Should Congress Force Social Media To Investigate Foreign Propaganda Trolls? (politico.com)

"I fought foreign propaganda for the FBI," writes a former special agent from its Counterintelligence Division. Now an associate dean at Yale Law School, he's warning that "the tools we had won't work anymore." An anonymous reader quotes Politico: The bureau is now faced with huge private companies, like Facebook and Twitter, which are ostensibly neutral and have no professional or ethical obligation to vet the material they distribute. Further, foreign intelligence service propaganda agents are no longer human operatives on American soil -- they are invisible "trolls," often operating from a foreign country and behind social media accounts that make them impossible for the FBI to approach directly. Or, in the case of so-called bots -- software programs designed to simulate humans -- they might not even be people at all... [S]ocial media platforms can reach an almost limitless audience, often within days or hours, more or less for free: Russia's Facebook ads alone reached between 23 million and 70 million viewers.

Without any direct way to investigate and identify the source of the private accounts that generate this "fake news," there's literally nothing the FBI can do to stop a propaganda operation that can occur on such a massive scale... But Congress could pass legislation that requires social media companies to cooperate with counterintelligence in the same ways they do with law enforcement. For example, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires telecommunications companies to design their digital networks in such a way that would permit wiretaps for criminal cases. Similarly, requiring social media platforms to develop ways to vet and authenticate foreign users and proactively report potential bots to the FBI would enable the FBI to identify perception management operations as they are occurring. In addition to monitoring these specific FIS-based accounts, the FBI could publicly expose the source of particular accounts, ads or news...
"At this point, we have no choice: It's clear that our current counterintelligence strategy hasn't caught up to the age of asymmetrical information warfare," the former counterintelligence agent concludes. "Until it does, we'll be silently allowing our freedoms to be manipulated...."

Comments

Charity (and other things) begin at home.

[bwanagary]

Let's start with our own media and politicians who can say whatever they want without any accountability.  This is the new millennium "boy who cried wolf".  With the deluge of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and unsubstantiated information that we are bombarded with daily people are now disbelieving of anything and everything.  Before we concern ourselves with foreign "information" we need to first get our own house in order.

The problem is ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... some people want to learn the truth and some want to validate their own beliefs. The former will continue research the things, the latter will be happy with what they find. "Fake News" is a problem for the former to weed through, but is the answer for others. Intervention and/or identification may help some, but won't make any difference to others - or may make them hold on to their beliefs more tightly. Some people have their identities built around what they believe, regardless of the truth. You can't fix that with a warning label.

Re:No

[Archtech]

1. As previous comments reminded you, freedom of speech is a fundamental human right - not reserved purely for US citizens.

2. One person's "propaganda" is another person's "truth", and vice-versa. If any nation ever allowed a police department like the FBI to tell its citizens which is which, it would automatically be a police state.

3. Why should anyone assume that US citizens - supposedly among the world's healthiest, best educated, and most intelligent - are unable to distinguish between truth and propaganda? Or, indeed, to exercise their own opinions and judgment about all the many statements that fall in the grey area in between?

In most parts of the world the very idea that any government department or corporations should be allowed - let alone expected - to tell citizens what to believe and what not to believe would be greeted with shocked dismay.