This op-ed was originall published in the Times of London on July 16, 2018. Damian Collins is chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, and MP for Folkestone and Hythe 

The Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg knows that just like a computer or biological virus, information spreads from one person to another and through mass media to millions. In co-ordinated campaigns, multiple messengers act together to help stories go viral. 

The greater the control over the way in which the message is conveyed, the stronger the influence on the target audience and therefore the more likely the virus will take hold and be successfully shared. 

Using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Russia has an active strategy to infect our western democracies with campaigns of disinformation, with the purpose of spreading doubt and confusion, turning communities against each other and undermining confidence in our public institutions. 

Thanks to the hearings in the United States congress we know that during the 2016 presidential election the Russians ran over 3,000 adverts on Facebook and Instagram to promote 120 Facebook pages in a campaign that reached 126 million Americans. 

In further evidence from Facebook given to the House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee which I chair, we know that the Russians used sophisticated targeting techniques and created customised audiences to amplify extreme voices in the campaign, particularly those on sensitive topics like race relations and immigration. 

Facebook evidence to the select committee also shows that the Russians ran anti-immigration ads targeting users in the UK in the run up to the Brexit referendum. Twitter has confirmed that the Internet Research Agency had active accounts targeting British voters during the referendum as well. 

A joint research project by the Universities of Swansea and UC Berkeley in California identified 156,252 Russian accounts tweeting about #Brexit and that they posted over 45,000 Brexit messages in the last 48 hours of the campaign. 

Further research by the consultancy 89up has shown that the Kremlin-backed media outlets RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik had more reach on Twitter for anti-EU content than either Vote Leave or Leave.EU, during the referendum campaign. 

Yet this analysis is based on looking at accounts we can easily trace back to Russia, but there may be many more. I recently met with the head of cybersecurity at a major UK bank who told me that they are regularly attacked from Russia, but that increasingly this is done by hacking first into servers based in the UK from which the operation is launched. This action is taken to deliberately try and hide the fact that the attack originated in Russia. 

In addition to this direct Russian interference in elections, the DCMS committee has also received evidence the leading political donor to the Brexit cause Arron Banks had previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador and businessmen where possible gold and diamond deals were discussed, although Mr Banks has said that nothing came of these conversations. 

Backdoor meetings between Russian businessmen and politicians would appear to belong in a spy movie. But they’re happening in real life and in centre stage. There is a moral imperative to shine a light on them. 

Mr Banks? Why did he downplay the importance of these discussions to our committee? Most importantly — and many have asked — where did Mr Banks get the money to help fund Brexit? 

We also know that the man at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scraping scandal, Dr Aleksandr Kogan who was born in the former Soviet Union, was also working at the same time on a project on cyberbullying at the University of St Petersburg, which was sponsored by the Russian government. 

Dr Kogan’s work is being investigated by the UK Information Commissioner and they believed that the Facebook data he gathered may have been accessed by third parties in other countries, including Russia. 

In the Darwinian battle of ideas being played out in the news feeds of millions of social media account holders, there is no guarantee that the truth will be a more successful virus than a campaign of disinformation. 

If anything, the burden of the truth, to inform and persuade, is much greater than a campaign of lies designed to merely shock and confuse. This is a potent threat and we need to do more to act together to defeat it. That is why I am attending a special conference being organised by the Atlantic Council in Washington today discussing the Kremlin’s interference in elections. 

This event is bringing together politicians from around the world who have been leading investigations into these issues, including the United States senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, and Bob Zimmer and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith from the House of Commons of Canada. 

In 1941 Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter setting out their ambitions for the new world order after the war. This included in clause three of the charter that nations should “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”. 75 

In upholding that principle we believe in liberty, democracy and the rule of law, which in both the USA and Britain guards against foreign interference in our politics and elections. 

Yet the mounting evidence of how Russia is using social media to spread fake news and disinformation, shows how easily this principle in the Atlantic Charter is being breached. 

