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

                             HIJACKING OUR HEROES:
                          EXPLOITING VETERANS THROUGH
                         DISINFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

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

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                         COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                          WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 116-44

                                   __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                        Available via http://govinfo.gov

                                    __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    41-374 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022

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

                         COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

                       MARK TAKANO, California, Chairman

    JULIA BROWNLEY, California           DAVID P. ROE, Tennessee, Ranking
    KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York               Member
    CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania, Vice-      GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
        Chairman                         AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,
    MIKE LEVIN, California                   American Samoa
    MAX ROSE, New York                   MIKE BOST, Illinois
    CHRIS PAPPAS, New Hampshire          NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia            JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
    SUSIE LEE, Nevada                    JIM BANKS, Indiana
    JOE CUNNINGHAM, South Carolina       ANDY BARR, Kentucky
    GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, JR.,           DANIEL MEUSER, Pennsylvania
        California                       STEVE WATKINS, Kansas
    COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota        CHIP ROY, Texas
    GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN,      W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
        Northern Mariana Islands
    COLIN Z. ALLRED, Texas
    LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
    ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York

                     Ray Kelley, Democratic Staff Director
                     Jon Towers, Republican Staff Director

    Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public
    hearing records of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs are also
    published in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the
    official version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare
    both printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process
    of converting between various electronic formats may introduce
    unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the
    current publication process and should diminish as the process is
    further refined.

                             C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                                  ----------

                          WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019

                                                                       Page

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

    Honorable Mark Takano, Chairman..................................     1
    Honorable David P. Roe, Ranking Member...........................     3

                                   WITNESSES

    Mr. Kristofer Goldsmith, Chief Investigator & Associate Director
      of Policy and Government Affairs, Vietnam Veterans of America..     4

    Dr. Vladimir Barash, Science Director, Graphika..................     7

    Mr. Kevin Kane, Public Policy Manager, Twitter...................     8

    Mr. Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security Policy, Facebook........    10

                                    APPENDIX
                        Prepared Statements of Witnesses

    Mr. Kristofer Goldsmith Prepared Statement.......................    39
    Dr. Vladimir Barash Prepared Statement...........................    44
    Mr. Kevin Kane Prepared Statement................................    57
    Mr. Nathaniel Gleicher Prepared Statement........................    60

                      Questions And Answers For The Record

    Nathaniel Gleicher's Responses to Questions for the Record.......    65

                             HIJACKING OUR HEROES:
                          EXPLOITING VETERANS THROUGH
                         DISINFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

                                  ----------

                          WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019

                         Committee on Veterans' Affairs
                                  U.S. House of Representatives
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room
    210, House Visitors Center, Hon. Mark Takano (chairman of the
    committee) presiding.
        Present: Representatives Takano, Brownley, Rice, Lamb,
    Levin, Brindisi, Pappas, Lee, Cunningham, Cisneros, Peterson,
    Allred, Roe, Bilirakis, Radewagen, Bost, Dunn, Bergman, Banks,
    Barr and Steube.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF MARK TAKANO, CHAIRMAN

        The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. Without
    objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
    time.
        Today's investigative hearing is entitled, ``Hijacking our
    Heroes: Exploiting Veterans through Disinformation on Social
    Media.''
        Over the past 3 years there has been an increasing
    awareness of how foreign actors have sought to infiltrate and
    influence our elections. Manipulation of social media networks,
    a major source of news and information, has become a tool of
    influence. We are here today to consider how such foreign
    actors specifically target and take advantage of our veterans
    and veterans' service organizations on social media.
        During today's hearing we will hear about interest
    spoofing. Spoofing is defined as the act of disguising an
    electronic communication, such as email and text, from an
    unknown source and make the communication look like it is from
    a known, trusted source.
        This can happen either by creating a fraudulent account or
    by stealing a real account, and is one of the primary tactics
    by which foreign actors infiltrate social media networks.
        Spoofing includes the creation of fake social media
    accounts using a stolen photograph or name, thereby imitating
    an actual person in order to gain trust and credibility. In
    other words, somebody may be looking at what they believe is a
    legitimate veterans' service organization's Facebook page or
    Twitter feed when, in reality, a bad or fraudulent actor is
    masquerading as the real thing.
        Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have
    enormous reach through their millions of daily users. The
    steady growth of internet access and mobile technology has made
    social media accessible to most people around the world.
    However, that also means that dishonest individuals or even
    entities associated with foreign governments can now easily
    reach into unsuspecting American homes to spread
    disinformation.
        As a recent Senate intelligence committee report detailed,
    Russian efforts to infiltrate our social media networks
    actually increased in the aftermath of the 2016 election, and
    are likely to continue to increase through 2020.
        Let me be clear. This issue has nothing to do with
    censoring certain political views or removing content based on
    partisan bias. This hearing is about impersonation and stealing
    veterans' voices. Pretending to be a veteran for any reason is
    shameful, but it is especially shameful when such deception is
    used to spread disinformation.
        Veterans wield considerable influence in credibility in
    their communities earned by virtue of their selfless sacrifice
    and service to our country. Whether in Riverside, California or
    Washington, DC, veterans are listened to because of their
    experience and sacrifice.
        That esteemed trust in our veterans is now being hijacked
    by foreign imposters online and used to spread harmful
    disinformation, political propaganda and fake news. Foreign
    actors are stealing veterans' voices and images in order to
    influence political opinions heading into an election year.
    Unsuspecting citizens could have their political judgment
    swayed by foreign voices posing as American veterans. By
    impersonating veterans, these foreign actors are effectively
    eroding the hard-earned power and integrity of veterans'
    voices.
        Social medial platforms play an important role in public
    discourse, and I continue to believe in protecting our freedoms
    of speech and innovation. There is a very real and growing
    problem here, and we need to determine how to strike the
    balance between shielding platforms from frivolous lawsuits and
    ensuring election security and sanctity of our veterans' voices
    in civic discourse. The platforms themselves need to do more to
    eliminate the issue of internet spoofing, and if they do not,
    then Congress will need to step in more directly.
        Today we are going to hear from Kristofer Goldsmith
    representing the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). In fact,
    the Vietnam Veterans of America itself was spoofed, leading Mr.
    Goldsmith to conduct years of research into how veterans are
    targeted by foreign actors online.
        We will also hear--so, Mr. Goldsmith, welcome today.
        We also will hear about the magnitude and scope of the
    spoofing problem from a data scientist from Graphika, a firm
    specializing in the analysis of social media networks who has
    completed extensive research examining this issue.
        Finally, two of the most significant social media
    platforms, Facebook and Twitter, will tell us about their
    efforts to combat the growing problem of foreign actors
    spoofing on their networks.
        This hearing will explore some key questions.
        First, how extensive is the problem of veteran spoofing;
    what are the types of manipulation and how are veterans
    affected.
        Second, are social media platforms doing enough to detect
    and remove bad actors; what more can the platforms do to
    prevent this manipulation, especially given the impending 2020
    election.
        Finally, what role should the government have in ensuring
    that veterans and others are not harmed by the manipulation of
    social media networks; are the FBI and others in the law
    enforcement community performing a strong and appropriate role
    in ensuring that our Nation's laws are followed.
        The issue of protecting our elections from foreign
    influence is one of critical importance to all Americans, and
    preserving the power of veterans' voices should be of equal
    concern to us all.
        With that I would like to recognize ranking member, Dr.
    Roe, for 5 minutes for any opening remarks that he may have.

           OPENING STATEMENT OF DAVID P. ROE, RANKING MEMBER

        Mr. Roe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        This past Monday, November 11th, was Veterans' Day. In our
    hectic world we sometimes fail to take the time to consider
    that we owe our freedom to those who have protected our
    freedoms. From 1776 to today, Americans from all walks of life
    have answered the call to fight for and defend this Nation.
        One veteran I met Monday, last Friday, I mean, at Colonial
    Heights Middle School in Sullivan County, Tennessee, was one of
    the last 11 survivors of the torpedoing of the U.S.
    Indianapolis. I saw this gentleman in his mid-90's who looked
    up at the screen and when they showed his ship and a tear came
    down his face and I saw, here is a man who spent 4 days in the
    water, if you have not read about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, and
    survived that terrible torpedoing to live a normal life, raise
    6 children and basically help create the country that I was
    able to, along with many, many others, that I was able to grow
    up in.
        I want to thank Mr. Smith for that and his family.
        The purpose of today's hearing is to explore the
    misappropriation of veterans' identifies, for the dissemination
    of fake news and political propaganda, romance scams and
    commercial fraud. I will say that I am just glad my sweet
    mother is no longer around to read my Facebook page to find out
    how awful her son turned out.
        This is a complicated issue that can be and has been
    approached from several different angles in Congress. Our
    colleagues and other committees with different expertise than
    ours have focused on foreign influence through social media. I
    intend to use my time today to understand the extent to which
    the peddlers of propaganda and unscrupulous scammers target
    veterans and their families, and learn what they can do to
    defend themselves.
        We want to shed light on the issues impacting veterans,
    help them understand the risks associated with using social
    media, and direct them to resources to empower them to protect
    themselves and their families online.
        From our witnesses, I am interested in learning whether
    veterans are at high risk for being targeted for propaganda and
    what veterans can do to identify propaganda. That was an issue
    raised in the Vietnam Veterans' recent report which will be a
    topic of today's conversation.
        Another issue raised in VVA's report concerns romance
    scams, many of which, according to VVA, originate in West
    Africa.
        According to the 2017 American Association of Retired
    People (AARP) report that examined fraud targeting veterans, 28
    percent of veterans surveyed reported being the target of a
    romance scam over the past 5 years, while 26 percent of non-
    veterans surveyed reported being targets of romance scams
    during the same period. In other words, there was no
    statistical difference between the rates of romance scams
    frauds between veterans and non-veterans.
        I am interested in whether our witnesses have studied the
    targeting of veterans for romance scams on social media
    platforms and whether they have evidence that veterans are more
    or less targeted than non-veterans.
        The evidence is clear that veterans have their identity
    misappropriated and that they, like other social media users,
    could be targets for propaganda or scams. Therefore, I want to
    hear from our witnesses about what they believe their
    platform's role is in preventing the misappropriation of
    veterans' identities and stopping propaganda and scams.
        Education outreach are the most effective means of
    protecting against financial exploitation. Therefore, we must
    empower veterans with the information necessary to make an
    informed choice about whether the benefits of social media are
    worth the risks and to make them aware of available resources
    to protect themselves.
        It is my understanding that both Facebook and Twitter
    provide information and training on social media safety. I hope
    to hear more about how they are partnering with other private
    entities, including the Veterans Service Organizations, to
    disseminate existing materials and new resources to their
    members, including veterans.
        I will conclude with this. No government agency or private
    entity can fully protect veterans from potentially malicious
    actors online or otherwise. Veterans must be their own shield
    and their own first line of defense.
        To veterans watching this hearing, please take a critical
    look at posts, news feeds and messages because not surprisingly
    not everything online is true and accurate. If you are
    contacted by someone you do know or a company asking you for
    money or sensitive information, take a moment to pick up the
    phone and call that person or company to verify that it was
    sent by them.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Roe.
        I will now call on the panelists to present their
    testimony.
        First, Mr. Kristofer Goldsmith, Chief Investigator &
    Associate Director of Policy and Government Affairs of Vietnam
    Veterans of America.
        Welcome, Mr. Goldsmith, and you have 5 minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF KRISTOFER GOLDSMITH

        Mr. Goldsmith. Good afternoon, Chairman Takano, Ranking
    Member Dr. Roe, and the distinguished members of this
    committee. We at Vietnam Veterans America and I personally are
    deeply grateful for your decision to hold this hearing, and for
    your commitment to ensuring that America addresses foreign-
    borne cyber threats against service members, veterans, our
    families and survivors.
        My name is Kristofer Goldsmith and I am the Chief
    Investigator and Associate Director for Policy and Government
    Affairs at VVA. I served with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division
    as a forward observer and deployed for a year to Sadr City,
    Baghdad in 2005.
        Many of you know me from my work on the issue of helping
    veterans with bad paper discharges and for being the young guy
    representing VVA as we joined with our Veteran Service
    Organization (VSO) partners to create and advocate for the
    passage of the Forever GI Bill.
        In an ideal world, these things would still be my primary
    focus here at VVA.
        VVA gave me the title of Chief Investigator out of
    necessity. I took on this additional role when VVA came to
    realize that we were facing a series of foreign-borne online
    imposters who were creating social media accounts and website
    that were meant to trick our members and supporters. These
    imposters were and still are using the name and brand of our
    congressionally chartered VSO to spread actual fake news that
    is meant to inflame national divisions.
        Since beginning our investigation we have found and exposed
    election interference related to the 2020 Presidential campaign
    by these foreign entities. VVA has documented what we believe
    to be campaign finance fraud with well known Macedonian crooks
    tricking followers of the Vets for Trump Political Action
    Committee's (PAC's) Facebook page into sending political
    donations overseas via Papal.
        These Macedonians had staged a hostile takeover of 2 pages
    originally owned by real American veterans and then used them
    to buildup xenophobic hatred against 4 women of color in
    congress, and then tie them, the women in congress, to
    democratic 2020 Presidential candidates.
        They also used these pages to spread disinformation about
    elections in New York, my home State. Separately, we discovered
    a host of foreign entities from Eastern Europe and the Asian
    Pacific selling counterfeit merchandise featuring VVA's
    trademark logo alongside racist political propaganda.
        We have found multiple entities from Russia, Ukraine, and
    Bulgaria who were purporting to be VVA on Facebook, Twitter,
    Instagram, Google, and ReadIt. We have been tracking a bot
    network on Twitter which finds and follows veteran advocates
    like myself and my colleagues behind me, and tries to blend in
    with the veterans' community by retweeting official government
    accounts, veterans organizations and political organizations
    like the NRA.
        People who then follow these accounts get automated
    messages in broken English with suspicious links.
        We have discovered that Nigeria hosts a massive organized
    criminal empire which uses the names and photos of troops and
    veterans to lure Americans into romance scams. Because some of
    the names and photos are of troops killed in action, their gold
    star families are re-traumatized as their deceased loved ones
    continue to be used as bait for financial fraud.
        Some of the victims whose names get used are your own
    colleagues, veterans who serve in Congress. In one example,
    Congressman Lee Zeldin, a fellow Long Islander, had photos of
    him and his kids exploited to make it look like he was a
    widower in search of new love.
        We have done a close analysis of the infamous Russian ads
    that were released by the House Permanent Select Committee on
    Intelligence. Among them were at least 113 ads directed at
    veterans or which used veterans as props in Russia's mission to
    divide Americans.
        Facebook's microtargeting allowed these Russian entities to
    specifically target the followers of American Veterans
    (AMVETS), Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Iraq and
    Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Paralyzed Veterans of
    America (PVA), VVA, Wounded Warrior Project, and a host of
    veterans organizations which operate on the political spectrum
    like Concerned Veterans of America and Vietnam Veterans Against
    the War.
        At least 2 of the ads on Facebook featured a friend of
    mine, an advocate for veterans and service dogs. Those of you
    who have been on this committee for a while knew Captain Luis
    Carlos Montalvan and his K9, Tuesday. Our friend died by
    suicide in December 2016, but he lives on as evidence in
    Russia's insidious campaign against us.
        If the committee would indulge me for a moment, and I am
    asking you, the members, would those of you in the room who
    remember the reports from 2015 of the so-called Cyber Califate,
    an affiliate of ISIS, sending threatening messages to families,
    please raise your hand.
        Thank you. For the record, one person.
        Now those among you in this time rapid fire breaking news
    that has overwhelmed us all have--who has had the opportunity
    to read the follow up stories which revealed that these
    terroristic threats were actually made by Russian hackers who
    were pretending to be ISIS?
        No one. Exactly.
        It is important to note that the military families were not
    chosen at random. One was a reported at Military.com, the
    others were prominent members of the community of military and
    veteran advocates.
        I want to emphasize this point. Russian hackers, who were
    pretending to be ISIS, sent terroristic threats to advocates
    and reporters who appear before or report about this committee.
    In a flurry of news, it seems like hardly anyone even knows
    that happened.
        We have detailed our findings in 191-page report that is
    sitting in front of you and it is publicly available at our
    website, VVA.org/trollreport, which we encourage all of you to
    read.
        Thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee
    today. I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions you
    might have to pose.
        Thank you.

        [The Prepared Statement Of Kristofer Goldsmith Appears In
    The Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Goldsmith.
        Next is Dr. Vladimir Barash, Science Director of Graphika.
    Welcome, Mr. Barash. 5 minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF DR. VLADIMIR BARASH

        Dr. Barash. Thank you.
        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and distinguished
    members of this committee, thank you for holding this hearing
    today. I am the Science Director of Graphika, a network
    analysis company that examines how ideas and influence spread
    online. This is a problem I have been working on for many
    years.
        My PhD dissertation at Cornell demonstrated how an idea can
    reach critical mass simply by gaining enough supporters in the
    right online communities, no matter how true or false it is.
    Even the most outlandish rumor that reaches critical mass will
    go viral and become extremely difficult to disprove.
        In the years since at Graphika I have had the opportunity
    to apply my research and studying a wide array of real
    disinformation campaigns including the work we did with our
    Oxford University colleagues for the Senate Select Committee on
    Intelligence, analyzing the Russian disinformation campaign
    surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
        These operations are rapidly evolving. Early campaigns we
    observed and analyzed targeted individuals online at random
    using easily discoverable methods. Newer methods use
    sophisticated cyborg approaches that synergize large scale
    automated operations with precisely crafted disinformation
    injection and highjacking efforts by human operators.
        The goal of these operations is not simply to go viral or
    to have a high Nielson score, so to speak, but rather to
    influence the beliefs and narratives of influential members of
    key American communities.
        The effects of these operations are not confined to the
    digital space. By targeting individuals directly and by
    leveraging social media to organize offline events, they seek
    to produce chaos and harm in the homes and streets of our
    country.
        These online campaigns have long targeted U.S. veterans and
    military service members. Foreign information operations
    against our men and women in uniform are a persistent threat
    ongoing since at least 2011. These operations have played out
    on social media, in the cyber domain, and on alternative
    websites and news media focused on the veterans' community.
    These operations show no sign of stopping. A previous study
    demonstrates that information operations by Russia's internet
    research agency increased dramatically after the 2016
    elections. Recent work has identified additional State actors,
    such as Iran, China and Saudi Arabia, using information
    operations to target communities and topics of interest.
        Information operations on social media exploit societal
    cleavages in U.S. veterans and military communities, and work
    to promote narratives that American democracy is irrevocably
    broken. Attacks against our troops in the cyber domain manifest
    as malware and fishing campaigns, for instance, targeting
    veterans looking for employment.
        The pairing of disinformation with cyber attacks
    demonstrates the sophistication of these operations which aim
    to manipulate our veterans through multiple channels
    simultaneously and negate the utility of any single defense
    against their efforts.
        Information operations intersect with domestic hyper-
    partisan and conspiratorial content, both on the right and on
    the left. The structure of our own public sphere creates the
    cracks through which bad actors target us. Domestic conspiracy
    theory accounts act as perfect amplifiers for foreign
    disinformation content pushing it to a larger audience of
    Americans and situating it in a familiar context.
        Our findings so far aided by proactive detection and
    transparency efforts by social media platforms in the last 2
    years have shed light on the nature of information operations
    against our veterans and military service members. As a
    scientist my inclination is also to highlight some of the key
    known unknowns of this topic.
        When it comes to the scope of operations, the data
    available so far allow for a piecemeal approach to a
    multifaceted problem. There are still data gaps in our
    understanding of the issue. When it comes to the impact of
    operations, we need to answer the crucial question of how
    follows, retweets, and page clicks translate to the changing of
    hearts and minds.
        What we do know, however, clearly demonstrates that we need
    a whole of society approach to protecting and supporting the
    communities most targeted by foreign actors online. Only by
    acting in concert can we stop a concerted threat to the troops
    who have fought and still and always will fight for our
    freedom.

