The Establishment vs. The American Liberation Movement

Newsweek  |   Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether "terrorism" is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.

"The current political environment is not something that the FBI is necessarily responsible for, nor should it be," says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of the world's leading terrorism experts and senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation.

In a statement to Newsweek, the FBI said: "The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI's goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI's top threat priorities." The FBI further said, "We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person's political beliefs or affiliations."

The White House declined to comment. The Trump campaign was given an opportunity to comment but did not do so.

What the FBI Data Shows

From the president down, the Biden administration has presented Trump and MAGA as an existential threat to American democracy and talked up the risk of domestic terrorism and violence associated with the 2024 election campaign.

"Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country," President Biden tweeted last September, the first time that he explicitly singled out the former president. "MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections but elections being held now and into the future," Biden said.

Biden's Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said: "The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security...it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy."

For Attorney General Merrick Garland: "Attacks by domestic terrorists are attacks on all of us collectively, aimed at rending the fabric of our democratic society and driving us apart."

Though the FBI's data shows a dip in the number of investigations since the slew of January 6 cases ended, FBI Director Christopher Wray still says that the breach of the Capitol building was "not an isolated event" and the threat is "not going away anytime soon." In a joint report to Congress this June, the Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security say that "Threats from...DVEs [domestic violent extremists] have increased in the last two years, and any further increases in threats likely will correspond to potential flashpoints, such as high-profile elections and campaigns or contentious current events."

The FBI and DHS report concludes: "Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence."

The threats listed in that paragraph are all clearly associated with America's right and in particular with Trump's MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report ("Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond") in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE ("anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism") from "furtherance of ideological agendas" to "furtherance of political and/or social agendas." For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.

It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan. This shifted subtly days after the events of January 6 when it comes to what the Bureau calls AGAAVE.

"We cannot and do not investigate ideology," a senior FBI official reassured the press after January 6. "We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence or criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security."

Everything The Biden Administration Does Seems Designed To Give Americans The Finger

jonathanturley  |  We previously discussed the defunct Disinformation Governance Board and its controversial head Nina Jankowicz. After the outcry over the program, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas finally relented and disbanded the board while insisting that it was never about censoring opposing views. Jankowicz has sued over the portrayal of her views. Now, Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) has exposed just how broad the scope of the censorship efforts were under the board in combatting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM). This range of authority in what the agency called the “MDM space,” included targeting views on racial justice and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

New documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argued that the agency could regulate speech related to “the 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” as well as “irregular immigration.”

Those subjects stretch across much of the “space” used for political speech in the last few years.

Notably, within DHS, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” I testified earlier on this effort.

So DHS asserted the authority to target viewpoints on racial justice, Ukraine, and other political subjects, including views based on fact but viewed as misleading in context.

What is also troubling is the continued effort to conceal these censorship activities. Homeland redacted much of this information on a now defunct board under FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protects “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations.” That claim is itself chilling.

After the demise of the board, National Public Radio ran an interview entitled “How DHS’s disinformation board fell victim to misinformation.”

As the title suggests, NPR just repeated the view of Jankowicz despite the objections of many of us in the free speech community. Jankowicz insisted “we weren’t going to be doing anything related to policing speech. It was an internal coordinating mechanism to make sure that we were doing that work efficiently.” Yet, what were the criminal investigations, prosecutions, and enforcement efforts now being claimed as connected to this work?

Recently, a court found that the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts constituted “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Those words by Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty are part of a 155-page opinion granting a temporary injunction, requested by Louisiana and Missouri, to prevent White House officials from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship.

Mayorkas Lawfare Censorship Advisory Board's Signatories To The Huntergate Laptop Coverup

dailycaller  |  Top Republican lawmakers requested information from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding an agency group that will include former intelligence officials who signed a letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop was a “Russian information operation,” according to a copy of a Thursday letter first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

DHS tapped former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, all of whom signed an October 2020 letter casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, to join the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group. In response, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green and Republican Texas Rep. August Pfluger are demanding to know DHS’ selection process for the group’s members, according to a copy of the letter. 

The Hunter Biden laptop contents were authenticated by the Daily Caller News Foundation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS News and other media outlets. No evidence currently exists to suggest the laptop was a Russian disinformation operation.

