    [House Hearing, 116 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                ONLINE IMPOSTERS
                               AND DISINFORMATION

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
                                 AND OVERSIGHT

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                                 AND TECHNOLOGY
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 116-47

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

     [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                                  __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    37-739PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2020

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                 HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
    DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois                Ranking Member
    SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             MO BROOKS, Alabama
    AMI BERA, California,                BILL POSEY, Florida
        Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
    CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             BRIAN BABIN, Texas
    LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas               ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    HALEY STEVENS, Michigan              ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
    KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma                RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               PETE OLSON, Texas
    JERRY McNERNEY, California           ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
    ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
    PAUL TONKO, New York                 JIM BAIRD, Indiana
    BILL FOSTER, Illinois                JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
    DON BEYER, Virginia                  JENNIFFER GONZALEZ-COLON, Puerto
    CHARLIE CRIST, Florida                   Rico
    SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                VACANCY
    KATIE HILL, California
    BEN McADAMS, Utah
    JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
                                     ------

                  Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight

                  HON. MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey, Chairwoman
    SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina,
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee                   Ranking Member
    DON BEYER, Virginia                  ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia            MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida

                            C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                               September 26, 2019

                                                                       Page

    Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Mikie Sherrill, Chairwoman,
      Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    10
        Written Statement............................................    11

    Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    12
        Written statement............................................    12

    Statement by Representative Don Beyer, Subcommittee on
      Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    13

    Statement by Representative Michael Waltz, Subcommittee on
      Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    14
        Written statement............................................    14

    Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
      Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
      House of Representatives.......................................    15

    Written statement by Representative Ralph Norman, Ranking Member,
      Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    16

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Siwei Lyu, Director, Computer Vision and Machine Learning
      Lab,
      SUNY - Albany
        Oral Statement...............................................    17
        Written Statement............................................    19

    Dr. Hany Farid, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer
      Science and the School of Information, UC, Berkeley
        Oral Statement...............................................    24
        Written Statement............................................    26

    Ms. Camille Francois, Chief Innovation Officer, Graphika
        Oral Statement...............................................    31
        Written Statement............................................    33

    Discussion.......................................................    38

                  Appendix: Additional Material for the Record

    Report submitted by Ms. Camille Francois, Chief Innovation
      Officer, Graphika..............................................    58

                                ONLINE IMPOSTERS
                               AND DISINFORMATION

                                  ----------

                          THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

                      House of Representatives,
          Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:01 p.m., in
    room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mikie
    Sherrill [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairwoman Sherrill. The hearing will now come to order.
    Good afternoon, and welcome to a hearing of the Investigations
    and Oversight Subcommittee. We're here today to discuss online
    impostors and disinformation. Researchers generally define
    misinformation as information that is false, but promulgated
    with sincerity by a person who believes it is true.
    Disinformation, on the other hand, is shared with the
    deliberate intent to deceive. It turns out that these days the
    concepts of disinformation and online impostors are almost one
    in the same. We all remember the classic scams and hoaxes from
    the early days of e-mail--a foreign prince needs help getting
    money out of the country. But today the more common brand of
    disinformation is not simply content that is plainly
    counterfactual, but that is being delivered by someone who is
    not who they say they are. We are seeing a surge in coordinated
    disinformation efforts, particularly around politicians, hot-
    button political issues, and democratic elections.
        The 2016 cycle saw Russian troll farms interfering in the
    American discourse across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,
    trying to sway public opinion for their preferred candidate.
    But at the same time they were after something else much
    simpler--to create chaos. By driving a wedge into the social
    fissures in our society, sowing seeds of mistrust about our
    friends and neighbors, exploiting social discord, they think
    they might destabilize our democracy, and allow the oligarchy
    to look a little more attractive by comparison.
        When I was a Russian Policy Officer in the Navy, I learned
    how central information warfare is in Russia's quest to
    dominate Western nations. And, unfortunately, modern technology
    makes information warfare a far easier proposition for
    antagonists--foreign or domestic. In fact, it's perhaps too
    easy today to proliferate convincing, harmful disinformation,
    build realistic renderings of people in videos, and impersonate
    others online. That's why the incidents of harmful episodes
    have exploded in the last few years. They range from fake
    reviewers misleading consumers on Amazon, to impersonating real
    political candidates, to fake pornography being created with
    the likenesses of real people. Earlier this year an alleged
    deep fake of the President of Gabon helped trigger an
    unsuccessful coup of the incumbent government. Deep fakes are
    particularly prone to being weaponized, as our very biology
    tells us that we can trust our eyes and our ears.
        There are social science reasons why disinformation and
    online impostors are such a confounding challenge. Research has
    shown that online hoaxes spread 6 times as fast as true
    stories, for example. Maybe human nature just likes a good
    scandal, and confirmation bias shapes how we receive
    information every time we log on, or open an app. If we
    encounter a story, a video, or an influence campaign that seems
    a little less than authentic, we may still be inclined to
    believe it if the content supports the political narrative
    already playing in our own heads. Our digital antagonists,
    whether the intelligence service of a foreign adversary, or a
    lone wolf propagandist working from a laptop, know how to
    exploit all of this.
        Our meeting today is the start of a conversation. Before
    we, as policymakers, can address the threat of fake news and
    online frauds, we have to understand how they operate, the
    tools we have today to address them, and where the next
    generation of bad actors is headed. We need to know where to
    commit more resources, in the way of innovation and education.
    Our distinguished witnesses in today's panel are experts in the
    technologies that can be used to detect deep fakes and
    disinformation, and I'm glad they're here to help us explore
    these important issues. We're especially thankful that all
    three of you are able to roll with the punches when we had to
    move the hearing due a change in the congressional schedule, so
    thank you all. I'd also like to thank my Republican
    counterparts who have been such great partners in this matter.
    He will be here shortly, but Mr. Gonzalez of Ohio is joining us
    today to inform his work on deep fakes, and I'm proud to be a
    co-sponsor of his bill, H.R. 4355, here he is, and I thank you
    for being here, Mr. Gonzalez.
        [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Sherrill follows:]

        Good morning and welcome to a hearing of the Investigations
    and Oversight Subcommittee.
        We're here today to discuss online imposters and
    disinformation. Researchers generally define misinformation as
    information that is false but promulgated with sincerity by a
    person who believes it is true. Disinformation, on the other
    hand, is shared with the deliberate intent to deceive.
        It turns out that these days, the concepts of
    disinformation and online imposters are almost one and the
    same. We all remember the classic scams and hoaxes from the
    early days of email - a Nigerian Prince needs help getting
    money out of the country! But today, the more common brand of
    disinformation is not simply content that is plainly
    counterfactual, but that it is being delivered by someone who
    is not who they say they are.
        We are seeing a surge in coordinated disinformation efforts
    particularly around politicians, hotbutton political issues,
    and democratic elections. The 2016 election cycle saw Russian
    troll farms interfering in the American discourse across
    Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and beyond, trying to
    sway public opinion for their preferred candidate. But at the
    same time, they were after something else much simpler: to
    create chaos. By driving a wedge into the social fissures in
    our society, sowing seeds of mistrust about our friends and
    neighbors, exploiting social discord, they think they might
    destabilize our democracy and allow the oligarchy to look a
    little more attractive by comparison. When I was a Russian
    policy officer in the Navy, I learned how central information
    warfare is in Russia's quest to dominate western nations. And
    unfortunately, modern technology makes information warfare a
    far easier proposition for our antagonists, foreign or
    domestic.
        In fact, its perhaps too easy today to proliferate
    convincing, harmful disinformation, build realistic renderings
    of people in videos, and impersonate others online. That's why
    the incidence of harmful episodes has exploded in the last few
    years. They range from fake reviewers misleading consumers on
    Amazon, to impersonating real political candidates, to fake
    pornography being created with the likenesses of real people.
    Earlier this year, an alleged deepfake of the President of
    Gabon helped trigger an unsuccessful coup of the incumbent
    government. Deep fakes are particularly prone to being
    weaponized, as our very biology tells us that we can trust our
    eyes and ears.
        There are social science reasons why disinformation and
    online imposters are such a confounding challenge: research has
    shown that online hoaxes spread six times as fast as true
    stories, for example. Maybe human nature just likes a good
    scandal. And confirmation bias shapes how we receive
    information every time we log on or open an app. If we
    encounter a story, a video or an influence campaign that seems
    a little less than authentic, we may still be inclined to
    believe it if the content supports the political narrative
    already playing in our own heads. Our digital antagonists,
    whether the intelligence service of a foreign adversary or a
    lone wolf propagandist working from a laptop, know how to
    exploit all of this.
        Our meeting today is the start of a conversation. Before we
    as policymakers can address the threat of fake news and online
    frauds, we have to understand how they operate, the tools we
    have today to address them, and where the next generation of
    bad actors is headed. We need to know where to commit more
    resources in the way of innovation and education.
        Our distinguished witnesses on today's panel are experts in
    the technologies that can be used to detect deep fakes and
    disinformation, and I'm glad they are here to help us explore
    these important issues. We are especially thankful that all
    three of you were able to roll with the punches when we had to
    move the hearing due to a change in the Congressional schedule.
        I'd also like to thank my Republican counterparts who have
    been such great partners on this matter. Mr. Gonzalez of Ohio
    is joining us today to inform his work on deep fakes. I'm proud
    to be a cosponsor of his bill H.R. 4355, and I thank you for
    being here, Mr. Gonzalez.

