Tag: dhs

Who Authorized the Department of Homeland Security to Police Online Speech? Not Congress

When George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, the goal was to improve national security by strengthening government at various levels and helping them identify and respond to threats, particularly terrorism.

”The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil, will be met with a unified, effective response,” said Bush. ”Dozens of agencies charged with homeland security will now be located within one cabinet department with the mandate and legal authority to protect our people.”

The law contained “severe privacy and civil liberties problems,” the ACLU argued, but the legislation enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Only nine Senators voted against it (eight Democrats and one Independent).

Bush tapped Tom Ridge as the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, but public policy experts admitted it was unclear precisely what the new department would do.

”The first challenge is to lower expectations,” Paul C. Light of the Brookings Institution told The New York Times. ”People should think they will be safer, but remember we have a long way to go.”

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How the government hid the truth behind Hunter Biden’s laptop

The more we find out about the collusion that has been going on among the Biden administration, the security agencies and Big Tech, the more alarming it is — and the more unrepentant they are.

The latest bombshell from The Intercept, based on communications unveiled in the federal lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, shows that the Department of Homeland Security has been having monthly meetings with Facebook and Twitter to pressure them to censor social-media posts about topics such as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of COVID vaccines, racial justice and US support for the war in Ukraine — In other words, anything that could be detrimental to public support for the Biden administration.

We already know that the FBI was involved in efforts to censor and bury information that might have harmed Joe Biden’s candidacy back in 2020, including The Post’s exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020. That amounted to election interference, which successfully prevented the American people from doing the necessary due diligence on one of the two candidates for president. So successful was the strategy that the Biden administration appears to have expanded it.

Security agencies have switched their attention from combating foreign disinformation to censoring the speech of American citizens who dissent from the government-approved narrative. No matter that free speech is protected by the First Amendment; if the Biden administration doesn’t like the speech, they label it “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malformation,” and they are deputizing the FBI and DHS to strong­arm Big Tech to censor it and de-platform serial offenders.

It doesn’t matter what brand your politics is, this is Stasi stuff.

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Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values

So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the “cognitive infrastructure” of the population. This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the “retooling” of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” online.

While the DHS’s hotly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as “an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms” in order to “curb speech it considers dangerous”:

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

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DHS is spending millions to combat “misinformation” and “disinformation”

Despite shutting down its “Disinformation Governance Board” after First Amendment violation concerns, the United States (US) Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still handing out millions in grants in order to combat “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theories.”

The DHS has previously claimed that online misinformation is a terror threat and these grants were made in a similar vein and doled out as part of a “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program.”

In total, over $3 million of taxpayer money was handed over to universities, think tanks, and nonprofits who will use the money to fund projects that fight what they deem to be misinformation and disinformation.

The University of Rhode Island was given $701,612 for its “Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives” and “Youth Resilience Programs.” The description for this grant claims that “disinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda have become large-scale social problems” and says that part of the funds from the grant will be used for “online and face-to-face dialogues [that] help demonstrate how to critically analyze propaganda, disinformation, and domestic extremism.”

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a quasi-government entity and think tank that produces research that informs public policy, was granted $750,000 for its “Raising Societal Awareness,” “Civic Engagement,” and “Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking” initiatives. The grant will be used to “develop an educational digital game and supportive materials for educating students in secondary schools in Northeast Washington Educational Service District 101 (ESD 101) in Washington State on disinformation.” The game and its learning program will “help students understand different strategies used to spread disinformation by malignant actors” and provide “a hands-on learning experience around strategies and policies to combat disinformation at the institutional level.”

The Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication was awarded $592,598 for an “extended reality” (XR) project which covers virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. The grant description claims that “terrorist recruiters and violent extremists will “most certainly target new forms of technology for their efforts to spread conspiracy theories, air grievances, and to craft misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” The project will create and test “Media Literacy interventions focused on Harmful Information in virtual spaces, to inform the prevention of extremism and violent content in the metaverse.”

The nonprofit International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) was given $750,000 to “inculcate resilience against the spread of disinformation and its divisive effects by making faith actors a part of the solution.” Tech company Moonshot will provide insights on “specific trends around disinformation and the spread of violence inciting narratives.” This data will be used by the ICRD to design workshops that build “societal resilience” where communities can “evaluate the meaning of religious disinformation for their future.”

The Carter Center, a nongovernmental nonprofit founded by former President Jimmy Carter, was awarded $99,372 for “Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives.” As part of these initiatives, The Carter Center will partner with Syracuse University to “demonstrate the effectiveness of its media literacy curriculum in mitigating the harms presented by dis-, misinformation.” Through this partnership, The Carter Center intends to roll out its curriculum modules in multiple classroom settings and target a wide population aged 18-60. The description for this grant claims that media literacy trainings build capacities in “recognizing false and misleading information.”

Lewis University was given $157,707 for “Media Literacy and Online Critical Thinking Initiatives.” It plans to use some of this grant money to “maintain and improve” its H2I (How2Inform) website which currently consists of content it says is “helpful in combating misinformation.” The description for this grant claims that “free tools and resources will be provided equitably to communities within the state to help combat online misinformation.”

