Hillicon Valley: Russian hackers targeted McCaskill | Facebook suspends Alex Jones | Dems question feds’ use of facial recognition tech | NYC weighs Uber, Lyft crackdown | Union targets AT&T over job losses

Welcome to Hillicon Valley, The Hill’s newsletter detailing all you need to know about the tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley.

Welcome! Follow the cyber team, Olivia Beavers (@olivia_beavers) and Morgan Chalfant (@mchalfant16), and the tech team, Harper Neidig (@hneidig) and Ali Breland (@alibreland).

 

MCCASKILL FIRST KNOWN CANDIDATE TARGETED BY RUSSIA IN 2018: Russian intelligence agents targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) with an attempted breach ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, The Daily Beast first reported Thursday.

The news site reported that McCaskill, considered among the most vulnerable senators up for reelection, was one of the three congressional candidates a Microsoft executive said last week had been targeted by hackers.

McCaskill appeared to confirm the attempted hack in a statement issued later Thursday, but noted that it was “not successful.”

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“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy,” McCaskill said in a statement. “I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

McCaskill, whose home state of Missouri went to President Trump by double-digits, would be the first confirmed target of attempted Russian hacking in the 2018 midterms.

The Daily Beast reported that the hackers targeted Senate staffers through phishing emails, falsely telling them that their Microsoft Exchange passwords had expired and sending them to a mock-up of the Senate’s Active Directory Federation Services login page.

Microsoft seized one of the fake sites in October and redirected traffic from the domain to its own server. This allowed the company to see who was sent to the mock site.

Remember this? Tokyo-based cybersecurity group Trend Micro told The Hill earlier this year that it had identified websites designed to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system and that they were part of an email-harvesting operation. Analysts tied the operation to the hacking group “Fancy Bear,” which some have connected to Russia’s military intelligence directorate, the GRU. Read more here.

 

BANNED: Facebook has banned Infowars founder Alex Jones from the platform for 30 days over content that violated its community guidelines, a Facebook spokesperson said.

“Our Community Standards make it clear that we prohibit content that encourages physical harm [bullying], or attacks someone based on their religious affiliation or gender identity [hate speech],” the spokesperson told Mashable.

The Facebook representative also said that the site has removed four videos from pages run by Infowars and Jones after the content was reported to the site.

“We reviewed the content against our Community Standards and determined that it violates,” the spokesperson told Mashable.

Context: Pulling the videos counts as strikes against the Facebook pages. The platform has said that pages will be pulled from the site after receiving a certain number of strikes, but hasn’t revealed how many strikes trigger the action. Infowars and Jones are known for sharing unfounded conspiracy theories. The temporary ban from Facebook comes days after YouTube gave Infowars’s channel another strike for posting content on “child endangerment and hate speech.”

“We apply our policies consistently according to the content in the videos, regardless of the speaker or the channel,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. “We also have a clear three strikes policy and we terminate channels when they receive three strikes in three months.”

Read more here.

 

DEMS QUESTION FEDS’ USE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION TECH: A trio of Democratic senators is probing federal agencies’ use of facial recognition software amid concerns about Amazon’s sale of such technology to law enforcement.

“As [facial recognition] technologies have increased in availability and accuracy, and decreased in cost, we understand that as a law enforcement tool this technology would appear attractive,” Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) wrote in a letter Friday to federal agencies.

“However, this technology comes with inherent risks, including the compromising of Americans’ right to privacy, as well as racial and gender bias,” they added.

Read more here.

 

LABOR GROUP PRESSURES GOP, AT&T OVER JOB LOSSES: A labor group is targeting Republican lawmakers and AT&T in a new advertising campaign aimed at highlighting the telecom giant’s job cuts after receiving a boost from the GOP’s tax law.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has launched radio ads in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas that ties Republican candidates to the job cuts. The group estimates that AT&T has cut 7,000 jobs since the tax bill went into effect this year. They accuse the company of using its tax savings to enrich its shareholders and executives rather than investing in workers.

“AT&T can certainly afford to keep good family-supporting jobs in our communities,” Lisa Bolton, CWA’s vice president of technology and telecommunications, said in a statement. “It’s shameful for these members of Congress to stay silent while AT&T sends layoff notices to their constituents and moves the work to low-wage contractors.”

The radio ads target a handful of races in the Midwest, including Rep. Jim Renacci’s (R-Ohio) bid to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said that the ads were “misleading” and noted that the company has invested more in the U.S. over the past five years — $135 billion — than any other publicly-traded company.

“We’re proud to be one of the country’s largest union employers,” Richter said. “And we continue to invest in good, middle-class careers in areas where we’re seeing increasing customer demand for our products and services. In the past three years, we’ve hired more than 87,000 people in the U.S., most of them union members.”

