"Alex Stamos is a Hoover fellow and adjunct professor at Stanford University. He served as the chief security officer at Facebook until August...
It is time for us to come together to protect our
society from future information operations. While it appears Russia and
other U.S. adversaries sat out the 2018 midterms, our good fortune is
unlikely to extend through a contentious Democratic presidential primary
season and raucous 2020 election.
First, Congress needs to codify standards around political advertising. The current rules restricting the use of powerful online advertising platforms have been adopted voluntarily and by only a handful of companies. Congress needs to update Nixon-era laws to require transparency and limit the ability of all players, including legitimate domestic actors, to micro-target tiny segments of the population with divisive political narratives. It would be great to see Facebook, Google and Twitter propose helpful additions to legislation instead of quietly opposing it.
Second, we need to draw a thoughtful line between the responsibilities of government and the large technology companies. The latter group will always need to act in a quasi-governmental manner, making judgments on political speech and operating teams in parallel to the U.S. intelligence community, but we need more clarity on how these companies make decisions and what powers we want to reserve to our duly elected government. Many areas of cybersecurity demand cooperation between government and corporations, and our allies in France and Germany provide models of how competent defensive cybersecurity responsibility can be built in a democracy."
