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Posts tagged ‘Disinformation Governance Board’

Government Officials Have a Special Portal to Flag Facebook Posts for Censorship


By MICAELA BURROW, REPORTER | October 31, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/31/dhs-portal-flag-disinformation-censor-facebook/

US-FACEBOOK
(Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland Security has left open a special feature that allows government officials to flag Facebook posts for misinformation after scrapping a controversial advisory board tasked with developing guidelines for social media censorship, the Intercept reported Monday.

DHS announced plans for a Disinformation Governance Board to “develop guidelines, standards, guardrails to ensure that the work that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years does not infringe on people’s free speech rights, rights of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May, according to The Hill. While DHS shuttered the initiative after an onslaught of bipartisan opposition decrying the potential censorship, the Intercept found through an analysis of public and leaked documents that government efforts to police tech companies goes on.

Those activities include a Facebook portal only accessible by government and law enforcement representatives to formally request the platform kill or label alleged misinformation, according to the Intercept. A leaked set of slides contains instructions on how to operate the system, and the URL to access the site — facebook.com/xtakedowns/login — was still active at the time of publication.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” a DHS official told a Microsoft representative in February, according to the Intercept. (RELATED: GOP Senators Release Documents Showing Biden Admin Lied About Disinfo Board)

The U.S. government has for years discussed the scope and scale of online content moderation the government should engage in, as well as how to compel social media platforms to flag or remove “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” the Intercept reported, citing meeting minutes and records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The department now considers rooting out misinformation online as a critical element of its overall mission, according to a draft of the 2022 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review reviewed by the Intercept.

While the document highlights counter-terrorism as DHS’s primary objective, it acknowledges that “misinformation and disinformation spread online” can exacerbate terrorist threats from “domestic violent extremists,” according to the Intercept. It calls for DHS to use advanced computer analytical software and hire experts “to better understand how threat actors use online platforms to introduce and spread toxic narratives intended to inspire or incite violence.”

However, DHS has defined the “critical infrastructure” threatened by domestic terrorists to encompass trust in government, public health and election security, according to the Intercept.

“No matter your political allegiances, all of us have good reason to be concerned about government efforts to pressure private social media platforms into reaching the government’s preferred decisions about what content we can see online,” Adam Goldstein, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Intercept.

Agencies under DHS — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Science and Technology Directorate and the Secret Service — all have directives to combat misinformation online, the Intercept reported, citing a DHS Inspector General report from August.

Meta and DHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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The Clownish Disinfo Czar Got The Boot, But Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Hired Monster Replacements


REPORTED BY DIANA GLEBOVA, ASSOCIATE EDITOR | May 19, 2022

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/the-clownish-disinfo-czar-got-the-boot-but-bidens-ministry-of-truth-hired-monster-replacements-2657354306.html/

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(Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit),(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hired the co-author of the PATRIOT Act, arguably the harshest crackdown on civil liberties in modern American history, and an official under former President Bill Clinton to head the Disinformation Governance Board during its “pause.”

The DHS shut the board down Monday after just several weeks and its head, Nina Jankowicz, wrote a resignation letter Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. Jankowicz was scrutinized for pushing disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the now-discredited Steele Dossier, which Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA officer, said was possibly “part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.” She also called Republicans who criticize critical race theory (CRT) “disinformers.” Videos of her singing as the “Mary Poppins of disinformation,” “fucking her way to the top” and satirical, sexualized renditions of Harry Potter themes have also raised eyebrows.

The department announced Wednesday former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and former U.S. Deputy Secretary General Jamie Gorelick under Clinton “will lead a thorough review and assessment” of the board that was “grossly and intentionally mischaracterized.” (RELATED: White House Responds To Disinfo Board Being ‘Paused’)

Chertoff reportedly pushed disinformation about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, claiming Russians were behind the emails found inside, according to the Free Beacon. Chertoff served as the secretary of the DHS from 2005-2009, investigated the 9/11 attacks and co-authored the PATRIOT Act, which gave the government authority to tap phones to surveil for terrorism and conduct searches without a warrant.

Gorelick worked for the Clinton administration and was a member of the 9/11 Commission. She was also reportedly rumored to be failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s top choice for attorney general, and has worked for a wide range of clients, including Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, BP after its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Duke University after three lacrosse players were falsely accused of rape.

The review of the Disinformation Governance Board will determine how the board can monitor disinformation while “protecting free speech, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy” and how it can increase “transparency” with the public. It will be conducted by the “bipartisan Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).”

