>> house impeachment investigators meeting today even though the house is not in session among those scheduled but not expected to appear today senior aide to the president acting chief of staff and office management budget energy expert and two of national security council attorney. a former national security council senior director on europe and russia fiona hill was back to answer committee questions as olivia beaver reports she did not answer questions on the way in. investigating committee has released the transcript of the ukraine ambassador and you could read it on our website c-span.org. intelligence committee chair

adam schiff says the transcript from two others kurt volker and u.s. ambassador to the european union will be released tomorrow. in response, president trump tweeted this morning all-time high for the stock market and all the fake news is the impeachment hoax. the brookings institution is hosting impeachment foreign interference and how best to safeguard the 2020 election. c-span will have live coverage of that today at 3:30 p.m. eastern. also coming up this afternoon on c-span two. democratic national committee chair donna brazile and mercedes former white house strategic munication director for president trump will talk about the divisive political climate and how to restore stability. you can see that live today at x 30:00 p.m. eastern.

coming up this evening. president trump holding a campaign rally in lexington kentucky. live coverage starts at 7:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all of these events live online. why listen with the free radio app. our c-span campaign 2020 team is traveling across the country visiting key battleground states in the 2020 presidential race. asking voters what issues they want presidential candidates to address during the campaign. >> something i want the candidate to address his gun violence. i do not think that there is one clear-cut answer. we need to initiate that discussion. what options are available to prevent these disasters from happening. >> a question that i have is how are you willing to combat the rising prices and drugs and also healthcare. >> an issue that is really important to me is focusing on fixing our criminal justice system. how can we rehabilitate our

offenders. how can we support a positive relationship between the community and law enforcement. how can we fix our incarceration rate. how can we help those impacted by the epidemic. how can we focus on helping those in poverty. the pipeline focusing on. >> an issue that is really important to economy. >> voices from the campaign trail. part of c-span battleground show >> a professor at the institute of technology he is our guest this week on the communicators.

what are they vulnerable to social media manipulation. >> said short answers we do not know. saying that the election manipulation is among the most serious challenges for democracy he has seen in his entire career. fbi director christopher wray says the threat is just escalating. facebook, on facebook, 126, 126 million are exposed to the attempts in the 2016 election. we know it request voting systems in all 60 states. we know it targeted people. 27% of voting saw russian

misinformation. that is what we know. what we do not know is what effect if any, any of this had on the election, on the 2018 midterms. what effect it will have in 2020. liberal democracies around the world. the vote has been questioned in the same way elections in brazil , india, sweden. the reason we do not know when the reason the short answer is we don't know is because we are not measuring it. the point of this paper is to say it is eminently measurable. we just need the data to understand what the threat is to our democracy and to harden our democracy to future manipulation >> how do you propose to get that data and how will you measure it? >> a simple four step procedure. the techniques for measuring within a certain degree of

statistical confidence, what the impact on an election or other types of behaviors have already been developed. they've been developed over the last 10 years. successfully applied to many different types of behavior. for instance, shopping behavior, exercise behavior, voting behavior into papers that i've been. reviewed and published with offers from facebook attached to them. the message exists. your first question is how do we get access to the data. that is a very important question. right now we have really no access to this kind of data. however, there are initiatives like social science one which is an industry collaboration that is attempting to secure access to this type of data political communication data. however, they are having trouble getting access to the data.

craig silverman reported in the past two weeks that not only is facebook delaying releasing the data, but the social science one and the project that have been approved, those are threatening to pull out by the end of september if facebook does not release the data that they promise to release. i think that facebook has responded to that. what they have said is that they are having difficulty releasing it in a timely manner because of concerns about security and privacy of the individual data that they intend to release. this brings up what i have described as a transparent paradox. what that means is these types of platforms are facing tremendous pressure to be more open and transparent about what is happening and how they are affecting our democracy and

other things in our society. they are also facing simultaneously a significant amount of pressure to be more secure and more private with individuals data. the scandal is a revelation millions of peoples of data for greater privacy and security. these two things are in conflict they want to be more transparent, but they they are being asked to be more secure and private at the same time. the only way to solve this problem is thread the needle of the paradox and become more secure and more transparent at the same time. technically it means using techniques like differential privacy to anonymize the data before it is released to researchers to analyze what the effects might be on our democracy. >> maggie miller of the hill newspaper, she covers cyber security there. she is here to help us explore some of these issues. >> thank you so much for being

