The video above options the November 30, 2023, Home Judiciary Committee listening to on the Weaponization of the Federal Authorities.1
Over the previous yr, the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Authorities has launched a number of reviews detailing how the federal government is a) harassing and intimidating residents to close down undesirable viewpoints, b) utilizing misinformation and propaganda to drive false narratives and c) censoring protected speech utilizing third events. Right here’s a listing of these reviews that you may peruse at your comfort.
The Subcommittee additionally filed an amicus transient on Missouri v. Biden in early August 2023.
Rep. Thomas Massie Censored
Authorities-funded organizations have been flagging official congressional accounts, together with mine, to get posts censored on social media. If the federal government will try and censor a member of Congress’s communications to his constituents, the federal government will censor anybody. pic.twitter.com/kvD3s9XlMv
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 30, 2023
Across the one-hour mark within the featured video, Rep. Thomas Massie questions Olivia Troye — a former intelligence official on the Division of Homeland Safety below President Obama and a nationwide safety and counterterrorism adviser to vp Mike Pence — in regards to the U.S. authorities’s use of third social gathering organizations to censor protected speech.
The related clip is included above. In her opening assertion, Troye accused the Committee of “indulging in fantasy indifferent from actuality.” “Members of this committee and their witnesses make grand and obscure accusations about authorities censorship,” she mentioned. She additionally claimed the members have been “spreading conspiracy theories about authorities censorship.”
Massie went on to level to a tweet he posted Might 19, 2021, below his official congressional account, during which he had linked to a peer-reviewed examine that discovered the effectiveness of pure immunity was similar to that of the Pfizer COVID shot.
“Right here’s a complete examine that tracked reinfections and COVID problems for 187,549 individuals with prior SARS-CoV2 an infection,” he wrote in his tweet. “Conclusion: Effectiveness of immunity on account of prior an infection is identical as for the Pfizer vaccine.”
This tweet was censored by Twitter after the Stanford Web Observatory’s Virality Undertaking flagged it as “misinformation.” As detailed in earlier articles, the Virality Undertaking is partnered with CISA and funded by the U.S. authorities to carry out censorship actions the federal government can not legally carry out.
When requested if she thought there was a purpose to flag Massey’s tweet, Troye answered, “Will depend on whether or not you’re spreading inaccurate info.” However who determines its “accuracy”?
It was a peer-reviewed, revealed examine, which implies a number of scientists who weren’t a part of the examine reviewed it. Is the Virality Undertaking certified to guage the accuracy of revealed analysis? This can be a very harmful slippery slope. If we can not share peer-reviewed science, which is the epitome of “respected supply,” then what, precisely, is appropriate to share?
“Are you going to take a seat right here and keep that it’s a conspiracy concept that this occurred?” Massey requested Troye. “We now have the paperwork … that confirmed this (censorship) occurred.”
“Nicely, then it (Massey’s tweet) should have been flagged for a purpose,” Troye replied.
“What purpose?” mentioned Massey. “Is there ever an excellent purpose to censor a member of Congress? … I carry this up, No. 1 to point out that your testimony is fake. However No. 2, if they will do that to a member of Congress’ official account, they will do it to anyone.”
Whistleblower Reveals Army Contractors’ Secret Plan for Censorship
Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger testified at this assembly for the second time. 9 months in the past, he testified and shared proof with the Subcommittee in regards to the existence of a “Censorship Industrial Advanced, a community of presidency companies, together with the Division of Homeland Safety, authorities contractors, and Huge Tech media platforms that conspired to censor strange Individuals and elected officers alike for holding disfavored views.”2
All of that was wild sufficient, however there’s extra. On the November 30 listening to, Shellenberger uncovered a gaggle known as the Cyber Risk Intelligence League (CTIL), which consists of army contractors that aren’t solely censoring Individuals, but in addition utilizing subtle psychological operations towards us.
In accordance with Shellenberger, the CTIL was based by a gaggle of former Israeli and British intelligence brokers who initially volunteered their cybersecurity providers FOR FREE to multi-billion-dollar hospital and well being care organizations within the U.S.
CTIL additionally gives bodily safety and “cognitive” safety, i.e., safety towards misinformation, and these providers are volunteered by U.S. and British army contractors. In accordance with a whistleblower who shared inside CTIL paperwork with Shellenberger, quite a lot of CTIL “volunteers” are presently in authorities make use of.
