Posted on 12/26/2024 4:42:42 AM PST by MtnClimber
Brownstone Institute has been tracking a little-known federal agency for years. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security created after 9-11. It is called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. It was created in 2018 out of a 2017 executive order that seemed to make sense. It was a mandate to secure American digital infrastructure against foreign attack and infiltration.
And yet during the Covid year, it assumed three huge jobs. It was the agency responsible for dividing the workforce between essential and nonessential. It led the way on censorship efforts. And it handled election security for 2020 and 2022, which, if you understand the implications of that, should make you spit out your coffee upon learning.
More than any other agency, it became the operationally relevant government during this period. It was the agency that worked through third parties and packet-switching networking to take down your Facebook group. It worked through all kinds of intermediaries to keep a lid on Twitter. It managed LinkedIn, Instagram, and most of the other mainstream platforms in a way that made you feel like your opinions were too crazy to see the light of day.
The most astonishing court document just came out. It was unearthed in the course of litigation undertaken by America First Legal. It has no redaction. It is a reverse chronicle of most of what they did from February 2020 until last year. It is 500 pages long. The version available now takes an age to download, so we shrunk it and put it on fast view so you can see the entire thing.
What you discover is this. Everything that the intelligence agencies did not like during this period – doubting lockdowns, dismissing masking, questioning the vaccine, and so on – was targeted through a variety of cutouts among NGOs, universities, and private-sector fact-checkers. It was all labeled as Russian and Chinese propaganda so as to fit in with CISA’s mandate. Then it was throttled and taken down. It managed remarkable feats such as getting WhatsApp to stop allowing bulk sharing.
It gets crazier. CISA documented that it deprecated the study of Jay Bhattacharya from May 2020 that showed that Covid was far more widespread and less dangerous than the CDC was claiming, thus driving down the Infection Fatality Rate within the range of a bad flu. This was at a time when it was widely assumed to be the black death. CISA weighed in to say that the study was faulty and tore down posts about it.
The granularity of their work is shocking, naming Epoch Times, Unz.org, and a whole series of websites as disinformation, often with a crazy spin that identified them with Russian propaganda, white supremacy, terrorist activity, or some such. Reading through the document conjures up memories of Lenin and Stalin smearing the Kulaks or Hitler on the Jews. Everything that is contrary to government claims becomes foreign infiltration or insurrectionist or otherwise seditious.
It’s a very strange world these people inhabit. Over time, of course, the agency ended up demonizing much authentic science plus a majority of public opinion. And yet they stayed at it, fully convinced of the rightness of their cause and the justness of their methods. It seems never to have occurred to this agency that we have a First Amendment that is part of our laws. It never enters the discussion at all.
AFL summarizes the document as follows.
- CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) relied on the Censorship Industrial Complex to inform its censorship of alleged foreign disinformation narratives regarding COVID-19.
- Unelected bureaucrats at CISA weaponized the homeland security apparatus, including FEMA, to monitor COVID-19 speech dissenting from “expert” medical guidance, including President Trump’s comments about taking Hydroxychloroquine in 2020. Many of these “false” narratives later turned out to be true, calling into question the government’s ability to identify “misinformation,” regardless of its authority to do so.
- To determine what was “foreign disinformation,” CISA relied on the Censorship Industrial Complex’s usual suspects (Atlantic Council DFR Lab, Media Matters, Stanford Internet Observatory) — even those discredited for erroneously attributing domestic content to foreign sources (Alliance for Securing Democracy). CISA even relied on foreign government authorities (EU vs. Disinfo) and foreign government-linked groups (CCDH, GDI) that advocated for the demonetization and deplatforming of individual Americans to monitor and target constitutionally protected speech by American citizens....SNIP
More weaponization of government.
If we cut the federal budget by 90%, they wouldn’t be doing stuff like this. Probably.
The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, which enabled the election of Donald Trump, becomes even more important.
The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, which enabled the election of Donald Trump, becomes even more important.
Musk took control of Twitter on October 27, 2022.
Bttt.
5.56mm
The US intelligence agencies are actually doing a good job… if their goal is to be as oppressive as the old East German Stasi. 🕵️
Trump 2.0 will of course try to fix this. It remains to be seen how much ground he will be able to gain against the Deep State.
Everyone involved should be prosecuted for deprivation of rights under color of law. And fired from their cushy FedGov jobs.
Merry Christmas, M❗ Quentin says likewise. 😎
With a retired, high-ranking officer in the conversation, we chatted about the highest rank in government, military as well as political.
The clear answer upon which we agreed: the law-abiding citizen, armed first and foremost with the Declaration of Independece and United States Constitution.
Part of the W. Bush, Tom Daschle, and pals mess created after 9-11 .
bkmk
What was the question?
I was still in college in 2001 and was tasked with writing a paper on the Patriot Act, which I assumed, at the time, that I would absolutely hate. After doing my research, I ended up writing a paper that saw some necessity in forming such an agency to track terrorism on the internet. My professor was as surprised as I was.
Since that time, I have watched what has become of this, once more simple, piece of legislation and how much it has been bastardized and abused.
All to this point- it is time to completely abolish the DHS, the FISA court and any “tie-in” it shares with other agencies. We are often sold garbage by this government of what they tell us increases our security, but only increases their control over US.
"Who?"
How can you deNazifi the intelligence agencies?
Imho it cannot be done—the new administration is going to have the bite the bullet and do what President Kennedy tried to do—shatter them into a million pieces.
“National security” does not cut it as a doctrine when we are deemed the “clear and present danger” to them.
The late George Carlin was way ahead of this when he did a routine about giving up some of our freedom for the “appearance” of “security.”
As someone pointed out the problem with the whole picture is that the DOD did such a good job of bombing terrorists over there that not much happened here. But we had these huge newly created domestic counterterrorism orgs which then got turned on conservative "hatemongers."
...and people claim they are against Tulsi because she is ‘not qualified’ for the job.
This report is just one example of the REAL REASON that people in high office are scared Shiiteless of Tulsi - she will put an end to the Stalinist nature of the US Government and likely also lead to at least subduing the Maoist nature of most European governments.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.