Today we need to renew that Charter for the digital age, underlining our commitment to act against the attack by Russia on our democracies and establishing the responsibilities as well of the major tech companies to provide real transparency to users on where the messages they are seeing are originating from. 

In addition to this, there needs to be more action against accounts that are proven to be spreading campaigns of disinformation, and to stop foreign agencies from running political adverts during our election campaigns. 

This op-ed was originally published in USA TODAY on July 12, 2018

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report last week concurring with the U.S. intelligence community’s unanimous assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a massive influence campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The attack included the targeting of election infrastructure, email hacks, weaponized leaks, overt propaganda and a covert, large-scale disinformation effort on social media feeds like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In many ways, this threat is not new. The Kremlin has been conducting information warfare or “active measures” against the West for decades. What is new, however, are social media tools with the reach and power to magnify propaganda and false information with a scale and precision that would have been unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall.

The Soviet Politburo could only have dreamed of the capability Russia now has to target voters directly in the U.S., Europe and other democracies with propaganda, misinformation and disinformation. Twenty-first century social media tools have the potential to further erode public confidence in western institutions and undermine the shared sense of facts that is supposed to be the foundation of honest political debate.

In 2016, we were taken by surprise. In 2018, there are no excuses. We must be ready.

Message to Russia as Trump meets Putin

That is why we are teaming up with legislators from Canada and Europe to sound the alarm. Following this week’s NATO summit, parliamentarians from across Europe and North America will meet Monday in Washington, D.C., the same day President Donald Trump and Putin meet in Helsinki.

Our goal must be to demonstrate to the world that the community of democratic nations does not intend to accede to Putin’s or any other authoritarian’s view of the world. We will resist Russia’s aggression. As legislators, we have a responsibility to address that threat — particularly on social media.

First, as elected officials, we have a duty to use our positions to shine a light on Russia’s actions and capabilities. Utilizing our investigative tools and public platforms, legislators must expose the full scale and scope of Russia’s schemes to weaken democracies.

The two of us are currently engaged in a bipartisan effort in the Senate Intelligence Committee to uncover Russia’s activities during the 2016 elections and publicly detail its array of asymmetric capabilities. Similarly, our colleagues in the British Parliament, led by Damian Collins, are conducting an inquiry on “fake news” and how it was used by both foreign and domestic actors to influence the Brexit vote.

But it is not enough simply to shine a bright light on Russian aggression. As legislators, we also are responsible for crafting and passing laws to protect our democracy while also preserving freedom of expression.

More: Donald Trump is right to question NATO

Don't call it 'meddling.' The Russians attacked our democracy.

Blame social media for making us more hasty and emotional. Can we fix this?

There is little doubt that our own government and our laws have not kept pace with technological change. The magnitude of this challenge is poised only to expand with improvements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and related advancements like “deep fake” video manipulation. This technology can literally put words in someone’s mouth, creating a false narrative that can spread across the globe in minutes.

As our committee’s work has helped to establish, a key goal of Russian disinformation is to fracture the ability of open societies to reach social and political consensus — an objective significantly furthered when Americans can no longer "their lying eyes." If we hope to stay resilient against these threats, we’re going to need laws that keep up.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has put forward several bipartisan proposals to improve election security and ensure that the intelligence community does a better job of tracking, sharing and responding to efforts by any foreign power to influence our elections, including through social media.These include making clear to adversaries that we consider attacking our election infrastructure a hostile act and will respond accordingly, and to states that they should replace outdated and vulnerable voting systems as quickly as possible.

As stewards of oversight, we also have a responsibility to ensure our respective governments are ready to track and attack the ongoing threat from influence operations. In the U.S., we are not convinced that the national security community is currently organized to adequately rise to this challenge. 

Informed public best defense against Russia

Finally, we have a responsibility as public officials to raise awareness and ensure that the voting public are fully informed of how our adversaries are trying to manipulate us. At the end of the day, there is really no better defense against Russian aggression on social media than an informed citizenry — a voting public that is fully aware of the Kremlin’s attempts to divide us from within and rejects them.

But social media companies also have a civic responsibility to prevent abuse from proliferating on their platforms and to inform users when they’ve been exposed to it.

