After Paying Twitter Millions, FBI Says Other Possible Big Tech Payments Are Protected For ‘Law Enforcement Purposes’

The FBI It refused to publish any payments it might have made. Google Oder Meta Because such records may contain sensitive information about law enforcement.

Recently, it was revealed that the FBI paid $3.4 million to Twitter to process requests for information about the censorship or deactivation of multiple accounts on the platform. The Daily Wire requested similar records through a Freedom Of Information Act request. This FOIA request sought to see what payments Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Google, might have made.

“The FBI can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to your request pursuant to FOIA Exemption (b)(7)(E) [5 U.S.C.§552 (b)(7)(E)]. The nature of your request implicates records the FBI may or may not compile for law enforcement purposes,” The Daily Wire received a written statement from the FBI Monday. Response To a December 20, FOIA request.

“Please be advised per standard FBI practice and policy this response neither confirms nor denies the existence of any records which would disclose techniques, procedures, or guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions and risk circumvention of the law by FOIA Exemption (b)(7)(E) [5 U.S.C.§552 (b)(7)(E)]. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed,” The FBI stated.

Elon Musk, the new chief of Twitter, has released a list of records and communications from Twitter. revealed The FBI developed a relationship to the social media giant through which it would pay the company to process requests regarding censorship and information about certain social media accounts.

One message beginning February 2021 that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars in compensation for the time the company’s staff spent processing the FBI’s myriad requests.

“In 2019 [Twitter’s Safety, Content, & Law Enforcement team] instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI. Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI,” The email stated that. “I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”

The FBI’s relationship with the company influenced the platform’s censorship decisions at a high level. For instance, Twitter’s former head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, Witness testimony In December 2020, the FBI and other members the U.S Intelligence Community instructed Twitter to be on the lookout for alleged terrorist activity. “hack-and-leak operations” by the state actors, namely Russia, ahead of the release of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO made similar claims on an appearance to the “Joe Rogan Experience” August

“The FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically There’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that,’” Zuckerberg said.

The New York Post dropped a story on Hunter’s laptop in October 2020 which was subsequently censored or suppressed on Twitter and Facebook. One of the largest proponents for censoring the story inside Twitter was the company’s deputy general counsel James Baker, who joined the social media platform after a stint as the FBI’s general counsel.

After much internal debate, Roth decided to censor Biden’s laptop story. “The suggestion from experts – which rings true – is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware,” Roth wrote in an email.