        Chairwoman Sherrill. Unfortunately Ranking Member Norman
    could not be with us today, but we are happy to have the full
    Committee Ranking Member in his place, so the Chair now
    recognizes Mr. Lucas for an opening statement. Thank you, Mr.
    Lucas.
        Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Sherrill, for holding this
    hearing on the growing problem of disinformation on social
    media. We all know that photos these days can be digitally
    altered so easily that it's almost impossible to tell what's
    real and what's not. Now there's a growing problem where audio
    and video can be altered so convincingly that it can appear
    that someone has said or done something that never happened.
    These deep fakes can be produced more and more easily.
        You know, there was once a rumor that I myself was a deep
    fake, just impersonating the real Frank Lucas. The good news,
    or, depending on your perspective, perhaps the bad news, is the
    technology hasn't come quite that far, and I'm the real deal.
    But once it's on the Internet, it never goes away. But deep
    fake technology is getting more and more sophisticated, and
    it's also getting easier to produce. As our witnesses will
    discuss today, the technology for generating deep fakes is
    improving at a rapid clip. Soon anyone with a decent computer,
    and access to training data, will be able to create
    increasingly convincing deep fakes that are difficult to detect
    and debunk. False and misleading content like this undermines
    public trust, and disrupts civil society. Unfortunately, the
    technology for generating deep fakes is developing at a speed
    and a scale that dwarfs the technology needed to detect and
    debunk deep fakes. We must help level the playing field.
        This Committee took the first steps to do this yesterday by
    passing a bipartisan legislation aimed at improving research
    into the technology to detect deep fakes. I want to commend
    Representative Anthony Gonzalez for introducing this bill, and
    his leadership on the issue of technology and security. I often
    say that one of our most important jobs on the Science
    Committee is communicating to the American people the value of
    scientific research and development. Legislation and hearings
    like this are a great example of how the work we do here can
    benefit directly people across the country, and I look forward
    to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield back my time, Madam
    Chair.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

        Thank you, Chairwoman Sherrill, for holding this hearing on
    the growing problem of disinformation on social media.
        We all know that photos these days can be digitally altered
    so easily that it's all but impossible to tell what's real and
    what's not.
        There's now a growing problem where audio and video can be
    altered so convincingly that it can appear that someone has
    said or done something that never happened. These deepfakes can
    be produced more and more easily.
        You know, there was once a rumor that I MYSELF was a
    deepfake, just impersonating the real Frank Lucas. The good
    news-or maybe the bad news-is that technology hasn't come quite
    that far and I am the real deal.
        But deepfake technology IS getting more sophisticated. And
    it's also getting easier to produce. As our witnesses will
    discuss today, the technology for generating deepfakes is
    improving at a rapid clip. Soon, anyone with a decent computer
    and access to training data will be able to create increasingly
    convincing deepfakes that are difficult to detect and debunk.
        False and misleading content like this undermines public
    trust and disrupts civil society.
        Unfortunately, the technology for generating deepfakes is
    developing at a speed and scale that dwarfs the technology
    needed to detect and debunk deepfakes. We must help level the
    playing field.
        This Committee took the first step to do that yesterday by
    passing bipartisan legislation aimed at improving research into
    the technology to detect deepfakes.
        I want to commend Representative Anthony Gonzalez for
    introducing this bill and for his leadership on the issue of
    technology and security.
        I often say that one of our most important jobs on the
    Science Committee is communicating to the American people the
    value of scientific research and development. Legislation and
    hearings like this are a great example of how the work we do
    here can directly benefit people across the country.
        I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield
    back my time.

        Chairwoman Sherrill. Well, thank you, Ranking Member Lucas.
    And we have an additional opening statement today from my
    colleague across the aisle, Representative Waltz of Florida.
    Unfortunately, Mr. Waltz could not make it to the hearing
    today, but considering his great interest in the issue, I
    allowed him to submit a video of his opening statement, so
    we'll now hear from Mr. Waltz.

        Mr. Waltz. Hello, everyone. I'm sorry I can't be in town
    for the hearing today, but I wanted to make sure to share my
    concerns about digital impostors. Everyone in this room relies
    on social media, video messages, and other digital technology
    to connect with our constituents. We listen to their concerns,
    we share information about our work in Congress. But deep fake
    technology, which can literally put words in our mouths,
    undermines public trust in any digital communication. Today's
    witnesses will paint a picture of just how sophisticated the
    technology has become for creating realistic images, videos,
    and personalities online.
        Before I conclude my statement, I want to say a few words
    about our distinguished Subcommittee Chairwoman, Mikie
    Sherrill. I think we can all agree that Mikie is one of the
    most intelligent, accomplished, and persuasive Members of
    Congress. In fact, she's so persuasive that she convinced me, a
    Green Beret, to cheer on Navy football in this year's rivalry
    game. Thanks, Chairwoman Sherrill, for bringing attention to
    the problems of deep fake technology, and go Navy, beat Army.

        Chairwoman Sherrill. What a pleasure. As you all saw that--
    thank you so much for your work. That was obviously a deep
    fake. That is what we're looking at, and that is what we're
    discussing today. Thank you so--right? How nice is that? And,
    sadly, knowing how deep the commitment to our respective
    services' football is, I do know that that was not actually
    your sentiment, although it should be. So thank you, Mr. Waltz
    and Mr. Beyer, for your willingness to participate in our deep
    fake demonstration, and thank you to our distinguished
    witnesses, Dr. Lyu, for creating this video.
        I'll now recognize Mr. Beyer and Mr. Waltz for a few
    remarks. Mr. Beyer?
        Mr. Beyer. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much.
    Congressman Waltz and I really had fun making the deep fake
    video. You can see that it clearly was in jest. As an Army
    brat, I would never throw a Green Beret under the bus. But you
    also see how dangerous and misleading it could be. I'm sure we
    fooled a couple of people. For instance, what if I had said,
    instead of go Navy, go beat Army, I had said, it's time to
    impeach the President? Well, that would be viral everywhere. I
    mean, the things would be ringing off the hook, and the social
    media----
        Mr. Waltz. Please do not do that to my staff.
        Mr. Beyer. No. And Mr. Waltz would be the first to know, so
    my friends might appreciate it, but I don't think he would at
    all, so obviously the potential for serious harms with these
    deep fakes is quite great on elections, international stage for
    diplomatic purposes, and even for our private lives. That's why
    we, as a country, need to take swift action and invest in the
    research and the tools for identifying and combating deep
    fakes, and create a national strategy immediately, especially
    for election integrity, and ahead of the 2020 presidential
    election.
        The stakes are high. We've got to act now. We already know
    of Russia's intentional campaign to spread disinformation
    throughout the last one, and I don't even want to imagine what
    Russia, or China, or just private players, the havoc they could
    wreak on our elections and on our personal lives. So thank you
    very much to Mikie Sherrill and Frank Lucas for leading this
    effort. I yield back.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you very much. Mr. Waltz?
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And while I do
    certainly hold you in the highest regard, that was not me. But,
    just to add to my colleagues, that's just an example, and a
    small example, of what a deep fake synthetic video can do. And
    we've seen this insidious capability. We're seeing, I think,
    the birth of it. But I certainly support my colleagues in how
    we can get our arms around this as a country. I think it's
    important to note that Mr. Beyer and I both consented to that
    video, but as, you know, putting words in the mouth of a U.S.
    Army Green Beret and cheering on for Navy is not the worst
    application of this technology, and it's certainly not
    difficult to imagine how our enemies or criminal groups can
    wreak havoc on governments, on elections, on businesses, on
    competitors, and the privacy of all Americans. So these videos,
    and this technology, have the potential to truly be a weapon
    for our adversaries.
        We know that advanced deep fake technology exists within
    China and Russia. We know that they have the capability, and
    that both countries have demonstrated a willingness to use
    asymmetric warfare capabilities. So, as the technology for
    generating deep fakes improves, we do risk falling behind on
    the detection front. That's why this hearing is so important,
    and I certainly commend you for calling it. It will help us
    examine solutions for both detecting and debunking the deep
    fakes of the future. And, you know, at the end of the day, I
    just have to say go Army, beat Navy. I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Waltz follows:]

        What you just saw was an example of a ``deepfake,'' or
    synthetic video that can be generated thanks to advancements in
    artificial intelligence and machine learning.
        As we have just seen, deepfakes have the ability to make
    people-myself included-appear as though they have said or done
    things that they have never said or done. And advancements in
    the underlying technology, as we will hear today, are making it
    much more difficult to distinguish an authentic recording from
    synthetic, deepfake impersonations.
        Importantly, Mr. Beyer and I both consented to and
    participated in the creation of this deepfake. But a Green
    Beret cheering for Navy is not the worst application of the
    technology.
        It's not difficult to imagine how deepfakes of
    nonconsenting individuals could be used to wreak havoc on
    governments, elections, business, and the privacy of
    individuals.
        Deepfakes have the potential to be a weapon for our
    adversaries and we know that advanced deepfake technology
    exists in China and Russia and that both countries have
    asymmetric warfare capabilities.
        As the technology for generating deepfakes improves, we
    risk falling behind on the detection front. That's why today's
    hearing is so important. It will help us examine solutions for
    detecting and debunking deepfakes of the future.
        Thank you Chairwoman Sherrill and Ranking Member Norman for
    convening this important hearing.
        Yield back.

        Chairwoman Sherrill. I don't know why I let you testify in
    my--no, thank you very much. Those were really sobering
    comments, and I appreciate you both for showing us a little bit
    of what we're contending with.
        [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

        Thank you Madam Chair, and I would like to join you in
    welcoming our witnesses this morning.
        I'm glad we're holding this hearing today. It's worth
    acknowledging just how deeply the phenomenon of online
    disinformation affects most of our lives these days. As long as
    there's been news, there's been fake news. But the American
    people are far more connected than they used to be. And the new
    tools that enable fake images, misleading public discourse,
    even long passages of text are alarming in their
    sophistication. Maybe we all should have seen this coming, the
    explosion of disinformation that would accompany the
    information age.
        I suspect my colleagues here in the House are already
    taking this matter seriously, because in a way, online
    imposters and twisted facts on the internet present a real and
    active threat to the way we do our own jobs. We all use social
    media to connect with our constituents and to hear about their
    concerns. My staff want to read the comments and the posts from
    the people in Dallas and hear what they have to say. If I am to
    believe that a large percentage of the comments on Twitter are
    coming from ``bots'' or some other source of disinformation,
    the waters get muddy very quickly.
        We have to acknowledge the serious legacy of disinformation
    is in this country. In the late 1970s, I was working under
    President Carter as a Regional Director for the Department of
    Health. Around that time, the Soviet Union's KGB kicked off a
    campaign to plant the idea that the United States government
    invented HIV and AIDS at Fort Detrick. The KGB wrote bogus
    pamphlets and fake scientific research and distributed them at
    global conferences. It sold a complex narrative in which the
    United States military deliberately infected prisoners to
    create a public health crisis -- biological warfare against our
    own people. The KGB's efforts were so pervasive that by 1992,
    15% of Americans considered it ``definitely or probably true''
    that the AIDS virus was created deliberately in a government
    laboratory. Decades later, a 2005 study found that a
    substantial percentage of the African American community
    believed that AIDS was developed as a form of genocide against
    black people.
        How absolutely devastating such disinformation can be. It
    is clear that information warfare can have such profound,
    destructive effects. I think it is long past time to recognize
    how vulnerable we are to the next generation of hostile actors.
        As Chairwoman Sherrill said, the first step in addressing a
    big problem is understanding it. Not every Member of this
    Committee, myself included, is well-versed in what a ``deep
    neural network'' is or how a ``GAN'' works. However, we have a
    sense already that the federal government is likely to need to
    create new tools that address this issue.
        We also need to have a serious conversation about what we
    expect from the social media platforms that so many of us use
    every day. These companies have enjoyed a level of growth and
    success that is only possible in the United States. They were
    created in garages and dorm rooms, but they stand on the
    shoulders of giants like DARPA, which created the internet, and
    the National Science Foundation, which developed the backbone
    of computer networks that allowed the internet to blossom. The
    American consumer has been overwhelmingly faithful to social
    media over the past decade. We will need those companies to
    help combat disinformation. It can no longer be ignored.
        I am pleased to welcome our witnesses today, and I'm also
    pleased that we had bipartisan agreement in yesterday's markup
    on a bill that would enable more research on deep fakes. These
    issues require a bold bipartisan response. I thank my
    colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working together to
    address these important issues. With that, I yield back.