Additionally they used formal authorities letter head (FBI, CISA, U.S. Navy and so forth) when speaking with one another. As famous by Massey, that “makes it exhausting for people to assert that these weren’t brokers of the federal government or performing in coordination with the federal government …”
CTIL Recordsdata Present Censorship Plot Is Greater Than Imagined
Now, the CTIL’s plan to manage the data panorama goes additional than these of CISA, the Virality Undertaking and different government-led censorship actions. CTIL’s plan additionally contains utilizing debanking as monetary leverage to close individuals up, and pressuring social media platforms to alter their phrases of service to facilitate censorship and deplatforming below the guise of “phrases of service violations” — and extra.
In a December 4, 2023, Substack article, Shellenberger’s colleague, Alex Gutentag wrote about this new cache of paperwork, known as the CTIL Recordsdata:3
“Throughout final Thursday’s (November 30, 2023) Congressional listening to on the Weaponization of the Federal Authorities, Democratic members of Congress insisted4 that censorship efforts of teams just like the Cyber Risk Intelligence League (CTIL),5 the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP),6 and the Virality Undertaking (VP)7 have been benign and never a violation of the First Modification.
‘It is not the First Modification!’ mentioned Rep. Dan Goldman, ‘It is the (social media platforms’) Phrases of Service … And they’re flagging it for the social media firms to make their very own choices. That’s not the First Modification. That’s the Phrases of Service.’
However the CTIL Recordsdata, a trove of paperwork {that a} whistleblower supplied to Public and Racket, reveal that US and UK army contractors developed and used superior techniques — together with demanding that social media platforms change their Phrases of Service — to form public opinion about Covid-19, and that getting content material eliminated was only one technique utilized by the Censorship Industrial Advanced.”
Adversarial Misinformation and Affect Ways and Strategies
As defined by Gutentag,8 the CTIL partnered with the Division of Homeland Safety’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) to implement a framework known as “AMITT,” which stands for “Adversarial Misinformation and Affect Ways and Strategies.”
The predecessor to this program was the DISARM framework — described as an “open-source, community-led9 … grasp framework for preventing disinformation by way of sharing information and evaluation, and coordinating efficient motion10” — created by the DISARM Basis in 2017.
In accordance with the DISARM Basis, AMITT was launched with the monetary help of the Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2019.11,12 The AMITT framework contains a wide range of “offensive actions,” together with:13
- Influencing authorities coverage
- Discrediting various media
- Utilizing bots and sock puppets to control and direct public dialogue
- Pre-bunking
- Counter-messaging
Extra particular AMITT methods embrace however are usually not restricted to:
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Creating coverage that forces social media to police mis- and disinformation |
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Creating “sturdy dialogue” between the federal authorities and personal sector to enhance reporting |
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Marginalizing and discrediting “extremists” |
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Naming and shaming “influencers” who share unsanctioned info |
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Simulating misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and responses to them, beforehand |
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Debanking offenders and reducing off their entry to monetary providers14 |
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“Inoculating” populations towards “misinformation” utilizing “media literacy coaching” |
A Full-Fledged Army-Led Affect Operation
Gutentag continues:15
“Removed from merely defending the general public from falsehoods, each authorities and non-profit actors inside Censorship Industrial Advanced have adopted CTIL’s actual playbook and have waged a full-fledged affect operation towards Individuals.
This affect operation has deep ties to safety and intelligence companies, as is evidenced by way of many examples of collaboration. In a single occasion of such collaboration, supposedly impartial “disinformation researchers” like Renée DiResta coordinated16 a 2020 election tabletop train with army officers.
Protection and intelligence funding helps a lot of the Censorship Industrial Advanced. As an example, Graphika, which was concerned in each EIP and VP, receives grants from the Division of Protection, DARPA, and the Navy.
Pentagon-affiliated entities are closely concerned in ‘anti-disinformation’ work. Mitre, a significant protection contractor, obtained funding to deal with ‘disinformation’ about elections and COVID.
The US authorities paid Mitre, a company staffed by former intelligence and army personnel, to watch and report17 what Individuals mentioned in regards to the virus on-line, and to develop vaccine confidence messaging.18
This government-backed army analysis group, Public found, was current within the EIP and VP misinformation reporting system, and in election disinformation report emails to CISA …
Why are companies which might be presupposed to fight international threats utilizing military-grade psychological instruments to wage affect operations towards the home inhabitants?”
Anti-Democratic Ideology Is Driving the Censorship
As famous by Gutentag, these efforts look like partly pushed by the necessity to manufacture perceived threats to justify the existence of the counter-terror forms.” However there are additionally clear ideological components at play. He writes:19
“Each (federal legislation enforcement and the intelligence group) now primarily deal with Individuals as an enemy inhabitants, with huge help from the Democratic social gathering and the legacy media.