        [The Prepared Statement Of Dr. Vladimir Barash Appears In
    The Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Barash, for your testimony.
        Mr. Kevin Kane, Public Policy Manager of Twitter, welcome,
    and you have 5 minutes for your testimony.

                        STATEMENT OF KEVIN KANE

        Mr. Kane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and members of the
    committee, I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before
    you today to discuss how Twitter supports America's veterans
    and works to mitigate bad actors from abusing our platform.
        Twitter facilitates and amplifies the voices of veterans,
    both online and in our workforce. We see important
    conversations related to veterans' issues play out on Twitter
    every day. Over the past 6 months we have hosted more than 100
    veterans for training in our offices. Just last week, in fact,
    we hosted the Student Veterans of America, in our office to
    teach them how to better leverage Twitter to support their
    important work.
        The commitment to Twitter's efforts to support veterans'
    causes and our employees with service backgrounds comes from
    the top, with our executives acting as model allies. It is not
    only a priority to get veterans in the door, but also to hire
    them at levels recognizing the experience they gained while
    serving in uniform.
        Our commitment is not solely limited to hiring. Our
    business resource group for veterans and military families,
    Twitter Stripes, works each day to share the veteran community
    story, both inside our offices and out. This group delivers
    programming that helps our employees understand the pride and
    challenge of service.
        We also have a close relationship with the U.S. Department
    of Veterans Affairs and advise the agency on best practices to
    leverage the power of Twitter to better serve veterans who are
    at risk for committing suicide. Among other efforts, we
    supported the VA's suicide prevention campaign by badging the
    Be There hash tag with a custom emoji to elevate this important
    initiative on Twitter.
        We work each day to serve the public conversation and
    ensure all those who come to Twitter have a voice on the
    service. Over the last year, for example, we implemented dozens
    of product and policy changes to improve our ability to tackle
    the issues that undermine a healthy conversation, including
    abuse, harassment, malicious automation, and inauthentic
    engagement. We rely on collaborative partnerships with civil
    society, governments and researchers to better understand and
    address these challenges.
        I provided more detail in my written testimony, but will
    briefly outline some of the most important work we are doing to
    fight online scams, combat coordinated manipulation, and
    provide transparency about foreign State back influence
    operations.
        First, in regard to preventing scams, in September of this
    year we codified our prohibition against scam tactics. Under
    our policy, individuals using Twitter are prohibited from
    deceiving others into sending money or personal financial
    information via scam tactics, fishing or other fraudulent
    methods. Individuals may not create accounts, post Tweets or
    send direct messages that solicit engagement in such fraudulent
    schemes.
        Examples of these prohibited tactics include sending money
    or personal financial information by operating a fake account
    or by posing as a public figure or an organization, engaging in
    money flipping schemes, operating schemes that make discount
    offers to others where a fulfillment of the offers is paid for
    using stolen credit cards, and posing as or implying
    affiliation with banks or other financial institutions to
    acquire personal financial information.
        On the issue of platform manipulation, we have made
    significant progress in our work. In fact, since January 2018
    we have challenged more than 520 million accounts suspected of
    engaging in platform manipulation. To be clear, we define
    platform manipulation as disrupting the public conversation by
    engaging in bulk, aggressive or deceptive activity.
        Finally, we strive for transparency by providing a publicly
    accessible archive of foreign State back influence operations.
    This archive currently contains more than 30 million tweets on
    accounts engaging in foreign influence operation originating in
    countries including Russia, Iran, China among others.
        We made these accounts and their content available and
    searchable so the public, governments and researchers can
    investigate, learn and build media literacy capabilities for
    the future.
        Information operations are not new and predate social
    media. They continue to adapt and change as the geopolitical
    terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge.
        We are committed to continue our work in understanding how
    bad faith actors use our service.
        In closing, our work on this issue is not done nor will it
    ever be. We continue to fight these threats while maintaining
    the integrity of people's experiences on Twitter and supporting
    the health of the conversation on the service.
        I appreciate the opportunity to share this work with the
    members of this committee.
        Mr. Chairman, I would again like to thank you for calling
    this important hearing, and I look forward to your questions.

        [The prepared statement of Kevin Kane appears in the
    Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Kane.
        Mr. Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security Policy at
    Facebook, welcome, and you have 5 minutes for your opening
    statement.

                    STATEMENT OF NATHANIEL GLEICHER

        Mr. Gleicher. Thank you, Chairman.
        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and members of the
    committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
    today.
        My name is Nathaniel Gleicher and I am the Head of Security
    Policy at Facebook. My work is focused on identifying and
    merging threats and protecting our users from those threats. I
    have a background in computer science and law. Before coming to
    Facebook, I prosecuted cyber crime at the U.S. Department of
    Justice and built and defended computer networks.
        All of us at Facebook are incredibly grateful to our
    veterans for their service and for the sacrifices they and
    their families make. We are proud that thousands of veterans
    and active duty military members use the Facebook family of
    apps to stay connected and share with their friends and loved
    ones.
        Facebook is also proud to invest in the veteran community
    through our hiring and by supporting veterans at Facebook, by
    providing career development and job search tools for veterans
    and military families, and by offering training and mentoring
    programs for veteran entrepreneurs.
        Through initiatives like our military and veterans hub and
    our new partnership to advance veterans entrepreneurship, we
    offer a wide variety of resources to help veterans grow their
    businesses, develop new skills and find job opportunities, both
    here at Facebook and elsewhere.
        Facebook is designed to help bring communities together,
    and to do that in an authentic way. That is why we require
    people to connect on Facebook using the name they go by in
    every day life. We don't allow people to use fake accounts,
    artificially boost the popularity of content or impersonate
    someone else.
        We recognize, however, that there are bad actors intent on
    misusing our platform, and some of those bad actors target
    individuals and groups that are considered trustworthy, like
    veterans. This can incur individually when a specific veteran
    is impersonated, such as in a romance scam, or organizationally
    when pages or groups are created to impersonate veteran related
    organizations, usually for financial purposes, such as to sell
    merchandise or otherwise make money.
        Finally, we see foreign governments just distort veterans
    issues to sow division. This is less common than the previous
    two examples of financially motivated fraud, but any amount of
    this type of deception is too much.
        Our efforts to stop this inauthentic behavior as well as
    other kinds of frauds and scams have four components.
        First, our expert investigators proactively hunt for and
    remove the most sophisticated threats.
        Second, we build technology to detect and automatically
    remove more common threats.
        Third, we provide transparency and reporting tools to give
    users context about who they are speaking to or following
    online, and to enable independent researchers and the press to
    conduct their own investigations and to expose bad behavior.
        Fourth, we work closely with civil society, researchers,
    governments and industry partners so they can flag issues that
    they see and we can work quickly to resolve them.
        Combining these 4 strategies allows us to pursue what we
    call adversarial design, continually adopting our platforms to
    make them more resistant to deception and more conducive to
    authenticity.
        When it comes to scammers impersonating veterans on our
    platform in particular, we are testing new detection
    capabilities to look for certain techniques these scammers use
    to target individuals such as veterans. These capabilities help
    us more quickly detect and remove scammer accounts, often
    before people even seem them.
        Unfortunately, impersonation is not limited to veterans or
    veteran-related groups. That is why to root out and remove
    these bad actors we focus on patterns of behavior, the
    techniques and tactics these scammers rely on, not just
    content. This allows our approach to be flexible enough to
    combat impersonation of all kinds and means that our teams can
    bring insights from protecting other communities to make sure
    we are as effective as possible when protecting veterans.
        One form of transparency that has been particularly useful
    to helpful expose false veterans organizations run from
    overseas is giving our users more information about who is
    running a particular Facebook page or account and from what
    country.
        Partnerships are also essential in our work to protect
    veterans. We work with Veterans Services Organizations and
    others to educate the veterans community on how to handle
    impersonation and we have dedicated channels for the Department
    of Defense and others effected by impersonation to report to
    us.
        We know that we face motivated adversaries in this space
    and that we have to continually improve our approach to stay
    ahead. We are committed to doing just that.
        I appreciate the opportunity to be here today, to hear your
    ideas and concerns, and I look forward to your questions.

        [The Prepared Statement Of Nathaniel Gleicher Appears In
    The Appendix]