        [The prepared statement of Mr. Norman follows:]

        Good afternoon and thank you, Chairwoman Sherrill, for
    convening this important hearing.
        We are here today to explore technologies that enable
    online disinformation. We'll look at trends and emerging
    technology in this field, and consider research strategies that
    can help to detect and combat sophisticated deceptions and so-
    called ``deepfakes.''
        Disinformation is not new. It has been used throughout
    history to influence and mislead people.
        What is new, however, is how modern technology can create
    more and more realistic deceptions. Not only that, but modern
    disinformation can be spread more widely and targeted to
    intended audiences.
        Although media manipulation is nothing new, it has long
    been limited to altering photos. Altering video footage was
    traditionally reserved for Hollywood studios and those with
    access to advanced technological capabilities and financial
    resources.
        But today, progress in artificial intelligence and machine
    learning have reduced these barriers and made it easier than
    ever to create digital forgeries.
        In 1994, it cost $55 million to create convincing footage
    of Forrest Gump meeting JFK. Today, that technology is more
    sophisticated and widely available.
        What's more, these fakes are growing more convincing and
    therefore more difficult to detect. A major concern is this: as
    deepfake technology becomes more accessible, the ability to
    generate deepfakes may outpace our ability to detect them.
        Adding to the problem of sophisticated fakes is how easily
    they can spread. Global interconnectivity and social networking
    have democratized access to communication.
        This means that almost anyone can publish almost anything
    and can distribute it at lightspeed across the globe.
        As the internet and social media have expanded our access
    to information, technological advancements have also made it
    easier to push information to specific audiences.
        Algorithms used by social media platforms are designed to
    engage users with content that is most likely to interest them.
    Bad actors can use this to better target disinformation.
        For example, it is difficult to distinguish the techniques
    used in modern disinformation campaigns from the those used in
    ordinary online marketing and advertising campaigns.
        Deepfakes alone are making online disinformation more
    problematic. But when combined with novel means for
    distributing disinformation to ever more targeted audiences,
    the threat is even greater.
        Fortunately, we are here today to discuss these new twists
    to an old problem and to consider how science and technology
    can combat these challenges.
        I look forward to an engaging discussion with our
    distinguished panel of witnesses on how we can better address
    online disinformation.
        Thank you again, Chairwoman Sherrill, for holding this
    important hearing, and thanks to our witnesses for being here
    today to help us develop solutions to this challenge. I look
    forward to hearing your testimony.
        I yield back.

        Chairwoman Sherrill. At this time I would like to introduce
    our three witnesses.
        First we have Dr. Siwei Lyu. Dr. Lyu is a Professor at the
    University of Albany's College of Engineering and Applied
    Sciences. He is an expert in machine learning, and media
    forensics. Next is Dr. Hany Farid. Dr. Farid is a Professor at
    the University of California Berkeley School of Electrical
    Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Information.
    Dr. Farid's research focuses on digital forensics, image
    analysis, and human perception. Last we have Ms. Camille
    Francois. Ms. Francois is the Chief Innovation Officer at
    Graphika, a company that uses artificial intelligence to
    analyze online communities and social networks.
        As our witnesses should know, you will each have 5 minutes
    for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be
    included in the record for the hearing. When you all have
    completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with questions.
    Each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel. And
    we'll start with you, Dr. Lyu.

                       TESTIMONY OF DR. SIWEI LYU,

               PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE,

          DIRECTOR, COMPUTER VISION AND MACHINE LEARNING LAB,

           UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

        Dr. Lyu. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Sherrill, Ranking
    Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for
    inviting me today to discuss the emerging issue of deep fakes.
    You have just seen a deep fake video we created for this
    hearing, so let me first briefly describe how this video, and
    similar fake videos, are made.
        Making a deep fake video requires a source and a target. In
    this case, the source was Representative Beyer, and the target
    was Representative Waltz. Mr. Beyer's staff was kind enough to
    prepare a video of the Congressman for this project. While Mr.
    Waltz's office consented to this video demonstration, it is
    important to know that we didn't use any video from his office.
    Instead, we conducted an Internet search for about 30 minutes,
    and found one suitable minute-long YouTube video of Mr. Waltz,
    and that's our target video. The next step involves a software
    tool we developed, which used deep neural networks to create
    the fake video. It is important to note that our tool does not
    use a generative adversary network, or GAN.
        It first trains the deep neural network models using the
    source and the target video. It then used the models to extract
    facial expressions in the source video of Mr. Beyer, and
    generate a video of Mr. Waltz with the same facial expressions.
    The audio track is from the original video of Mr. Beyer, and
    was not modified. The training and the production are performed
    on a computer equipped with a graphical processing unit, or
    GPU. The computer and the GPU can be purchased from Amazon for
    about $3,000. The overall training and production took about 8
    hours, and were completely automated, after setting a few
    initial parameters.
        So a similar process was also used to generate the fake
    videos that are being displayed on the screen right now.
    Although we do not distribute this particular software, true,
    similar software making deep fakes can be found on code-sharing
    platforms like GitHub, and are free for anyone to download and
    to use. With the abundance of online media we share, anyone is
    a potential target of a deep fake attack.
        Currently there are active research developments to
    identify, contain, and obstruct deep fakes before they can
    inflict damages. The majority of such research is currently
    sponsored by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency),
    most notably the MediFor (Media Forensics) program. But it is
    also important that the Federal Government fund more research,
    through NSF (National Science Foundation), to combat deep
    fakes. As an emerging research area that does not fall squarely
    into existing AI (artificial intelligence) or cybersecurity
    programs, it may be wise to establish a new functional program
    at NSF dedicated to similar emerging technologies. It can serve
    as an initial catch-all for similar high-risk and high-impact
    research until either an existing program's mission is
    expanded, or a new dedicated program is established.
        We should also examine the approaches we share software
    code and tools, especially those with potential negative
    impacts like deep fakes. Therefore, it may be wise to consider
    requiring NSF to conduct reviews of sponsored AI research and
    enforcing controls on the release of software codes or tools
    with dual use nature. This will help to reduce the potential
    misuses of such technologies.
        Last, but not least, education on responsible research
    should be an intrinsic part of AI research. Investigators
    should be fully aware of the potential impact of the sponsored
    research, and provide corresponding trainings to the graduate
    students and post-docs working on the project. Again, NSF could
    enforce such ethics training and best practices through a
    mandatory requirement to sponsored research projects. The
    creation of new cross-function NSF programs for emerging
    technologies, the introduction of controls on the release of
    NSF-funded AI research with potential dual use, and required
    ethics training for NSF-funded AI research will go far in
    defending against the emerging threat posted by deep fakes.
        Thank you for having this hearing today, and giving me the
    opportunity to testify. I'm happy to answer any questions you
    may have. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Lyu follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you very much. Dr. Farid?

                      TESTIMONY OF DR. HANY FARID,

                 PROFESSOR, ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND

            COMPUTER SCIENCE AND THE SCHOOL OF INFORMATION,

                   UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

        Dr. Farid. Chairwoman Sherrill, Ranking Member Lucas, and
    Members of the Committee, thanks for the opportunity to talk
    with you today on this important topic. Although disinformation
    is not new, what is new in the digital age is the
    sophistication with which fake content can be created, the
    democratization of access to sophisticated tools for
    manipulating content, and access to the Internet and social
    media, allowing for the delivery of disinformation with an
    unprecedented speed and reach.
        The latest incarnation in creating fake audio, image, and
    video, so-called deep fakes, is being fueled by rapid advances
    in machine learning, and access to large amounts of data.
    Although there are several variations, the core machinery
    behind this technology is based on a combination of traditional
    techniques in computer vision and computer graphics, and more
    modern techniques from machine learning, namely deep neural
    networks. These technologies can, for example, from just
    hundreds of images of the Chairwoman, splice her likeness into
    a video sequence of someone else. Similar technologies can also
    be used to alter a video of the Chairwoman to make her mouth
    consistent with a new audio recording of her saying something
    that she never said. And, when paired with highly realistic
    voice synthesis technologies that can synthesize speech in a
    particular person's voice, these deep fakes can make a, for
    example, CEO announce that their profits are down, leading to
    global stock manipulation; a world leader announcing military
    action, leading to global conflict; or a Presidential candidate
    confessing complicity to a crime, leading to the disruption of
    an election.
        The past 2 years have seen a remarkable increase in the
    quality and sophistication of these deep fakes. These
    technologies are not, however, just relegated to academic
    circles or Hollywood studios, but are freely available online,
    and have already been incorporated into commercial
    applications. The field of digital forensics is focused on
    developing technologies for detecting manipulated or
    synthesized audio, images, and video, and within this field
    there are two broad categories: Proactive and reactive
    techniques.
        Proactive techniques work by using a specialized camera
    software to extract a digital signature from a recorded image
    or video. This digital signature can then be used in the future
    to determine if the content was manipulated from the time of
    recording. The benefit of this approach is that the technology
    is well-understood and developed. It's effective, and it is
    able to work at the scale of analyzing billions of uploads a
    day. The drawback is that it requires all of us to use
    specialized camera software, as opposed to the default camera
    app that we are all used to using, and it requires the
    collaboration of social media giants to incorporate these
    signatures and corresponding labels into their systems.
        Notice that these proactive techniques tell us what is
    real, not what is fake. In contrast, reactive techniques are
    focused on telling us what is fake. These techniques work on
    the assumption that digital manipulation leaves behind certain
    statistical, geometric, or physical traces that, although not
    necessarily visually obvious, can be modeled and
    algorithmically detected. The benefit of these techniques is
    that they don't require any specialized hardware or software.
    The drawback is that, even despite advances in the field, there
    are no universal forensic techniques that can operate at the
    scale and speed needed to analyze billions of uploads a day.
        So, where do we go from here? Four points. One, funding
    agencies should invest at least as much financial support to
    programs in digital forensics as they are in programs that are
    fueling advances that are leading to the creation of, for
    example, deep fakes. Two, researchers that are developing
    technologies that can be weaponized should give more thought to
    how they can put proper safeguards in place so that their
    technologies are not misused. Three, no matter how quickly
    forensic technology advances, it will be useless without the
    collaboration of the giants of the technology sector. The major
    technology companies, including Facebook, Google, YouTube, and
    Twitter, must more aggressively and proactively develop and
    deploy technologies to combat disinformation campaigns. And
    four, we should not ignore the non-technical component of the
    issue of disinformation, us--the users. We need to better
    educate the public on how to consume trusted information, and
    not spread disinformation.
        I'll close with two final points. First, although there are
    serious issues of online privacy, moves by some of the
    technology giants to transform their platform to an end-to-end
    encrypted system will make it even more difficult to slow or
    stop the spread of disinformation. We should find a balance
    between privacy and security, and not sacrifice one for the
    other. And, last, I'd like to re-emphasize that disinformation
    is not new, and deep fakes is only the latest incarnation. We
    should not lose sight of the fact that more traditional human-
    generated disinformation campaigns are still highly effective,
    and we will undoubtedly be contending with yet another
    technological innovation a few years from now. In responding to
    deep fakes, therefore, we should consider the past, the
    present, and the future as we try to navigate the complex
    interplay of technology, policy, and regulation, and I'm sorry
    I'm 15 seconds over.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Farid follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you very much. Ms. Francois?

