Lawsuit Depositions and Twitter Files Tell the Tale

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There’s an old saying: Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want reported on the front page of the newspaper.  So many stunning revelations have been reported in the last couple days from the release of the Twitter files and the Missouri versus Biden Big Tech censorship case, there’s no room on the front page left.

An FBI agent testified in a deposition in the censorship case that FBI headquarters put its “stamp of approval” on requests to social media companies to block specific information before the 2020 elections.  Requests would get routed through FBI field offices around the country, federal prosecutors, FBI and Justice Department lawyers, and FBI headquarters before being sent to the agent’s “command post” in San Francisco for action.  The agent further testified social media platforms frequently complied with FBI requests to take down posts.

A State Department official testified during his deposition that the State Department has been funding online fact checkers.  He named the Poynter Institute which operates Politifact, a notoriously left-wing fact checker.  You might recall Facebook admitted in a lawsuit these so-called ‘fact checkers’ are really just “opinion”, left-wing opinion your State Department is only too happy to pay for.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk released a first set of files showing how former Twitter executives decided to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Twitter suppressed the story under its policy against “hacked” information, but there was no evidence the information was hacked.

In a second set of files released just yesterday, it was revealed the platform used several means to silence conservatives, including blacklists and shadow-banning, techniques which former Twitter executives had denied using and dismissed as conspiracy theory.  The targets included a well-known opponent of the Covid lockdowns and two conservative radio talk show hosts.  As one Twitter engineer put it, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”  Twitter was taking down posts or limiting visibility as many as 200 times a day.

The head of the team was Jeff Carlton, a former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer who had previously worked for the FBI counterintelligence division and CIA.  I told you earlier this week Twitter’s deputy general counsel who had advised the company to block the Hunter Biden laptop story had previously worked for the FBI.  Elon Musk fired counsel James Baker this week for suppressing information and for giving an “unconvincing” explanation for why he reviewed the new Twitter files before they were published.

So we have more than just proof of concerted action between the Biden administration and Twitter executives to support the theory Twitter had become an extension of the government to suppress speech.  We have a revolving door that placed former intelligence agency and FBI officials inside Twitter at critical junctures, adding weight to the case Twitter had become a state actor.  Personnel is policy, as they say.

The Missouri Attorney General – now Senator-elect Eric Schmitt who brought the censorship case said:

This is a story of the federal government with all of its vast power and authority colluding with some of the biggest companies in the history of the world to censor Americans to put their thumb on the scale for what’s out there that people can actually read about before an election. It ought to scare the bejesus out of every American, I don’t care about your political stripe.

They suppressed speech and silenced conservatives, but they got caught.  Moral of the Story:  If you can’t do the time on the front page of the newspaper, don’t do the crime.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Twitter Used ‘Vast Array Of Tools’ To Throttle Trump’s Account Even Before Jan. 6, Docs Reveal

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  • Twitter took advantage of a “vast array of tools” to suppress the reach of former President Donald Trump, even prior to the company’s decision to ban him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, journalist Matt Taibbi reported Friday.
  • The platform’s executives debated rolling out “L3 deamplification,” a label that limited users’ ability share offending tweets, in response to Trump posting a series of tweets on Dec. 10, 2020, questioning the results of the 2020 election, but ultimately decided to wait until the program’s “official” launch on Dec. 11, Taibbi reported.
  • “The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6,” Taibbi tweeted.

Twitter deployed a “vast array of tools” to limit the impact of former President Donald Trump on the platform, even before the company decided to ban him following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to journalist Matt Taibbi, citing internal Twitter documents Friday.

The decision to ban Trump was made not solely due to his actions or the actions of his supporters on or around Jan. 6, 2021, but “over the course of the election and frankly the last 4+ years,”  one Twitter executive — whose name was redacted by Taibbi — wrote in an internal message, according to Taibbi. While Twitter had several teams to limit the visibility of users’ tweets, the majority were either automatic and rules-based or handled by high-ranking executives on a subjective, case-by-case basis, but those executives met with more and more federal officials as time went on, particularly before the 2020 election, Taibbi reported.

Twitter “had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6,” Taibbi tweeted.

Following Jan. 6, 2021, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth said in an internal Slack message that he lacked sufficient “generic enough” meetings to fill his calendar and hide his “very interesting” meetings from view, according to Taibbi.

“DEFINITELY NOT meeting with the FBI I SWEAR,” reads one of Roth’s messages following Jan. 6, Taibbi reported. Another Twitter employee, whose name and profile picture on Slack were censored by Taibbi, simply responded “lmao.”

On Oct. 8, 2020, Twitter executives opened a Slack channel dedicated to election-related account removals, with a particular focus on “Very Important Tweeters” or “VITs,” according to Taibbi. There was some level of friction between Safety Operations, a larger department within Twitter with a more rules-oriented approach to content moderation, and high-ranking executives like Roth and then-head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, as the latter group often made moderation decisions “only the fly, often in minutes and based on guesses, gut calls, even Google searches, even in cases involving the President,” Taibbi reported.

In response to a member of Twitter’s marketing team asking if they can say Twitter detects misinformation through “partnerships with outside experts,” Policy Director Nick Pickles asked for the unidentified employee to simply say “partnerships,” according to Taibbi.

“Can we just say ‘partnerships’ … not sure we’d describe the FBI/DHS as experts or some [Non Governmental Organizations] that aren’t academic,” Pickles replied, according to Taibbi.

On Dec. 10, 2020, Twitter executive Patrick Conlon, announced internally that Twitter would be launching a new mode of suppression known as “L3 deamplification,” according to Taibbi. This mode, which was announced the same day Trump tweeted or retweeted roughly 20 posts challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, was a label that came with an automatic “deamplification” of the tweet in question, limiting its ability to be shared, Taibbi reported.

While some team members asked whether to deploy the new tool right away, Conlon opted to wait until the following day, when the policy was slated to officially go live, according to Taibbi. The team had also applied several “bots” to Trump’s account, monitoring both his claims and the claims of connected entities, such as right-wing news outlet Breitbart, Taibbi reported.