“Multiple members of this Homeland Intelligence Expert Group have shown an utter disregard for the truth, not to mention brazen political bias. Does Secretary Mayorkas really think appointing leading Russian-collusion hoaxers will increase trust in his department? Clearly, he doesn’t care,” Green said in a statement to the DCNF.

Both Clapper and Brennan have been previously criticized for misleading the American public. On multiple occasions, Clapper gave incorrect information to Congress.

Clapper gave “inconsistent testimony” about contacts he had with the media while in office, Republicans charged. Additionally, Brennan denied that CIA officials had hacked the computers of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, a statement that was later proven false.

“James Clapper and John Brennan have no place in positions of power—much less on a board of so-called experts where they will surely continue to serve as partisan Democrat operatives disguised as national security officials. The Department of Homeland Security must dispense with its disinformation boards and expert groups and focus on the real national security issues facing our country—such as the thousands of illegal migrants crossing our southern border on a daily basis,” Pfluger, who serves as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, said in a statement to the DCNF.

The group will meet four times per year to advise DHS on intelligence and national security efforts regarding issues such as “terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology,” DHS said.

DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

 

 

DHS Just Handed Out $20Million To Grease Those Snitching Skids...,

leohohmann  |  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on September 6 that $20 million in federal grants (your tax dollars) will be handed out to 34 organizations to “prevent targeted violence and terrorism.”

Since today is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, you might think these 34 organizations will be focused on al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. But you would be wrong. They are focused on Americans who dissent from the prevailing narratives coming out of the federal government and its collaborating partners in the corporate media and major social media platforms.

Whether it’s Covid and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential “violent extremist” and terrorist.

The $20 million is going to universities, behavioral and mental-health providers, youth services organizations, schools, churches and faith leaders, and state law enforcement agencies. Their job will be to identify political dissidents and foster interventions among those Americans considered to be “going down a path toward violence.”

This money comes from the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3. The program was started in fiscal 2020 and has to date awarded $70 million in grants to private nonprofits, state and local government agencies.

The following is from the Department of Homeland Security press release announcing the $20 million in new grants (notice the emphasis on public health, which is the same emphasis used by the U.N. World Health Organization, an emphasis also used by New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham in her recent declaration suspending the Second Amendment).

“Created in 2021, CP3 is tasked with strengthening our country’s ability to prevent acts of targeted violence and terrorism nationwide. To help accomplish this mission, CP3 cultivates partnerships across every level of government and within local communities, provides grant funding and prevention training, and promotes greater awareness and understanding of TVTP (Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention) strategies and best practices.  Leveraging a public health-informed approach, CP3 brings together behavioral and mental health providers, educators, faith leaders, social service providers, nonprofits, law enforcement, and other state, local, and community partners to address systemic factors that can lead to violence while strengthening protective factors at the local level that support the safety, well-being, and resiliency of communities in the United States.”

The CP3 program, according to the release, “helps to prevent targeted violence and terrorism through funding, training, increased public awareness, and the development of partnerships across every level of the government, the private sector and in local communities across our country. Leveraging an approach informed by public health research, CP3 brings together mental health providers, educators, faith leaders, public health officials, social services, nonprofits, and others in communities across the country to help people who may be escalating to violence.”

This all sounds wonderful, until you figure out that it’s not focused on actual terrorists or drug cartel members who slip into our country every day from across wide-open borders with intent to harm Americans. It’s focused on spying on law-abiding Americans who the government considers dangerous simply because of their views on various political or social issues.

This program, administered by DHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with the full support of Congress, is “the only federal grant program solely dedicated to helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in this area.” 

DHS Has Assembled A Rogue's Gallery Of Oxygen-Thieving Turd Burglers To KEEP US SAFE!!!

DHS.GOV  |  Today, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) Ken Wainstein, and Counterterrorism Coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen announced the establishment of the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group (Experts Group). The group is comprised of private sector experts who will provide their unique perspectives on the federal government’s intelligence enterprise to DHS’s I&A and the Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator.

“The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “I express my deep gratitude to these distinguished individuals for dedicating their exceptional expertise, experience, and vision to our critical mission.”