                   TESTIMONY OF MS. CAMILLE FRANCOIS,

                   CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER, GRAPHIKA

        Ms. Francois. Chairwoman Sherrill, and Ranking Member
    Lucas, Members of the Committee, thank you for having me here
    today. We're here to discuss the growing issue of online
    imposters and disinformation. As you know, this problem is
    nuanced and complex. I've been looking at disinformation
    campaigns for many years, and I have seen great diversity in
    the types of actors, techniques, and impacts that those
    disinformation campaigns can have. I want to highlight that,
    while we tend to focus on fake content, the most sophisticated
    actors I have seen operate online actually tend to use
    authentic content weaponized against their targets. This is
    what I want to talk about a little bit more.
        It's really hard to give a sense of the growing and global
    scale of the issue, but here are a few recent examples. Today a
    report by my colleagues over at the Oxford Internet Institute
    highlighted that more than 70 countries currently use
    computational propaganda techniques to manipulate public
    opinion online. Since October 2018, Twitter has disclosed
    information around more than 25,000 accounts associated with
    information operations in 10 different countries.
        Twitter is one thing. On Facebook, over 40 million users
    have followed pages that Facebook has taken down for being
    involved in what they call coordinated inauthentic behavior.
    Those may seem like huge numbers, but, in fact, they represent
    a needle in a haystack, and the danger of this particular
    needle is its sharpness. Targeting specific communities at the
    right time, and with the right tactics, can have a catastrophic
    impact on society, or on an election. That impact remains very
    difficult to rigorously quantify. For instance, if you take a
    fake account, what matters is not just the number of followers
    it has, but who those followers are, how they have engaged with
    the campaign, and how they have engaged both online and
    offline. Similarly, for a piece of content, it's not often the
    payload that matters, but really the delivery system, and the
    targeted system.
        We are finding more and more state and non-state actors
    producing disinformation. What keeps me awake at night on this
    issue is also the booming market of disinformation for hire.
    That means troll farms that one can rent, bot networks that one
    can purchase, for instance. These tools are increasingly
    attractive to domestic political actors, who also use them to
    manipulate American audiences online. I see that you discovered
    how easy it was to make a deep fake, and I encourage you to
    also discover how easy it is to buy a set of fake accounts
    online, or, frankly, to purchase a full blown disinformation
    campaign.
        The good news here, if there is any, is that, as a society,
    and as a professional field, we've come a long way since 2016.
    These problems began long before 2016, but it really took the
    major Russian interference in the U.S. election to force us
    toward a collective reckoning. In 2016 the top platforms, law
    enforcement, and democratic institution sleepwalked through the
    Russian assault on American democratic processes. Those who
    raised the alarm were, at best, ignored. Today we're in a
    better place. We have rules, definition, and emerging processes
    to tackle these campaigns. Coordination between researchers,
    platforms, and public agencies have proven successful, for
    instance, in protecting the U.S. 2018 midterms from Russian
    disinformation efforts. Then, those actors worked hand in hand
    to detect, take down, and, to a certain extent, document the
    Russian attempts to deceive an manipulate voters.
        We still have a long way to go, but the scale of the
    problem is staggering. Sophisticated state actors, and, again,
    a growing army of hired guns, are manipulating vast networks'
    interactions among billions of people on dozens of platforms,
    and in hundreds of countries. This manipulation is
    discoverable, but almost in a way that a submarine is
    discoverable under the ocean. What you really need is
    sophisticated sensors that must evolve as rapidly as the
    methods of evasion. That requires a serious investment in the
    development of analytic models, computational tools, and domain
    expertise on adversary trade crafts. We need better technology,
    but also more people able to develop and adopt rapidly evolving
    methods.
        Accomplishing this also requires access to data, and that
    is currently the hardest conversation on this topic. The task
    at hand is to design a system that guarantees user security and
    privacy, while ensuring that the corps of scientists,
    researchers, and analysts can access the data they need to
    unlock the understanding of the threats, and harness innovative
    ways to tackle the issue. Today we're very far from having such
    a system in place. We critically need not just the data, but
    the community of scholars and practitioners to make sense of
    it. That emerging field of people dedicating to ensuring the
    integrity of online conversation needs support, funding, and a
    shared infrastructure.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Francois follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you, Ms. Francois. We'll have to
    get to the rest of it as we go through the questions, but thank
    you very much. At this point we'll begin our first round of
    questions, and I'm going to recognize myself for 5 minutes.
        I'd just like to start with Dr. Farid and Dr. Lyu, because
    we read a lot about the potential for deep fakes to be used on
    political candidates, and we watched Dr. Lyu's very compelling
    example here in this room, so thank you for that brilliant
    demonstration. I hope my fellow Members of Congress who aren't
    in the room today will actually get a chance to see for
    themselves, and hear just how limitless the potential impacts
    of deep fakes can be.
        Let's talk about some hard truths. On a scale of 1 to 10,
    what do you think are the chances of a convincing video deep
    fake of a political candidate, someone running for Congress, or
    President, or Governor, emerging during the 2020 election
    cycle, and why do you think that?
        Dr. Farid. I'm going to save five, to minimize my chances
    of being wrong. I am--and for another reason too, that I think
    we shouldn't--despite the sophistication of deep fakes, we
    shouldn't overlook that traditional disinformation works really
    well, and it's easy, right? Teenagers in Macedonia were
    responsible for a lot of the disinformation campaigns we saw in
    2016. So I think it's coming. I don't know whether it'll be in
    2020, or 2022, or 2024, but largely because the cheap stuff
    still works, and it's going to work for a while. I think we'll
    eventually get out ahead of that, and then this will be the new
    front.
        But I think it is just a matter of time. We've already seen
    nefarious uses of deep fakes for cases of fraud, and I think
    the bigger threat here is not going to be--the first threat I
    predict is not going to be an actual deep fake, but the
    plausible deniability argument, that a real video will come
    out, and somebody will be able to say, that's a deep fake. And
    that, in some ways, is the larger threat that I see coming down
    the road, is once anything can be faked, nothing is real
    anymore. And I think that's probably more likely to happen
    before the first real deep fake comes out.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. That's interesting. Dr. Lyu?
        Dr. Lyu. Yes. Thank you for the question. As, actually, I
    mentioned in the opening remarks, the technical capability of
    making high-quality deep fakes is already at the disposal of
    whoever wants to make it. As I mentioned, for the deep fake
    videos we made, we have a specially made software, but anybody
    can potentially also develop similar softwares based on the
    open-source software on the GitHub, and then they can just buy
    a computer for about, you know, a couple thousand dollars, and
    then run this for a couple hours. Everything is automatic. So
    this is really the reality that, you know, people, whoever want
    to make these kind of videos, they have that capacity.
        However, the question whether we will see such a video in a
    coming election really--as Professor Farid mentioned, depends
    on a lot of other factors, especially, you know, deep fake is
    not the only approach for disinformation. So it is kind of
    difficult to come up with a precise number there, but the
    possibility is certainly substantial. Thank you.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you. And then, Ms. Francois, you
    have a lot of experience observing how trolls and bots behave
    when they identify a hoax they might want to spread. If a
    convincing deep fake of a politico emerges next year, what do
    you expect the bot and troll participation to look like in
    proliferating the video? In other words, will we see this sort
    of erupt all at once, or does it percolate in dark areas of the
    Internet for a short-period of time before it emerges? How does
    that work?
        Ms. Francois. All of the above are possible. I will say
    that, if we are facing a sophisticated actor able to do a
    convincing deep fake, they will be able to do a convincing
    false amplification campaign, too.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you very much. And then, Dr.
    Farid, you said in your testimony that researchers working on
    technologies to detect disinformation should give more thought
    to proper safeguards so their work cannot be misused or
    weaponized. What kind of safeguards do you believe could be
    adopted voluntarily by the research community to protect
    against the spread of disinformation?
        Dr. Farid. Good. So I think there's two things that can be
    done. So, first, you have to understand in computer science we
    have an open source culture, which means we publish work, and
    we put it out there. That's been the culture, and it's
    wonderful. It's a wonderful culture. But when that technology
    can be weaponized, maybe we should think about putting the
    data, and the code, and the GitHub repository, where anybody
    can download it, as Professor Lyu was saying. So that's number
    one, is just think about how you disseminate. We can still
    publish and not put the details of it out so that anybody can
    grab it, No. 1.
        No. 2 is, there are mechanisms by which we can incorporate,
    into synthetic media, watermarks that will make it easier for
    us to identify that. That can become a standard. We can say
    academic publishers who are going to post code should
    incorporate into the result of their technology a distinct
    watermark. That is not bulletproof, it's not that it can't be
    attacked, but it's at least a first line of defense. So those
    are the two obvious things that I can see.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. That was perfect timing. Thank you
    very much, I appreciate it. I would now like to recognize Mr.
    Lucas for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Farid, following up
    on what the Chair was discussing, in your written statement you
    say that no matter how quickly forensic technology for
    detecting deep fakes develops, it'll be useless without the
    cooperation of the technology giants like Google and Facebook.
    How do we bring those people to the table to begin this
    collaboration?
        Dr. Farid. Yes. So the bad news is they have been slow to
    respond, for decades, really. It's not just disinformation.
    This is the latest, from child sexual abuse, to terrorism, to
    conspiracy theories, to illegal drugs, illegal weapons. The
    technology sector has been very slow to respond. That's the bad
    news. The good news is I think a combination of pressure from
    here on Capitol Hill, from Brussels, from the UK, and from the
    public, and from advertisers, there is now an acknowledgement
    that we have a problem, step number one.
        Step number two is, what are we going to do about it? And I
    still think we are very slow here, and what you should
    understand is we are fighting against business interests,
    right? The business model of Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter
    is data, it's content. Taking down content is bad for business.
    And so we have to find mechanisms and either through regulatory
    pressure, advertising pressure, public pressure, bring them to
    the table. I will say the good news is, in the last 6 months,
    at least the language coming out of the technology sector is
    encouraging. I don't know that there's a lot of action yet.
        So I will give you an example. We all saw a few months ago
    an altered video of Speaker Pelosi. This was not a confusing
    video, we all knew it was fake, and yet Facebook gleefully let
    it on their platform. In fact, defended the decision to leave
    it on their platform, saying, we are not the arbiters of truth,
    OK? So we have two problems now. We have a policy problem, and
    we have a technology problem. I can help with the technology
    problem. I don't know what I can do about the policy problem,
    when you say, we are not the arbiters of truth. So I think we
    have to have a serious look at how to put more pressure on the
    technology sector, whether that's regulatory, or legislative,
    or advertising, or public pressure, and they have to start
    getting serious as to how their platforms are being weaponized