        The Chairman. Thank you for your testimony.
        I now will recognize myself for 5 minutes for questioning.
        My first question is to Mr. Goldsmith and Dr. Barash. Can
    both of you talk to us about the significance or urgency of
    this problem? How does the disinformation spread by foreign
    actors harm veterans and what is the full scope of the impact
    to our nation?
        Mr. Goldsmith, go first, please.
        Mr. Goldsmith. Thank you, Chairman, for the question.
        One specific example of how this falsified news pushed by
    these fake VSOs can effect our members, in May 2017 a Stars and
    Stripes reporter wrote a report about what was then Trump's
    first budget. It was a true story. It was written by a
    reputable outlet that we work with day in and day out, and part
    of it mentioned how there was proposed budget cuts to certain
    disability benefits.
        That true story was copied and pasted word for word, minus
    the name of the reporter, onto the website vvets.eu, which was
    based out of Bulgaria, and it was just using the same headline,
    the same text, but it was changing the date to make it look
    more urgent.
        Now when Vietnam Veterans of America's members find out
    that something like total and permanent disability benefits for
    those who are collecting social security or something, say
    those are going to be cut, that has a profound effect on the
    real health of our members. When they are affected by that
    policy and they see a report like that and they think, oh, my
    God, in a couple of months I could be homeless if this budget
    passes, you know, if this piece of the budget passes.
        To be re-exposed over and over and over again to that sense
    of panic of real effects on your life can exacerbate things
    like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), can exacerbate
    physical health conditions. That is, I think, what really lead
    VVA down this path and to this investigation.
        The Chairman. Well, thank you.
        Dr. Barash.
        Dr. Barash. Thank you for the question, Chairman.
        I think there are two ways in which these operations really
    effect our veterans and more broadly the population that those
    veterans influence.
        First and foremost, they affect our veterans as they try to
    reintegrate into civilian life. Our veterans are an influential
    member of American communities. They are trusted. They are
    respected, but they are also vulnerable in the context of a
    digital divide. When they are looking for employment and they
    are being targeted by malware, when they are looking to
    establish new relationships and are being targeted by scams,
    this breaks down the social fabric, the fragile social fabric
    that they are starting to build as they return from military
    service and have a life at home or return to a life at home.
        The Chairman. Well, thank you.
        Mr. Kane and Mr. Gleicher, given the potential harm to
    veterans, their families and our Nation, why should not the
    spoofing threat be treated as seriously as other issues like
    copyright infringement? Why does it take so much longer to
    remove spoof content than copyrighted content?
        Please, Mr. Kane first.
        Mr. Kane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        We take very seriously and have strong policies strictly
    against having a fake account which is something like using a
    stolen profile image, using a stolen bio, whether or not----
        The Chairman. Excuse me. I realize you take it seriously.
        Mr. Kane. Right.
        The Chairman. Why does it take so much longer to remove
    spoof content than copyright content? I do not have much time.
    I just need to understand why you are able to move copyrighted
    content faster and much more effectively than spoof content.
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, we do have effective and very fast
    methods of----
        The Chairman. You do remove copyrighted content much
    quicker. Why is that the case?
        Mr. Kane. We work to stay compliant with Digital Millennium
    Copyright Act (DMCA) which I do believe has----
        The Chairman. You are still not answering my question.
        Mr. Gleicher, can you answer that question?
        Mr. Gleicher. Chairman, so we have automated systems that
    detect and remove billions of fake accounts every day. Most of
    them before anyone has seen them. Fake accounts are the common
    underlying theme under all of these scams. We have automated
    systems that actually move very quickly to remove these fake
    accounts.
        One of the difficult challenges here, Mr. Chairman, is if
    someone reports an account, we respond very quickly. Often the
    question of what constitutes impersonation, we need to
    understand that and make sure we are taking correct action.
        The Chairman. Again, why is copyrighted content removed
    much more quickly than spoof content?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have--Mr. Chairman, we have
    specific systems in place in both cases, and we respond given
    the complexity of the environment and move as quickly as we
    can. It is something where we need to move more quickly, quite
    frankly.
        The Chairman. I still have not heard an answer, a direct
    answer to my question.
        My time is up. I now want to recognize Dr. Roe for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Roe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        When you are old and ugly like I am you know that romance
    is definitely a scam, so I do not--I have never even answered
    those.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Roe. I do not worry about it at all.
        You know, to show you how misinformation, Dr. Barash, you
    mentioned it, I was in Estonia a couple of years ago and we
    were having a--there is a big Russian maneuvers just off, as
    you know, the Baltics. Basically a story was floated that a
    young Estonian woman on social media had been raped by a German
    soldier. It was totally fabricated, but it took a lot of
    getting, you know, correcting to correct this misinformation
    that rapidly spread throughout social media.
        It is a powerful tool. There is no question about it, and
    how you get that information out of there quickly.
        I have some sympathy for you all here. It must be wackamole
    trying to figure out what account is legitimate, what account
    is not legitimate. I do not know how you do that when someone
    puts an identity up. I tell my wife all the time who gets
    steaming mad when she reads my Facebook page, I said, it may be
    fake. Who knows what is real or not, so do not get all worked
    up about it.
        How do you know that and, again, to the chairman's
    question, I do not know how you rapidly do that. Any of you are
    welcome to take that question.
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, thank you very much for that
    question.
        You are absolutely right. We want to try to avoid a
    wackamole type situation here and take a very holistic approach
    in terms of how we deal with fake accounts. One of the common
    strategic approaches that we take is looking for coordinated
    manipulation. Looking to see how various accounts are connected
    together to push out this type of content.
        We have invested heavily in terms of proactive detection of
    these coordinated accounts. As I mentioned, over the last year
    and a half, we have found and challenged approximately 520
    million accounts. This is as a result of our investment in
    automated detection systems to look for that coordinated
    networks because, again, we want to massively disrupt these
    networks and not just focus on certain segments of where they
    seek to interfere with the conversation.
        Mr. Roe. Well, there is no question that--and, Mr. Kane,
    back to you since you answered that. What has Twitter done to
    specifically educate veterans, users of the platform about how
    they can protect themselves?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, thank you very much for that
    question.
        The underlying issue of media literacy is something that is
    absolutely imperative. We certainly have a role in making sure
    we are supporting the health of the conversation by getting rid
    of bad actors, by getting rid of these fake accounts.
        One of the things that we have done is make investments in
    partnerships with various organizations focused on media
    literacy. In fact, I have a copy of our last report that we did
    with the Organization of American States that we have published
    in several different languages to help keep people safe online,
    to help them better understand Twitter.
        For any veterans who may be watching this today, if you go
    to blog.twitter.com, you can find these resources to help
    better educate the veterans' community. We are certainly
    committed in terms of partnering with the VSOs as well as the
    VA in providing this information as well.
        Mr. Roe. I am sure I have won a cruise if I just look hard
    enough right here now.
        Dr. Barash, this is a 3-part question quickly.
        First, are veterans targeted for scams at a higher rate
    than non-veterans? I think you have answered that.
        Second, are veterans targeted for propaganda at a higher
    rate than non-veterans?
        Do you have evidence for either one?
        Dr. Barash. Thank you, Congressman, for the question.
        Yes and yes. Veterans are an influential community in our
    social fabric online and offline. As a result, it is much more
    effective to target them with all kinds of operations including
    propaganda.
        We have performed studies that indicate that veterans are
    targeted by operations from many different countries. I think
    that more research needs to be done to do a true baseline where
    we can say, yes, this is the average level of targeting of
    Americans by foreign operations all kinds, broken down by
    operation, and this is how it differs for certain key
    communities, including veterans.
        Mr. Roe. My time is about expired, but one last question to
    you, Dr. Barash. I am sure you would agree that policing this
    is incredibly difficult.
        Has your organization witnessed any improvements or changes
    in the rates of fake accounter scam operations thanks to the
    increased attention in budgets from Twitter and Facebook?
        Dr. Barash. Thank you for the question.
        We have unfortunately seen an increase in these operations.
    I do want to recognize Twitter and Facebook's efforts in taking
    them down, and I think those efforts are paying off. So far we
    are still in the crest of the wave.
        Mr. Roe. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this. It has
    been very informative.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Roe, for your questions.
        I now would like to recognize Representative Cunningham for
    5 minutes.
        Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to each
    and every one of you all for showing up here today and
    answering these questions.
        My South Carolina district has the highest population of
    veterans in any congressional district in the State of South
    Carolina. This is a particular important issue for me. That is
    why during the debate on the Shield Act last month, I
    introduced an amendment to require the Federal Election
    Commission to conduct an analysis of foreign disinformation
    campaigns focused specifically on influencing service members
    and veterans.
        To that extent, Mr. Kane and Mr. Gleicher, you would both
    agree that it is your shared goal to identify and eliminate
    veterans and veterans group pages run by foreign actors,
    correct?
        Mr. Kane. Correct.
        Mr. Gleicher. Yes, Congressman.
        Mr. Cunningham. Okay. You would agree that you have an
    obligation and responsibility to work directly with the Federal
    Election Commission (FEC) to report such bad accounts, correct?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, certainly whenever we identify these
    foreign State back information operations, we publicly release
    them for the public, for governments, for the research
    community to see and to examine that data.
        Mr. Gleicher. I would just add, Congressman, that when we
    do one of our take downs of a foreign operations, we also work
    specifically with government partners, whether that is the FEC,
    the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or others that are
    conducting investigations in this space to make sure they have
    the resources they need to do their own work, both to expose
    and to deter these actors.
        Mr. Cunningham. Okay. Who at Facebook and who at Twitter
    works directly with the FEC in reporting these bad actors and
    these foreign actors?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, again, we release them to the
    public. I work with the FEC on a number of issues and have in
    the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have specific teams that
    work--whenever we conduct one of these take downs, we have
    investigators. We have policy experts. We have engineers. We
    have our legal teams, and we have our teams that work closely
    with third party partners, like government organizations like
    we are discussing.
        As we reach the point of understanding the nature of an
    operation, they will share information proactively to make sure
    that our partners can conduct their own investigations. I am
    happy to follow up with more detail if that would be helpful.
        Mr. Cunningham. Okay. It sounds like each of you are
    responsible, ultimately, in communicating with the FEC and
    reporting these bad actors, these foreign actors who are
    responsible for trying to interfere in our election system by
    targeting these information campaigns to specific veterans
    groups; is that right?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, again, we work closely with law
    enforcement and provide this data for all governments to go
    through and examine this data so that they can examine how
    various communities, be it veterans communities or any other
    community, how they are potentially impacted, and then we can
    learn from that data to help improve our service.
        Mr. Cunningham. How many employees at each of your
    respective companies whose job that it is to root out these
    foreign actors whose intent is to impact our elections?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, across Twitter there are
    approximately 4,700 employees. I do not have a specific number
    of employees available, but I would be happy to get that for
    the record.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, at Facebook we have more than
    35,000 people across the country working on safety and
    security. That is a number that has tripled in recent years as
    we have been expanding the teams to make sure we can tackle
    this. Within that then there are core teams that work closely
    with government and that work closely to conduct these more
    sophisticated investigations.
        Mr. Cunningham. Obviously, you know, looking at the--
    hindsight is 20/20 and what happened in the 2016 and 2018
    elections as far as targeted misinformation toward veterans and
    veterans groups.
        Looking backward at Facebook and Twitter's efforts to root
    out foreign actors who are specifically targeting veterans and
    veterans groups, what kind of grade would you give Facebook and
    Twitter on their efforts?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, I think we have certainly learned a
    lot since 2016. With regard to specifically targeted veterans,
    again, we take a more holistic approach and make sure that we
    are serving the entire public conversation and modifying our
    policies to reflect that objective.
        Mr. Cunningham. I appreciate that, Mr. Kane. I do not have
    a lot of time here, but I want to know whether or not you feel
    like there is room for ample improvement in, you know, helping
    our veterans communities to make sure that the information they
    are getting on Facebook and Twitter is accurate.
        Do you think--you know, were you all performing at a B
    average or a C average or how good of a job do you feel like
    you are doing?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, it is difficult for me to give a
    grade. We are constantly working to improve the service. That
    is something that we are never going to sit still on. We
    recognize that there is always more work that we can do. We are
    committed to working with the VSOs and working with the
    research community to better understand these threats so that
    we can improve our service.
        It is a constant State of improvement that we are working
    on.
        Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Gleicher.
        Mr. Gleicher. We have said pretty clearly, Congressman,
    that we were far too slow to recognize the threats and respond
    to them particularly in 2016. The most encouraging indication
    in 2018, the nature of this threat is really a whole of society
    challenge. One of the things we saw in 2018 was we saw
    industry, our partners at Twitter and ourselves really focused
    in stepping up to this challenge, but also saw key partners in
    civil society and in government who worked together.
        One of the reasons there were 3 separate attempts that we
    identified and that the broader community identified to target
    that election directly, that the community responded to I think
    quite effectively. There is always room for improvement. There
    is a lot more work to be done, Congressman.
        Mr. Cunningham. Okay. I am out of time, but I appreciate
    your attention to this pressing matter. I would yield back.
        Mr. Chairman. Yes. Gentleman, your time is up.
        Mr. Bilirakis, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mr.
    Chairman. Thanks for holding this hearing. I thank the ranking
    member as well.
        Well, let me just say this. When we get these comments on
    Facebook, for example, specifically that veterans benefits or a
    particular benefit for a veteran is being cut completely, what
    have you, if you see that this happens multiple times and, you
    know, when you say something, a lie over and over and over
    again, people start believing it, unfortunately, particularly
    in our game. We are kind of thick-skinned to this. I am
    thinking about the veterans.
        Is there any kind of a mechanism where you can control
    something like that if you see, you know, that that Congress is
    cutting veterans affairs by a certain amount of money, and the
    opposite is true because, you know, we have significantly
    increased the veterans budget over the years in a bipartisan
    manner.
        Is there any kind of a mechanism to take that off of
    Facebook, Twitter, or what have you, any social media?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have found that you need
    multiple mechanisms in place working together to be as
    effective as possible. Let me describe two that we would use in
    a situation like that.
        First, often we see people who seed or share this type of
    information are doing it using inauthentic or deceptive
    behavior. They are concealing who they are. They are hiding
    their identity or they are trying to mislead users into
    thinking they are someone they are not.
        If we see that type of behavior, we remove it from the
    platform.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Okay. You have that capability?
        Mr. Gleicher. We do.
        Mr. Bilirakis. If you see it over and over and over again
    you remove it because it is harmful to the veteran, Okay,
    emotionally.
        Mr. Gleicher, I understand that earlier this year Facebook
    worked with the committee to help verify veteran service
    organizations. Despite this, my staff and I found that the
    Vietnam Veterans of America, the VSO that shares the witness
    stand here this afternoon, their Facebook page does not have
    the blue verification checkmark that some of its counterparts
    have.
        Can you explain why this is and tell us how the
    verification process works, if you can, and is Facebook going
    to verify these VSO pages?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I can not talk too much about
    how the verification process works in public. We know that
    people might----
        Mr. Bilirakis. Okay. I understand that.
        Mr. Gleicher.--use that to try to game it. I will say I
    would be more than happy to work with our colleagues at VVA and
    to follow up with you, Congressman, to make sure that we review
    that and can address that.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Okay. Yes. Please, I want to know and maybe
    I will hear from Mr. Goldsmith. You say in your testimony that
    when you found that the imposter organization using the logo in
    2017, you went through Facebook's reporting features to address
    the problem. They did not address the underlying issue until
    Congress got involved.
        However, I know verification is a helpful way for members
    to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic process.
    When you got in contact with their team, did you request
    official Facebook verification on the page? Now, you know, I am
    not asking questions just to get you in trouble. I want to find
    out what is going on. We are trying to protect the veterans. I
    know the verification is a blue checkmark.
        If you could answer that question and give us as much
    information as possible, we would appreciate that.
        Mr. Goldsmith. Thank you, Congressman.
        Currently Facebook has two different levels of
    verification. There is a gray checkmark and a blue checkmark.
    It is my understanding that the gray checkmark, which is a
    surface level verification. You have to have a business
    address, a phone number, an email, and I think pick up the
    phone when they call it.
        As for getting the blue checkmark, I do not know how that
    would work. The way that we got our blue checkmark from Twitter
    is I know someone who works on the policy staff personally and
    last Vietnam Veteran's Day I said, hey, it would be a great
    thing for Vietnam Vets to get their verification badge.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Now how does the blue checkmark work?
    Facebook, please.
        Mr. Kane. Sir, for Twitter, the verification process is
    currently on hold right now, but we do still verify a number of
    government accounts, elected officials, folks like that. We are
    certainly happy to work with this committee as well as the VSOs
    and the VA to ensure that if there are any remaining VSOs that
    need to be verified, that we do so promptly.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Anyone else? Facebook, please.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, the blue check mark involves
    additional work to verify and ensure that the organization is
    who they say they are. As I mentioned, Congressman, I am happy
    to work with----
        Mr. Bilirakis. In addition to the gray checkmark----
        Mr. Gleicher. Yes, Congressman.
        Mr. Bilirakis.--the blue is further verification.
        Mr. Gleicher. Yes, Congressman.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Okay. Very good.
        All right. I guess my time has expired. I yield back, Mr.
    Chair. Thank you.
        Mr. Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank you,
    Mr. Bilirakis.
        Mr. Lamb, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Gleicher from Facebook, do I have it right that
    Facebook's quarterly profits in the third quarter were a record
    all-time high of $17.7 billion with a b?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I do not know the specific
    number, but that sounds correct.
        Mr. Lamb. I believe your last two quarters were both record
    quarterly profits, this one of 17.7 billion and last quarter,
    ending in July, about 7 billion. Mr. Goldsmith, thank you for
    your hard work on this report, and you make some specific
    recommendations in it as to what we, as Congress, should do and
    what we should do across the Government, and also what some of
    these specific platforms should do.
        In light of the massive, massive profits that Facebook is
    making with its product, driven almost entirely by the
    advertising that they sell and their ability to microtarget it,
    do you think they are even close to doing enough to address
    this problem and deal with the fake accounts? Do you think more
    resources could be directed in that way?
        Mr. Goldsmith. Since the publication of my report, I have
    actually had a great relationship with these companies. One of
    the things that I hope comes out of this hearing today is I
    hope that we consider them American assets and victims. It is
    right to blame and assign guilt, but this is going to take a
    whole of society response. Basically, what it comes down to is
    we are asking for them to be the police force, and they do not
    have any sort of enforcement mechanism. If they can not do
    anything that brings the pain to a human being sitting behind
    the anonymous avatar, there is no real incentive for that
    person, that human being, that bad actor to stop what they are
    doing.
        Mr. Lamb. As part of those discussions, did you learn how
    much Facebook invests in the specific problems that you are
    addressing in this report?
        Mr. Goldsmith. No, things like a budget and costs, those
    are beyond us. The one thing that I did include in my testimony
    is that during the 2-years of investigation in producing this
    report, VVA has essentially acted as an unpaid consultant for
    these companies. That is something that I understand could
    change. I know Facebook has some partnerships with some non-
    profit organizations that produce reports to basically raise
    attention to threats, but that is above my pay grade.
        Mr. Lamb. Mr. Barash, your--or Dr. Barash, I am sorry. Your
    graduate work is in this--your expertise is about the spread of
    these false ideas and misimpressions, do you believe there is
    more that entities like Facebook could be doing as far as
    investing in new solutions, whether technological or just pure
    manpower, particularly given the resources that they have?
        Mr. Barash. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. Yes,
    I do. I, again, want to recognize that we have come a long way
    since this problem of disinformation have arrived on the public
    scene in 2016. In 2016, there were, for instance, no terms of
    service by any of the major platforms that addressed this.
    There were very few investigators at any of these companies.
    There were no public data sets. All of that has changed.
        I do think that the companies should continue their work in
    releasing public data sets and on public outreach and
    education, especially when targeting some of these more
    advanced campaigns. It is great that we are learning about
    general information operations, but I think we can say and do
    even more to work with specific communities being targeted by
    them.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you. Mr. Gleicher, last question, I am
    about run out of time. How much does Facebook spend on this
    specific problem set, in terms of paid employees, investments
    in the Artificial Intelligence (AI), and tech tools that you
    have talked about that help you detect what is going on?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, what we have seen is that actors
    that target veterans target other communities as well. The
    overlap between them means that rather than focusing on
    specific communities in terms of building resources, we do not
    want to silo the work that way----
        Mr. Lamb. Yes, I mean on the overall problem, of which this
    is an example.
        Mr. Gleicher. On the overall problem, I mentioned that we
    have more than 35,000 employees working in this space. We
    currently spend more money today each year than the company
    made in profits the year that it IP owed very, very large
    amounts, Congressman.
        Mr. Lamb. Do you know the amount?
        Mr. Gleicher. I do not have the exact amount for you,
    Congressman. I would be happy to talk about that further if
    that would be useful. The key question for us is not, ``Do we
    have enough resources?'' The question is, ``How can we most
    effectively deploy what we can get to make sure that we tackle
    this problem?'' We have and we drive----
        Mr. Lamb. Okay. I am glad that is the question for you. My
    question was whether you do have enough resources. So we will
    see if we can find that out. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank
    you.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Lamb. Mr. Bost, you are
    recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Bost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had some prepared
    questions, but they have already been asked, but I do want to
    know, as you are going down these paths and all of a sudden you
    pick up these--and this is for both Twitter and Facebook--you
    pick up these bad actors, Okay? They have an identity on their
    site, whether it is a group organization or an individual.
    How--after you take them down, how quick can they come back up
    and you identify them again? Or is there a way to block them
    and identify them as they move from what you blocked to
    someplace else?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, thank you very much for that
    question. You are absolutely right. We have made significant
    investment in serving the public conversation by removing these
    bad actors and then keeping them off platform. I mentioned in
    my opening statement, it was approximately 520 million
    challenges over--from January 2018 until July of this year, of
    which approximately 75 percent were permanently suspended. We
    want to work to keep those bad actors off the platform.
        As part of our overall health initiatives, we are investing
    in just that, and making sure that we understand how to keep
    these bad actors off platform, because that is how we ensure
    the health of the conversation, that is something that is a top
    priority for us.
        Mr. Bost. All right.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I would say, I mentioned in my
    opening remarks this notion of adversarial design. If all we
    were doing was take downs, was removals, we would be in a
    constant game of cat and mouse.
        Mr. Bost. Right.
        Mr. Gleicher. Our strategy has been over time, we remove
    these actors from the platforms, and as Kevin mentioned, we
    also have systems to keep them off when they are removed. We
    see them try to defeat them. We improve those systems to block
    them.
        Mr. Bost. Without getting too technical, Okay, do you
    identify their address or how is it that you identify them?
        Mr. Gleicher. The most effective thing that we have seen,
    Congressmen, is to look at the pattern of behavior that they
    engage in.
        Mr. Bost. Okay.
        Mr. Gleicher. As you--we have to be careful about talking
    about too many of the signals in detail, and I am happy to talk
    more about them in more detail in a more private setting. You
    can see from the patterns of behaviors that they engage in the
    types of accounts these are, and that allows us to take action.
    A good example of this, we have an automated machine learning
    system that we have been using particularly for financial
    scams, that we have been testing and expanding, to look at the
    pattern of behavior we see these accounts engage in. That
    system has identified more than 500 million, and blocked more
    than 500 million of these accounts automatically. That is an
    instance of trying to find these patterns and get ahead of
    them.
        Mr. Bost. I guarantee you that everybody sitting here wants
    to make sure the veterans are protected, but they want others
    to be protected too. The question I also have then is as you
    are moving forward, is there a danger of giving up someone
    else's freedom of speech that may not be in the business of
    doing fake sites and causing trouble?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I think that is a really
    difficult balance to strike, and it is why it is important to
    be so deliberate here. I will give you a good example. We
    certainly see actors from certain parts of West Africa being
    very prolific in this environment, but we also see people from
    West Africa who have legitimate reasons to engage with veterans
    and people who are overseas.
        We would never, for example, rely on only one signal. That
    is why the pattern of behavior is so valuable, because if you
    have one marker, you may know something, but you can not be
    certain, and there is a risk that you are going to silence an
    innocent user. If you see a consistent, persistent pattern of
    behavior, it allows us to have much higher confidence and
    ensure that we are not silencing innocent users.
        Mr. Bost. I also need to ask Mr. Goldsmith, you said that
    you have been working with them and you became pretty well
    partners in trying to fix this problem. What is the--and this
    is an answer I do not know that you can give, but I am going to
    ask anyway. When this damage occurs to our veterans, it is not
    like, ``Oh, well, once this is blocked, it is over.'' They are
    still reeling from that. What is your organization doing to
    one, stop--educate, first off, our veterans and the people that
    you work with as a VSO, but also what do you do after the
    damage has occurred, maybe, to an individual who is a veteran,
    that we can do through our VSOs to help them?
        Mr. Goldsmith. Thank you, Congressmen. Facebook is actually
    one of our primary ways of interacting with our members. We use
    Facebook and Twitter to educate our members. Since we began
    this investigation, any time that the press has reported on,
    especially veteran-specific spoofing or financial scams,
    romance scams, et cetera, we post those on social media.
        We also have traditional--a print magazine that we publish
    all year round. We are partnering with the Yale Veterans Legal
    Services Clinic. We have a couple law students here, who have
    been helping us develop policies on education. We hope that
    this goes, maybe the veterans' community is kind of a place
    where a larger picture can be born across American society.
        Mr. Bost. Thank you. With that, my time is expired. Mr.
    Chairman, I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Bost. Ms. Underwood, you are
    recognized for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Underwood. Thank you, Chairman Takano. I appreciate the
    system-wide steps that Facebook, Twitter, and the other
    companies have announced to tackle this complicated issue, but
    as the companies continue to work on it, veterans need to be
    able to engage with them, especially since your companies are
    relying so heavily on users to report back behavior.
        Mr. Gleicher, you have said in your testimony that Facebook
    has set up a dedicated escalation channel for victims of
    impersonation to contact Facebook, to ensure that Facebook can
    respond quickly. How long, on average, does it take for
    Facebook to respond to users impacted by impersonation?
        Mr. Gleicher. Thank you, Congresswoman. There are a couple
    of different ways someone can report to us.
        Ms. Underwood. I understand the method. I want to know how
    long.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, if someone reports to us on
    the platform, they can report immediately within the platform,
    we examine and respond to that, and it happens very quickly, in
    order of days, but I can not give you an exact timeline.
        Ms. Underwood. Will you submit that in writing to our
    committee in follow up?
        Mr. Gleicher. I am happy to follow up with more detail.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. Then, Mr. Kane, for Facebook, how long
    does it take to respond to users impacted by impersonation.
        Mr. Kane. Congresswoman, I do not have a specific
    timeframe, but I will be happy to follow up in writing for the
    record.
        Ms. Underwood. What about how soon in the reporting process
    would it be possible for a veteran who is a victim of
    impersonation to speak directly with a Facebook and Twitter
    employee?
        Mr. Kane. Congresswoman, certainly we have an online
    reporting flow. As a veteran myself, I have worked extensively
    with a number of veteran service organizations, and the VA as
    well----
        Ms. Underwood. I appreciate that. How long does it take to
    speak to an employee, or is that not part of your process?
        Mr. Kane. Typically, it is not part of the process for us
    to be effective at scale.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. Thank you. Twitter? Mr. Kane? Or Mr.
    Gleicher, sorry.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, so for example, if something
    is reported by one of our expert partners, like VVA, we are
    able to work with them very quickly to respond and get in
    direct contact. If someone is reporting directly through the
    platform, then they will get an immediate response, and
    depending on what happens, we might engage with them further.
        This is why I am saying there is sort of different ways to
    report, so the speed is a little different.
        Ms. Underwood. I understand. Would it be possible to speak
    directly with an employee or is it just through, like, some
    kind of customer service line? There is not an availability to
    engage on the phone.
        Mr. Gleicher. It depends on how it is reported,
    Congresswoman. There are different mechanisms to report. For
    the largest, most scaled mechanism, directly on the platform,
    it is run through automated systems and through online systems.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay.
        Mr. Gleicher. For more tailored reporting, like we have
    with key partners----
        Ms. Underwood. Thank you. Do you maintain or publish data
    on the amount of time it takes to process impersonation cases
    from report to account closure for Facebook and Twitter?
        Mr. Kane. No, Congresswoman. We do publish twice a year a
    transparency report that provides this data overall, and again
    for the first half of this year, we permanently suspended
    approximately 125,000 accounts for engaging in impersonation.
    We typically do not provide a specific timeframe. That is
    something I am certainly happy to discuss with our team to--as
    we work to provide more transparency around our actions to
    examine the feasibility in doing that.
        Ms. Underwood. Right. Facebook?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, we also publish a periodic
    transparency report with details on enforcement. We do not
    include specific details on timeline.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. Well, I think that that might be
    something that it might be worthwhile to consider for both
    companies moving forward, given the scale of this problem in
    our country and the way that it has really spread through
    multiple lines of victims.
        The New York Times has reported that many veterans who
    report imposter accounts receive automatic replies from
    Facebook and their photos do not get removed. Some known fakes
    that the Times reported to Instagram were not taken down
    because Instagram said they did not violate company policies.
        Facebook has a misrepresentation policy that is pretty
    short. It is about a page long. Does Facebook have any
    additional or internal guidance beyond this policy that is
    publicly released, that reviewers use when making decisions
    about whether to remove an account impersonating a veteran?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, that is the core of our
    misrepresentation policy. As you might expect, there is some
    details that if we were to release it publicly, there is a risk
    that bad actors would use that to game our systems.
        Ms. Underwood. Sure. Can you share that internal guidance
    with our committee?
        Mr. Gleicher. I am happy to talk further about that,
    Congresswoman.
        Ms. Underwood. Will you be willing to share the guidance
    with the committee?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, if--what I would like to do is
    talk to our team and make sure we can share with you what is
    going to be most useful for you and that we focus it, so that
    we do not provide any risk of exposing anything.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. If the veterans request to have an
