{"id":1778252,"date":"2022-12-17T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778252"},"modified":"2022-12-17T06:03:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:03:24","slug":"sens-grassley-hawley-dhs-redacted-critical-details-about-anti-disinformation-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sens-grassley-hawley-dhs-redacted-critical-details-about-anti-disinformation-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Sens. Grassley, Hawley: DHS Redacted Critical Details About \u201cAnti-Disinformation\u201d Activities"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/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%2Fsens-grassley-hawley-dhs-redacted-critical-details-about-anti-disinformation-activities%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=1778252&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 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has neglected to provide in full certain disclosures requested by members of the U.S. Senate relating to the department\u2019s growing role in \u201ccounter-disinformation\u201d activities, and this failure is particularly egregious in light of the co-equal roles of the executive and legislative branches of the government, two senators have charged in a Dec. 15 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/614678138\/Dec-15-Grassley-Hawley-DHS-Letter\">letter<\/a> to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) charge the DHS with ignoring or downplaying their \u201cserious concerns\u201d about the DHS\u2019s \u201cgrowing counter-disinformation efforts\u201d as conveyed previously in a letter of June 7, which formally requested \u201cinformation necessary to inform our congressional oversight of DHS activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The senators are deeply concerned about the DHS\u2019s admitted plans to ramp up its efforts to play a role in monitoring and mediating MDM, a common acronym for \u201cmis-, dis-, and mal-information,\u201d disseminated through social media, on topics as varied as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, race relations in America, and the hasty U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in August 2021.<\/p>\n<p>According to the senators, the DHS\u2019s response to their June 7 letter, which was dated June 29, did not answer any of the ten questions they had posed in their June 7 communication.<\/p>\n<p>Even more seriously, the DHS included with its June 29 letter three \u201cdocument productions\u201d supposedly intended to allay the senators\u2019 concerns, but the first of these contained documents already in the public domain, and the third featured some 500 pages of information, half of which was partly or completely redacted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBased on our review of this material, it appears that many of the redactions are applied to pre-decisional and deliberative process material,\u201d the senators write, before going on to remind Mayorkas that they have advanced their requests as sitting members of Congress whom DHS cannot legally ignore or blow off, given the separate and co-equal character of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches comprising the U.S. federal government.<\/p>\n<p>The Freedom of Information Act applies neither to the requests, nor to DHS\u2019s procedures in protocols in responding to them, and the redaction of content\u2014as DHS might do in response to a journalist\u2019s request for information\u2014is not appropriate here, the senators contend.<\/p>\n<p>The senators also take DHS to task for complaining, in its letter of June 29, about Congress\u2019s having made documents available to the senators without getting approval from DHS.<\/p>\n<p>Here, too, Grassley and Hawley charge DHS with having misconstrued the nature of its relationship to other branches and having falsely assumed that DHS enjoys the right to apply executive branch designations such as \u201cPredecisional,\u201d \u201cDeliberative,\u201d and \u201cFor Official Use Only,\u201d and thereby limit what documents and materials the senators may obtain by means of lawful whistleblower disclosures and oversight requests. In the case referenced in DHS\u2019s June 29 letter, the senators state, they did not unconditionally release all the material provided to them and included limited redactions of their own where appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe make such decisions independently, based on our assessment of what will be in the best interest of transparency and the public interest. Moreover, DHS should learn a lesson in accountability and transparency when patriotic whistleblowers provide full and complete records in contrast to DHS failing to follow that standard and instead providing improperly redacted records,\u201d Grassley and Hawley write.<\/p>\n<h2>Overstepping Bounds<\/h2>\n<p>The senators convey their considerable \u201calarm\u201d at public reports that illuminate DHS\u2019s growing role in \u201ccounter-disinformation activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese efforts stretch well beyond DHS\u2019s seriously misguided effort to establish a Disinformation Governance Board (DGB),\u201d they write, pointing to a document prepared by Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/10\/31\/social-media-disinformation-dhs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">released<\/a> by The Intercept, which states that \u201cCISA has a burgeoning MDM effort\u201d that includes \u201cdirectly engaging with social media companies to flag MDM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The same Intercept article also quotes a draft copy of DHS\u2019s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review stating that in coming years DHS will aggressively combat what it sees as bogus information on a range 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>The senators conclude by making two formal requests to Mayorkas, namely, full and complete answers to all questions raised in the senators\u2019 June 7 letter, along with unredacted copies of the documents provided in DHS\u2019s initial response; and a detailed account of DHS\u2019s policy for replying to congressional oversight requests, specifying how DHS makes decisions about redacting material that members of Congress have asked for.<\/p>\n<p>The Epoch Times has reached out to DHS for comment.<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-michael-washburn\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/WEB_MichaelWashburn_1.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Washburn\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p>Michael Washburn is a New York-based reporter who covers U.S. and China-related topics. He has a background in legal and financial journalism, and also writes about arts and culture. Additionally, he is the host of the weekly podcast Reading the Globe. His books include \u201cThe Uprooted and Other Stories,\u201d \u201cWhen We&#8217;re Grownups,\u201d and \u201cStranger, Stranger.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has neglected to provide in full certain disclosures requested by members of the U.S. Senate relating to the department\u2019s growing role in \u201ccounter-disinformation\u201d activities,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1698161,"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":[547],"tags":[9759,5595,5458,5092,4954,7492,9760,3690,9758,3819,9761],"class_list":["post-1778252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-anti-disinformation","tag-activities","tag-bongino","tag-critical","tag-details","tag-dhs","tag-grassley","tag-hawley","tag-redacted","tag-report","tag-sens"],"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\/1778252","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1698161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}