Is Twitter Actually An Intelligence Gathering And Propaganda Tool?

CTH  |  Once you change your reference point and review the Twitter File release from a different perspective, things make sense.  DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, in this scenario Twitter is operating on the backbone of DHS.  The information and content on Twitter exist, or not, by the permission and authority of the national security state, DHS.

Influencing public opinion take on the priority dimension.  Created narratives, established by media partners, can be enhanced or throttled (think Russiagate). Public perceptions can be uplifted or deemphasized.  Political candidates can be boosted or dismissed.

Control over the public conversation is not simply in the hands of the Twitter ‘safety council’ executives, the platform content is shaped by the guiding hand of the controlling interest – the government.  Under this scenario the defining of disinformation, misinformation or malinformation by DHS/CISA takes on a new level of influence.

So why did they permit it to be sold?  Again, control.

Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter.  The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome.  So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh.

Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence.  Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective.  In the eyes of the control state, Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat of Donald Trump. Meanwhile Twitter and YouTube represent the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis.

There are trillions at stake.

The ‘magic’ inside Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is the intelligence community ability to shape, mold and create the illusion of choice.  Remember, shaping opinion is the goal and within that dynamic some voices must be removed, throttled and controlled, while other voices must be amplified.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea, well, at least no more of an idea than he does about the financial underwriting of the purchase itself.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, influencing public opinion, and then ultimately controlling the outcomes.

Tens of millions of Brazilians are on the streets in protest of their fraudulent election.  Do you see those voices on Twitter?

The Twitter social media company residing on the backbone of DHS would help explain why.

The Government Is Now Provably In The Business Of Monitoring And Moderating Speech

CTH  |  Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American citizens.  There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.

Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an acceptable outlet for the information.  Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and transparency interests.  However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter exists.  Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from U.S. government officials.  Yet, curiously missing from the documented evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this instruction pathway he is describing.

Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was not selected to review the files.  Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t recognize are being shaped for his reporting.   Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”

What Good Is Twitter As An Intelligence Gathering Tool If Everyone Isn't Free To Participate?

CTH  |  Twitter is simply a discovery vector to reveal the larger dynamic of DHS being in control of social media.  That was the DHS/ODNI problem James Baker was trying to mitigate by his filtration of the released documents.  The “Twitter files” are one tentacled element in a much larger story.

#1 Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and #2 The Fourth Branch of Government

To put it in brutally honest terms, The United States Dept of Homeland Security is the operating system running in the background of Twitter.

You can debate whether Elon Musk honestly didn’t know all this before purchasing Twitter from his good friend Jack Dorsey, and/or what the scenario of owner/operator motive actually is.  Decide for yourself.

For me, I feel confident that all of the conflicting and odd datapoints only reconcile in one direction.  DHS, via CISA, controls Twitter.

Wittingly or unwittingly (you decide) Elon Musk is now the face of that govt controlled enterprise.

If you concur with my researched assessment, then what you see being released by Elon Musk in the Twitter Files is actually a filtered outcome as a result of this new ownership dynamic.  And with that intelligence framework solidly in mind, I warn readers not to take a position on the motive of the new ownership.

Put simply, DHS stakeholders, to include the DOJ, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), are mitigating public exposure of their domestic surveillance activity by controlling and feeding selected information about their prior Twitter operations.

If TikTok is a national security threat, then TikTok is to Beijing as Twitter is to Washington DC.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.

Your Betters Consider Your “Cognitive infrastructure” Part Of Their Remit

theintercept  | Under President Joe Biden, the shifting focus on disinformation has continued. In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote more flexibility to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one CISA official quoted in the IG report, “counters all types of disinformation, to be responsive to current events.”

Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

DHS’s mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures by DHS.

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “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.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”

The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.

 

When Exposing A Crime Is Treated As Committing A Crime You Are Being Ruled By Criminals

greenwald  |  In May, the Department of Homeland Security's attempted appointment of a clearly deranged partisan fanatic, Nina Jankowicz, to effectively serve as “disinformation czar” sparked intense backlash. But liberal media corporations — always the first to jump to the defense of the U.S. Security State — in unison maligned the resulting anger over this audacious appointment as “itself disinformation,” without ever identifying anything false that was alleged about Jankowicz or the DHS program.

