The Highwire with Del Bigtree - HOW BIG TECH WORKED WITH THE GOVERNMENT TO CENSOR YOU

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

New documents provided in a lawsuit against top Biden administration officials reveal potential collusion between social media platforms and public health officials, and the Department of Homeland Security.#BigTech #ElonMusk #Fauci #DHS #TwitterLayoffs #Censorship #FreeSpeechBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

This is one of the biggest stories out there right now. This is the Department of Homeland Security. And if people remember just about five, six months ago, the Department of Homeland Security had a disinformation governance board. And they had to shut that down. They came out and they said, look at this. Isn't this great? Department of Homeland Security shuts down disinformation board that drew fire from GOP.

So that was shut down. But behind the scenes, before that and increasingly after that, they have been working to wreck an infrastructure. that is nothing short of terrifying. So we know this, we have a peek into this because of the lawsuits by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. And this was the, we have documents now that have been produced in their lawsuit showing DHS in collusion with Big Tech. And the article that put that together by Lee Fang and the intercept truth cops, leaked documents outlined DHS's plan to police disinformation. This is a great article.

and it says here, DHS's mission to fight disinformation stem from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. According to a draft copy of DHS's Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS's capstone report outlining the department's strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target, quote, inaccurate information on a wide range of topics, including the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we still don't know yet, and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.

So it's a big chunk there. Remember, the Department of Homeland Security was created by the Patriot Act after the 9-11 attacks for foreign terrorist operations. So over the years, we've seen that really saw it supercharged in around 2010 with Obama. And, you know, it's been, it's been handed off in fairness from administration to administration. No one's really put a squash on this thing. So we have now the internal documents. So let's look at these internal documents that were produced during this lawsuit.

So we're first going to look at documents from cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. This is CISA. This is the kind of the operational component of the Department of Homeland Security. So this is their meeting minutes. April 12, 2022, they say members emphasize. two framing questions for further consideration. How can SISA inspire innovators to partner with the government in a way that catalyzes availability of trusted information without being seen as government propaganda? They go back to this. And the next quote, subcommittee members return

to the recommendation for CISA to amplify trusted information and discuss designated a point of contact as a clearinghouse for trusted information redacted. And Mr. Hale suggested designated the ISACs as the clearinghouse for information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda. So they're basically saying how do we control this online conversation? We want to control it. We want to monitor it, but we don't want to look like we're monitoring it. So is there a way to do that? Maybe we can have a middleman, a third party where we can use them as kind of like the glove in hand and monitor it through there and influence it through there. So when people are talking or when they're talking about the online discussion what online discussion what are they

talking about so the next draft conversation they're talking about this was from june 20 22nd draft report to the csa director and they say well what media cisa should approach the md that's misinformation disinformation problem with the entire information ecosystem in view this includes social media platforms of all sizes mainstream media cable news hyperpartisan media talk radio and other online resources. So there it is. I mean, that's the entire swath of communication and information. They want their hands in that. They want to be able to basically curate and manipulate that. So even before DHS became involved, you know, as we know this with these documents, we already saw government in there with big tech. So Biden came out and said this, this actually,

really is a crazy statement. Biden says platforms like Facebook are killing people with COVID misinformation. Well, this was a shock to people in the world and people at Facebook because just a day later, we have Vivek Murthy. He is the Surgeon General of the United States. We have some text messages now from that same court case that were released. And he says this. Imagine the president says, your company is killing people. The next day, you get a knock on the door. Hi, I'm from the government. I want to talk to you. Does that sound like coercion? He says, hi, it's Vivic Murphy, great to connect with you this week and looking forward to working together. Be well, Fivik. So then we have the response from, it's an unknown Facebook employee. We're guessing it's

someone that's higher up there because they're responding to the government here. And they say this, Hi, Vivik. You may have seen this post today, which we issued to provide more context. We do not plan to issue more public posts, et cetera. I imagine you and your team are feeling a little aggravated. As is the Facebook team, it's not great to be accused of killing people. But as I said by email, I'm keen to find a way to de-escalate and work together collaboratively. I'm available to meet, speak whenever suits with my best wishes. So they're saying, hey, stop calling us killers. Like, we want to de-escalate this.

You realize the president just called her company, told us people were killing people. So it's not clear when this system started, but Facebook has a content request system directly for the government. It's a back channel system for government reporting. So you or I see a post we don't like. Facebook goes, yeah, we'll get around to it. The government has a fast track system that they, and if you have a government email or a law enforcement email,

you can use this system. And there it is right there, government requests, Facebook processes. And so the government directly has its own back portal. So to say that they're not involved in curation, they have an entire back portal of Facebook. So that brings us really to one of the bigger stories of the conversation when it comes to social media, and that's Elon Musk.

He has finished his Twitter takeover for billions of dollars. And one of the first things he did there, he fired a couple people, but Twitter limits content enforcement work as U.S. election looms. So this was the headline, and it says here, this is apparently the steps he's taken. Detection of policy breaches can either be flagged by other Twitter users or detected automatically. But taking action on them requires human input and access to the dashboard tools. Those tools have been suspended since last week, the people said.

Typically, this level of access is given to a group of people numbering in the hundreds, and that was initially reduced to about 15 people last week, according to two of the people who asked not to be named discussing internal issues. So a lot of people, when Elon Musk took this company over, were expecting full release of everyone that's been banned. And he came out and said this. Musk says Twitter will keep current bans in place. through midterms. We wanted to test that. So yesterday, we put out this tweet on the high wire

Twitter account since the Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, which previously banned accounts, have you seen reinstated? There wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of people saying they saw a lot of accounts reinstated. I saw Stella Emmanuel, one of the frontline doctors. She had another account that was shut down. She was there for about a day. David Ike tried to have another account. He was shut down like 24 hours. So it looks like the bans are still there and they will continue to ban. And I guess until must figures out this system, if he's even going to do that, we have our eyes on it. All right.

Well, I mean, look, there's so much that you're reporting on now. And as people can see, we're shifting really through, you know, what I talked about with James. This isn't just about vaccines anymore, folks. And no, we are not ready to go back to sleep. And no, I don't believe it's time for amnesty because these same players want you to forgive them, why they continue to structure and build a jail cell around your life. So Jeffrey, incredible reporting. And it really makes me think, as I look at government back channels to Facebook,

and you have to imagine all the other social media platforms have the same thing, you know, we've really got to look at ourselves and say, we are being tracked, we are being watched by a government that's not supposed to be doing that. We're supposed to have privacy, our privacy is disappearing. But to all of you folks out there, that depending on how your relationship is with your child, you may be saying, look, I'm going to monitor all of your social and media interactions, or maybe you're saying, look, I want to teach you to be a strong citizen, you're going to self-regulate, I'm leaving that to you. You may not be watching what your child

is saying, but rest assured the government is. Imagine in the future, should anything happen, how much do they have to sort of spin their own way that they've captured of things your child said, how they're interacting with their friends? You must now know that all that is being tracked, I would at least have a conversation with your child and saying, I may not be watching you, but it appears our government is. So govern yourself accordingly.