{"id":1720101,"date":"2022-11-01T13:06:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T17:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1720101"},"modified":"2022-11-01T13:06:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T17:06:26","slug":"how-the-surveillance-state-and-big-tech-colluded-to-make-twitter-disinformation-the-new-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-the-surveillance-state-and-big-tech-colluded-to-make-twitter-disinformation-the-new-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Surveillance State And Big Tech Colluded To Make Twitter \u2018Disinformation\u2019 The New Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-the-surveillance-state-and-big-tech-colluded-to-make-twitter-disinformation-the-new-terrorism%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1720101&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The late, great Angelo Codevilla maintained that America\u2019s response to 9\/11 was fundamentally flawed because it adopted a law enforcement approach to what is essentially a foreign policy problem. He argued that the law enforcement approach \u2014 the idea that we could detect and disrupt terrorist plots before they come to fruition, and arrest those responsible \u2014 required the construction of a vast state security and surveillance apparatus that would eventually, when the terrorist threat subsided, be turned on American citizens.<\/p>\n<p>As in so much else, Codevilla was prophetic.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/10\/31\/social-media-disinformation-dhs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a deeply reported piece by Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang of The Intercept<\/a>\u00a0revealed an \u201cexpansive effort\u201d by the Department of Homeland Security to curb speech it considers dangerous by pressuring tech platforms to engage in online censorship. Although DHS\u2019s widely ridiculed\u00a0\u201cDisinformation Governance Board\u201d was scaled back and then shut down earlier this year amid well-deserved criticism, \u201cother initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate \u2014 the war on terror \u2014 has been wound down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The security apparatus that was erected to keep us safe from al-Qaida, it seems, is looking for something else to do now, so it has decided to become the arbiter of what constitutes false and dangerous information, and therefore what political opinions Americans are allowed to express online.<\/p>\n<p>Citing a trove of documents connected to an ongoing lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Klippenstein and Fang reveal a quiet pressure campaign by DHS \u201cto try and shape online discourse\u201d that involves frequent meetings and coordination with top tech and finance executives, and even \u201ca formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/4a908485-1c24-4bdb-949a-95b83e7dff37\/special%20Facebook%20portal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">special Facebook portal<\/a>\u00a0that requires a government or law enforcement email to use.\u201d At the time of this writing, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/xtakedowns\/login\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">portal is still live<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What might DHS consider \u201cinaccurate information\u201d worthy of suppression? A whole host of topics, including \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because \u201cdisinformation\u201d isn\u2019t clearly defined, it can be whatever DHS and the federal agencies under its purview say it is. And wouldn\u2019t you know it, disinformation turns out to be whatever ideas and opinions <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/07\/20\/democrats-definition-of-misinformation-is-whatever-hurts-them-politically-today\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">contradict the official narrative<\/a> of the Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership on major political issues.<\/p>\n<p>No surprise, then, that Big Tech appears to be OK with this. Klippenstein and Fang quote a February text from Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, to a DHS director, saying: \u201cPlatforms have got to get comfortable with gov\u2019t. It\u2019s really interesting how hesitant they remain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But not, perhaps, as hesitant as Masterson thinks. Emails and documents connected to the Missouri lawsuit show a close collaboration between DHS and top executives of social media firms such as Twitter. In 2018, Congress passed and President Trump signed a bill creating an office inside DHS called<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal law enforcement agencies originally created to protect us from terrorists are now being used to protect us from ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":1720106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1720101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1720106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}