Exasperated U. S. senators harshly criticized representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google at a hearing Tuesday for not doing more to prevent Russian agents interfering with the American…
By TOM LoBIANCO and RYAN NAKASHIMA Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – Exasperated U. S. senators harshly criticized representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google at a hearing Tuesday for not doing more to prevent Russian agents interfering with the American political process as early as 2015.
At one point, Sen. Al Franken shook his head after he couldn’t get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with North Korean currency.
The hearing by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary panel was moved last week into a cavernous hearing room usually reserved for high-profile events like Supreme Court confirmations. About 50 people waited to get in as senators fired pointed questions and waved at cardboard displays of outrageous ads.
„People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads,“ Franken fumed. „You put billions of data points together all the time. … Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like, ‚Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad?‘ „
Technology company representatives fumbled at points. After Franken pointed out foreign spending on U. S. political campaigns is illegal, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, replied only that the search giant would refuse political ads paid with foreign currency „if it’s a good enough signal on illegality.“
„In hindsight, we should have had a broader lens,“ said Facebook’s general counsel, Colin Stretch.
The companies all pledged to do more and politely said they understood the seriousness with which lawmakers are taking the question of Russian meddling.
PRESSURED TO SUPPORT LEGISLATION
Sen. Amy Klobuchar pressured the representatives to support her „Honest Ads“ bill, which she is co-sponsoring with Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. John McCain, and which would bring political ad rules from TV, radio and print to the internet.
She dismissed pledges from the companies this week to be more transparent about political ads as an unenforceable „patchwork“ of self-policing.
„We’re not waiting for legislation,“ said Stretch, before Klobuchar cut him off and repeated her demand for a yes or no answer.
„We stand ready to work with you and your co-sponsors on that legislation going forward,“ Stretch replied, echoed by Twitter’s and Google’s representatives.
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy browbeat Stretch into admitting that Facebook had no way of knowing the true identity of all of the 5 million advertisers that use its platform every month.
„Of course, the answer is no,“ Stretch said.
INVESTIGATIONS HEATING UP
The hearing – the first of three this week in which the three tech giants face a public grilling – comes amid the increasing pace of investigations into the Trump administration’s possible link to Russia.
Court papers unsealed Monday revealed an indictment against President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and a guilty plea by another adviser, who admitted to lying to the FBI about meetings with Russian intermediaries.
Just five of the full committee’s 11 Republicans attended the Senate subcommittee hearing, while all nine Democrats showed up.
On Wednesday, representatives of all three companies face hearings by the House and Senate intelligence committees.
MASSIVE REACH
In preparation for Tuesday’s hearing, Facebook disclosed that content generated by Russia’s infamous troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users.
The company said IRA-linked accounts generated 80,000 posts on 120 pages between January 2015 and August 2017. Possible views reached the millions after people liked the posts and shared them.
Facebook had earlier turned over more than 3,000 advertisements linked to the agency. The ads – many of which focused on divisive social issues like immigration and gay rights – pointed people to the agency’s pages, where they could then like or share its material.
Twitter said it uncovered and shut down 2,752 accounts linked to the IRA, nearly 14 times as many as it handed over to congressional committees three weeks ago.
The Russia-linked accounts put out 1.4 million election-related tweets from September through Nov. 15 last year – nearly half of them automated. The company also found nine Russian accounts that bought ads, most of which came from the state-backed news service RT, previously known as Russia Today.
And Google said it found evidence of „limited“ misuse of its services by the Russian group, as well as some YouTube channels that were likely backed by Russian agents.
Google said two accounts linked to the Russian group spent $4,700 on ads on its platforms during the 2016 election. The company also found 18 YouTube channels likely backed by Russian agents. Those channels hosted 1,108 videos with 43 hours of material, although they racked up just 309,000 views in the U. S. between June 2015 and November 2016, Google said.
MISLEADING ADS REVEALED
Sen. Richard Blumenthal revealed some of the ads taken out by Russians, including one that showed comedian Aziz Ansari holding up a sign that said „Save time, avoid the line, vote from home,“ a message that falsely suggested voters could cast ballots by text message.
Another Twitter post urged voters to text „Hillary“ to 59925 to cast their vote.
Blumenthal pressed Twitter’s acting general counsel Sean Edgett to commit to researching how many voters may have been misled into incorrectly believing they had voted because of the posts.
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Nakashima reported from San Francisco. Barbara Ortutay in New York, Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this story.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Sayfullo Saipov, 29, now of Tampa, Florida registered a business under the name of „Sayf Motors Inc.“ with the state of Ohio with a Symmes Township, according to records.
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The driver identified by law enforcement officials in Tuesday’s New York City terror attack registered a business in Greater Cincinnati in 2011.
Sayfullo Saipov, 29, now of Tampa, Florida, registered a business under the name of „Sayf Motors Inc.,“ with the state of Ohio. It had a Symmes Township address, according to records from the Ohio Secretary of State.
Authorities in New York said Saipov drove a rented Home Depot pickup into a bike lane Tuesday afternoon killing eight and injuring more than a dozen. Saipov was shot by an officer at the scene and transported to a New York hospital, officials said. He’s expected to survive.
