DHS (Homeland Securuty) LEAKS

Source: (https://bit.ly/3fnncsR)
The Department of Homeland Security has been working to influence
big tech platforms. This became originally evident when the Biden
administration launched the ill-fated Disinformation Governance
Board early in 2022, but has been a focus of their efforts even
beyond that now-defunct unit, and before.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit that revealed
via appended meeting minutes that former Microsoft executive Matt
Masterson, who was formerly an official with DHS, told a DHS
director in February 2022 that "Platforms have got to get comfortable
with gov't. It's really interesteding how hesitant they remain."
This according to The Intercept.
Prior to 2020, it was reported that DHS met with Twitter, Facebook,
Wikipedia, and other platforms in order to coordinate "content
moderation" operations. These meetings were part of an ongoing
initiative which saw collusion and collaboration between DHS and
big tech to determine how "misinformation" would be dealt with
on those platforms.
Areas that came under this purview included the withdrawal from
Afghanistan, undertaken disastrously by President Joe Biden in August
2021 as well as the origins of the Covid-19 virus, which became
controversial enough that users were kicked off social media
platforms for expressing the hypothesis that the virus originated
in a Wuhan, China lab. A Senate report found last week that this was
the most likely scenario. Information that could undermine trust
in financial institutions was also targeted.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act, signed by
President Donald Trump, opened the door to this as it formed a new
branch within DHS, which then undertook to deal with online
"disinformation." CISA stated its understanding that the mission
of that branch of DHS was "evolved," and meant to communicate
their concerns on "disinformation" to social media companies. Social
media companies took DHS' word for it.
DHS used concerns about "marginialized communities" to justify their
reach. Much of this effort became evidence as a result of an attempt
to "fight disinformation" in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential
election. Both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey spoke about their platform's effort to suppress and
censor reporting from the New York Post. They did this, in part,
because the FBI had told these platforms to watch out for
a "misinformation" dump.
During the elction, there were "weekly teleconference to coordinate
Intelligence Community activities to counter election-related
disinformation." Since then, meetings have taken place every two
weeks.
The government had its fingers all over social media companies. DHS
would tell social media companies what they wanted off the platforms
via "takedown requests," and then the platforms would submit reports
to government. They would be "called on to 'process reports and
provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported
misinformation from the platform where possible.'"
This was specifically done with election information, which would
be flagged by state election officials, submitted to DHS, which would
then tell social media companies to pull it.
FBI official Laura Dehmlow stated her concern in March that big tech
companies were not accountable to the government, saying "we need
a media infrastructure that is held accountable."
"There is also a formalized process for government officials
to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that
it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that
requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time
of writing, the 'content request system' at
facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the
parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment.
The FBI declined to comment," The Intercept reports.
"The extent to which the DHS initiatives affect Americans' daily
social feeds is unclear. During the 2020 election, the government
flagged numerous posts as suspicious, many of which were then taken
down, documents cited in the Missouri attorney general's lawsuit
disclosed. And a 2021 report by the Election Integrity Partnership
at Stanford University found that of nearly 4,800 flagged items,
technology platforms took action on 35 percent - either removing,
labeling, or soft-blocking speech, meaning the users were only able
to view content after bypassing a warning screen. The research was
done 'in consultation with CISA,' the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency," The Intercept reports.
The case that revealed the information was brought this spring by
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney
General Jeff Landry against top administration officials in US
District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
It alleged that President Joe Biden and other administration
officials "pressured and colluded" with Big Tech companies to
censor the Hunter Biden laptop story as well as information
regarding the lab leak origin theory of COVID-19 and the security
of voting by mail.
The suit claimed that government officials of colluded with social
media and big tech companies "under the guise of combating
misinformation" and that the goal, and the goal, and the result, was
censorship and suppression of free speech online. This discovery
shows that the Attorneys General who brought the case.
The lawsuit named White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, US
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Secretary of the Department of
Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Chief Medical Advisor
and NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, Secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and newly announced
director of the DHS's Disinformation Governance Board.
Also named were the Department of Health and Human Services,
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department
of Homeland Security, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency.
The lawsuit alleges that the federal government had violated
constitutional rights to suppress free speech in "one of its greatest
assaults by federal government officials in the Nation's history."

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