We in the U.S. have much to learn about Russian tactics from our allies across the Atlantic who have been, and continue to be, on the front lines of Russian information operations. Vladimir Putin wants to divide us — both internally, here at home, and externally, from our transatlantic friends. Next week, legislators from across the NATO alliance will send him a strong and direct message that it won’t work.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is a member of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees. Follow them on Twitter: @MarkWarner and @marcorubio

WASHINGTON — Today U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate to warn of threats to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and highlight the constitutional crisis that would likely ensue if the President were to interfere in the Mueller probe. In recent weeks, a growing chorus of voices in Congress, the media, and the White House have begun pushing a coordinated narrative undermining the credibility of the Special Counsel’s investigation and the FBI itself. Sen. Warner today responded to these “troubling” signs that the President may be considering firing Mr. Mueller or top FBI/DOJ brass, pardoning potential witnesses, or otherwise interfering in Mueller’s investigation.

Sen. Warner called on Senators from both parties to “make a clear and unambiguous statement: that any attempt by this President to remove Special Counsel Mueller from his position, or to pardon key witnesses in an effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation, would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of Executive branch responsibilities and authorities.”

He continued: “These are red lines, and we simply cannot allow them to be crossed.”

Senator Warner’s remarks as prepared for delivery follow:

Mr. President – 

I rise today concerned about threats to the Special Counsel’s critical investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible and reckless voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.  At first, these calls came from the fringes of our political discourse – those who would refuse to put our country and our security before base political instincts.  Earlier this year, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle were right to push back on those misdirected calls and urge that the Special Counsel be allowed to do his job without interference.   

However, in recent weeks, those voices seem to be growing in stridency and in volume. Just this weekend, one major news organization suggested that Special Counsel Mueller could be involved in a “coup” against this President.  One senior advisor at the White House has now outrageously alleged, “The fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning.” 

These statements are reckless. They are inappropriate. And they are extremely worrying.

They are also at odds with the President’s own lawyers, who have pledged to cooperate with the Special Counsel.

Beyond being irresponsible, the seemingly coordinated nature of these claims should alarm us all – particularly since, in recent days, these baseless accusations have been repeated by several members of the House of Representatives. 

I believe it is up to every member of this institution, Republican or Democrat, to make a clear and unambiguous statement: that any attempt by this President to remove Special Counsel Mueller from his position, or to pardon key witnesses in an effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation, would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of Executive branch responsibilities and authorities. These are red lines, and we simply cannot allow them to be crossed.

Let’s remember why Special Counsel Mueller was appointed in the first place – and why it remains so critical that he be permitted to finish his job, without obstruction.

Recall, last spring, we were all reeling from a series of confounding actions by this President, beginning with the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey on May 9, 2017.  Mr. Comey was fired just two months after publicly revealing the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign, and – as we would find out later – after several attempts by this President to improperly influence Director Comey. 

Try to put yourself back into those dangerous days.  Director Comey’s dismissal was met with confusion and widespread condemnation.  We needed a stabilizing action from our nation’s law enforcement leadership. We needed some certainty that the facts would be found and brought to light – regardless of what they were. 

Eight days after Mr. Comey’s firing, Trump appointee and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

His appointment reassured Americans that there would be a full and thorough law enforcement investigation. The announcement was met with support on both sides of the aisle and received nearly universal praise. In fact, many of the same people who are attacking him today praised Mr. Mueller’s appointment just months ago.

Indeed, there is much to praise. The fact is that Robert Mueller has impeccable credentials as a man of the law.  He has assembled a team that includes some of the nation’s best investigators, and he is leading this investigation with the professionalism that it deserves.   

Mr. Mueller is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a lifelong Republican, appointed to his current role by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, also a Republican.  In fact, all of the major players to date in this investigation – former Director Comey, current FBI Director Wray, Rosenstein, and even Attorney General Sessions, who has recused himself – are all Republicans.  The charges of Democratic political bias are baseless, given the makeup of the leadership team.    

