence committees.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that he has believed since the beginning of his panel’s investigation that Russians were using “the very social media sites that we rely on for virtually everything – the Facebooks, Googles and Twitters … to intervene in our elections.”
Addressing a major intelligence conference in Washington, Warner called “the tip of the iceberg” Facebook’s revelation that it had tracked thousands of the ads to a Russian company linked to a so-called, Kremlin-directed “troll farm” that spread Russian propaganda.
The sponsored Facebook ads pop up near the top of Facebook users’ private news feeds. Ads that are targeted to a certain subset of people are known as “dark posts,” because only the recipients see them. Many such ads are designed to automatically disappear once they’ve been viewed by Facebook customers.
U.S. intelligence agencies also say Russian operatives unleashed automated attacks using computer commands known as “bots” to circulate fake news about Clinton, often via phony Twitter accounts.
Warner said he wants Facebook representatives “to come back in” for further questioning by Senate investigators.
“I want to see Twitter back in” as well, he said. “I want to see others come back in.”
No evidence has surfaced that Facebook officials knew about the Russian ads until the recent completion of an internal inquiry. A company official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told McClatchy it considers that inquiry to be a starting point for further review. So far Facebook has searched mainly for the most easily found accounts traceable to Russia, but not those that may have been created using LLCs and other entities whose origins are more difficult to track.
Facebook usually puts up a legal fight over demands for client information, but the company’s published policies make exceptions in the case of subpoenas in criminal investigations and, presumably, in counterintelligence investigations like the ones into Russia’s cyberattacks.
Company spokesman Andy Stone said the firm is “cooperating with authorities” and “we are investigating, as well.”
If investigators serve the company with a subpoena, he said, “we will process it in accordance with our policies.”
A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined to comment on whether it has sought or will seek subpoenas from the grand jury it is working with to obtain Facebook’s records.
But Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who is a senior adviser for the new watchdog group American Oversight, said she is sure that Mueller “is taking a hard look at this” and will ask a grand jury to subpoena the company if it doesn’t voluntarily provide access to the purchasers of all sponsored ads.
She said “the latest revelations regarding the Facebook ad buys suggest numerous crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
If Russia were found to have used front companies or loosely regulated U.S. nonprofit groups to conceal the source of funding while spreading fake or harshly critical news about Clinton over Facebook, then investigators would want to know whether any were targeted to swing states or districts crucial to Trump’s upset victory.
Former New York federal prosecutor Jaimie Nawaday, now a partner in the law firm of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, said even without collusion, such activity would rise to a new level of illegality.
“If Russian agents were using front companies to purchase advertising in the United States in order to promote federal criminal activity surrounding an election,” she said, “that would be classic money laundering.”
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ISSIE LAPOWSKY
BUSINESS
09.06.1704:55 PM
THOUSANDS OF FACEBOOK ADS TIED TO BOGUS RUSSIAN ACCOUNTS
DANIEL BISKUP/REDUX
AMID ONGOING CONCERN over the role of disinformation in the 2016 election, Facebook said Wednesday it found that more than 5,000 ads, costing more than $150,000, had been placed on its network between June 2015 and May 2017 from "inauthentic accounts" and Pages, likely from Russia.
The ads didn't directly mention the election or the candidates, according to a blog post by Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos, but focused on "amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum—touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights." Facebook declined to discuss additional details about the ads.
Facebook says it had given the information to authorities investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. "We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform," Stamos wrote in the post. "We believe in protecting the integrity of civic discourse, and require advertisers on our platform to follow both our policies and all applicable laws."
Even If Kushner Can't Recall His Russia Talks, the FBI Would
Speculation has swirled about the role Facebook played spreading fake news during the 2016 election. Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has gone so far as to wonder whether President Trump's tech and data team collaborated with Russian actors to target fake news at American voters in key geographic areas. “We need information from the companies, as well as we need to look into the activities of some of the Trump digital campaign activities," Warner said recently.
Brad Parscale, digital director of the Trump campaign, has agreed to an interview with the House Intelligence Committee, and maintains he is "unaware of any Russian involvement in the digital and data operations of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign."
Wednesday's revelation is a new wrinkle in the ongoing Russia investigations. In July, Facebook told WIRED it had found no indication of Russian entities buying entities during the election.
In the larger context of political ad spending, even $150,000 is a nominal amount. According to a report by Borrell Associates, digital political-ad spending totaled roughly $1.4 billion in 2016. And yet, this finding exposes what seems to be a coordinated effort to spread misinformation about key election issues in targeted states.
Facebook is remaining tight lipped about the methods it used to identify the fraudulent accounts and Pages that it has since suspended. One search for ads purchased from US internet addresses set to the Russian language turned up $50,000 worth of spending on 2,200 ads. Facebook said about one-quarter of the suspect ads were geographically targeted, with more of those running in 2015 than 2016. According to The Washington Post, some accounts may be linked to a content farm called Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.
Facebook said it is implementing changes to prevent similar abuse. Among other things, it's looking for ways to combat so-called cloaking in which ads that appear benign redirect users to malicious or misleading websites once people click through. That allows bad actors to circumvent Facebook's ad review process.
But while Facebook may be able to limit what people can and can't buy on its platform, it doesn't change the fact that social media has created a stage for anyone looking to spread false information online, with or without ads. As the $150,000 figure indicates, this finding is but a small fraction of a much larger problem.
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ti ... -accounts/
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