Terrorist careens into NYC bike path, kills 8 near World Trade Center
The Cincinnati-area business was incorporated in May 2011 with an address in the 12000 block of Brisben Place, which is a townhouse complex in Symmes Township. It’s unclear if he lived there also.
The residents who now live at the Brisben Place address listed in the business filing for Saipov said they recently moved in.
Brooke Carey, who has lived across the street from the Brisben Place address in a similar townhouse, recognized Saipov’s photo when it was shown to her Tuesday night.
„I recognize the face,“ Carey said. „I remember him keeping to himself.“
She said she never spoke to him, but saw him several times.
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
On Halloween night, dozens of children made their way along the sidewalks gathering candy even as media crews descended on the neighborhood.
She said Wellington Place is a safe, gated, family-oriented neighborhood.
„It’s a wonderful community. The people are wonderful,“ she said. „The same people have lived here a long time. It’s very diverse. Everybody gets along.“
Online records also show a previous address for Saipov in Stow, Ohio, outside of Akron. Multiple media outlets are reporting Saipov immigrated to the U. S. from Uzbekistan in 2010.
The Associated Press reported Saipov has a Florida license but may have been living in New Jersey.
NYC terror attack: ‚A lot of blood, a lot of people on the ground‘

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In these willfully ignorant, fiercely partisan times, let’s recall that we fought our bloodiest war to end human bondage. Almost three-quarters of a million…
In these willfully ignorant, fiercely partisan times, let’s recall that we fought our bloodiest war to end human bondage. Almost three-quarters of a million Americans died in a complex struggle that began to right an inexcusable injustice.
Now we’re re-fighting our Civil War with neo-Stalinist, fact-purging propaganda that makes cartoon villains of the dead. We rush to tear down statues of men we refuse to understand. We rob one group of citizens of their heritage to please another.
And the president’s chief of staff cannot state facts about our history without triggering mob-rule outrage from those who could not even tell you when the Civil War was fought.
Yes, slavery was the catalyst of our Civil War. Without slavery, sectional disagreements would have remained, but none would have brought us to make war on ourselves. Still Trump Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly’s televised remark that “the lack of an ability to compromise” provoked our Civil War was also accurate. Despite repeated attempts by Northern states to find a political compromise, nothing satisfied Southern firebrands.
There’s much more to it, though. While slavery brought us to fratricidal war, that doesn’t mean everyone who wore a Confederate uniform fought for slavery. Quite the contrary. Rare was the Rebel soldier who owned a slave (as usual, the rich often stayed home).
Let’s judge the dead as we’re admonished to judge the living: as individuals. As a student of the Civil War since childhood, it astonished me when the media reacted to Kelly’s statement that Robert E. Lee was “an honorable man” as if Kelly had praised Pol Pot.
Robert E. Lee was, in fact, a man of flawless honor in his times. He abhorred secession and viewed slavery as doomed. But when Virginia seceded from the Union, this hero of multiple wars felt compelled — as Gen. Kelly honestly noted — to defend his state, his family and friends. It was, for him and others, an anguished choice.
Nor was Lee alone in detesting secession. Many of the West Point-trained officers who became Confederate generals strongly opposed it. Jubal Early argued bravely against it. Thomas J. Jackson, soon to be known as “Stonewall,” preferred continued unity and peace.
Now students who have never taken a course in American history demonstrate to tear down statues of Jackson, a man who, before the war, defied his neighbors to start a Sunday school for blacks; who broke Virginia law by teaching slaves and free blacks to read; and who saved slaves from being sold into the Deep South (Virginians, such as General-to-be Robert Rodes, were appalled by the treatment of slaves in the Cotton Belt).
Jackson continued sending regular donations back to that Lexington, Va., Sunday school until he died of wounds.
Such men did not think of themselves as defending slavery. Overwhelmingly, Confederate soldiers believed they were defending their homes — most former officers took off their blue coats to put on gray only after Lincoln called for volunteers to keep the Southern states in the Union by force. In their view, the North was an aggressor — and, indeed, the Union was preserved through devastation.
Lest I sound like a Southern sympathizer, let me state that my sentiments are pure Yankee. I lost an ancestor who wore blue and recently visited his grave in the National Cemetery in Beaufort, SC.
But as a serious student of the war and as a soldier, I have come to respect and honor the valor, skill and fortitude of the Confederate infantry — particularly those who served under Robert E. Lee.
But the statues must come down, we’re told, without regard for individual merit. And monuments to simple Southern soldiers must be stripped from county seats because activists in search of a cause insist they honor slavery.
No. Those bronze or granite Confederate privates atop columns in North Carolina or Alabama honor the hometown boys who went to war and didn’t come back.
It’s true that those statues didn’t go up right away. The South lay impoverished. But monuments were erected as soon as the shattered South could raise the funds. And they didn’t build monuments to Jim Crow, but to Private Jim Dandy, CSA.
Activists beware: Today, you remove the statues others cherish, but tomorrow the statues you revere may go.
Ralph Peters is the author of 13 books set during the Civil War, the latest of which is “ Judgment at Appomattox .”

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