“The significance is that it shows that Twitter, in 2020 at least, was deploying a vast range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump’s engagement, long before J6,” according to Taibbi. “The ban will come after other avenues are exhausted.”

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Twitter Had Secret ‘Blacklists’ That Suppressed Stanford Doctor, Top Conservatives, Docs Show

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  • Twitter maintained secret “blacklists” that included several prominent conservative voices and a Stanford professor of health policy, limiting the spread of their content, according to journalist Bari Weiss.
  • While Twitter kept a record of some of this activity, the most sensitive, politically charged actions were typically kept off-the-books by high-ranking members of Twitter’s staff, Weiss reported.
  • “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.” 

Twitter kept secret “blacklists” that included a doctor at Stanford and several prominent conservative voices that suppressed their ability to be found or heard on the social media platform, according to journalist Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press and former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist, who launched the second chapter in Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” Thursday evening.

Weiss tweeted what appeared to be a photo of Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy, with his account being prominently marked as being under a “Trends Blacklist.” Bhattacharya was secretly blacklisted because he “argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children,” and was thus unable to trend on the platform, according to Weiss.

In addition to Bhattacharya, Twitter placed Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk under a “Do Not Amplify” notice, while right wing talk radio personality Dan Bongino, who has appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, was placed under a “Search Blacklist,” according to Weiss. The practice of limiting the access or reach of users’ content, commonly referred to as “shadow banning,” is something that Twitter has denied doing in the past, and is referred to internally as “Visibility Filtering” or “VF,” Weiss reported.

“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels,” a senior Twitter employee reportedly told Weiss. “It’s a very powerful tool.”

Twitter operated two teams that managed visibility filtering, with the lower-level team — known as the “Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team” — handling roughly 200 routine and recorded cases per day, Weiss reported. However, a second group, known as “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” handled high-profile, politically sensitive accounts, making no record of their decisions, one Twitter employee told Weiss.

The second group included former Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde, former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, as well as then-CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, Weiss reported.

“Think high follower account, controversial,” the twitter employee told Weiss. The employee noted that when this group was involved, “there would be no ticket or anything.”

The company’s internal slack messages showed that Roth was interested in using “deamplification” and “remediations” in order to slow the spread of viral content that the team considered to be misinformation, according to Weiss.

“We got [CEO Jack Dorsey] on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains,” said Roth in a message to the company’s Health, Misinformation, Privacy and Identity research team, according to Weiss. “So I’d love research’s POV on that.”

After Twitter suffered a steep decline in advertising revenue following Musk’s takeover in late October, the company’s new CEO committed to fighting hateful content by reducing its visibility on the platform, in a Nov. 9 call with advertisers.

Weiss’ thread arrived six days after Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, launched “Part One” of Musk’s Twitter Files, focusing primarily on the mechanisms by which various high-level executives at twitter coordinated to suppress the spread of a New York Post article detailing a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.

Musk had initially tweeted on Dec. 2 that the second installment of the files would be released on Dec. 3, a date that he then pushed back “another day or so,” before going silent on the issue.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Chinese Operatives Ran A Massive TikTok Campaign To Help Dems In The Midterm Elections

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  • TikTok accounts operating on behalf of Chinese state media published content that criticized Republicans and favored Democrats ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, a Forbes investigation found.
  • Despite TikTok rules requiring accounts to disclose their government ties, at least three Chinese government-affiliated accounts with millions of views did not clearly describe their status to users.
  • “This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,” Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

TikTok accounts operating as voices of Chinese state media promoted messages that appeared to denigrate Republican candidates and favor Democratic ones ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Forbes investigation.

While the Chinese-owned social media app has verbally affirmed the need to crack down on election disinformation and foreign interference, several news-oriented accounts failed to disclose their affiliation with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state-owned media on the platform, Forbes found. The accounts racked up tens of millions views on posts that covered divisive topics, such as abortion and race, as well as critical clips that mostly targeted Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,” Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, which registered as a foreign agent for China with the Treasury Department in 2019 and distributes the U.S. branch of China Central Television (CCTV), CGTN, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. MediaLinks also operates the CCTV and CGTN apps, according to Apple.

The largest accounts are @Panadorama, @The…Optimist and @NewsTokss, the latter of which expressly covers U.S. national news, according to Forbes.

NewsTokss in particular ran content that overall shone Republican politicians in an unfavorable light and praised Democrats, Forbes found.

A video from July was introduced with the caption “Cruz, Abbott Don’t Care About Us,” referring to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, according to Forbes. Another from October criticized Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida for having “Done Absolutely Nothing.”

Some content swayed against Democrats; one NewsTokss video in October asked viewers whether President Joe Biden’s promise to enshrine abortion rights served as a “political manipulation tactic,” Forbes found.

None of the videos clearly disclosed their ties to CGTN or the Chinese government, but the accounts’ profile bios did spell out, “Material distributed by MediaLinks TV LLC on behalf of CCTV. More info at DOJ, D.C.,” Forbes reported.

“That’s not disclosure,” Healy said. Between May 8 and July 6, NewsTokss received 8.3 million views but only 57,600 profile views, suggesting many users who watched the videos may not have realized a foreign government was pushing the content, Forbes reported.

Further, by redirecting users to the Department of Justice (DOJ), MediaLinks shrouded its status as a foreign agent.

However, such high-profile accounts should be easily identifiable as state-run, Healy argued to the DCNF.

“Either they don’t care and don’t have the protocols in place to deal with this, or they’re letting it happen,” he said.

In September, TikTok announced a new pilot policy of “mandatory verification for accounts belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties through the midterm elections” in November.

“We plan to introduce our state-controlled media policy and corresponding labels globally next year as part of our continued focus on media literacy,” a spokesperson for TikTok told Forbes.

Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok, causing suspicion that the company takes orders or signals from the CCP and prompting politicians to call for banning the app across the federal government.

Technology and China researchers have long expressed concerns about China’s election interference via social media content; cybersecurity firm Recorded Future warned ahead of the 2018 midterm elections found Chinese-run accounts “disseminating breaking news and biased content surrounding President Trump and China-related issues.”