with us today. social media platforms really need to spread the needle between securing data but making it more transparent. how has social media platforms such as facebook and twitter done in terms of addressing this vital balancing act? how are they prepared for 2020? >> i will tell you. two things about that. we do not know enough about what is happening eternally to prepare for 2020. there has not not been enough transparency. simply in terms of policy. forget releasing data. we don't really know what preparations are being made behind the scenes to prevent this manipulation and protect integrity in 2020. point number two is that it is a difficult problem, but one that can be solved. i think that what i hear from facebook is that the people that

are responsible for instance giving data to social science one working around the clock. they have a lot of people dedicated to it. doing it in a timely manner. i am aware of more people at google who have been researching differential privacy for instance. .... .... >> you note in your paper that legislators need to be careful when dropping privacy legislation in several committees on capitol hill are currently working on in order not to limit the amount of analysis potentially could be

done on the data from social media companies. what would you recommend that lawmakers keep in mind as they come back from recess and to pursue this topic? >> guest: i have one message as they pursue regulating special social media plot forms going forward but that is consult experts. i watched mark zuckerberg testified in front of congress and i watched many others instances of congressional testimony where the tech platform sent representatives to the hill and the legislators are ill prepared to create legislation without consulting experts before they do it. i will give you two examples. there are tremendous amount of very important trade-offs that need to be managed in pursuing any type of regulation of the social media platforms or tech platforms in general. the first example is one you mentioned between privacy and

election integrity. obviously we want to explore reasonable privacy legislation in the united states. i'm an advocate for privacy legislation and think we need to have some sort of legislation that regulates how private and individual data is used and that is an important right that emanates from a number of rights in the constitution but at the same time a broad sweeping illegitimate of data retention makes it difficult to audit what social platforms due to our democracies and society in general. we will want to audit those things going forward and so the legislation has to be designed in a way that protects individual privacy perhaps through anonymized asian but also retains the ability to secure transparency at the same

time. another important trade-off is for instance the trade-off tween free speech and harmful speech and we certainly want to prevent the live streaming of mass murders or terrorist attacks on facebook but we also want to protect free speech in this country. there's a clear tension in trade-off between regulation that would require platforms to quell speech or chill speech and free speech itself. these types of trade-offs must be carefully thought out before the legislators act. >> host: he's a professor at the institute for data systems and society at the massachusetts institute of technology and also a professor of management there and professor if you could would you go back and define again differential diversey? >> guest: differential privacy is a technique from computer

science that anonymous sizes data but cannot be backwards create and you can't discover who the person was in a data set of individual level data from the data it is a set of techniques that guarantee with some confidence the inability for the possessor of information to figure out what any individual identity is. >> host: is it your goal to explore what happened in 2016 or to prevent it from happening in 2020? >> guest: we are much more interested in preventing happening in the future but i think what we need to understand is that we have a broad conveyance of an sweeping instance in 2016 that is right for study and to understand how

it was done in the past will help us to prevent it in the future and i think that the goal is to prevent it from happening again. it is not about doing a retrospective on the 2016 election. it's about understanding how to harden our democracy from future attacks and to protect election integrity going forward. >> host: in a sense are we fighting the last war? >> guest: what do you mean? >> host: were fighting something that happened in 2016 and haven't technics moved on? >> guest: yes, indeed. you are completely right in that future meant ablation attempts will be different and more sophisticated and perhaps more broad-based and more sweeping and will certainly involve more innovative masses of misinformation. for instance, synthetic video and synthetic audio depot fakes which is very troubling to me

because this technology is advancing rapidly and becoming much more convincing and they say that seeing is believing for a reason and it's the potential for it to be more convincing than actual misinformation. yes, things will be different in the future but however it's also the case that we can learn from the past and those who don't are doomed to repeat it. >> in terms of deep fake this is an issue that's been discussed by legislators on capitol hill and wont commit him by congress or at least social media plot forms to mitigate this threat of deep fake head of 2020 or is it already too late to start to prevent this? >> guest: i don't think it's ever wise to advocate that it is too late and we should throw our hands up. that is not the answer. again, you face trade-offs. i don't think it's appropriate to chain down this technology. there are tremendous benefits

