1. TWITTER FILES EXTRA:
BIG BROTHER IS FLAGGING YOU
New House report and previously unpublished Twitter Files show: Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership was a front for government censorship
2. On Monday, @Jim_Jordan's Weaponization of Government Subcommittee released a damning report on the “Weaponization of Disinformation.” Packed with subpoenaed documents, it focused on Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership: judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subs…
3. The report showed the EIP, when it flagged 2020 election content, was a stand-in for the Department of Homeland Security.
“We just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA,” wrote Graham Brookie of Atlantic Council, an EIP partner:
4. Early diagrams of EIP workflow show a central role for DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which would provide a "warm introduction to election and special interest communities."
The "intelligence community" is also depicted as a participant:
5. That EIP was a fig leaf for DHS/CISA was never a mystery. Stanford's Alex Stamos said it was formed because CISA “lacked both kinda the funding and the legal authorizations” for its “necessary” work:
6. When @Shellenberger and I testified about the EIP before the Weaponization of Government Committee in March, outraged members denied the operation was secret or engaged in censorship. Wrote one, “CISA did not found, fund, or otherwise control the EIP”:
7. The denials triggered a long, self pitying media campaign, depicting congressional subpoenas and Freedom of Information requests as “tools of harassment,” and describing reports of a “government-private censorship consortium” as “false statements” and conspiracy theory:
8. Stanford's Renee DiResta to the New Yorker: “Matt Taibbi says something on a Twitter thread, and… members of Congress get to read my e-mails!”
In fact, congress read her emails because voters chose to give members who wanted them subpoena power. That, and FOIA.
9. New Twitter Files confirm the Weaponization Committee’s assertions that the EIP was a DHS operation from the start. “DHS want to establish a centralized portal for reporting disinformation,” wrote Twitter attorney Stacia Cardille in early 2020:
10. In May 2020, Twitter’s Lisa Roman wrote, “CISA received a grant to build a web portal for state and local election officials to report incidents of election-related misinformation,” adding, “This tool has been built in beta form.”
11. The Committee report noted Twitter was “briefed on the portal” by DHS in May, 2020. In June, Twitter executives added, “We have already done a demo with DHS/CISA,” and, “Twitter has already received a demo on this product.”
12. The EIP had asserted it filled a “critical gap” reviewing domestic political content, which “would likely be excluded from law enforcement action under the First Amendment… and not appropriate for study by intelligence agencies restricted... inside the United States”:
13. Among the most damning Committee revelations? Notes from a DiResta presentation on the EIP, saying the “gap” it filled “had several components,” involving “unclear legal authorities including very real 1st amendment questions.”
14. Worse, the Committee produced notes from a call between Facebook and DHS officials, showing the EIP created a platform for receiving complaints overseen by the quasi-private Center for Internet Security (CIS) because “DHS cannot openly endorse the portal.”
15. Instead, it was agreed a “behind-the-scenes” system would be implemented in which the private CIS would technically be the face of the program, but CIS and CISA would receive “incoming” content “at the same time”:
16. In other words, the convoluted bureaucracy of the EIP was designed to conceal the central role of CISA by making the “non-governmental" CIS – which this year received $42.9 million from CISA – its superficial intake mechanism.
17. This fit with Twitter Files documents, where EIP flags came with a disclaimer, saying complaints were already forwarded to CISA, which will “submit it to the relevant platform(s) for review,” and to the “Election Integrity Partnership of Stanford University.”
18. Among the EIP denials: “CISA did not send content to the EIP to analyze.”
CIS instead sent content to EIP, while CISA sent content to platforms “for review.” Readers may judge for themselves if the distinction is important:
19. EIP members complained that FOIAs and subpoenas were unnecessary because “our work is public” and EIP was no “secret cabal,” but the EIP didn't release individual recommendations on content until threatened with contempt:
20. When EIP finally produced the “JIRA” tickets showing the recommendations on flagged content, it wasn’t hard to see why they weren’t anxious to produce them. Many were phrased as direct requests for removal, e.g. “We recommend that these posts be removed immediately.”