    imposter account using their photos is taken down, if that is
    denied, do they have an option to appeal on both of your
    platforms?
        Mr. Kane. Broadly, yes, Congresswoman. We do have an
    appeals----
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. Thank you. Facebook?
        Mr. Gleicher. Yes, Congresswoman. We have broad appeals
    processes.
        Ms. Underwood. Okay. Then, Mr. Kane, in response to one of
    my colleagues, you mentioned that Twitter has suspended its
    verification now, my question is why are you doing that heading
    into an election year?
        Mr. Kane. Congresswoman, this was an action that was taken
    in November 2017. Certainly, as we prepare for the election,
    similar to what we did in 2018, we are absolutely working with
    a number of parties, both political parties, Department of
    Homeland Security (DHS), the Association of the Secretary of
    State, among others, to ensure election officials are, in fact,
    verified and working with them to deal with any impersonation
    cases as they come up.
        Ms. Underwood. I see. Okay. Social media is an important
    way for veterans to stay connected to their families and to the
    community of veterans. It is also an important and influential
    source of information for veterans and non-veterans alike,
    which is why it is so important that we all do everything that
    we can, everything that we can, to protect our veterans, our
    communities, and our country from these threats. Thank you.
    Thanks for being here, and I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Underwood. Dr. Dunn, you are
    recognized for 5 minutes. Is Dr. Dunn here? He is not. Dr.
    Dunn. Mr. Banks, 5 minutes.
        Mr. Banks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In 2012, Mr. Tony Wang,
    the general manager of Twitter in the UK declared Twitter to be
    the ``free speech wing of the free speech party.'' I am
    concerned that that is no longer the case.
        This reality has meaningful consequences for veterans and
    for the health of our democracy. This past February, Quillette
    published the research findings of Mr. Richard Hannineah
    (phonetic), who uncovered a systematic pattern of politically
    motivated censorship on Twitter.
        From 2006, when Twitter was founded, to May 2015, Hannineah
    could find exactly zero cases of prominent political persons
    being suspended or banned from the platform. Just over 2 years
    later in December 2017, the number of monthly suspensions of
    prominent political persons skyrocketed to nine times higher
    than May 2015, and found that prominent conservatives were at
    least four times more likely than liberal persons to be found
    in violation of Twitter's applied terms of services and banned.
        While Twitter sensors lawful political speech, veterans
    remains targets of fraud, as this hearing has already well
    established. According to the AARP, veterans are twice as
    likely to fall victim to scammers as the population at large.
    Scammers who operate on various platforms, including Twitter.
    Yet Twitter faces no legal consequences when veterans are
    harmed by activities that take place on their platform. That is
    because Twitter has claimed that there is no possible way to
    moderate illicit content such as veterans' scams in real time,
    as protected under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications
    Decency Act.
        Mr. Kane, is not it quite ironic, how can--that Twitter can
    argue in good faith that their Section 230 protections can be
    retained because it does not have the resources or ability to
    root out illicit material, such as scams targeting veterans, on
    its platform when the same platform devotes considerable
    resources and attention to stomping out lawful political
    speech?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, thank you for that question. As I
    mentioned, we have a clear policy addressing scams on our
    platform. Since January 1st of this year, we have permanently
    suspended 335,000 accounts for engaging in scamming behavior,
    not just for the veterans' community, but for all community,
    because again, we have to take a very broad approach in terms
    of how we combat these threats, which we take seriously.
        To your earlier point regarding political speech on
    Twitter, Twitter's purpose is to serve the entire public
    conversation, not just for one political party, but for the
    entire globe. One of the things I am most proud of in terms of
    working at Twitter is we embrace diversity and diverse
    viewpoints in everyone. Whenever we go into make any policy
    decision, we all make decisions in the interest of serving the
    public conversation and not one particular ideal or another.
        Mr. Banks. All right. All right. Mr. Gleicher, in your
    testimony, you alluded to working with law enforcement as they
    find and prosecute the scammers who engage in impersonation or
    other deceptive activities. Does Facebook have a specific
    process for reporting instances of veterans scamming to Federal
    law enforcement agencies?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we work with law enforcement to
    report the threats that we see in a few different ways. When we
    see scams, particularly recurrent scams where we see someone
    being targeted, we will work with law enforcement to make sure
    they have as much information as we can provide. Whenever we
    see a more scaled foreign operation, for example, something
    emanating from what could be a nation State, we share that
    information proactively to make sure law enforcement
    understands the scope and can take action where appropriate.
        Mr. Banks. Then it is safe to say that you do not have a
    specific process specific for veterans?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have processes. What we have
    found that is most important is the tight relationship between
    the people who work with law enforcement to make sure that
    sharing happens most effectively. And so the----
        Mr. Banks. Okay. How about this? Can you confirm that
    Facebook refers 100 percent of known instances of veteran
    scamming to law enforcement officials?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, whenever we see, particularly an
    ongoing or sophisticated operation, we share that with law
    enforcement.
        Mr. Banks. If it is not sophisticated, you do not?
        Mr. Gleicher. We work with them to give them as much
    information as they can use.
        Mr. Banks. I think you have answered my question. Mr.
    Gleicher, you stated that Facebook has dedicated escalation
    channels through which individuals and organizations most
    impacted by impersonation attempts can contact it when they
    learn of a new case of impersonation or targeting.
        In essence, the establishment of these channels are
    Facebook saying they can not catch everything itself, and the
    user has some level of responsibility. Can you help me
    understand what my responsibility is to track down a fake
    @RepJimBanks account?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, the reason we have reporting
    systems is so that if someone sees something, they can get it
    to us quickly. We proactively investigate to remove these
    operations. We also build systems like transparency in place to
    make it easier for users and teams, like the team at VVA, to
    find and action these things.
        What we have found is we can be most effective when we work
    closely with civil society organizations and governments.
        Mr. Banks. I get it. It is my responsibility. With that, I
    will yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Banks. I now will recognize
    Mr. Brindisi for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Brindisi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Gleicher, in
    your testimony, you said that Facebook works hard to limit the
    spread of spam and other content abuses on your platform, and
    that you have human review and automated detection as two ways
    that Facebook does this. You mentioned that Facebook has over
    35,000 people working on safety and security to ensure
    inappropriate or graphic content is not able to stay posted.
    How many of these people are content moderators?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I do not have a specific number
    for you within that 35,000, in part, because we actually have
    policy experts that also step in on content moderation for
    particularly challenging cases. A very large number of that set
    are focused on content moderation to make sure we have the
    resources we need.
        Mr. Brindisi. Would the number 15,000 be in the ballpark of
    content moderators? People actually viewing what is on the
    screen and making determinations of whether or not to take it
    down.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, I am happy to follow up and
    speak in more detail for specific numbers.
        Mr. Brindisi. Okay. If you could do that in writing to the
    committee. I would like to know exactly the number of content
    moderators.
        As you know, individuals we have seen that use your
    platform will find numerous ways to circumvent your detection
    software. In may ways, content moderators are the last line of
    defense. The number that I think has been reported publicly is
    that you are employing somewhere around 15,000 individuals to
    ensure community compliance across the platform of about one
    billion Facebook users.
        If that is the number, and we will wait and see what you
    come back with, does that seem like an adequate number to you,
    15,000 moderators for over one billion users on Facebook?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we can always do more. Part of
    our approach here is pure human moderation by itself will never
    scale to be enough to tackle a challenge like this. We need
    also automated systems that help triage and sort of empower
    those moderators. We have both AI enabled systems, and then we
    have content moderators, and then we have proactive detectors,
    investigators that hunt for more sophisticated operations. We
    need all of these pieces in order to be able to deal with this
    challenge.
        Mr. Brindisi. Do you have any plans to hire more humans,
    more content moderators?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we are continually expanding our
    teams. There is a reason that the number of people we have
    working in this space has more than tripled in recent years. I
    expect that to continue to grow.
        Mr. Brindisi. I am sure you are aware, Mr. Gleicher, a
    family from my district in Utica, New York, suffered an
    unimaginable loss when their daughter, Bianca Devins, was
    murdered on July 14th, 2009. The alleged perpetrator then
    posted extremely graphic and disturbing images of the crime on
    social media and these images reportedly appeared more than a
    week later on Facebook.
        I use this as a case, as an example of how the system
    Facebook has in place clearly failed at the expense of my
    constituents. If content moderators are not adequately trained
    or not able to keep up with workload, these tragedies will
    continue to occur.
        Can you speak to the training process of content
    moderators?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, what happened to Ms. Devins is a
    complete tragedy. The fact that people use platforms designed
    to build community to glorify that is completely unacceptable
    to us. What we see here, though, there are two pieces that are
    relevant. First is the immediate response to identify and
    remove the photograph. The second challenge is we see, as we
    saw in this case, groups of people actually work actively to
    try to spread and share that photograph by recutting it, by
    editing it, and by sharing tips amongst themselves on how to
    beat the automated systems we have in place.
        Mr. Brindisi. Right. I understand that. In terms of, if I
    am a content moderator and I am employed by Facebook, what
    training do I go through to become a content moderator?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have a whole series of
    training that we go through with content moderators to ensure
    that they understand both what the policy lines are and how
    they can take both quick action, but also deliberate action. I
    am happy to follow up with more details on those and talk about
    them, if that is helpful.
        Mr. Brindisi. That would be great. If you can do that to
    the committee, that would be very helpful.
        Obviously, there must be accountability of users on
    Facebook and other social media platforms who violate your
    company's community standards in such a despicable way, such as
    purposely deceiving veterans, or sharing graphic content. Can
    you talk a little bit about what you will do to either
    permanently ban users who share these images and to the best of
    your ability restrict their IP addresses--users' IP addresses
    from assessing the app under a different account?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, whenever we see inauthentic
    behavior, deceptive behavior, we remove that account from the
    platform and we do permanently ban it. I would be careful here,
    only because in some cases, you can imagine someone sharing
    this to condemn it, or a reporter mistakenly sharing it to
    report on it. Both of those are cases where we would remove the
    content because it clearly violates our policies. It is not
    entirely clear we should fully ban an individual like that.
        Mr. Brindisi. How do you make that determination then?
        Mr. Gleicher. In a context like that, this is why we think
    both about behavior and about content. If we seek content that
    violates, we take action against the content. If we see repeat
    behavior, that is an indication that the actor behind it is, in
    fact, bad intentioned, and we take more aggressive action
    against the actor, for example, removing the account.
        Mr. Brindisi. Great. Thank you, sir.
        The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brindisi. I now
    recognize Ms. Radewagen for 5 minutes.
        Mrs. Radewagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Goldsmith, you
    raise serious allegations that foreign governments are
    targeting veterans. As you know, the House Permanent Select
    Committee on Intelligence held hearings on this issue earlier
    this year. Have you worked with the chairman of the
    Intelligence Committee, and what are they doing to address the
    concern you have raised?
        Mr. Goldsmith. I have shared my report with the staff of
    the Intelligence Committee. Part of the problem is I am also a
    full time student, so I have not been able to do the follow up
    that I would like to with other members, other committees. I
    will thankfully graduate in May, and after then, I plan on
    talking to every committee that is going to listen.
        Mrs. Radewagen. Mr. Gleicher, during committee staff
    briefings, you highlighted that Facebook has found that scams
    are originating almost entirely from non-State actors, while
    this information is mostly State actors; is that correct? How
    does that information inform your policies?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, what I would say is when we
    see fraudulent--the majority of the activity that we online is
    fraudulently motivated, that is motivated in order to make
    money. We are a little careful. In order to prove that
    something is state--it has state-backed, we have very strict
    controls internally so that we only claim that something is
    state-backed when we can prove it.
        The reason is, particularly the State actors in this space,
    we have taken action against a number of operations from
    Russia, Iran, and elsewhere. Part of their goal is to make
    themselves appear more powerful than they are, and make us
    think that every instance of misinformation is actually a
    foreign operation.
        They do that because it fundamentally undermines our trust
    in the conversations we are having, and it leads to this
    phenomenon today where people think that anyone who disagrees
    with them, or they distrust online may be state-backed.
        We are very careful. It is really important that people
    understand the nature of this threat, but we also want to make
    sure that we do not hyperbolize it, that people know when there
    is a State actor. That is why whenever we see one of these
    operations, we report it publicly every time, we disclose it,
    we provide details and analysis on the behavior we saw, and
    what we can prove about who was behind it, and then we share
    information from it with a third party research organization.
    It may be graphic in some contexts. The digital forensics
    research laboratory, the Atlantic counsel, and others so that
    they can provide their own independent assessment of the
    operation.
        Mrs. Radewagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Radewagen. I now recognize Mr.
    Cisneros for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Cisneros. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Goldsmith, I
    want to thank you for your hard work effort, 2 years effort of
    putting this report together. It is very impressive and very
    informative on everything that you have done.
        As you may be aware, in March, I led a bipartisan letter
    with my colleagues to the FBI director, requesting an
    investigation to suspicious VSO accounts on social media that
    had outnumbered--or had been outlined in a Wall Street Journal
    article. Today, I have not received a response from the FBI,
    through my office has followed up on numerous occasions, and we
    still have not gotten a response. For the record, how many
    times have you requested that the FBI or other law enforcement
    agencies investigate these activities you documented, and what
    response have you received?
        Mr. Goldsmith. Thank you, Congressman. This is something
    that I think is important and I am glad that you brought it up.
    The FBI has not responded to any of our letters, any of our
    press releases to this report. As a matter of fact, we have not
    received a response from any Federal agency whatsoever: not the
    VA, not the Department of Defense (DOD), not the FEC, no one.
        Mr. Cisneros. All right. Well, thank you for that. That is
    good to know that nobody is acting on this. We should start
    acting on this.
        You also said you worked very closely with Facebook and
    Twitter to address the problems that you outlined in your
    report. What are some of the things that you want these
    platforms to do that they have not done yet?
        Mr. Goldsmith. One of the things that we have talked about
    today is the spoofing of certain individuals. If you turn in my
    report to page 119, there is an Army staff sergeant, who is
    still in uniform. She is also an Instagram influencer. She has
    a unique name. It is kind of easy to find her and her
    imitations online. Someone like her ought to be paid attention
    to closely by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, any platform that
    she is using because right now I just looked up her name and I
    found over 23 accounts on Facebook alone.
        Someone like her, who is on active duty, who is constantly
    being used as bate for romance scams, ought not to have to
    worry about being contacted by victims who are in love with
    her, or who think that she owes them money.
        Mr. Cisneros. Mr. Kane, you know, outlined in those
    reports, and there has been numerous articles also throughout,
    whether it be in the Washington Post or any other periodical
    out there, that have said a lot of these agents or these bad
    actors are coming from countries like Macedonia or anywhere
    else, or maybe Russia, that are targeting VSOs or veterans'
    pages on your platform, you know, if you see--if there is a
    page out there and it is being administrated from a foreign
    country that is targeting, and it is meant toward veteran, is
    not that a red flag to raise that that is something that maybe
    we should look into this?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, certainly we look at the behavior
    behind these accounts. That is how we effectively address this
    issue at scale. That is something that we have invested in
    heavily. As I mentioned, it has resulted in approximately 97
    million challenges from Twitter just for the first half of this
    year alone.
        We continue to invest and look at the behavior, look at the
    signals behind how these accounts are behaving and potentially
    targeting people, to include veterans. Again, we take a much
    more holistic approach so we are not just silencing certain
    communities and we can apply lessons learned across the board.
    Again, it is looking at the signals behind the accounts, as
    well as potential coordinated behavior, which is a very strong
    signal that accounts are engaging in suspicious activity and
    that would cause us to look into it further.
        Mr. Cisneros. Mr. Gleicher, the same question to you.
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have a proactive sweep, a
    team that has been looking explicitly for financially motivated
    pages that operate from overseas and target U.S. citizens. This
    includes veterans, but also it includes other situations where
    we see foreign actors targeting American citizens.
        We have removed thousands of financially motivated pages
    like this when we see that they are engaged in deceptive
    behavior, when we see that they are monetizing or deceiving
    American citizens and particularly attempting to appear as if
    they are from the United States.
        Mr. Cisneros. What do we do? Do we take those sites down?
        Mr. Gleicher. Yes. We hunt for them. We expose them. When
    we find them, we remove them from the platform.
        Mr. Cisneros. All right. My time is wrapping up. I do want
    to say there was another article on there. Hopefully this is
    not the case, and it was one situation, but there was one
    gentleman, who really did not get his page back or the
    administration back to his page until after he agreed to sell--
    to do ads on his page with Facebook. I hope that was a one time
    situation and is not something that continually comes up.
        With that, I am out of time, so I yield back my time. Thank
    you.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Cisneros. Mr. Barr, you are
    recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding this
    interesting hearing. I appreciate the witnesses' testimony and
    learning a lot about online scams here today and impersonation.
    I, frankly, was probably not aware that this was widespread of
    a problem as, sir, your report showcases here.
        I think everybody in this room, I would hope, opposes
    scams, inauthentic accounts, fraud, obviously, and the terrible
    graphic displays that were described earlier. Certainly, we are
    very concerned about scams and fraud schemes coming from
    targeting our veterans coming from overseas, foreign entities.
        I do want to ask you, though, how widespread is this? Let
    me direct this question to Mr. Kane and Mr. Gleicher. How
    widespread is this? Is this--you know, in the total universe of
    accounts and posts on Twitter and Facebook, what is the
    percentage of scams of targeted campaigns of false accounts in
    terms of the percentages?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, every day, there are more than 500
    million tweets around the world on Twitter. As I mentioned, we
    actioned approximately 335,000 accounts that were permanently
    suspended that were engaging in scamming activity.
        Mr. Barr. Over what time period?
        Mr. Kane. From January 1st to today.
        Mr. Barr. OK. You know, ballpark percentage of fraudulent
    or fake accounts or impersonations in the total Twitter
    universe.
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, I am a former enlisted infantryman,
    math is not necessarily my strong skill set. I will be happy to
    follow up for the record in terms of----
        Mr. Barr. I mean, would you say it is rare?
        Mr. Kane. Certainly, it is not entirely common.
        Mr. Barr. Okay. Facebook, Mr. Gleicher?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, we have a periodic transparency
    report where we report the fake accounts that we have removed.
    To give you a sense of scale, we removed about 1.7 billion fake
    accounts in the last quarter. The vast majority, I think 99.8
    percent of them we removed automatically before any user
    engaged with them, often within minutes of their creation.
        Mr. Barr. That sounds like a lot, certainly, and one is too
    many. Obviously, if there is a scam of our service members or a
    veteran, one is too many. I do want to touch on this issue of
    if it is--in the grand scheme of things in the social media
    universe, I do worry if there is every a mistake that is made
    in removing accounts too. I think there is a balance that we
    need to strike.
        My question, as a follow up, is has Twitter or Facebook
    every mistakenly removed an authentic account, which was
    misidentified as an impersonation? Or does that happen all the
    time?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, certainly that is not common, but it
    can happen. As we seek to enforce our rules at scale,
    unfortunately, there are occasions where we have made mistakes.
    Certainly, we do allow for an appeals process to address an
    issue where a mistake may be made.
        Mr. Barr. Yes, and I was interested to hear about the
    content moderators and the AI that is used. How do you all
    prevent in the trainings that you all conduct, how do you
    prevent political bias from creeping into content moderation or
    even your AI systems? In other words, you know, we obviously
    want to prevent scams, but we also do not want to have a
    viewpoint discrimination based on a moderator or an AI systems
    assessment that something is politically incorrect. How do you
    avoid censorship, is my point?
        Mr. Kane. Congressman, that is a great question. That is
    something that we work every day to ensure that any content
    moderator understands that we are here to serve the public
    conversation, and applying appropriate context in terms of
    making decision. At no point in time will we tolerate or accept
    any type of bias when these decisions are made. We absolutely
    work with our workforce to ensure they receive appropriate
    training to avoid such issues.
        Mr. Barr. Well, Mr. Gleicher, how would you differentiate
    an inauthentic account or a post versus an authentic account,
    or a post that may reflect views that some may deem politically
    incorrect?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congressman, when we are talking about
    inauthentic behavior, one of the essential components for us is
    that we are acting based on the techniques or tactics we are
    seeing, not based on what the person is saying.
        I mentioned that we have done 50 of these take downs over
    the course of the last year, all of those take downs are based
    on patterns of behavior. For example, representing one's self
    as an American, when in fact, we can see the account is coming
    from another country, has nothing to do with who the person is
    or what they are saying. Drawing that line is extremely
    important for us, particularly because of the concerns you are
    describing, and because we know that foreign actors act--one of
    their techniques is to make themselves try to look American and
    then try to say things that are right on the line, which means
    that if we do not take it down, they get their message out; but
    if we do take it down, then they get to stoke the--sort of fuel
    the perception of bias.
        For us, having behavioral based enforcement is a really
    important component. We couple that with clear, public
    community standards and an appeal system, because we know we
    will make mistakes, to make sure that we can address them when
    they happen.
        Mr. Barr. My time has expired, but you all have a tough
    job. Just always remember to err on the side of free speech and
    not censorship. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Barr. Ms. Rice, you are
    recognized for 5 minutes.
        Miss Rice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Gleicher, I would
    just like to continue on Mr. Barr's line of discussion in terms
    of inauthentic versus authentic accounts. Last month, the New
    York Times reported that Facebook detected a massive new
    Russian disinformation campaign. It was targeting parts of
    Africa, which is yet another step in Russia's relentless
    efforts to use social media to undermine global stability.
        The uniqueness of that situation, however, was that they
    were co-oping African citizens to do that, which made detection
    of those accounts that much more difficult. My colleague, Mr.
    Barr, was kind of--this kind of goes into if there is no clear
    connection to a foreign State or non-State actor, but there is
    a--it looks, smells, tastes like disinformation, how do you
    address that, because this is where they are going. They are
    doing that here in America now, prior to our 2020 elections.
        Mr. Gleicher. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
    You are sort of striking to exactly the heart of this
    challenge. I would say two things. First is we distinguish
    between disinformation, which is content that may be true or
    false, and inauthentic behavior. In fact, for many of these
    operations, the majority of what they say is not provably
    false. What we are looking for is deceptive behavior and
    techniques. Whether you are foreign or domestic, if you are
    using fake accounts to mislead people about who you are, that
    is unacceptable.
        The other thing that I would say that is actually
    interesting, and to some degree encouraging, about this latest
    take down, so we identified multiple operations across Africa.
    The Stanford Internet Observatory also identified one, and we
    worked together with them to expose this.
        What we found is that these actors were using locals, and
    in some ways, that could make it more challenging, but it
    another way, it makes it a little easier, because the locals do
    not have the sophistication, the deliberation to conceal their
    identity. That type of technique would not work very well in
    the United States. The reason it would not work as well is
    because in the U.S., we have law enforcement and government
    teams that are dedicated and focused on this challenge. If we
    see foreign actors working with locals, those locals could be
    at significant risk of exposure. So----
        Miss Rice. You did not see it in Africa, so how are you
    going to see it here?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, we did--I think, in this case,
    we found and proactively exposed and removed these operations.
    Those were ones that we found based on our own--there were
    three. Two of them we found based on our own investigations.
    One of them Stanford found. Working together, we exposed them
    and removed them. In those cases--Congresswoman?
        Miss Rice. No, no, go ahead.
        Mr. Gleicher. In those cases, one of the challenges is if
    you do not have law enforcement focused on the problem and
    government focused on the problem, you can operate with
    impunity in these countries. Those operations, they used
    physical newspapers. They used things that were far from social
    media platforms. That would be much more difficult here.
        Miss Rice. You are looking into that happening here as
    well? You are on top of that issue.
        Mr. Gleicher. We are, and law enforcement is as well, which
    I think is actually extremely important.
        Miss Rice. Good. On that note, two things. How do you
    determine when it is--your content moderator is an individual
    versus an AI system versus a proactive detector?
        Mr. Gleicher. In the case of influence operations, these 50
    take downs that I have described over the course of the last
    year, every single one of them goes through multiple levels of
    human review. These are sophisticated threat actors. We may see
    some patterns that automated systems use, but these are the
    things where we need human investigators. We have a team of
    investigators from law enforcement, the intelligence community,
    and actually investigative journalism to expose these.
        Miss Rice. Is AI the--maybe the technical review, and then
    things are kicked up for human review? Is that how it would go?
        Mr. Gleicher. We found that AI is--in this context, is
    particularly useful to surface patterns that help our
    investigators find the threats. You might imagine they are
    looking for needles in a haystack. AI helps shrink the haystack
    so they know where to look.
        Miss Rice. Let me just comment on the content moderators
    because they are looking at really disturbing stuff. Their job
    is to look at very disturbing stuff every day. My concern is
    that they are not being trained well enough, they are not being
    supported from an emotional standpoint, and it is clear that
    they are not being treated as valued employees from a
    compensation standpoint. I really think it is incumbent upon
    Facebook to take care of those people who have--I mean, it is
    like PTSD--it is terrible. I am not taking away from you, Kris,
    at all, but like----
        Mr. Goldsmith. No, that is an appropriate----
        Miss Rice. What they are doing is unbelievably difficult.
    Also, I just have a question for Mr. Kane and for Mr. Gleicher,
    and I have about 13 seconds. Do your platforms voluntarily--you
    talked about sharing data with Federal law enforcement on
    fraudulent accounts when such information is discovered, but do
    you require law enforcement to go through a legal process, i.e.
    issuing a subpoena? Or is there some kind of an agreement--now,
    I am not asking you to violate the Electronic Communications
    Privacy Act (ECPA) and give me any substantive information. I
    am asking you as a process, is law enforcement required to go
    through this ridiculously time consuming process of subpoenaing
    for information?
        Mr. Gleicher. Congresswoman, I would say, so there are
    three ways we share with law enforcement. First is they share
    tips with us that we then use to fuel our own investigations.
    There was a really critical example of this just before the
    mid-terms. That was a very good example of collaboration, also
    with Twitter and others.
        Second, they may come to us and ask for specific evidence
    about individuals. In a case like that, they need to go through
    lawful process and we are very careful to ensure we are
    protecting our users' privacy.
        Third, when we are investigating one of these cases, we
    will sit down with them and talk through strategic, here are
    the patterns we are seeing. Here is the type of information we
    are seeing. We will have these higher level conversations that
    are calibrated, so we are not exposing user privacy, but we can
    fuel their investigations and they can fuel ours. We are trying
    to strike that balance.
        Mr. Kane. It is very similar at Twitter. I would really
    also like to thank the cross-industry collaboration with
    Facebook and Google, among others, in terms of making sure that
    we are all working together to share appropriate information to
    deal with this threat. Certainly, we have a very close working
    relationship with our law enforcement partners as well.
        Miss Rice. That is clear. Look, today we are talking about
    veterans because they are a particularly vulnerable population,
    but every single one of us at some point in our lives is going
    to have this happen to us. It behooves all of us to work
    together, whether it is the private sector, you know, civil
    society, government, private citizen. Thank you very much, all,
    for being here and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Miss Rice. Ranking Member Dr. Roe,
    you are recognized for 5 minutes for any closing remarks you
    may have.
        Mr. Roe. Well, at this late in the afternoon, it will not
    take 5 minutes. I do want to thank the panel for being here.
    The beauties of social media are that I have a granddaughter
    that is two and a half and I literally have seen a picture of
    her every day of her life because of that, and I am greatly
    appreciative of that. As opposed to when my son, when I was
    overseas in the Army in Southeast Asia years ago, we had to
    send a tape of a voice and so it has changed and dramatically
    for the better, I would add.
        You see the statement, ``Roe is dumber than a flat rock.''
    I would consider that to be offensive speech that needs to be
    removed, and my opponents would think that that is political
    free speech. That is the challenge you guys have of figuring
    out what is hate speech, what is all--you have a very, very
    difficult job.
        I would finish by saying, and Mr. Chairman, thank you. This
    has been a great hearing. Many of us in this room, I know at
    least two of you--including myself and Chris here, put a
    uniform on and led this country to protect your right to free
    speech. I would always err on free speech, even if--I have told
    my newspaper editorials, when you write--if it is true and you
    write it about me, it just happens to be your opinion and true.
    I think that is one of the great things about America is our
    ability to say what we want to as Americans.
        I know you have a tough job with basically the really
    assault that you are seeing from bad actors from overseas, but
    again, I would suggest that you err always on an individual's
    liberty and free speech. With that, I yield back.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Roe. I would like to close
    with a few final thoughts. Today we have learned about a unique
    and growing threat from foreign actors targeting our veterans
    on social media I order to steal their voices, whether for
    spreading disinformation and political propaganda, luring
    unsuspecting Americans into romance scams, or simply engaging
    in commercial fraud, these predators are all trying to
    impersonate veterans or veteran service organizations.
        Dr. Goldsmith and--Mr. Goldsmith and Dr. Barash have
    provided compelling testimony on the scale of these scams as
    well as the harm. It is notable how far, fast, and wide the
    impact spreads. Both Twitter and Facebook have explained their
    efforts to screen for such spoofed accounts, to identify bad
    actors, and to remove them from their respective platforms.
        While I do not doubt their sincerity or their commitment to
    addressing this critical issue, I am convinced that more can
    and must be done to protect veterans voices.
        We did not hear from law enforcement today, but an integral
    piece of the solution to this problem lies there. A committee
    is scheduling a closed briefing for our members with--and staff
    with the FBI to learn how they and other law enforcement
    agencies are engaging with social media platforms. Most
    importantly, we need to understand what loopholes, roadblocks,
    and barriers are impeding a more effective enforcement and
    protections, and perhaps identify an opportunity for
    legislative action to address any policy gaps.
        Today's hearing has highlighted the existing challenges
    faced by the victims of spoofing for getting fake accounts
    quickly identified or removed. We have also heard from the
    platforms about all the procedures and resources they have
    directed toward solving this problem since 2016 and yet, the
    data show that spoofing continues to rise. Clearly, more must
    be done.
        There is room for all the parties to collaborate and share
    more information to address these threats in a comprehensive
    manner, rather than the current haphazard approach. I am
    committed to working with Ranking Member Roe, and other members
    of our committee, and our congressional colleagues on both
    sides of the aisle to continue to highlight this issue as we
    head toward the 2020 election.
        Again, I thank all of you for attending today. Members will
    have 5 legislative days to revise and extend the remarks, and
    include extraneous material. Again, thank you to all of our
    witnesses for appearing before us today. Without objection, the
    committee stands adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 3:48 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
    =======================================================================

