Contains it is something we understand why people are concerned about it. Its one of the reasons why the Electoral Commission approached us in october of last or and said we would like you to assess about whether or not there was indeed misinformation coming from another country. And we were keen to cooperate on that. We reported some findings from an initial investigation to chair the committee. I think its fair to say we havent done enough work having reflected on that. Is we wont be able to tell you until that work is completed. We are committed to telling the committee the outcome of those results. The one thing i would say is unlike the u. S. Election, we intelligence any reports that suggests there were downright russian interference using facebook involved in the brexit referendum. Different where there is an Intelligence Report demonstrating. Obviously the referendum was about the membership of the European Union Going Forward. Countries within the eu, not the u. K. , had more
Whose made the logistics behind that possible. Id like to thank the witnesses from the Different Companies well seed to for their evidence too. Just one small piece of House Keeping from the start. For people who are unfamiliar with the work of how fast commons select committees maybe more familiar with the work of congressional committees, its understood that anyone taking part in the proceeding of particle lent like this answers questions honestly and truthfully to the committee and its an offense to mislead parliament. Im nol not saying our witnesses would do that but we dont require them to swear an oath because under our rules its implied that theyre telling the truth. Well also we have a number of sessions to get through today and im conscious that we need to do that in good time gand order. Id like to ask the members of the committee to be clear in directing their questions to either individual members of the panel, be clear what theyre asking for as well. And just to say to the
We will go straight into the second panel. Somewould ask monica Background Information about the Senate Intelligence investigation into russian intelligence. Some of that work has been quite insightful for us and lead to us contacting facebook and asking for similar insight to be done as to when he as to whether there was any russian activity in the u. K. I want to ask about the information that facebook has provided. Is it correct to say that all the unit all the evidence so far and the number of people that were exposed to content creation disputed by the Internet Research agency in st. Petersburg, all of that announced so far comes from the analysis facebook did identifying payments made in ruples related to advertising around that content. Monica the information we gave to the committee in testimony is the best source of information for the details about that. Didhat testimony, colin speak to how facebook conducted that investigation. Payment in rubles was one of the signals. That
Committee. Our clerk is alyssa summerall and id also like to thank samuel williamses and high Maya Hernandez from sfgov tv. Items acted upon today will appear on the january 30 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. Great. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Summerall. Can you please call item number one . Item number one is a hearing to consider appointing two members, terms ending november 30, 2018, to the Ballot Simplification Committee. There are two seats and two applicants. Great. We have two applicants, unless there is any initial comments from Committee Members. Lets hear from mr. Scott patterson first. If he is ok. Great. Please come forward. Hello. Thank you for having me here today. Im Scott Patterson, candidate for the Ballot Simplification Committee. My family traces its roots in San Francisco back to when they immigrated from italy in 1881 so weve been around for a long time. Ive been a member of the faculty at San Francisco State University as a professor of broadcas
Background on that. This language and thrust of this is really a basic tran parency issue. It would provide a way for these who recuse under the law, to do so for a good thing, in order to avoid conflicts. It would give the public a chance to understand repeated recusals, so there would be an opportunity to engage. If there is a repeated recusal, and well get into how this would calculate that, there is a process for the Ethics Commission to review those recusals, and determine if there is a continued conflict that exists for that board or Commission Member, and the commission can recommend that maybe this commissioner should be sit in that role. Its a transparency tool and a way to avoid significant conflict in city decision making. What this would create is a system thats parallel to whats been in service in los angeles for a number of years. Each time a commissioner appears on an agenda, there would be tools for the Commission Member to do that. The form would be filed with our offi