    to great effect in disrupting elections, and inciting violence,
    and sowing civil unrest. I don't think they've quite come to
    grips with that reality.
        Mr. Lucas. Well, when that moment comes, and inevitably it
    will, in your opinion, what will that collaboration look like?
    There's a government element, there's an academic element,
    there's a public-private partnership element.
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Lucas. Can you just----
        Dr. Farid. Sure.
        Mr. Lucas [continuing]. Daydream for a moment here with me?
        Dr. Farid. So I think the good news is the Facebooks and
    the Googles of the world have started to reach out to
    academics, myself included, Professor Lyu included. We now
    receive research funding to help them develop technology.
    That's good. I think the role of the government is to coax them
    along with regulatory pressure. I think what we've noticed over
    the last 20 years of self-regulation is not working. I'd like
    it to work, but it doesn't work in this particular space.
        So I think the role of the government can be through
    oversight, it can be regulatory, it can be through a cyber
    ethics panel that is convened to talk about the serious issues
    of how technology is being weaponized in society. But very much
    I think the academic/industry model has to work, because most
    of the research that we are talking about is happening at the
    academic side of things, and obviously the industry has
    different incentives than we do in the academy, so I think
    there is room for everybody.
        I'll also mention this is not bounded by U.S. borders. This
    is very much an international problem, so we should be looking
    across the pond to our friends in the UK, in the EU, and New
    Zealand, and Australia, and Canada, and bringing everybody on
    board because this is a problem for not just us, but for the
    whole world.
        Mr. Lucas. One last question. In your written testimony you
    suggest there's a non-technological component to solving the
    problem related to deep fakes and disinformation. Specifically,
    you wrote that we need to educate the public on how to consume
    trusted information, and how to be better digital citizens.
    What should this public education initiative----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Lucas [continuing]. Look like?
        Dr. Farid. I'm always reluctant to say this, because I know
    how taxed our schools are in this country, but at some point
    this is an educational issue, starting from grade school on the
    way up. And, as an educator, I think this is our role. We have
    to have digital citizenry classes. Some of the European
    countries have done this. France is starting to do this, the UK
    is starting to do it. Public service announcements (PSAs)
    explaining to people how information can be trusted, what
    disinformation is, but we've got to start taking more seriously
    how we educate the next generation, and the current generation.
    And whether that's through the schools, through PSAs, through
    industry sponsored PSAs, you know, I think all of those are
    going to be needed.
        Mr. Lucas. And you would agree that our technology giant
    friends have a role in that education process?
        Dr. Farid. They absolutely have a role. They made this
    mess, they need to help fix it.
        Mr. Lucas. Very concise. Thank you, Doctor. I yield back,
    Madam Chair.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. And now, Ms.
    Wexton, I recognize you for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the
    panelists for appearing today. I want to speak a little bit
    about the explosive growth that the major social platforms have
    experienced over the past few years, because I'm worried that
    these companies are more focused on growth, and getting more
    users, than they are about essential oversight and user support
    functions. And, in fact, as has been noted, they disclaim
    responsibility for any information that goes out onto the web
    by the users. And, in fact, it seems to me that they have a
    disincentive to purge suspicious, or fake, or bot accounts.
        You know, I have here an article from July of last year,
    where Twitter's stock price went down by about eight and a half
    percent after they purged, over the course of two months, 70
    million suspicious accounts. Now, don't feel too bad for
    Twitter, because their stock price went up 75 percent over that
    six month period, but, you know, by being socially responsible,
    or by being responsible, it hurt their bottom line.
        Now, the platforms are incredibly powerful. We have already
    seen the power that they have here in the capitol, not just
    because of the lobbyists and everything, but because we all use
    them. We all have those platforms on our phones, and on our
    various devices. And, Dr. Farid, you spoke a little bit about
    how the basic features of the technology and the business model
    at social media companies kind of help exacerbate the
    proliferation of disinformation. Can you explain, from a
    business perspective, what benefit a bot account or a fake
    account might represent for a social media company?
        Dr. Farid. Sure. So, first of all, I think you're
    absolutely right that growth has been priority No. 1. And
    because the metrics of Silicon Valley are number of users,
    number of minutes online, it's because that's what eventually
    leads to advertising dollars. What we have to understand is
    that Silicon Valley, for better or worse, today is driven by ad
    revenue, and ad revenue is optimized by having more engagement,
    OK? So fake account, real account, don't care. Fake like, real
    like, fake tweet, doesn't matter, right, because at the end of
    the day, you get to report big numbers to the advertisers who
    are going to pay more money. Whether 50 percent of those
    accounts are fake or not, who's to know?
        So that's the underlying poison, if you will, of Silicon
    Valley, I think, and is the reason why the system is entirely
    frictionless, by design. There's no friction to creating an
    account on Twitter, or on Facebook, or on YouTube, because they
    want that to be easy. They want bots to be able to create these
    things because that is what elevates the numbers. And I think
    this is sort of our core problem that we have here.
        Ms. Wexton. So, related to that, why would social media
    companies allow, or even encourage, their recommendation
    algorithms to----
        Dr. Farid. Good.
        Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Put people, you know, to direct
    users to----
        Dr. Farid. Good.
        Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Suggested videos, or things like
    that, that are sensational, or even false? Why would they do
    that?
        Dr. Farid. The metric on YouTube is engagement, how long do
    you stay on the platform? And so what the algorithms learn is
    that, if I show you a video that is conspiratorial, or
    outrageous, you are more likely to click on it and watch it. If
    you are more likely to click or watch, you're going to stay on
    the platform longer, right? So the algorithms are not trying to
    radicalize you. What they are trying to do is to keep you on
    the platform for as long as possible. And it turns out, in the
    same way that people will eat candy all day long instead of
    broccoli, people will watch crazy videos all day long instead
    of PBS. I don't think this is surprising. And so the underlying
    algorithms, what they are being optimized for, in part, is
    exactly this.
        And we have been studying the nature of these conspiracy
    videos for over a year now, and I will tell you that, despite
    claims to the contrary, there is a rabbit-hole effect, that
    once you start watching the slightly crazy conspiratorial
    videos, you will get more and more and more of that because you
    are more likely to click, you are more likely to view, they're
    going to get more data, and they're going to sell more
    advertising. That's the underlying business model, is how long
    do you stay on my platform? And, in that regard, the quality of
    the information is utterly unimportant to the platforms. It is
    what keeps you there.
        Ms. Wexton. So maybe we should all have more cats and
    kittens, and less conspiracy?
        Dr. Farid. I'm all for cat videos.
        Ms. Wexton. So, switching gears a little bit, yesterday
    this Committee--we marked up a bill, it was Congressman
    Gonzalez's bill, that would expand research into technologies
    to help us better identify deep fake videos. And I had an
    amendment which was made in order, and approved by the
    Committee, to help increase education to help people identify
    deep fake videos, and so I was encouraged to hear you talk
    about that. So I would inquire of the panel, do you have any
    advice on what the most important elements of a public
    education campaign on deep fake videos should be?
        Dr. Farid. Again, you know, I am reluctant to put this on
    our public schools. I think they are overtaxed, and overworked,
    and underfunded. But at the end of the day, this is sort of
    where it belongs. And I think if we can do this, not as an
    unfunded mandate, but actually give them the resources to
    create courses of digital citizenry, of how you are a better
    digital citizen, how you can trust information and not trust
    information.
        I'll point out too, though, by the way, it's not just the
    young people. The senior citizens among us are more likely to
    share fake news than the young people, so this is across the
    spectrum. So I'm more--this--for me, the education level is
    more about the next 20, 30, 40 years than necessarily today. So
    I think a combination of PSAs, about returning to trusted
    sources, and about educating kids not just, by the way, about
    trusted information, but how to be a better digital citizen,
    how to interact with each other. The vitriol that we see online
    is absolutely horrific, and the things that we accept online we
    would never accept in a room like this, and I think we have to
    start teaching the next generation that this is not a way that
    we interact with each other. We need a more civil discourse.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you, Dr. Farid. And I'd now like
    to recognize Mr. Biggs for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I appreciate each of
    the witnesses for being here. It's a very, very interesting
    hearing, and appreciate the Chair for convening this hearing.
        So one of the main things I'm worried about is the de facto
    gray area between misinformation and disinformation, despite
    the seemingly clear definitional difference between these
    concepts. While disinformation may be defined in terms of the
    malicious intent on the part of the sender, such intent, as
    we've seen today, can at times be very difficult to identify.
    And then, on top of that, we need to make sure the gatekeepers,
    themselves trying to police content, are objective. Objective
    enough to identify potential misinformation, and able to do so
    as expeditiously as possible.
        It seems to me that, even if we have the technological
    anti-disinformation tools that we've learned about in this
    discussion, and that we anticipate seeing developed over time,
    human judgment will always be a key component of any anti-deep
    fakes effort, and human judgment can, of course, be fallible.
    In short, the difficulties and nuances of the battle pile up
    the deeper we delve into this topic. Maybe that's why I find it
    so interesting to hear what you all have to say today.
        But I want to just get back to something, and I would say I
    feel like we've been doing what I would call an endogenous
    look, and that is what's the technology here? And you mentioned
    it, Dr. Farid, in item four on page four of your
    recommendations in your written report, but it really gets to
    what I think is a real-world problem I'd like all of you to
    respond to, and the last questioner just kind of touched on it
    a bit as well. What do you tell a 13- or 14-year-old that
    you're trying to warn of potential disinformation,
    misinformation? How do you do it as a parent, as a grandparent,
    as someone who cares for, loves, an individual. I mean, that
    really becomes a part of the equation as much as anything else
    on the technological side.
        Dr. Lyu. Well, thank you for asking the question, because
    the nature of my work, I usually show a lot of fake videos to
    my 12-year-old daughter, and she actually grow the habit of
    distrust for any video I showed to her. So I think this may be
    a very effective way to actually tell them--to show them that
    the existence of fake videos will make them aware that those
    are something they should be careful about.
        Ms. Francois. I can take the question on, you know, what
    goes beyond technology, and I want to talk about one specific
    example. I think, when you look at the most sophisticated
    campaigns that have leveraged disinformation, and we're talking
    about actors who are willingly doing this, there's still a lot
    that we don't know. So, back to the Russian example, for
    instance, which is largely seen as the best-documented
    campaign, right, on which the platforms have shared a lot of
    data. I have myself worked with the Senate Select Intelligence
    Committee to document what happened. There are still essential
    pieces of that campaign that we know nothing about, and on
    which there's no data, in the eye of the public, to really
    understand how that technology was leveraged to manipulate
