BREAKING: Facebook provided special counsel Mueller more details re: Russian ad purchases than it shared w/ Congress https://t.co/foJAEKAwgl
— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) September 15, 2017
The info Facebook shared w/ Mueller incl. copies of the ads, details about the accounts that bought them & the targeting criteria they used https://t.co/ehkeZ2gdWR
— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) September 15, 2017
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Until Adam or Cheryl can post more expert information, I’m just gonna toss out some links that seem like they might be important. Per CNN:
… Facebook did not give copies of the ads to members of the Senate and House intelligence committees when it met with them last week on the grounds that doing so would violate their privacy policy, sources with knowledge of the briefings said. Facebook’s policy states that, in accordance with the federal Stored Communications Act, it can only turn over the stored contents of an account in response to a search warrant.
“We continue to work with the appropriate investigative authorities,” Facebook said in a statement to CNN.
Facebook informed Congress last week that it had identified 3,000 ads that ran between June 2015 and May 2017 that were linked to fake accounts. Those accounts, in turn, were linked to the pro-Kremlin troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.
In those briefings, Facebook spoke only in generalities about the ad buys, leaving some committee members feeling frustrated with Facebook’s level of cooperation.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN last week that Facebook had not turned over the ads to Congress. Warner has also called Facebook’s review “the tip of the iceberg,” and suggested that more work needs to be done in order to ascertain the full scope of Russia’s use of social media…
Are those “contents” significant? This guy — “Former federal prosecutor. Legal expert for TV and print” — thinks so:
2/ The @WSJ talks about some of the info Mueller obtained (see below). Mueller could not obtain *content* of an account without a warrant. pic.twitter.com/Hl2wMuyF3Y
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 16, 2017
4/ But @CNN has confirmed that Mueller obtained content via search warrant, including ads, acct details, targeting. https://t.co/DQ5fVB1fH3
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 16, 2017
6/ in connection with an election. It also means that he has evidence of that crime that convinced a federal magistrate judge of two things.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 16, 2017
Russiagate Open Thread: The Facebook Conundrum(s)Post + Comments (154)