Though anger over this classically Orwellian program was obviously merited — it was, after all, an attempt to assign to the U.S. National Security State the power to issue official decrees about truth and falsity — that anger sometimes obscured the real purpose of the creation of this government program. This was not some aberrational attempt by the Biden administration to arrogate unto itself a wholly new and unprecedented power. It instead was just the latest puzzle piece in the multi-pronged scheme — created by a union of U.S. Security State agencies, Democratic Party politicians, liberal billionaires, and liberal media corporations — to construct and implement a permanent and enduring system to control the flow of information to Western populations. As importantly, these tools will empower them to forcibly silence and otherwise punish anyone who expresses dissent to their orthodoxies or meaningful opposition to their institutional interests.

That these state and corporate entities collaborate to control the internet is now so well-established that it barely requires proof. One of the first and most consequential revelations from the Snowden reporting was that the leading Big Tech companies — including Google, Apple and Facebook — were turning over massive amounts of data about their users to the National Security Agency (NSA) without so much as a warrant under the state/corporate program called PRISM. A newly obtained document by Revolver News’ Darren Beattie reveals that Jankowicz has worked since 2015 on programs to control “disinformation” on the internet in conjunction with a horde of national security state officials, billionaire-funded NGOs, and the nation's largest media corporations. Ample reporting, including here, has revealed that many of Big Tech's most controversial censorship policies were implemented at the behest of the U.S. Government and the Democratic-controlled Congress that openly threatens regulatory and legal reprisals for failure to comply. 

Every newly declared crisis — genuine or contrived — is immediately seized upon to justify all new levels and types of online censorship, and increasingly more and more offline punishment. One of the core precepts of the Russiagate hysteria was that Trump won with the help of Russia because there were insufficient controls in place over what kind of information could be heard by the public, leading to new groups devoted to "monitoring” what they deem disinformation and new policies from media outlets to censor reporting of the type that WikiLeaks provided about the DNC and Clinton campaign in 2016. This censorship frenzy culminated in the still-shocking decision by Twitter and Facebook to censor The New York Post's reporting on Joe Biden's activities in China and Ukraine based on documents from Hunter Biden's laptop that most media outlets now acknowledge were entirely authentic — all justified by a CIA lie, ratified by media outlets, that these documents were “Russian disinformation.”

The riot at the Capitol on January 6 was used in similar ways, though this time not merely to un-person dissidents from the internet but also to use Big Tech's monopoly power to destroy the then-most-popular app in the country (Parler) followed by the banning of the sitting elected President himself, an act so ominous that even governments hostile to Trump — in France, Germany, Mexico and beyond — warned of how threatening it was to democracy to allow private monopolies to ban even elected leaders from the internet. Liberal outlets such as The New Yorker began openly advocating for internet censorship under headlines such as “The National-Security Case for Fixing Social Media.”

The COVID pandemic ushered in still greater amounts of censorship. Anyone who urged people to use masks at the start of the pandemic was accused of spreading dangerous disinformation because Dr. Anthony Fauci and the WHO insisted at the time that masks were useless or worse. When Fauci and WHO decided masks were an imperative, anyone questioning that decree by insisting that cloth masks were ineffective — the exact view of Fauci and WHO just weeks earlier — was banned from Big Tech platforms for spreading disinformation; such bans by Google included sitting U.S. Senators who themselves are medical doctors. From the start of the pandemic, it was prohibited to question whether the COVID virus may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan — until the Biden administration itself asked that question and ordered an investigation to find out, at which point Facebook and other platforms reversed themselves and announced that it was now permissible to ask this question since the U.S. Government itself was doing so.

In sum, government agencies and Big Tech monopolies exploited the two-year COVID pandemic to train Western populations to accept as normal the rule that the only views permitted to be heard were those which fully aligned with the views expressed by institutions of state authority. Conversely, anyone dissenting from or even questioning such institutional decrees stood accused of spreading "disinformation” and was deemed unfit to be heard on the internet. As a result, blatant errors and clear lies stood unchallenged for months because people were conditioned that any challenging of official views would result in punishment.

We are now at the point where every crisis is seized upon to usher in all-new forms of censorship. The war in Ukraine has resulted in escalations of censorship tactics that would have been unimaginable even a year or two ago. The EU enacted legislation legally prohibiting any European company or individual from broadcasting Russian state-owned broadcasters (including RT and Sputnik). While such legal coercion would (for now) almost certainly be banned in the U.S. as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free press rights, non-EU companies that decided in the name of open debate to allow RT to be heard — such as Rumble — have faced a torrent of threats, pressure campaigns, media attacks and various forms of retribution.