    audiences, direct messages, and how the Russians used to target
    deliberately specific journalists to feed them sources. We
    don't know anything about the scale of how much of that was
    going on.
        Similarly, what the GRU was doing, alongside the IRA, is
    something that there's zero available data on. So I would go
    back to those important and large-scale campaigns that we know
    have really disrupted society and interrogate, where are our
    blind spots? How can we do better? How can we produce this data
    so that we actually are able to fully understand those tactics?
    And then, of course, to build the tools to detect it, but also
    to train people to understand it, and to build defense.
        Mr. Biggs. Thank you. Dr. Farid? What are you going to tell
    your kid?
        Dr. Farid. I, fortunately, don't have kids, so I don't have
    to struggle with this problem.
        Mr. Biggs. They're a blessing and a curse.
        Dr. Farid. I think this is difficult, because the fact is
    this generation is growing up on social media----
        Mr. Biggs. Yes.
        Dr. Farid [continuing]. And they are not reading The
    Washington Post, and The New York Times, and MSNBC, and Fox
    News. They think about information very differently. And I can
    tell you what I tell my students, which is, do not confuse
    information with knowledge. Those are very different things.
    And I think there is this tendency that it's online, therefore
    it must be true. And so my job as an educator is to make you
    critically think about what you are reading. And I don't know
    how to do that on a sort of day-to-day basis, but I do that
    every day with my students, which is critical reasoning. And
    with critical reasoning, I think everything comes.
        And, if I may, I wanted to touch one--because I think you
    made a good point about the--sort of the nuance between mis-
    and disinformation, and we should acknowledge that there are
    going to be difficult calls. There is going to be content
    online that falls into this gray area that it's not clear what
    it is, but there is black and white things out there, and we
    should start dealing with that right now, and then we'll deal
    with that gray area when we need to, but let's not get
    confounded with that gray area, and not deal with the real
    clear cut harmful content.
        Mr. Biggs. Right. So information's not knowledge. I'd like
    to tell people in Congress, activity is not progress either,
    so, I mean, we----
        Dr. Farid. We agree on that.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you, Mr. Biggs. And next I would
    like to recognize Mr. Beyer for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Beyer. Madam Chair, thank you very much. Dr.--Ms.
    Francois--so Dr. Lyu talked about funding more civilian
    research through the National Science Foundation, and setting
    up an emerging technologies directorate, and you spoke about
    this emerging field of interdisciplinary scholars,
    practitioners, that needed support, funding, and shared
    infrastructure. How best do you see us making that happen? Do
    we need congressional legislation? How big a budget does it
    have to be? Is it only NSF, or NIST (National Institutes of
    Standards and Technology), or----
        Ms. Francois. That's a great question, thank you. I think
    it can be a whole of government effort, and I do think that a
    series of institutions have to get involved, because indeed, as
    I say, it's very interdisciplinary. I do think that regulation
    has to play a role too, not only to address those critical and
    complex questions, like the one of data access that I
    discussed.
        I want to build on a point that Dr. Farid made about the
    algorithmic reinforcement, as an example. This is something
    that we know is impacting society. People watch one video, and
    seem to end up in a filter bubble of conspirational video. But,
    unfortunately, we have very little serious research on the
    matter. We are making those observations on a purely empirical
    basis out of, you know, people who let their computers run. We
    can't afford to be in the dark on the impact of technology on
    society like this. And in order to do serious scientific
    research on those impacts at scale, we need data, and we need
    the infrastructure to systematically measure and assess how
    this technology is impacting our society.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. Dr. Farid, I was fascinated
    you talked about determining what's real, rather than what's
    fake, and specifically talking about the control capture
    technologies. We've had a number of Science Committee hearings
    on blockchain technology, which inevitably lead into quantum
    computing (QC) technology. Is blockchain, and ultimately QC,
    the right way to deal with this?
        Dr. Farid. I think blockchain can play a role here. So the
    basic idea, for those who don't know, blockchain--basically all
    you have to know is that it's an immutable distributed ledger.
    So immutable, when you put information on there, it doesn't
    change. Distributed as it's not stored on one central server,
    but on millions of computers, so you don't have to rely on
    trust of one individual.
        So one version of control capture is, at the point of
    capture, you extract that unique signature, cryptographically
    sign it, and you put that signature on the blockchain for
    public viewing of it, and public access to it. It's a very nice
    application of blockchain. I don't think it's critical to the
    solution. If you have a trusted central server, I think that
    would work well, but the reason why people like the blockchain
    is that I don't have to trust a Facebook, or an Apple, or a
    Microsoft, I can trust the globe. So I do see that as being
    part of the control capture environment, and being part of the
    solution of a universal standard that says, if you want your
    content to be trusted, take it with this control capture, and
    then we can trust that going down the line. I think we're
    eventually going to get there. I think it's just a matter of
    time.
        Mr. Beyer. And, Dr. Lyu, how would you contrast
    watermarking technology with the blockchain, with the control
    capture? And is one better than the other, or do you need both,
    or----
        Dr. Lyu. I think these technologies are somehow
    complementary. So watermark is the content you actually embed
    into the image, and blockchains are ways to actually
    authenticate if the watermark is consistent with the original
    contents we invited into the signal. So they can work together.
    You can imagine that we have watermark also being part of the
    blockchain, uploaded to the remote distributed serer. So they
    can work hand in hand in this case. But watermarks can also
    work independently from a single capture control mechanism for
    authenticity of digital visual media.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you. And Ms.----
        Dr. Lyu. Thank you.
        Mr. Beyer. Ms. Francois, again, you talked about how the
    big data players, the Facebooks and Twitters, obviously are a
    huge part of the potential problem--source material, and have
    to be part of the solution, and you mentioned regulation as one
    of the pieces of the NSF/NIST piece. Not that you can do it in
    45 seconds, but anything that you guys can prepare to help our
    Energy and Commerce Committee, the committees in both houses,
    looking at how we manage the social media giants would be very,
    very appreciated. Because understanding how they've gone from
    basically unregulated unicorn game changers in our society, to
    how they can properly play within the rules, is going to be a
    really, really big challenge for us.
        Ms. Francois. I think it's going to be a lot of moving
    pieces. It's a complex problem, as I said, and I do believe
    that there's a lot of different bodies of regulation that can
    be applied and brought to bear to tackle it. One that is often
    left out of the conversation that I just want to highlight here
    is consumer protection. Dr. Farid talked about how the
    advertisers are getting the fake clicks. This can be a consumer
    protection issue. So different bodies of regulation, from cyber
    security to consumer protection, to address a whole of the
    disinformation problem, plus serious pressure to ensure that
    the data that the field needs is being shared in a way that
    makes it--for people.
        Mr. Beyer. Yes. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Thank you. Next I'd recognize Mr.
    Waltz for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Ms. Francois, going
    back to the disinformation campaigns that the Russians, the
    Iranians, and others have ongoing, the FBI and Department of
    Homeland Security have briefed us that they're confident, at
    least at this point in time, that active hacking into our
    election infrastructure has diminished, at least for now.
        Although I, and other colleagues, have worked to ensure
    that critical infrastructure is secured going forward, and this
    Committee has done work on that as well, but I'm interested in
    the disinformation piece of it, are you seeing increasing
    evidence of our adversaries conducting disinformation against
    individuals, whether they're thought leaders, journalists,
    politicians? For example, I could foresee hawks on Iran policy,
    or Russia, or others being specifically targeted during an
    election in order to change that election outcome, and
    therefore change our policy and voices. Are you seeing an
    increase there? What types of techniques are you seeing, and
    where are you seeing it, aside from the United States?
        One of the things that I've pushed is for us to share what
    we're gathering. For example, the Taiwanese elections, or other
    elections, for us to create a collaborative approach with our
    allies as well. This is a problem with the West, and I think
    with free speech and free thought, as much as it is with, you
    know, 2020 elections. And I'd welcome your thought.
        And then second, sorry, what would you think the response
    would be if we took more of a deterrence measure? For example,
    sending the signal that the Iranians, the Russians, and other
    bad actors, they have their own processes, and they have their
    own concerns, and often these regimes are more concerned with
    their own survival than they are with anything else, and at
    least demonstrating that we have that capability to interfere
    as well. I know that may present a lot of moral and ethical
    questions of whether we should have that capability, and
    whether we should demonstrate we should use it, but we've
    certainly taken that approach with nuclear weapons. And so I'd
    welcome your thoughts there.
        Ms. Francois. Thank you. I want to start by saying that
    part of it--yes, I am seeing an increase. Part of it is an
    increase, the other part is simply just a reckoning, as I said.
    Iran is a good example. We see a lot of disinformation
    campaigns originating from the Iranian state, who's a very
    prolific actor in that space.
        Now, people often ask me, is Iran following the Russian
    model. In reality the first Iranian campaign to use social
    media to target U.S. audiences date back from 2013, where we
    were asleep at the wheel, and not looking for them. So, despite
    our reckoning with sort of the diversity of actors who have
    been engaged with these techniques to target us, there is also
    an increase in both their scale and their sophistication. This
    is a cat-and-mouse game, and so what we also see is, as we
    detect actors and their techniques, they increase the
    sophistication. They make it harder for us to do the forensics
    that we need in order to catch those campaigns as they unfold.
        Thank you for raising the question of deterrence. I do
    think that this ultimately is a cyber policy issue too, and
    therefore the government has a role to play. In the case of the
    U.S. midterms in 2018, we saw U.S. Cyber Command target the
    Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg in an act of this
    attempted cyber deterrence. So I do think that there is a
    governmental response too by putting this problem in the
    broader context of cyber issue and cyber conflict.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you for raising that. I think it's
    important for my colleagues to note that was a policy change
    under this Administration that then allowed Cyber Command to
    take those kind of, what they call active defensive measures,
    and taking election security very seriously. I want to
    distinguish, though, between active defense and the potential,
    at least, and sending the signal that we have the potential for
    offense. And your thoughts there on the United States also
    participating in disinformation, or at least a deterrent
    capability?
        At the end of the day I think we can only do so much in
    playing defense here. We can only counter so much of this cat-
    and-mouse game. We have to fundamentally change our
    adversaries' behavior, and put them at risk, and their regimes
    at risk, in my own view. But I'd welcome your thoughts in my
    remaining time.
        Ms. Francois. Yes, I think the--8 minutes to answer this
    complex question on the dynamics of deterrence and resilience
    in cyberspace. I will say what immediately comes to mind is, of
    course, a question of escalation. How much of these dynamics
    contribute to escalation is something that is an unknown in
    this space.
        So far I think that the approach of being much more
