RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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ANOTHER BUZZFEED BOMBSHELL!
STEVE BANNON HATES PENCE
Steve Bannon Privately Slammed Pence VP Pick
Steve Bannon Privately Slammed Pence VP Pick
"This is the price we pay."
October 10, 2017, at 11:08 a.m.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Steve Bannon privately slammed the selection of Mike Pence as Donald Trump's running mate a month before taking over the Trump campaign, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The email exchange during Bannon's first stint as executive chairman of Breitbart is of new relevance as Bannon — two months removed from his role as President Trump's chief strategist — rolls out his plan for a wide-ranging attack against establishment Republicans in 2018. And it reveals that Bannon regarded the Pence pick as something of a deal with the devil necessary to bolster Trump's standing in the GOP.
On July 15, 2016, the day the Trump campaign announced that it had selected Pence, Breitbart's former technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos wrote to Bannon and Breitbart editor Alex Marlow.
"Seems like a bad pick. Should I tweet something ambivalent about him? People are telling me Trump likely didn't want this. ...What's our party line on this?"
"This is the price we pay for cruzbots and #nevertrump movement," Bannon responded. "An unfortunate necessity...very. feel free to do whatever u want. we, as always, will remain above it all."
And two days later, Bannon signed off on a Yiannopoulos column trolling the socially conservative Pence by asking him to attend a "big gay party for Trump." (Yiannopoulos is gay.)
"I'm cool," Bannon wrote of the story.
"It's a little mocking but we want to turn the screw," Yiannopoulos replied.
A spokesperson for Bannon did not respond to a request for comment.
A White House spokesperson for Pence and an outside political adviser both declined to comment when asked about the emails and about the vice president’s relationship with Bannon.
That Bannon would be unimpressed with Trump’s choice of Pence is not surprising, given the populist and aggressively anti-establishment politics Bannon has promoted at Breitbart. Pence, a former Indiana governor and former member of the House Republican leadership, often is deployed as the administration’s ambassador to the GOP establishment: He headlines traditional party fundraisers and has been a key negotiator between Trump and Congress. (Less conventionally, Pence also starred Sunday in a Trump-approved stunt by walking out of an Indianapolis Colts-San Francisco 49ers game in protest of 49ers players kneeling during the national anthem — a culture war that Trump and his allies have prioritized.)
Since leaving the White House in August and returning to his role at Breitbart, Bannon has sought to assert his influence in Republican politics by backing Trump-friendly challengers to more-mainstream candidates and incumbents. He even split with Trump recently in Alabama by backing the right-wing evangelical insurgent Roy Moore over Sen. Luther Strange in a special election primary. On the night before the vote last month, Pence campaigned for Strange in Birmingham while Bannon was among the attractions at a Moore rally downstate.
Moore won, and now Bannon is looking to replicate the formula in other races. In a Fox News interview Monday night with Sean Hannity, Bannon talked of a “coalition coming together that’s going to challenge every Republican incumbent [senator] except for Ted Cruz.”
Breitbart this week promoted a slate of his preferred prospects in superhero fashion, as “The League of Extraordinary Candidates.” Targeted GOP incumbents include Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso — a member of party leadership in the chamber — and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker. “We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on,” Bannon told Hannity.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
STEVE BANNON HATES PENCE
Steve Bannon Privately Slammed Pence VP Pick
Steve Bannon Privately Slammed Pence VP Pick
"This is the price we pay."
October 10, 2017, at 11:08 a.m.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Steve Bannon privately slammed the selection of Mike Pence as Donald Trump's running mate a month before taking over the Trump campaign, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The email exchange during Bannon's first stint as executive chairman of Breitbart is of new relevance as Bannon — two months removed from his role as President Trump's chief strategist — rolls out his plan for a wide-ranging attack against establishment Republicans in 2018. And it reveals that Bannon regarded the Pence pick as something of a deal with the devil necessary to bolster Trump's standing in the GOP.
On July 15, 2016, the day the Trump campaign announced that it had selected Pence, Breitbart's former technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos wrote to Bannon and Breitbart editor Alex Marlow.
