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Author and journalist Michael Shellenberger has said that “U.S. and U.K. military contractors” have used “sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics… against the American people” in sworn testimony in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government chaired by Jim Jordan (R-OH) on suppression of free speech by the government, Shellenberger presented the information he received from a whistleblower about the origins of the so-called “Censorship Industrial complex.” Shellenberger, one of the “Twitter Files” authors, coined the phrase “Censorship Industrial Complex” to describe the network of government and private entities...

A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files....

On June 8th, the Washington Post ran, “These academics studied falsehoods spread by Trump. Now the GOP wants answers,” a story about how “records requests, subpoenas and lawsuits” were wielded as “tools of harassment” against “scholars” in the “field of disinformation.” In photo portraits, Kate Starbird of the University of Washington stared plaintively in the distance, a caption under one: “The political part is intimidating — to have people with a lot of power in this world making… false accusations about our work.” Starbird sits on an advisory committee for the 245,000-person, $185 billion Department of Homeland Security, but perhaps...

Here is a disturbing story. It demonstrates intrigue, corruption and disdain for American principles at the highest level. Perhaps the saddest thing about this story is that you probably won’t be surprised. Especially if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years. The story is this: Twitter and other social media platforms have been cozy with the Department of Homeland Security ... But you knew that. And maybe Elon Musk did in his purchase of Twitter last week. ... Job one for Musk was to not only fire CEO Parag Agrawal but also Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and...

House Oversight Committee Republicans are kicking off an investigation into what they they called a “taxpayer-funded censorship campaign” at the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2020, the federal agency has been under fire for working with big tech companies to censor certain viewpoints mainly related to election integrity. The GOP launched its investigation after Monday's report by The Intercept dove into how the Feds had begun pressuring tech companies on a range of issues, including COVID-19, the vaccine for it, and Ukraine. The Center Square obtained a letter from the group, led by ranking member Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. The...

Aaron Berman, a 17-year veteran of the CIA who already held a senior position in Facebook’s “misinformation” team during the 2020 election, has been promoted to “Head of Elections Policies” at the company now known as Meta. Berman served at the CIA between March 2002 and July 2019. During that time, he wrote for and edited the President’s Daily Brief, an influential top-secret document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community given to the president each morning. According to Berman’s Linkedin, he enjoyed positions of considerable influence at the agency, including “supervising teams of dozens of analysts and with multi-million-dollar budgets,”...

Below is my column in the Hill on the first hearings this week to be held by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It could be one of the most consequential investigations for free speech in decades if it pulls back the curtain on government censorship programs. After the historic release of the Twitter Files by Elon Musk, questions remain on any similar coordination with other social media companies with federal agencies like the FBI to target views considered “disinformation” or “misinformation.” Here is the column: This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) met weekly with large social media platforms to collaborate on moderating content, according to a deposition this week from FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan. Chan, who was one of the two FBI agents who contacted Facebook ahead of its censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop warning of potential Russian disinformation operations, said that the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officials met weekly with social media companies to remove specific accounts ahead of the 2020 presidential election, according to his deposition cited by Missouri Attorney General...

he Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its "censorship operation" to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, "implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional," according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. CISA also wanted to use the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), as its "mouthpiece" to obfuscate its own role in censorship, the report says. It cites spring 2022...