Tag Archive for: disinformation governance board

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

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.

Disinformation Czar Resigns, Board On ‘Pause’ Following Criticism She Spread Disinformation

The Department of Homeland Security put a “pause” Monday on its disinformation board after the truth czar, who resigned Wednesday, came under fire for spreading disinformation herself, The Washington Post reported.

DHS shut the board down Monday and Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to lead the department, drafted a resignation letter Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. Jankowicz was reportedly pulled into a meeting late Tuesday night, however, with officials giving her the chance to stay on as the department determines whether to move forward with the highly polarized board. Jankowicz formally resigned Wednesday, according to The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz.

The decision comes as Jankowicz faced extreme backlash for pushing disinformation.

Jankowicz attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Trump campaign product” while speaking to ABC News in 2020. During the second presidential debate, Jankowicz posted that President Joe Biden cited “50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op.”

The laptop was authenticated by several outlets including the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Jankowicz also claimed the now-discredited Steele Dossier was funded by Republicans in a 2017 tweet.

She also expressed concern about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and what would happen if “free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms.”

Jankowicz also said in 2021 the GOP is made up of “disinformers” who “have seized on” issues like Critical Race Theory to spread “disinformation.”

A DHS spokesperson defended Jankowicz in a statement to The Post.

“Nina Jankowicz has been subjected to unjustified and vile personal attacks and physical threats. In congressional hearings and in media interviews, the Secretary has repeatedly defended her as eminently qualified and underscored the importance of the Department’s disinformation work, and he will continue to do so.”

The DHS announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board in April to counter what it considers misinformation and disinformation, particularly disinformation coming from Russia and misleading rhetoric about the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has fended off criticism of the board, recently saying the “board does not have any operational authority or capability.”

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

Reporter. Follow Brianna on Twitter

RELATED ARTICLE: These Are Not Bright People’: Bill Maher Rips Nina Jankowicz, ‘Disinfo Governance Board’

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

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

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.

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.

Wolf concluded by calling on the DHS “to provide the American people transparency as to what the Board is and was planning to do, and why the Department chose to put on an overtly partisan individual in charge who could easily be accused of spreading disinformation herself prior to her government service.”

AUTHOR

DIANA GLEBOVA

Associate Editor.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Disinformation And Wizard Rock: Meet Biden’s New ‘Minister Of Truth’ At DHS

‘That’s Not True’: CNN’s Jake Tapper Rips Biden Admin For ‘Politicizing The Pandemic’

Concerned Mothers Group Calls AG Merrick Garland A ‘Terrorist’ After Report Confirms Group Was Targeted By FBI

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

Biden’s Disinformation Board Top Dog Claims Leftists, not Pro-Freedom Voices, are Censored on Social Media

Don’t believe your lying eyes, believe Nina Jankowicz, the Disinformation Governance Board czarina.

There is a huge list of freedom fighters and patriots who have banned from Twitter (here is a list of some of them, along with some people who are not admirable at all, including David Duke and others), and absolutely no prominent Leftists who have been likewise banned, but just ignore that.

Nina Jankowicz is the arbiter of truth.

And she wouldn’t ever lie to us, now, would she?

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Kamala Harris Warns of Terrifying Future of Government Interference in ‘Personal Decisions’

Taliban Stop Pretending to be Nice, Order Women to Wear Burkas and Stay Home

Pakistan: Men dig up grave of teenage woman and rape her corpse, 17 accused are being interrogated

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

Durham Builds Case On Clinton Disinformation Factory As Biden Launches ‘Disinformation Governance Board’

Just as the Biden administration was gearing up to announce the head of its new “Disinformation Governance Board,” Special Counsel John Durham was busily working toward one of many clear conclusions: the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign was central to the spread of harmful disinformation throughout the media.

To truly gauge the level of harm the Clinton disinformation factory caused would be a difficult task, but it did contribute in some ways to locking the FBI up in a costly and lengthy investigation that ultimately found no Trump/Russia conspiracy. It also resulted in a series of corrections and reckonings at media outlets already struggling with national trust.