In recent weeks, much has been made of some political opinions expressed by an FBI agent during the election last year. This specious line of argument conveniently ignores the fact that, as soon as Mr. Mueller learned about those comments, he immediately removed the agent in question from the investigation.  If anything, this incident only adds to Mr. Mueller’s credibility as a fair and independent investigator.

Mr. President, I stand here as the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We are in the midst of our own investigation into the Russian incursion, and I’m proud of the way Chairman Burr and our Committee members have taken on this difficult task.  We’ve made tremendous progress in uncovering the facts of Russian interference in our elections.  Our Committee’s work helped expose a dark underbelly of disinformation on our social media platforms.  We have successfully pressed for the full accounting of Russian cyber efforts to target our state election systems.  And, despite the initial denials of any Russian contacts during the election, this Committee’s efforts have helped uncover numerous and troubling high-level engagements between the Trump campaign and Russian affiliates – many of which have only been revealed in recent months.       

We’ve got some work to do yet.  But, this Committee has gone out of its way to ensure continued bipartisan backing for this effort, and I’m committed to seeing this through.

However, it should be very clear that our Committee cannot and will not stand as a substitute for Mr. Mueller’s investigation.  As Chairman Burr and I have noted on numerous occasions, the FBI is responsible for determining any criminal activities related to this inquiry. As such, Mueller has already moved to indict two individuals and has negotiated two additional guilty pleas. This is an investigative path reserved solely for law enforcement, and it is essential that it be permitted to go on unimpeded. 

The country no doubt remains severely divided on the question of the last election; however, the national security threat facing us today should demand that we rise above the partisan differences. No matter the political divide, surely each of us – and all Americans – should want to know the truth of what happened during last year’s election. And, no doubt, we all want to know as quickly as possible.

The President has long called the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election a witch hunt, and he has done much to discredit the Intelligence Community’s unanimous assessment of Russian interference in our election. The failure of this White House to lead a whole-of-government approach to prevent this type of election interference in the future – either by Russia or some other adversary – defies understanding.  The President’s refusal to accept the Intelligence Community’s assessment and his blatant disregard for ensuring Russia never again infiltrates our election process has been unnerving and cause for significant concern.

In recent days, the President has said he is not considering removing Special Counsel Mueller.  But the President’s track record on this front is a source of concern.  I’m certain many of my colleagues believed that he wouldn’t possibly fire Mr. Comey, either.   

Firing Mr. Mueller or any of the top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this Administration’s commitment to the truth and the rule of law. It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis. In the United States of America, no one is above the law. Not even the President. Congress must make clear to the President that firing the Special Counsel, or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses, is unacceptable, and would have immediate and significant consequences. 

I hope my concerns are unfounded, but there are troubling signs.  It is critical that we as elected officials, and as citizens, speak up against these threats now…before it is too late.  

Thank you, Mr. President.  

###

As Prepared for Delivery

In this age of social media, you can’t afford to waste too much time – or too many characters – in getting the point across, so I’ll get straight to the bottom line. 

Russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate social media to hijack the national conversation and to make Americans angry, to set us against ourselves, and to undermine our democracy.  They did it during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. They are still doing it now.  And not one of us is doing enough to stop it.  

That is why we are here today.

In many ways, this threat is not new. Russians have been conducting information warfare for decades.

But what is new is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall.  Today’s tools seem almost purpose-built for Russian disinformation techniques. 

Russia’s playbook is simple, but formidable.  It works like this:

1. Disinformation agents set up thousands of fake accounts, groups and pages across a wide array of platforms. 
2. These fake accounts populate content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, and others.
3. Each of these fake accounts spend months developing networks of real people to follow and like their content, boosted by tools like paid ads and automated bots. Most of their real-life followers have no idea they are caught up in this web.     
4. These networks are later utilized to push an array of disinformation, including stolen emails, state-led propaganda (like RT and Sputnik), fake news, and divisive content.

The goal here is to get this content into the news feeds of as many potentially receptive Americans as possible and to covertly and subtly push them in the direction the Kremlin wants them to go.

