Wednesday 2 November 2022 02:37 AM How Biden's DHS collaborates with social media firms to target disinformation trends now
The US Department of Homeland Security is pursuing a sprawling campaign against online 'disinformation' through close partnerships with social media companies, raising concerns about encroachments on free speech, according to a new report.
In a lengthy report on Monday citing internal documents that have emerged through leaks and court filings, The Intercept described what appears to be a growing focus within DHS on controlling online discourse.
Though the Biden administration earlier this year disbanded its controversial Disinformation Governance Board after furious backlash, the documents suggest that DHS has quietly maintained an intense interest in policing speech it deems false or dangerous.
The documents show that Facebook has a special online portal for DHS and other government officials to request content moderation, and that the federal department plans to target 'inaccurate information' on a wide array of topics.
Those hot-button topics include 'the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of US support to Ukraine,' according to a draft copy of DHS's Quadrennial Homeland Security Review cited in the report.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen above. A new report details the Department of Homeland Security's close partnerships with social media companies to fight 'disinformation'
The new report describes a special portal that DHS officials can use to request content be removed or otherwise moderated from Facebook and Instagram
The portal, which is still active as of Tuesday evening, requires a pre-registered government email address to gain access to a priority 'content request system'
The ambition of those plans, and the inherently political nature of some of the topics in question, such as the Afghan withdrawal, are drawing concerns from free speech advocates.
They fear that DHS could stray over the line from policing foreign disinformation campaigns, and into censorship of opposing viewpoints.
'There is growing evidence that the legislative and executive branch officials are using social media companies to engage in censorship by surrogate,' Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, told The Intercept.
'It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly. If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship, it raises serious First Amendment questions.'
Spokespersons for Facebook's parent company Meta, Twitter, and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com on Tuesday evening.
Twitter told The Intercept in a statement: 'We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules.'
DHS officials have argued that it is vital to protect Americans from foreign campaigns to spread false or dangerous information
The new report describes a special portal that DHS officials can use to request content be removed or otherwise moderated from Facebook and Instagram, which are both owned by Meta.
The portal, which is still active as of Tuesday evening, requires a pre-registered government email address to gain access to a priority 'content request system'.
The report indicates that most of the government's work on disinformation is taking place within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a DHS sub-agency created during the Trump administration with a broad mandate to protect US infrastructure.
But CISA's domain, and its definition of 'infrastructure', appears to have swiftly expanded under
