As part of a process that has already held several meetings, the Biden administration is trying to implement a program that will allow it to intervene in social networks to censor without inconvenience.
The year’s most important news has just exploded in the United States.
Documents leaked to The Intercept show that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is working with social media companies and the financial sector to censor negative news that damages the image of the Democrat administration.
Read also: Check out our coverage on curated alternative narratives
The bombshell report came from Missouri Prosecutor General Eric Schmitt, who filed a lawsuit against the federal government for censoring news during the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
According to the leaked documents, which include text messages and emails between high-ranking Biden administration officials, the DHS agency CISA was reformed by the Democrat administration last August to pressure companies to censor people’s publications, users, and bank accounts.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, and even JP Morgan have held weekly meetings with CISA officials to present various publications or individuals and discuss their censorship between the two parties.
According to the documents, DHS has asked to censor millions of posts related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, “racial justice,” U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support for Ukraine.
Another piece of news suppressed to this day at the request of the Biden administration is the contents of his son Hunter Biden’s laptop, where photos, videos, and emails were found showing various crimes, from influence peddling to illegal drug purchases.
Since the classification of “disinformation” is not clearly defined in CISA’s terms of reference, any ideas or opinions that contradict the Biden administration’s official narrative may be considered objectionable content.
FACEBOOK HAS SET UP A PAGE FOR THE GOVERNMENTS TO REMOVE POSTS
The federal government’s influence over social media companies’ decisions went so far that Facebook extended its website to allow CISA agents direct access to request content deletions without having to attend previously weekly meetings.
A presentation provided to DHS explained that a subpage of the Content Request System, called the Government Reporting System, was set up to allow federal agents to log in with their own credentials and request removal automatically.
The facebook.com/xtakedowns page is still online despite this information, likely because a week before the election, the future of Biden’s administration is at stake, and he does not want to risk not moderating content posted on social media.
The Biden administration sought to make some of this infrastructure public in April 2022 with the announcement of the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board.
The exact duties of the board were never made clear, nor how it would serve its purpose of defining and combating Fake News, but it generated so much negative opinion that it had to be shut down within days.
Today we know that the closure was so easy because the CISA agency was already doing all the tasks it was supposed to do publicly, in secret, and with the support of several companies.
Preserved documents include minutes of meetings between federal agents and companies from social networks and the financial sector.
For example, FBI official Laura Dehmlow warned in a March meeting with Twitter and JP Morgan executives that the threat of “subversive” information on social media could increase citizen dissatisfaction with the government.
“We need an accountable media infrastructure,” Dehmlow stressed at the meeting.
There are also text messages from February sent by Microsoft executive Matt Masterson to a DHS director expressing frustration that other companies are reluctant to accept government intervention.
“Platforms need to be on good terms with the government. It’s exciting how reluctant they remain,” he says.
THE ORIGINS OF THE AGENCY BIDEN USES TO CENSOR SOCIAL NETWORKS
On Nov. 16, 2018, Trump signed a bill passed by Congress that officially created a federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a decision he certainly regrets.
The bill was drafted and passed in response to a series of high-profile hacking attacks on U.S. companies such as SolarWinds and Equifax by China. The bill’s text states that the purpose of this agency is to protect the country’s critical cyber infrastructure.
However, in August 2021, Biden issued an executive order granting the agency new powers and goals, such as protecting the U.S. from “disinformation” on social media and helping the FBI combat online radicalization.
A committee backed Biden’s executive order made up of the heads of legal departments at major tech companies and chaired by Vijaya Gadde, the former director of legal affairs and policy at Twitter and head of the company’s censorship division who was fired last week by Elon Musk after he took over the company.
Gadde co-authored a report in June calling on the ICPR to take a lead role in monitoring free expression online, overseeing social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, nonpartisan media, radio, and other online resources.
With information from Derecha Diario
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