CGTN did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Musk Releases Details On How Twitter Censored The Hunter Biden Laptop Story

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This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, released what Elon Musk has referred to as “The Twitter Files,” Friday afternoon detailing how the social media platform suppressed a New York Post story regarding a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.

The NYP story revealed an email — which was verified soon after by the Daily Caller News Foundation — that connected President Joe Biden with an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, with the executive thanking the president’s son for “giving me an opportunity to meet your father.” Taibbi alleged that former head of legal, policy and trust Viyaja Gadde played a “key role,” in the decision to suppress the story, which was made without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey, but without any government involvement.

Taibbi tweeted an email indicating that Twitter’s trust and safety team initially explained to other employees that it made the decision to suppress the story — the company even went so far as to prevent it from being sent in private messages — because it violated Twitter’s policy for sharing “hacked materials.” Taibbi tweeted two additional emails that show Twitter employees discussing posts flagged by the Democratic National Committee and Biden staff, and communication on how to moderate the posts.

Democratic Rep. Khanna of California reached out to Gadde personally after the story was suppressed, concerned that Twitter’s actions were a “violation of the 1st Amendment [sic] principles,” according to Taibbi. Carl Szacbo, general counsel at trade association NetChoice that advocates for limited government intervention online, sent a letter to Twitter’s head of Public Policy, Lauren Culberston, noting that while members from both parties were frustrated with Twitter’s response to the situation, the three Democratic lawmakers they had polled were in agreement that social media companies needed to moderate more, arguing that “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.”

Sharing the NYP story was banned on Twitter from Oct. 14-16, 2020, a move that Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, described as a mistake in an interview on Nov. 30, 2022. Dozens of former intelligence officials criticized the NYP story in October 2020 as likely linked to Russian disinformation in an open letter, according to Politico; however, the veracity of the laptop’s contents has been confirmed by several major news organizations since the DCNF.

Facebook also prevented users from sharing the story, which alleged that the laptop’s hard drive contained video of Hunter Biden using drugs while engaging in sexual activities.

Months before the NYP story, tapes leaked by Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament with connections to Russia’s intelligence, alleged that Joe Biden had pressured the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire a prosecutor that was investigating Burisma, where his son was a member of the board, when he was the Vice President.

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

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO EXPOSE: Apple Computers Block All P2P Communications for the Chinese Government

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Tucker Carlson reveals that Apple computers blocked all P2P communications for the Chinese Government to help them stop the protests.

Apple used to have air drop which allows file transfers without the use of the Internet. But they dropped an update which disabled it in China without telling the people it disabled it.

The collusion of big business with totalitarian government is known as fascism. It also happens in Canada in much the same way, and we have published the proof of it over and over, where Facebook worked with the Canadian government under Trudeau to block signals from phones at protests to people’s accounts showing the protest and speakers etc.

Tucker also has a segment of Dr. Malhotra from his morning show yesterday.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Governments Are Using Drones to Spy on Americans. Here’s How People Are Fighting Back

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Drone technology is making it easier than ever for governments to stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.

Americans have long been concerned about government surveillance, and rightly so. Being watched by the government is incredibly disconcerting, especially when government agents are probing into your private life.

The rise of drone technology has not helped on this front. Whereas before a government would need a plane or helicopter to get aerial views of you or your property, now they just need a small remote-controlled device.

The issue of governments spying on Americans using drones has come up in some recent court cases and legislative disputes. One recent case involves Todd and Heather Maxon who live on a rural five-acre property in Long Lake Township, Michigan. Todd likes to fix up cars, and he keeps a number of vehicles on his property.

For years the Township has been going after the couple for zoning violations, accusing them of illegally storing “junk” on their property. But here’s the kicker. The cars can’t even be seen from outside the property…that is, unless you fly a drone overhead. And that’s exactly what the Township did.

Without even attempting to get a warrant, the Township hired a contractor to fly a drone as low as 150 feet over the Maxons’ property multiple times over two years. The Township is now trying to use the pictures taken by the drone as evidence that the Maxons are violating a local zoning ordinance.

“If the government wants to conduct intrusive surveillance like this, the Fourth Amendment requires that it get a warrant,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg regarding the case. “The zoning authority’s failure to even try to get one shows their indifference to Michiganders’ constitutional rights.”

New York City has also come in the crosshairs in recent years for its decisions on this front. In 2019, the New York Police Department acquired 14 drones for “monitoring giant crowds, investigating hazardous waste spills, handling hostage situations and reaching remote areas in crime scenes, among other tasks.” Though the NYPD insists the drones won’t be used for warrantless surveillance, many are worried that putting this technology in the hands of police is just asking for trouble.

Citing these fears, privacy advocates pushed for legislation known as the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act (“POST Act”), which requires the NYPD to release information about how surveillance tools are being used and creates an annual oversight system to audit compliance with department policies. The Act was passed in June 2020 after gaining momentum following the death of George Floyd.

The legal issue with warrantless government surveillance revolves around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states the following:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In plain language, governments aren’t allowed to conduct searches and seizures as they please. They need to get a warrant.

In the more than two centuries that have passed since this amendment was adopted in 1791, mountains of case law have built up establishing precedents for what exactly constitutes “unreasonable” and what qualifies as a “search” or “seizure.” Other related questions have also been extensively litigated, such as whether evidence collected in an unconstitutional search (such as pictures from a warrantless drone flight) can be used in court. On that issue, there is a long-standing precedent. “For more than a century, the remedy for a Fourth Amendment violation has been suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence,” the Institute for Justice notes.

Whether the Maxons win their case remains to be seen.

What’s clear, however, is that drone technology provides governments with unprecedented spying capabilities—capabilities they would gladly use against Americans if they could get away with it.

For many topics addressed in the Bill of Rights libertarians are firmly in favor of the right being recognized (for example, freedom of speech and gun rights). With the Fourth Amendment, however, there are some philosophical problems.

The economist and political philosopher Walter Block addresses the “right” to privacy in the Peeping Tom chapter of his book Defending the Undefendable 2. “According to the libertarian legal code,” Block writes, “we may do anything at all to each other, whether they like it or not, provided, only, that in so doing we not violate—not their privacy ‘rights’ which do not exist, but rather—their property rights in their own persons and justly owned physical possessions.”

