New Docs Reveal US DHS Conspiracy to Violate First Amendment
public.substack.com
public.substack.com
The emails they include show that there were meetings between DHS and Twitter and between DHS and Stanford, on the topic of election integrity. And that there was a Signal chat (I guess this is kind of sketchy).
But there's no evidence of censorship or anything politically-motivated that I can discern.
I don't have a problem in general with a ticketing system for the government to request specific kinds of moderation. There do exist valid carve-outs of free speech, and I see no reason why government and industry couldn't collaborate on that. If it were used to censor political speech, then yes, I would have a problem with that. But I haven't seen evidence of that.
> In 2020, CISA officials and personnel from EIP were often on emails together, and CISA’s personnel had access to EIP’s tickets through an internal messaging system, Jira, which EIP used to flag and report social media posts to Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.
Here is a more detailed article with links to many of the documents, but I am unsure of the trustworthiness or biases of this source. It is hard to find mainstream coverage or discussion on this topic.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/...
Is there any example of a social media company being impacted by refusing to comply with one of these requests?
How about this comment from Senate Majority leader Schumer?
This argument of "It's ok to meddle as long as you do not compel." is atrocious. People, especially those in high positions in social media companies, indeed fear government capability from many angles.
Regardless of the permission to meddle but not compel, why is the government paying for agents to act as moderators in the first place? Isn't there more important crime to allocate resources to?
I don't think there's a compelling case for government agents' top priority to be moderating online speech, but ensuring that the American people are not being subjected to massive mis/disinformation campaigns is a legitimate cause.
>>> According to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is “axiomatic” that the US government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
Edit: Flagged again with 33 upvotes in 27 mins.
> we just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA
> Brookie’s acknowledgment contradicts the claim made by the EIP that the idea for the project “came from four students
The partnership was not the program. This glaring misrepresentation is what the entire piece is built on.
What this article is citing is direct refutation of the claim.
Moreover this evidence is valuable because it came unprompted. The evidence may noy be devastating, but its not unsubstantiated either.
I don't think anyone contends its ok for any party to share information with the govt that it deems important. But whether that sharing happened is not the claim. The question is who directed the work.
The original assertion that the DHS did not direct the work is under suspicion, becauae the alibi came from a related party that is now know to be in a business partnership with the same party that is defending itself from the allegations of illegal 1st amendment interference.
And now theres 3rd party information that refutes the alibi.
You don't want it to be the government or anyone really to decide what you can or cannot read?
You battle bad speech with good speech.
you meaning all of us do want a government that takes active measures to prevent weaponized speech.
That we don't have a Constitutional framework for distinguishing this is the same sort of catastrophic zero day in our democracy that the comically shitty second amendment language is.
That these are unpatchable is a consequence of and overwhelmingly serves bad actors, specifically, right wing antidemocratic bad faith actors, and operates in no small part over the "free speech" being mechanically reproduced by they and their allies in such lovely institutions as the GRU and other centers of literally anti-American memetic warfare.
I would rather have the “threat” of having to actually convince people we’re right rather than have the government tell people something can’t be said. That’s far more horrifying.
People are allowed to be wrong. They’re people. They disagree. If our society is so weak it crumbles when people hear certain things, it deserves to crumble. I don’t think it is and I don’t think we will, however.
Those two axioms are enough to guarantee that, all things being equal, lies will be legitimated over truth. I''ll graciously ask for proof that truth is born out of debate in greater than 50% of cases and baring evidence, cannot take it to be true.
It's perfectly fine to prioritize free speech protection over lies, but it's delusional (though everyone's right) to believe that we can have both. It's simply not based in reality. More power to those who stick by their principles.
Sharing jira tickets is pretty much the definition of collaboration in every single other organization on the planet. The tickets were opened with the express purpose of suppressing opposition party voices, and it was between a domestic security and intelligence agency and a platform, using an ostensibly "academic" project to do it.
You should be more principled. Speech protections don't just protect the right to be disagreeable, they protect your right to be that intellectually lazy as well.
You're lucky enough to not have used Jira (or Trello :/) as a method of communication between your users and your org.
Depends on your meaning of "collaboration" i guess.
Source(s)?
When was it officially enacted that bureaucracies, universities, or social media corporation were the arbiters of public discourse?
What is disinformation exactly? I can remember very recently when later proven to be true "information" around COVID was determined at the time to be some insane verboten "disinformation" and was banned on social media platforms. Things like efficacy of masks, whether vaccines prevented the spread or any other manner of debatable political discussions. But who cares if you think this or that thing is false? Of course right-wingers are opposed to violations of their 1st amendment rights. Because being able to communicate freely (or not) has direct bearing on political power.
Insanity lol.
A person that thinks like this is exactly the type of political danger it is prudent to fear and oppose.
Again, "disinformation" is nearly meaningless. That you oppose or disagree with one's opinions or political views is not grounds for that person to be OK with you censoring them. In fact they should view you as a political enemy. It is the fundamental rationale for the 1st amendment.
The China lab-leak is likely true. Masks don't work. What a weird position to hold whereby completely rational views are legitimate grounds for complete subversion of the 1st amendment. This is Dunning–Kruger-like in it's complete inversion of who should be deemed crazy, stupid, or politically dangerous.
Right, disinformation then.
>High-quality studies have shown that use of face masks in the community is associated with reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and is likely to be an important component of an effective response to a future respiratory threat.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Again, feel free to make claims with evidence. I'll even congratulate you for getting it.
>The China lab-leak is likely true.
Maybe, maybe not, we may never know. Funny how you threw in "likely", when every MAGA hat wearing idiot was shouting it with certainty two years ago with spittle flying out of their mouth at me and every other healthcare worker.
Dunning-Kruger don't mean what you think it means either.
> Maybe, maybe not, we may never know
Do you consider those that discredited or supressed the lab leak theory to be spreaders of "disinformation" and worthy of censorship as well?
The point PKop is making is that "disinformation" is a terrible basis on which to censor people... unless you are content just getting rid of free speech and saying, "Whoever is in power determines what people are allowed to say and think."