The outcome has been large-scale info warfare towards US residents, with subtle techniques being employed to develop propaganda narratives about Trump, COVID, and the 2020 election within the identify of combatting ‘disinformation.’ We at the moment are uncovering the clear proof that army contractors seem to have been on the forefront of this effort …
What was as soon as thought-about a ‘conspiracy concept’ that army and intelligence forces have been manipulating public opinion by way of inorganic interventions, has now been confirmed.
Our examine of the Censorship Industrial Advanced has uncovered a far-reaching plan to subvert the democratic course of and have interaction in actions which have a foundation in army methods and that are tantamount to makes an attempt at thought or thoughts management.”
The Plan to Get Censorship Again on Twitter
Right here is the top of the Stanford Web Observatory, Alex Stamos, taunting that Elon Musk “purchased himself right into a hellish existence” the week Musk acquired Twitter.
He goes on, 14 occasions, to call Tesla as a vulnerability governments may exploit to power Musk to censor speech pic.twitter.com/f3WuJkWjfr
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 4, 2023
The brief clip above options Alex Stamos, head of the Stanford Web Observatory, which runs the federal government’s censorship equipment by way of its Virality Undertaking.
In it, he’s taunting Elon Musk, saying he “purchased himself right into a hellish existence” by making moderating Twitter his private duty. In so doing, Musk is putting his web value, most of which is invested in Tesla, in addition to all different Tesla shareholders, “in jeopardy.”
The rationale? 4 phrases: The Digital Providers Act.20 This European Union legislation, which took impact August 25, 2023, requires on-line firms to actively police their platforms for “unlawful” content material or face big fines — as much as 6% of their international income. Repeated refusal to adjust to guidelines or requests for motion may end up in suspension of the platform inside the EU altogether.
What Stamos seems to be insinuating is that by Musk insisting on preserving X a free speech platform, he dangers dropping all of it, and this type of monetary extortion leverage is exactly what the CTIL plan requires.
One other Surveillance Program Revealed
In associated information, Wired journal not too long ago reported21 on leaked paperwork that confirm the existence of a “secretive authorities program” that enables legislation enforcement to entry trillions of telephone information of Individuals with out a warrant.
In a latest letter to the Division of Justice, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden challenged the legality of this system, which has been up and working for greater than a decade. In accordance with Wired:22
“… a surveillance program now referred to as Information Analytical Providers (DAS) has for greater than a decade allowed federal, state, and native legislation enforcement companies to mine the small print of Individuals’ calls, analyzing the telephone information of numerous people who find themselves not suspected of any crime, together with victims.
Utilizing a method referred to as chain evaluation, this system targets not solely these in direct telephone contact with a legal suspect however anybody with whom these people have been in touch as properly.”
DAS began out as a program known as Hemisphere, run by the White Home in coordination with AT&T. It was renamed DAS in 2013. It captures telephone calls made utilizing the AT&T infrastructure on behalf of U.S. legislation enforcement companies, together with native police, sheriffs’ departments, U.S. customs and postal inspectors.
DAS is managed below an anti-drug trafficking program known as HIDTA, which stands for “high-intensity drug trafficking space,” however leaked information from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Heart (NCRIC) exhibits the system can also be being utilized in circumstances which might be unrelated to drug trafficking. In accordance with Wired, the DAS information doesn’t embrace recordings of conversations.
The info do, nevertheless, embrace figuring out info such because the names of the caller and recipient, their telephone numbers, dates and occasions of calls, spanning not less than 10 years or extra into the previous. Collectively, these information can be utilized to find out the precise areas of individuals, “a apply deemed unconstitutional with out a warrant in 2018,” Wired notes.
In accordance with Wyden, “The size of the info obtainable to and routinely looked for the advantage of legislation enforcement below the Hemisphere Undertaking is beautiful in its scope.” Furthermore, it’s not below congressional oversight, and since it’s run out of the White Home, it’s exempt from privateness impression evaluation guidelines and Freedom of Data Act (FOIA) requests.
Protections afforded by the Digital Communications Privateness Act are additionally circumvented as a result of AT&T’s name report assortment happens alongside a telecommunications “spine.”
In early November 2023, Wyden and different lawmakers within the Home and Senate launched the Authorities Surveillance Reform Act of 2023,23 which goals to patch the loopholes DAS is presently exploiting.
If handed, the DAS program would grow to be explicitly unlawful and would doubtless be compelled to close down. So, I encourage you to contact your representatives and ask them to help this laws.