“The Homeland Intelligence Experts Group is being formed at a time of unprecedented challenge, with the U.S. intelligence enterprise facing threats from a range of malign actors, to include foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cyber criminals, drug-trafficking cartels and other transnational criminal organizations,” said Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Ken Wainstein. “The Experts Group will be an invaluable asset as we navigate through this evolving threat and operating environment and continue to strengthen our efforts to protect the Homeland.”

“The homeland threat environment is more diverse, dynamic, and challenging than at any point in our post 9/11 history, with threats tied to an array of different terrorist and violent extremist ideologies and narratives,” said Counterterrorism Coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen. “The experience, expertise, and perspective offered by Experts Group members will undoubtedly put the Department in a strong position to confront this threat landscape, and we are grateful for the willingness of the Experts Group members to serve in this important capacity."

The Experts Group will provide DHS with a wide range of views and perspectives, with a membership that includes former senior intelligence officials, journalists, and prominent human rights and civil liberties advocates.

The Experts Group members are the following:

• John Bellinger, Partner, Arnold & Porter (Former Legal Advisor, Department of State and National Security Council)
• John Brennan, Distinguished Fellow, Fordham University School of Law and University of Texas at Austin (Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency)
• James Clapper, CNN National Security Analyst (Former Director of National Intelligence)
• Rajesh De, Partner, Mayer Brown (Former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy and NSA General Counsel)
• Thomas Galati, Senior Vice President, East Coast Security Operations, NBC Universal (Former New York Police Department, Chief, Intelligence and Counterterrorism)
• Tashina Gauhar, Senior Director, Compliance, Strategy and Policy, The Boeing Company (Former Associate Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division, Department of Justice)
• Asha M. George, Executive Director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense (Former Subcommittee Staff Director, House Committee on Homeland Security)
• Karen Greenberg, Director, Center on National Security, Fordham University School of Law
• Emily Harding, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Former Deputy Staff Director, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)
• Paul Kolbe, Senior Fellow and former Director of the Intelligence Project, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center (Former Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency)
• David Kris, Co-Founder, Culper Partners LLC (Former Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division, Department of Justice)
• Michael Leiter, Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (Former Director, National Counterterrorism Center)
• Elisa Massimino, Executive Director, Human Rights Institute, Georgetown Law
• Gregory Nojeim, Senior Counsel and Director, Security and Surveillance Project, Center for Democracy & Technology
• Francis Taylor, Principal, Cambridge Global Advisors (Former Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, DHS)
• Caryn Wagner, Former Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, DHS
• Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution, and Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, Lawfare            

The Experts Group will meet four times annually and leverage the expertise of each member to provide input on I&A’s most complex problems and challenges, including terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology.

For more information on I&A’s vital work, please visit Office of Intelligence and Analysis | Homeland Security (dhs.gov).

Chuck Schumer's AI Conference

 CTH  |  According to a recent media report, Senator Chuck Schumer led an AI insight forum that included tech industry leaders: Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Tesla, X and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, NVIDIA President Jensen Huang, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, technologist and Google alum Eric Schmidt, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Additionally, representatives from labor and civil rights advocacy groups which included: AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President and CEO Maya Wiley, and AI accountability researcher Deb Raji. The group was joined by a list of prominent AI executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Notably absent from the Sept 13th forum was anyone with any real-world experience that is not a beneficiary of government spending. This is not accidental. Technocracy advances regardless of the citizen impact. Technocrats advance their common interests, not the interests of the ordinary citizen.

That meeting comes after DHS established independent guidelines we previously discussed {GO DEEP}.

DHS’ AI task force is coordinating with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on how the department can partner with critical infrastructure organizations “on safeguarding their uses of AI and strengthening their cybersecurity practices writ large to defend against evolving threats.”

Remember, in addition to these groups assembling, the Dept of Defense (DoD) will now conduct online monitoring operations, using enhanced AI to protect the U.S. internet from “disinformation” under the auspices of national security. {link}

So, the question becomes, what was Chuck Schumer’s primary reference for this forum?