The DHS awarded these misinformation and disinformation grants last month alongside another $699,763 grant to Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) which was given to study “extremism” in gaming.

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Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020

Aconsortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.

The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment’s prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.

The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file “tickets” requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.  

Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.

In its own after-action report on the 2020 election, the consortium boasted it flagged more than 4,800 URLs — shared nearly 22 million times on Twitter alone — for social media platforms. Their staff worked 12-20 hour shifts from September through mid-November 2020, with “monitoring intensif[ying] significantly” the week before and after Election Day.

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DHS to spend almost $700,000 of taxpayers’ cash on studying “extremism” in video gaming

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded researchers a $699,768 grant to investigate extremism in gaming.

As reported by VICE, the money will go to Logically, a company committed to the issue of “bad” online behavior, Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC), and Take This, a nonprofit that specializes in mental health in video gaming.

“Over the past decade, video games have increasingly become focal points of social activity and identity creation for adolescents and young adults. Relationships made and fostered within game ecosystems routinely cross over into the real world and are impactful parts of local communities,” the grant announcement on the DHS website said. “Correspondingly, extremists have used video games and targeted video game communities for activities ranging from propaganda creation to terrorist mobilization and training.”

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DHS: “Radicalized” Americans who believe “false narratives” online are the new terror threat

The War on Terror. You might have thought that it started in 2001, with the shocking tragedy of 9/11, and also – the shockwaves that reverberated throughout societies (in terms of how the way of life irrevocably changed from airport travel, to what can and can’t be expressed online.)

And that it’s over.

Well, US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas doesn’t seem to be on board with such “ideations” of a return to the normal.

There’s apparently ever more “enemies” to be dealt with, hinted the head of the agency – the same agency that had its figurative “ass” handed to it earlier in the year with the failed attempt to impose a censorship overlord agency in the shape of a “disinformation board.”

Post 9/11, Mayorkas said on the anniversary of the attacks, the enemy was the individual.

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Homeland Security officially terminates agency’s Disinformation Governance Board

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has terminated the agency’s Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter.

Mayorkas officially ended the Department Homeland Security board Wednesday after the DHS advisory committee issued an interim recommendation last month that “there is no need” for the board.

The latest advisory report released Wednesday stated: “There is no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board. But it is our assessment that the underlying work of Department components on this issue is critical.”

Homeland Security does not ” have the authority to silence or sanction anyone’s speech,” but should instead focus on determining whether “publicly disseminated disinformation impedes missions assigned to the agency” and “disseminating correct information,” the advisory council stated.

“With the HSAC recommendations as a guide, the Department will continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law, while upholding the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work,” Homeland Security stated.

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“Beyond Chilling” — Homeland Security Seeks to Share Biometric Databanks With Foreign Countries

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is promoting “Enhanced Border Security Agreements” by offering access to the department’s vast biometric databanks to foreign states that agree to reciprocate, according to a July 22 Statewatch report.

A DHS document, “DHS International Biometric Information Sharing (IBIS) Program,” is effectively a “sales pitch” to potential “foreign partners,” Statewatch said.

According to the document, the IBIS Program provides “a scalable, reliable, and rapid bilateral biometric and biographic information sharing capability to support border security and immigration vetting.”

Biometric technologies work by identifying unique features in the biological traits of a person and comparing them with stored information to see if a person is who they say they are.

According to DHS, these traits — which could be physical, such as a fingerprint or iris pattern, or behavioral, such as voice patterns — are used for “automated recognition” of individuals.

Some human rights and civil liberties advocates raised concerns about the collection of people’s biometric information by the DHS, foreign governments and corporations.

“It’s not just the surveillance and the buying and selling of your data that is worrisome,“ John Whitehead, a civil liberties attorney and author told The Defender.

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DHS watchdog calls for revamping counter disinformation efforts

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General on Thursday released a report calling for the agency to develop a new comprehensive strategy to counter disinformation on social media.

“Without a unified strategy, DHS and its components cannot coordinate effectively, internally, or externally to counter disinformation campaigns that appear in social media,” the IG said in the report.

The watchdog’s conclusion follows a dramatic episode surrounding the DHS’s creation of a Disinformation Governance Board, widely derided as a potentially Orwellian censorship body. The Biden administration quickly backtracked on the idea after Nina Jankowicz, the board’s original director, quickly resigned. In mid-July an advisory panel for DHS firmly asserted there was “no need for a Disinformation Governance Board.”

While the IG did not directly call for the return of the DGB, it highlighted that the DHS currently lacks a system for coordinating and monitoring disinformation efforts.

“Although DHS components have worked across various social media platforms to counter disinformation, DHS does not yet have a unified department-wide strategy to effectively counter disinformation that originates from both foreign and domestic sources,” the report read.

“DHS faced challenges unifying component efforts because disinformation is an emerging and evolving threat. We also attributed some challenges to the continual changes in DHS leadership, which may have hindered the development of top-down strategic guidance for countering disinformation.”

DHS began actively working on counter disinformation efforts in 2018, the report noted, originally focusing on campaigns about election infrastructure.

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