"Seems like a bad pick. Should I tweet something ambivalent about him? People are telling me Trump likely didn't want this. ...What's our party line on this?"
"This is the price we pay for cruzbots and #nevertrump movement," Bannon responded. "An unfortunate necessity...very. feel free to do whatever u want. we, as always, will remain above it all."
And two days later, Bannon signed off on a Yiannopoulos column trolling the socially conservative Pence by asking him to attend a "big gay party for Trump." (Yiannopoulos is gay.)
"I'm cool," Bannon wrote of the story.
"It's a little mocking but we want to turn the screw," Yiannopoulos replied.
A spokesperson for Bannon did not respond to a request for comment.
A White House spokesperson for Pence and an outside political adviser both declined to comment when asked about the emails and about the vice president’s relationship with Bannon.
That Bannon would be unimpressed with Trump’s choice of Pence is not surprising, given the populist and aggressively anti-establishment politics Bannon has promoted at Breitbart. Pence, a former Indiana governor and former member of the House Republican leadership, often is deployed as the administration’s ambassador to the GOP establishment: He headlines traditional party fundraisers and has been a key negotiator between Trump and Congress. (Less conventionally, Pence also starred Sunday in a Trump-approved stunt by walking out of an Indianapolis Colts-San Francisco 49ers game in protest of 49ers players kneeling during the national anthem — a culture war that Trump and his allies have prioritized.)
Since leaving the White House in August and returning to his role at Breitbart, Bannon has sought to assert his influence in Republican politics by backing Trump-friendly challengers to more-mainstream candidates and incumbents. He even split with Trump recently in Alabama by backing the right-wing evangelical insurgent Roy Moore over Sen. Luther Strange in a special election primary. On the night before the vote last month, Pence campaigned for Strange in Birmingham while Bannon was among the attractions at a Moore rally downstate.
Moore won, and now Bannon is looking to replicate the formula in other races. In a Fox News interview Monday night with Sean Hannity, Bannon talked of a “coalition coming together that’s going to challenge every Republican incumbent [senator] except for Ted Cruz.”
Breitbart this week promoted a slate of his preferred prospects in superhero fashion, as “The League of Extraordinary Candidates.” Targeted GOP incumbents include Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso — a member of party leadership in the chamber — and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker. “We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on,” Bannon told Hannity.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
Russia threatens 'restrictions' in letters to U.S.-backed media
Russia threatens 'restrictions' in letters to U.S.-backed media
Hadas Gold
Russian threats against American media outlets based in Moscow reached a new level on Monday, when officials sent letters to news organizations backed by the US government, warning them of possible "restrictions."
The letters and increasingly intimidating rhetoric from Russian officials are retaliation for what they allege is the U.S. Justice Department's crackdown of state-funded news organizations like RT and Sputnik in the US. It's the latest in an escalating war of words the Russian government is waging as it comes closer to taking measures against U.S. media in Russia.
The Russian Justice Ministry on Monday sent warning letters to both Radio Free Europe's Russian service, called Radio Svoboda and to Current Time, a Russian-language cable news network launched by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America as an alternative to state-funded news. A Russian-language website run by Radio Free Europe's Tatar-Bashkir service, called Idel Realii, also received a similar letter, which said the outlets fall under a Russian law as a foreign agent and NGO, and therefore authorities have the right to impose "restrictions" on the organizations. It's not clear if other news organizations received similar letters.
"The activity of your organization may be subjected to restrictions envisioned in the legislation of the Russian Federation," the statement from ministry official Vladimir Titov said, according to Radio Free Europe.
"Current Time, Radio Svoboda, and Idel Realii are journalistic organizations. We trust we will be able to continue our work," Radio Free Europe Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Nenad Pejic said in a statement.
Related: Bannon ally wants to turn government media agency into 'legacy' for former Trump adviser
Over the past several weeks, Russian officials have repeatedly lashed out with public threats against American media in Russia in retaliation for what they say are inappropriate pressures placed on their outlets, like the television network RT and news website Sputnik.
Sources at Radio Free Europe say that nothing concrete has come out of Russia's threats, but the tension is palatable. The network already faces severe restrictions in distributing its content within Russia. An official from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. agency that oversees Radio Free Europe, said the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman Jr., was briefed on the ongoing spat between the two countries. Radio Free Europe has a bureau in Moscow which employs more than 50 people, including Russian nationals.
