By: Eowyn Weiss & Zara Asim (photographer)
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussed foreign election interference today, with three bills voted on before three o’clock in the afternoon. One, the Bot Elimination and Ad Investigation Act called for suspending Bot and AI accounts from social media platforms and passed with a resounding majority of 22-8. This bill will create a committee through the Department of Intelligence to investigate suspicious activity on accounts suspected of being bot-run, and require a fine “appropriate” to the size of the yearly revenue of the app itself, though what exactly that meant was never specified. “[The funding] seems a little unorganized and not feasible,” Reisch said while arguing against this bill.
Indiana Senator Todd Young (Republican), Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville (Republican), and Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth (Democrat), co-sponsors of the bill, expressed their concerns regarding Russian interference with elections. The senators said, “Any interference will lower American comfort with democracy, elections, and their government as a whole.”
These guidelines allow for human error, raising concerns that human-run accounts could be unfairly flagged by the committee. Though the authors insisted the bill would not impact free speech, an amendment allocated funds for a federal system to scan for bots, which will be available to U.S. social media companies.
James E Risch speaks against the Bot Elimination and Ad Investigation Act
Other Congress members however expressed their disapproval of the bill. James Risch, Senator for Idaho, said that the bill was “unorganized and not feasible,” and “incredibly dangerous to free speech.” Risch insisted that the bill doesn’t direct the rights of the people toward a free election, but rather threatens the sanctity of free speech among Americans on social media apps.
Despite the complaints, safeguards were put into place and this bill passed with an overwhelming majority and will move on to the full senate sometime tomorrow. This bill’s hopes to remove foreign influence from American elections seem favorable in this committee, and more bills of this nature are expected to be passed soon, according to an anonymous source.