CYBERWAR/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA: “The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday [9-12-17] they are likely to call representatives from Facebook Inc. to Capitol Hill to publicly detail Russian activity on the company’s platform during the 2016 election.
In separate interviews with reporters, Sens. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and Mark Warner (D., Va.) said they are in discussions with each other and other committee chairs in Congress about holding a public hearing with representatives from Facebook and other social-media companies on foreign election-related activity in cyberspace.
Mr. Burr, chairman of the panel conducting a probe into Russian activity during last year’s election, said he was leaning toward holding such a hearing, but that he was working out issues like scope, jurisdiction and whether to include other social-media companies, such as Twitter Inc., in the final lineup of witnesses.
‘Now that we’ve opened up this avenue of social media, it’s of great interest for us to get a full accounting from everyone who operates in the space if in fact foreign money found its way in to finance any of the efforts on social media,’ said Mr. Burr. He added that no final decision had been made and that he was in negotiations with Mr. Warner and other committee leaders.
Facebook declined to comment, pointing to a blog post last week in which the company said: ‘We have shared our findings with U.S. authorities investigating these issues, and we will continue to work with them as necessary.’ “
-Byron Tau and Deepa Seetharaman, “Senate Panel Likely to Ask Facebook to Publicly Detail Russian Activity on Platform During Election,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 12, 2017 06:31pm