Tag: censorship

The Witch Hunt Begins In Pennsylvania – The Thought Police Are Coming For You

You probably know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the charge to protect America’s “critical infrastructure”. You probably also understand that to mean they should be stopping terrorists from blowing up things like nuclear power plants, bridges and dams. You are unlikely to understand that DHS believes it is supposed to “protect” America’s “cognitive infrastructure” and that this means censoring your free speech and preventing you from disseminating ideas or opinions with which DHS disagrees.

DHS believes it has the power to silence you, and it has been doing so for some time now.

Within DHS is an entity called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA has for some time now been working with private entities to silence anyone who strays from the official government-approved narrative. The Attorney General of Louisiana described it this way in testimony before Congress.

“The First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” This means that the government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content. The U.S. Supreme Court also firmly established that “the Constitution ‘demands that content-based restrictions on speech be presumed invalid … and that the Government bear the burden of showing their constitutionality.” United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 716-717 (2012) (plurality op.). Yet in our lawsuit we have uncovered a censorship enterprise so vast that it spans over a dozen significant government institutions, including the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Publicly, these federal actors have justified their deeds in the name of protecting the public against “misinformation” and “disinformation,” when in fact it is done to suppress disfavored views…”

“To understand the framework of these activities, we must first look at the way censorship has been approached by those actively engaged in it. For example, CISA — an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — has classified the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of the American public as “critical infrastructure.” In an effort to control, manage, and maintain these cognitive assets, CISA serves as a “switchboard” for sending disfavored information from state and local officials to the necessary social media company to ensure content-moderation policies are applied. As a result, America’s “cognitive infrastructure” can be maintained in the same way that the DHS might protect the nation’s physical infrastructure from outside threats; but in this case, CISA aims to protect our collective consciousness from independent thought and inquiry at the individual level…”

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How the Government Used ‘Track F’ to Fund Censorship Tools

Officials from the National Science Foundation tried to conceal the spending of millions of taxpayer dollars on research and development for artificial intelligence tools used to censor political speech and influence the outcome of elections, according to a new congressional report.

The report looking into the National Science Foundation (NSF) is the latest addition to a growing body of evidence that critics claim shows federal officials—especially at the FBI and the CIA—are creating a “censorship-industrial complex” to monitor American public expression and suppress speech disfavored by the government.

“In the name of combatting alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election, NSF has been issuing multimillion-dollar grants to university and nonprofit research teams,” states the report by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

“The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.”

The report also described, based on previously unknown documents, elaborate efforts by NSF officials to cover up the true purposes of the research.

The efforts included tracking public criticism of the foundation’s work by conservative journalists and legal scholars.

The NSF also developed a media strategy “that considered blacklisting certain American media outlets because they were scrutinizing NSF’s funding of censorship and propaganda tools,” the report said.

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X Says It Will Reduce the Visibility of Posts That Purposely Ignore a Person’s Preferred Pronouns

For some reason quietly, X has started enforcing revised rules, detailed in its platform guidelines for users – among other things, adding a section to the “Abuse and Harassment” that concerns the use of pronouns, and speech referring to persons “transitioning” (in terms of transgenderism).

The “amended” rules came into force at some point between January 24 and 27 this year, and should an X user be found to “purposefully” address another using a pronoun different than what that user has chosen for themselves, they can expect to be (and they ostensibly already are) punished by having their posts’ visibility on the platform “reduced.”

It’s not entirely clear if this constitutes straight-forward shadowbanning, i.e., if the supposed guidelines violator is immediately notified of this; but given the nebulous nature of any attempt to determine if someone is doing this “purposefully” – the revised rules spell out that those addressed using “the wrong pronouns” will be consulted.

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‘Stunning Act of Scientific Censorship’: Journal Retracts Peer-Reviewed Study Critiquing COVID-19 Vaccine

The journal Cureus on Monday retracted the first peer-reviewed paper to provide an extensive analysis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine trial data and post-injection injuries. The authors of the paper also called for a global moratorium on the vaccines.

Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the paper’s authors, called the retraction “a stunning act of scientific censorship.” He told The Defender:

“The journal and its editors had the right to reject the paper at any time during the review process. Once published, it is a violation of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines to retract a paper without adequate justification.”

The paper, published last month, detailed the vaccines’ potential serious harms to humans, vaccine control and processing issues, the mechanisms behind adverse events, the immunological reasons for vaccine inefficacy and the mortality data from the registrational trials.

The authors concluded:

“Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA injectable products on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits.”

They also called for the vaccines to be immediately removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) childhood immunization schedule and for the boosters to be suspended.

The paper was read more than 350,000 times in the month after it was posted. An average Cureus paper has only approximately 2,700 views in an entire year.

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MSNBC Legal Analyst Argues for ‘Common Sense’ Speech Restrictions Live on Air

A legal analyst at MSNBC argued earlier this week that there is a need for “common sense” restrictions to the First Amendment to prevent “disinformation” online.

The comments from University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade underscore how many on the far left now view basic American Constitutional rights.

During an interview with network host Rachel Maddow that The New York Post flagged on Thursday, McQuade argued that current restrictions on free speech might not go far enough.

McQuade said previous arguments from the U.S. Supreme Court had set a precedent — that there are some limitations to what people can say if it is intended to create harm — but she added those might not be far-reaching enough.

One such case is 1919’s Schenck v. United States, in which it was ruled that a person could not shout “fire” while in a crowded theater if that person’s rationale for speaking was only to cause public harm.

In the context of American political discourse in the age of social media, McQuade said that the country’s “deep commitment to free speech,” a cornerstone of society, is leaving people vulnerable to being misled.

While hawking a new book she has authored called “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America,” McQuade told MSNBC she hoped to initiate a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to [free speech].”

After Maddow asked if Americans are vulnerable to being misled more than citizens of other countries without First Amendment protections, McQuade agreed.

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Meta Launches Real-Time Content Censorship Unit for 2024 Elections

When Facebook (Meta) wants to safeguard its “right to censor,” the company presents itself as basically just another private company out there minding its own business.

But when election campaigns get in full swing, especially in the US, but also the EU, the way Meta reacts, announcing all sorts of yet new policies and new units to deal with information related to elections, shows that it could have a massive influence on their outcome.

And while it’s repeatedly said that (mostly arbitrarily “defined”) misinformation is the scourge of democracy, there is another, this time, no doubt about it: censorship, sometimes based on such flimsy excuses as basically somebody’s subjective opinion – for example, “potential threats.”

None of this seems to be important to Meta, who have just announced how they are “preparing” for the elections in the EU this summer.

There’s a slew of news on this front: Meta will have what it calls an Elections Operations Center whose job will be identifying “potential threats.” And then real-time “mitigation” (i.e., censorship) will follow.

Oh happy news: despite all the controversies around “fact-checker,” Meta has announced it is continuing to rely on them, and even boasts about having “the largest fact-checking network of any platform.”

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Biden Admin. pressured Amazon to censor books about vaccine safety risks during Covid

White House officials pressured Amazon in 2021 to censor and minimize access to books on its online site that questioned the safety or efficacy of vaccines, according to e-mails released earlier this month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman, U.S. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio.

The campaign to curtail any vaccine-related book sales during the height of the pandemic was led by President Biden’s Senior Advisor for Covid-19 Response, Andrew Slavitt, and sought to avoid the spread of “propaganda and misinformation.”

“Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Slavitt wrote to Amazon in a Mar. 2, 2021, e-mail.

In initial discussions, Amazon officials discouraged “a manual intervention” to censor or remove certain book titles from populating in search results, concerned that it would be too obvious and lead to further criticism. “We will not be doing a manual intervention today,” one e-mail between Amazon executives read. “The team/PR feels very strongly that it is too visible, and will further compound the Harry/Sally narrative (which is getting the Fox News treatment today apparently), and won’t fix the problem long-term … because of customer behavior associates.”

The Amazon officials, whose names were redacted from the e-mails, reveal that another individual at the company “gave very direct guidance to the teams to be boring and not do anything that is visible and will draw more attention.”

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The 2024 Santa Monica Film Festival was chock full of red-pilled conspiracy content

The 18th annual Santa Monica Film Festival, which held in-person screenings on Saturday, February 3 and which is running online screenings through February 28, chose to feature and then give awards to some dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories masquerading as “documentary” films.

The festival awarded “Best Documentary Feature” to The Great Awakening, the third film in anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Mikki Willis’ Plandemic series. The Santa Monica Film Festival website describes the film:

The Great Awakening is the third installment of the ‘Plandemic’ series. This documentary experience assembles forbidden puzzle pieces to reveal the big picture of what’s really happening in America and beyond. The Great Awakening is intended to be a lighthouse to guide us out of the storm and into a brighter future.

 The Plandemic website also provides a description of the film:

Witness the culmination of truth-seeking as PLANDEMIC 3: The Great Awakening unravels the layers of corruption and unveils a path towards a brighter future. Prepare to be inspired, awakened, and empowered to take a stand for liberty.

After the screening, the audience was treated to a Q&A with Rizza Islam, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s disinformation dozen.

The first installment of Plandemic was released May 4, 2000, and was largely responsible for the viral spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and vaccine disinformation. The New York Times explained in 2020 that nothing in the pandemic had gone as viral as the 26-minute short film, “a slickly produced narration that wrongly claimed a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to profit and gain power. The video featured a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who said her research about the harm from vaccines had been buried.”

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Biden Admin Wants To Spend Around $1 Million on University “Disinformation” Monitoring Program

The White House’s latest initiative to carry out its brand of combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (which is now referred to by the handy “MDM” initial) continues to co-opt the education sector.

The Department of Justice agency the National Institute for Justice (NIJ) is behind the funding effort that is said to be designed to study and research “effective technologies and tools for identification, moderation, and/or removal of extremist content.”

A grant worth $1 million will be spent to come up with a dashboard featuring an MDM tracker, which is supposed to surveil the internet for both speech, and narratives, and do so in real time. The project’s official name is, “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns.”

And reports say that the targeted speech coincides with “contentious political events.” Critics say that the taxpayer dollars here are in reality going towards suppression of conservative and religious groups, rather than as declared, violent extremists.

The recipient of the grant is South Carolina-based Clemson University. Researchers there are expected to come up with computer models that will keep an eye on accounts singled out as MDM peddlers and identify people associated with allegedly spreading MDM.

Eventually, the effort should produce the real-time tracking dashboard.

Regular citizens may not benefit from this project – considering the “fluid” nature of the very definitions of misinformation and its companions (some reports mention the initial, and subsequent treatment of the Covid origin and Hunter Biden laptop stories as examples of this.)

But the grant does specify who will benefit: law enforcement and policymakers.

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Bill Gates Partner GAVI Vaccine Alliance Targets Online Memes

An international group promoting vaccines with ties to the Gates Foundation in going after memes. Whatever could make more sense?

But things here aren’t as haphazard as they might seem. Bill Gates is known, and rich, for two things: as the founder of one of the most oppressive (in terms of design, security, and historically predatory toward free-as-in-freedom competing technology) companies ever – Microsoft.

And the other is Gates – now as a billionaire – reinventing himself through his “uncanny valley” philanthropic efforts, centered and emanating from his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and focusing by and large on all sorts of vaccines, and – agriculture.

One of those involved, the GAVI Vaccine Alliance (that gets money from Gates) now wants to reframe memes – internet’s succinct expression of humor and satire – as “health disinformation super-spreaders.”

And we’ve heard this one before – this genre, that, in the digital age, might as well be considered as any other artistic format in previous times, is said to be capable of evading “fact checkers and content moderators” (i.e., censors).

In previous eras and authoritarian states, that would get the books with imagery and words characteristic of memes banned or burned.

So what could be the solution in the current era? And what does the big picture amount to?

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