for technological innovation and synthetic videos and synthetic audios and data generations realistic data regeneration is used in high-energy physics experiments and used in medical testing and training. there are all sorts of legitimate applications to the technology and we should not shackle the technology in a way that prevents the innovation however, we should be regulating uses of the technology the great harm. the ways in which we do that have to be sensitive to the trade-offs between not preventing technological innovation on one hand but preventing the uses of the technology that are nefarious and harmful. we know that it will be used in political circles, in elections but we also know it's already being used for commercial fraud. have been instances that semantic cto has reported that

multiple clients being conned into transferring millions of dollars through synthetic audio that is used to mimic the voice of the ceo of a company calling the cfo requesting large sums of money be transferred immediately. that has been successful in the past. there are commercial threats and democratic threats and we need to regulate it in a way that does not shackle the technology but controls the nefarious uses. >> another potential disinformation that was highlighted when twitty twitter ceo account was hacked and post were on there briefly before being removed but what is the terms of the disinformation to accredited users that are verified by twitter or on facebook or other social media platforms being hacked and spreading views that may not be true? >> guest: i talk about this in

my upcoming book about how social media is just dropping our world and it was ironic that the exact moment that jack dorsey's account on twitter was hacked i was on television talking about the danger to the democracy from digital manipulation. the issue here is there can be broad ramifications for society that we may not even think of. in 2013 syrian hackers hacked to the ap news twitter handle and put out a tweet that said that barack obama had been injured in an explosion in the white house the day. what happened was automated trade algorithms the trade on the sentiment in social media were in an automated fashion observing this sentiment and started selling stock because that is big news at the president has been injured in an explosion inside the white house

that's a destabilizing situation. that created a market crash which lost $140 billion of equity value in a single day. the threat from mimicking or inauthentic packs of individual users account israel potentially much greater than that reputational damage to the individual. in the case of jack dorsey he's the ceo of a major company and when that fake news gets out it can damage the repetition of the company and create downward trends in the stock crisis and it is difficult to theorize about what all the potential harm could be but we have several examples of serious harm that could come from these attacks. >> host: professor, i want to go back to something that you said earlier but are these social media comedies helping in this effort or are you finding

resentment? >> guest: i think they are generally interested in helping. i think they also have natural incentives to drag their feet at times because there's a lot of potential exposure to commercial harm to them and being transparent. it takes a motivation on the part of the senior leadership team to understand that the impact of these technologies honor society are more important than the potential commercial harm of transparency and or any given disclosure. obviously, they have a need to protect individuals private data and i do know some of the people working on this at facebook and i believe they have tremendous integrity and i also believe they are generally interested in enabling research on this point

but that is not the senior management see xo sweep of the company and these people, mark zuckerberg, and so on have a response ability to the shareholders that also puts them in a tight spot about how quickly to be how transparent. >> host: 90% of our conversation today has been about facebook and twitter. should we be including anyone else? >> guest: everyone else. we make this point in the paper the facebook is the poster child for this conversation at the moment and twitter but there are a number of other platforms that are involved and important in this conversation. for instance, messaging services are important because a lot of them are encrypted. for instance what's app or telegram is encrypted services could be spreading and we know that they are by examining public what's app messaging

groups and spreading misinformation that has been linked to genocidal killings in india linked to fake news in brazil and in oxford study noted that a full third of the information before the swedish election was false and misinformation. on social media platforms online. we have to think about all the potential platforms, each has a different role to potentially play in this and i describe many of them one by one in my book and describe why they are important to these problems. >> host: when does the hype machine come out? >> it will be out 2020 in the september october right before the election. >> disinformation is a wider debate amongst election security that has been taking place on capitol hill since the 2016 election. quite a heated debate and there's been dozens of this

floated on various aspects election security including the honest ads act sponsored by congressman and i would mean that those who buy ads on social media have to be transparent about who they are and why they buy the advertisements. to think pledges agent like this or any type of legislation that congress should push through prior to 2020 will have a major impact on this information efforts? >> guest: i do think so. i think the honest ads act is a step in the right direction and also that california is making steps in a similar and right direction and let me make a broad statement about legislation which i think is important so there are dozens but at least for bills that are in front of congress right now that have to do with election reform and it is surprising to me that the discussion of these bills is even blocked by the majority in the senate, mitch