"The networks of the BBG, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, are free and independent of the United State's government and deploy honest and independent journalism on behalf of our audiences around the world," BBG CEO John Lansing said in a statement. "Any attempt to stifle them by authoritarian regimes is a direct assault on the rights of all people around the globe to have access to the free flow of truthful information,"
On Monday, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom released an unusual tweet, quoting the Russian Foreign ministry saying it was "ready to impose restrictions on US-owned media in Russia, no matter, state or private, in response to what is done vs @RT_com." The tweet included an illustration of a face with hands covering its eyes and mouth, and what looks like a distorted CNN logo made to look like "CIA" on its forehead, with the tag line "distorting reality worldwide."
The embassy tagged the BBC's Russian operation and BBC reporter Daniel Sandford, who previously covered Russia but now focuses on the U.K. A review of the Russian Embassy's tweets shows that it often tags Sandford and other journalists in similarly unrelated tweets.
Representatives from the U.S. State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
RT claims that the Department of Justice last month sent a letter to the Russian company that services its American affiliate, asking them to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. RT has a global web presence funded by the Kremlin and airs around the world in six languages.
The FARA is meant to thwart undisclosed foreign propaganda from swaying the American public, but it is not traditionally applied to media companies. The Department of Justice has repeatedly declined to comment about RT's claim that such a letter was sent.
RT America was singled out in a January intelligence community report for the impact it may have had on the 2016 election. The report said RT "conducts strategic messaging for [the] Russian government" and "seeks to influence politics, fuel discontent in the U.S." The report also cited the Russian-funded news website Sputnik as "another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin radio and online content."
RT head Margarita Simonyan said last week that staff in the United States "fear for their security" because of the negative publicity. It's become hard to hire for the network while other staff members are leaving en-masse, said Simonyan, who was cited by Russian state-run news wire TASS.
Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova doubled down on the threat, saying that "everything that Russian journalists and the RT station are subject to on U.S. soil, after we qualified it as restriction of their activities, we can apply similar measures to American journalists, American media here, on Russian territory."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week cited the "continued violation of the rights of our media to work unimpeded" as a reason why they "cannot rule out that actions will be taken in accordance with the principle of reciprocity."
CNNMoney (New York) First published October 10, 2017: 12:22 PM ET
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
Why is it so difficult to post links to articles and use the builtin quote block to call out relevant parts? Why is it so hard to understand that text walls with pictures and multiple tweets slow the site's database causing pages to take double to triple the time to render?
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
VICE and VICE News shared a link.
White House Staff Treat Trump like a Toddler, Report Says
White House staff reportedly try to distract and delay Donald Trump from enacting potentially disastrous policy decisions on a whim.
NEWS.VICE.COM
White House Staff Treat Trump like a Toddler, Report Says
White House staff reportedly try to distract and delay Donald Trump from enacting potentially disastrous policy decisions on a whim.
NEWS.VICE.COM
I agree
Lets do this
Whoo! That investment in Trump's vanity party sure is working out well for those football owners !
I hope this catches on and the basket collectively hops on the idea
Whoo! That investment in Trump's vanity party sure is working out well for those football owners !
I hope this catches on and the basket collectively hops on the idea
I trump hope further pisses off those scumbag owners.....The Trouble With the Steele Dossier
The Trouble With the Steele Dossier
By John R. Schindler • 10/10/17 11:00am
Opinion
President Donald Trump. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Nine months ago today, a salacious report appeared that alleged close ties between the Kremlin and President-elect Donald J. Trump, thereby upending American politics. Published by BuzzFeed, the so-called Steele dossier ignited a firestorm with its assertions that Russian intelligence had quietly boosted the president-elect for years and possessed embarrassing personal and financial information on the man about to enter the White House.
That Moscow has such compromising material, what the Russians term kompromat, on Trump led to awkward questions that the still-forming White House brushed away with counterclaims that the entire dossier is fake, a put-up job. The president termed the detailed, 35-page dossier a “hoax,” “totally made-up stuff,” and dismissed it altogether as just more “fake news,” to cite Trump’s favorite phrase.
