1984: Thread

Tue Nov 1 23:20:24 PDT 2022

Leaked Docs Reveal Shocking Extent Of DHS "Disinfo" Collusion With
Twitter, Facebook

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23175380-dhs-cybersecurity-disinformation-meeting-minutes
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23131810-cisa-emails
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23132393-cis-meeting-notes
https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-08/OIG-22-58-Aug22.pdf

https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1587102997317722113
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1587114424925442049

https://twitter.com/nataliegwinters/status/1587135297208320003
https://twitter.com/crabcrawler1/status/1587119901550018561
https://twitter.com/itsmercadante/status/1562896597905600512

In August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on the Joe Rogan podcast
that the FBI approached the company warning of "Russian propaganda"
shortly before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke at the NY Post.

"Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to
us- some folks on our team and was like, 'Hey, just so you know, like,
you should be on high alert…  We thought that there was a lot of
Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that,
basically, there's about to be some kind of dump of that's similar to
that. So just be vigilant," Zuckerberg told Rogan.

    Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to
Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story
was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert
#joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa
    — Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022

Now, leaked documents provided to The Intercept reveal that government
collusion with big tech goes much deeper.

The effort began in 2018, after former President Donald Trump signed
the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act in the wake
of several high-profile hacking incidents, forming a new wing of DHS
devoted to protecting critical national infrastructure.

    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. -The Intercept

"Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really
interesting how hesitant they remain," said Microsoft exec and former
DHS official Matt Masterson in a February text to Jen Easterly, a DHS
director.

    FBI agent Laura Dehmlow was in communications w Facebook that led
to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 over the
false allegation that it was “disinfo.” This year, she met w/
Twitter/DHS to stress “we need a media infrastructure that is held
accountable.” pic.twitter.com/17LqhEyMN0
    — Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

Then, in a March 2022 meeting, FBI official Laura Dehmlow warned that
the 'threat of subversive information on social media' could undermine
support for the US government - stressing "we need a media
infrastructure that is held accountable."

    🚨 Representatives from JPMorgan Chase attended virtually all DHS
meetings about federal government efforts to censor disinformation on
social media.

    Are they laying the groundwork for "de-banking" to become an (even
more) mainstream strategy?
    https://t.co/yTIeLvQjr2 pic.twitter.com/BFehCIupDQ
    — Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) October 31, 2022

    🚨🚨🚨FBI OFFICIALS are being REASSIGNED from AL QAEDA and ISIS
assignments ---> to investigating AMERICANS pic.twitter.com/OF09QXIsek
    — Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) October 31, 2022

Twitter has denied the report, telling The Intercept: "We do not
coordinate with other entities when making content moderation
decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the
Twitter Rules."

Except...

    The emails and documents show close collaboration b/w DHS &
private sector. Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (fired by @elonmusk last week)
met monthly with DHS to discuss censorship plans. Microsoft exec
texted DHS: "Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov't"
pic.twitter.com/Z19yLM3miB
    — Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

More via The Intercept:

    This apparatus had a dry run during the 2020 election, when CISA
began working with other members of the U.S. intelligence community.
Office of Intelligence and Analysis personnel attended “weekly
teleconferences to coordinate Intelligence Community activities to
counter election-related disinformation.” According to the IG report,
meetings have continued to take place every two weeks since the
elections.

    Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet
Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the
period leading up to November 2020. Meeting notes show that the tech
platforms would be called upon to “process reports and provide timely
responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the
platform where possible.” In practice, this often meant state election
officials sent examples of potential forms of disinformation to CISA,
which would then forward them on to social media companies for a
response.

    Under President Joe Biden, the shifting focus on disinformation
has continued. In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign
Influence Task force with the “Misinformation, Disinformation and
Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote more flexibility
to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the effort had expanded
beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include
domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one CISA official quoted
in the IG report, “counters all types of disinformation, to be
responsive to current events.”

What's more, the DHS plans to accelerate their efforts.

    According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security
Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and
priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target
“inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “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.”

Why? Racism, apparently.

"The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,
which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such
as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color,"
reads the report.