As if taking inspiration from the legendary rock band, Genesis, the Biden FBI appears to be “turning it on again” when it comes to bullying and cajoling social media to censor our posts online.
The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood (no relation to Fleetwood Mac) reports that, even as the Bidenistas await the Supreme Court decision in “Murthy v. Missouri” the Biden FBI is turning on their tax-funded censorship machine.
“On Monday (May 6), Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that federal agencies such as the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) restarted discussions with Big Tech platforms. According to NextGov/FCW, this coordination will focus on ‘removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears.’ Warner claimed these talks resumed in March, around the same time oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri — which centers on the feds’ censorship efforts — were heard before the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Ahh, yes. “Discussions.” It sure is nice to see how creative some tyrants and fascists can be when reframing their use of your taxes to silence you.
MRCTV readers no doubt know that “Murthy v. Missouri” centers on doctors such as Dr. Jay Battcharya and other signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, who, by taking legal action against the U.S. government, already have helped expose the feds’ unscrupulous and widespread attempts to besmirch the Great Barrington signers, the signers' traditional approach to viral outbreaks, and their opposition to lockdowns.
Of course, regardless of whether the Great Barrington signers were right (and they were), the principle of free speech is at stake, and it is a principle that stands regardless of whether the information we express is valid or invalid.
Fleetwood notes that an FBI representative confirmed the information Warner provided:
“’The FBI remains committed to combatting foreign malign influence operations, including in connection with our elections. That effort includes sharing specific foreign threat information with state and local election officials and private sector companies when appropriate and rigorously consistent with the law,’ the representative claimed. ‘In coordination with the Department of Justice, the FBI recently implemented procedures to facilitate sharing information about foreign malign influence with social media companies in a way that reinforces that private companies are free to decide on their own whether and how to take action on that information.’”
Which is nearly a clone of the previous operation conducted by the FBI (which literally gave Twitter millions after it played cozy with FBI requests to censor during the Hunter Biden info scandal and during the lockdown insanity), and conducted on a broader scale going back to 2016, when the Dems and RiNOs used their “Russian Interference” canard to push the Portman-Murphy Countering Foreign Propaganda Act.
I, and a handful of other reporters, were trying to warn people about that as the bill was sliding around the slippery halls of Congress and it passed in the final National Defense Authorization Act that Barack Obama signed as President, handing the Department of Defense $150 million for two years to shovel to other federal agencies, and, eventually, to private or “non-profit” interests that would censor us or pressure social media to do so.
Donald Trump put a two-year pause on the program, but it has returned with Biden, and since that time, the corrupt funding and excuses of “fighting foreign influence” have grown so numerous and so insanely opposed to free speech, it is valuable to recall some of the most egregious.
Related: New Twitter Files Reveal DoD, CIA, DARPA, More, In Massive Network To Silence Conservatives
For example, in the first week of March, 2023, journalist Matt Taibbi and others detailed key parts of what have become known as the Twitter Files. Those files, released by Elon Musk after taking control of the corporation and as he rebranded it “X,” showed the world that the feds had been using their tax money to silence them.
As I wrote March 7, 2023, for MRCTV:
“Taibbi shows readers how the Portman-Murphy Act was connected to an almost simultaneously issued March, 2016 Obama Executive Order, establishing what was called the ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC), and a bit of digging shows us that this, itself was an Obama spin on something he started in 2011 with an earlier E.O. As the official GEC website reveals:
‘GEC’s founding traces back to 2011 and Executive Order 13584, which established within the Department of State the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) for the purpose of ‘supporting agencies in Government-wide public communications activities targeted against violent extremism and terrorist organizations.’[1] Executive Order 13721 in 2016 transformed the CSCC into the Global Engagement Center but left its counterterrorism mission largely unchanged.’
Which isn’t really true – at all.
As Taibbi notes, when Portman-Murphy was rolled into the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the bankroll permitting the GEC to begin a two-year propaganda campaign against innocent American – and others, worldwide -- was laid out.”
And, of course, the feds want to keep it up, even as the Supreme Court weighs arguments in a case citing just that kind of wrongdoing.
Fleetwood notes:
“CISA External Affairs Specialist Tess Hyre declined The Federalist’s request for comment on whether the agency has resumed discussions with social media companies to combat what it claims to be ‘disinformation,’ but she said that CISA Director Jen Easterly will be participating in an ‘Election Security’ hearing in ‘the coming weeks.’”
Warms the heart.
Yes, the FBI, and, likely, CISA, and who-knows how many other Biden agencies, are going full-bore, turning on the censorship machine until they are told to stop by the Supreme Court.
Writes Fleetwood:
“Neither the FBI nor CISA responded when pressed on when they restarted communications with social media companies on efforts to remove posts containing so-called “disinformation” from their platforms. The FBI and CISA did not identify the specific companies they’re working with on such efforts. Neither agency provided an answer when questioned on how they determine what constitutes “disinformation” or what other federal agencies they are collaborating with in these efforts to have ‘disinformation’ removed from social media platforms.”
Fleetwood also reminds us about the on-again, off-again injunctions against this kind of federal speech suppression.
“U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction in July 2023 barring federal agencies from colluding with Big Tech to censor posts they don’t like. In his ruling, Doughty wrote, ‘If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.’”
That was a memorable quote. One wonders if the FBI will let us share it.
And, writes Fleetwood:
“The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently upheld Doughty’s injunction in September. While the initial ruling did not pertain to CISA — often referred to by its critics as the ‘nerve center’ of the federal government’s censorship operations — the court later issued a corrected ruling to prevent CISA from colluding with Big Tech to squash free speech online. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, lifted the Fifth Circuit’s injunction in October, effectively allowing the federal government’s censorship operations to resume while it considered the merits of the case.”
It sure is great to consider the fact that your rights are left to the mercies and hubris of government “security” agencies, the FCC (which holds the sword of Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act over social media) and -- even in the halls of “justice” -- left to the mercurial and often ill-informed minds of politically appointed judges.
In this land of the “free” you are free to speak as long as people feeding off your toil say you are.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in “Murthy v. Missouri” in June, so, until then, enjoy being policed on social media, fellow “foreign influence peddlers.”
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