    aggressive in both catching these campaigns, deactivating them,
    and publicly claiming that we have found them, and this is what
    they look like, seems to be a welcome move in this area. I
    think by exposing what actors are doing, we are also
    contributing to raising the cost for them to engaging in these
    techniques.
        Chairwoman Sherrill. Well, that was well done----
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you.
        Chairwoman Sherrill [continuing]. Ms. Francois. Thank you.
    Next I recognize Mr. Gonzalez for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
    being here, to our witnesses, and your work on this topic. A
    very important topic, and one that's a little bit new to
    Congress, but one that, alongside of Madam Chair, and others on
    this Committee, we've been excited to lead on, and I think
    we're making progress, unlike some other areas of Congress that
    I'm a part of.
        So, that being said, Dr. Lyu, I want to start with you, and
    I really just want to understand kind of where we are in the
    technology, from the standpoint of cost. So if, call it 2
    decades ago, I used the Forrest Gump example, yesterday. You
    know, Forrest Gump, if you've seen the movie, makes it looks
    like he's shaking hands with Presidents, and all kinds of
    things, and you can't tell the difference, except for you just
    know that there's no way that happened. Hollywood studio
    could've produced that, but it was costly back then, right,
    however much it costs. Today I think some numbers came out that
    you were citing that as, you know, roughly a couple thousand
    dollars. How quickly is the cost going down, to the point that
    this will be a weapon, if you will, that, you know, a 16-year-
    old sitting behind his computer could pull off?
        Dr. Lyu. I think this is basically, you know, we used to
    call this Moore's Law, where the computational power just got
    doubled every 18 months, and I think Moore's Law has already
    been broken with the coming of GPUs. The computational power
    that are at our hand is extremely higher than we have imagined
    before, and this trend is growing. So I will predict in the
    coming years it will become cheaper and easier, and also better
    to produce these kind of videos, and the computer hardware and
    algorithms will all get rapid improvements.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Dr. Lyu. So that's coming. I think it's a coming event.
    Thank you.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Thanks. And I actually think, you know, we
    talk a lot about great power competition in Iran, and China,
    and Russia, and I think that makes sense. I'm also maybe
    equally concerned about just a random person somewhere in
    society who has access to this, and can produce these videos
    without any problem, and the damage that that can cause. And I
    don't know that we've talked enough about that, frankly.
        But switching to Ms. Francois, you talked about how you
    found 70 countries use computational propaganda techniques in
    your analysis. And obviously a lot of this is spread through
    the platforms, and I think you talked really well about just
    how you can go down rabbit holes in the engagement metrics, and
    things like that. What do you think, and Dr. Farid, I'd welcome
    your comments as well, what do the platforms themselves need to
    be doing differently? Because it strikes me that they're being
    somewhat, or I would say, I would argue grossly irresponsible
    with how they manage some of the content on their systems
    today.
        Ms. Francois. That's a great question. I just want it
    precise that the 70 countries method comes from the Oxford
    Internet Institute report that was published today.
        Mr. Gonzalez. OK. Thank you.
        Ms. Francois. For me, the platform's play here is actually
    quite simple, and I would say clearer roles, more aggressive
    action, more transparency.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Ms. Francois. Let's start with clearer roles. Some
    platforms still don't have a rule that governments are not
    allowed to leverage their services in order to manipulate and
    deceive. And they will say they have rules that kind of go to
    this point, you know, tangentially, but there's still a lot of
    more clear rules that need to be established. To the second
    point, aggressive enforcement. There's still a lot of these
    campaigns that go under the radar, and that go undetected. They
    need to put the means to the table to make sure that they
    actually are able to catch, and detect, and take down as much
    of this activity as possible. My team, this week, published a
    large report on a spam campaign that was targeting Hong Kong
    protestors from Chinese accounts, and then they----
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Ms. Francois [continuing]. Had to take it down. There's
    more that they can do. Finally, transparency. It's very
    important that the platform continue, and increase, their
    degree of transparency in saying what they're seeing on their
    services, what they're taking down, and share the data back to
    the field.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes. I think that makes a lot of sense. My
    fear is, you know, we're going to do the best we can. I don't
    know that, one, this is intellectually difficult to figure out,
    as Congress, and it's also politically difficult, which, to me,
    puts it in that, like, Never Never Land, if it's going to take
    a while. So my hope is that the social medial platforms
    understand their responsibility, and come to the forefront with
    exactly what you said, because if not, I don't know that we're
    going to get it right, frankly.
        But with my final question, I'll throw just the word mental
    health, and the platforms themselves, and misinformation. Any
    studies that you're aware of that are showing the impacts on
    mental health, in particular teenagers, with respect to what's
    going on on the platforms today? Anybody can answer that.
        Ms. Francois. Again, I want to say that in this field we
    direly lack the data, infrastructure, and access to be able to
    do robust at-scale studies. So there is a variety of wonderful
    studies that are doing their best with small and more
    qualitative approaches, which are really, really important, but
    we're still direly lacking an important piece of doing rigorous
    research in this area.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you. And I'll follow up with additional
    questions on how we can get that data, and be smarter about
    that in Congress. So, thank you, I yield back.
        Mr. Beyer [presiding]. Thank you very much, sir. Dr. Farid,
    I understand you developed a seminal tool for Microsoft called
    PhotoDNA that detects and weeds out child pornography as it's
    posted online. Can you talk about how this tool works? Could
    this be used to address harmful memes and doctored images? And
    how do the social media companies respond to this?
        Dr. Farid. So PhotoDNA was a technology that I developed in
    2008-2009 in collaboration with Microsoft and the National
    Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Its goal was
    to find and remove the most horrific child sexual abuse
    material (CSAM) online. The basic idea is that the technology
    reaches into an image, extracts a robust digital signature that
    will allow us to identify that same piece of material when it
    is reuploaded. NCMEC is currently home to 80 million known
    child sexual abuse material, and so we can stop the
    proliferation and redistribution of that content.
        Last year alone, in one year, the National Center for
    Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline received 18
    million reports of CSAM being distributed online. That's 2,000
    an hour. 97, 98 percent of that material was found with
    PhotoDNA. It has been used for over a decade, and has been
    highly effective. Two more things. That same core technology
    can be used, for example, to find the Christchurch video, the
    Speaker Pelosi video, the memes that are known to be viral and
    dangerous. Once content is detected, the signature can be
    extracted, and we can stop the redistribution.
        And to your question of how the technology companies
    respond, I think the answer is not well. They were asked in
    2003 to do something about the global distribution of child
    sexual abuse material, and for 5 years they stalled, they did
    absolutely nothing. We're not talking about complicated issues
    here, gray areas. We are talking about 4-year-olds, 6-year-
    olds, 8-year-olds being violently raped, and the images and the
    videos of them, through these horrific acts, being distributed
    online. And the moral compass of Silicon Valley for the last
    decade has been so fundamentally broken they couldn't wrap
    their heads around their responsibility to do something about
    that.
        That doesn't bode well, by the way, for going forward, so I
    think that history is really important, and we have to remember
    that they come begrudgingly to these issues, and so we have to
    coax them along the way.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. So there--these images have
    digital signatures, even before we talk about the capture
    control technology----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. Or the watermark----
        Dr. Farid. That's exactly right. These don't have to be
    captured with specific hardware. So what we do is, after the
    point of recording, we reach in and we find a distinct
    signature that will allow us to identify, with extremely high
    reliability, that same piece of content. And that can be child
    abuse material, it can be a bomb-making video, it can be a
    conspiracy video, it can be copyright infringement material. It
    can be anything.
        Mr. Beyer. But it has to show up first----
        Dr. Farid. That's right.
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. In the public space----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. At least once, and we have to know
    that it's there in order to capture this----
        Dr. Farid. That's the drawback. But the good news is that
    technology works at scale. It works at the scale of a billion
    uploads to Facebook a day, and 500 hours of YouTube videos a
    minute. And that's a really hard engineering problem to tackle,
    but this technology actually works, unlike many of the other
    algorithms that have extremely high error rates, and would
    simply have too many mistakes.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. Dr. Lyu, you talked about
    using AI to find AI, and that more deep neural networks are
    used to detect the fakes, but there's the sense that the good
    guys are always trying to catch up with the bad guys, you know,
    the cat-and-mouse. Is there any way around the cat-and-mouse
    nature of the problem? Which, by the way, we just saw before,
    it's got to be out there before you can tag it and chase it
    down.
        Dr. Lyu. That's a very good question. Actually, I think on
    this point, I'm more pessimistic because I don't think there's
    a way we can escape that, because that's the very nature of
    this kind of problem. Unlike other research areas, where the
    problem's fixed, we're basically dealing with a moving target.
    Whenever we have new detection or deterrent algorithms, the
    adversaries will always try to improve their algorithm to beat
    us. So I think, in the long run, this will be the situation
    that will keep going.
        But I--that also emphasize Dr. Farid's point that we need
    more investment onto the side of detection and protection for
    the sake that, you know, we have a lot more resources put into
    making deep fakes for, you know, all kinds of reasons, but the
    investment in detection has not been catching up with that
    level. So that's part of my testimony, is encouraging the
    Federal Government to put more investment into this important
    area. Thank you.
        Mr. Beyer. Ms. Francois?
        Ms. Francois. Yes, if I may add a very simple metaphor
    here, I think we also have a leveling of the playing field
    issue. We're currently in a situation where there are a lot of
    cats, and very few mouses. We need to bring the resources to
    the table that correspond to the actual scale and gravity of
    the problem.
        Mr. Beyer. OK. Great. Thank you very much. I now recognize
    the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Gonzalez.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Thanks. Didn't know I was going to get a few
    extra seconds. So I just want to drill down on that data-
    sharing component. So you mentioned that we just need a better
    data-sharing infrastructure. Can you just take me as deep as
    you can on that? What do we need specifically? Just help me
    understand that.
        Ms. Francois. Yes. There are many different aspects to what
    we need, and I think that the--both the infrastructure, people
    involved, and type of data depend on the type of usage. So, for
    instance, facilitating academic access to at-scale data on the
    effects of technology on society is ultimately a different
    issue than ensuring that cybersecurity professionals have
    access to the types of forensics that correspond to a high-
    scale manipulation campaign that enables them to build better
    detection tools. And so I think the first step in tackling this
    problem is recognizing the different aspects of it.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Got it.
        Ms. Francois. Of course, the key component here is security
    and privacy, which here go hand in hand. What you don't want is
