1/ Good morning. Yesterday the Washington Post published a very important report on January 6- before, during, and after. I reckon it's one of the most important accounts published anywhere to date. It is full of new reporting and detail. washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
2/ The article opens with the incredible account of Donell Harvin, a homeland security official who convened the nation's fusion centers which- for the first time since 9/11- were blinking red "coast to coast". He even told DC to prepare for mass casualties ~48 hours in advance.
3/ Based on interviews with more than 230 people and thousands of documents and multimedia assets, the report finds the "red flags were everywhere" and were compounding even weeks before the attack.
4/ We learn more about the FBI's mishandling of warnings, including confusion over how to deal with the volume of threats. And we learn here what has seemed obvious for months- FBI Director Christopher Wray was playing politics. This reeks of cowardice:
5/ This appears to again confirm the idea that senior military leaders feared putting the Guard on the ground because they worried then President Trump might try to use it as an instrument in the coup.
6/ The "before" section of the piece details the compounding furor over false election claims- @GrahamBrookie and @jaredlholt are quoted about the stirrings of extremists immediately after election day.
7/ The FBI even had information about threats to kill Capitol Police.
8/ Fascinating section here suggests posters were getting around content moderation rules by inserting words like "peaceful" into their chats. "Mitt Romney peacefully gets it first," said one.
9/ This junior analyst basically predicted the RNC and DNC bombs, and the general confusion at the Capitol.
10/ The concerns of senior military leaders are detailed again, including the fear Trump would attempt to use the National Guard to accomplish his coup if they were put on the street.
11/ More detail on the role of Jack Donohue, the former NYPD analyst who became director of intelligence for the Capitol Police who understood the threat, but he was apparently hampered by his tenure in the role.
12/ It is still not known which of these "larger" social media firms were sending posts to the fusion center in Northern California, but this offers more evidence that the FBI was receiving real time threat information from multiple social media firms.
13/ The Norfolk memo, the final warning from the "multibillion-dollar security apparatus built in the wake of 9/11", ignored because.... white people.
14/ Just a harrowing paragraph.
15/ @RepJayapal shared text messages she exchanged with her husband as the attack unfolded.
16/ The new details reported by the Post about the role of Trump lawyer Eastman are just incredible. This was a coup attempt, and Eastman believed he had the legal authority to push it through.
17/ Imagine if these belligerent tweets had been sent.
18/ Only after the 4:17 Trump tweet did the Army approve putting the Guard on the street, presumably because they may have felt more satisfied Trump would not use them to further advance his effort to stop the certification of Biden's victory.
19/ (Almost passed this over, but a stunning anecdote about Lindsey Graham)
20/ The final section of the report is called, aptly, Contagion, detailing the way that violent threats and disinformation have continued to spread across the country following the insurrection.
21/ It importantly notes that the insurrection is not, in fact, over.
22/ More on the alleged bias at the FBI against taking the threat from white "largely law-abiding" protestors seriously.
23/ All of that social media data- combined with video and other forms of data- became useful post facto to investigators tracking down the insurrectionists.
24/ The insurrection failed in the short term, but in the long run may indeed achieve its objective.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I wrote about the proposed Musk-Zuckerberg cage match, and why it gives me reason for ... optimism? techpolicy.press/rescuing-the-f…
The Musk-Zuckerberg spectacle, while stupid, is clarifying — it reveals the extent to which Silicon Valley has abandoned even the veneer of its purported mission of advancing humanity and solving the pressing challenges of our time. techpolicy.press/rescuing-the-f…
What is Secure? An Analysis of Popular Messaging Apps
A deep dive into the design and technical security of encrypted apps conducted by Cooper Quintin, Caroline Sinders, Leila Wylie Wagner, Tim Bernard, Ami Mehta, and me. Read the 86-page report here: techpolicy.press/what-is-secure…
In a world swept up in a wave of autocratization and erosion of rights, encrypted messaging apps are an increasingly popular—and necessary—way to share information, organize and engage with one another, and do business. techpolicy.press/what-is-secure…
But while the promise of secure messaging is private communications and user control over the spread of personal or group information, the reality is often more complicated, particularly in the age of surveillance capitalism. techpolicy.press/what-is-secure…
TikTok’s Confidence-Destroying Bold Glamour Filter is the Logical Product of Platforms Built for Consumerism
Rachel Griffin (@rachel_grfn) sees the beauty filter as the obvious endpoint of the underlying structural dynamics of the social media industry. techpolicy.press/tiktoks-confid…
With reference to @KathyCastorFL's comments in yesterday's #TikTok hearing in the House Energy & Commerce Committee:
"...criticizing TikTok as irresponsible or calling for it to add labels to videos where a filter is used – essentially suggesting that properly-informed users should be capable of resisting the unattainable beauty ideals they’re bombarded with – misses the bigger picture."
1/ I'm sympathetic to some of the angles on this issue that @jawillick explores here; yet I think talking about misinformation as a singular concept can be misleading. There are forms of mis- and disinformation that are very dangerous... washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/…
2/ Is the concern over these issues out of whack with the threat, writ large? Probably. But when you zoom in to particular phenomena, there is plenty to worry about. We have real examples to point to in this country and many others of mis- and disinformation leading to harms.
3/ Better to consider these issues through the lens of power, and to look at how the deliberate deployment of mis- and disinformation serves those in power and those that seek it. There is a lot of work to do to improve democracy; information integrity is only one lane.
1/ I've covered January 6 fairly closely, including helping with the @just_security January 6 Clearinghouse. I've read thousands of pages of documents and watched dozens if not hundreds of hours of footage from that day and the events that led up to it. justsecurity.org/77022/january-…
2/ I've paid close attention to the dynamics in the media and social media ecosystem as they relate to January 6, writing about related research and producing information and reporting on the subject. While what Fox News and others on the right are doing is abhorrent ...
3/ In many ways it is just more of the same. Public perception of January 6 has remained remarkably static since it happened. If you participate in or largely consume a media diet from the MAGA cinematic universe, you've been exposed to these ideas for more than two years.