Posted on 08/12/2024 6:16:17 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Federal agencies used the pretext of foreign interference in the 2020 election to surveil and suppress domestic news.
merica’s speech police are reassembling to once again influence our elections. At the same time the security state is creating potential pretexts for renewed censorship by issuing warnings of cyberattacks that could “hinder public access to election information,” they are also reprising old claims of coming Russian election interference on behalf of Donald Trump.
The little-noticed development comes in a report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) on the DOJ’s efforts to “Coordinate Information Sharing About Foreign Malign Influence Threats to U.S. Elections” — a euphemism for the chief law enforcement agency’s prior censorship activities.
During the 2020 election, as revealed in litigation, congressional oversight, and reporting, national security and law enforcement agencies used the threat of foreign misinformation and disinformation on social media to U.S. elections as a pretext to surveil and suppress domestic news and opinions deemed derogatory to our ruling regime.
An alphabet soup of agencies coerced, cajoled, and colluded directly and via cutouts with social media companies to get those companies to squash all manner of wrongthink on election integrity and outcomes at mass scale.
While the OIG explicitly omitted the “FBI’s information sharing with social media companies with respect to domestic actors” from its report, the DOJ’s response to the office’s recommendations will likely have substantial bearing on Americans’ speech.
That response, appended to the report, comes in the form of a DOJ memo revealing that the law enforcement agency has now codified its protocols for reporting purported “foreign malign influence” information with social media companies, and is redoubling its efforts to do so in the run-up to the 2024 election.
In fact, the FBI has been implementing new Standard Operating Procedures since February.
Under those procedures, the FBI is required to identify “specific, credible, and articulable facts that provide high confidence for assessing that the information at issue relates to activity attributable to a foreign government, foreign non-state actor, or their proxy engaged in an FMI [foreign malign influence] operation.”
The Bureau is also required to include a disclaimer — akin to one authorities often included in censorship requests from 2020 — explaining it “does not request or expect” recipients to take any specific action based on shared information......
I understand that. But last time the powers that be didn’t want to collapse the United States.
No matter what we speculate on, one thing is certain: We’re in for very bad trouble and it’s going to be very ugly.
And a large percentage of people think our government was behind it. And the MSM has forgotten about it already. Imagine what the news would be like if that had happened to 0bama.
Yes. But it would not have.
I do too. Remember that congresscritter that was approached? - to join an orgy, or something similar...
If this election is allowed to go forward in November I see no path to a win for Trump. No doubt he’s fully aware they are going to steal it again.
Sadly, I must agree.
The deafening silence from the (R)N(C) is just as telling, no?
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