National: After Russian Election Interference, Americans Are Losing Faith in Elections | Susan Milligan/US News

As lawmakers, state elections officials and social media executives work to limit intervention in the 2020 elections by Russia and other foreign operatives, an unsettling truth is emerging. Vladimir Putin may already be succeeding. The troubling disclosures of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign – “sweeping and systematic,” special counsel Robert Mueller concluded in his report on the matter – have policymakers on guard for what intelligence officials say is a continuing campaign by Russia to influence American elections. But even if voting machines in all jurisdictions are secured against hacking and social media sites are scrubbed of fake stories posted by Russian bots, the damage may already have been done, experts warn, as Americans’ faith in the credibility of the nation’s elections falters.

National: What’s Russia still doing to interfere with U.S. politics — and what’s the U.S. doing about it? | The Washington Post

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone Friday morning, covering, according to both sides, a wide range of issues. Included among them, according to a subsequent tweet from Trump, was the “Russian hoax” — apparently a reference to the recently concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s a bit uncertain, though: Trump regularly referred to the investigation as a hoax but has also repeatedly claimed that the idea that Russia interfered at all was questionable. The probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III left little doubt about Russia’s role. Mueller obtained indictments against two dozen Russians for the two-pronged effort to steal and publish material from Democratic sources and to foster political divisions through events and on social media. Trump has long argued that the source of the hacking in particular was unknowable, reiterating shorthand allusions to his skepticism as recently as February.

TRUMP on whether he discussed election meddling with PUTIN:
“We discussed it. He actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse, but he knew that because he knew there was no collusion, whatsoever.” pic.twitter.com/qlEaWP6Eqy— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) May 3, 2019

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Trump was asked whether he had spoken to Putin about Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. politics, an effort that Attorney General William P. Barr said in Senate testimony this week was ongoing. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him about the 2020, but I certainly have told him you can’t do what you’re doing,” Trump said. “And I don’t believe they will be.”

National: Sen. Klobuchar on Russian interference: Trump ‘makes it worse by calling it a hoax’ | The Washington Post

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday sharply criticized President Trump’s response to Russian interference in U.S. elections, saying that the president “makes it worse by calling it a hoax.” Trump had a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on Friday. After being repeatedly asked by reporters whether he raised the issue of election interference or warned Putin not to do it again, Trump eventually acknowledged the issue, saying, “We didn’t discuss that.” Klobuchar, who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said Sunday that there is “ample evidence” that Trump is not concerned about the possibility that Russia may try to interfere in the next election. She accused Trump of dismissing the seriousness of the issue. “This was actually an invasion of our democracy, okay?” Klobuchar said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” U.S. national security officials have been preparing for Russian interference in 2020 by tracking cyberthreats, sharing intelligence about foreign disinformation efforts with social media companies and helping state election officials protect their systems against foreign manipulation. But Trump has repeatedly rebuffed warnings from senior aides about Russia and sought to play down the country’s potential to influence American politics.

Europe: Facebook Opens a Command Post to Thwart Election Meddling in Europe | The New York Times

Inside a large room in Facebook’s European headquarters in Ireland’s capital, about 40 employees sit at rows of desks, many with two computer screens and a sign representing a country in the European Union. Large screens at the front display charts and other information about trends on the social network’s services, including Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp. In the back, muted televisions broadcast BBC and other European news stations. The cramped space is home to Facebook’s newly opened operations center to oversee the European Union’s parliamentary election, which will be held May 23 to May 26 in 28 countries. Modeled after the “war room” that the Silicon Valley company created before last year’s midterm elections in the United States, the people inside are tasked with washing Facebook of misinformation, fake accounts and foreign meddling that could sway European voters. A similar command post was set up in Singapore for elections in India. Eager to show it is taking threats seriously as it faces pressure from governments across Europe to protect the integrity of the election, Facebook invited about two dozen journalists to visit its hub last week. “We are fundamentally dealing with a security challenge,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy. “There are a set of actors that want to manipulate public debate.”

