Den amerikanske efterretningstjeneste ser stadigt mere ud til at være USAs egentlige magthavere. Det er velkendt, at de censurerer i offentlige debat ved deres nærmest lydefrie samarbejde med de sociale medier og resten af it-industrien. Historien om Hunter Bidens computer blev slettet på deres fælles opfordring til stor glæde for de traditionelle medier. Åh ja, de traditionelle medier, er også efterretningstjenesternes talerør, udspyende en hvilken som helst fortælling, som kan desillusionere almindelige amerikanere og så splid mellem brødre. Så bizart er deres samarbejde, at tidligere efterretnings-bosser, ender som politiske kommentatorer på TV, hvis job det er at bekræfte, hvad efterretningstjenesterne påstår.
Men nu har en føderal domstol erklæret, at det er ulovligt at censurere amerikanere givet deres Gudsgivne rettigheder i Forfatningen, skriver The Federalist.
A federal judge in Lousiana issued a preliminary injunction that bars the Biden regime from colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” Judge Terry Doughty, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, noted in the ruling. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”
In his 155-page memorandum ruling handed down on July 4, the Trump appointee specified that federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the FBI, and the Department of Justice may no longer coordinate with or “coerce” platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to silence their political enemies.
Jonathan Turley skriver at det Demokratiske parti helt synes at have omfavnet censur, som et politisk våben, mod deres indre fjender
The judge’s order names various agencies, including the Department of Justice, State Department, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as individual officials like Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Mayorkas not only attempted to create the infamous Disinformation Governance Board but has given grants to an array of controversial censorship programs. I also testified recently on the efforts of Easterly, who radically extended her regulatory authority by declaring “critical infrastructure” includes “our cognitive infrastructure” and “building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation.” That included barring “malinformation” that is “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” You read that correctly: It can be true information which the government nevertheless believes is being used for a misleading purpose.
(…)
In February’s hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, I warned that “the massive censorship system employed by social media companies presents the greatest loss of free speech in our history.” The Trump administration had some back-channel communications with social media companies, but that was radically expanded under President Biden.
Democrats on the committee struggled to ignore the content of the then-recently released “Twitter Files” while attacking every witness who discussed those files.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticized me for offering “legal opinions” without working at Twitter. I later noted that it was like saying a witness should not discuss the contents of the “Pentagon Papers” unless he or she worked at the Pentagon. Wasserman Schultz tried to portray the Twitter Files allegations as mere opinions; she cut me off when I tried to explain that the Twitter Files contents — like those of the Pentagon Papers — are “facts,” while the implication of those facts are opinions.
(…)
The attacks have continued in the media, too. Some of those objecting to this censorship were bizarrely denounced as protecting white supremacists and insurrectionists. For example, MSNBC contributor and former senator Claire McCaskill denounced subcommittee witnesses Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) as “Putin apologists.”
When two journalists testified before the subcommittee about their investigations of censorship programs, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the subcommittee’s ranking member, called them “so-called journalists.” Plaskett later suggested one of them, Matt Taibbi, be criminally investigated. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) and other members pressed the journalists to reveal their sources.
These attacks reflect a growing problem for Democrats who have tied the party to the cause of speech limits, blacklisting and censorship. When the party controlled both houses of Congress, these members simply denied allegations of censorship as conspiracy theories and said there was no real evidence while opposing any effort to acquire evidence.
Then Democrats lost control of the House, and Elon Musk purchased Twitter, opening up its files for full public view. The resulting Twitter Files forced everything into the open.
This censorship system included funding groups to blacklist targeted individuals and sites. With the help of companies like Microsoft, federal agencies poured millions into efforts to target not just social media accounts but the advertisers for conservative sites.
As new details emerge, Democrats have doubled down. In one hearing, former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on how she and her staff approached censorship. Navaroli said they pushed to remove anything they considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging; she said they refused to prioritize the free speech of posters but, instead, asked “whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety.” She said they were unwilling to allow the safety of others “to go to the winds so that people can speak freely.”
It was a chilling account of ill-defined, biased censorship. However, committee Democrats heralded her censorship work.
They also clearly agreed with the standard of former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal that the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” and more on “who can be heard.” The Twitter Files showed that the federal government supplied thousands of names and sites of precisely who should not be heard.
Pressen, der også er en del af den Demokratiske maskine, forsvarede regeringens ret til at censurere, selvfølgelig.
The Washington Post complained that the “Trump-appointed judge’s move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.”
The New York Times, similarly, bemoaned that the judge handed a victory to Republicans “who claim the administration is trying to silence its critics.”
“Courts are increasingly being forced to weigh in on such issues — with the potential to upend decades of legal norms that have governed speech online,” the NYT warned.
NPR skrev fortørnet “US is barred from combating disinformation”, New York Times skrev af “Disinformation researchers fret about fallout from judge’s order” og Vox viste tudfjæs med overskriften “Why the Biden administration is no longer allowed til talk social media platforms”. Og på CNN skrev Phil Mattingly, der er korrespondent på Det Hvide Hus, at censur giver mening
“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
Jonathan Turley, der bliver stadigt mere deprimeret over ytringsfrihedens tilstand, skrev
What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmless thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.
Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
However, there are now ample studies stating that “a new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID.” It added that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”
(…)
Yet, Mattingly and others are now defending censorship by repeating a tautology: the government must seek the censorship of ideas because some ideas must be censored. Governments have always claimed that censorship of critics and dissenters is for the public’s best interest. They have always defined certain views as harmful or false.
Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off censorship and suggesting that the natural default should be to obey the government and its censorship. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”
Og surrealistisk nok, men helt i tråd med Det Hvide Hus stadigt mere totalitære ånd, ankede regeringen straks dommen i et sidste lovligt forsøg på at bevare retten til at censurere befolkningen, skrev The Politics Brief
“Defendants respectfully request that the Court stay its July 4 preliminary injunction pending Defendant’s appeal of that order,” the government argued. “The Government faces irreparable harm with each day the injunction remains in effect, as the injunction’s broad scope and ambiguous terms (including a lack of clarity with respect to what the injunction does not prohibit) may be read to prevent the Government from engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct—including speaking on matters of public concern and working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
“These immediate and ongoing harms to the Government outweigh any risk of injury to Plaintiffs if a stay is granted, and for the same reason, a stay is in the public interest,” the government added. “Moreover, Defendants have shown a substantial case on the merits regarding Plaintiffs’ lack of Article III standing and failure to present evidence substantiating their First Amendment claims. Accordingly, this Court should exercise its discretion to temporarily stay the preliminary injunction during the pendency of Defendants’ Fifth Circuit appeal.”
Nu der er krig i Ukraine som CIA givet har gjort deres for fremme, kan det ukrainske efterretningsvæsen også luge uønskede meninger og fakta ud af den amerikanske debat. De ringer til FBI, som ringer de sociale medier og således skabes der en historie om almen amerikansk hengivenhed til en af verdens mest korrupte regimer og tro på at forårsoffensiven snart starter.
Matt Taibbi skriver for Racket News
A month ago, Aaron Maté of The Grayzone published a new piece about a bizarre finding in the Twitter Files. An FBI agent named Alexander Kozbanets had forwarded to Twitter a list sent to the FBI by Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU. These accounts, Kozbanets said, were “suspected by the SBU of spreading fear and disinformation.” Of the 170-odd account names on the list, most were Russian, but one stood out: Aaron’s! Here he is, along with the popular Russian newspaper “Rush Hour” (Chas-Pik) and a host of Cyrillic names:
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The shame of this story wasn’t that the SBU sent this list over, but rather that the FBI collaborated in the effort, even having the gall to forward the name of a respected, award-winning Canadian journalist to Twitter. To its credit, Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth pushed back, noting Aaron’s name and saying, “authentic news outlets and reporters who cover the conflict with a pro-Russian stance are unlikely to be found in violation of our rules.” Nonetheless, the fact that the FBI even tried this lunatic stunt was damning.
Now, thanks to the Weaponization Committee, we find out this situation with Aaron appears not to have been a one-off incident.
In fact, the Committee found that since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, there’s been an ongoing pattern of mass-censorship requests, funneled from the SBU through the FBI to a whole variety of platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, for starters. As the report notes:
The FBI, at the request of the SBU, flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists. The FBI and SBU repeatedly requested the removal or suspension of authentic accounts expressing unambiguously pro-Ukrainian views, as well as those voicing opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As to the latter, the Committee suggested the part of the problem may be connected to an incident in which President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the head of the SBU “on account of Russian infiltration.”
Whatever the reason for some of the moderation decisions, the pattern of behavior the Commitee uncovered probably explains some of the documents we found in the Twitter Files. For instance, now that we know for sure the FBI was forwarding SBU moderation requests to YouTube, the following document we found decrying “anti-Ukrainian narratives” in YouTube videos,” which the FITF sent to Twitter from an unidentified source, may make more sense:
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The Committee report also noted that the lists the SBU sent, which sometimes contained thousands of names, mostly targeted accounts from places like Russia or Belarus. However, they also roped in Americans, from a New York photographer, to the manager of a moving company in South Carolina, to a musician in Minnesota, to a professor and an author of children’s books, even an Instagram account belonging to the U.S. State Department! In this screenshot showing a segment of a request from the SBU involving 5,165 Facebook accounts, you can see the American account (in Cyrillic, “USA” is “США”):
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It got worse. In one email the Committee turned up, an FBI agent wrote to a Meta executive, saying (emphasis mine): “I work with Elvis Chan at [the San Francisco field office of the] FBI. Would you be able to tell me if these accounts were taken down, or if you need some legal process from us?”
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Essentially, the FBI was asking Meta if it needed the FBI to, as the Committee put it, “concoct a legal justification” for the removal of the accounts in question. This is a devastating piece of evidence in the context of cases like Missouri v. Biden, in which defendants from agencies in the federal government have claimed they were merely passing along suggestions to tech companies, who act of their own accord.
Emails like this make the arrangement look much more like a collusive enterprise, one in which the tech companies might even work with government to “concoct” legal justification for content removal, if such justification is lacking.
The Committee report confirms the essence of both Aaron’s article about being put on the SBU list and an April report by fellow Substacker Lee Fang called, “How The FBI Helps Ukrainian Intelligence Hunt ‘Disinformation’ On Social Media.” Fang interviewed Ilua Vitiuk, head of the department of Cyber Information Security for the SBU, and Vitiuk told Lee:
When people ask me, “How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?” Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow. I say, “Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.”
MONOKULTUR 
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