As Block correctly points out, spying on people isn’t technically a rights violation from a libertarian perspective. Indeed, a “right” to privacy, consistently recognized, would lead to all sorts of absurd laws, such as banning detectives or prohibiting most journalism and gossip.

Should we let governments spy on us at will, then, and never push back through legal channels? Of course not. There is a sound philosophical case to be made against government surveillance—it just doesn’t rest on a supposed “right” to privacy.

The most fundamental point to be made in this regard from a libertarian framework is that government surveillance is funded by taxpayer dollars, which are taken coercively. This alone makes the practice immoral in the libertarian view.

It’s also worth pointing out that the purpose of government surveillance isn’t necessarily protecting people. Sometimes the government uses drones because it intends to force its laws on people (such as in the case of the Maxons and Long Lake Township’s zoning laws) in which case the government is using surveillance as a means to a liberty-violating end.

In such cases, libertarians will often make a tactical move. While we may disagree with the Fourth Amendment philosophically, holding the State to its stated laws on privacy is often a more effective way of defending people’s liberties (property rights) than appealing to philosophical ideals. Just saying “it’s their property, they have a right to use it as they please” may be a more philosophically sound rebuttal to zoning laws, but it’s not particularly effective in court.

If appealing to the Fourth Amendment is what will convince the powers that be to respect property rights, there’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to recognize that, for libertarians, such an appeal is merely a practical tactic—the philosophical argument against the government’s actions is rather different from the legal argument.

So that’s the argument against government drones, but what about private drones? Would libertopia have private drones flying everywhere, snooping on people constantly, seeing as libertarians don’t recognize a right to privacy? Of course not. Privacy is in high demand, so drones would almost certainly be regulated with voluntary contracts.

Responding to the Fourth Amendment at the end of his Peeping Tom chapter, Block summarizes the libertarian position on privacy as follows: “We have no such right. It is merely a privilege, one that, fortunately, the free market system can bestow upon us.”

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elon Musk Reinstates Trump’s Twitter Account

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Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Saturday that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated on Twitter, following the results of a Twitter poll where a majority of voters favored his return.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” tweeted Musk, quoting a Latin phrase that means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” He tweeted the announcement immediately after the conclusion of a poll asking the question “Reinstate former President Trump.”

Over 15 million users voted in the poll, which was active for 24 hours and ended on Saturday night, with a slim majority, 51.8%, voting in favor of Trump’s reinstatement. The decision comes nearly two years after Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, was permanently suspended by Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump’s supporters in protest against the results of the 2020 election.

Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump became visible on Twitter again shortly after Musk’s announcement.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” wrote Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, following tweets by Trump that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 of that year. The decision to remove Trump from the platform was widely criticized by conservatives as well as some progressives and foreign leaders, including then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as an illicit exercise of corporate power.

Trump has repeatedly said that he will not return to Twitter following the ban and continues to post social media messages on Truth Social, a network he set up under the Trump Media and Technology Group. His contract with TMTG allegedly stipulates that he must post content on Truth Social before posting on any other social media website, according to TechCrunch.

Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the richest man in the world, recently acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He has claimed that his acquisition was motivated by concerns regarding free speech on the platform, with conservatives having long petitioned him for Trump’s reinstatement.

During Trump’s term, his Twitter account was the focus of international attention as he used it to make official pronouncements, fire officials and criticize political opponents as well as the media. His tweets often were the basis of political controversies.

Trump’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

ARJUN SINGH

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Red Tsunami Was Stopped by Massive, Widespread, Ongoing Election Fraud

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The take-away from the mid-terms is that Trump was right about the 2020 elections. The braying mob that kept telling him (and us) to “move on” never understood or worse – was complicit – was aiding and abetting corrupt election systems rendering them nothing more than a Democrat rubber stamp for one party rule.

Without legitimate elections, we are done. Finished.

Election fraud is the cause of this nation’s ills.  We will never move on again. 2022 midterm was stolen. Just like 2020. Without election reform, none of this matters. We will never take any chamber of power again. It’s a one party state like the all the terror regimes in history.

The Red Tsunami Was Stopped by Massive, Widespread, Ongoing Voter Fraud

It’s surprisingly hard for many to believe what is blatantly obvious to some of us.

By: JD Rucker, November 14, 2022:

It appears Democrats are going to not only retain control of the Senate, but may pick up a seat and potentially have the power to take out the filibuster. The House, which was all but assured for Republican majorities for weeks before the election, appears to be heading toward giving razor-thin control to the GOP… and it still has a chance of remaining in Democrats’ hands.

The red tsunami didn’t materialize. Or, to be more accurate, it was stolen. That seems to be hard for many to accept as even some of the most outspoken conservative and alternative news outlets following the 2020 theft have gone silent on 2022. They’re blaming everything other than voter fraud for some reason. I’ve seen far too few outside of The Gateway Pundit, Wayne Allyn Root, and a few others in media who are discussing in public what seems to be blatantly clear, at least to me.

I posted a thread of Gab, Gettr, and Twitter explaining briefly why I am certain the 2022 election was stolen. I fought and continue to fight for the truth about the 2020 election to come out and I’m even more certain that 2022 was stolen. Yet, it appears those of us who believe that are a very tiny minority. Here’s my thread:

Why are so many people who were absolutely certain the 2020 election was stolen suddenly blind to the fact that 2022 voter fraud was even worse? Only a precious few conservative and alternative media voices are even mentioning the notion of massive, widespread voter fraud.

The gaslighting isn’t just coming from the left. It’s coming even harder from the Republican Establishment that wants to blame Trump, abortion, “bad” candidates, or anything other than a coordinated attack on our nation and our Constitution.

Florida was NOT the outlier. Florida is what happens when voter fraud is quashed and actual voters got to have their say at the ballot box without late night dumps, computer “malfunctions,” and ballot harvesting schemes at nursing homes and cemeteries.

The polls are always wrong… in favor of Democrats. This is the first time in modern history when the polls, corporate media, and everyone else predicted a red wave and it didn’t materialize. It wasn’t that everyone was wrong. It was and continues to be outright theft.