WASHINGTON – JANUARY 3: U.S. President George W. Bush (C) with (L-R) Montana U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer, New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesiais, Oregon U.S. Attorney Karen Immergut, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, U.S. Attorney for Eastern District of New York Roslynn Mauskopf and U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Debra Wong Yang participates in a meeting on the Patriot Act in the Roosevelt Room of the White House January 3, 2006 in Washington, DC. While on vacation at his ranch, Bush signed a one-month extension of the Patriot Act and is pushing Capitol Hill to make the law permanent. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

A number of Republicans raised the alarm about the establishment of the board and Jankowicz’s past of being partisan to conservatives. Former DHS officials under the Trump administration agreed, saying the board was unneeded and “politicized” battling disinformation. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Blackburn, Trump Intelligence Officer Warn Biden’s Disinformation Board Will Come After Conservatives)

“The creation of the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ in the Secretary’s office is unneeded and politicizes the Department’s mission. There is no operational reason to take this responsibility from largely non-political operating components and move this mission to the Secretary’s office filled with political appointees, including a politically charged individual with no government experience. The move represents a further politicization of the Department under this Administration,” Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS, told the Daily Caller.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that there was “no question” that they “could’ve done a better job at communicating” what the board does when it was announced. (RELATED: ‘I Was Not Aware’: Mayorkas Says He Didn’t Know About Truth Czar’s Viral Videos)

The rollout of the board was “half-baked” and that the DHS got “ahead of themselves when they mentioned it in” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ testimony April 27, a congressional staffer told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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EXCLUSIVE: No, Jen Psaki, Trump Didn’t Start the DHS ‘Truth Ministry.’ That’s Literal Disinformation


REPORTED BY DIANA GLEBOVA, ASSOCIATE EDITOR | May 13, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/13/trump-dhs-truth-ministry-disinformation-governance-board-jen-psaki/

Jen Psaki Delivers Daily White House Briefing
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has spread disinformation repeatedly from the podium while speaking about the Disinformation Governance Board, claiming its “work” was present under the Trump administration.

Psaki’s go-to defense of the establishment of the board under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a continuation “of disinformation-related work that began under the prior administration.” One of the key bodies countering disinformation founded under former President Donald Trump, the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF), was renamed by the Biden administration when he came into office the Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) and was modified to focus on domestic rather than foreign threats, two Trump DHS officials told the Daily Caller.

“The CFITF was focused on foreign influence – particularly as it related to elections. The current MDM description from DHS takes the word ‘foreign’ out of the title. It’s clear that MDM, as it’s currently defined, is also looking at domestic communication,” Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS, told the Daily Caller.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), was created in 2018 under Trump to counter cybersecurity threats. In May of 2018, “a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) was established within CISA’s predecessor agency,” according to CISA’s website, and was tasked with “helping the American people understand the risks from” MDM.

CFITF was modified by the Biden administration in 2021 to officially change its name to MDM, and its “mission evolved to reflect the changing information environment,” according to its website.

The Biden-era DHS, its assistant press secretary and the CFITF did not respond to several requests from the Daily Caller to say why the name change was necessary, and what the new “mission” of the MDM is.

The MDM is now “charged with building national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities,” the website reads. It also mentions that MDM campaigns are waged by both “foreign and domestic threat actors.”

A “Disinformation Stops With You” resource listed on the website states disinformation can be spread by “foreign states, scammers and extremist groups.” An election MDM resource states “Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-sponsored elements, as well as domestic extremist groups,” are the primary culprits of spreading MDM.

President Joe Biden stated May 4 the “MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history.”

“When it comes to disinformation, it’s clear that DHS, under President Biden, is making this a core responsibility – to include in the domestic context. They are also politicizing the issue as they have established a Disinformation Governance Board in the Secretary’s office. They have taken control of combating foreign influence away from operating components, where decisions were largely made from career civil servants, and moved that power to the Secretary’s office. On top of that, they have appointed a highly controversial and partisan individual to head that board Nina Jankowicz,” Wolf continued.

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 04: U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas arrives to testify before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, on Capitol Hill on May 04, 2022 in Washington, DC. Mayorkas will address the budget request for fiscal year 2023 for the Department of Homeland Security. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Disinformation Governance Board, which he first mentioned April 27 in a Senate hearing, wants to “develop guidelines, standards, guardrails to ensure that the work that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years does not infringe on people’s free speech rights, rights of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.” He echoed Psaki in saying that the “work” was being done under Trump, and claimed that the board will focus on foreign surveillance, not domestic.

