Carper Asks Twitter About Efforts to ID, Fight Russian Actors Trying to Influence US Politics

Allegations that Russia-backed hackers tried to disrupt the U.S. political process prompted Senate Homeland Security Committee ranking member Tom Carper, D-Del., to get information from Twitter. A Thursday letter to CEO Jack Dorsey cited reports the Russian Federal Security Service and the nation's military intelligence may have been involved in trying "to influence public opinion through the malicious use of Twitter and other social networking services." Carper said such "social" cyberattacks through bots, which he described as automated and false accounts, "pollute information streams by generating messages that appear to come from many different users." He asked Dorsey how his company estimates the number of false or spam accounts and if it has the ability to track or estimate the number of such accounts controlled by potential Russian state actors. Carper wants information by Sept. 30. Twitter didn't comment Friday. It's been suspending accounts since 2015 for promoting terrorism (see 1608180066) -- which Carper acknowledged. Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been fighting online hate speech in Europe (see 1605310051 and 1606030037).