I know there’s a lot of coping involved. Believing the 2022 election was stolen would be admitting that we no longer have a say in our government. Our voices are being quashed and there are no apparent avenues of recourse. But truth is truth. Stop coping. We MUST address this.

If you truly believe Pennsylvanians are so masochistic that they’d elect a guy who can’t form a sentence to the Senate, an Attorney General who promotes crime as Governor, and a dead guy to the state legislature, then you believe Pennsylvanians are absolute morons. They are not.

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

These words have always rang true. We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis of our lives and there’s ZERO chance America rewarded the Democrats with two more years of Senate control. ZERO. They stole it and so few are uttering those words.

They called us racists so we did backflips to prove otherwise. They called us terrorists so we stopped going to school board meetings. They called us insurrectionists so we stopped going to protests. Now they call us election deniers so we’re accepting these results. I won’t.

It feels like only a tiny portion of Americans are lucid and courageous enough to acknowledge the red tsunami was stopped by ongoing voter fraud. That means a majority of people are gullible, feckless, stupid, or a combination of the three. If that offends you, I’m not sorry.

The only for this nation, Lord willing, is that the same thing that happened with the jabs happens with voter fraud. It took far too long but people are finally waking up to the risks of the jabs. Maybe someday they’ll wake up and realize elections are being stolen from us too.

We are already being told to “move on” and the votes haven’t even been fully counted yet. This is worse than the 2020 steal because it affected dozens of states, not just 7 or 8 swing states. I won’t be moving on anytime soon.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elon Musk Connects the Dots on the FTX Ponzi Scheme

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FTX was created as a Ponzi scheme to launder American taxpayer money through the Ukraine in order to fund the campaigns of Democrat politicians. FTX CEO became the second largest donor to Democrats and the Democrat Party.

FTX, having served its political purpose, is now bankrupt and “under investigation.”

Well, Elon Musk began tweeting about the links between Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of FTX, Gary Gensler the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a former MIT professor, Glen Ellison a Professor of Economics and the former boss of Gary Gensler at MIT and Caroline Ellison the CEO of Alameda Research the trading arm of FTX, who is the daughter of Glen Ellison and dated Bankman-Fried.

Here is a video and tweet with information about Caroline Ellison the CEO of Alameda Research thru which FTX laundered money from the Ukraine.

The tweet below, in reply to Elon’s tweet, gives readers an understanding of the timeline of the creation of FTX. It also shows links between Sam Bankman-Fried and his mother Barbara Fried who happens to head two Democrat Party political fundraising organizations: the left-wing super PAC Mind the Gap and the non-profit Center for Voter Information.

Here is another tweet in response to Elon’s tweet,

Influence Watch’s review of Mind the Gap reported,

In 2018, the PAC created a statistical model which attempted to score the impact each dollar donated would have on Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives. The group ultimately raised more than 20 million dollars in its successful attempt to win back control of the House for Democrats.

MTG is known for its secretive operations where it attempts to quickly gather and coordinate donations over a short time to prevent Republicans from mobilizing donors in response. The PAC is managed by Stanford Law professors Barbara Fried, Paul Brest, and researcher Graham Gottlieb. Of the three, only Gottlieb has political experience, having served former President Barack Obama as a staffer during his 2012 re-election campaign and in the White House.

Read more about Mind the Gap.

Influence Watch has this on the Center for Voter Information (CVI)

The Center for Voter Information (CVI) is a left-of-center voter registration and outreach group that is permitted to take positions on candidates that works alongside its nominally nonpartisan and charitable “sister,” the Voter Participation Center (VPC). While both organizations run general get-out-the-vote campaigns, the CVI runs targeted voter outreach campaigns for candidates. Both organizations are left-of-center, and the VPC’s political spending exclusively goes to supporting Democratic candidates or opposing Republicans. CVI shares its 501(c)(4) tax status with another voter registration activist group, Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF), which the organizations treat as separate groups but are a single entity.

As of September 2020, CVI and VPC have generated 939,000 registration applications and 2 million vote-by-mail applications for the 2020 election. [1] These applications are generally targeted towards demographic groups which tend to support the Democratic Party, and have been extensively criticized by state-level officials.

All three organizations share a common founder, liberal activist Page Gardner.

[ … ]

As of October 23, 2020, CVI had committed to sending 340 million pieces of mail leading up to the 2020 general election. This included sending ballot applications as well as voter registration forms. The initiative focused on over 20 battleground states. Critics argued that some of the forms contain errors or prefilled information, preventing individuals from successfully registering and influencing votes. Additionally, the mail was not always understood to be from a non-government organization and confused voters. [3]

Read more.

This is an evolving story with many, many dots to connect.

Stay tuned for more information as we seek the truth about the 2022 midterm elections and how Democrats used FTX to launder money which ended up in the political coffers of Democrat campaigns.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Congress needs to investigate the criminal snooping of the FBI and HHS

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Federal law enforcement agencies are violating the 1974 Privacy Act by gathering, storing, and demanding social media posts be throttled or censored.

The sensible ambition of every human is to feel secure. To feel safe. To be worry-free from random or intentional attacks.

We desire it so much, that most are willing to sacrifice a little less freedom to obtain it.

Normally, those precious freedoms are gobbled-up by some government agency promising to snatch only a small portion of our personal sovereignty if we allow them to act as an iron shield against organized mobsters, gangs, criminal syndicates, and terrorists.

So, track us. We don’t care. Monitor us. Listen to what we say. Put a camera on every corner. Review what we write. Frisk us. Scan us. Snoop all you want. We have nothing to hide. We know the difference between right and wrong.  After all, it’s not about us.

Heck, we hardly notice those freedoms being scarfed up. The invasion of our privacy rights is ghostly, invisible, and ethereal.

All is fine and dandy‚ until…

…the government redefines what’s right and wrong.

Then we see it.

Now, we’re the bad actor. And good luck trying to reclaim those freedoms that could have protected us in the past.

Last week, Intercept (a leftwing, online news publication) shook America with the astounding revelation that the FBI and Homeland Security are working with Big Tech to scrub the internet of information they label “inaccurate.”

“Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the US government has used its power to try to shape online discourse,” the article reveals.

The goal of the Government is to scrub the internet of social media posts that “drive a wedge between the populace and the government.”

To that end, agencies inside the FBI and Homeland Security – that previously focused on international terrorists, such as ISIS – are using their snooping tools to go after Americans who post “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.”

If any of these law-enforcement employees determine a social media post will lower the nation’s “trust in government,” the content is flagged, stored, and then sent back to the originating social media platform with the expectation the message will be suppressed, throttled, or eliminated.

The snooping tools of the FBI: Babel X, Dataminr, ZeroFox

As much as I would like to reveal more about the findings in the Intercept story, that’s not the intent of this article.

I aim to broaden the discussion on a few things the Intercept article briefly mentioned.

Intercept reports that government officials have a unique portal to Facebook to request takedowns or throttling of postings they don’t like, which means anything that harms the “cognitive infrastructure” of the United States.

(The “cognitive infrastructure” would mean everything would be game)

But one of the most puzzling questions I wanted to be answered was how the FBI has the manpower to review virtually every social media message posted on the World Wide Web.

One of the answers is Babel X.

In April of this year, the FBI spent $27 million to purchase 5,000 licenses from Babel X.

In its purchase request, the FBI notified Babel X:

“The tool shall be able to gather information from the following mandatory online and social media data sources: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Deep/Dark Web, VK, and Telegram,” the bureau said.

But they’re hoping for a far greater reach.

The FBI also asked Babel X to give them the ability to search Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Gab, Parler, Discord, and others.

Bable X aside, the FBI also uses Dataminr to scour the data highway.

The FBI has 200 agents plugged into Dataminr (with its “advanced alerting tool”) to review Twitter posts that meet the bureau’s interest.

Of course, the FBI claims they need these tools to combat “terrorists and other criminals” that “communicate, recruit, and raise funds for illegal activity.”

But thanks to FBI official Laura Dehmlow [quoted in the Intercept story] we know the FBI also wants to eliminate the threat of “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.”

That “subversive” information, according to Intercept and a lawsuit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, includes “malinformation” or “disinformation” of Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, Covid vaccines, the Hunter Biden laptop story, racial justice, the Ukraine war, and the 2020 election fraud claims.

The answer to how the FBI can monitor and takedown posts believed to harm “trust in government” is also found in a program called ZeroFox.

In court records, the FBI said they also monitor the Internet with ZeroFox (a $14 million contract) that surveils organizations across social media, including web domains, online news sites, blogs, forums, deep/dark web, and even email.

The “great” feature of ZeroFox is that it provides its customers with a “takedown service,” which allows the FBI to hide, delete and block posts they don’t like.

Read this from ZeroFox:

“Although ZeroFox will initiate a takedown request on behalf of a customer [such as the FBI], the social network or other online provider assesses the request against its own terms, rules and policies and decides whether to act on, or reject, the request. In other words, the third-party provider controls whether the material is removed.”

Of course, big corporations may fail to convince Facebook, for instance, to remove an unflattering post. But a request coming from the FBI?

Who wants to get on the wrong side of the FBI?

The 1974 Privacy Act protects American citizens

At one time, the FBI and Homeland Security focused their surveillance efforts on ISIS and other international, radicalized terrorist organizations and cartels.

For the most part, Americans applauded these law enforcement agencies and their zeal to protect America from another 9/11 attack. We weren’t ignorant, though. We knew it meant the FBI and DHS would resort to monitoring every crevice of the virtual world in all its forms, styles, and behaviors.

But we convinced ourselves we would never become the target of the US Government and their massive and invasive snooping tools that can collect, store, suppress or eliminate what we post.

Now, we know better.

But we can fight back.

The 1974 Privacy Act makes it illegal for the Federal Government to engage in any activity that gathers, maintains, keeps secret files, or releases to non-government parties the identity of citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Here are two important sections found under 5 US 552a of the 1974 Privacy Act that we can reasonably believe are currently being violated by many federal law-enforcement agencies:

“Each agency that maintains a system of records shall maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statue or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.” (emphasis added)

“Any officer or employee of an agency…who knowing that disclosure of the specific material is so prohibited, willfully discloses the material in any manner to any person or agency not entitled to receive it, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.” (emphasis added)

The takeaway is:

  1. It is illegal for the Federal Government to maintain, collect, or use any social media post that falls under the protection of the First Amendment.
  2. It is illegal for any federal employee to release that social media post to any person or agency (think Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) that is not entitled to receive it.

In addition, the 1974 Privacy Act requires the Federal Government to explain when the information is being gathered, why it is needed, and how it will be used. They must also ensure that those records are handled only for the reasons given.

Who believes the feds, when gathering up posts on Joe Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, are completing the process of explaining why that collection was needed and how it will be used?

America needs answers.

The way to get those answers is for Congress to immediately launch a full-scale investigation using its sledgehammer power of subpoenas to determine the numerous violations of the 1974 Privacy Act, including criminal offenses.

©Marin Mawyer. All rights reserved.

People who foretold and warned of the coming Deep State, Dark State and the current ‘Police State of America’

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Americans are very concerned about the growing powers of the federal government especially its law enforcement branches, i.e. the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Many have written about the deep state. In a July 12th, 2018 column titled The Deep State vs. The Dark State wrote:

The “Deep State” adherents are the long-serving entrenched bureaucrats who are key to making the engine of government function. Presidents come and go, but those in the “Deep State” are 15, 20 and longer in year’s entrenched mid-level managers and upper level managers to which paper work and duties of carrying out the decisions and proclamations of a president must go to be enacted.

[ … ]

The members of the “Dark State” are a different animal; although, they, too, have gummed-up the effective workings of government to accomplish their goals and agendas; namely, to collapse the United States into the New-World Order, the Global community which will be hedonistic and communistic in style and belief, and worse! The members of this diabolical state are many whose names you are acquainted with; the Clintons, Obamas, Schiff, Pelosi, Schumer, Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Mueller, with a list very long, and many within the list not named in publications often. The list does not exclude Republicans, with many on the Republican side like, McConnell, McCain, Romney, Paul Ryan, examples…and include the Bush Family to this list along with still many others who have adopted the global community goal. [Emphasis added]

Read more.

