Truth Cops: Leaked Documents Outline DHS Plan To Police Disinformation (1 Viewer)

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    SaintForLife

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    THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

    The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.

    Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

    “Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

    In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

    Key Takeaways
    • Though DHS shuttered its controversial Disinformation Governance Board, a strategic document reveals the underlying work is ongoing.
    • DHS plans to target inaccurate information on “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
    • Facebook created a special portal for DHS and government partners to report disinformation directly.


    -The work is primarily done by CISA, a DHS sub-agency tasked with protecting critical national infrastructure.

    -DHS, the FBI, and several media entities are having biweekly meetings as recently as August.
    DHS considered countering disinformation relating to content that undermines trust in financial systems and courts.

    -The FBI agent who primed social media platforms to take down the Hunter Biden laptop story continued to have a role in DHS policy discussions.

    ...In retrospect, the New York Post reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election provides an elucidating case study of how this works in an increasingly partisan environment.

    Much of the public ignored the reporting or assumed it was false, as over 50 former intelligence officials charged that the laptop story was a creation of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. The mainstream media was primed by allegations of election interference in 2016 — and, to be sure, Trump did attempt to use the laptop to disrupt the Biden campaign. Twitter ended up banning links to the New York Post’s report on the contents of the laptop during the crucial weeks leading up to the election. Facebook also throttled users’ ability to view the story.

    In recent months, a clearer picture of the government’s influence has emerged.

    In an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook had limited sharing of the New York Post’s reporting after a conversation with the FBI. “The background here is that the FBI came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan. The FBI told them, Zuckerberg said, that “‘We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump.’” When the Post’s story came out in October 2020, Facebook thought it “fit that pattern” the FBI had told them to look out for.

    Zuckerberg said he regretted the decision, as did Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter at the time. Despite claims that the laptop’s contents were forged, the Washington Post confirmed that at least some of the emails on the laptop were authentic. The New York Times authenticated emails from the laptop — many of which were cited in the original New York Post reporting from October 2020 — that prosecutors have examined as part of the Justice Department’s probe into whether the president’s son violated the law on a range of issues, including money laundering, tax-related offenses, and foreign lobbying registration.

    Documents filed in federal court as part of a lawsuit by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana add a layer of new detail to Zuckerberg’s anecdote, revealing that officials leading the push to expand the government’s reach into disinformation also played a quiet role in shaping the decisions of social media giants around the New York Post story.

     
    I will ask again, since I didn’t get an answer. What was the threat? How was anyone threatened? What were the consequences?
    Go look it up yourself. We've had this same conversation multiple times and you still keep asking the same questions.
     
    Go look it up yourself. We've had this same conversation multiple times and you still keep asking the same questions.
    You don’t know what threat there was, because there wasn’t any. Thanks for confirming it.
     
    You don’t know what threat there was, because there wasn’t any. Thanks for confirming it.
    I didn't confirm anything. You keep asking me the same questions over and over when you are presented with information that contradicts your claims. No matter what you are shown you still claim it never happened which is a common theme of yours.
     
    I didn't confirm anything.
    You’re right. You cannot confirm there were any threats used. There were no consequences for not following the requests. There was no violation of anyone’s First Amendment rights.
     
    What does the word “likely” mean? And this is a preliminary opinion from one set of judges. They are leaving it open, because it’s not proven.
     
    As per usual, SFL is just reading tweets from bad actors who are not telling the whole truth. Reading on this recent decision, it walks back almost all of the lower court decision of a single judge. Here is a comment putting the decision in context:

    “Evelyn Douek, assistant professor at Stanford Law, said the case was a “strong candidate for the Supreme Court to weigh in, given the law isn’t clear, the issues are so important, and courts have come to different conclusions.”

    Douek said the 5th Circuit “paints with a slightly less broad and more careful brush than the district court did.” But she warned the decision “lumps together lots of different kinds of government speech in a way that papers over a lot of nuance.”

    The 5th Circuit ruling reversed Doughty’s order specifically enjoining the actions of leaders at DHS, HHS and other agencies, saying many of those individuals “were permissibly exercising government speech.””

    So painting this as a complete victory is pretty disingenuous when it reverses most of the previous decision. The DOJ can appeal this decision, and it’s unclear whether it will or not.
     
    Here is the way I think of this. We have the 5th Circuit writing an opinion with some hemming and hawing that there were “likely” some issues with the way the Biden Admin fought to keep vaccine disinformation off of social media. They were trying to save people’s lives. It was a global deadly pandemic and we had an unprecedented amount of disinformation both about the disease and about the vaccines that were saving people from a horrible death. It got adjudicated by the courts like in a normal democracy. I don’t 100% agree with the 5th Circuit decision, and it may be appealed, but it is the normal course of things in the way our democracy works.

    Then we have a GOP Senator and the likely GOP nominee for President saying they want to criminally charge an author of an opinion piece because he criticized the former President, and take an entire network off of TV because they criticized the former President. The Senator actually formally requested a criminal investigation. This is not normal, and signals a dangerous turn toward authoritarianism.

    I am able to see the difference. Apparently there are some who are arguing on social media that the situation in the first paragraph is worse than the situation in the second. And some who are so partisan that they go along with that nonsense.
     