National: Mueller fails to break stalemate on election meddling crackdown | The Hill

Efforts to combat election meddling in the aftermath of the Mueller report are running into steep political headwinds on Capitol Hill. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling 448-page report detailed Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and sparked fresh calls for tougher sanctions against Moscow or new election security measures. But any initial boost of momentum is now hitting roadblocks with top GOP senators and stalemated partisan standoffs, underscoring the uphill battle for a legislative push leading up to the 2020 election. “I think there’s a lot we can do without passing new legislation,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of GOP leadership and the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The House has taken more of an attitude of: Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” Asked about the chances of passing sanctions or election security, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said, “We’ll see.” “Some of our members are talking about more sanctions. We’ll see where it goes,” he said. “On the election security stuff … I think we feel confident based on the fact that our elections in this country are basically local, that …  it ensures a certain amount of accountability.”

National: If Mueller Report Was ‘Tip Of The Iceberg,’ What More Is Lurking Unseen? | NPR

If the political interference documented in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was just the “tip of the iceberg,” what else is lurking out of sight beneath the surface? That was the question posed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a speech in New York City, one in which he defended his handling of the Russia investigation and suggested there could be much more to it beyond that contained in Mueller’s report. “The bottom line is, there was overwhelming evidence that Russian operatives hacked American computers and defrauded American citizens, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” Rosenstein said on Thursday. Mueller’s focus was on the two best-known aspects of Russia’s “active measures”: the theft and release of material embarrassing to political targets and the use of social media platforms to crank up agitation among an already divided populace. Some of the Russian schemes that Mueller left out of his report also are known. On Friday, for example, a federal judge sentenced a woman to 18 months in prison after she pleaded guilty to serving as an unregistered Russian agent from around 2015 until her arrest last summer.

Canada: Elections Canada to monitor misinformation about voting on social media | The Globe and Mail

Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer says Elections Canada will deploy teams to monitor social media for misinformation about the electoral process during this fall’s election. Stéphane Perrault told the Senate finance committee Tuesday morning that it is not Elections Canada’s role to monitor truth on the internet, but it does have a responsibility to ensure that information about the voting process is accurate. “We will have a dedicated team both to monitor and a team to respond to any inaccurate information, whether it’s disinformation or misinformation,” Mr. Perrault said. “We are acquiring tools to monitor social media in multiple languages and we’ll use key words and try to identify any information that relates to the electoral process. And if there is misinformation, we will quickly respond to that – that’s a key aspect of our role during this election.” In response to questions from senators about ways to crack down on misinformation, Mr. Perrault reiterated that Elections Canada’s focus will be on any misinformation relating to the voting process. But he did say that in the lead-up to the campaign, Elections Canada will launch a public-awareness initiative on social-media literacy to encourage people to determine the source of the information they’re receiving.

National: Graham challenges Kushner’s bid to downplay Russia interference | The Washington Post

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham on Sunday pushed back against White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s recent downplaying of Russian interference in the 2016 election, calling Moscow’s actions a “big deal” deserving of new sanctions immediately. Still, the South Carolina Republican insisted President Trump had done nothing wrong, citing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s refusal to charge Trump with either conspiracy or obstruction of justice in the Russia probe. “I think the idea that this president obstructed justice is absurd,” Graham, a fierce Trump ally, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “I can’t think of one thing that President Trump did to stop Mueller from doing his job. . . . I’ve heard all I need to really know.” During the interview, however, Graham challenged the assertion by Trump’s son-in-law in a Time magazine interview on Tuesday that Russia’s bid to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor amounted to a “couple of Facebook ads” — and that Mueller’s investigation was more damaging to the country than the Russian effort. 

Canada: Liberals, Conservatives and NDP endorse global pledge against fraudulent campaign tactics | The Globe and Mail

Canada’s three main parties are signing on to a global pledge against the use of fake news and digital dirty tricks in advance of the October federal election campaign. A former head of NATO met with MPs and government officials on Monday on Parliament Hill to gather signatures for an “election integrity” pledge that started in the European Union and is now being promoted in Canada and the United States. Signatories agree to reject the increasingly sophisticated tools that can be used to mislead voters during an election. That list includes “deep fakes,” an artificial-intelligence technology based on doctoring video and audio in ways that produce believable, yet fake, clips of politicians appearing to say something that they never did. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it is only a matter of time before voters are faced with fraudulent videos that are nearly impossible to distinguish from reality. “In a couple of years, you’ll have a perfect technology where you’re not able to identify with your own eyes and ears who is the fake and who is the true edition of a political leader,” he said. “You can imagine if a deep-fake video, for instance, is published a couple of days before an important election [what] damaging effect it could have.”