                             A  P  P  E  N  D  I  X

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

                        Prepared Statements of Witnesses

                                  ----------

                   Prepared Statement of Kristofer Goldsmith

        Good afternoon, Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Dr. Roe, and
    distinguished members of this committee. We at Vietnam Veterans of
    America, and I personally, are deeply grateful for your decision to
    hold this hearing, and for your commitment to ensuring that America
    addresses foreign-born cyber threats against service members, veterans,
    our families and survivors.
        My name is Kristofer Goldsmith, and I am Chief Investigator and
    Associate Director for Policy and Government Affairs at Vietnam
    Veterans of America (VVA). I served with the Army's Third Infantry
    Division as a Forward Observer, and deployed for a year to Sadr City,
    Baghdad, in 2005.
        Many of you know me for my work on the issue of helping veterans
    with bad-paper discharges, and for being the young guy representing VVA
    as we joined with our VSO partners to create and advocate for the
    passage of the Forever GI Bill. In an ideal world, these things would
    still be my primary focus here at VVA.
        VVA gave me the title of Chief Investigator out of necessity. I
    took on this additional role when VVA came to realize that we were
    facing a series of foreign-born online imposters who were creating
    social media accounts and websites that were meant to trick our members
    and supporters. These imposters were, and still are, using the name and
    brand of our congressionally chartered VSO to spread actual fake news
    that is meant to inflame national divisions.
        Since beginning our investigation, we've found and exposed election
    interference related to the 2020 Presidential race by these foreign
    entities. VVA has documented what we believe to be campaign finance
    fraud, with well-known Macedonian crooks tricking followers of the Vets
    for Trump Political Action Committee's (PAC's) Facebook page into
    sending political donations overseas via PayPal. These Macedonians had
    staged a hostile takeover of two pages originally owned by real
    American veterans, and then used them to buildup xenophobic hatred
    against four women of color in Congress and then tie them to Democratic
    2020 Presidential candidates. They also used these pages to spread
    disinformation about elections in New York, my home State.
        Separately, we discovered a host of foreign entities from Eastern
    Europe and the Asian Pacific selling counterfeit merchandise featuring
    VVA's trademarked logo alongside racist, political propaganda.
        We've found multiple entities from Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria,
    who are purporting to be VVA on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google,
    and Reddit.
        We've been tracking a bot network on Twitter which finds and
    follows veteran advocates like myself and my colleagues behind me, and
    tries to blend in with the veterans' community by retweeting official
    government accounts, veterans' organizations, and political
    organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA). People who
    then follow these accounts get automated messages in broken English
    with suspicious links.
        We've discovered that Nigeria hosts a massive organized criminal
    empire, which uses the names and photos of troops and veterans to lure
    Americans into romance scams. Because some of these names and photos
    are of troops killed in action, their Gold Star families are
    retraumatized as their deceased loved ones continue to be used as bait
    for financial fraud. Some of the victims whose names get used are your
    own colleagues, veterans who serve in Congress. In one example,
    Congressman Lee Zeldin, a fellow Long Islander, had photos of him and
    his kids exploited to make it look like he was a widower in search of
    new love.
        We've done a close analysis of the infamous ``Russian Ads'' that
    were released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
    Among them were at least 113 ads directed at veterans, or which used
    veterans as props in Russia's mission to divide Americans. Facebook's
    micro-targeting allowed these Russian entities to specifically target
    the followers of American Veterans (AMVETS), Disabled American Veterans
    (DAV), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA), Paralyzed
    Veterans of American (PVA), Vietnam Veterans of American (VVA), Wounded
    Warrior Project (WWP), and a host of veterans' organizations which
    operate on the political spectrum, like Concerned Veterans for America
    (CVA) and Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW). At least two of these
    ads on Instagram featured a friend of mine, an advocate for veterans
    and service dogs. Those of you who have been on this committee for a
    while knew Captain Luis Carlos Montalvan and his canine, Tuesday. Our
    friend died by suicide in December 2016, but he lives on as evidence of
    Russia's insidious campaign against us.
        If the committee would indulge me for a moment--Would those who are
    in this room who remember reports from 2015 of the so-called Cyber-
    Caliphate, an affiliate of ISIS, sending threatening messages to
    military families--please raise your hand?
        Thank you. Now, who among you, in this time of rapid-fire breaking
    news that has overwhelmed us all, has had the opportunity to read the
    follow-up stories which revealed that these terroristic threats were
    actually made by Russian hackers who were pretending to be ISIS?
        It's important to note that the military families were not chosen
    at random. One was a reporter at Military.com; the others were
    prominent members of the community of military and veteran advocates. I
    want to emphasize this point--Russian hackers who were pretending to be
    ISIS sent terroristic threats to advocates and reporters who appear
    before, or report about, this committee. And in the flurry of news, it
    seems like hardly anyone knows that this even happened.
        We've detailed our findings in a 191-page report that's publicly
    available on our website, https://vva.org/trollreport/ which we at VVA
    encourage all of you to read.

    How VVA Discovered the First Imposter Organization

        On or about August 17, 2017, in helping VVA's Communications
    Director manage our social media accounts, I found a Facebook page that
    was using the name ``Vietnam Vets of America.'' The person or people
    behind it eventually built an online following twice the size of our
    own, eventually reaching nearly a quarter of a million followers, using
    VVA's trademarked logo as their page's first profile photo.
        At first, when I saw that the website address was ``vvets.eu,'' I
    thought that this was a member or VVA chapter somewhere in Europe. With
    a membership of 86,000 strong and growing, we've got members all over
    the world who use social media to keep in touch with their sisters and
    brothers in arms, and they build their own websites to organize for
    their chapters. I figured that since they were doing such a great job
    with the page--posting engaging content, high-quality videos, and news
    relevant to veterans--that perhaps we should reach out and offer them a
    job.
        After following the page with my personal Facebook account, I
    noticed a story that they posted on their website about the President
    proposing a budget which would cut certain veterans' benefits in order
    to expand access to private care. This link was paired with a post on
    the Facebook page bearing VVA's name and logo calling for action and
    for followers to express their outrage, and to share the story with
    their friends. The story went viral, reaching thousands and thousands
    of veterans.
        This article was a true story. Stars and Stripes reporter Nikki
    Wentling, whom many of you on the committee know personally, wrote it
    when President Trump had introduced his first budget in May 2017. But
    it was now September 2017. The admins behind the Facebook page and
    website had plagiarized the article word-for-word on their website, and
    just changed the date to make it look immediate and urgent--so that
    they could gin up anger against the new President and send our members,
    aging Vietnam Veterans, many with serious health issues, into a panic.
        As someone who works on veterans' policy for a living, I was able
    to quickly recognize this as what we call falsified news - that the
    page had taken an old story and made it look new for nefarious
    purposes. But most veterans don't follow politics and policy the way
    that I do, and they had good reason to be upset when they saw what
    looked like a trusted source--what looked like VVA--sharing an urgent
    update about a proposed cut to benefits.
        Once VVA realized that the page did not have the best interests of
    our members in mind, VVA's Communications team filed complaints through
    Facebook's standard reporting tools, and reported every use of our
    trademarked logo. The admins of the page responded to our reporting
    them by quickly removing all instances of our logo from their page so
    that they were no longer in violation of Facebook's terms. Facebook
    told us after we filed additional complaints that the use of the name
    ``Vietnam Vets of America'' and their imitation of our organization was
    not a violation of their terms of service, and that it was up to us to
    educate our membership on what our real page looks like.
        The idea that VVA should on our own train 86,000 seniors living all
    over the world how to differentiate real and imposter Facebook pages is
    preposterous. Because Facebook's regular reporting and complaint
    functions were a dead end, we appealed to the media to raise awareness
    for the issue of the imposter page. By a stroke of luck, one of those
    stories came out immediately before representatives of Facebook were
    scheduled to testify before several congressional committees. Members
    from both chambers addressed these Facebook officials directly about
    the imposter VVA page. They replied that they knew nothing of it, yet
    the page was taken down within 24 hours.
        Later VVA established contact with Facebook's Threat Intelligence
    Team, and they were much more helpful to us in taking down any abusive
    content that we flagged for them. But the information-sharing only went
    in one direction--we would find what looked to us to be foreign-born
    scammers and/or influence campaigns, and Facebook would take action--
    but Facebook representatives were telling us that their user-privacy
    agreement prohibited them from letting us know anything about what we
    found.
        In reporting abusive content this way, without information being
    shared by both parties, VVA was essentially acting as an unpaid
    consultant for Facebook.