(FED NEWS) […] Schumer said that tackling issues around AI-generated content that is fake or deceptive that can lead to widespread misinformation and disinformation was the most time-sensitive problem to solve due to the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

[…] The top Democrat in the Senate said there was much discussion during the meeting about the creation of a new AI agency and that there was also debate about how to use some of the existing federal agencies to regulate AI.

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, Schumer’s Republican counterpart in leading the bipartisan AI forums, said: “We’ve got to have the ability to provide good information to regulators. And it doesn’t mean that every single agency has to have all of the top-end, high-quality of professionals but we need that group of professionals who can be shared across the different agencies when it comes to AI.”

Although there were no significant voluntary commitments made during the first AI insight forum, tech leaders who participated in the forum said there was much debate around how open and transparent AI developers and those using AI in the federal government will be required to be. (read more)

There isn’t anything that is going to stop the rapid deployment of AI in the tech space.  However, for the interests of the larger American population, the group unrepresented in the forum, is the use of AI to identify, control, and impede information distribution that is against the interests of the government and the public-private partnership the technocrats are assembling.

The words “disinformation” and “deep fakes” are as disingenuous as the term “Patriot Act.”   The definitions of disinformation and deep fakes are where the government regulations step in, using their portals into Big Tech, to identify content on platforms that is deemed in violation.

It doesn’t take a deep political thinker to predict that memes and video segments against the interests of the state will be defined for removal.

DoD Fitna Scrutinize You To Protect You In Ways You Didn't Even Know You Need!

CTH  | The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has contracted New York-based Accrete AI to deploy software that detects “real time” disinformation threats on social media.

The company’s Argus anomaly detection AI software analyzes social media data, accurately capturing “emerging narratives” and generating intelligence reports for military forces to speedily neutralize disinformation threats.

“Synthetic media, including AI-generated viral narratives, deep fakes, and other harmful social media-based applications of AI, pose a serious threat to US national security and civil society,” Accrete founder and CEO Prashant Bhuyan said.

“Social media is widely recognized as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behavior through the intentional spread of disinformation.

“USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognizing the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”

But wait… It gets worse!

[PRIVATE SECTOR VERSION] – The company also revealed that it will launch an enterprise version of Argus Social for disinformation detection later this year.

The AI software will provide protection for “urgent customer pain points” against AI-generated synthetic media, such as viral disinformation and deep fakes.

Providing this protection requires AI that can automatically “learn” what is most important to an enterprise and predict the likely social media narratives that will emerge before they influence behavior. (read more)

Now, take a deep breath…. Let me explain.

The goal is the “PRIVATE SECTOR VERSION.”  USSOCOM is the mechanical funding mechanism for deployment, because the system itself is too costly for a private sector launch.   The Defense Dept budget is used to contract an Artificial Intelligence system, the Argus anomaly detection AI, to monitor social media under the auspices of national security.

Once the DoD funded system is created, the “Argus detection protocol” – the name given to the AI monitoring and control system, will then be made available to the public sector.  “Enterprise Argus” is then the commercial product, created by the DoD, which allows the U.S. based tech sectors to deploy.

The DoD cannot independently contract for the launch of an operation against a U.S. internet network, because of constitutional limits via The Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.  However, the DoD can fund the creation of the system under the auspices of national defense, and then allow the private sector to launch for the same intents and purposes.   See how that works? 

RESOURCES:

Using AI for Content Moderation

Facebook / META / Tech joining with DHS

Zoom will allow Content Scraping by AI 

AI going into The Cloud

U.S. Govt Going into The Cloud With AI

Pentagon activates 175 Million IP’s 👀**ahem**

Big Names to Attend Political AI Forum

Ken Klippenstein Wrote About The DoD Office Of Information And Perception Management (IPMO)

theintercept  |   While perception management involves denying, or blocking, propaganda, it can also entail advancing the U.S.’s own narrative. The Defense Department defines perception management in its official dictionary as “[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.” This is the part that has, historically, tended to raise the public’s skepticism of the Pentagon’s work.

The term “perception management” hearkens back to the Reagan administration’s attempts to shape the narrative around the Contras in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration sought to kick what his Vice President George H.W. Bush would later call the “Vietnam syndrome,” which it believed was driving American public opposition to support for the Contras. Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, directed the agency’s leading propaganda specialist to oversee an interagency effort to portray the Contras — who had been implicated in grisly atrocities — as noble freedom fighters.

