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First the House, now the Senate: As the country braces for a second wave in coronavirus cases, a Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing on the persistence of Covid-19 robocalls and related scams and what businesses and the government should do about it.

Tech measures advance in the House: Lawmakers approved a set of amendments to their annual defense spending bill dealing with everything from TikTok to deepfakes and bias in artificial intelligence.

In social media we trust: Or do we? More than half of social media users have less confidence in tech platforms ability to protect the November election from foreign interference after last weeks unprecedented Twitter hack, according to a new poll.

ITS TUESDAY; WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! Im your host, Alexandra Levine.

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TODAY, IRL, ON THE HILL: SENATE EXAMS SCAMS The director of the FTCs Consumer Protection Bureau, Andrew Smith, is among the witnesses testifying this afternoon at a Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee hearing on Covid-19 scams. Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) plans to single out illegal robocalls pitching low-priced health insurance and other scams targeting vulnerable populations like seniors, per opening remarks shared with POLITICO. He also plans to press the witnesses on current enforcement efforts to detect, identify and prosecute criminal organizations engaged in these illegal activities.

Sound familiar? Todays session is more or less a Senate counterpart to a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing earlier in July on Covid-19 privacy harms and scams online, from price gouging to counterfeit products. Today, Smith and the other witnesses including Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt are expected to highlight what businesses and federal and state governments are doing, and what they should be doing more of, to crack down on pandemic-era ploys.

HOUSE VOTES TO ADVANCE SLEW OF TECH MEASURES In a rare flurry of activity for tech policy on Capitol Hill, House lawmakers on Monday approved a series of amendments to their annual defense spending bill that touched on everything from government use of TikTok to the dangers of so-called deepfakes and to bias in artificial intelligence.

What made it through: The House passed a massive bloc of amendments that included a proposal by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) to ban the use of TikTok on federal devices; two plans from Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) to ban the Defense Department from using some funds to acquire AI not vetted for algorithmic bias, and separately to require that regulators file reports to Congress on how deepfake videos affect national defense; and a Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) amendment requiring DoD to issue a report to Congress on social media use by terrorists and on the threat of online radicalization.

Whats next: The House is slated to consider amendments today to have the GAO probe predatory social media targeting service members and their families and to establish an Open Technology Fund to promote global internet freedom by countering internet censorship and repressive surveillance by authoritarian regimes. Neither is up for debate on the House floor, indicating likely passage. The House is expected to pass its version of the National Defense Authorization Act today, with a Senate vote likely soon to follow. The two chambers will then need to reconcile differences between the bills.

TikTok's reaction: A TikTok spokesperson said in response to the House vote that the company's "entire and growing U.S. team have no higher priority than promoting a safe app experience that protects our users' privacy." They added, "Millions of American families use TikTok for entertainment and creative expression, which we recognize is not what federal government devices are for."

TECH TO TIKTOKS RESCUE After the House voted to bar TikTok on government devices, a leading tech research institute is warning the Trump administration against banning the Chinese-owned video app in the U.S. an idea floated in recent weeks by top officials and the president himself. Instead, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation argues, members of Congress should prove that TikTok has done wrong, as lawmakers claim it has, and then U.S. regulators should hold TikTok accountable for any missteps.

TikTok has stated clearly and unambiguously that it has not and will not provide U.S. user data to the Chinese government, said ITIF Vice President Daniel Castro. If the U.S. government has evidence to the contrary, it should share this information with lawmakers and the public. Similarly, if the app is not complying with U.S. data privacy or other laws, regulators should hold it accountable for any violations. He added that the U.S. punishing foreign tech firms based on rumors and innuendo sets a precedent for other countries to retaliate and freely impose trade restrictions on digital goods and services for vague and undefined national security threats.

ASK THE AUDIENCE: DO YOU TRUST TWITTER AHEAD OF THE ELECTION? In the wake of last week's unprecedented Twitter hack, more than half of social media users fear that the platforms cannot successfully thwart election interference or disinformation campaigns ahead of November, according to a new Morning Consult poll.

Of more than 2,000 social media users polled over the weekend following the breach, 56 percent said they have less confidence in tech platforms ability to fight such attempts from bad actors and more than 70 percent have little or no trust in the sites to protect sensitive personal information like full name, email address, birth date and geolocation. (Sixty-five percent felt the same about banking information.)

Meanwhile, over in Congress: The top two Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as the top two Democrats on the respective intelligence committees, put out an urgent call for an FBI briefing on an apparent election-related foreign influence operation targeting lawmakers, our POLITICO colleagues report: Among the Democrats concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for laundering a foreign operation to damage Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand. A Johnson spokesperson didnt immediately reply to a request for comment.

What does Biden have to say about that? In his most definitive statements to date on election interference obtained first by POLITICO the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee threatened to hold the Kremlin and other foreign governments accountable for any meddling if elected, Natasha Bertrand reports. Biden said he will treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nations government, and plans to direct the U.S. Intelligence Community to report publicly and in a timely manner on any efforts by foreign governments that have interfered, or attempted to interfere, with U.S. elections.

LOBBYING LATEST: HEY, SMALL SPENDER Google continues to reduce its spending on federal lobbying, at least the kind that has to be publicly disclosed. The search giant shelled out $1.69 million during the second quarter, new records show. For comparison, Google spent $2.94 million during the same quarter last year and $5.83 million in the second quarter of 2018. Google has laid off several outside firms and restructured its internal staff over the past two years, but the steep decline is still surprising given the companys woes in Washington have only grown. Google declined to comment.

Twitter spending held relatively flat at $390,000 in the second quarter, but the social network has tapped TwinLogic Strategies as its latest outside lobbyist. The firm will work on content moderation and intermediary liability issues, among other policy matters. Other notable new contracts: Cypress Advocacy is lobbying for Amazon Web Services on the CARES Act; BL Partners is on retainer for T-Mobile; and Mercury Public Affairs is advocating on behalf of Netflix.

Antitrust expert and former Justice Department official Fiona Scott Morton is advising Amazon and Apple as the tech giants face federal antitrust probes, per Bloomberg. Melody Neil, former founding partner and principal of an advocacy firm that offered government affairs expertise to companies and business trade associations, joined the data center services provider Digital Realty as a senior director of business operations and government affairs. Denise Linn Riedl, chief innovation officer for the city of South Bend, Ind., and Leon A. Wilson, the Cleveland Foundations chief of digital innovation and chief information officer, were named board members for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. ICYMI: Alabama announced the creation of the Alabama Innovation Commission, also known as Innovate Alabama, its first statewide commission promoting entrepreneurial and tech growth. The advisory council includes Alabama native and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Trumps texting trouble: When the Trump campaign recently tested out its mass-text messaging program, key for its small-donor outreach and voter turnout, the program was flagged as spam and shut down by telecom giants, POLITICO reports.

Surprise: Google promised privacy with its coronavirus contact tracing app, but government agencies are now surprised that this isnt quite the case, NYT reports.

Orders for the oversight board: "A new policy-focused nonprofit that emerged from the recent wave of big tech scrutiny is calling for members of Facebook's Oversight Board to either step up or step down," TechCrunch reports on the group Accountable Tech.

Should Facebook take sides? Boycott organizers want Facebook to pick a side and align its corporate operations with aggressive activism on issues such as racism and social justice, former Facebook policy director Matt Perault, who now leads Dukes Center on Science and Technology Policy, writes on Chicago Booths ProMarket blog. But picking a side would mean a radical shift in the companys approach to its product and alienate many of its users.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([emailprotected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([emailprotected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([emailprotected], @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([emailprotected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([emailprotected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([emailprotected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([emailprotected], @leah_nylen).

TTYL.

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