House Dems call for an FBI investigation of Parler over the January 6 riot and possible ties to Russia

The House Oversight Committee is calling on FBI Director Christopher Wray to open up an investigation into Parler “as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement” of the Capitol riot on January 6:

House Oversight chair Carolyn Maloney calls on FBI Directory Wray in new letter to conduct a review into the role Parler played in the Capitol attack, “as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement.”

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 21, 2021

From the committee:

#BREAKING: @OversightDems Chair @RepMaloney requests @FBI Director Christopher Wray conduct a thorough investigation of the social media platform Parler's role in the Jan. 6th domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.https://t.co/JPeiT6NvsX pic.twitter.com/5aGUhLN3J7

— Oversight Committee (@OversightDems) January 21, 2021

Dems also want the FBI to investigate Parler’s “financing and its ties to Russia”:

1) Oversight Cmte Chair Maloney to FBI Dir Wray: "Questions have also been raised about Parler’s financing and its ties to Russia, which the Intelligence Community has warned is continuing to use social media and other measures to sow discord in the United States"

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 21, 2021

Dems noted that the company’s founder is married to a Russian:

2) Maloney: "The company was founded by John Matze shortly after he traveled in Russia with his wife, who is Russian and whose family reportedly has ties to the Russian government."

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 21, 2021

"The site's creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol." https://t.co/gqZ9WJebgx

— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) January 21, 2021

From Wired:

WHEN HACKERS EXPLOITED a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform’s contents last week, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata revealing exactly how many of the site’s users had taken part in the invasion of the US Capitol building just days before. But the videos uploaded to Parler also contain an equally sensitive bounty of data sitting in plain sight: thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now one website has done the work of cataloging and publishing every one of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site’s creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people’s deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

As the FBI is currently arresting people based on their social media photos, this will be an investigative goldmine:

Alleged hockey stick guy Michael Foy arrested today based on an investigation that started from an @ to the FBI’s account and caught a break from his father’s boastful Facebook posts. https://t.co/JFdvb6RElq pic.twitter.com/n5nyg30atH

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 21, 2021

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