Tech Giants On Capitol Hill For More Russia Interference Questions

By Miles Parks / NPR

Published November 1, 2017 at 3:38 AM PDT

This story was published more than 6 years ago.

Colin Stretch (left), general counsel of Facebook; Sean Edgett (center), acting general counsel of Twitter; and Richard Salgado, director of law enforcement and information security of Google, are sworn in prior to testifying during a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Russian influence on social networks on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Update at 11:05 a.m. ET

Lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google will again be grilled by members of Congress on Wednesday, after more details were revealed this week about the scope of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The three tech giants appeared before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday. And in his prepared opening remarks before that panel, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch revealed that as many as 126 million users on the service may have seen content linked to Russian digital active measures. Sean Edgett, Twitter's deputy general counsel, said in his opening statement Tuesday that the company had uncovered 2,752 Russia-linked accounts and more than 36,000 automated "bots." Those accounts tweeted 1.4 million times about the election last fall.

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The three lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google return to Capitol Hill Wednesday to face questions from Congress' two intelligence committees, which have been conducting two of the main investigations — along with the Department of Justice special counsel and the Senate Judiciary Committee — into Russian interference in the 2016 election cycle and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing began at 9:30 a.m. ET Wednesday and the House Intelligence Committee hearing is set to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET.