Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Monday that government agencies like the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have restarted discussions with major tech companies. NextGov/FCWThey are focusing on removing false information from their platforms as the November presidential election approaches. These discussions resumed in March, around the same time Murthy v. Missouri , a case about government censorship, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When asked about Warner's comments, an FBI representative confirmed that the agency has started talking to social media companies again before the 2024 election.
The FBI is committed to fighting foreign influence operations in connection with elections. They share foreign threat information with election officials and private companies, with the new procedures allowing them to share this with social media platforms. They stress that it is up to the private companies to decide how to act on this information.
CISA declined to comment on whether they have restarted discussions with social media companies to combat what they see as false information, but their Director will be participating in an election security hearing soon.
The FBI and CISA did not say when they started talking to social media companies about removing posts with false information. They also did not identify the specific companies they are working with or explain how they decide what is false information. They did not disclose which other federal agencies they are collaborating with on this issue.
The case Murthy v. Missourifocuses on allegations from Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government's control over social media companies' censorship violates the First Amendment. pressuring The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in July 2023, prohibiting federal agencies from colluding with Big Tech to censor disliked posts. The judge expressed concerns that this case may involve a major attack on free speech in U.S. history. issued 12 Times The Biden White House Colluded With Big Tech To Throttle Free Speech, According To
[READ: Missouri v. Biden The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently]
Doughty’s injunction in September. While the initial ruling did not pertain to CISA — often referred to by its critics as the “ upheld nerve center” of the federal government’s censorship operations — the court later issued acorrected ruling to prevent CISA from colluding with Big Tech to suppress free speech online. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, the Fifth Circuit’s injunction in October, effectively allowing the federal government’s lifted censorship operations to resume while it considered the merits of the case. SCOTUS is expected to issue a final ruling on the merits of
Murthy v. Missouri this summer. 8 Shocking Takeaways From Landmark
[READ: Murthy v. Missouri Censorship Case Largely ignored by legacy media, the collusion between the federal government and Big Tech to silence online speech the feds do not approve of is extensive and unprecedented. For example, the Biden administration]
social media companies to censor Covid-related posts they deemed to be “misinformation” shortly after coming into power, even if such posts contained information that is factually true. pressured Emails unearthed in
Murthy v. Missouri indicate health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held regular “misinfo/debunking meeting[s]” with Facebook to discuss the latter’s censorship efforts. But these efforts are just one facet of the government’s censorship operations. CISA regularly
meetings “between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address ‘mis-, dis-, and mal-information’ on social media platforms.” facilitated Leading up to the 2020 election, for instance, the agency upped its censorship efforts by flagging posts for Big Tech companies it claimed were worthy of being censored, some of which called into question the security of voting practices such as mass, unsupervised mail-in voting. This was done despite CISA
privately acknowledging the risks associated with such practices. Neither the FBI nor CISA responded to The Federalist’s request for comment on whether social media posts highlighting the risks of mail-in voting would be flagged as “disinformation.”
interim report
An released by House Republicans in November revealed that CISA’s censorship enterprise was more extensive than previously known. According to that analysis, CISA — along with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) — colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed to be “disinformation” during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was the
Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) , “a consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics” spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC “to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech” ahead of the 2020 contest.Created “at the request” of CISA, EIP allowed federal officials to “launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.” As documented in the interim report, this operation
to censor “accurate information, jokes and humor, and political beliefs” and reported flagged posts from notable conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship. Among those targeted were The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis. attempted The feds also played a significant role in
social media companies to pressuring the New York Post’s censor bombshell report on the Biden family business dealings ahead of the 2020 election. The FBI has resumed collusive efforts with social media companies to censor posts it claims are “disinformation,” The Federalist has learned.