One of the easiest and surest ways to be banned these days from Big Tech platforms is to reject the core pieties of the CIA/NATO/EU view of the war in Ukraine, even if that dissent entails simply affirming the very views which Western media outlets spent a decade itself endorsing, until completely changing course at the start of the war — such as the fact that the Ukrainian military is dominated by neo-Nazi battalions such as Azov, especially in the Eastern part of the country. Regardless of one's views on the Biden administration's involvement in this war, surely it requires little effort to see how dangerous it is to try to impose a full-scale blackout on challenges to U.S. war policy, especially given the warning by Biden himself that this war has brought the world closer to nuclear armageddon than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

The U.S. Treasury Office Of Asset Forfeiture

treasury.gov  |  ​The Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF) administers the Treasury Forfeiture Fund (TFF). The TFF is the receipt account for deposit of non-tax forfeitures made pursuant to laws enforced or administered by Treasury and Department of Homeland Security agencies.

About

Established in 1992, the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF) was established to affirmatively influence the consistent and strategic use of asset forfeiture to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises.  Asset forfeiture is a vital legal tool that serves a number of compelling law enforcement purposes and is designed to deprive criminals of the proceeds of their crimes, to break the financial backbone of organized criminal syndicates and drug cartels, and to recover property that may be used to compensate victims and deter crime.

TEOAF administers the Treasury Forfeiture Fund (TFF), which is the receipt account for the deposit of non-tax forfeitures made pursuant to laws enforced or administered by Treasury and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) law enforcement agencies:

• Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division (IRS-CI), U.S. Department of the Treasury;
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Department of Homeland Security;
• U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Department of Homeland Security;
• U.S. Secret Service (USSS), Department of Homeland Security;
• U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security.

Other statutory member agencies include the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

 

The TFF is a special fund, i.e. a federal fund collection earmarked by law for a specific purpose. The enabling legislation for TFF (Title 31 U.S.C. § 9705) defines those purposes for which Treasury forfeiture revenue may be used.  The funds can be allocated and used without the enactment of an annual appropriation by the Congress. 

 

TEOAF’s priorities in administering the Treasury forfeiture program are to:

• Administer and manage the Treasury Forfeiture Fund (TFF) program in a fiscally responsible manner that seeks to minimize administrative costs and maximize the benefits for law enforcement and the compensation of eligible victims. 

• Ensure program policies protect due process rights of individuals.

• Focus resources on strategic cases and investigations that result in actions against high profile criminals and criminal enterprises to affect the greatest financial damage to criminal organizations.
• Foster a strong working relationship between federal and state or local law enforcement agencies.

 

 Additional information about the TFF is included in the following Treasury orders and Directives:

• Treasury Directive 15-04
• Treasury Order 102-14

 

Why Did Obama Authorize Integration Of Military Drones Into U.S. Domestic Air Space?

covertactionmagazine |  April 1^st was a good news/bad news kind of day for U.S. military drone-maker General Atomics. First, it was reported that the government of Australia had revealed that they were canceling the planned purchase of 12 MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones, made by General Atomics (GA). Since the deal would have been worth a cool one billion dollars to GA, this was definitely the bad news.

[Source: breakingdefense.com]

Luckily, GA had a good news story in the works. And as luck would have it, it would run on the same day as the bad news story.

[Source: ga.com]

Back in January, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) handed GA $1.5 million to fly the 79-ft. 12,000 lbs SkyGuardian over North Dakota for 10 hours. (GA apparently didn’t feel the need for a press release and the resulting news article until the day before some bad news from down under was in the pipeline.)

General Atomics Sky Guardian [Source: ga.com]

The stated purpose of the FAA grant to GA was “to research Detect and Avoid (DAA) capabilities.” (DAA, the ability for an unmanned aircraft to ‘detect’ another aircraft, and ‘avoid’ it, is the Holy Grail of drone integration. “Integration” is the process of removing restrictions against drones operating in domestic U.S. airspace.)

That’s right—the FAA was PAYING a U.S. arms manufacturer $1.5 million in public monies to demonstrate their newest military surveillance drone over domestic U.S. territory.