What we are seeing today is the rapid expansion of the “Dark State” bent on destroying those who oppose their hedonistic and communist efforts to fundamentally transform America.

As George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, warned, “BIG BROTHER IS WATHCING YOU!”

But there were those who foretold this massive invasion of our government to do harm to political opponents rather than enforce the laws of the land.

Watch:

One of the ways the federal government has flexed its powers is to become the sole judge of what is true and what is not true. Today its the federal government that determines what is and is not mis-, dis-, and mal-information. But others warned that this was coming.

Watch.

Here is the entire interview:

America is now at a crossroads. The powers to be warn that the 2022 midterm elections is all about preserving democracy.

Here is what our Founding Father John Adams said about democracy,

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

America is a Constitutional Republic and this means that the power lies in the hands of we the people and not the federal government, the deep state nor the dark state.

Today we have a police state. Time to dismantle the federal police state and restore law and order to our land. We need those who hold near and dear their faith, family and fully embrace freedom.

Law and order is on the 2022 midterm ballot in states like New York, Illinois and Michigan. The economy and cost of living is the prime driver of working Americans. School choice is also on the ballot as is pushback against the LGBTQIE+ agendas.

Pray that voters save American!

May God continue to bless the USA!

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Former DOD Contract Translator Arrested for Alleged Ties to ISIS

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The ongoing threat of Jihad.

A former Department of Defense (DOD) contract interpreter, Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi has been arrested for allegedly having lied about his connection to ISIS in his application for a security clearance in conjunction with his employment by the DOD.

The arrest of this defendant is of great significance however, while information about this case has been published in several news reports but, incredibly, has not been reported by the Justice Department or any other federal agency.

Mohammadi is being prosecuted by the federal government and is alleged to have worked to assist ISIS, the group behind the bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 American soldiers and grievously wounded many others.

Additionally, the news reports neglected to provide important insight into just how the alleged actions of the defendant may have done significant harm to U.S. national security or ask what should be obvious questions about the way that Mohammadi is being charged.

I will address these issues shortly, but first, let’s begin by reviewing information about this case that Rolling Stone’s article about the arrest provided in its October 18, 2022 report under the title:

CAUGHT

Feds Charge Pentagon Contractor With Lying About Ties to ISIS

Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi worked for the U.S. in Afghanistan. He was also allegedly helping the terrorist group behind a bombing that killed 13 American troops.

The Rolling Stone article began with this excerpt:

FEDERAL PROSECUTORS SAY a translator hired by the U.S. to work in Afghanistan lied about his contacts with recruiters for the terrorist group behind a notorious bombing that killed 13 American troops in August 2021.

In a federal criminal complaint filed in Kansas on Monday, the government says Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi communicated with, funded, and, in one case, sought to secure the release of recruiters for ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) both before and after he worked for the U.S. as a linguist in Afghanistan.

Mohammadi allegedly denied “ever associat[ing] with anyone involved in activities to further terrorism” while filling out a security clearnace form for his linguist work in 2019. But FBI agents investigating him in the wake of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan say a trail of Facebook messages, social media posts, and the testimony of an informer contradict that account.

Experts say that, while lying on security clearance forms is illegal and subject to criminal penalties, prosecutions tend to be rare and reserved only for extreme cases. The case comes as thousands of interpreters, soldiers, and employees who fought ISIS-K and the Taliban beside the U.S.-led coalition are still struggling to find refuge inside the U.S. after Taliban rule.

This next excerpt is utterly impossible to understand:

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Rolling Stone was unable to reach Mohamaddi or an attorney representing him.

The Rolling Stone article also reported on Mohammadi’s alleged support of two recruiters for ISIS-K in this excerpt:

The Defense Department deployed Mohammadi to Afghanistan as a contract linguist in October 2019. Unbeknownst to the Pentagon, Mohammadi allegedly had a history of support for an ISIS-K recruiter prior to his travel to Afghanistan.

Investigators say he had been in contact with “Individual 1,” a man arrested by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) for “recruiting militants for ISIS-K and deploying them to a specific province within Afghanistan” in February 2019.

Prosecutors didn’t name the alleged recruiter, but the description of him as the subject of a publicly announced arrest by NDS aligns with Abu Obaidullah Mutawakil, a jihadist preacher arrested in Kabul in February 2019. Mutawakil’s arrest was the only publicly announced arrest of an ISIS-K recruiter that month.

Mohammadi’s relationship with the individual appears to date at least to early January 2018, when the Kansas man Facebook messaged a friend in an attempt to get the recruiter’s phone number. Months later, Mohammadi allegedly sent the recruiter $400 via Western Union and published a video featuring him on his Facebook page in the wake of the recruiter’s February 2019 arrest.

Once deployed to Afghanistan in October 2019, Mohammadi appears to have raised little suspicion except for a brief incident when “he attempted to sneak back onto the military base, as he left the base without permission,” according to investigators.

While in the country, Mohammadi allegedly tried to help a second ISIS-K recruiter, referred to in court documents as “Individual 2,” after an arrest. Afghanistan’s NDS arrested Individual 2 for “recruiting students to join ISIS-K and encouraging them to carry out terrorist attacks” in July 2019. Mohammadi allegedly told an FBI informant that he had tried to help secure the man’s release while working as a linguist in Afghanistan

Additional information about his case was provided in the October 20, 2022 American Military News report that republished a Kansas City Star report about this arrest that had been published by Kansas City Star under the title,  Kansas City man who worked for DoD lied about contacts with ISIS recruiters: Authorities.

Now let’s dig deeper into the serious implications that this case has for America’s national security.

Generally the arrest and prosecution of an individual associated with a known terrorist organization would be the subject of a Justice Department (DOJ) news release and likely a well-attended news conference.  However, as I noted in the beginning of my article today, the has, to date, not made any public announcements about this case.  Here the DOJ was not even willing to respond to a direct question and provide information to a news organization about the arrest of an alleged affiliate of ISIS-K.