    How the Investigation Got Started

        In February 2018 we discovered another imposter VVA page, which was
    using the name ``Vietnam-Veterans.org,'' and sharing links to the same
    content that we had seen months earlier on a new website. It was clear
    that this was the same actor, but they had developed a new logo,
    adjusting their ``brand'' to look more legitimate. We then discovered
    that the same entity had created accounts with the same branding on
    Twitter and Instagram. So, we started digging deeper. Then we found a
    Facebook page called ``Nam Vets,'' which was also being operated by the
    same entity. Except this page wasn't a new one--it had been created in
    2015, using VVA's logo as its profile photo. The page had been dormant,
    apparently since the original ``Vietnam Vets of America'' page was more
    successful in building a massive following.
        At this time, Facebook did not yet display the country of origin of
    the admins of Facebook pages, but we could tell that this was likely a
    persistent foreign entity because of grammatical errors in posts that
    are typical of non-native English speakers.
        When we discovered that the troll had forgotten to anonymously
    register the new ``Vietnam-Veterans.org'' website, we were able to
    trace this entity back to Plodiv, Bulgaria, and a person using the name
    or pseudonym ``Nikola Mitov,'' and the email address
    ``forthevets1000@gmail.com.'' Mitov had--and in some cases still has--a
    presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Reddit. All
    accounts were primarily focused on deceiving and exploiting American
    veterans.
        On these websites, the Bulgarian imposter would frequently
    plagiarize real stories from reporters, including those of the
    reporters in this room during this hearing, about legislative proposals
    that would negatively affect some of VVA's members. They would change
    the dates on particularly inflammatory stories to make it appear as if
    you--the members of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs--were
    constantly trying to cut essential veterans benefits.
        Rather than hand this information over to Facebook, which would
    have likely resulted in the immediate closure of the offending
    accounts, we began documenting the activity of the pages and studying
    them. We prepared a brief on our findings for Congress and the Federal
    agencies that we believed should be concerned with the issue of
    imposter Veteran Service Organization (VSO) accounts being created by
    foreign entities. In March and April 2018 VVA sent this brief as
    letters to the Departments of Justice, Veterans Affairs, Homeland
    Security, and Defense, as well as to the Federal Bureau of
    Investigation (FBI). We've called on the DOD and VA to coordinate in
    efforts to inoculate troops and veterans against these hostile cyber
    campaigns.
        To date, we have not received a response from any office from the
    Executive branch.
        Several Members of Congress cited our brief during hearings which
    featured Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other high-ranking
    representatives of the company as witnesses. Again, Facebook's
    representatives claimed ignorance of the issue of imposter VSO pages,
    and the new pages were quickly brought down after lawmakers confronted
    Facebook.

    Why Service Members, Veterans, and Our Families Are Targeted

        From the perspective of our adversaries, our community is an
    economically efficient target for influence campaigns. Veterans are
    more likely than any other demographic in the US to vote, run for
    office, and motivate others to vote. Our opinions and political beliefs
    are generally highly respected across the entire political spectrum,
    and as a result, our behavior often influences the behavior of those
    around us. In many cases, as a veteran votes, so does her family and
    circle of friends.
        In instances of financial fraud or romance scams, foreign criminals
    are exploiting the general sense of trust that the American people have
    in those who serve in uniform. People put their guard down when they
    are interacting with someone who is serving the country, and that
    includes when they're interacting online. There is a large organized
    crime ring based in Nigeria that recognizes this, and has built an
    industry around stealing veterans' identities for use in financial
    scams. These men in Nigeria proudly call themselves ``Yahoo Boys,'' a
    nickname that came about in the 1990's from e-mail scams from supposed
    ``Nigerian Princes'' who offered huge deposits in exchange for private
    banking information.
        These criminals frequently steal veterans' deployment photos and
    use them to create online social media profiles. They then use those
    imposter profiles to enter online groups which are made for grieving
    Gold Star families. These predators know that with a military death
    comes a large life insurance payout, so they use these stolen
    identities to comfort widows and widowers, offering love and attention
    to people who need it most. After weeks or months of grooming a victim,
    forming what the victim believes to be a romantic relationship, the
    scammers will make up stories about being in desperate financial
    situations. With their minds clouded by loneliness and grief, victims
    will often send large sums of money believing that they're helping a
    service member in need fly across the world so that they can finally
    meet. Then the scammers doctor photos of plane tickets and send them to
    victims. Victims often end up waiting at an airport for hours before
    they come to realize that the love that they had felt for someone was a
    lie.
        News reports have documented several cases in which victims of
    these scams die by suicide after realizing that they were tricked into
    giving away their life-savings.

    Foreign Entities Using Veterans as Props in the 2020 Election

        Our full report documents several ways that American veterans and
    service members are used by foreign entities to influence the political
    beliefs and behavior of the American public. This summer, VVA
    discovered that the Facebook page ``Vets for Trump,'' a digital
    property of the ``Vets for Trump PAC, LLC,'' was run entirely by
    foreign entities.
        Infamous Macedonian trolls, the Arsov brothers, who had previously
    been outed for publishing fake news supportive of Donald Trump's
    candidacy by American press and Macedonian anti-corruption groups in
    the wake of the 2016 elections--were the ones who had control of the
    ``Vets for Trump'' Facebook page until mid-August 2019. The Macedonians
    took control of the page when it had around 110,000 Facebook followers,
    and while publishing vile racist, xenophobic, and islamophobic content,
    increased their following to around 131,000 followers. In this time
    they posted disinformation regarding voter eligibility, attacked
    Democratic Presidential candidates, and promoted the candidacy of
    President Donald Trump. The Macedonians frequently targeted freshmen
    Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley, ginning up
    ethic-based hatred and fear--and then tying them to Democratic
    Presidential candidates.
        The Macedonians also engaged in what VVA believes is campaign
    fraud, soliciting political donations from victims who sent messages to
    the page offering to support the ``Vets for Trump'' PAC.
        These Macedonians claimed to VVA and to the Washington Post that
    this was ``just business,'' and a money-making venture, but there is
    little evidence to support this claim. They were not selling
    merchandise or posting links to ad-filled websites. They were not
    openly soliciting donations. They kept original the ``Vets for Trump
    PAC's'' website embedded within the Facebook page. Their true
    motivations of the Macedonians who stole the ``Vets for Trump'' page
    and then used it to interfere with American domestic politics remains
    unclear, and looks to have cost more to run than they could have made
    via the occasional illegal ``donation.''
        Although followers of the ``Vets for Trump'' page could, in theory,
    click on the ``page transparency'' link to see that the page was
    exclusively under the control of people outside the United States--few,
    if any, did. These foreigners didn't only fool lay-people whose lives
    aren't focused on politics, policy, and campaigns. Followers of the
    ``Vets for Trump'' page who didn't seem to notice that it was
    controlled by foreign entities included a member of the New Hampshire
    House of Representatives and former Trump campaign surrogate, as well
    as the inaugural chairman of GOP Vets.
        This is just one example of the politically manipulative foreign-
    born entities that we found during our investigation. VVA has
    identified over 100 Facebook politically focused pages which produce
    content targeting veterans which we have either confirmed of having, or
    we suspect of having foreign admins. Another, ``Vietnam Veterans
    Advocacy Group,'' had more than 100,000 followers and posted explicitly
    pro-Obama and anti-Trump content. We've found scores of additional
    social media accounts across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which
    have essentially kept the divisive ``Russian ads'' alive by reposting
    them as organic content. On Facebook pages with fewer than 100,000
    followers, admin locations aren't automatically revealed. Twitter,
    Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media platforms don't require
    admin locations to be revealed at all.

    Conclusion

        This committee must help service members, veterans, and our
    families resist the influence of foreign disinformation campaigns and
    efforts to divide us along partisan lines. In order to accomplish this,
    the committee must help us to rally a whole-of-government response to
    address these issues.
        The committee must require the VA to take efforts to shield
    veterans from financial fraud, spear-phishing, and other cyber threats.
    Cyber Hygiene must be considered a critical aspect of veterans' overall
    health needs in the 21st Century, and the committee should encourage
    the White House to create the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of
    Cyber-Health, a political appointee who this committee can hold
    accountable for modernizing the VA's approach to ensuring that
    veterans' healthcare enters the digital age.
        In recognition of the fact that our service makes us targets of
    foreign adversaries long after we remove our uniforms, this committee
    should empower the VA to offer a lifetime of access to complementary
    cyber-security software to veterans, and expand identity-theft
    insurance and credit monitoring to all who have served.
        Social media companies must be held accountable for imposing a cost
    on VVA, other veterans' organizations, and individual veterans, who
    through their ineffective policies are forcing us to constantly monitor
    their platforms for criminals seeking to victimize Americans by
    exploiting our trusted brands and personal identities.
        The committee should commission a study on the physical and mental-
    health effects of cybercrimes and propaganda campaigns that are
    directed at veterans. The Committee should pass legislation to aid
    veterans who have fallen victim to cybercrime.
        On behalf of Vietnam Veterans of America, we thank you for your
    attention to this very serious issue.

                          VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA
                               Funding Statement
                               November 13, 2019
        The national organization (VVA) is a non-profit veterans'
    membership organization registered as a 501(c) (19) with the Internal
    Revenue Service. VVA is also appropriately registered with the
    Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives
    in compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
        VVA is not currently in receipt of any Federal grant or contract,
    other than the routine allocation of office space and associated
    resources in VA Regional Offices for outreach and direct services
    through its Veterans Benefits Program (Service Representatives). This
    is also true of the previous two fiscal years.

        For Further Information, Contact:
        Executive Director for Policy and Government Affairs
        Vietnam Veterans of America
        (301) 585-4000 extension 127

                              Kristofer Goldsmith
        Kristofer Goldsmith joined the policy and government-affairs team
    at in May 2016. In his role, he advises Members of Congress and the
    administration on the implementation of policy regarding post-9/11
    American veterans.
        Mr. Goldsmith was born in New York and joined the Army to serve as
    a forward observer with the Army's Third Infantry Division shortly
    after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He deployed with Alpha
    Company of the Third Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, in support of
    Operation Iraqi Freedom for the year of 2005. Since separating from the
    Army with a General Discharge after surviving a PTSD-related suicide
    attempt, Mr. Goldsmith has become an advocate for veterans with PTSD
    and those with less-than-honorable discharges. Twelve years after his
    separation from the military, the Army corrected his discharge
    characterization to Honorable.
        As a disabled student veteran using the VA's Vocational
    Rehabilitation program, Mr. Goldsmith found an opportunity both to
    recover from PTSD and to continue serving his fellow veterans. At
    Nassau Community College (NCC), he established a million-dollar
    veteran-resource facility, which serves as a center for hundreds of
    student veterans. After 2 years as president of NCC's Student Veterans
    of America chapter, he transferred to Columbia University's School of
    General Studies to pursue a bachelor's degree in political science.
        Mr. Goldsmith is the founder and president of High Ground Veterans
    Advocacy, a 501c3 not-for-profit, which partners with military and
    Veterans Service Organizations to train veterans to become grassroots
    advocates and leaders in their local communities. High Ground Veterans
    Advocacy was recognized in 2016 by HillVets as one of the Nation's top
    new veteran's organizations.
        Since 2017, Mr. Goldsmith has been investigating foreign entities
    that target troops, veterans, and their families online. He believes it
    is the responsibility of today's young veterans to keep the motto of
    VVA alive: ``Never again will one generation of veterans abandon
    another.''
                                     ______

                     Prepared Statement of Vladimir Barash

        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and distinguished members of
    this committee: thank you for holding this hearing today, and for
    inviting me to contribute on the topic of digital threats targeting
    service members, veterans, and their families.
        I am the Science Director of Graphika, a network analysis company
    that examines how ideas and influence spread online. In this capacity,
    I oversee our work with Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA)
    and with our colleagues from leading academic institutions on
    developing and applying cutting edge methods and algorithms for
    detecting the manipulation of 21st Century networked communications.
    This is a problem I have been working on for many years.
        My Ph.D. dissertation at Cornell demonstrated how an idea can reach
    ``critical mass'' simply by gaining enough supporters in the right
    online communities--no matter how true or false it is. Even the most
    outlandish rumor that reaches critical mass will go viral and become
    extremely difficult to disprove. This dissertation, using simulated
    network behavior, demonstrated some fundamental mechanisms explaining
    how truth and falsehood alike go viral. In the years since, at
    Graphika, I have had the opportunity to apply these and other models in
    studying a wide array of real disinformation campaigns, including the
    work we did with our Oxford University colleagues for the Senate Select
    Committee on Intelligence, analyzing the Russian disinformation
    campaigns surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.\1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ Howard, P., Ganesh, B., Liotsiou, D., Kelly, J., and Francois,
    C. (2019). The IRA, Social Media, and Political Polarization in the
    United States, 2012-2018. The Computational Propaganda Project at the
    University of Oxford. URL: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/ira-
    political-polarization/. Retrieved on: February 24, 2019.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Our work on Russian interference, along with numerous other
    campaigns we've detected, investigated, and analyzed, point to the
    insidious effects of sophisticated disinformation campaigns on
    individual citizens, on our social cohesion, and on our trust in
    factual and unbiased news and information required for democracy to
    function.
        Disinformation on social media and information operations conducted
    by sophisticated actors came to broad public attention in the wake of
    the 2016 U.S. Presidential election but have been going on longer than
    most people realize. In the past few years, foreign information
    operations have targeted divisive political issues within American
    society and have sought to manipulate and divide political and social
    communities. Unfortunately, our military service members and veterans
    are no exception.
        These operations are rapidly evolving. Early campaigns we observed
    and analyzed targeted individuals online at random, using easily
    discoverable methods; newer methods target specific communities, embed
    sock-puppet personas in them, and use sophisticated ``cyborg''
    approaches that synergize large-scale automated operations with
    precisely crafted disinformation injection and hijacking efforts by
    human operators.\2\, \3\ The goal of these operations is not
    simply to ``go viral,'' or to have a high ``Nielsen Score,'' so to
    speak, but rather to influence the beliefs and narratives of
    influential members of key communities active at the wellsprings of
    social and political ideas. The effects of these operations aren't
    confined to the digital space: by targeting individuals directly, and
    by leveraging social media to organize offline events, they seek to
    produce chaos and harm in the homes and streets of our country.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ Francois, C., V. Barash, and J. Kelly. Measuring coordinated
    vs. spontaneous activity in online social movements. SocArxiv: https://
    osf.io/aj9yz/
        \3\ Howard et al. 2019
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        These online campaigns have long targeted the U.S. veterans and
    military service members community, who represents a target of interest
    for both foreign operators and commercial disinformation actors. U.S.
    veterans and members of our military are highly respected members of
    society who ``positively influence their country and their community.''
    \4\ At the same time, they are considered a ``vulnerable population in
    the context of the digital divide.'' \5\ Common topics of discussion in
    U.S. veteran communities include mental and physical health issues,
    separation from military service, and reintegration into civilian life
    \6\: those are all topics we have seen malicious campaigns target and
    engage with in order to manipulate the U.S. veterans community.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \4\ Lieberman, D. and Stewart, K.(2014). Strengthening Perceptions
    of America's Post-9/11 Veterans Survey Analysis Report. Greenberg
    Quinlan Rosner Research on behalf of Got Your Six. https://
    www.dillonconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Strengthening-
    Perceptions-of-Americas-Post-911-Veterans-Survey-Analysis-Report-Got-
    Your-6-June-2014.pdf Retrieved on November 1, 2019
        \5\ Houston, T.K., Volkman, J.E., Feng, H., Nazi, K.M., Shimada,
    S.L., Fox, S. (2013). Veteran Internet Use and Engagement With Health
    Information Online. Military Medicine, Volume 178, Issue 4, April 2013,
    Pages 394-400, https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-12-00377
        \6\ Olenick, M., Flowers, M., and Diaz, V.J. (2015). U.S. veterans
    and their unique issues: enhancing health care professional awareness.
    Adv Med Educ Pract. 2015; 6: 635-639. Published online 2015 Dec 1. doi:
    10.2147/AMEP.S89479
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        I would like to highlight a few important points that I have
    learned throughout my work examining social media threats targeting
    veterans on social media over the past few years.

    1. The U.S. veterans community is often a target of state-sponsored
        foreign information operations

        Foreign information operations against our men and women in uniform
    are a persistent threat, ongoing since at least 2011.\7\ These
    operations are not isolated to one channel: they have played out on
    social media messages,\8\ including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; on
    social media advertisements \9\; and on alternative websites and news
    media focused on the veterans community.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \7\ Finkle, J. (2014). Iranian hackers use fake Facebook accounts
    to spy on U.S., others. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/iran-
    hackers/iranian-hackers-use-fake-facebook-accounts-to-spy-on-u-s-
    others-idUSL1N0OE2CU20140529. Retrieved on November 10, 2019.
        \8\ Goldsmith, K. (2019). An Investigation Into Foreign Entities
    Who Are Targeting Troops and Veterans Online. Chief Investigator and
    Associate Director for Policy and Government Affairs Vietnam Veterans
    of America. http://vva.org/trollreport/ Accessed November 4, 2019.
        \9\ Howard et al. 2019, Goldsmith 2019. Goldsmith analyzed the
    advertisements placed by Russian Internet Research Agency accounts and
    found forty one ads targeting U.S. veterans and military service
    members. These ads generated 476,131 impressions and 26,031 clicks.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        These operations are surgically precise, targeting influential
    people and organizations in the veteran community. Veterans-focused
    publications have unwittingly published articles authored by false
    personas created by foreign intelligence services, such as the Russian
    persona ``Alice Donovan.'' \10\ Foreign information operations have
    also targeted the spouses of veterans,\11\ exploiting the family
    connections of those who serve our country for their own malicious
    ends.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \10\ Barrett, K. (2017). ``Alice Donovan'' sparks anti-alt-media
    witch hunt--is ``she'' a false flag? Veterans Today. https://
    www.veteranstoday.com/2017/12/27/alice-hunt/. Retrieved on November 10,
    2019. Alice Donovan was identified as an account run by Russian
    military intelligence in United States of America vs. Viktor Borysovych
    Netyshko, Boris Alekseyevich Antonov, Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, Ivan
    Sergeyevich Yermakov, Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev, Sergey
    Aleksandrovich Morgachev, Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek, Pavel
    Vyacheslavovich Yershov, Artem Andreyevych Malyshev, Aleksandr
    Vladimirovich Osadchuk, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin, and Anatoliy
    Sergeyevich Kovalev, Defendants (2018). CRIMINAL NO. 18 U.S.C.
    Sec. Sec.  2, 371, 1030, 1028A, 1956, and 3551 et seq. In the United
    States District Court for the District of Columbia. Case 1:18-cr-00215-
    ABJ Document 1 Filed July 13, 2018.
        \11\ Satter, R. Russian hackers posed as IS to threaten military
    wives. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/
    4d174e45ef5843a0ba82e804f080988f. Retrieved on 11/10/2019.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Last but certainly not least, these operations show no signs of
    stopping. Howard et al.\12\ demonstrate that information operations by
    just one agency operated by one foreign actor--Russia's Internet
    Research Agency--increased dramatically after the 2016 US Presidential
    elections. Similarly, Spaulding et al.\13\ say ``the volume and
    intensity of these aggressive [information] operations have grown since
    2016 and show no signs of abating.'' Our analysis of foreign
    information operations on Twitter released by Gadde and Roth 2018,\14\
    focusing specifically on operations against U.S. military and veterans,
    confirms previous finding and demonstrates the involvement of multiple
    State actors in targeting the U.S. veterans community.\15\ Russia and
    Iran are the most prominent State actors in this context, but recent
    work \16\ has identified additional State actors, such as China and
    Saudi Arabia, using information operations to target communities and
    topics of interests.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \12\ Howard et al. 2019
        \13\ Spaulding, S. Gresh, J. and Nair, D. (2019). Why the Kremlin
    Targets Veterans. Center for Strategic and International Studies.
    https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-kremlin-targets-veterans. Accessed on
    November 10, 2019.
        \14\ Gadde, V. and Roth, Y. (2018). Enabling further research of
    information operations on Twitter. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/
    topics/company/2018/enabling-further-research-of-information-
    operations-on-twitter.html. Accessed on November 14, 2019.
        \15\ We examined eight foreign information operations datasets
    published by Twitter: three datasets stemming from Russian information
    operations (2018 release, January 2019 release, June 2019 release) and
    five datasets stemming from Iranian information operations (2018
    release, January 2019 release, and three datasets released in June
    2019). We filtered each published Twitter dataset to include only
    messages that a) targeted an influential account for military and
    veterans, based on our analysis of Gallacher et al. 2017 (see below)
    and/or b) used one of the following keywords: ``vet,'' ``vets,''
    ``veteran,'' ``veterans.'' Our rate analysis showed that two of the
    three Russian information operations datasets increased in activity
    after the 2016 election, while one dataset (the one released in June
    2019, which included only 11 tweets targeting U.S. Veterans or military
    service members) had no post-election activity. All five Iranian
    information operations datasets increased in activity after the 2016
    election. Overall, the rate of increase for the two Russian datasets
    with post-election activity was 1.32 and the rate of increase for the
    Iranian datasets was 5.65. This means both Russian and Iranian
    information operations targeting U.S. veterans and military service
    members ramped up their activity after the 2016 election.
        \16\ Francois, C. and Nimmo, B. (2019). Briefing for the U.S. House
    of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
    Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Hearing on Online Imposters
    and Disinformation. Statement of Camille Francois, Chief Innovation
    Officer, Graphika, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for
    Internet & Society, and Ben Nimmo, Director of Investigations,
    Graphika. Washington, DC. September 26, 2019