A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Caller “the Disinformation Governance Board is an internal working group that was established with the explicit goal of ensuring … Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” noting that the group has no “operational authority or capability” and that Psaki has said the DHS has worked to address disinformation “for years and throughout multiple administrations.”

Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for the DHS under Trump, Lora Ries, told the Daily Caller that the Biden administration’s DHS focuses on “content” rather than harmful “foreign adversaries,” and that Trump would have never started a Disinformation Governance Board.

Former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told the Daily Caller that the board “is an entirely new creation of their own making,” called it the “Ministry of Truth,” and said there is “no way” the Democrats will operate the board “well.” “It is one of the most philosophically alarming things produced by this administration,” he added.

“The Biden Administration has changed the focus from foreign adversaries seeking to harm American cybersecurity and infrastructure to focus on content. This paved the way for this Disinformation Governance Board that will surely be weaponized against Americans. The government should not be the arbiter of truth or ‘misinformation.’ We Americans have learned the hard way that ‘misinformation’ is often just information the left doesn’t like,” Ries said.

“Instead of focusing on foreign terror threats and securing the homeland, particularly the border to prevent such threats from entering the U.S., the Biden Administration appears more interested in using the national security state to target concerned parents at school board meetings and Americans rightly skeptical about government’s own coronavirus disinformation. This administration prioritizes the wrong things. Secretary Mayorkas, like the Biden Administration, has turned inward – away from foreign threats and against Americans, in particular political opponents, who they label as ‘extremists,’” she concluded.

The newly appointed leader of the Disinformation Governance Board, Jankowicz, who will be in charge of determining what disinformation is, has been criticized for spreading disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop. She also supported the Steele Dossier, which Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA officer, said was possibly “part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.”

Mayorkas and Psaki have defended Jankowicz, calling her an “expert” in disinformation.

Republican senators have questioned Mayorkas, exposing that he did not know about Jankowicz’s TikTok videos, nor about her Hunter Biden claims before she was appointed. (RELATED: Disinformation And Wizard Rock: Meet Biden’s New ‘Minister Of Truth’ At DHS)

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Scary Poppins

A.F. BRANCO | on May 3, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-scary-poppins/

Left-wing hack and propagandist Jankowicz is now heading Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board.

Jankowicz Misinformation Czar
Political cartoon ©2022.

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.

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DHS creates ‘disinformation governance board,’ appoints leader who peddled disinformation about Hunter Biden laptop, Trump dossier


Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | April 28, 2022

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/dhs-creates-disinformation-governance-board/

The Department of Homeland Security was criticized Thursday over the creation of a new department whose mission is to combat the spread of “disinformation.” According to Politico, the DHS has established the Disinformation Governance Board, which will “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”

The agency appointed Nina Jankowicz as executive director of the board.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed the board’s creation on Wednesday after Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) asked him what steps the DHS is taking to combat the manipulation of black Americans and Hispanics, including migrants, through “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Making matters worse, Jankowicz is by no measure an objective leader. In fact, the Washington Examiner reported that Jankowicz disseminated information contained in the debunked Christopher Steele dossier and repeatedly downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop story with claims that it was part of a foreign interference campaign. She even described the laptop hard drive — which has been repeatedly authenticated — as a “Trump campaign product.” Jankowicz even appears to oppose free speech. Last week, she told NPR that she “shudder[s] to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms.”

The announcement generated a wave of backlash, both against the creation of the board itself and against Jankowicz as its leader. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has already sent Mayorkas a letter demanding that the board be dissolved immediately.

“I confess, I at first thought this announcement was satire. Surely no American Administration would ever use the power of Government to sit in judgement on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens,” Hawley said. “Sadly, I was mistaken. Rather than protecting our border or the American homeland, you have chosen to make policing Americans’ speech your priority. This new board is almost certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately.”

Meanwhile, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) described the board as the “ministry of truth,” aka the government’s own propaganda office.

“I’m also going to let a cat out of the bag — you’re about to get a lesson in federalism because the free state of Missouri will NEVER let you administer a federal Ministry of Truth. Buckle up!” Schmitt said.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, “During the worst border crisis in history, Biden’s DHS is creating an Orwellian ‘disinformation governance board’ led by a partisan Democrat who herself spread disinformation. What a disgrace. When Republicans take control, we will fix this.”

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