Transcripts For CSPAN2 Forum On Disinformation And Election

The George Washington institute for data, democracy and politics is hosting this forum. Live coverage on cspan2. Today we tackle another grade disinformation harm, election disinformation. We will have two very important panels. Offers will focus on foreign interference. The second panel will zero in on democratic integrity and Voter Suppression. These are vitally important themes. They are both areas of urgent and serious challenge threatening civil discourse and our democracy itself. We have to understand them, find ways to stop them, all apple for by social media. In between our panel will hear from stacey abrams, founder of fair fight 2020 and will describe the realities she is experienced and she is trying to confront. Were hosting is a series of forms impala with workshops hosted by the center for International Governance innovation on disinformation come online governments exploit domestic and International Governance. Our series is held in cooperation with members of the International Grant committee on disinformation. Thats a consortium of legislators from around the world working to protect consumers and voters from social media disinformation. Im frank says no with the institute for data, democracy and politics at gw, director of gw school and media fares for it is based. I will be a moderator the much of my job today will also be your timekeeper to keep his remarkable speakers that we have on time so everybody can have an opportunity to participate. A the topic were examining tody should matter to every citizen who cares about liberty and democracy. Hostile foreign powers, we know this are using social media platforms to undermine out elections, so discord and confuse voters and try to drill the process. We sighed in 2016. Theres ample evidence this process continues. Despite all that we know big social media platforms that failed so far to curtail the inauthentic accounts and the exponential amplification of disinformation get we see it across the board. In many cases platform are aiding efforts to so division and doubt about the integrity of our election. They do that their policy, rules, algorithm and will be engaging that. We can do and some of the worlds leading experts to discuss this threat to democracy. We were first from several witnesses who will describe whether experienced on the receiving end of this poisonous flow disinformation. Witnesses include a world class investigative journalist, the head of an International Research agency that is been the vanguard spiting extreme, extremism and disinformation a line and then we will hear from distinguished panel of lawmakers, a very distinguished panel of lawmakers from around the world. Each an expert in their own right, each serving of the most influential echelons of government. So before i deduce our witnesses esteemed panelists, lets introduce our first topic which is foreign in government interference in elections with this short video. The fbi says potential for foreign interference is real. During the 2016 president election suspected russian operators created bots on twitter to promote hashtags like war against democrats, facebook is one common platform for russian trolls and bots which in 2016 used fake accounts to influence the u. S. Election. This is really nothing less than information warfare. Another type of warfare. There is no Government Intervention in place to prevent foreign ads, anecdotal evidence shows a already here targeting you ahead of the 2020 election. Though they start off as biased, research into a 16 shows their goal is to keep you from wanting to vote for anyone on election day. Now to our discussion. First let me say thank you for joining us on this virtual event. With technical problems, or was it but i dont think we will. We have this pretty well done. I do want to invite the journalists who have joined us as attendees to please put your question in at any time and we will seek to get you as many of those is a can after each has gone. Our panel of lawmakers will which will get two and a was adam schiff, chairman House Intelligence Committee Senior Member House Judiciary Committee where he is incredibly grateful to have him and come him today and is expertise. Canadian abusers as minister in the government and president of the queens privy council. He has jurisdiction over Election Integrity in canada and one of Prime Minister trudeau is closest advisor and member of the European Parliament from estonia, there foreign minister of affairs, sorry, minister of Foreign Affairs at the height of the 26 election so she felt the Disinformation Campaign immensely. First, a journalist, author ad founder of online new site in the philippines now a major multimedia output. Maria was time persevere in 2018 for her efforts to fight fake news. Just to be sure she was convicted of cyber libel. Cyber libel in the philippines and an apparent retaliation of shining a light on corruption and government sponsored Disinformation Campaigns across social media in the philippines. She is freed on bail pending her appeal. Where extremely fortunate to have her and, of course, we very much supporting her efforts to preserve a free press, independent press in the philippines and fight disinformation. Another groundbreaker compound ceo of the institute for strategic dialogue, isp which provides indepth analysis on audience, networks and contents to both interpret and fight the threat of wild extremism. She is a backer to conflict resolution, expertise expertise and global extremist movements come Digital Information and Disinformation Campaigns and electoral in fluence influence. I want to turn to start with maria, she happens to be former colleague of mine when were both at the scene in, so absolutely delight to see you. Were looking forward to hearing your take on this issue so its a great pleasure to turn over to you now. Frank, thanks a lot. Thanks for inviting me today. Im going