If this is all a surprise to you, you’re not alone. The program to integrate military drones into U.S. domestic airspace has been operating for 10 years. It involves various federal agencies—DoD, FAA, NASA, Commerce, Energy, DHS, etc. But it hasn’t been reported on in any major news venue since the day before the bill creating it was signed into law in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama.

Nina Jankowicz Worked For CIA/Zelensky Now Defended By Taylor Lorenz

What, specifically, is the "DHS's work" when it comes to disinformation? Do they decide what is and is not disinformation? Do they use specific powers to "combat" it? It's not just the new Board itself that is unclear. DHS's entire role in all of this is unclear - and creepy. https://t.co/0PJGcTlqul

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 18, 2022

politico  |  President Zelensky has made ending the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region—which was instigated and is sustained by Russia and has claimed 13,000 lives and counting—his administration’s top priority. He has made some progress toward that goal, overseeing a historic prisoner swap with Russia that saw one of Ukraine’s most respected filmmakers as well as 24 sailors captured last November returned home. According to information from the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, fewer civilians have been killed in the conflict this year than any year previously. A July cease-fire at the contact line seems to be holding firmer than its previous incarnations.

For Zelensky, Trump could be the key to ending the war in the Donbas. The American president has made his admiration for and cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin no secret. Likewise, Trump’s views about Ukraine—ambivalence about the status of Crimea, which Russia illegally seized in 2014, and support for ending the sanctions placed on Russia in response to its activities in Ukraine—make Ukrainians nervous. A cordial relationship between Trump and Zelensky could give Trump insight into Ukraine’s perspective and give Ukraine leverage it did not enjoy under former President Petro Poroshenko, who struggled to connect with the U.S. leader.

Ukraine does not have the luxury to pick and choose its international partners, something I learned when I served as an adviser to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in 2016 and 2017 under the auspices of a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship. Ukraine relies on its larger, richer allies as it attempts to shed its post-Soviet legacy. The United States—its largest and richest ally—provides not only for the now-famous military aid package, but hundreds of millions of dollars in civilian aid, supporting projects in just about every sector. The containment of the Chernobyl nuclear site, fighting HIV/AIDS, building cybersecurity capabilities, and creating government bodies that are more responsive to citizens are just a few of the projects that U.S assistance makes possible. Continued reform, including the pursuit of energy independence from Russia and the cleanup of the court system, the biggest obstacle to Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts, would be imperiled without this assistance. The United States also plays a key role in corralling European partners to uphold their own sanctions on Russia and to continue to support Ukraine as it walks the long and often bumpy road of democratic reform.

There are reasons to believe Zelensky’s slippery answers to President Trump’s repeated requests that he investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were deliberate. According to congressional staff who recently visited Ukraine and spoke with senior Ukrainian officials, the Zelensky administration was upset at feeling that it was being used and didn’t want to be a pawn in America’s domestic political machinations. In the phone call and at the meeting of the two presidents Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly, Zelensky was careful not to let the name Biden cross his lips. Instead, Zelensky says he will “look into the situation” related to Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat, more generally. At the U.N., Zelensky also mentioned a few of the other important cases he hoped his new prosecutor would investigate in addition to Burisma, and maintained that he didn’t want to be dragged into American politics. 

Nina Jankowicz, who served as a Fulbright fellow, works in a press room at Volodymyr Zelensky's campaign headquarters in 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Jankowicz was recently named the head of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board.

WaPo  | On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankowicz, a well-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism, as the board’s executive director.

In naming the 33-year-old Jankowicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in the field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent and important issue. The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.

But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

Search "Cass Sunstein" Here To Know The Origin Of The Disinformation Governance Board

 twitter  |  Interesting long thread from the Last Refuge

(1) The FBI is the codependent agency for Antifa.
(2) Homeland Security (DHS) is run by U.S. Intel agencies under the umbrella of the ODNI office.
(3) Nina Jankowicz works for U.S. Intelligence.
(4) "Disinformation" is information adverse to the interests of U.S. Intel.

(5) Big tech social media companies operate on joint access databases of the U.S. govt.
(6) As a result of #5, tech data processing costs are essentially subsidized.
(7) FB, Insta, YouTube, MS, Google, and all tech platforms operating on AWS are connected to intel.

(8) Twitter as a private company is adverse to this preestablished relationship.
(9) ODNI office as well as DHS, DOJ and FBI domestically have self-interest in blocking Musk.
(10) Starlink presents problem for pre-established ISP control nodes for internet traffic surveillance.