    I don't know why you guys keep feeding this thread. When it comes to censorship, @SaintForLife 's insincerity has been more than established. You just have to mention CRT. You don't see posts from him condemning book banning, actual overt government attacks on businesses, anything related to LGBTQ like "don't say gay" laws, officially banning words even if the words are accurate...
     
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    Maybe SFL will care about other aspects of the First Amendment? Trump is the only candidate that is actively anti-First Amendment, that’s just a fact.

     
    Maybe SFL will care about other aspects of the First Amendment? Trump is the only candidate that is actively anti-First Amendment, that’s just a fact.


    Guess he doesn't realize the overwhelming number of immigrants on the South border are Christians.
     
    Wow, I never knew the USA had a national "religion"....kind of goes against everything we are supposed to stand for, does it not?
     
    Another government funded cutout pushing censorship. The Stanford Internet Observatory was one of the worst ones.



    Full Tweet:
    —After Krispy Kreme announced it would give free donuts to people who got vaccinated, the Virality Project alerted platforms about “criticism against Krispy Kreme’s vaccine for donut promo” and labeled such criticism as “general anti-vaccination.”

    — The Virality Project flagged a PDF of consolidated data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national vaccine safety reporting system co-managed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. (VAERS data is publicly available.) The Project noted that Google had removed the content after its report.

    — The Project flagged an Israeli pre-print that found natural immunity to be as protective as vaccination. “Please note this Israeli narrative claiming that Covid-19 immunity is equivalent to vaccination immunity,” Virality Project wrote to Twitter and Facebook, including the link to a tweet from Congressman Thomas Massie.

    — The Virality Project flagged a Lancet research article about the absolute risk reduction of Covid vaccines, calling it an “alleged authoritative source.” Facebook then labeled the article.

    — In one highly troubling instance, the Project flagged someone’s Google Drive. “See the following Google Drive links being used to compile testimonies about vaccine shedding, videos showing side effects, and PDFs detailing conspiracy theories,” the Virality Project wrote. “This was reported to us from one of our public health partners, who found that an individual commented on these links on their website.” The Project noted that Google removed the content.

    — On multiple occasions, the Virality Project sent platforms reports about resistance to vaccine mandates and lockdowns, such as the “Worldwide Rally for Freedom” and a TikTok trend to “raise middle fingers to vaccine.” The Project called this content “organized outrage.”

    — Contrary to Stanford’s claim that the Project did not “ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects,” the Virality Project repeatedly reported testimonials of vaccine injuries to Twitter and Facebook, including testimonials from healthcare workers. Accounts of vaccine injuries, the Project wrote to platforms, could “fuel vaccine hesitancy.”

    — When Pfizer claimed that its vaccine for children age 12 to 15 was 100% effective, the Project reported that “anti-vaccine groups” were expressing concerns about mandates for children and “disbelief at the 100% efficacy number.”

    — In June 2021, the Virality Project flagged accurate claims that the World Health Organization (WHO) did not recommend vaccinating children. In its communication with platforms, the Project flagged a tweet by journalist David Zweig that contained this claim. (The WHO has since changed the advice on its website.)

    — The Virality Project flagged jokes, including what it called the “Right-Wing & Anti-Vaxx Viral Trend” to say, "I Identify as Vaccinated."

    — According to Stanford, the Virality Project’s work “centered on identification and analysis of social media commentary relating to the COVID-19 vaccine, including emerging rumors about the vaccine where the truth of the issue discussed could not yet be determined.”

    Yet in its Jira system, the Virality Project expressed absolute certainty about the vaccine, called doubters “anti-vax,” and targeted individuals like Kulldorff who challenged CDC advice. The Project clearly aimed to control the vaccine narrative and prohibit questions about vaccine safety and efficacy.


     
    As per usual, SFL is just reading tweets from bad actors who are not telling the whole truth. Reading on this recent decision, it walks back almost all of the lower court decision of a single judge. Here is a comment putting the decision in context:

    “Evelyn Douek, assistant professor at Stanford Law, said the case was a “strong candidate for the Supreme Court to weigh in, given the law isn’t clear, the issues are so important, and courts have come to different conclusions.”

    Douek said the 5th Circuit “paints with a slightly less broad and more careful brush than the district court did.” But she warned the decision “lumps together lots of different kinds of government speech in a way that papers over a lot of nuance.”

    The 5th Circuit ruling reversed Doughty’s order specifically enjoining the actions of leaders at DHS, HHS and other agencies, saying many of those individuals “were permissibly exercising government speech.””

    So painting this as a complete victory is pretty disingenuous when it reverses most of the previous decision. The DOJ can appeal this decision, and it’s unclear whether it will or not.
    After I posted about the government cutout Stanford Internet Observatory that is involved in censorship, I searched for Evelyn Douek on X and WOW look who she was interviewing.

    I'm sure it's just a coincidence and she's not supportive of the Internet censorship right?


     
    Maybe SFL will care about other aspects of the First Amendment? Trump is the only candidate that is actively anti-First Amendment, that’s just a fact.


    You are only concerned about possible censorship that hasn't happened, but past and current censorship you say it didn't happen or you make excuses for. 🤔
     
    You are only concerned about possible censorship that hasn't happened, but past and current censorship you say it didn't happen or you make excuses for. 🤔
    You don’t know what censorship actually is. You demonstrate that almost daily.
     

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