21. Many posts recommended for action were clearly protected speech, like an ad claiming "do-nothing Democrats" want to "hijack" Republican votes, or a joke tweet by Mike Huckabee about voting on behalf of deceased parents:
23. Exhibits from the Missouri v. Biden case show the Atlantic Council worrying to former CISA official Matt Masterson that CIS may not be “effective” for “the USG,” because it came to see EIP “as a growth area and consistent funding source.”
24. Masterson replied, “I have been pounding on them for 2 months… not to gorilla their way into more.”
25. These documents should put to rest the notion that the EIP was not a government/Homeland Security operation. The idea that it's conspiracy theory to worry about First Amendment concerns with the EIP would also seem belied by DiResta herself conceding it:
Not only is the @nytimes is totally wrong implying @mirandadevine’s reporting hasn’t held up, the paper ignored its own multi-level failure on that same story in 2020, which included ignoring their own reporting. It’s almost actionable — they owe a huge apology (1/6):
First of all the Times in 2020 tried to use the unprecedented censorship of the story by Facebook and Twitter to call Miranda’s story “dubious,” without saying what was dubious. (The censorship angle they of course ignore entirely.) It got worse (2/6):
Just a few paragraphs down, the Times contradicted itself, saying Twitter didn’t block the story because it was “dubious,” but because it was supposedly “hacked materials.”
The laptop contents were not even “hacked materials,” as Twitter quickly determined. But also (3/6):
1. TWITTER FILES Extra: The Defaming of Brandon Straka and #Walkaway
Smeared as a Russian proxy after founding a movement to "#Walkaway" from the Democratic Party, Twitter documents suggest @BrandonStraka and his followers were set up
2. In Atlanta Monday, I testified before Georgia state Representative @MeshaMainor, in a free speech hearing centered around the censorship of members of the “#WalkAway” Facebook Group, whose 500,000-plus accounts were deleted by Facebook on January 8th, 2021. washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/…
3. The #TwitterFiles contained material about federal interest in #WalkAway, including exculpatory Twitter analyses that contrasted with coverage describing #WalkAway as a “Kremlin operation.” These documents should have been published earlier. I apologize to @BrandonStraka.
You obviously didn't read the reports (@lhfang is a right-wing ideologue?). We went out of our way to show censorship/manipulation taking place across the spectrum, mentioning everyone from the Green Party to the Yellow Vests to Truthout and Consortium News. (1/5)
If you read the reports there was very little about which "side" was suppressed more. There was some chatter within the company about it, and some current and former executives talked about it with us, but mainly we focused on the who/how of censorship (2/5)
The main revelations were about roles the FBI, DHS, GEC, ODNI, DOD, HHS etc. played in flagging content. Lee's reports were about DOD creating fake accounts abroad. Other projects put USG agencies in the middle of flagging election or Covid-related content (3/5)
1. TWITTER FILES (DEAMPLIFIED)
How the Censorship Industrial Complex Case Was Built
2. I made a deal with the owner of this platform to publish new #TwitterFiles material only on this site. However, since this account is denylisted, I don't feel obligated to add the context, since no one will see it. Full explanations for images on Racket.News
1. UK FILES EXTRA:
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, the IRS, and 501 (c)(3) status
2. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, or CCDH, is one of the most powerful players in the global "anti-disinformation" space, with a reputation for successfully pressuring Internet platforms to remove disfavored speech:
3. CCDH is currently being sued by this platform, X, which has accused it of manipulating X data to make it "appear as if X is overwhelmed by harmful content":
1. FOIA FILES EXTRA:
STATE DEPARTMENT "TARGETING AMERICANS"?
2. In late May and early June, 2019, a story hit the news: Donald Trump's State Department had been caught trolling people, including a Washington Post reporter, deemed insufficiently tough on Iran. Outrage was universal:
3. Similar stories at The Intercept and Guardian ripped State's Global Engagement Center for funding @IranDisinfo, which was said to have dubbed critics of of Trump's "Maximum Pressure" policy “‘mouthpieces,’ ‘apologists,’ ‘collaborators,’ and ‘lobbyists’” of Iran: