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10 months ago

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cisa constitutional law fbi first amendment social media

Injunction Twitter Files, Part 2
By Terry A. Hurlbut
Tracy Beanz, who has reported on the case of Missouri v. Biden since its inception, continued her thread dissecting the sweeping injunction forbidding government agencies to tell social media companies what to remove, whom to bank and so on. Beginning with a tweet she added to her earlier thread, she now considers prohibitions against the “three-letter agencies.” The FBI tops her list of agencies now forbidden to meet with social media staffs for censorship purposes.
Review of the preliminary injunction
As CNAV said yesterday, the injunction itself needs little introduction. It came in the case of Missouri v. Biden, a massive lawsuit accusing the government, and several specific agencies and agents, of cajoling, coercing, and otherwise inducing various social media platforms into restricting the protected speech of American citizens, in violation of the First Amendment. In short, it turned those social media platforms into State actors, as The Intercept said in the fall of 2022. But unlike The Intercept, Judge Doughty has so far found that the social media platforms were acting under duress. (The legal term for this is force majeure, but thus far Judge Doughty has not used that term.)
Various Twitter journalists have covered extensively the conduct of nearly every defendant the Missouri lawsuit names. Accordingly, Judge Doughty has enjoined the White House, those specific agencies, and named agency members, from any further such conduct.
Since the injunction came down, the Biden administration has first appealed,
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1676724171143888896
and then filed a motion to stay the injunction, which they had not done before.
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677293259574370304
Tellingly, Judge Terry A. Doughty, the judge trying the case of Missouri v. Biden, did not stay his own injunction. Judges handing down preliminary injunctions often stay them for seven days, to give the enjoined party a chance to appeal. Then they stay their orders pending the appeal. That Judge Doughty did not do that in this case, indicates his high confidence that the Fifth Circuit will not reverse him.
The thread, Part 2
Yesterday’s thread is actually Part 2 of a thread that began with this anchor tweet:
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1676969679326429188
Herewith the seventy-fourth tweet, and the even numbers beyond it:
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677343244357713921
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677344444817854464
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677345669860794373
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677346623288901633
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677348415800311808
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677357095585292303
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677358809465987082
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677361192287838221
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677363160855060493
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677368196095934466
https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1677376998375854083
Reaction was universally positive toward Tracy Beanz, and negative toward the government. Almost no users tried to excuse the government’s position.
One user suggested that the Big Tech players knew all the time that what they were doing was wrong. By this theory they relished the role of State actors – as The Intercept said.
https://twitter.com/LibsOwner/status/1677349718832054273
Another user, one Amber Krabach, offered proof of such censorship happening to her:
https://twitter.com/AK4WA/status/1677365232434561027
The “receipts” include correspondence between CISA and Kiran Boyal, Website and Social Media Coordinator, Office of Secretary of State. That’s the Washington State Secretary of State – because Amber Krabach was a candidate for office in King County. Recall that the seat of King County is Seattle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcMD3LWUwD8
The letter back to Kiran Boyal is the most disturbing. It includes several “snitch addresses” for social media platforms. One of these is Nextdoor.com, a social network for one’s immediate neighbors. That invites comparisons to the neighborhood informers that the Stasi and the Vopos (literally, Volkspolizei, People’s Police) in the old German Democratic Republic (East Germany) routinely recruited.
Analysis
This thread is obviously shorter, but perhaps more disturbing. By now we know the extent of the censorship machine. But in that next-to-last tweet we got a psychological profile of a tyrant. “Cognitive infrastructure?” What can that mean, except the thoughts of the people? And what does Jen Easterly suggest, except that she owns our thoughts?
The more reason to question the motives of the social media platform staff in cooperating with these government agents. No mere injunction against the government agents can suffice here. Judge Doughty needs to issue another injunction against the social media platforms. Someone needs to stop them from giving even the appearance of acting like the neighborhood snitches of East Germany.
We saw, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, that this did not make Twitter staff happy. The Twitter Files series does not paint a picture of Trust and Safety employees coming out of hypnotic-like trances and reaching out to Musk as if he were their rescuer. Furthermore, we all remember that some government agents hired on to Twitter – like Jim Baker, who came from the FBI. Musk handed Baker his walking papers, but CNAV suspects that other troublemakers remain.
The larger picture – and why another injunction might be necessary
The evidence thus far paints a very dystopian picture of the United States today. That picture includes rogue agencies and agents, government funded shell entities (the “NGOs”), and social media companies that cooperated with them. Judge Doughty, so far, doesn’t seem to believe they cooperated willingly. But in that case why did so many Twitter staff leave in a collective huff? Why did their technical teams cooperate in creating special portals for government agents to use? (We saw that in the Intercept piece last fall, as well as in the recent Memorandum Ruling.) Who at Twitter decided to hire Jim Baker of the FBI?
Elections have consequences. Moreover, no one ever alleged that absolutely no person voted for Joe Biden as President. We must assume that many liberal people have gravitated to these social media companies over the years. The Twitter Files validate the Memorandum Ruling – but we have those only because an outsider bought the company. Even he wasn’t exactly conservative until he saw many things that outraged him.
None of the above excuses the government or those agencies and agents. But we cannot blithely excuse every member of Trust and Safety staff at Twitter, Facebook, et al.
We eagerly await Part III of the thread, that tells us what Judge Doughty might be thinking. But something will still be missing until at least one more case lands in Judge Doughty’s courtroom.
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