National: Trump, GOP Won’t Act on Election Interference Warnings | RealClearPolitics

Foreign powers and domestic disruptors are already interfering in next year’s presidential and congressional elections and this week we learned what the likely response of the Trump re-election campaign will be: bring it on. Two prominent Trump associates — Rudy Giuliani and Jared Kushner — both dismissed the impact of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, essentially telling those currently seeking to sow disinformation, “Come on in, fellas, no big deal.” What Special Counsel Robert Mueller characterized in his findings as a “sweeping and systematic” effort by the Russian government to interfere, and help elect Trump, was “a couple Facebook ads,” Kushner said Tuesday, adding that the investigation itself — into a foreign attack on this nation’s electoral process — had done more damage to democracy. To Rudy, “there’s nothing wrong” with accepting help from a hostile foreign power. Some characterized Kushner’s comments as unpatriotic, even treasonous. What they were, at best, was irresponsible. They were also false. According to the Mueller Report, by Election Day the Russian government was spending more than $1 million per month on its campaign and, by Facebook’s account, reaching one-third of the U.S. population. The very hour that Kushner spoke at the Time 100 Summit, NBC was reporting that Twitter had removed 5,000 accounts of bots attacking the Mueller investigation as the “Russiagate hoax.” They weren’t Russian bots but ones connected to a pro-Saudi social media operation that formerly went under the name Arabian Veritas, which had claimed to be “an initiative that aims to spread the truth about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East through social engagement.”

National: Jared Kushner Dismisses Russian Election Interference as ‘Couple of Facebook Ads’ | The New York Times

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, dismissed Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign on Tuesday as a “couple of Facebook ads” and said the investigation of it was far more damaging to the country than the intrusion itself. “You look at what Russia did — you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it — and it’s a terrible thing,” Mr. Kushner said during a panel sponsored by Time magazine. “But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads.” “Quite frankly, the whole thing is just a big distraction for the country,” Mr. Kushner said in his first public comments since the release of the report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, last week. Facebook estimated that Russia-backed ads and social media posts reached 126 million Americans during the election, only about 10 million fewer than voted in 2016. Moreover, Russians hacked accounts of the Democratic National Committee and leaked damaging information about Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, at critical moments during the campaign. In his report, Mr. Mueller concluded that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

National: Russia’s hack into the US election was surprisingly inexpensive, Mueller report shows | CNBC

Techniques used by state-backed Russian hackers to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections were apparently inexpensive, experts told CNBC, highlighting the ease at which a foreign government was able to meddle in a Western democracy. The report released by special counsel Robert Mueller lays out how Russian trolls used social media to try to influence the outcome of the election in which Donald Trump was made president and outlines the way in which hackers stole documents from the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Beginning in March 2016, units of Russia’s military intelligence unit known as GRU hacked the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees and volunteers supporting the Clinton presidential campaign, including the email account of campaign chairman John Podesta, the Mueller report said. The Russian group also hacked the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Initially, the GRU employed a hacking technique known as spearphishing. That’s when a hacker sends an email to a person that contains something like a link to a fake website or an attachment. When a person clicks that link or downloads that document, it could lead to malicious software being installed on that person’s computer or mobile device. The spoof website might ask for personal details about a person, which could include passwords to certain services they use.

Editorials: The 2020 Election Is Going to Make 2016 Look Like a Student Council Election | Matt Lewis/Daily Beast

It’s time we face facts about 2020. It will be so dirty, brimming with disinformation, and packed with hackers that it’ll make 2016 look like a student council election. On Sunday, Rudy Giuliani went on CNN’s State of the Union and declared, “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.” “You’re assuming that the giving of information is a campaign contribution,” Rudy averred to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Read the report carefully. The report says we can’t conclude that because the law is pretty much against that. People get information from this person, that person.” Talk about defining deviancy down. Of course, Rudy’s interpretation is open to debate. My read of the Mueller report suggests that opposition research may constitute a “thing of value,” which is tantamount to a contribution. The question, though, is whether anyone on Trump’s team “knowingly and willfully” violated the law. Intent is hard to prove. But let’s assume that Rudy is correct about the legality (he’s a lawyer—I’m not). As the president’s personal attorney, his words have weight. And taking Rudy at his word, why wouldn’t a 2020 campaign be willing to avail itself of information from Russia, Turkey, or China? And why wouldn’t Russia, Turkey, or China oblige?

