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At this point, smoking guns showing First Amendment law breaking by the Federal government are everywhere.
A new Intercept expose has revealed yet more instances of federal agencies and government authorities colluding with tech companies to censor free speech rights of American citizens.
Leaked documents obtained by the news outlet detail censorship efforts of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Matt Masterson, a former DHS official working at Microsoft, said in one text exchange with DHS director Jen Easterly, in February.
Then Twitter exec in charge of Legal, Policy and Trust, Vijaya Gadde, held meetings with Feds, plotting greater government control of information on that platform.
New Twitter owner Elon Musk fired Gadde, among others, within his first few days of taking over the company.
In another instance, FBI official Laura Dehmlow complained that “subversive” information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government.
Meeting not only with Twitter executives, but JPMorgan bank reps, Dehmlow reportedly said “we need a media infrastructure that is held
accountable.”
What’s ironic, of course, is that the Federal government, by its illegal and often secretive efforts to control and censor speech on social media platforms, has earned that distrust and loss of support.
Previously during the election season of 2020, Dehmlow was reportedly among the FBI agents who briefed Facebook on Russian election disinformation. Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg later referenced that briefing as a reason the platform censored a story about a Hunter Biden laptop, which contained info that might damage the Presidential prospects of Hunter’s father, Joe Biden.
Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan the briefing led the Facebook CEO to believe that the laptop was possible Russian disinfo.
The Intercept’s detailed piece concerning the efforts of DHS to conduct censorship by tech proxy can be read here.
The reporting only adds to a growing mountain of troubling evidence that the Federal government is systematically undermining First Amendment protections, which bars Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
No federal agency is authorized by law to work with or direct companies or social media platforms to censor broadly protected speech of Americans.
The Intercept story follows recent news involving a lawsuit brought by 19 state attorneys general, alleging illegal government and tech company collusion to censor Americans.
The Trends Journal reported on that in “FIRST AMENDMENT SHOWDOWN: MISSOURI VS BIDEN” (13 Oct 2022) and “MISSOURI V BIDEN: FAUCI MUST TESTIFY IN DEPOSITION” (25 Oct 2022).
The Biden Administration has, from its earliest, engaged in a concerted effort to justify and advance censorship under the guise of combating “dangerous misinformation” and “disinformation.”
Often predicated on protecting Americans from “foreign” actors and “terroristic” threats, the administration has progressively undercut legal free speech rights of Americans.
For a timeline of articles showing the evolution and extent of those efforts, check out the following:
- “U.S. GOVERNMENT CROSSING THE CONSTITUTIONAL LINE” (23 Feb 2021)
- “CONGRESS PRESSURES BIG TECH TO CENSOR EVEN MORE” (30 Mar 2021)
- “DC ATTORNEY CIRCUMVENTING BAR ON GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE OF FREE SPEECH” (13 Jul 2021)
- “GOVERNMENT: FREE SPEECH IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH” (21 Sep 2021)
- “BIDEN PUSHES FOR MORE CENSORSHIP” (20 Sep 2022)
- “‘DANGEROUS DISINFORMATION’ LABEL BEING USED TO GUT FUNDAMENTAL FREE SPEECH RIGHTS” (4 Apr 2022)
- “U.S.S.A. IF YOU DON’T OBEY THE GOVERNMENT, YOU ARE A DOMESTIC TERRORIST” (18 Jan 2022)
- “U.S. SURGEON GENERAL GOES FULL COMMIE, TELLS TECH TO GIVE HIM NAMES OF PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T BUY GOVERNMENT’S COVID LINE” (8 Mar 2022)
- “‘DANGEROUS DISINFORMATION’ LABEL BEING USED TO GUT FUNDAMENTAL FREE SPEECH RIGHTS” (5 Apr 2022)
- “BIDEN’S PICK TO HEAD NEW DOMESTIC ‘DISINFORMATION GOVERNANCE BOARD’: HOW LOW CAN YOU GO” (3 May 2022)
- “THE ‘DECLARATION’ TRASHING THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET” (3 May 2022)
- “NEW EVIDENCE CDC DIRECTED BIG TECH TO MONITOR AND BAN COVID DISSENT” (2 Aug 2022)