The matter has taken on renewed urgency with reports that the Steele dossier is being closely examined by Special Counsel Robert Muller, including dispatching investigators to Britain to interview Christopher Steele, the dossier’s complier. A security consultant and former officer of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (popularly known as MI6) with considerable experience in Russian matters, Steele presumably had a lot to say.
Mueller’s investigators want to know more about the dossier’s background, about which there remain questions—even though the essential outline of how it came to be is already clear. Steele’s dossier is something rarely seen by the public: a raw, unfiltered human intelligence assessment. This is the sort of thing Steele compiled during his MI6 service, so it’s no surprise that he repeated the exercise when he examined Trump’s Kremlin connections.
However, such raw HUMINT reports are unfamiliar to the public, which focused on Steele’s porn-worthy allegations more than the substance of alleged collusion between Trump and Moscow. The dossier, being unfiltered intelligence, some of it derived from second-hand sources in Russia, is best considered lead information only, that is, a jumping-off point for additional investigation—not the final word on anything. As a stand-alone report, its uses are limited for any seasoned intelligence analyst.
Not to mention that there have always been good reasons to doubt some of Steele’s revelations. While the dossier’s depiction of Kremlin politics—what spies call “atmospherics”—are undeniably true, many of the specifics are unverifiable. When the dossier appeared in January, veteran Kremlin-watcher David Satter observed that the whole exercise reeked of a Russian provocation, making a case that’s plausible to those who understand Chekists.
Satter noted that the dossier nicely met Vladimir Putin’s overall objectives, in particular making American politics as bitter, divided, and unpleasant as possible, while not revealing very much substance. Its observations about Kremlin atmospherics, while accurate, were mostly pedestrian. Moreover, Satter made an important observation about the dossier’s best-known claim regarding a pornographic tape allegedly made of Trump during a 2013 visit to Moscow:
“The description of Trump’s using prostitutes to urinate on the bed in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow, where the Obamas slept, bears a striking resemblance to the work of the ‘novelists’ in the Russian Federal Security Service whose job it is to come up with stories to discredit individuals without much regard for plausibility. My entry in Wikipedia was recently changed to say that I was expelled from Russia in 2013 for running a brothel with underage girls. The style is eerily similar.”
Indeed it is, and the dossier’s “pee-pee tape” claim is viewed with derision by most Western spies who know the Russians. It’s very likely that the Kremlin possesses kompromat on the president—senior intelligence sources from several countries have confirmed to me that unpleasant videos of Trump exist—yet there’s no reason to believe Steele’s particular claim here, without corroborating evidence.
The idea that the Steele dossier represents an exercise in Chekist provokatsiya gets more plausible the more you look at it. It’s very much in the habits of Russian intelligence to disseminate a great deal of accurate information, sometimes muddied, in the service of a greater lie. The KGB’s successors are highly adept at assembling disinformation that results in more questions than answers for Western investigators. There’s no doubt that the dossier created enormous political churn in Washington—including murky assertions that haven’t been resolved yet and perhaps never will be.
Take one of the dossier’s explosive claims, namely that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, secretly meet with Kremlin officials in Prague in 2016 to coordinate propaganda operations to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Now, we know that Moscow certainly did push a lot of propaganda against Clinton in 2016, through spies, online trolls and cut-outs like Wikileaks. We can also now confirm some degree of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians with Kremlin connections. And Cohen certainly appears to possess questionable ties to Russia that merit examination.
Moreover, it’s perfectly plausible that the Prague meeting happened. The Czech capital, as I’ve previously noted, is a hotbed of Russian espionage activity; Kremlin spies would consider Prague a “safe” European venue for such a clandestine meeting with Team Trump. Not to mention that an important Russian hacker believed to be tied to 2016 online propaganda against Clinton has been arrested in Prague.
But did the August 2016 meeting actually happen? Cohen, predictably, has categorically denied that anything of the sort transpired, dismissing the dossier’s claim as “entirely false.” He may be telling the truth, or at least a half-truth. On the heels of BuzzFeed’s publication of the dossier, Newsweek reported that Estonian intelligence spied on the Prague meeting, citing an unnamed “Western intelligence official.” Word quickly circulated in spy circles that this constituted proof of Steele’s claim.