(11) Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is well aware of this relationship between U.S. Intel and Social media.
(12) Current network of U.S. surveillance state is authorized by congress through SSCI notification.
(13) National Security shields prevent disclosure.

(14) Current surveillance system has been active for ten full years.
(15) Budget is hidden by using Ominibus and Continued Resolutions.
(16) Retaining opaque budgeting is why Congress stopped using ordinary budgetary processes.
(17) Last federal budget passed Fiscal Year 2008

(18) Expanded data processing and social media user metadata required massive expansion of data library.
(19) Funding for expansion delivered in federal infrastructure spending.
(20) Federal broadband expansion covered expenses for expanded server library and data processing.

(21) U.S. citizen data is all inclusive.
(22) Two-factor authentication sold under auspices of user security, was critical USIC developmental tool.
(23) U.S. Digital Identity database already exists.
(24) Database and geolocation used in J6 investigation is simple example of use.

(25) Current emphasis for future network expansion is facial recognition program to put it all together.
(26) China is approximately 5 years behind U.S. development of surveillance state.
(27) Huawei operation was/is to identify technology behind U.S. system and replicate.

Trudeau's Emergency Overreaction Brings Unwanted Scrutiny To Similar DHS Contingencies...,

jonathanturley  |  With the emergency powers, Trudeau can now prohibit travel, public assemblies, conduct widespread arrests, and block donations for the truckers. This also includes freezing bank accounts and ramping up police surveillance and enforcement.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association objected:

“The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met. The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation ‘seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada’ & when the situation ‘cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.’”

Such voices have been drowned out by media demonizing the truckers as racists or insurrectionists.

As civil libertarians, it is less important what people are saying as their right to say it. That includes people who speak through their financial support or donations. Millions in such donations were blocked by GoFundMe or the Canadian government in this crackdown.

It is often tempting to ignore the implications of such extreme measures by focusing on your disagreement with a given group. To understand the scope of this law you can simply look to how widely revered movements could be treated under the same provisions.  For example, the Civil Rights marchers also engaged in civil disobedience in shutting down bridges and occupying spaces.  As I stated on Monday,

“Now, when you put all of that together, you’ve extinguished the ability of thousands, perhaps even millions of people to express themselves through a form of civil disobedience. And according to Prime Minister Trudeau’s definition, he could have shut down the Civil Rights Movement. He could have arrested Martin Luther King. He could have arrested any number of figures that we now celebrate today as visionaries.”

On Tuesday, I returned to that same point and noted that Canada could easily use the same law against the marchers and Dr. King today. Trudeau’s government could cut off all funding for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) while arresting figures like Dr. King. I noted that “I thought [the use of the Emergency Act] was quite excessive. This is an act of civil disobedience. That is a standard tactic of groups going back to the civil rights movement and even earlier to block bridges and streets, to do what was referred to as — quote — ‘good trouble.’ By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights Movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King.”

The “they” is clearly the Canadian government in its use of these emergency powers today — not a reference to arrests in the past in the United States.

Canadian Emergency Powers Declaration - A Dry Run For What This Way Comes?

DHS been squaring up on you stiff-necked hard-headed busters for a minute now - because any minute now - the clampdown will kick off in earnest here in the homeland.

CISA |  CISA’s Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) team is charged with building national resilience to mis-, dis-, and malinformation and foreign influence activities. Through these efforts, CISA helps the American people understand the scope and scale of MDM activities targeting elections and critical infrastructure, and enables them to take actions to mitigate associated risks. The MDM team was formerly known as the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF). 

January 31, 2022: Today, CISA released a set of four election security training videos to enhance the awareness and importance of securing the Nation’s election infrastructure. The training videos provide an overview of CISA’s role in election security, the importance of building public trust through secure practices, the risks associated with ransomware and resources to mitigate them, and the risks associated with phishing and resources to combat them.

• To view these videos, visit Election Security Trainings - YouTube
  
• For additional election resources, visit the Election Security Library.

January 27, 2022: The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) and the Subsector Coordinating Council’s (SCC) Joint Mis/Disinformation Working Group released the Rumor Control Page Start-Up Guide and the MDM Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials as voluntary tools to assist State and local election officials prepare for and respond to risks of MDM.