National: Mueller Report: Russia Funded US Election Snooping, Manipulation with Bitcoin | GCN

It is no news by now that the long-awaited Mueller Report has revealed extensive Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While much attention has been focused on whether or not president Donald Trump was in any way complicit with these efforts, what is less reported is that the report showed that state-backed Russian operatives used bitcoin extensively in their attempts to impede Hilary Clinton and help Donald Trump’s campaign. According to the report, agents working on behalf of Russian military intelligence used bitcoin to do everything from purchasing VPNs to buying domains hosting political propaganda. This was part of a wide-reaching and apparently successful attempt to hack the 2016 election that saw Trump emerge victorious against all expectations. While this may not be news to anyone familiar with cryptocurrencies, the Russian agents apparently worked under the mistaken assumption that the mere fact of their transactions being carried out using cryptocurrency made them anonymous and untraceable. In fact, as has been demonstrated several times, bitcoin transactions are not that difficult to trace, given the presence of some key data.

Ukraine: Hacked Emails Appear to Reveal Russia Is Backing Comedian Likely to Be Ukraine’s Next President | Newsweek

Comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, has upended Ukraine’s presidential race over the past several months by promising young voters a break from a past riddled with corruption and leaders beholden to powerful oligarchs. But now, a tranche of hacked emails suggest that Zelenskiy may have a powerful patron of his own: the Kremlin. On Tuesday, Ukraine’s security services revealed that they are investigating whether Zelenskiy’s campaign received financing from members of the Russian security service who are supporting the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a self-proclaimed, pro-Russian separatist proto-state in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. The claims first surfaced after a Ukrainian hacking group associated with the non-profit Myrotvorets Center released a set of hacked emails showing that a Russian security official with links to the DPR’s leadership had attempted to exchange cryptocurrency for cash to send to Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign. In one of the emails, a member of the Russian security services notes that they “have approved the budget for the actions of the comedian.” The emails also appear to show that some of the financing came from Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov and Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeev, both of whom allegedly help dictate the Kremlin’s policies towards Ukraine.

National: The cyber teams that helped stop Russian election interference | Fifth Domain

When Pentagon leaders tasked Air Force cyber teams with helping prevent Russian trolls from influencing the 2018 midterm elections, it marked the first time those forces were tasked with such a mission under new authorities. Department of Defense has openly discussed their success in keeping the midterm elections free from Russian interference, but officials have provided few details about which teams were tasked with doing so. During an April 11 event at Langley Air Force Base, Gen. James Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command, said Maj. Gen. Robert Skinner, the head of Air Forces Cyber, was ordered and given the authority to defeat Russian influence operations. “It’s the first time we’ve really had the authority to go operate and do that in the cyber environment,” Holmes said. Cyber authorities have typically been held at the highest levels of government making them difficult to be approved for rapid use, but over the last year the Trump administration has begun to loosen those restrictions in an attempt to make it easier for commanders to employ cyber tools faster and react more quickly to adversaries in a domain that is measured in milliseconds.

Editorials: A storm of misinformation is coming. The Canadian federal election could be at risk | Eric Jardine/The Globe and Mail

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland made headlines recently when she proclaimed that foreign interference in Canada’s coming federal election was “very likely,” and that there had “probably already been efforts by malign foreign actors to disrupt our democracy.” Ms. Freeland is not wrong, nor is she being alarmist. If Canada’s election avoids the meddling and campaigns of disinformation experienced by the United States in the 2016 presidential election and Britain during the Brexit campaign, it will be because we have a small population and are of marginal power in comparison to the United States and Britain – not because we are special or somehow immune. Indeed, to think that there is something unique about Canada or Canadians that would make us more resilient to disruptive foreign influence operations would be a grave mistake. Canadians are just as prone as our U.S. and British friends to being swayed by malicious interference and the poisoning of our democratic processes by disinformation. The lessons of other Western countries loom large. While perhaps narrowly correct to say that Russia preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, the real objectives of these operations are often not as clear-cut as trying to elect a particular person or secure a specific referendum outcome.