Except it doesn’t. Estonia has fine spy services, but they excel at counterintelligence and technical intelligence. Their reach is limited, as one should expect of a country with only 1.3 million people. Nobody I know in Tallinn’s security circles had heard of Estonians spying on a meeting in far-away Prague—an impossibility given the tiny country’s size, where everybody in the security agencies knows everybody else
Not to mention that Estonians wouldn’t dare conduct an espionage operation in Prague by themselves, what spies call a “unilateral.” The Czech Republic is a fellow member of NATO and the European Union, and Tallinn would have informed Prague of its spy plans, and most likely it would have turned into a joint Czech-Estonian spy operation against the Russians. Again, nobody in Prague I know heard anything about this sort of thing happening in August 2016.
On top of that, it’s highly likely the Estonians (and Czechs) would have informed the U.S. Embassy in Prague of their joint operation, since the targets included Americans—some of them closely tied to the Republican presidential nominee. Then, American spies would have gotten involved in the operation too, and even more people would have known about it. Nobody I know in our Intelligence Community heard anything about the alleged Prague meeting.
To sum up, there’s every reason to think Team Trump colluded with the Russians in 2016, but there’s simply no convincing evidence that the Prague meeting happened in August of that year. Meanwhile, there are plenty of strong hints that it did not. It’s entirely possible that Michael Cohen secretly met with Kremlin representatives in other European cities—nobody acquainted with this story would be surprised by that—but Cohen’s specific denial here may well be accurate.
The Steele dossier should be treated with caution. The Kremlin has long run complex spy stories together—creating “faction” by mixing bona fide information with disinformation—to confuse Western intelligence, and they may very well have done it again here. Those seeking the truth of Donald Trump’s relationship with Moscow should view the dossier as a jumping-off point for more investigation and no more. Otherwise, you may get quickly lost in what seasoned counterspies term the wilderness of mirrors.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.
More by John Schindler:
Reports Reveal Sorry State of Security at the National InSecurity Agency
False Flag Terrorism: Myth and Reality
The Dead Sing With Dirt in Their Mouths
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
MVike28
right around the ACC
Google, Facebook, Twitter Scramble to Hold Washington at Bay
More stories by Mark BergenOctober 10, 2017, 1:00 PM EDT
Last month, Google summoned about 200 staff from around the world for an annual policy meeting. One agenda item was very different this time: How to deal with the sudden drumbeat of calls in the U.S. to regulate the company for being too big.
The two-day retreat in Monterey, California, where employees from the $682 billion company plied Washington policy experts with questions about the pros and cons of its size, took place as Google confronts European antitrust claims and proposed U.S. legislation that would increase online publishers’ liability for content produced by others.
This week, the Alphabet Inc. unit disclosed new information that could further roil the regulatory picture: revelations that Russian-linked accounts used its advertising network to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The news put Google in the company of Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., both of which are embroiled in the controversy surrounding Russia’s involvement in last year’s U.S. elections. Executives at all three companies are scrambling to respond.
Facebook has hired two crisis PR firms, and it plans to bring on as many as 1,000 people to screen ads. Top executives, including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, are phoning members of Congress directly. The company reported spending more than $3.2 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2017, a company record. Google spent almost $6 million in the second quarter for its own record. Both companies, with Twitter, are working together to deal with issues related to the Russian ads.
“There is a lot of pressure to intervene in this case because of the democratic implications,” said Laura DeNardis, director of the Internet Governance Lab at American University in Washington. “Because of the rising stakes for cyberspace, for the economy, for democracy, there is greater attention on the part of all actors.”
It’s a delicate balance for the companies, whose products reached massive scale because of their ability to transact advertising automatically, without much restriction. They must figure out how much responsibility to take and how much change to promise, without succumbing to costly regulation or setting a precedent that might be difficult to follow in other countries.
In the context of political advertising, some lawmakers are already proposing new limits. “We must update our laws to ensure that when political ads are sold online Americans know who paid for them,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Monday.