“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and charged with the task of working closely with private groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and governmental action,” an unpublished draft chapter of Congress’s investigation into Iran-Contra states. (Democrats dropped the chapter in order to get several Republicans to sign the report.)

The Smith-Mundt Act, passed in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, prohibits the the State Department from disseminating “public diplomacy” — i.e., propaganda — domestically, instead requiring that those materials be targeted at foreign audiences. The Defense Department considered itself bound by this requirement as well.

After the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon triggered backlash after U.S. propaganda was disseminated in the U.S. In 2004, the military signaled that it had begun its siege on Fallujah. Just hours later, CNN discovered that this was not true.

But in 2012, the law was amended to allow propaganda to be circulated domestically, under the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, introduced by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, which was later rolled into the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Proponents of amending these two sections argue that the ban on domestic dissemination of public diplomacy information is impractical given the global reach of modern communications, especially the Internet, and that it unnecessarily prevents valid U.S. government communications with foreign publics due to U.S. officials’ fear of violating the ban,” a congressional research service report said at the time of the proposed amendments. “Critics of lifting the ban state that it may open the door to more aggressive U.S. government activities to persuade U.S. citizens to support government policies, and might also divert the focus of State Department and the BBG [Broadcasting Board of Governors] communications from foreign publics, reducing their effectiveness.”

The Obama administration subsequently approved a highly classified covert action finding designed to counter foreign malign influence activities, a finding renewed and updated by the Biden administration, as The Intercept has reported.

The IPMO memo produced for the academic institution hints at its role in such propagandistic efforts now. “Among other things, the IPMO is tasked with the development of broad thematic messaging guidance and specific strategies for the execution of DoD activities designed to influence foreign defense-related decision-makers to behave in a manner beneficial to U.S. interests,” the memo states.

As the global war on terror draws to a close, the Pentagon has turned its attention to so-called great power adversaries like Russia and China. Following Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, which in part involved state-backed efforts to disseminate falsehoods on social media, offices tasked with combating disinformation started springing up all over the U.S. government, as The Intercept has reported.

The director of national intelligence last year established a new center to oversee all the various efforts, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

The Pentagon’s IPMO differs from the others in one key respect: secrecy. Whereas most of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-disinformation efforts are unclassified in nature — as one former DHS contractor not authorized to speak publicly explained to The Intercept — the IPMO involves a great deal of highly classified work.

That the office’s work goes beyond simple messaging into the rarefied world of intelligence is clear from its location within the Pentagon hierarchy. “The Influence and Perception Management Office will serve as the senior advisor to the USD(I&S) [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] for strategic operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters,” the budget notes.

When asked about the intelligence community’s counter-disinformation efforts, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress this month, “I think DIA’s perspective on this, senator, is really speed: We want to be able to detect that and it’s really with our open-source collection capability working with our combatant command partners where this is happening all over the world — and then the ability to turn something quickly with them, under the right authorities, to counter that disinformation, misinformation.”

Thank GAWD Brandon An'em Protecting Our "Cognitive Infrastructure"

tablet  |  My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency—better known as CISA—a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission. This agency was created in the waning days of the Obama administration, supposedly to protect our digital infrastructure against cyberattacks from computer viruses and nefarious foreign actors. But less than one year into their existence, CISA decided that their remit also should include protecting our “cognitive infrastructure” from various threats.

“Cognitive infrastructure” is the actual phrase used by current CISA head Jen Easterly, who formerly worked at Tailored Access Operations, a top secret cyber warfare unit at the National Security Agency. It refers to the thoughts inside your head, which is precisely what the government’s counter-disinformation apparatus, headed by people like Easterly, are attempting to control. Naturally, these thoughts need to be protected from bad ideas, such as any ideas that the people at CISA or their government partners do not like.

In early 2017, citing the threat from foreign disinformation, the Department of Homeland Security unilaterally declared federal control over the country’s election infrastructure, which had previously been administered at the local level. Not long after that, CISA, which is a subagency of the DHS, established its own authority over the cognitive infrastructure by becoming the central hub coordinating the government’s information control activities. This pattern was repeated in several other government agencies around the same time (there are currently a dozen federal agencies named among the defendants in our suit).

So, what exactly has the government been doing to protect our cognitive infrastructure? Perhaps the best way to wrap your head around the actual operations of the new American censorship leviathan is to consider the vivid analogy offered by our brilliant attorney, John Sauer, in the introduction of our brief for the injunction. This is worth quoting at length:

Suppose that the Trump White House, backed by Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress, publicly demanded that all libraries in the United States burn books criticizing the President, and the President made statements implying that the libraries would face ruinous legal consequences if they did not comply, while senior White House officials privately badgered the libraries for detailed lists and reports of such books that they had burned and the libraries, after months of such pressure, complied with those demands and burned the books.

Suppose that, after four years of pressure from senior congressional staffers in secret meetings threatening the libraries with adverse legislation if they did not cooperate, the FBI started sending all libraries in the United States detailed lists of the books the FBI wanted to burn, requesting that the libraries report back to the FBI by identifying the books that they burned, and the libraries complied by burning about half of those books.

Suppose that a federal national security agency teamed up with private research institutions, backed by enormous resources and federal funding, to establish a mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program that uses sophisticated techniques to review hundreds of millions of American citizens’ electronic communications in real time, and works closely with tech platforms to covertly censor millions of them.

The first two hypotheticals are directly analogous to the facts of this case. The third, meanwhile, is not a hypothetical at all; it is a description of the Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project.

The censorship activities of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, which it terms “information warfare,” have turned the FBI, in the words of whistleblower Steve Friend, into an “intelligence agency with law enforcement powers.” But there is no “information warfare” exception to the constitutional right of free speech. Which other federal agencies are involved in censorship? Besides the ones you might suspect—the DOJ, NIH, CDC, Surgeon General, and the State Department—our case has also uncovered censorship activities by the Department of the Treasury (don’t criticize the feds’ monetary policies), and yes, my friends, even the Census Bureau (don’t ask).

In prior precedent-setting cases on censorship, the Supreme Court clarified that the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution exists not just for the person speaking but for the listener as well: We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan, not just those who happen to post opinions or share information on social media.

The judge presiding over the case, Terry Dougherty, asked on Friday in court if anyone had read George Orwell’s 1984 and whether they remembered the Ministry of Truth. “It’s relevant here,” he added. It is indeed time to slay the government’s Ministry of Truth. I hope that our efforts in Missouri v. Biden prove to be a crucial first step in this project to restore our constitutional rights.

 

What Is The Restrict Act And Why Is It Bad?

A short booster thread on this issue 👇

The RESTRICT ACT did not surface in a vacuum. It was preceded by Biden groundwork that is much deeper.

Unroll available on Thread Reader

2) The “TicTok ban” legislation (SB686), which is a fraudulent auspice for total internet control by the intelligence community, comes from within bipartisan legislation spearheaded by the aligned interests of Senator Warner, the SSCI and DHS.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15

3) None of this is accidental, and the legislative branch is walking into the creation of an online control mechanism that has nothing whatsoever to do with banning TikTok.

4) Preceding the Restrict Act, on March 2, 2023, the people in control of the Joe Biden administration officially announced that government control of internet content was now officially a part of the national security apparatus.

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces National Cybersecurity Strategy | The White House Read the full strategy here Today, the Biden-Harris Administration released the National Cybersecurity Strategy to secure the full benefits of a safe and secure digital ecosystem for all Americans. In… https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-national-cybersecurity-strategy/

5) If you have followed the history of how the Fourth Branch of Government has been created, you will immediately recognize the intent of this new framework.

6) The “National Cybersecurity Strategy” aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to “cybersecurity” and communication vectors.

7) This policy is both a surveillance system and an information filtration prism where the government will decide what is information, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, then act upon it.

8) Now put the March 2nd announcement, the executive branch fiat, together with Senate Bill 686 “The Restrict Act” also known as the bipartisan bill to empower the executive branch to shut down TikTok.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15

9) If you read SB 686 what you discover is that congress is giving the Comm Dept & Office of Director of National Intelligence the power to shut down internet content they view as against their interests. The definitions of interests? Outlined here👇:

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces National Cybersecurity Strategy | The White House Read the full strategy here Today, the Biden-Harris Administration released the National Cybersecurity Strategy to secure the full benefits of a safe and secure digital ecosystem for all Americans. In… https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-national-cybersecurity-strategy/

10) /END

Hamilton 68 (Russiagate) The Biggest Khazarian Deception OF ALL TIME!!! (That We Now Know About)

 racket  |  Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source. 

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. 

The Twitter Files expose Hamilton 68 as a sham:

The secret ingredient in Hamilton 68’s analytic method was a list of 644 accounts supposedly linked “to Russian influence activities online.” It was hidden from the public, but Twitter was in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s sample by analyzing its Application Program Interface (API) requests, which is how they first “reverse-engineered” Hamilton’s list in late 2017.

The company was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it also ordered a forensic analysis. Note the second page below lists many of the different types of shadow-banning techniques that existed at Twitter even in 2017, buttressing the “Twitter’s Secret Blacklist” thread by Bari Weiss last month. Here you see categories ranging from “Trends Blacklist” to “Search Blacklist” to “NSFW High Precision.” Twitter was checking to see how many of Hamilton’s accounts were spammy, phony, or bot-like. Note that out of 644 accounts, just 36 were registered in Russia, and many of those were associated with RT. 

The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it. They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal, since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton’s “bullshit” stories in volume.

This is one of the more significant Twitter Files stories. Each one of these tales explains something new about how companies like Twitter came to lose independence. In the U.S., the door was opened for agencies like the FBI and DHS to press on content moderation after Congress harangued Twitter, Facebook, and Google about Russian “interference,” a phenomenon that had to be seen as an ongoing threat in order to require increased surveillance. “I do very much believe America is under attack,” is how Hamilton 68 co-founder Laura Rosenberger put it, after watching the tweets of Sonya Monsour, David Horowitz, and @holbornlolz.

The Hamilton 68 story shows how the illusion of ongoing “Russian interference” worked. The magic trick was generated via a confluence of interests, between think-tanks, media, and government. Before, we could only speculate. Now we know: the “Russian threat” was, in this case at least, just a bunch of ordinary Americans, dressed up to look like a Red Menace. Jayson Blair had a hell of an imagination, but even he couldn’t have come up with a scheme this obscene. Shame on every news outlet that hasn’t renounced these tales.

 

 

 

Jim Jordan An'Em Have Their Work Cut Out For Them

 gatestoneinstitute |  Destroying American Democracy - An Inside Job

• Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

• The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

• Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

• Having... false information -- some of which the FBI actually altered -- in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

• Today we know that the "Russia hoax" was a lie.... the information in the "Steele dossier" was false -- and the FBI had known it was from the start.

• For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden's laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: "Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA."

• One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files.... Tweet #17 states, "executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content." Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to "handle requests from the bureau."

• The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

• Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

• Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

• Has more than one solitary person -- former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email -- been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

• Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

• Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

• Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

• It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

• There... needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop -- now -- before our democracy is destroyed.

Opposition To Globalization Has Long Been Classified As Domestic Violent Extremism

As I've previously reported, the Department of Homeland Security's new definition of "domestic extremist" includes not only anti-government groups on the right but also anti-establishment left-wing groups such as animal rights and environmental activists:https://t.co/7INcvJjjk8 pic.twitter.com/JOaHpeoPEh

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 22, 2021

piie  |  This paper is about the critics of the “doers” of globalization. It describes who they are, where they came from, what they want, how economists, policymakers, and others might understand them better, and where globalization might head from here. Many critics are themselves strongly internationalist and want to see globalization proceed, but under different rules. Some, particularly the protesters in the streets, focus mainly on what is wrong with the world. But some of them put forward broad alternative visions and others offer detailed recommendations for alleviating the problems they see arising from status quo globalization. Most of them have roots in long-standing transnational advocacy efforts to protect human rights and the environment and reduce poverty around the world. What brings them together today is their shared concern that the process by which globalization’s rules are being written and implemented is undermining democracy and failing to spread the benefits broadly. This paper sketches the key issues and concerns that motivate the critics in a way that is broadly representative and intelligible to economists. It finds more resonance for the critics’ agenda in economics than they commonly recognize. And it attempts to capture the concerns of Southern as well as Northern critics and to analyze the issues that divide as well as bring them together. Finally, it evaluates those issues and alternative proposals on which even globalization enthusiasts and the critics might come together cooperatively.

greenwald |  “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,” the March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared “in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security—and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).” 

Its primary point is this: “The IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” While asserting that “the most lethal” of these threats is posed by “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs),” it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: “those who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization”) to the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).

The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of “domestic violent extremists” as “derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” which includes “opposition to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.” In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an “extremist” is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a “domestic violent extremist,” subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions:

 

How Long Before The DHS, FBI And The CIA Move On Substack?

greenwald  |  These moves by the U.S. Security State to commandeer censorship decisions on TikTok, accompanied by the hovering threat to ban TikTok entirely from the U.S., appear to be having the desired effect already. When we launched our new live nightly show on Rumble, System Update, our social media manager created new social accounts for the program on major social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, etc. Each day, she posts identical excerpts from the prior night's shows on each social media account.

For Monday night's show, I devoted my opening monologue to documenting how reporting by mainstream Western media outlets on Ukraine and President Zelensky completely reversed itself as soon as Russia invaded in February. When one reviews the trajectory of how these media outlets radically reversed everything they had been saying about Ukraine and Zelensky, one can see the Orwellian newspeak — we have always been at war with Eastasia — happening in real time.

For years, for instance, mainstream news outlets in the West repeatedly warned that the Ukrainian military was dominated by a neo-Nazi group called the Azov Battalion, that the Kiev-based government was becoming increasingly repressive and anti-democratic (including ordering three opposition media outlets closed in 2021), and that Zelensky himself was not only supported by a single Ukrainian oligarch but he himself had massive off-shore accounts of hidden wealth as revealed by the Pandora Papers. And the U.S. State Department itself, in 2021, had documented a long list of severe human rights abuses carried out either with the acquiescence or even active participation of the Zelensky-led central government.

One of the video excerpts from our program that was posted to all social media sites, including TikTok, was this indisputably true and rather benign review of how media outlets, including The Guardian, had previously depicted Zelensky as surrounded by corruption and hidden wealth. To be sure, the excerpt was critical of Zelensky, but there is absolutely nothing even factually contestable, let alone untrue, given that the whole point of the clip is to show how the media had spoken of Ukraine and Zelensky prior to the invasion as opposed to the fundamentally different tone that now drives their coverage:

Shortly after posting this video, we were notified by TikTok that the video was removed by the platform. The cited ground was “integrity and authenticity,” namely that the video, for unspecified reasons, had “undermine[d] the integrity of [their] platform or the authenticity of [their users].” The warning added that TikTok "removes content and accounts that…involve misleading information that causes significant harm.” In a separate communication, TikTok notified our program that our “account is at high risk of being restricted based on [our] violation history” (the sole violation we were ever advised of was this specific video). As a result, TikTok warned, “the next violation could result in being prevented from accessing some feature.” A more ambiguous warning could scarcely be imagined.

Elon Musk Asks Ted Lieu About His Censorious Lil'Bish Credentials Too

democraticunderground |  This is the tweet from Taibbi that started it, a continuation of the transparency in the Twitter Files Musk hired him to post on Twitter.

Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.

Lieu's response:

Dear @mtaibbi: I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the
@FBI and you are lying. The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement.

Taibbi replied, and then Musk jumped in with a reply addressing Lieu, though his reply went only to Taibbi and the RW media outlet RSBN:

Taibbi to Lieu:

Being on that committee you should know:
- How much has been spent, and how many DHS/DOJ employees have been assigned, to monitoring and flagging social media?
- Why is the FBI asking for "location information" about ordinary Americans and media outlets like
@RSBNetwork?

Musk to Lieu:

Replying to @mtaibbi and @RSBNetwork

Congressman Lieu, were you aware of this program and did you approve it? Simple questions require simple answers.

While this is just on Twitter now, and probably the RW media outlets cheering Musk on, this will be affecting what the GOP majority does in the House, starting next month