to go through this relatively quickly. Weve been going through this for four years and it does start with the information were, with in our case facebook. Because 100 of filipinos on the internet are on facebook. Facebook is essential. Then we have twitter. [inaudible] in 2016 i told america that keep track of whats happening to us because was happening in the philippines is your distant future. Fastforward formatters and a quickly go through that. In 2016 the messages were seated on social media first. President duterte one in 2016. [inaudible] the weaponization of social media again soon after that. By july of 2016. The message at least in our case was journalists equals criminalist. That was in 2016. Exponentially pounded when we came out with challenges to the impunity of the drug were, to the impunity of Information Operations or influence operations we were pounded. And ill show you some of that happen in the philippines. I think keep in mind this one thing, that the goal of Information Operations are influenced operations, is not just to flood you with lies but also to target people, to target their minds, what theyre thinking it to change the way they behave. So what happened in the philippines, let me show this to you. Im going to just this was in let me pull this up. So this was in may of 2017, and i i just want to show you how the government at that point had seated this hash out a rest maria ressa. I wasnt resident of february 2019. That is what exponential lies try to do. It almost acts like fertilizer in this case all the biggest do a story about President Trumps call to president duterte. It looks really ridiculous right now when you look at it but i think the time that i was watching this. From there it jump hashtag arrest maria ressa jumped to lets make it move. Its not moving. Hold on a second. Sorry about that. There it is. So from there it jump to twitter where called her to the senate and then it jump to a real person. I can spell an arrest. My arrest didnt happen until two years later. The shutdown order we received in janet 2018 document after that, and then it moves into gender section was attack. Maybe its to become the ultimate porn star in a gang bang. Its not but this is what was seated and again look, this goes to real people, young men, picture maria ressa gets quickly martial law was on. It would bring joy to my heart. This guy was a student at a college and university. Here is what happened when you exponentially pound a fractional into society society. In our case it was attacking the media, attacking. We kept track of it by the data. I draw your eyes to may 2016. Thats when president duterte was elected. If you see the red lines become more solid with repetition. By july of 2016 thats our drug war in full speed. You can see that we are under attack, and the more and more and more and more, these are just hosts happening. Its a solid line. This is how when you say ally when million times you make it the fact. Through the social platform, lies spread faster than really boring fact. This is the database to put together. We challenge the impunity upfront. The drug were of the filipino government and the Information Operation, silicon valley, facebook, the kind of impunity that was happening here. We published a threepart propaganda war series. I wrote two of the three parts. The first was weaponizing the internet. The second was how facebook algorithms impact democracy. This was in 2016, and the third was manufactured consensus, how 26 date accounts could influence up to 26 million. This is what happened in octobey published it. When it turns red it means the average reposting is more than ten times. We zoom in on this facebook account because this account was attacking every major news paper. It is just cut and paste. Turn left at the facebook pages where it was seating, was cutting and pasting this. And if you look, the facebook pages from the election have not been weaponized, its the Duterte Campaign pages as well as the martial law campaign. This is where this is in 2017 may i ask you to take about another minute to some of because well need to move to our next witness. My apologies to that. I will end with this one. He was at the network that attacked journalists, activists, human rights activists and opposition politicians. Its the same network so segment ties that each one of the notes you see actually target by demographics, the middle class, the mass base, and the one person for the motherland. These of the last attacks and this is the last thing i saw that before i came to you. This is using my color, my sex and my facial features. When this is seated on facebook at home happens in the comments section and they turn into being an animal from normally the caption here is i was given a report whoever captures the spirit ive gone from being every animal being threatened with rape and death to being a no. She is not the victim. This is two weeks ago when i was convicted, but you can also look at how they made my skin much, much worse. Because i have a topic dermatitis, eczema, really dry skin and it made a whole new they call me scrotum face in the next one, just a second. I didnt filter this up for you because of what you see what i see every morning. It comes from here. This is seated on facebook and allowed to stay for periods of, chunks of time. Its not excellent for me so want you to see the impact. From there it goes just to this last one, frank. This is the film that was done about 1000 cuts and you can see can they doctored of photo and it is evil. It has evolved to this. This has a page. It is allowed to stay on facebook and its even marked by the page. Maria, i want to i want to thank you. I want to thank you for the courage that you have managed to keep about you throughout all of this, the way that you are sharing with us in the world. And it is so important that we see exactly what is happening, exactly what people have to endure, and this is what is eroding our sense