electionhacking
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Facebook found essentially no Russian effort to sway Brexit vote
In October, UK officials asked Facebook to look into the possibility that Russian groups had attempted to sway the Brexit referendum through the site. They were particularly interested in whether ads were purchased by Russia-linked accounts and how many times they were viewed if so. Now, the New York Times reports that Facebook has found little evidence of Russian interference, at least when it comes to Russian-purchased Facebook ads.
Russian hackers had hundreds of US targets in addition to the DNC
Various US agencies continue to look into the role Russia played in last year's presidential election, and targets of those investigations include interactions between Trump advisors and Russian officials, ads purchased by Russian agents through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and whether the Kremlin was involved in the DNC email hacks of last year. In regards to the latter, Russia has been suspected of being behind the hacks for quite some time and just this week, reports have surfaced that the US Department of Justice has pinpointed six Russian officials it believes to have been involved in the hacks. However, a report released today by the Associated Press suggests that the group behind the DNC email breaches actually had a much wider range of targets.
Twitter blocks ads from two Russia-backed media agencies
Twitter has announced that it will no longer allow two prominent state-owned Russian media organizations from advertising on its platform. The company revealed on its Public Policy blog that it has decided to "off-board" advertising from any account related to either Russia Today / RT or Sputnik. The decision is effective immediately, and is based on a belief that both enterprises interfered with the 2016 US elections.
Two states say the DHS is wrong about election hacking
Just a few days ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally revealed which states were targets of Russian election hacking attempts after having known itself for nearly a year. But Reuters reports that two states are saying the DHS is wrong and their election systems weren't targeted.
DHS finally reveals the states Russia hacked during the elections
State officials finally know if they serve one of the 21 states Russia tried to hack during the 2016 Presidential elections. Homeland Security and other agencies found out in 2016 that Russian government hackers tried to get into some states' voting registration systems, but it took a year for the secretaries of state to convince the DHS to disclose its findings. The agency has only decided to tell authorities if they were targeted during the elections on Friday, because it "would help [them] make security decisions" way before the 2018 midterm elections begin.
In 2017, tweets are official presidential statements
Does a tweet count as an official response to a federal inquiry? Unsurprisingly, the White House thinks so. As reported by Reuters, the White House sent a letter to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee claiming that a pair of Trump tweets on Thursday were the president's official response to an inquiry from the committee. At question is the existence of any recordings or memos of Trump's conversations with fired FBI director James Comey, and Trump's latest tweets claim that he "did not make, and do not have, any such recordings."
