I'm a little surprised by what I read in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's prepared
statement to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives,
as reported by The Washington Post. 1
In section III, "RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE," Zuckerberg recounts the activities
of groups named APT28 and the now-infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA), and mentions
that as recently as last week Facebook removed accounts and pages operated by the IRA,
adding that "Some of the pages we removed belong to Russian news organizations that we
determined were controlled by the IRA."
To me, remarks like these smack very heavily of intelligence reporting. Given all
that happened with Facebook since the 2016 US federal election cycle, I suppose it's not
really too much of a stretch to think that experts from the federal government would
be embedded with Facebook in some sort of a fusion center-like environment,
coupling events surfacing on the Facebook network with intelligence derived from other
sources. I'm simply skeptical Facebook has the organic resources to make the statements
in Zuckerberg's remarks.
Taking the "Facebook fusion center" concept a step further, it might not be too
outlandish to suggest the US intelligence services might also be using the Facebook
network for foreign intelligence gathering, or at least the enormous amount of data
it generates. Sound silly? Certainly, Mr. Zuckerberg is well aware of impending
election cycles abroad:
We’re committed to getting [the addition of verification requirements] done in time
for the critical months before the 2018 elections in the U.S. as well as elections
in Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the next year.
Facebook is a global phenomenon, reaching over 2 billion by Zuckerberg's count.
By the middle of last year, India — not the US — was Facebook's top consumer, and
among the cities with the largest populations of active Facebook users, the top ten
were all outside of the United States. 2
It stands to reason that Facebook would observe increased regional traffic in response
to events like elections. But I just can't shake the notion that Facebook couldn't "name
names" without assistance.