As it happens, the new head of Biden’s disinfo board – dedicated to tackling misinformation and disinformation as the 2022 midterm elections loom – Nina Jankowicz herself promoted a piece of disinformation Durham recently concluded to be an outright fabrication by Clinton-hired researchers. Jankowicz, a self-styled “globally recognized” expert on disinformation, also propped up former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that one former CIA Moscow station chief described as likely “a part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.”

“Listened to this last night — Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen,” Jankowicz wrote in one 2020 tweet.

Russian-born Igor Danchenko – allegedly Steele’s top source for the dossier, according to the Washington Examiner – was charged in 2021 as part of Durham’s inquiry for “making false statements to the FBI.”

On other occasions, Jankowicz pushed misleading claims surrounding the dossier. In one instance, she claimed that the Republican Party “funded the dossier first.” Her tweet was in response to Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s question of whether there was “collusion between DOJ and Fusion GPS to use Democratic funding dossier for political and legal purposes.”

“You’re probably aware that [the Steele dossier] began as a Republican opposition research project,” Jankowicz wrote in a separate tweet in 2020, according to The Washington Examiner.

The conservative Washington Free Beacon, which initially hired Fusion GPS, said in 2017 it “had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier.”

“The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele,” the Beacon’s editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti and chairman Michael Goldfarb wrote in a statement at the time, according to NPR.

In fact, the Steele dossier came about after he was hired by an opposition firm in 2016. That firm, Fusion GPS, was hired in part by the general counsel for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Examiner noted.

With Jankowicz prepping to lead the administration’s “disinformation” board, Durham’s court filings have served as insight into another apparent disinformation push.

Durham noted in one April 2022 court filing that the CIA determined data from former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann surrounding Russia-Trump organization links was “user created” and not “technically plausible.”

Sussmann was charged by Durham last year with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting.

Durham more recently alleged that Fusion GPS sent hundreds of unverified claims regarding Trump to journalists, The Washington Times reported. The hundreds of emails, according to Durham, resulted in various news articles tying together Trump and Russia.

Individuals tied to Clinton’s presidential campaign have argued that research from Fusion GPS should be protected, citing attorney-client privilege. They’ve also claimed the opposition firm’s work was to supply legal services, The Washington Times reported.

Durham responded in court filings by noting that, if true, Fusion GPS would have taken more care with its unverified allegations prior to spreading them around to journalists.

“If rendering such advice was truly the intended purpose of Fusion GPS’s retention, one would also expect the investigative firm to seek permission and/or guidance from [the Clinton campaign] or its counsel before sharing such derogatory materials with the media or otherwise placing them into the public domain,” Durham wrote, according to The Washington Times.

On Wednesday, Durham saw his latest small win when the judge presiding over Sussmann’s case agreed to do a review of records being withheld by Clintons’ presidential campaign, the Washington Examiner reported.

AUTHOR

SHELBY TALCOTT

Senior White House correspondent. Follow Shelby on Twitter

RELATED ARTICLES:

Disinformation And Wizard Rock: Meet Biden’s New ‘Minister Of Truth’ At DHS

The List Gets Longer: All The Ways Hillary & The Government Spied On Trump

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

‘Half-Baked’: DHS Admitted Some Stunning Details About Its ‘Disinformation’ Board To Congress

  • The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told congressional staffers that the agency’s Disinformation Governance Board lacks a charter and has yet to hold its first meeting.
  • The board has come under scrutiny, with members of Congress fearing that it could infringe on the rights of American citizens.
  • Conservatives, including Republican lawmakers, are also concerned with DHS’ pick to lead the board, Nina Jankowicz, who has spread misinformation herself.
  • One congressional staffer described the board as “half-baked,” adding that DHS seemed to have gotten “ahead of themselves when they mentioned this in the secretary’s testimony.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told congressional staffers Friday that its Disinformation Governance Board had yet to hold its first meeting, according to two congressional staffers familiar with the discussion, who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

One congressional staffer told the DCNF that the board appeared “half-baked” and said DHS seemed to have gotten “ahead of themselves when they mentioned it in the secretary’s testimony.” DHS also admitted the board lacks a charter during Friday’s call, the two congressional staffers told the DCNF.

