VirginiaSen Warner states Congress requirements Silicon Valley to assist resolve personal privacy issues

Sen Mark Warner has actually been asking tech business to step up to the plate for a very long time. Now Congress is asking too.

This follows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s marathon 10 hours of statement to Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee over 2 days today. He provided information about how Cambridge Analytica, a political information analysis consultancy, was apparently able to purchase Facebook profile information for more than 87 million users, and he provided apologies for what he called Facebook’s breach of trust.

During the hearings, he likewise attended to whatever from worries about political censorship to concerns about upcoming European personal privacy policies to conspiracy theories about whether his business’s app is surreptitiously listening through your phone to much better serve advertisements (he assured the committee it’s not real).

By completion of the experience, commonly viewed as a face-off that might identify Facebook’s future, Zuckerberg was provided a thumbs-up by WallStreet Investors pressed the business’s stock up almost 6 percent in appearing relief that the 33- year-old had actually mainly evaded congressional ire.

But Warner, a Virginia Democrat who’s likewise vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated in an interview that this is without a doubt not completion of things. He now desires Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other tech executives to come to Capitol Hill too. He’d like them to speak with his committee about nationwide security concerns.

That isn’t to state Warner’s itching to provide a finger-wag to every significant name in tech. Instead, he states tech giants require to sensible up that the concerns raised in these hearings are not disappearing which it remains in their benefit to deal with Congress instead of withstand.

“I’ll be the first to acknowledge that if the tech companies leave it to policy makers in Washington alone to figure this out, we’ll probably screw it up,” he stated. He includes that the intricacy of the concerns dealing with legislators asks for the tech market’s input.

“This is a problem that’s not going to go away,” he stated.

Warner isn’t the only legislator making these demands. Figures like Dorsey have actually currently been welcomed to affirm at different hearings, however up until now have actually demurred.

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Sen. Warner: Silicon Valley needs to work with Congress…

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Seeking solutions

While Congress has vented plenty of frustration at Zuckerberg over his company’s handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other issues, the hearings were light on policy prescriptions.

There is, though, the Honest Ads Act, which Warner co-sponsored with Arizona Sen. John McCain and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. It says that internet sites and apps would have to disclose who pays for political ads, among other things. Warner calls it “the lowest-hanging fruit,” and indeed Facebook is already implementing similar features.

But Warner’s also interested in other issues, such as finding new ways to confirm the origin of posts. That is, someone posting propaganda from Moscow, for example, wouldn’t be able to post on Facebook claiming to be in San Francisco.

Here’s what could be next, Warner said: making companies more responsible for what’s posted on their services. In some ways, this is beginning to happen. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a bill amending the Communications Decency Act to hold companies accountable if they knowingly allow sex trafficking to happen on their service.

Warner is also hoping for ways to make it easier for people to move their data from one social network to another, though he realizes taking connections to friends with you isn’t easy. Beyond that, he’d like to strengthen privacy laws and find a fix for all those terms-of-service contracts we all just press “agree” to.

“I’m not sure what the right answer is,” Warner added. But he wants to begin figuring it out. “There is a litany of policy responses we could take.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation with the senator after Zuckerberg’s testimony concluded this week.

What did you think of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony?
Warner: I didn’t watch, but I got a lot of reports. You could see to a degree that as the members got younger, the questions got sharper. And I think that the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg apologized and took responsibility — I appreciate the fact that he even, in advance of his testimony, supported one of the legislative resolutions I put forward called the Honest Ads Act with Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. McCain.

There were a lot more questions left unanswered. For example, the fact that Facebook had individuals embedded in the Trump campaign, how were they not aware that this Cambridge Analytica had 87 million Americans’ information, how were they not aware much earlier that this was a problem?

On the questions around privacy, content, data portability, sourcing of particularly fake posts, he got away without answering any really serious questions.