Ukraine: Ukraine’s Election Is an All-Out Disinformation Battle | The Atlantic

“Everything,” Dmytro Zolotukhin tells me, “is going like they wanted.” Slumped in a chair in a café here in the Ukrainian capital, Zolotukhin wasn’t talking about the campaign of Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who is favored to win the country’s presidential elections this weekend, or the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko. No, they are the Russians. Moscow has used Ukraine as a disinformation laboratory for years—and Zolotukhin is one of the men charged with fending them off. The Kremlin stands accused of interfering in elections the world over, driving division in societies through an array of tactics, chief among them online disinformation. Using fabricated or misleading news stories and fake accounts, Russian operations have sought to sow doubt in the democratic process. Ahead of European Parliament elections next month and the American presidential contest in 2020, Putin’s online armies are auditioning their tactics in Ukraine. Kyiv isn’t just the laboratory for Russia’s information warfare tactics, though; it’s also a proving ground for possible solutions, where officials such as Zolotukhin, Ukraine’s deputy minister of information policy, struggle to walk the line between defending democratic discourse and trampling freedom of speech. As the United States prepares for another contentious presidential race and social-media regulation looks inevitable, the Ukrainian government’s efforts highlight how difficult it is to fight disinformation in a polarized information environment. But offices such as Zolotukhin’s are often under-resourced, and in a divisive electoral period in which campaigns are themselves combatants in the information war, separating fact from fiction, patriot from enemy, and friend from foe is not as simple as it once was.

National: Inside the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump | The Washington Post

After Bernie Sanders lost his presidential primary race against Hillary Clinton in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News reached out to his supporters to help sway the general election. “Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016,” the account tweeted. The tweet was not actually from Louisiana, according to an analysis by Clemson University researchers. Instead, it was one of thousands of accounts identified as based in Russia, part of a cloaked effort to persuade supporters of the senator from Vermont to elect Trump. “Bernie Sanders says his message resonates with Republicans,” said another Russian tweet. While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a case filed last year against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign, said workers at a St. Petersburg facility called the Internet Research Agency were instructed to write social media posts in opposition to Clinton but “to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.” That strategy could receive new attention with the release of Mueller’s report, expected within days.  

Israel: How Israel Limited Online Deception During Its Election | The New Yorker

Earlier this year, Hanan Melcer, the chairman of Israel’s Central Elections Committee and a veteran justice on the Supreme Court, summoned representatives from major U.S. social-media and technology companies for talks about the role he expected them to play in curbing online deception during the country’s election, which took place on Tuesday. Facebook and Google sent representatives to meet with Melcer in person. Twitter executives, who weren’t in the country, arranged for a conference call. “You say you’ve learned from 2016,” Melcer told them, according to a government official who was present. “Prove it!” When Melcer, two years ago, assumed his role overseeing the election, he expected that covert influence campaigns by foreign adversaries, similar to Russia’s alleged interference during the 2016 U.S. Presidential race, could be his biggest challenge. But, as Melcer and his colleagues looked more closely into the issues they could face, they realized that the problem was broader than foreign interference. Russia’s campaign in the United States demonstrated that fake personas on social media could influence events. In Israel and elsewhere, political parties and their allies realized that they could use similar techniques to spread anonymous messages on the Internet and on social media to promote their candidates and undermine their rivals. The use of fake online personas has a long history in Israel. In the mid-two-thousands, an Israeli company called Terrogence used them to infiltrate suspected jihadi chat rooms. Later, Terrogence experimented with covertly influencing the jihadis they targeted. More recently, companies in Israel and elsewhere started using fake personas to spread messages on behalf of political parties and their allies.

National: After Arrest of Julian Assange, the Russian Mysteries Remain | The New York Times

In June 2016, five months before the American presidential election, Julian Assange made a bold prediction during a little-noticed interview with a British television show. “WikiLeaks has a very big year ahead,” he said, just seconds after announcing that the website he founded would soon be publishing a cache of emails related to Hillary Clinton. He was right. But an indictment unsealed on Thursday charging Mr. Assange with conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer in 2010 makes no mention of the central role that WikiLeaks played in the Russian campaign to undermine Mrs. Clinton’s presidential chances and help elect President Trump. It remains unclear whether the arrest of Mr. Assange will be a key to unlocking any of the lingering mysteries surrounding the Russians, the Trump campaign and the plot to hack an election. The Justice Department spent years examining whether Mr. Assange was working directly with the Russian government, but legal experts point out that what is known about his activities in 2016 — including publishing stolen emails — is not criminal, and therefore it would be difficult to bring charges against him related to the Russian interference campaign. Numerous significant questions are left unanswered, including what, if anything, Mr. Assange knew about the identity of Guccifer 2.0, a mysterious hacker who American intelligence and law enforcement officials have identified as a front for Russian military intelligence operatives.