As one who deeply respects the tech industry and was involved in the tech business for twenty years, it has taken me some time to really understand this threat.  Even I struggle to keep up with the language and mechanics.  The difference between bots, trolls, and fake accounts.  How they generate Likes, Tweets, and Shares.  And how all of these players and actions are combined into an online ecosystem. 

What is clear, however, is that this playbook offers a tremendous bang for the disinformation buck. 

With just a small amount of money, adversaries use hackers to steal and weaponize data, trolls to craft disinformation, fake accounts to build networks, bots to drive traffic, and ads to target new audiences.  They can force propaganda into the mainstream and wreak havoc on our online discourse.  That’s a big return on investment.   

So where do we go from here? 

It will take all of us – the platform companies, the United States government, and the American people – to deal with this new and evolving threat.

The social media and innovative tools each of you have developed have changed our world for the better. 

You have transformed the way we do everything from shopping for groceries to growing our small businesses.  But Russia’s actions are further exposing the dark underbelly of the ecosystem you have created.  And there is no doubt that their successful campaign will be replicated by other adversaries – both nation states and terrorists – that wish to do harm to democracies around the globe.

As such, each of you here today needs to commit more resources to identifying bad actors and, when possible, preventing them from abusing our social media ecosystem.  

Thanks in part to pressure from this Committee, each company has uncovered some evidence of the ways Russians exploited their platforms during the 2016 election.

For Facebook, much of the attention has been focused on the paid ads Russian trolls targeted to Americans.  However, these ads are just the tip of a very large iceberg.  The real story is the amount of misinformation and divisive content that was pushed for free on Russian-backed pages, which then spread widely on the News Feeds of tens of millions of Americans. 

According to data Facebook has provided, 120 Russian-backed Pages built a network of over [3.3] million real people. 

From these now-suspended Pages, 80,000 organic unpaid posts reached an estimated 126 million real people.  That is an astonishing reach from just one group in St. Petersburg.  And I doubt that the so-called Internet Research Agency represents the only Russian trolls out there.  Facebook has more work to do to see how deep this goes, including looking into the reach of the IRA-backed Instagram posts, which represent another 120,000 pieces of content – more Russian content on Instagram than even Facebook.

The anonymity provided by Twitter and the speed by which it shares news makes it an ideal tool to spread disinformation.

According to one study, during the 2016 campaign, junk news actually outperformed real news in some battleground states in the lead-up to Election Day.[1]  Another study found that bots generated one out of every five political messages posted on Twitter over the entire presidential campaign.[2]   

I’m concerned that Twitter seems to be vastly under-estimating the number of fake accounts and bots pushing disinformation.  Independent researchers have estimated that up to 15% of Twitter accounts – or potentially 48 million accounts – are fake or automated.[3] 

Despite evidence of significant incursion and outreach from researchers, Twitter has, to date, only uncovered a small percentage of that activity.  Though, I am pleased to see, Twitter, that your number has been rising in recent weeks.   

Google’s search algorithms continue to have problems in surfacing fake news or propaganda.  Though we can’t necessarily attribute to the Russian effort, false stories and unsubstantiated rumors were elevated on Google Search during the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas.  Meanwhile, YouTube has become RT’s go-to platform.  Google has now uncovered 1100 videos associated with this campaign.  Much more of your content was likely spread through other platforms.        

It is not just the platforms that need to do more.  The U.S. government has thus far proven incapable of adapting to meet this 21^st century challenge.  Unfortunately, I believe this effort is suffering, in part, because of a lack of leadership at the top.  We have a President who remains unwilling to acknowledge the threat that Russia poses to our democracy.  President Trump should stop actively delegitimizing American journalism and acknowledge this real threat posed by Russian propaganda.

Congress, too, must do more.  We need to recognize that current law was not built to address these threats. I have partnered with Senators Klobuchar and McCain on a light-touch, legislative approach, which I hope my colleagues will review. 

The Honest Ads Act is a national security bill intended to protect our elections from foreign influence. 

