ORLANDO, Fla. — Republican and Democratic members of Florida’s congressional delegation are warning about expanding foreign efforts to influence the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

“Let’s be really clear, this is an attack on our country,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-House District 7. “They happen to be using cyber tools instead of missiles and kinetic weapons, but this is an attack on our country.”

Representatives from the Office of Director of National Intelligence, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency held a classified meeting Friday for the delegation.

The meeting was in response to demands made by Murphy and Rep. Michael Waltz, R-House District 6.

Note: Murphy and Waltz are both up for re-election in the November 3 election.

The pair pushed for the bipartisan hearing after national intelligence officials blamed Iran for a series of recent letters, posing as “Proud Boys” members intimidating voters across Florida.

“When foreign adversaries seek to sow discord and disinformation in our election, we as Americans should all be offended and should work together to fight back against this,” Murphy said Friday after the classified briefing.

Foreign interference is nothing new.

U.S. intelligence agencies have long outlined how Russia carried out vast misinformation campaigns during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

That effort included penetrating two Florida county election systems, an act that Murphy and Waltz say was only disclosed publicly years later as a footnote in the Mueller Report.

“What I’m looking towards moving forward is what we do about it from a policy perspective,” Congressman Waltz said. “…I want to impose costs, I want to raise costs, and I want to impose some pain, frankly, for them doing this and establish deterrence.”

Representatives Waltz and Murphy are leading bipartisan efforts they say will streamline communications at various levels when foreign nations carry out cyber-attacks targeting the U.S.

Waltz is also pushing for measures targeting tech companies, including Facebook and Google.

While Waltz says tech companies were cooperative with U.S. agencies in regard to the recent Iran attack, he believes they need to be more proactive yet fair.

While some have argued that tech companies have allowed unfiltered content on their platforms, those like Waltz are also working to ensure that tech companies don’t broadly censor certain political posts.

Waltz is a co-sponsor of The Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritan Act which Waltz’s office said “…would allow Americans to file lawsuits against Big Tech companies that breach “good faith” user agreements by censoring political speech and suppressing content.”

Cybersecurity Expert: Social Media Giants haven't Done Enough

“We have given social media giants more than enough time to figure out how to stop their platforms from being used to spread the political discord, and I do not feel they’ve done enough since the last election to make everyone feel safe,” said Craig Agranoff, a cybersecurity expert and adjunct professor of political marketing and campaigning at Florida Atlantic University.

Agranoff warns the reason why American voters and social media users are so vulnerable to foreign misinformation attacks is because at times they want the information to be true, even though it is likely false.

“A lot of times we should fault ourselves because we fall prey to these things because lately we’ve become so divided and we sit in our echo chambers,” Agranoff said.

The value of cyber attacks to foreign countries is apparent from the payoff from the 2016 election efforts, Agranoff said.

“Although we’re worried about foreign interference, we should be worried about the very people here at home, not paying attention and fact checking the information they’re sharing,” Agranoff said.

Beyond people sharing unfiltered and unchecked information online, Agranoff says technology itself can cause further concern.

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That includes “deep fakes” where technology can be used to create visual effects to show something that is not true. “Deep fakes” are often used to illustrate someone saying something that they did not actually say.

“It’s impossible for the regular eye to detect and those kinds of deep fakes have people believing that those they trust the most are saying those specific things, whereas they’ve been manipulated to say something very different,” Agranoff said.

“If you get a crazy email trying to intimidate you or presenting false information, Central Floridians, don’t you believe it, go ahead and vote,” said Rep. Darren Soto, D-Florida House 9.

Soto, also up for reelection November 3, said he too is reassured after Friday’s classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community is proactively fending off potential future cyber-attacks.

Lawmakers and federal and state officials collectively agree that despite the cyber-attacks, Florida’s physical election system is safe.

“We have paper ballots, we review them election night, we have a certification process for a week, you can’t hack a paper ballot and so I have absolute confidence that the vote totals in Florida are going to reflect the will of the American people,” Soto said.