National: Scrutiny and suspicion as Mueller report undergoes redaction | The Washington Post

The escalating political battle over special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report centers on redactions — a lawyerly editing process that has angered distrustful Democrats eager to see the all evidence and conclusions from his 22-month investigation of President Trump’s conduct and Russia’s elaborate interference operation during the 2016 campaign. Attorney General William P. Barr is redacting at least four categories of information from the report, which spans nearly 400 pages, before issuing it to Congress and the public. Legal experts say he has wide discretion to determine what should not be revealed, meaning the fight over blacked-out boxes is likely to spawn months of fights between Congress and the Justice Department, and it may end up in the courts. The first public confrontation is imminent, with Barr scheduled to appear Tuesday and Wednesday before the House and Senate Appropriations committees for hearings ostensibly about the Justice Department’s budget. He is expected to face extensive questioning about the Mueller report and his ongoing redaction process, though, and his testimony will be scrutinized for any sign he is trying to protect the president. “There’s a lot of pressure all pointing in the direction of doing a robust release,” said John Bies, who held senior roles in the Justice Department during the Obama administration and now works at American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group. “We are very hopeful the attorney general will do the right thing here and make everything public that can lawfully be made public.”

Canada: Rebuking Tech Giants, Canada Braces for Possible Election Interference | The New York Times

Canada is expecting foreign interference in its national election in October, and is considering stronger regulation of social media companies to ensure they block meddling in the voting, the minister responsible for election integrity said on Monday. The minister spoke after the release of an updated report by Canada’s electronic eavesdropping and security agency on online interference by other countries in the Canadian election. “We judge it very likely that Canadian voters will encounter some form of foreign cyber interference related to the 2019 federal election,” the report said. “However, at this time, it is improbable that this foreign cyber interference will be of the scale of Russian activity against the 2016 United States presidential election.” “Canada is a target of choice for those who seek to undermine our democracy,” said the minister, Karina Gould, at a news conference in Ottawa. The report does not indicate what countries are likely to attack Canada, and both Harjit Sajjan, the defense minister, and Shelly Bruce, who heads the electronic security agency, declined to elaborate.

National: U.S. senators want stiff sanctions to deter Russia election meddling | Reuters

U.S. Republican and Democratic senators will introduce legislation on Wednesday seeking to deter Russia from meddling in U.S. elections by threatening stiff sanctions on its banking, energy and defense industries and sovereign debt. Known as the “Deter Act,” the legislation is the latest effort by U.S. lawmakers to ratchet up pressure on Moscow over what they see as a range of bad behavior, from its aggression in Ukraine and involvement in Syria’s civil war to attempts to influence U.S. elections. The measure will be introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Republican. They offered a similar measure last year, when it also had bipartisan support but was never brought up for a vote by the Senate’s Republican leaders, who have close ties to President Donald Trump. Trump has gone along with some previous congressional efforts to increase sanctions on Russia, although sometimes reluctantly. According to details of the legislation seen by Reuters, it would require the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to determine, within 30 days of any federal election, whether Russia or any other foreign government, or anyone acting as an agent of that government, had engaged in election interference.

India: Misinformation Is Endangering India’s Election | Nextgov

In the days following a suicide bombing against Indian security forces in Kashmir this year, a message began circulating in WhatsApp groups across the country. It claimed that a leader of the Congress Party, the national opposition, had promised a large sum of money to the attacker’s family, and to free other “terrorists” and “stone pelters” from prison, if the state voted for Congress in upcoming parliamentary elections. The message was posted to dozens of WhatsApp groups that appeared to promote Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, and seemed aimed at painting the BJP’s main national challenger as being soft on militancy in Kashmir, which remains contested between India and Pakistan, just as the two countries seemed to be on the brink of war. The claim, however, was fake. No member of Congress, at either a national or a state level, had made any such statement. Yet delivered in the run-up to the election, and having spread with remarkable speed, that message offered a window into a worsening problem here.