    2. These operations seek to divide and weaken the veterans communities
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        and sometimes go hand in hand with sophisticated cyber attacks

        Spaulding et al.\17\ observe that foreign attacks on U.S. veterans,
    including Russian state-sponsored news outlets media such as Russia
    Today, ``use misleading and divisive questions about the U.S.
    government's military and veteran policies to further amplify and
    exploit the existing frustrations in the veteran community.'' These
    attacks exploit ``societal cleavages'' in U.S. veterans and military
    communities and work ``to promote narratives that `the system,' and
    thus democracy, is irrevocably broken.'' Our analysis of foreign
    information operations on these communities confirms this observation.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \17\  Spaulding et al. 2019
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        We present a few example posts to illustrate these tactics of
    division and exploitation. We also welcome the transparency efforts of
    the platforms in this area, notably Twitter and Facebook, who, since
    2017, have publicly released archives of posts and messages crafted by
    foreign actors and used in information operations. Together with our
    colleagues at the German Marshall Fund, we have created the
    ``Information Operations Archive'' online portal, enabling users to
    better navigate and analyze these archives \18\.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \18\  Available at www.io-archive.org

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Figure 1. Screenshot: IRA-controlled Facebook page seeking to
    engage viewers through interactive or divisive memes.\19\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \19\  Goldsmith, 2019 reprinted in Spalding, 2019.
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Figure 2. Screenshot: Both images are from a Russian-backed
    Facebook group called Stop A.I. (Stop All Invaders).\20\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \20\  The images were reproduced in Senator Michael Bennet's book :
    Michael Bennet, Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and
    Democracy (Michael Bennet, 2019) and reprinted in Spalding, 2019.

        My team and I also analyzed the topics of posts from information
    operations datasets released by Twitter, again focusing on posts that
    target U.S. veterans and military. Unsurprisingly, many of these topics
    are focused on veterans and the military. Quantitative analysis \21\
    allows us to extract salient topics in the set of messages used by
    foreign actors to target the veterans community, which we found to be
    primarily belonging to three themes:
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \21\  We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei et al. 2003) to
    automatically identify the topics of discussion in the veteran-focused
    foreign information operations. Latent Dirichlet Allocation takes a
    fixed number of topics as an input constructs these topics from common
    word co-occurrences in documents (for the purposes of this study, a
    document is a Tweet). We experimented with different numbers of topics
    and found that seven topics provided a high level of semantic
    differentiation.

          Messages related to being homeless and getting help
          Messages related to post-traumatic stress disorder and
    trauma
          Messages related to supporting our troops

        The last topic especially mixes generally positive statements like
    supporting veterans and troops (and a reference to Red Friday, an event
    to remember deployed troops) with calls to attack, take, and ``wake
    up''--indicating that the information operation involves hijacking the
    supportive messages to call for violence. Hijacking conversations to
    promote a particular message is often used in Internet culture and has
    been borrowed by foreign actors such as Russia in order to dominate key
    conversations at home and abroad.\22\ The Appendix includes key words
    for each topic discovered in the Twitter datasets, broken down by
    dataset.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \22\  Howard et al. 2019
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The divisive and debilitating tactics of these operations are not
    limited to subversive messages posted on social media. In the cyber
    domain, attacks against our troops manifest as malware and phishing
    campaigns, for instance targeting veterans looking for employment.\23\
    The pairing of disinformation with cyber attacks demonstrates the
    sophistication of these operations, which aim to manipulate our
    veterans through multiple channels simultaneously and negate the
    utility of any single defense against their efforts.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \23\  Mercer, W. and Rascagneres, P. (2019). How Tortoiseshell
    created a fake veteran hiring website to host malware. https://
    blog.talosintelligence.com/2019/09/tortoiseshell-fake-veterans.html.
    Accessed on November 10, 2019.

    3. Commercial disinformation operations and online ``scammers'' are
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        also targeting the US veterans community

        Today's disinformation landscape is an open playing field, with
    State and non-State actors having equally demonstrated interest and
    ability to engage in malicious behavior. As Goldsmith demonstrates,
    Russian foreign actors are not the only entities targeting our
    veterans. The Macedonian national Panche ``Pane'' Arsov purchased the
    Facebook page ``Vets for Trump'' after it had been compromised and
    stolen from its legitimate, American creators. Mr. Arsov grew the
    page's audience from 120,000 to 130,000 followers between April and
    mid-August 2019. Mr. Arsov is known to be one of the key figures of the
    Macedonian ``Fake News industry'' who ``worked closely with two high-
    profile American partners for at least 6 months during a period that
    overlapped with Election Day'' \24\ in 2016. During the period when
    Arsov controlled Vets for Trump, the page posted images and text on the
    subject of American politics. These images were supportive of Russian
    President Vladimir Putin, hostile to law enforcement, and ``us[ed]
    racist ``dog whistles'' (or subtly coded language), Islamophobic
    tropes, and dehumanizing language to incite division among the MilVets
    community.''
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \24\  Silverman, Craig. ``Macedonia's Pro-Trump Fake News Industry
    Had American Links, and Is Under Investigation for Possible Russia
    Ties.'' BuzzFeed News, 18 July 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
    article/craigsilverman/american-conservatives-fake-news-macedonia-
    paris-wade-libert.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Mr. Arsov is not an outlier when it comes to manipulating American
    veterans. Mr. Goldsmith discovered 41 Facebook pages targeting our
    service members with at least some foreign administrators. These pages
    had a combined audience of millions.\25\ Kris Goldsmith also discovered
    efforts to scam our veterans using platforms such as Instagram and
    Snapchat. Foreign commercial disinformation operations that take
    advantage of those who have given our country so much, for political or
    commercial ends, are a rapidly growing cottage industry that seeks to
    recruit our veterans into campaigns run from abroad and to profit off
    our veterans as they reintegrate into civilian life.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \25\  All together, these 41 pages had 18,298,968 followers or
    likes. Of this larger set, the 16 pages with exclusively foreign
    administrators had 3,852,187 followers or likes.

    4. These operations intersect with domestic hyperpartisan and
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        conspiratorial content

        Gallacher et al.\26\ found 2,106 well-connected, active U.S.
    veterans and military accounts on Twitter following or mentioning
    accounts for three prominent alternative hyper partisan media outlets
    (``junk news'' \27\ in the study) that are reported to show links with
    Russian-origin content.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \26\  John D. Gallacher, Vladimir Barash, Philip N. Howard, John
    Kelly. Junk News on Military Affairs and National Security. COMPROP
    Data Memo 2017.9 / Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.
    Comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk.
        \27\  Gallacher et al. 2017 define junk news as ``ideologically
    extreme, hyperpartisan, or conspiratorial political news and
    information. Much of this content is deliberately produced false
    reporting. It seeks to persuade readers about the moral virtues or
    failings of organizations, causes or people and presents commentary as
    a news product.''
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The precise targeting of these messages enables them to reach a
    large audience far beyond the initial set of targeted actors. For
    instance, our analysis of the 2,106 Twitter accounts identified in
    Gallacher et al.\28\ shows their combined audience exceeds 5 million
    accounts.\29\ Information operations targeting these 2,106 accounts can
    take advantage of their large Twitter following to expose millions of
    users to disinformation--an incredibly powerful multiplier effect.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \28\  Gallacher et al. 2017
        \29\  The total number of Twitter followers of the 2,106 accounts
    is 6,279,927. Some followers may follow multiple accounts, so we apply
    a standard multi-following correction of 80 percent. The expected
    audience size of Veterans and Military accounts in Gallacher 2017 is
    6,279,927*80 percent = 5,023,942.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The structure of our own public sphere creates the cracks through
    which bad actors target us. Gallacher et al.\30\ showed that
    disinformation operations spread to our veterans and military service
    members not directly from Russia or other foreign actors but mediated
    via American conspiracy theory communities, both on the right and on
    the left. Domestic conspiracy theory accounts act as perfect amplifiers
    for foreign disinformation content, pushing it to a larger audience of
    Americans and situating it in a familiar context, where it is more
    believable. Technical features of our social media platforms, such as
    recommendation algorithms, strengthen these pathways even further: in
    the absence of consistent disinformation detection and removal, users
    can follow platform recommendations down virtual ``rabbit holes'' from
    personal interests to domestic conspiracy theories to foreign
    information operations.\31\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \30\  Gallacher et al. 2017
        \31\  Howard et al. 2019.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Conclusion

        Proactive detection and transparency efforts by social media
    platforms in the last two years have allowed us to access the data and
    information necessary to shed light on the nature of information
    operations against our veterans and military service members. But, as a
    scientist, my inclination is also to highlight some of the key known
    unknowns of this topic. When it comes to the scope of operations, the
    data available so far allows for a piecemeal analysis approach to a
    multi-faceted operation. When it comes to the impact of operations, we
    need to answer the crucial question of how simple metrics related to
    reach and engagement, such as follows, retweets, and page clicks,
    translate to the changing of hearts and minds. The best way to answer
    this question is to conduct a causal analysis \32\ to understand how,
    and to what extent, online information operations change our veterans'
    beliefs and actions. Such an analysis is extraordinarily challenging,
    because it must take into account both the direct and indirect effects
    of disinformation, in both online and offline operations, yet it is the
    most rigorous method to make accurate determinations about the true
    effectiveness of these operations.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \32\  Liotsiou, D., Moreau, L. and Halford, S., 2016, November.
    Social influence: from contagion to a richer causal understanding. In
    International Conference on Social Informatics (pp. 116-132). Springer,
    Cham.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        What we do know, however, clearly demonstrates that we need a whole
    of society approach to protecting and supporting the communities most
    targeted by foreign actors online. Our press and educational
    institutions could provide resources and fact-checking efforts
    specifically serving American veterans. Research institutions can fund,
    and researchers can develop, community-focused disinformation detection
    and deterrence approaches. Our social media platforms can continue to
    take action to protect and support vulnerable communities online. Our
    law enforcement agencies can identify and deter precision threats. Last
    but not least, legislators can pass laws to protect and support our
    veterans online. Only by acting in concert can we stop a concerted
    threat to the troops who have fought, and still and always will fight,
    for our freedom.
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     ______

                        Prepared Statement of Kevin Kane

        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and Members of the Committee:
    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
        The purpose of Twitter is to serve the public conversation. We
    serve our global audience by focusing on the needs of the people who
    use our service, and we put them first in every step we take. People
    from around the world come to Twitter to engage in a free exchange of
    ideas. We must be a trusted and healthy place that supports open
    democratic debate.
        Twitter facilitates and amplifies the voices of veterans, both
    online and in our workforce. Our efforts to connect all communities
    online--including the veterans' community--enables advocacy of their
    issues and raises awareness of their needs. Within the company, Twitter
    demonstrates a strong commitment to honoring veterans by attracting,
    hiring, and retaining veterans and military families.
        Over the past 3 years, Twitter has launched initiatives through
    partnerships with nonprofits to socialize career opportunities as well
    as to improve resume and interview skills for veterans and their
    families. It is not only a priority to get veterans in the door, but
    also to hire them at levels recognizing their experience gained while
    serving in uniform. Our commitment is not solely limited to hiring. Our
    business resource group for veterans and military families,
    @TwitterStripes, works each day to share the veteran community's story
    both inside our offices and out. This group delivers programming that
    helps our employees understand the pride and challenge of service.
        The commitment to Twitter's efforts to support veteran causes and
    our employees with service backgrounds comes from the top, with our
    executives acting as model allies. As a result, our employees support
    the veteran community both in the workplace and on the platform. Some
    examples include: large turnouts to raise awareness and funds for the
    veteran suicide epidemic in a 22 push-up challenge; sponsoring teams
    and running the Marine Corps Marathon; hosting senior military leaders
    as speakers at employee events; and donating--with corporate matching--
    to veteran nonprofit organizations.
        We also have close relationships with the U.S. Department of
    Veterans Affairs (VA) and advise the agency on best practices to
    leverage the power of Twitter to better serve veterans who are at risk
    for committing suicide. Twitter representatives presented at a
    conference on this topic hosted by the VA and the Substance Abuse and
    Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) within the U.S.
    Department of Health and Human Services in July 2019. In September, we
    supported the VA's suicide prevention campaign by creating a custom
    emoji for the #BeThere hashtag to elevate this important initiative on
    Twitter.
        We appreciate the ongoing dialog we have with this Committee, and
    we share your concern about malicious efforts to manipulate the
    conversation on our service. While our work in improving the health of
    the conversation is never done, I look forward to discussing our
    progress to date with the members of this Committee, which will focus
    on: (1) lessons learned from global elections; (2) our voluntary
    releases of state-backed information operations; and (3) our efforts to
    safeguard the conversation, including updates to our rules governing
    election information, political advertising, and financial scams.
                    I. LESSONS LEARNED FROM GLOBAL ELECTIONS
        The public conversation occurring on Twitter is never more
    important than during elections, the cornerstone of democracies across
    the globe. Our service shows the world what is happening, democratizes
    access to information and--at its best--provides people insights into a
    diversity of perspectives on critical issues in real time. We work with
    commitment and passion to do right by the people who use Twitter and
    the broader public. Any attempts to undermine the integrity of our
    service are antithetical to our fundamental principles and erode
    freedom of expression, a core value upon which our company is based.
    This issue affects all of us and is one that we care deeply about as
    individuals, both inside and outside the company.
        Twitter engages in intensive efforts to identify and combat state-
    sponsored and non-State sponsored hostile attempts to abuse our
    platform for manipulative and divisive purposes. We possess a deeper
    understanding of both the scope and tactics used by malicious actors to
    manipulate our service and sow division across Twitter more broadly.
    Our efforts enable Twitter to fight this threat while maintaining the
    integrity of peoples' experience and supporting the health of
    conversation on our service.
        Our work on this issue is not done, nor will it ever be. It is
    clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior
    will not cease. These types of tactics have been around for far longer
    than Twitter has existed--they will adapt and change as the
    geopolitical terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge.
    As such, the threat we face requires extensive partnership and
    collaboration with government entities, civil society experts and
    industry peers. We each possess information the other does not have,
    and our combined efforts are more powerful together in combating these
    threats.

    A. Retrospective Review of 2016 U.S. Elections

        In the fall 2017, we conducted a comprehensive retrospective review
    of potential service manipulation activity related to the 2016 U.S.
    election. This analysis was divided into two parts: (1) a review of
    organic activity that included investigations into both the Russian
    Internet Research Agency specifically and broader malicious automation
    originating in Russia; and (2) a comprehensive review of promoted
    election-related Tweets linked to Russia. First, to better understand
    the nature of the threat of malicious automation and identify ways to
    address future attempts at manipulation, we examined activity on the
    service during the 2016 election period. We focused on identifying
    accounts that were automated, potentially linked to Russia, trying to
    get unearned attention, and Tweeting election-related content,
    comparing activity by those accounts to overall activity on the service
    during the election as a baseline.
        As we reported in January 2018, we identified 50,258 automated
    accounts that were Russian-linked and Tweeting election-related
    content, representing less than two one-hundredths of a percent (0.016
    percent) of the total accounts on Twitter at the time. Of all election-
    related Tweets on Twitter during that period, these malicious accounts
    constituted approximately 1 percent (1.00 percent), totaling 2.12
    million Tweets. Additionally, in the aggregate, automated, Russian-
    linked, election-related Tweets from these malicious accounts generated
    significantly fewer impressions (i.e., views by others on Twitter)
    relative to their volume on the service. Twitter is committed to
    ensuring that promoted accounts and paid advertisements are free from
    bad faith actors, including foreign State actors seeking to manipulate
    our service.
        We also conducted a comprehensive analysis of accounts that
    promoted election-related Tweets on the service throughout 2016 in the
    form of paid ads. We reviewed nearly 6,500 accounts and our findings
    showed that approximately one-tenth of 1-percent (0.01 percent)--only
    nine (9) accounts--were Tweeting election-related content and linked to
    Russia. The two most active accounts out of those nine were affiliated
    with Russia Today (``RT''), which Twitter subsequently barred from
    advertising on Twitter. And Twitter is donating the $1.9 million that
    RT spent globally on advertising to academic research into initiatives
    related to elections and civic engagement. The recipients of those
    funds include: the Kofi Annan Foundation's Global Commission on
    Elections, Democracy, and Security; the Atlantic Council; First Draft;
    the EU Disinfolab; and the Reporters Committee for Press Freedom.