Two congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are examining whether Russian operatives used social-media platforms to influence U.S. voters in 2016. Investigators are also examining possible collusion between Russian interests and associates of President Donald Trump. Facebook has turned over more than 3,000 ads purchased by Russian entities to both congressional investigations. Twitter has said it gave the panels a roundup of advertisements by RT, a TV network funded by the Russian government that was formerly known as Russia Today.
Facebook for years has sought exemptions from political-ad disclosure rules -- but the company recently said it’s working on ways to show who pays for ads. It also indicated it might be open to some regulation regarding transparency.
For Google, the new concerns around political advertising come as it responds to European antitrust charges and tries to preserve online platforms’ liability protections under a law known as Section 230. A Senate bill aimed at stopping online sex trafficking has drawn opposition from Google, Facebook and other internet companies because it weakens those protections. Google executives expected Congress to be more receptive to its arguments that penalizing knowledge of trafficking might stop smaller internet companies from looking for it at all. They were caught off-guard by negative responses to the company’s lobbying, according to one Washington operative who works for the company.
Meanwhile, a potential showdown on political advertising looms on Nov. 1, when executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter have been summoned to Washington to give public testimony before congressional committees.
Facebook’s two top executives -- Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg -- have joined others in making calls to members of Congress and trying to smooth relationships, the company said. It has also hired two crisis communications firms to help it on both Republican and Democratic fronts. And a letter went out to advertisers, saying Facebook staff would manually review ads that target people based on their politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues.
Facebook’s vice president of public policy, Elliot Schrage, started a question-and-answer-style blog called “Hard Questions” in June. In consultation with Liz Spayd, the former New York Times public editor, Facebook updates the blog when news breaks on the company’s relationship with the Trump campaign and the Russian ads.
On Sunday, when “60 Minutes” aired an interview with the Trump campaign’s digital director saying he had partisan Facebook employees work as “embeds” in the campaign, the company added an explanation of how its services for Trump were standard for any advertiser during an important event.
The strategy is meant to reassure the public, and lawmakers, that Facebook is working diligently on solutions and therefore doesn’t need to be regulated more. But some critics say that by volunteering to be responsible, Facebook is opening itself up to more publicity and more blame.
Inside the company, leaders are dismayed by how the public is interpreting its involvement in the Russia investigation, according to a person familiar with their thinking. Executives fear that Facebook’s work for the presidential campaigns is being re-framed as partisan, for example, even though it offers the same services to any major advertiser.
Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, defended the company from media critics who say it should have found a technical solution to the problem of fake news. It’s not that simple -- and any quick solution could end up being ideologically biased, he said in a series of recent posts on Twitter.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are cooperating on issues related to the Russian political ads. A person familiar with the effort said it was similar to how the three firms would work together on difficult industrywide issues, such as child pornography or content from terrorist groups.
"We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries," a Google spokeswoman said on Monday.
Twitter executives have been in frequent contact with Congressional committees and investigators to try and answer their questions before Nov. 1, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company is addressing the issue from multiple angles, the person said, including asking engineers to examine spam-use on the platform and asking its advertising team to delve into ad purchases by RT, the Russian TV network.
Teaching Twitter’s algorithms to find malicious actors is challenging; Russian actors in particular are moving away from bots and networks to human beings that behave in coordinated ways, the person said. For instance, it can be difficult for Twitter’s algorithms to detect the difference between a group of paid tweets in Eastern Europe and a group of legitimate tweeters who are all posting at the same time at a convention. Bloomberg LP is developing a global breaking news network for the Twitter service.
Meanwhile, Google took a more creative approach to discussing its future last month. At the policy session in Monterey, one speaker played the opposition, voicing concerns about the power big corporations can wield over society. Another played defense. That was Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. His upcoming book, Big is Beautiful -- co-authored by Michael Lind -- argues larger firms create progress and prosperity.
“It was very open-minded to have that kind of debate,” Atkinson said when reached by phone. “The threats against Google are certainly more severe now. Trying to portray yourself just as a good company is not adequate enough.”
— With assistance by Ben Brody, Gerrit De Vynck, and Selina Wang