Read more here.

 

NYC CONSIDERS LIMITS ON RIDE-SHARE VEHICLES: The New York City Council is considering legislation that would limit the number of vehicles in the city operating for ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft.

If the legislation passes, New York would become the first major American city to place a cap on the ride-sharing vehicles, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The measure would stop the city from issuing new licenses for for-hire vehicles during a year-long study of the industry. City Council speaker Cory Johnson has backed the legislation, the newspaper reported.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), who in 2015 attempted to cap the number of ride-sharing vehicles, did not fully endorse the proposal, but said it was time to put a check on the market.

Read more here.

 

NEW YORK MOVES TO BAN STATE’S LARGEST CABLE PROVIDER: New York is moving to ban Charter Communications from operating in the state after regulators said it failed to live up to the commitments it made when its merger with Time Warner Cable was approved in 2016.

The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to revoke its approval of the merger on Friday, calling the company’s behavior since the deal closed “brazenly disrespectful.”

“Charter’s repeated failures to serve New Yorkers and honor its commitments are well documented and are only getting worse,” PSC Chairman John Rhodes said in a statement. “After more than a year of administrative enforcement efforts to bring Charter into compliance with the Commission’s merger order, the time has come for stronger actions to protect New Yorkers and the public interest.”

Charter, which operates under the name Spectrum, is New York’s largest cable provider. The commission on Friday ordered the company to come up with a plan to transition its 2 million customers in the state to new service providers.

A Charter spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked for comment.

Read more here.

 

COHEN DRAMA: President Trump’s former longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen claims that Trump had prior knowledge of the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer, CNN reported Thursday.

Sources told CNN that Cohen claims that he was with Trump when Donald Trump Jr. told him of the offer from Russians and that Trump approved going ahead with the meeting.

CNN reported that Cohen does not have evidence to back up his story, such as audio recordings, but that he is willing to discuss it with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating any ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pushed back on the report during an appearance Thursday night on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” pointing to past denials that Trump had advance knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting.

“He didn’t know about it,” Giuliani asserted. He also blasted Cohen during the interview, calling him a “pathological liar” days after news emerged that Cohen had secretly recorded some of his conversations with Trump.

Cohen’s attorney had provided CNN with a tape earlier this week of then-candidate Trump and Cohen discussing a payment related to a former Playboy model alleging an affair with Trump in 2006. “He’s been lying all week. He’s been lying for years,” Giuliani said of Cohen. “I don’t see how he has any credibility.”

Read more here.

 

I MIGHT TAKE YOU UP ON THAT…: The White House on Friday said President Trump is “open” to visiting Moscow, but only if he receives an official invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

“He is open to visiting Moscow upon receiving a formal invitation,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.  Sanders added that “Trump looks forward to having President Putin to Washington after the first of the year.”

The statement came after Putin claimed he has invited Trump to the Russian capital for a second one-on-one meeting. Putin also said he is “ready to come to Washington” to visit with Trump if the conditions are right.

 

TRIPLE THE FUN: The United States on Friday hosted a trilateral meeting on cybersecurity with representatives from Japan and South Korea in Washington during which all three countries “reaffirmed their commitment to promoting an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet,” according to a readout from the State Department. Among the topics discussed: cybersecurity of the 2018 and 2020 Olympics, among other potential avenues of cooperation in cyberspace.

 

TWO LIGHTER TWITTER CLICKS (because it’s Friday): Keep watching. And this is awkward.

 

TIP OF THE DAY: How to watch Friday’s lunar eclipse … ONLINE.

 

ON TAP FOR NEXT WEEK:

Tuesday: DHS is hosting a National Cybersecurity Summit in New York on Tuesday. The summit will pull together top officials across federal agencies as well as the private sector in an effort to ” lay out a vision for a collective defense model to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure.”

Also, Tuesday, Paul Manafort’s fraud trial is slated to begin in federal court in Alexandria.

Wednesday: The Senate Intelligence Committee is slated to hold an open hearing at 9:30 a.m. where third-party social media experts will testify on foreign influence operations and their use of social media platforms.

The House has peaced out for August recess, but not before some drama.

 

NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

Coffee company rejects $40K Salesforce contract, citing tech firm’s ties to Trump border policy. (The Hill)

Should Dems play up Russia in midterms?. (The Hill)

The Trump administration is mulling rules on online privacy. (The Washington Post)

Foreign spies have their sights set on Silicon Valley. (Politico)

It’s been a ‘black week’ for social media. (AFP).

Trade groups and tech firms wrote a letter urging the Senate to pass a bill to rename and reorganize the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber unit.

BSA | The Software Alliance adds Cadence and PTC to its membership.

The tech backlash we really need. (The New Atlantis)