Finally – but perhaps most importantly – the American people also need to be aware of what is happening on our news feeds. We all need to take a more discerning approach to what we are reading and sharing, and who we are connecting with online. We need to recognize that the person at the other end of that Facebook or Twitter argument may not be a real person at all.

The fact is that this Russian weapon has already proven its success and cost effectiveness. 

We can be assured that other adversaries, including foreign intelligence operatives and potentially terrorist organizations, are reading their playbook and already taking action.  We must act.      

To our witnesses today, I hope you will detail what you saw in this last election and tell us what steps you will undertake to get ready for the next one.  We welcome your participation and encourage your commitment to addressing this shared responsibility.

It’s now clear to everyone — with the possible exception of Donald Trump — that operatives linked to Russia took advantage of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to stoke divisions among Americans during last year’s presidential campaign. This meddling ought to outrage Americans regardless of their party affiliation.

Now, legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress that would attempt to make it at least somewhat harder for Russians and other foreign actors to use social media to manipulate public opinion in this country and influence elections. Equally important, it would shine more light on the sources of online advertising in election campaigns.

The Honest Ads Act sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) would mandate that election-related online advertising be subject to the same disclosure and disclaimer requirements as similar ads in other media. It also would require online platforms, as well as broadcasters and cable and satellite TV companies, to make reasonable efforts to ensure that the political advertisements they disseminate comply with the existing ban on foreigners spending money to influence U.S. elections.

Election law has been painfully slow to catch up with the growing importance of online political advertising. According to Borrell Associates, a data tracking firm, political spending on digital advertising in the 2016 election cycle amounted to $1.4 billion, nearly an 800% increase from the previous presidential election. (“Digital advertising” includes search, display, email, video, social media and mobile marketing efforts.) The figure is projected to rise to $1.9 billion in the 2018 election cycle and $2.8 billion in 2020.

Unlike radio and television stations, internet platforms aren’t “public” entities operated under a government license.
Online services have resisted the idea that paid political messages on their platforms should be subject to requirements that they identify those financing the ads; some have compared online political ads to trivial examples of political communication, such as campaign buttons or bumper stickers.

Those are clearly obsolete analogies. And while there may not be room for a disclaimer on a campaign button, software engineers should find it easy to satisfy the bill’s requirement that an ad state in a “clear and conspicuous manner” who paid for it. (Running the computer mouse over the ad, for example, could pull up the disclosure statement.)

Granted, there’s always the risk that foreign governments and operatives will try to conceal their involvement by funneling money through innocuous-sounding groups based in the United States. The bill wouldn’t make matters any better or worse on that front.

A more fundamental challenge for the bill’s authors is that much of the meddling done in last year’s campaign wasn’t in advertisements — it was in news (and fake news) stories circulated, tweeted and retweeted online. Many of the posts attributed to Russia focused on divisive social issues such as race, gun control, immigration and gay rights. Such communications would largely be ignored by the Klobuchar bill.

What the measure would do is require internet companies to maintain records not just of election-related advertisements but also of ads related to “a national legislative issue of public importance.”

There are two problems with this provision, however. First, it’s a disproportionate response to the possibility that Russians or other foreigners may be violating U.S. election law. While foreigners are prohibited from spending money on election-related advertising, the Federal Election Commission and the courts have said they are allowed to subsidize “issue ads.”

A more serious issue is that, unlike radio and television stations, internet platforms aren’t “public” entities operated under a government license. There may be 1st Amendment problems with subjecting them to the same record-keeping requirements that are imposed on radio and TV stations.

The fact that Congress has limited power to regulate online forums for political speech doesn’t mean that social media companies can’t act on their own to be more vigilant about manipulation of their platforms by foreign actors, whether it take the form of deceptive advertising or “fake news.” After Facebook revealed that a Russian company with ties to the Kremlin had purchased more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on its site, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pledged to “do our part to defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation and subvert elections.” On Friday, Facebook announced that it would require disclosure by buyers of political ads and adopt other transparency measures.