mcconnell has received a lot of negative publicity around his desire to block this legislation. h.r. 1 which is a sweeping legislation for election reform may be controversial in the sense that it has lots of elements to it that people disagree about but surely we can discuss things like the fire a act, secure democracy act, cyber system or cyber -- cybersecurity voting act and i don't remember the exact name but these are short bills with limited scope that have to do with reporting contact by a campaign by a foreign individual that is trying to manipulate the election and making penalties for foreign individuals trying to ablate the elections in securing the voting systems themselves and surely we can have a discussion on the floor about these types of bills and i

don't know the poll numbers but my guess is a large swath of americans would be supportive of election integrity bills that are narrowly focused and not as a sweeping as h.r. 1. >> i noted these bills are languishing in the senate and the senate has passed a few smaller measures but should know him bills be signed into law by prison trunk prior to the 2020 election but what is this mean for election security headed into 20 turning if we have not passed a meaningful legislation to address some of what happened in 2016? >> guest: let me be clear, if we don't make more moves on understanding what many ablation does to our democracy which we laid out in our paper in science last week and if we don't pass legislation simultaneously we

are essentially doing nothing and flying blind. i think that's a huge mistake because voting is a foundation of our democracy and its the bulwark that protects all of our other rights. if we are not satisfied with the way our government is protecting our rights the only recourse we have is voting. if that system does not have integrity then i think that it does cut dad foundation of democracy itself and that for that reason it's important that we be more active and proactive both in terms of legislation and in terms of science around under standing election manipulation. >> host: professor sinan aral, the states have most control over voting but we got talked about that. >> guest: i think that certainly there is a federal lection commission which has been largely inactive and also you

know there are federal level voting, not just legislation but legislative systems, the deal with voting at the federal level. it is true that states have power and that this is an instance where federalism is strong in terms of states rights but unfortunately, for instance, mitch mcconnell has used that argument as an excuse for inaction. i think that's a big mistake at the federal level paid my point about the difference between the states and the federal government acting in this case is that we need to both. there is no reason why the action of one should prevent the action of the other or why we need one but not the other and why they should not be acting in concert and both sides being proactive. >> host: does our decentralization of voting systems make us more vulnerable or less vulnerable? >> guest: no, our inaction pictures more vulnerable. i don't think necessarily

decentralization makes us more or less vulnerable but a decentralized system can be secure in a centralized system can be secure but in an active system is neither centralized nor decentralized will not be secure. >> imagine the federal elections commission and recently they went down from four-three commissioners meaning they are not able to take votes on anything in front of them fit what does this mean in terms of election security? what is the impact. >> guest: it's a big problem. the major body that governs elections or that overseas i should see elections at the federal level is inactive because we can have a quorum and that is you know it is very troubling, is what i would say. >> you close your paper by noting that being aware of social media manipulation is a core civic duty. how do you raise awareness amongst the public about this

threat and how do you keep that going in 2020? >> guest: i think the point of our paper is to do exactly that. dean and i who is my colleague at mit who i wrote the paper with we did feel like it was important to not only write the paper but come and talk to you on c-span and try our best to speak to the press and make sure this message gets out. i think legislators have a duty, civic duty and responsibly to keep pushing both in terms of making the issue front and center but also in terms of pushing legislation and the scientists have a civic duty to continue to pressure the platforms for action to the data and the platforms have a civic duty to do what is right and create plans to protect our democracy and 2020 and to to be more transparent while being more secure and release the data we need to understand the threat of many ablation.

i think law enforcement needs to do the same thing. it's all hands on deck and i do believe that we need to continue to trump the message that this is an issue that has to do with the foundation of our democracy. >> host: professor sinan aral, when will we see an update from you and mr. eccles? >> guest: great question for anytime we have movement we will update the public. if we get access to data and hear a denial in terms of not getting access to data as a social science one either progresses i'm happy to talk about that as well and we intend to be public whenever we feel that would push the issue forward. >> host: sinan aral is a professor at mit in his article is in science magazine and you can find him on the mit website, maggie muller is with the hill.

thank you both for being on "the