Silicon Valley may have done 'bare minimum' to help Russia investigation, Senate Intel Committee told

The committee hired an online intelligence firm to review data on Russian social media accounts that posed as American accounts. The data, much of which has not yet been made public, was provided to lawmakers by Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube.

New Knowledge, the firm hired by the committee, tracks online disinformation. In its report to lawmakers, the firm said that the social media companies could have provided more valuable data to the committee and also could have presented it in a more accessible format.

The firm advised lawmakers that there are likely more Russian accounts that the social media companies failed to identify, according to person familiar with the report.

A spokesperson for Google said the company did not have a comment on the report but pointed to some of the steps the company has taken to combat disinformation since 2016.

A spokesperson for Facebook said they didn't have a comment on the report.

Twitter did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

New Knowledge declined to provide a comment to CNN.

The firm analyzed more than 10 million tweets, 116,000 Instagram posts, and 61,500 Facebook posts sent by the Russian government-linked troll group the Internet Research Agency, according to the source familiar with the report. The IRA was indicted in February by special counsel Robert Mueller.

New Knowledge's report is due to be made public by the committee this week along with a separate report, also commissioned by the committee, by Oxford University. The Washington Post reported the details of that report on Sunday, saying it found that the IRA was active on every social media platform and sought to help Trump win.

While the tech giants were criticized for their cooperation with the Senate Intelligence committee about 2016 meddling, the Justice Department praised the "exceptional cooperation" from Facebook and Twitter in October when it indicted a woman it alleged was involved in an effort to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections.

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