It is also hard to understand why Mohamaddi was only charged with lying on his application for the security clearance required for his employment as a translator for the DOD but has not been charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Another issue that should be addressed is Mohamaddi’s immigration status.  If he was born in the United States he would certainly be a United States citizen.  However, if he entered the United States as an alien, then his applications to secure entry into the United States must be scrutinized to see if he lied on his immigration applications, just as he alleged to have lied in his security application.  This is of great importance, because if he committed fraud in his immigration applications and that fraud can be proven, he would be subject to deportation (removal) from the United States after his criminal prosecution is completed and he completes his prison sentence, presuming he is found guilty.

If he is found guilty of assisting ISIS, his continuing presence in the United States would clearly pose a clear and present danger to national security and public safety.  His deportation would eliminate that threat.

Translators hold positions of extreme sensitivity.  This is a fact that I am intimately familiar with, as an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) special agent I frequently worked with translators.

Translators, of necessity, serve as the eyes, ears and mouths of the agents and intelligence officers who work with them and also act in the eyes ears and mouths of the individuals who are interviewed.  Translators may be given access to sensitive documents.

Translators are able to identify agents and potential informants, putting their lives at risk.  The information that is discussed is highly sensitive and provides the translator with sensitive information that has potential national security implications.

A rogue translator may lie about the responses being given by an individual who is being interviewed.  This would undermine the integrity of the vetting process that is vital to prevenient terrorists from entering the United States by concealing their association with terrorist organizations or other derogatory information.

The arrest of this alleged affiliate of ISIS is a bit of positive news, however, how many more such individuals have succeeded in infiltrating our agencies that are charged with protecting America and Americans?

In the days, weeks and months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 politicians from both political parties and at all levels of government demanded to know why no one had “connected the dots” to anticipate that America was vulnerable to a massive terror attacks.

Ultimately the 911 Commission was formed to conduct an extensive and in-depth investigation into how the terrorists were able to successfully target the United States an the worst terror attack ever carried out on U.S. soil.

In point of fact, I provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

It did not take long for the 9/11 Commission to determine that multiple failures of the immigration system enabled terrorists, and not only the 19 hijacker terrorists who carried out the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, to easily enter the United States by various means, most often by committing immigration fraud, that enabled them to embed themselves in communities around the United States as they made their deadly preparations.

In addition to providing testimony to the 9/11 Commission and testifying before numerous hearings in the House and Senate I have written a number of articles in which I attempted to “Connect the dots”-

Here are five such articles:

The Biden administration must now order an audit of every case that involved Translator Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi’s “services.”

However, I am not optimistic that this will happen under the “leadership” of Joe Biden or DHS Secretary Mayorkas .  My recent article, For the Biden Administration, National Security is ‘Mission Irrelevant’ explored some of the vulnerabilities that have been exacerbated by the Biden administration.

We The People must contact our Senators and Congressional Representatives and make it clear that they must act on behalf of national security and the safety of all Americans.   This is not a “Left” issue or a “Right” issue but an American issue.

The clock is ticking and time is not on our side!

©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

Elon Musk accuses Twitter board of ‘deliberately’ hiding evidence from court: ‘Stay tuned’

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This just keeps getting better and better. Harder! Faster!

The  Twitter Board lied to  the court. Further, these entities would be in trouble with the SEC as well for filing false statements.

As Joe Hoft reminds us, Yoel Roth was the the one to block the Hunter Biden Laptop story before the 2020 election and called Trump officials “actual Nazis.” He is a bad actor and appears to have participated in illegal acts.

Elon Musk accuses Twitter board of ‘deliberately’ hiding evidence from court: ‘Stay tuned’

Musk leaked a private message from Twitter executive Yoel Roth as potential ‘evidence of ‘fraudulent metrics’

By Andrea Vacchiano, FOX Business, October 31, 2022:

Circle Squared Alternative Investments founder Jeff Sica discusses Big Tech earnings and why Musk’s potential Twitter deal is a bad idea on ‘Varney & Co.’

Elon Musk accused Twitter’s former board of directors and their lawyers of “deliberately” hiding evidence from court proceedings, days after the entrepreneur’s $44 billion deal was finalized.

“Wachtell & Twitter board deliberately hid this evidence from the court,” Musk tweeted Sunday night. He included a screenshot of internal messages from a Twitter executive referencing “fraudulent metrics.”

“Stay tuned, more to come…,” the billionaire added. Twitter was represented by Wachtell, Rosen, Lipton and Katz lawyers in their legal proceedings with the entrepreneur.

Proof of “fraudulent metrics” at Twitter may serve as a basis for arguments that Musk significantly overpaid in the $44 billion deal. Musk said earlier this month that he “obviously” paid more than the company was currently worth.

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles June 13, 2019. (Reuters Photos)

In July, Musk told Twitter that he planned to terminate the deal he announced in April over speculations about the amount of spam accounts on the website, prompting Twitter to file a lawsuit.

After Twitter accused Musk of not following his obligations under their agreement, Musk filed a countersuit. The entrepreneur changed course by announcing that he would proceed with his original $54.20 per share offer to buy the platform in October.

In the screenshot, Twitter’s Global Head of Safety & Integrity Yoel Roth suggested that he would imply a Twitter personnel named Amir used “fraudulent metrics” to report objectives and key results (OKRs).

“But also lol if Amir continues to BS me my escalation route is ‘Amir’s OKRs are entirely based on fraudulent metrics and he doesn’t care and may actively be trying to hide the ball,’” the Twitter executive wrote.

“Literally doing what Elon is accusing us of doing,” Roth added. In a follow-up tweet on Sunday night, Musk said that he supported Roth after other Twitter users dug up old, apparently anti-Trump tweets from Roth.

“We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel,” the Telsa founder wrote. “My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

Roth’s comments about “fraudulent metrics” were made in a May 17 message – roughly the same time Musk accused Twitter of being “very suspicious” about its reporting of spam bots.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Government Officials Have A Special Portal To Flag Facebook Posts For Censorship

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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.

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.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: GOP Senators Release Documents Showing Biden Admin Lied About Disinfo Board

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.