    to enable scenarios like Cambridge Analytica, where data abuses
    lead to more manipulation. Similarly, when we see
    disinformation campaigns, we often see a lot of real citizens
    who are caught into these nets, and they deserve the protection
    of their privacy.
        If you go down sort of the first rabbit hole of ensuring
    that cybersecurity professionals have access to the type of
    data and associated forensics that they need in order to do
    this type of detection at scale, and to build the forensics
    tool we need at scale, there's still, as I said, a lot we can
    do. The platforms right now are sharing some of the data that
    they have on these types of campaigns, but in a completely
    haphazard way. So they're free to decide when they want to
    share, what they want to share, and in which format. Often the
    format, they're sharing them in are very inaccessible, so my
    team has worked to create a database that makes that accessible
    to researchers. That's one step we can take.
        And, again, and I'll wrap on that, because this can be a
    deep rabbit hole----
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Ms. Francois [continuing]. You pushed me down this way.
    Again, if we take the Russia example, for instance when we
    scope a collection around something that we consider to be of
    national security importance, we need to make sure we have the
    means to ensure that the picture we're looking at is
    comprehensive.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Right.
        Ms. Francois. Our own false sense of security, in looking
    at the data, thinking that they represent the comprehensive
    picture of what happened, and was directed at us, is a problem
    in our preparations for election security.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you. Dr. Farid, any additional thoughts
    on that?
        Dr. Farid. Yes. I just wanted to mention, and I think Ms.
    Francois mentioned this, there is this tension between privacy
    and security, and you're seeing this particularly with
    Cambridge Analytica. And I will mention too that this is not,
    again, just a U.S. issue, this is a global issue. And with
    things like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), it has
    made data sharing extremely more complex for the technology
    sector.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Dr. Farid. So, for example, we've been trying to work with
    the sector to build tools to find child predators online, and
    the thing we keep running up against is we can't share this
    stuff because of GDPR, we can't share it because of privacy. I
    think that's a little bit of a false choice, but there is a
    sensitivity there that we should be aware of.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes. That's fair. I agree with you.
    Certainly, I think what you highlight, which I agree with, is
    there are gray areas----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Gonzalez [continuing]. OK, but there also, like, big
    bright lines. Child pornography, let's get that off our
    platforms.
        Dr. Farid. Yes, I agree. And feels to me like, if you share
    child pornography, you have lost the right to privacy. I don't
    think you have a right to privacy anymore once you've done
    that, I should have access to your account. So I think there's
    a little bit of a false narrative coming out here, but I still
    want to recognize that there are some sensitivities,
    particularly with the international standards. The Germans have
    very specific rules----
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Dr. Farid [continuing]. The Brits, the EU, et cetera.
        Mr. Gonzalez. So the last question, and this is maybe a bit
    of an oddball, so with the HN site that was ultimately brought
    down, I believe Cloudflare was their host, is that----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Gonzalez. So we talk a lot about the platforms
    themselves, right, but we don't always talk about the
    underlying infrastructure----
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Gonzalez [continuing]. And maybe what responsibilities
    they have.
        Dr. Farid. Yes.
        Mr. Gonzalez. Any thoughts on that? Should we be looking
    there as well?
        Dr. Farid. You should. And it is complicated, because----
        Mr. Gonzalez. Yes.
        Dr. Farid [continuing]. When you go to a Cloudflare--as the
    CEO came out and said, I woke up 1 day, and I thought, I don't
    like these guys, and I'm going to kick them off my platform.
    That is dangerous.
        Mr. Gonzalez. That's very----
        Dr. Farid. Yes. But Ms. Francois said it very well. Clear
    rules, enforce the rules, transparency. We have to have due
    process. So define the rules, enforce them consistently, and
    tell me what you're doing. I can fix this problem for the CEO
    of Cloudflare. Just tell me what the rules are. So--but I don't
    think they get a bye just because they're the underlying
    hardware of the Internet. I think they should be held to
    exactly the same standards, and they should be held to exactly
    the same standards of defining, enforcing, and transparency.
        And, by the way, I'll also add that cloud services are
    going to be extremely difficult. So, for example, we've made
    progress with YouTube on eliminating terror content, but now
    they're just moving to Google Drive, and Google is saying,
    well, Google Drive is a cloud service, so it's outside of this
    platform. So I do think we have to start looking at those core
    infrastructures.
        Mr. Gonzalez. OK. I appreciate your perspective. Frankly, I
    don't know what I net out on it, I just know it's something
    that I think we should be looking at----
        Dr. Farid. I agree.
        Mr. Gonzalez [continuing]. And weighing, so thank you.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Dr. Lyu, you know, Ms. Francois just
    talked about a level playing field, you know, that, the bad
    guys have a lot more tools and resources than the good guys.
        Dr. Lyu. Right.
        Mr. Beyer. We talked a lot about the perils of deep fakes,
    but are there any constructive applications?
        Dr. Lyu. Actually----
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. Where we want to use deep fakes in
    a good way?
        Dr. Lyu. Yes, indeed. Actually, the technology behind deep
    fake, as I mentioned in my opening remark, is of dual use. So
    there's a beneficial side of using this technology. For
    instance, the movie industry can use that, reduce their costs.
    There are also ways to actually make sure a message can be
    broadcast to multilinguistic groups without, you know,
    regenerating the media in different languages. It is also
    possible to use this technology to protect privacy. For
    instance, for people like whistleblowers, or, you know, victims
    in violent crime. If they don't want to expose their identity,
    it's possible to use this technology, replacing the face, but
    leaving the facial expression intact there.
        The negative effect of deep fake, this kind of technology,
    you get a lot of spotlight, but there's also this dual use that
    we should also be aware of. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Ms. Francois, are there any good
    bots?
        Ms. Francois. Yes. They're really fun. One of them
    systematically tweets out every edit to Wikipedia that is made
    from the Congress Internet infrastructure. In general what I'm
    trying to say is there are good bots. Some of them are fun and
    creative, and I think they do serve the public interest. I do
    not think that there are good reasons to use an army of bots in
    order to do coordinated amplification of content. I think when
    you are trying to manipulate the behavior to make it look like
    a broader number of people are in support of your content than
    actually is the case, I do not see any particularly good use of
    that.
        Mr. Beyer. I want to send you one of my daughter's bots.
    She has a perfectly normal Twitter account, and then she has
    the Twitter bot account, where she leverages off of her
    linguistics background, and I cannot make heads nor tails of
    what it does. But perhaps----
        Ms. Francois [continuing]. Can look at it.
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. You can. Yes, it's----
        Ms. Francois. OK.
        Mr. Beyer. She says it's OK. Dr. Farid, you talked--it
    would be a mistake for the tech giants to transform their
    system from end-to-end encrypted systems, that would make the
    problem only worse. Can you walk us through that?
        Dr. Farid. Sure, and I'm glad you asked the question. So
    let's talk about what end-to-end encryption is. So the idea is
    I type a message on my phone, it gets encrypted, and sent over
    the wire. Even if it's a Facebook service, Facebook cannot read
    the message. Under a lawful warrant, you cannot read the
    message. Nobody can read the message until the receiver
    receives it, and then they decrypt. So that's called an end-to-
    end encryption. Everything in the middle is completely
    invisible. WhatsApp, for example, owned by Facebook, is end-to-
    end encrypted, and it is why, by the way, WhatsApp has been
    implicated in horrific violence in Sri Lanka, in the
    Philippines, in Myanmar, in India. It has been linked with
    election tampering in Brazil, in India, and other parts of the
    world, because nobody knows what's going on on the platform.
        So last year, you heard me say, 18 million reports to the
    National Center for Child Sexual Abuse Material, more than half
    of those came from Facebook Messenger, currently unencrypted.
    If they encrypt, guess what happens? Ten million images of
    child sexual abuse material, I can no longer see. This is a
    false pitting of privacy over security, and it's completely
    unnecessary. We can run PhotoDNA, the technology that I
    described earlier, on the client so that, when you type the
    message and attach an image, we can extract that signature.
    That signature is privacy preserving, so even if I hand it to
    you, you won't be able to reconstruct the image, and I can send
    that hash, that signature, along with the encrypted message,
    over wire, pull the hash off, compare it to a database, and
    then stop the transmission.
        And I will mention, by the way, when Facebook tells you
    that this is all about privacy, is that on WhatsApp, their
    service, if somebody sends you a link, and that link is
    malware, it's dangerous to you, it will be highlighted in the
    message. How are they doing that? They are reading your
    message. Why? For security purposes. Can we please agree that
    protecting you from malware is at least as important as
    protecting 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds and 8-year-olds from
    physical sexual abuse?
        We have the technology to do this, and the rush to end-to-
    end encryption, which, by the way, I think is a head fake.
    They're using Cambridge Analytica to give them plausible
    deniability on all the other issues that we have been trying to
    get them--progress on, from child sexual abuse, to terrorism,
    to conspiracies, to disinformation. If they end-to-end encrypt,
    we will lose the ability to know what's going on on their
    platforms, and you have heard very eloquently from my colleague
    that this will be a disaster. You should not let them do this
    without putting the right safeguards in place.
        Mr. Beyer. So you were just making a powerful argument now
    for national and international level banning end-to-end
    encryption?
        Dr. Farid. I wouldn't go that far. We want end-to-end
    encryption for banking, for finance. There are places where it
    is the right thing to do, but there are other places where we
    have to simply think about the balance. So, for example, in my
    solution I didn't say don't do end-to-end encryption. I said
    put the safeguards in place so that if somebody's transmitting
    harmful content, I can know about it.
        I have mixed feelings about the end-to-end encryption, but
    I think, if you want to do it, and we should think seriously
    about that, you can still put the safeguards in place.
        Mr. Beyer. And blockchain is not end-to-end encryption?
        Dr. Farid. No, it is not.
        Mr. Beyer. But it gets close?
        Dr. Farid. These are sort of somewhat orthogonal separate
    issues, right? What we are talking about is a controlled
    platform saying that--everything that comes through us, we will
    no longer be able to see. That is super convenient for the
    Facebooks of the world, who don't want to be held accountable
    for the horrible things happening on their platforms, and I
    think that's the core issue here.
        Mr. Beyer. Great, thanks. Anything else? All right. I think
    Mr. Gonzalez and I are done and thank you very much. It's a
    very, very interesting mission, and don't be discouraged that
    there weren't more Members here, because everyone's in their
    office watching this, and have their own questions. So thank
    you very much for being here, and thanks for your witness
    stuff. And the record will remain open for 2 weeks for
    additional statements from the Members, and, additionally, we
    may have questions of you to answer in writing. So thank you
    very much.
        Dr. Farid. OK.
        Mr. Beyer. You're excused, and the hearing is adjourned.
        Dr. Farid. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 3:26 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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                       Additional Material for the Record

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