That sort of self-policing is clearly part of the solution. But so is measured legislation that requires transparency in election advertising regardless of where it appears.

BY TIMOTHY ROEMER AND ZACHARY WAMP, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS 

During the 2016 election, hostile foreign powers unleashed unprecedented, anonymous attacks on the American people through the largest online platforms, the equivalent of strafing our TV sets with lies and disinformation during the 1960s and 1970s. The Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked “troll farm” spent more than $100,000 on thousands of Facebook advertisements linked to the election and divisive social issues.

Due to the highly-targeted nature of the advertisements and private platforms they infected, neither the wider public nor civil society has been able to see the content of the ads. The government and watchdog groups were similarly left in the dark until after the election, subsequently, when the damage was potentially done. The national security implications of foreign entities continuing to meddle in American elections are a clear and present danger to the United States.

Yet, nearly a year later and despite months of investigations, lawmakers of both parties have been slow to act. Meanwhile, the country remains vulnerable to foreign interference. In his recently published book “The Darkening Web,” Harvard Professor Alexander Klimburg wrote that “the rise of cyberspace has breathed new life into former Soviet military strategy.” He goes on to observe that “Russia’s philosophy of information conflict is much older than the United States.”

The bottom line is that current law does not in any way protect our election system from this type of foreign intervention, and every free society should have adequate protections in place to maintain open, fair and unfettered elections. We still do not know who is trying to sow disinformation and propaganda campaigns across American-made digital platforms where hundreds of millions of Americans communicate and organize.

The newly introduced Honest Ads Act aims to finally address the deficiencies in political disclosure law that allow foreign actors to attack the United States anonymously. The carefully crafted, bipartisan, bicameral legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Rules Committee Ranking Democrat Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.). It in the House by Reps. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) and Mike Coffman (R-Colo.).

The bill would address the critical problem that our 20th century laws are out of date and overmatched by the 21st century reality of political campaigns. Our current regime has us fighting cyber warfare with the equivalent of telegrams and the Pony Express. The Honest Ads Act would modernize our technological arsenal to combat foreign influence by ensuring that paid political ads on the largest online platforms are treated similarly to paid political advertisements on television and radio.

These transparency standards are not new. The bill uses longstanding Federal Communication Commission disclosure rules about broadcast advertisements, which have been in place for a decade, to better serve the digital medium. Private companies, such as Facebook and Google, would have to obtain information from the purchaser, the cost, the targeted audience, and what candidate or issue is the subject of each ad. This would give the American people enough information to understand who is attempting to influence their vote and allow government agencies to determine if the ad is impermissible foreign interference in U.S. politics.

Additionally, the Honest Ads Act subjects the platform and the ad purchaser to fines for failing to follow the law as a preventative measure against widespread abuse in the future, like the public saw in the 2016 election. Most importantly, this narrowly tailored legislation seeks to protect the First Amendment rights of Americans engaging in political debate. It is only targeted at the platforms who make millions or billions of dollars selling political ads, placing them on equal standing with broadcast radio and television.

Beyond this legislation, Congress must perform its oversight job and ask tough questions when Twitter and Facebook testify before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees next Wednesday. Republicans and Democrats in both legislative chambers should use the Honest Ads Act as the starting point for robust dialogue about the best practices necessary to reassure Americans their First Amendment rights are protected from domestic and foreign attack.

As Senator Klobuchar said at the press conference unveiling the bill, “Election security is national security.” Congress cannot allow hostile foreign powers to influence or impact U.S. elections. The failure to set aside partisan politics and move forward on this bipartisan legislation opens the possibility of ignoring the direct threat and sitting on our hands. It is time for Congress to fully embrace its obligation to protect the American people from a new form of enemy attacks called “cyber war.”

Timothy Roemer is a former U.S. ambassador to India, member of Congress from Indiana, and 9/11 commissioner. Zachary Wamp is a former member of Congress from Tennessee. They co-chair the Issue One Reformers Caucus, a bipartisan coalition of former members of Congress, Cabinet officials, and governors who advocate for solutions to fix democracy.