Israel: Election bots show “how the political game has changed” | Verdict

The discovery of Israel election bots designed to give the illusion of support for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of elections next week is the latest example of how cybersecurity has crossed over into the political realm, according to one cybersecurity expert. The Israel election bots, which were uncovered by cyber watchdog the Big Bots Project, identified hundreds of fake Twitter accounts responsible for over 130,000 tweets said to be spreading disinformation about Netanyahu’s opponents. It is, according to Corin Imai, senior security advisor at DomainTools, the latest example of how cybersecurity concerns are posing a threat to democracy. “This campaign is yet the latest demonstration of how the political game has changed,” she said. “Cybersecurity is no longer a matter of protecting enterprises’ digital assets and data, but a responsibility towards the preservation of the democratic process.

National: US ripe for Russian meddling in 2020 vote, experts warn | Financial Times

In the wake of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the US electoral system, experts warn the nation is just as exposed as it was in 2016, raising new concerns about the 2020 presidential election. More than two years after intelligence agencies exposed Moscow’s efforts to exploit weaknesses in the US democratic system, technology companies and state governments have yet to come to terms with a foreign power’s meddling in domestic affairs of state. When it comes to the 2020 presidential vote, the US faces many of the same vulnerabilities that made its electoral system a prime target In 2016 — and perhaps some new ones, said Doug Lute, a former American ambassador to Nato and retired Army lieutenant-general who has taken up the cause of US election security. “We are more prepared in the sense that we are more aware. But we are little better prepared in terms of actual security,” said Mr Lute. He noted that Russia’s strategy in 2016 resembled an age-old Russian military doctrine: to attack on a broad front, assess strengths and weaknesses, then prepare to reattack vulnerabilities — a potentially dangerous scenario for 2020. 

Ukraine: Disrupt and discredit: Russia still has Ukrainian elections in sights | KyivPost

Exit polls from the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election, released late on March 31, seem to confirm what has long been believed: that no openly pro-Russian candidate has a chance to secure this Ukrainian presidency. But it doesn’t seem that will stop the Kremlin from having its voice heard, or from trying to have some of its strategic objectives secured, observers note. On April 1, as ballots were still being tallied, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and Russia officially, although quietly, expired. Previously renewed automatically each decade, Ukrainian lawmakers approved the treaty’s termination on Dec. 6, 2018, after roughly four years of undeclared war between the two nations. Also on April 1, as the likely outcome of the Ukrainian presidential election started to become more clear, elected Russian lawmakers prepared a statement of “non-recognition” of the result. The move is yet another signal that Moscow is committed to discrediting the election and not accepting its outcome.

Ukraine: With elections just days away, Ukraine faces disinformation, cyber attacks and further Russian interference | Global Voices

UkraineUkrainians will head for the polls on Sunday 31 March in what will be the first regular national elections since the country’s 2014 Euromaidan revolution. With its Crimean peninsula still occupied by Russian forces, an ongoing military conflict in eastern Ukraine, and rising activity of far-right groups, the country is a prime target for both domestic and external information influence operations. Ukraine has been in the crossfire of disinformation warfare since 2014, with multiple political actors attempting to disrupt its democratic development. The elections for both the office of the president and parliamentary seats will be a crucial test for Ukraine’s democracy and stability. Much of the action has taken place on Facebook, which is the country’s most popular social network. Despite persistent efforts of civil society and media groups, Facebook has done relatively little to respond to Ukraine’s disinformation problem in the past. But the company changed its tune in January, when it publicly announced that it had taken steps to counter some of these issues.

National: Manafort Found to Have Lied to Prosecutors While Under a Cooperation Agreement | The New York Times

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, had breached his plea agreement by lying multiple times to prosecutors after pledging to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The decision by Judge Amy Berman Jackson of United States District Court in Washington may affect the severity of punishment that awaits Mr. Manafort. Judge Jackson is scheduled to sentence him next month on two conspiracy counts, and he is also awaiting sentencing for eight other counts in a related fraud case. After Mr. Manafort agreed in September to cooperate with the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, the judge found, he lied about his contacts with a Russian associate during the campaign and after the election. Prosecutors claim that the associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, has ties to Russian intelligence, and have been investigating whether he was involved in Russia’s covert campaign to influence the election results.