of decency, our civil discourse at our democracies themselves. Thats what we are here today. Let return next and will come back, maria, to you. I know our panelists and congressman schiff will have some comments that would be relevant. Lets turn to sasha now, our next witness. Sawchuk, its yours. Forgive me. M unmuted . You are with us now. Thank you so much. Frank, thank you. Im honored to be here and had to say listening to maria, it is a depressingly familiar set of activities that we see on a very regular basis. Its a terrible thing to see of course this play out in very personal ways that weaponization of hate is absolutely part of the tactical playbook we see across the board these days. You asked me a little bit about what i and my team have seen to our Competition Analysis of platform manipulation, of Information Operation targeting election over the past four years. In particular the work weve done across europe. I know we have limited time. I should say just within the scope of the European Parliamentary elections i see partners of ours working in this space. We were able to identify some 19 coordinated and authentic Disinformation Campaigns. We are a small team of researchers, and it just gives you something about this is a tip of the iceberg. Theres too much to go into in terms of the detail of all that but i but i thought i would lay out [inaudible] that we see in relation to the actress epley a play in the assumptions we make about actors, the tools and the tactics that are deployed by those actors, and the target of their activity. So very quickly come on the actors. 2016 in in a way was the penny dropping for western about we were asked to go and find more of that. But in reality what we found was a much more complex picture in terms of the actors apply, and that playbook that was associated with the kremlin was deployed by absolutely there are many states in this space, but also nonstate actors, an array of transnational and domestic extremist groups and movements, special interest groups, International Activist groups and, of course, [inaudible] in a number of cases having to do with so we need to be thinking about measures the line between foreign and domestic is increasingly blurred. The line between states and nonstate is increasingly blurred. This is again not to say that absolutely. Were you have an interplay between overt kremlin disinformation and transnational extremist mobilization in the interest of supporting a political party, their objective. You have covert activities that we are and so on the state side of the challenge that are questions that we have. Of course there are many factors to which state actors operating, through state executed directly campaigns, through directed or coordinated campaigns, through state incited or fueled campaigns, state a leveraged or endorsed activities. These are extremely difficult to get a sense of. Just in the uk elections, for instance, we chose to identify what was this after modi made his announcement of support for the conservative party in the lead up to the uk election. We saw a flurry of accounts established which were antimuslim and protory party targeting indian committees in the united kingdom. These sorts of activities are difficult to identify. Is it foreign . Is it may i ask you, saucy, one minute to conclude please . So i will just go want to say, a Domestic Networks that are often not addressed as vigorously our grant for manipulation. [inaudible] we need to be understanding this increasingly authorities Domestic Networks, sometimes seemingly political networks. We need to be like that. On the tactics and on the target, of the tactics i should just say were looking for outright fakery [inaudible] counter coordinated accounts, hashtag hijacking. The media simple taken out of context. This is legitimate sources of media twisted and taken out of context to manipulate the audience. Its really important because it requires a different kind of responsiveness. In a way were in narrative or for rather than outright information worker. Finally, the targets. The target is not just elections and while we seem direct electoral manipulation in form of particular taxon opposition, politicians, women, minority, candidates are absolutely directly under consistent campaign coordinated attack. We also see campaigns for mounting of those do we saw that in germany. We saw that in sweden. The approach information preparation of electoral fraud narrative prior to the elections that really took off. Were seeing some of that of course start to plant in the u. S. But its a bigger thing. This is about the exploitation of wage issues to polarize our society. We see the weaponization of hate and also we see the targeting of wedge issues like migration increasingly climate. In order to polarize communities in a longrange sense. The electoral insights we get for disinformation are a window into longerrange efforts, essentially political efforts to divide momentum around political opinion and behavior. So let me take focus on the wider issue for going to get hit of the curve. Theres a lot to focus on, and is use it comes to many places but thank you very, very much for that. And you maria had teed up in a very clear and compelling and urgent way the panel that we now turn to an expert we now turn to you, adam schiff as an agent earlier has been unbelievably generous with his time today has been. Senior member of the House Judiciary Committee. As you know he served as the chief manager in the house of representatives in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump which deals a lot with this whole information of foreign interference, disinformation, misinformation and elections. Thank you so much for being too. I cant think of them are urgent issue as a think about we are are and where were going in this country, and around the world, and i will turn over to you now for your remarks in some engagement with our witnesses. Frank, thank you very much. Its