President Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order that would sanction any foreign actor for attempting to interfere in U.S. elections.
According to a report by Reuters, “Sanction targets could include individual people or entire companies accused of interfering in U.S. elections by cyber attacks or other means, a U.S. official told Reuters.”
The details of the order, according to Reuters’ sources, are as follows:
The order will put a range of agencies in charge of deciding if meddling occurred, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and including the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Homeland Security Department, the sources said.
Based on a recent draft of the order reviewed by the U.S. official, it will require any federal agency aware of election interference by foreigners to take the information to the office of Director of National Intelligence.
Election interference will be defined in the order as hacking attempts against ‘election infrastructure,’ and efforts to sway public opinion through coordinated digital propaganda or systematic leaks of private political information.
The U.S. official also told Reuters that the Trump administration seeks to “set a new norm in cyberspace.”
“This is a first step in stating boundaries and publicly announcing our response for bad behavior,” the official said.
The decision comes ahead of the November midterm elections.
Facebook has warned of potential meddling as the social media company has detected tens of fake pages and accounts created on its platform talking about divisive issues and spending thousands of dollars on ads.