WASHINGTON - Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson addresses the Homeland Security Advisory Council during a meeting at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., Dec.1, 2016. The HSAC provides advice and recommendations to the Secretary on matters related to homeland security. The Council comprises leaders from state and local government, first responder communities, the private sector, and academia. Official DHS photo by Barry Bahler. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Recently leaked documents have revealed that executives from Facebook and Twitter held regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss censorship on a wide range of topics. The Intercept first reported the leak though it was also revealed in documents and minutes that originated from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s lawsuit against the Biden Administration. The topics the meetings revolved around include the withdrawal from Afghanistan, racial justice, and the coronavirus.

According to a Twitter thread written by Lee Fang an investigative journalist at The Intercept:

 

Much of the information is still hidden from the public. Though, The Intercept has reported that a lot of this new information began to surface when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board” which would police misinformation and malinformation threatening U.S. interests.

DHS has not classified how they will determine disinformation, which allows DHS to make politically motivated decisions on the basis of hate speech. It is also unclear to what extent Americans’ social feeds will be affected by these censorship efforts.

What is known at this time is that the work is primarily being done by CISA, a DHS sub-agency, and meetings between media entities, DHS, and the FBI have been happening biweekly as recently as August.

While CISA has defended its work by stating, according to The Intercept, “once CISA notified a social media platform of disinformation, the social media platform could independently decide whether to remove or modify the post”

The truth is there is a portal for government officials to flag content on Facebook and Instagram and send it “through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to [be] use[d],” to throttle or suppress content from the sites.

 

Breitbart News has reported that in the 2020 election cycle the EIP provided tools to federal government and the Democratic party that allowed them to flag stories enabling big tech platforms to suppress content or add warning labels to certain content. Breitbart also included in that report that the outlets being targeted by the EIP with that technology were “Breitbart News, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Epoch Times, as well as the social media accounts of prominent conservatives Charlie Kirk, Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Mark Levin, James O’Keefe, and Sean Hannity, amongst others.”

Read more on this story at Breitbart and The Intercept.



Comments

  1. Secret meetings to usurp the 1st Amendment. Talk about destroying democracy. This has to be illegal and prosecutable.

  2. So Dorsey (Padraig and Vagia), Zuck and the Google Boys have been colluding with the Federal Govt. against the American People. I hope the American People teach them a good lesson this Nov. 8.

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