I think the narrative we’ve stumbled on in the last year is that the honeymoon period between tech and Washington, DC is starting to come to a close. And a lot of serious questions are starting to be asked.
Warner: Yes, and I think a lot of the concerns raised in the hearings this week were around privacy. And obviously that is a huge issue and one that not only Facebook needs to address, but Twitter needs to address, in a sense Google and YouTube as a single entity need to address. All the other social media companies need to grapple with.

But there are also enormous national security concerns. And these problems are only going to get worse.

And yet we have members of Congress struggling to understand the basics of even the business model and how some of these companies work. How do we deal with this?
Warner: I hope there was a step forward on the education process this week and that members will maybe get their staffs or others to brief them up on the basic notion that Facebook is not selling data, but they’re selling information about us, so that we can then be targeted by users or advertisers or people who want to spread real content or non-real content.

I think it will be an evolutionary process. I’ve seen it on the intelligence committee as we’ve both educated members on how the social media models work but also to create fake personas and fake accounts. And we’ve even see data mapping that shows when and where a lot of this extremist views on both the left and right originate.

That’s why my appeal to the Valley, and to Mr. Zuckerberg — and for that matter, we want to see him, we want to see Jack Dorsey, we want to see Sergey [Brin]– to come back in and speak with the intelligence committee on nationwide security concerns. Because this is an issue that’s not going to disappear.

I believe for a while the business believed they might send their attorneys as they did last fall and do genuine fast hearings and sweep this under the carpet and go on as if absolutely nothing had actually altered. That is not going to hold true.

We’ve learnt about these personal privacy and nationwide security issues for a while. But it seems like this things is coming way faster than Congress can discover and there’s no genuine hope of capturing up.
Warner:Amen That is a really possible circumstance. And then you have a really unfavorable occasion and after that an overreaction.

If you build up all the cash Russia invested in intervening in our election, from paid advertisements to paying folks who were giants to utilizing their bots, if you include on top of that what occurred in the French elections, you include on top of that, too, we have actually now had members of Parliament come by and state, “Oh my gosh, we didn’t believe so initially, however we’re seeing all sorts of indicators around the Brexit vote“– you include all that together, it’s less than the expense of one brand-new F-35 plane, which, at more than $400 billion, is among the most costly weapons systems ever.

And we reside in a world where the United States of America simply authorized a $700 billion defense budget plan. Russia has a $68 billion defense budget plan. They’ve decided where they believe 21 st century dispute will be– in false information, disinformation and cyber. I fear in some cases we’re purchasing the world’s finest 20 th century armed force in regards to tanks and ships and airplanes and weapons, when dispute might have relocated to a various world.

Do you trust Facebook to be totally forthright at this moment?
Warner: I believe they have actually improved. I still am bothered by the truth that simply in regards to scale– they discovered 30,000 accounts in France that they removed, andMr Zuckerberg mentioned that in his statement, which we have actually just recognized the 470 accounts from the one giant factory inSt Petersburg as the only Russian intervention in our nation.

My issue is that considering that this is was such a reliable capability to spread out dissension. I do not believe any of that has actually stopped.

The truth that Facebook hasn’t leaned more into that is worrying to me.

So I hope they are totally upcoming. We generated outdoors professionals to do a more comprehensive independent analysis of the actually numerous countless posts and instagrams and others to attempt and get a much better manage. I price estimate Ronald Reagan, “Trust but verify.” I believe we require to do that.

That’s why with the Senate Intelligence examination, which is continuous, is going to desire these CEOs back.

My attract the tech business, both as folks who desire their business to continue, however likewise as devoted Americans, is that they will step up and deal with us to get this right. The days of the wild wild west that we have actually endured for the last couple of years can not continue

Is any of this things going to get much better eventually?
Warner: I’m an optimist. You need to remain in this company.

I believe clever individuals with ingenious concepts can arrange through these issues, however just if we want to lean into them.

Note: Alexandra Zuckerman and Blair Guild, both based in Washington for CBS News, shot video and added to this report.

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