    B. Ongoing Efforts to Safeguard Elections

        The process of investigating suspected foreign influence and
    information campaigns is an ongoing one. Although the volume of
    malicious election-related activity that we could link to Russia in
    2016 was relatively small, we strongly believe that any such activity
    on Twitter is unacceptable. We remain vigilant about identifying and
    eliminating abuse on the service perpetrated by hostile foreign actors,
    and we will continue to invest in resources and leverage our
    technological capabilities to do so.
        Twitter continues to demonstrate a strong commitment to
    transparency regarding our election integrity efforts. We published a
    report of our findings from the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. The 2018
    U.S. midterm elections were the most Tweeted-about midterm election in
    history with more than 99 million Tweets sent from the first primaries
    in March through Election Day. We are proud to document publicly our
    efforts to increase voter turnout, combat voter suppressive content,
    and provide greater clarity on the limited state-backed foreign
    information operations we proactively removed from the service. I have
    attached the full retrospective review to my testimony and it can be
    found electronically at: https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-
    twitter/official/en--us/company/2019/2018-retrospectiv e-review.pdf
                    II. STATE-BACKED INFORMATION OPERATIONS
        In line with our strong principles of transparency and with the
    goal of improving understanding of foreign influence and information
    campaigns, we released the full, comprehensive archives of Tweets and
    media associated with potential information operations that we had
    found on our service, including the 3,613accounts we believe were
    associated with the activities of the Internet Research Agency on
    Twitter dating back to 2009. We made this data available with the goal
    of encouraging open research and investigation of these behaviors from
    researchers and academics around the world.
        Prior to the release of these datasets, Twitter shared examples of
    alleged foreign interference in political conversations on Twitter by
    the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and provided the public with a
    direct notice if they interacted with these accounts. We launched this
    unique initiative to improve academic and public understanding of these
    coordinated campaigns around the world, and to empower independent,
    third-party scrutiny of these tactics on our platform.
        We also recognize that, as a private company, there are threats
    that we cannot understand and address alone. We must continue to work
    together with elected officials, government entities, industry peers,
    outside experts, and other stakeholders so that the American people and
    the global community can understand the full context in which these
    threats arise.
        As our investigations of platform manipulation around the world
    have continued, we subsequently added several new datasets while also
    sharing insights on Twitter's internal investigative approach and how
    these complex, sometimes cross-jurisdictional operations are
    identified.
        As our investigations of platform manipulation around the world
    have continued, we subsequently added several new datasets while also
    sharing insights on Twitter's internal investigative approach and how
    these complex, sometimes cross-jurisdictional operations are
    identified.
        The archive is now the largest of its kind in the industry. We are
    proud of the fact that thousands of researchers have made use of these
    datasets that contain more than 30 million individual Tweets and more
    than one terabyte of media. Using our archive, these researchers have
    conducted their own investigations and shared their insights and
    independent analyses with the world.
                       III. SAFEGUARDING THE CONVERSATION
        We strongly believe that any attempt to undermine the integrity of
    our service undermines freedom of expression. We have made numerous
    updates to the Twitter Rules that govern our policies relating to
    elections, political advertising, and financial scams.

    A. Twitter Rules Relating to Elections

        We have made a number of recent updates to the rules governing the
    use of our service to better protect the conversation around elections.
    In addition to new prohibitions on inauthentic activity, ban evasion,
    and hacked materials, we codified our policy regarding civic integrity
    governing multiple categories of manipulative behavior and content
    related to elections.
        First, an individual cannot share false or misleading information
    about how to participate in an election or other civic event. This
    includes but is not limited to misleading information about how to vote
    or register to vote, requirements for voting, including identification
    requirements, and the official, announced date, or time of an election.
    Second, an individual cannot share false or misleading information
    intended to intimidate or dissuade voters from participating in an
    election. This includes but is not limited to misleading claims that
    polling places are closed, that polling has ended, or other misleading
    information relating to votes not being counted.
        We also do not allow misleading claims about police or law
    enforcement activity related to polling places or elections, long
    lines, equipment problems, voting procedures or techniques which could
    dissuade voters from participating in an election, and threats
    regarding voting locations. Finally, we do not allow the creation of
    fake accounts which misrepresent their affiliation, or share content
    that falsely represents its affiliation to a candidate, elected
    official, political party, electoral authority, or government entity.
        On Monday, October 21, 2019, we publicly announced that we have
    been working on a policy to address synthetic and manipulated media on
    Twitter. On Monday, we announced our plan to open a public feedback
    period to get input from the public. We believe that we need to
    consider how synthetic media is shared on Twitter in potentially
    damaging contexts. We also want to listen and consider a variety of
    perspectives in our policy development process, and we want to be
    transparent about our approach and values.

    B. Twitter Rules Relating to Political Advertising

        On October 30, 2019, Twitter's chief executive officer Jack Dorsey
    announced that we have made the decision to stop all political
    advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach
    should be earned, not bought. This means bringing ads from political
    candidates and political parties to an end.
        A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an
    account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing
    highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe
    this decision should not be compromised by money. While Internet
    advertising is incredibly powerful and effective for commercial
    advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it
    can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.
    Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic
    discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-
    targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at
    increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.
        We will soon share the final policy and provide current advertisers
    a notice period before this change goes into effect. We believe our
    approach to political advertising is not about free expression because
    candidates and political parties will continue to be able to share
    their content organically. This is about paying for reach. And paying
    to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications
    that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.
    We believe it is worth stepping back in order to address.

    C. Twitter Rules Relating to Scam Tactics

        In September 2019, we updated our policies to clarify our
    prohibitions against scam tactics. We want Twitter to be a place where
    people can make human connections and find reliable information. For
    this reason, bad-faith actors may not use Twitter's services to deceive
    others into sending money or personal financial information via scam
    tactics, phishing, or otherwise fraudulent or deceptive methods.
        Using scam tactics on Twitter to obtain money or private financial
    information is prohibited under this policy. Individuals are not
    allowed to create accounts, post Tweets, or send Direct Messages that
    solicit engagement in such fraudulent schemes.
        Our policies outline deceptive tactics that are prohibited. These
    include:

          Relationship/trust-building scams. Individuals may not
    deceive others into sending money or personal financial information by
    operating a fake account or by posing as a public figure or an
    organization.

          Money-flipping schemes. Individuals may not engage in
    ``money flipping'' schemes, for example, guaranteeing to send someone a
    large amount of money in return for a smaller initial payment via wire
    transfer or prepaid debit card.

          Fraudulent discounts. Individuals may not operate schemes
    which make discount offers to others wherein fulfillment of the offers
    is paid for using stolen credit cards and/or stolen financial
    credentials.

          Phishing scams. Individuals may not pose as or imply
    affiliation with banks or other financial institutions to acquire
    others' personal financial information. We additionally emphasize to
    individuals using Twitter that other forms of phishing to obtain such
    information are also in violation of our platform manipulation and spam
    policy.

                                     * * *
        All people who use Twitter--including veterans--must have
    confidence in the integrity of the information found on the service. We
    continue to invest in our efforts to address those threats posed by
    hostile actors and foster an environment conducive to healthy,
    meaningful conversations on our service. We look forward to working
    with the Committee on these important issues.
                                     ______

                    Prepared Statement of Nathaniel Gleicher

    I. Introduction

        Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Roe, and members of the Committee,
    thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is
    Nathaniel Gleicher, and I am the Head of Security Policy at Facebook.
    My work is focused on addressing the serious threats we face every day
    to the security and integrity of our products and services. I have a
    background in both computer science and law; before coming to Facebook,
    I prosecuted cybercrime at the U.S. Department of Justice and built and
    defended computer networks.

    II. Facebook's Efforts to Support Veterans

        Facebook supports the military and veteran community and is
    grateful for their service and the sacrifices made by veterans and
    their families. We are proud that thousands of veterans and active-duty
    military members use the Facebook family of apps to stay connected and
    share with their friends and loved ones. More than 900,000 users are
    part of the more than 2,000 active Facebook groups that have been
    created for veterans and their families, and 70 percent of the veteran
    and military groups on Facebook are for veteran or active duty spouses.
        Veteran hiring is also an important focus for Facebook. Veterans
    currently hold senior roles at the company, and increasing the number
    of veterans working at Facebook is a critical part of our diversity
    initiatives. We offer a Military Skills Translator that helps veterans
    leverage their unique skills to find Facebook careers relevant to their
    military experience.
        When veterans join our team, we provide dedicated resources so they
    can connect and share with one another to find opportunities for
    advancement, including internal programs for mentorship and support
    groups, and for the first time this year, we are hosting an internal
    Facebook Vets and Allies Leadership Summit. We are also launching a 12-
    month career development pilot program for veterans with a background
    in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or computer science
    in order to further the opportunities available to veterans at
    Facebook.
        Veterans leave military service equipped with the traits and skills
    that provide a strong foundation for successful entrepreneurship,
    including leadership experience, attention to detail, dedication, and
    determination. We are pleased that veteran-owned small businesses use
    our services to connect with their customers and grow their businesses.
        We also know that entrepreneurs with access to mentors are much
    more likely to start a business and to stay in business. This is why we
    have announced a new Partnership to Advance Veterans' Entrepreneurship
    (PAVE) with Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), the Nation's
    largest network of volunteer expert business mentors. Our partnership
    with SCORE will provide education and mentoring to those in the veteran
    community who dream of becoming entrepreneurs. Through a mentor match
    program, we will connect potential veteran entrepreneurs with a cohort
    of SCORE's experienced business mentors who are also veterans. We will
    offer an educational toolkit, and in collaboration with SCORE, a
    veteran-focused series of workshops, both of which will help veterans
    with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to launch a
    business. SCORE's veteran mentors will be available to attendees after
    the workshop to provide ongoing guidance throughout all stages of
    startup and growth.
        In addition, our Military and Veterans Hub provides consolidated
    resources and tools for veterans to build their community, find job
    opportunities, and enhance digital skills. Last month, we hosted two
    free events to educate veterans and military families on using
    technology to grow their businesses and develop new skills.
        We recognize the strain that military service places on
    servicemembers, veterans, and their families. That is why we partnered
    with the organization United Through Reading in May 2018 to host an
    event where servicemembers were able to use Facebook Portal, a smart
    device we offer that can be used for video calling, to record stories
    for their families to listen to when they cannot be there. We know that
    connections with family and loved ones are critical for servicemembers,
    whether deployed overseas or when they come home, and we want to be
    there for them along the way.

    III. Fighting Fraud and Scams on Facebook

        Billions of people use our service to connect and share, and
    unfortunately some of them are intent on misusing it. We know how
    important it is to protect the people who use our services, and we have
    a combination of policies, processes, and technology to combat frauds
    and scams.
        The idea behind Facebook is to help bring communities together in
    an authentic way. We believe that people are more accountable for their
    statements and actions when they use their authentic identities. As
    part of our commitment to authenticity, we have a series of policies to
    protect against misrepresentation, fraud, deception, spam, and
    inauthentic behavior. First, we require people to connect on Facebook
    using the name they go by in everyday life. Second, we do not allow
    people to misrepresent themselves on Facebook, use fake accounts,
    artificially boost the popularity of content, or engage in behaviors
    that otherwise violate our Community Standards. We prohibit users from
    impersonating or speaking for another person, and our policies require
    that users do not misuse our product by maintaining multiple Facebook
    profiles. Third, we work hard to limit the spread of spam or other
    content that abuses our platform, products, or features to artificially
    increase viewership or distribute content en masse for commercial gain.
    These policies are intended to create a space where our users can trust
    the people and communities with which they interact.
        We enforce these policies through a combination of human review,
    automated detection technologies, and user reports, and we work hard to
    improve in all three areas. We have over 35,000 people across the
    company working on safety and security--more than three times as many
    as we had in 2017. In fact, our security budget today is greater than
    the entire revenue of our company at the time of our IPO earlier this
    decade. We assist law enforcement as they find and prosecute the
    scammers who engage in impersonation or other deceptive activities. We
    are constantly improving our technology as well. For example, in March
    2018, we introduced new machine learning techniques that helped us take
    action against more than half a million accounts tied to financial
    scams on Facebook.
        Fake accounts are often behind harmful and misleading content, and
    we work hard to keep them off Facebook. We took down over 2 billion
    fake accounts in the first quarter of this year alone, not including
    the millions of additional attempts to create accounts that our
    technology stops every day before they are created.
        We know that user reports are another key component of identifying
    fraudulent and other prohibited behavior. Therefore, we continue to
    invest in educating our users and improving our reporting systems. We
    inform users about warning signs and abuse patterns to help them
    recognize when they may be a target for abuse. We are developing ways
    to discourage users from engaging in behaviors that play into the bad
    actors' aims (for example, warning against sending payments,
    compromising photos, or personal information). We have learned that
    users often have a gut instinct that something is not right when they
    encounter bad actors, so we are empowering users with easy-to-use
    reporting and self-remediation tools while encouraging them to report
    behavior they think is problematic.
        On Instagram, we do not require users to use their real name when
    they register, but our policies require people to be authentic on our
    service--meaning that we do not allow people to misrepresent who they
    are or to mislead others. We use a combination of proactive technology
    and reporting to understand if an account violates these policies, and
    when we find violations, we take action. Our systems examine thousands
    of account attributes and focus on detecting behaviors that are very
    difficult for bad actors to fake, including their connections to others
    on our platform.

    IV. Combating Inauthentic Behavior

        We know that fraud, scams, and inauthentic behavior degrade the
    experience of our services and expose our users to risks of harm.
    Stopping this kind of abuse is a key priority as we work to make our
    services safer for people to connect and share. Our efforts to prevent
    inauthentic behavior have four components.
        First, our expert investigators use their experience and skills in
    areas like cybersecurity research, law enforcement, and investigative
    reporting to find and take down the most sophisticated threats. To do
    so, they collaborate closely with our data science team, which uses
    machine learning and other advanced technologies to identify patterns
    of malicious behavior.
        Second, we build technology to detect and automatically remove the
    most common threats. This reduces the noise in the search environment
    by removing unsophisticated threats, and it makes it easier for our
    expert investigators to corner the more sophisticated bad actors.
        Third, we provide transparency and reporting tools so users can
    make informed choices when they encounter borderline content or content
    that we miss. This transparency extends to the application of our
    policies, which are detailed and public. And when we take down
    coordinated inauthentic behavior, we publicize these takedowns for all
    to see, and we provide information to third parties for them to review
    and share relevant data with researchers, academics, and others.
        And fourth, we work closely with civil society, researchers,
    governments, and industry partners, so they can flag issues that they
    see and we can work quickly to resolve them. Engaging with these
    partners regularly helps us improve the efficacy of our techniques and
    learn from their experiences.
        Using this combination of approaches, we continually adapt our
    platforms to make deceptive behaviors much more difficult and costly.
    When we conduct a takedown, we identify the tactics the bad actors
    used, and we build tools into our platforms to make those tactics more
    difficult at scale. Over time, we are making it harder for bad actors
    to operate and making our systems more secure and resilient. By
    continuing to develop smarter technologies, enhance our defenses,
    improve transparency, and build strong partnerships, we are making the
    constant improvements we need to stay ahead of our adversaries and to
    protect the integrity of our platforms.
        We have also made real progress in curbing inauthentic engagement
    on Instagram. For example, we penalize accounts that distribute
    automated likes, comments, or follows in an attempt to expand their
    reach. Using machine learning, we can identify accounts that use third-
    party services to distribute inauthentic engagement. When a service
    uses an account to generate inauthentic activity, our tools can detect
    and remove that activity before it reaches the recipient. As our tools
    continue to remove inauthentic likes, follows, and comments, bad actors
    will have less incentive to use these methods. This will take time, but
    we are investing in this area for the long term.

    V. Protecting Our Military and Veteran Users from Scams and
        Impersonation

        We recognize that individuals and groups that are considered
    trustworthy, like veterans, are more likely to be the targets of
    impersonation. This can occur on an individual basis--where a specific
    veteran is impersonated, such as in a so-called ``romance scam.'' Or it
    can happen at the organization level--where Facebook Pages or groups
    are created to impersonate veteran-related organizations. Protecting
    veterans on our site is something we take very seriously, and in
    addition to the steps I have already outlined above, we work to combat
    the increased risks of impersonation that uniformed personnel and
    veterans face.
        We are testing new detection capabilities to help spot and remove
    accounts that pretend to be some of the most frequently impersonated
    members of the U.S. military and veterans. We also are training our
    automated systems to look for certain techniques used by scammers to
    impersonate an individual, such as leaving out one letter of a person's
    name to make their impostor account look legitimate. If, during this
    process, we detect that an account may be impersonating such an
    individual, we flag it for human review. We are still testing these
    processes, but they have helped us more quickly detect the creation of
    impostor accounts and remove them shortly after their creation, often
    before people even see them.
        When it comes to Pages that falsely represent themselves as
    belonging to real organizations, what we have found is that,
    unfortunately, these activities are not limited to veteran-related
    groups. In fact, the same bad actors sometimes create multiple Pages,
    some of which may impersonate veterans organizations, while others
    might impersonate organizations that focus on politically sensitive
    issues. That is why, to root out and remove these bad actors, we focus
    on patterns of behavior, not just content. Our approach is flexible
    enough to combat various types of impersonation, and when we develop
    tactics that prove effective with respect to one type of impersonation,
    we apply those same tactics to other types automatically.
        To combat these inauthentic activities, our systems rely on signals
    about how the account was created and is being used, such as the use of
    suspicious email addresses, suspicious actions, or other signals
    previously associated with other fake accounts we have removed. Most of
    the accounts we currently remove are blocked shortly after their
    creation, before they can do any harm.
        On Instagram, we are also using proactive technology to find and
    take action on potential scams, and we recently introduced the option
    for members of the community to let us know if they come across scams
    on our platform.
        We have also worked to increase transparency. For example, we have
    changed the way users see information about Pages, so that if a Page is
    owned or run by a foreign actor, the country location of the people or
    organizations managing the Page is easily determined. This way, users
    can better assess whether the Page they're engaging with is legitimate.
    People can also see more information about accounts on Instagram that
    reach large audiences so they can evaluate the authenticity of the
    account, including the date the account joined Instagram, the country
    where the account is located, any username changes in the last year,
    and any ads the account is currently running.
        Sometimes people fail to disclose the organization behind their
    Pages as a way to make others think that Page is run independently. We
    want to make sure Facebook is used to engage authentically, and that
    users understand who is speaking to them and what perspective they are
    representing. That is why we recently introduced a policy to require
    more accountability; if we find a Page that is concealing its ownership
    in order to mislead people, we will require it to go through our
    business verification process and show more information about who is
    behind the Page in order for the Page to stay up.
        We recognize our responsibility to work to make sure the veterans
    who use our platform are not being targeted or victimized. We also
    recognize that we can have a greater impact if we work in continued
    partnership with government, law enforcement, and civil society
    organizations. We work with law enforcement, including the FBI and the
    Department of Defense, to help find and prosecute the scammers who
    conduct these activities. We educate our users, including our veteran
    users, through videos and online safety guides in concert with civil
    society groups. And we work with the Department of Defense to help
    raise awareness among the military community about impersonation. For
    individuals and organizations most impacted by impersonation attempts,
    as well as for the Department of Defense, we have set up dedicated
    escalation channels for them to contact us when they learn of a new
    case of impersonation or targeting, to ensure that we can respond
    quickly.

    VI. Conclusion

        We know that we are fighting against motivated adversaries in this
    space, and that we have to iterate and improve our approach to stay
    ahead. We are committed to doing just that. Although our efforts
    haven't been perfect, our commitment is producing results.
        We also recognize the importance of working with government and
    outside groups who are engaged with us in this fight. We have strong
    relationships with veterans organizations and others working on these
    issues and look forward to strengthening those relationships as we go
    forward. We value the input and assistance these organizations provide
    as we work to keep veteran impersonation off of our platforms.
        I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to hear your ideas
    and concerns, and I look forward to your questions.

                      Questions and Answers for the Record

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           Nathaniel Gleicher's Responses to Questions for the Record
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