By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
With a new election approaching, the FBI is concerned.
The FBI’s “foreign influence” task force plans to alert U.S. companies and the public about efforts by Russia or other nations to use disinformation and social media manipulation to interfere in upcoming elections, Bloomberg News reports.
At the same time, the feds are being careful not to upset free speech and constitutional rights, a top law enforcement official said.
The direction that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “foreign influence” task force is heading could dramatically reshape the relationship between government and social media companies in order to address vulnerabilities that enabled Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
“We’ve been reluctant in some instances to share the amount of information of what we know about what’s happening,” said Jeffrey Tricoli, a top FBI official heading the task force. “You can’t stay with the same strategy if you think there needs to be changes. So going forward there’s going to be opportunities for us to share information in better ways.”
