CIRCLE THE WAGONS

Russian Interference: Tech Giants Gather for Secret Meeting on Protecting Midterms

As many as a dozen companies meeting Friday in San Francisco.

Officials from as many as a dozen top tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, are holding a secret meeting Friday to hammer out a joint approach to protecting the upcoming midterm U.S. congressional elections. An email seen by BuzzFeed News indicates the meeting—which will also be attended by Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat—will take place at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco. The meeting will have each company present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations and discuss the problems they each face. It may become a regular appointment. Following intense criticism of how they handled the 2016 presidential election, tech and social-media companies are under pressure to eliminate foreign intelligence and affiliated operations from their platforms for elections this fall.