• Download/share the Rumor Control Page Start-Up Guide for direction on how and when to develop a rumor control webpage to dispel specific MDM narratives through transparent and authoritative information.
• Download/share the MDM Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials to understand how to recognize, prepare for, and respond to MDM threats that may impact the ability to conduct elections.

Brandon Says "Every Single One Of YOU Chatty Busters Is A Terrorist Threat!"

alexberenson |  The White House has begun an extraordinary assault on free speech in America. It is no longer content merely to force social media companies to suppress dissenting views. It appears to be setting the stage to use federal police powers.

How else to read the “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” the Department of Homeland Security issued on Monday? Its first sentence:

SUMMARY OF THE TERRORISM THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES: The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories... [emphasis added]

You read those words right.

The government now says “misleading narratives” are the most dangerous contributor to terrorism against the United States.

The bulletin’s next sentence:

These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. [emphasis added]

You read those words right too.

A federal agency says that to “undermine public trust in government institutions” is now considered terrorism. Speech doesn’t even have to encourage rebellion or violence generally, much less against anyone specific. It just has to “potentially inspire” violence.

Potentially.

Later, the bulletin explains exactly what speech the government now considers a terrorist danger:

Widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.

There’s that word misleading again.

Who’s defining “misleading”? Misleading to whom? Misleading how?

DHS February 2022 bulletin

—

I have no doubt whatsoever that I fit as a terrorist threat under these guidelines.

So does Joe Rogan. And Tucker Carlson. After all, we’ve “undermine[d] public trust in government institutions” about Covid and the mRNA shots (I try not to call them vaccines anymore).

This bulletin marks an extraordinary escalation of the war on speech and the First Amendment.

Does This Video And This Write-Up Make Dr. Dan Stock A "Domestic Violent Extremist"?

DHS – The Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the current heightened threat environment across the United States. […] These threats include those posed by domestic terrorists, individuals and groups engaged in grievance-based violence. […] Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions. 

Indystar |  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that K-12 schools adopt universal masking for all students, teachers and staff members, regardless of vaccination status. The Indiana State Department of Health has recommended that schools follow the CDC guidance. 

But the decision has been left to local school boards, the very people that Stock is telling not to listen to the CDC or the state health officials.

State health officials have pushed back on Stock’s video, while maintaining the position that Indiana is a "home rule state" and decisions around masking and more are up to local officials.

“Throughout this pandemic, we have relied on data and science to make recommendations, and we will continue to do so,” said Megan Wade-Taxter, a spokesperson for the Indiana State Department of Health. “The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, as evidenced by the fact that more than 98% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since mid-January are unvaccinated."

That’s true even as the delta variant drives a surge of new cases. More than 97% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since June 1 have not been vaccinated, she said.

"Decisions about school protocols rest with school boards and local leaders," she said, "including local health departments and elected officials."

The Hancock County Health Department has also advised all schools in the county, including Mt. Vernon, to follow the CDC and state health recommendations.

"You’ve got so many things coming at you," said Kellie Freeman, a member of the Mt. Vernon Community Schools board that heard from Stock last week. "It’s difficult to know."

At that meeting of the Mt. Vernon board, members were considering parameters that would require individual school buildings to increase cleaning and move toward a mask mandate, based on the percentage of students out due to illness or quarantine. Currently, the district is mask-optional.

Ultimately, the board decided to table the discussion after hearing Stock's comments. 

"I think we have an obligation to… find the facts that were shared today," said board member Shannon Walls.

 

Who Believes The Military Simply Stopped Arcane Human Experimentation?

antiwar  |  Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry?

Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law? Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?

Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations? Has it not become wilier, more slippery, more difficult to pin down?

Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion, are we not dealing with a government that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be?

Consider this: after revelations about the government’s experiments spanning the 20^th century spawned outrage, the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries, where “clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.”

In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.” In Uganda, U.S.-funded doctors “failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study… even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven children died and many others were left disabled.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Case in point: back in 2016, it was announced that scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways.

The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk. It’s in our best interests, they said, to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread. And look how cool the technology is – said the government cheerleaders – that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food. (Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest.)

Mind you, this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.

In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.

In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.

And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests – GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc. – and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years. It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.

The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always the same: money, power and total domination.

It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.

The mindset driving these programs has, appropriately, been likened to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. As the Holocaust Museum recounts, Nazi physicians “conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”

The Nazi’s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia, tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of a plane, injecting prisoners with malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis, exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas, and mass sterilization experiments.