The congressional staffers elected to speak on background, with one telling us they don’t want to compromise their ability to work with DHS, and the other telling us their office only confirms details of this nature on background.

The board is new under the Biden administration, according to the aforementioned staffer who said DHS doesn’t “really have direction for this board.” The staffer also said Nina Jankowicz, the head of the board, kept referring to the board as “visionary,” adding that it appeared that there’s “no concrete structure to it yet.”

Jankowicz has recently come under scrutiny for having a history of promoting misinformation, such as discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop story

The staffer said they requested a copy of the charter and that DHS agreed to share it when it’s ready. The board is also looking to add two co-chairs to work under Jankowicz, according to the staffer.

The other staffer told the DCNF that they were told the board hasn’t met yet and hasn’t approved a charter.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told lawmakers on April 27 that the agency had formed the board to tackle misinformation and disinformation targeting minority communities.

Mayorkas said Sunday that Jankowicz is “eminently qualified,” adding that the board will only monitor foreign misinformation and disinformation and not American citizens.

On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the board is “a continuation of work that began at the Department of Homeland Security in 2020, under former President Trump,” adding, “For anyone who’s critical of it, I didn’t hear them being critical of the work under the former president, which is interesting to note contextually.”

A DHS spokesperson didn’t address whether the board was newly formed or what was discussed on the call, telling the DCNF that DHS agencies have long worked to tackle “disinformation.”

DHS has been working for years to address disinformation, the spokesperson said, pledging DHS’ commitment to upholding “Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy.”

The board doesn’t have any operational authority or capability, the spokesperson added.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Disinformation And Wizard Rock: Meet Biden’s New ‘Minister Of Truth’ At DHS

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.

‘They Want To Stifle Dissent’: DeSantis Declares War Against Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ At DHS

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to fight the Biden administration’s proposed Disinformation Governance Board Friday, which he said was an attempt to censor ordinary people and impose narrative control.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the formation of the board Wednesday, which will be run by Nina Jankowicz, a self-described “disinformation expert” who previously attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story. DeSantis promised to fight the board in a Friday press conference.

“You cannot have a Ministry of Truth in this country. And so let’s get real here,” DeSantis said. “We’re not gonna let Biden get away with this one, so we will be fighting back.”

Critics including DeSantis have compared the board to the “Ministry of Truth” in the novel “1984,” an agency that produces government propaganda and decides what citizens are allowed to say and believe.

“They now have an idea – and I honestly thought this was a belated April Fool’s joke – but they are actually going to create in the Department of Homeland Security a Bureau of Disinformation. It’s basically a Ministry of Truth,” DeSantis said. “And what they want to do is, they want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able to speak out and fight back.”

“They want to be able to say things like ‘Russia collusion’ and perpetuate hoaxes and then have people like us be silenced. They want to be able to advocate for COVID lockdowns, they want to be able to advocate for school closures, things that are not supported by the evidence. But then when you speak out, they want to stifle dissent,” he added. “And so we reject this bureau in the state of Florida.”

The board announced Wednesday that it would begin by focusing on Russian disinformation in the lead-up to midterm elections and misinformation aimed at migrants at the southern border, according to the Associated Press. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it sounded “like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country” during a Thursday press conference, but declined to comment on Kankowicz’ appointment, claiming she had no information about her.

Kankowicz said “We should view it [Hunter Biden’s laptop] as a Trump campaign product” on ABC News in October 2020 and claimed Republicans had funded the claimed the now-discredited Steele dossier in a 2017 tweet.

Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson demanded answers from the DHS about the board in a Thursday letter which focused on potential biases Jankowics could bring into the position and called her a “beacon of misinformation online.”

DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social issues and culture reporter.

RELATED ARTICES:

‘Discomforting’: Elon Musk Reacts To The DHS’ New Disinformation Governance Board

Biden’s New ‘Ministry of Truth’ Director Turns out to Be a Raving Lunatic

“Ministry of Truth” Trends on Twitter After Government Unveils New “Disinformation Governance 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.