The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back, in a direct line, to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories. In fact, following the second World War, the US government recruited many of Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation, and implemented his tactics in incremental steps.

Cornpop Walks Back Potatoheaded DHS Secretary Mayorkas Vaccine Passport Talk

axios  |  The Department of Homeland Security on Friday said "there will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”

Why it matters: Earlier Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the U.S. is "taking a very close look" at the possibility of requiring vaccine passports for international travel.

• "We’re taking a very close look at that, you know, one of our principles that has guided us throughout this pandemic is the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and making sure that any passport that we provide for vaccinations is accessible to all and that no one is disenfranchised," Mayorkas said.

A DHS spokesperson later on Friday clarified Mayorkas' comments, saying that there will be no "federal mandate" for vaccine passports in the U.S.

• “We’ve always said we’re looking at how we can ensure Americans traveling abroad have a quick and easy way to enter other countries," the spokesperson added.
• "That’s what the Secretary was referring to; ensuring that all U.S. travelers will be able to easily meet any anticipated foreign country entry requirements."

The big picture: The European Union and some Asian governments are developing coronavirus vaccine passports that people can access using phone apps in order to "help kickstart international travel," AP writes.

Vaccine passports have become a controversial topic in the country, with several Republican-led states banning state government and some private business from requiring them.

Those Farmboys From Langley VA. Are Ready To Do What Proletarian U.S. Military Won't Do...,

greenwald  |  A report declassified last Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.

Entitled “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:

Department of Homeland Security report, Mar.1, 2021

It goes without saying that violence of any kind — including that which is politically motivated — is a serious crime under U.S. law, and it is the proper role of the U.S. Government to investigate and prevent it. But there are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if not outright violated.

The NPIG Has Been Waiting Since The Outset Of Its Panicdemic To Implement Covid Domestic Terrorism Strategery

house.gov |  Dear Assistant Secretary Neumann:

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend American lifein new and unpredictable ways, we seek an understanding ofhow DHS is preparing for and mitigating potential homeland security threats from bad actors, such as violent extremists in the United States and abroad, who may seek to exploit vulnerabilities stemming  from this metastasizing crisis.

To  that  end, we would  like  to  know how  the  Office  of  Threat Prevention and Security Policy is coordinating DHS prevention efforts to account for the evolving threat landscape under the specter of COVID-19. Recent media reports have highlighted how white supremacist extremists across the world are discussing ways  to  take  advantage  of  the  COVID-19  pandemic  to  advance  violent  ends,  including,  in  some  cases, accelerating society toward mass violence by sowing chaos.

ISIS, too, appears to be interested in exploiting the  crisis: in  the  March  19,  2020,issue  of  the  ISIS  magazine Al-Naba’,  an  editorial  urged adherents to leverage the pandemic to free prisoners from the “prisons of the polytheists and the camps of humiliation,” arguing that Western countries’ security forces are preoccupied with the crisis and their financial resources are being drained.

Federal law enforcement entities have published similar warnings. The Federal Protective Service, under DHS,released  an  intelligence  brief, entitled  “White  Racially  Motivated  Violent  Extremists  Suggest Spreading the Coronavirus,” warning that white supremacist extremists have discussed the “obligation” to spread COVID-19 to law enforcement and minority communities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s field office in New York reportedly released an alert warning local police agencies that white supremacist extremist groups were encouraging members to intentionally spread the virus to police officers and Jews.

Extremists have,  of course,long made calls  to  violence against vulnerable groups. However, as the uncertainty, fears, and anxiety engendered by this pandemic strain our social fabric in many ways, we must renew our efforts to guard against vulnerabilities that bad actors may exploit.The Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violencestates that DHS will “counter terrorists and violent extremists’ influence online” and “develop prevention frameworks... to identify and respond to individuals at risk of mobilizing to violence.”

We seek to understand how this framework is being  implemented across  the  Department in  light  of  the  reports highlighting  extremists’  interest  in exploiting the current crisis here and abroad. To that end, we respectfully request an overview of the Department’s efforts to address and prevent any exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic by violent extremists, including any efforts with foreign partners. In addition, we ask to receive any products that DHS has disseminated to state, local, tribal, and territorial partners regarding this threat. We look  forward  to  continuing  our  partnership with  you in  tackling these  serious  issues. Thank  you  for your attention to this important matter.