The censorship-industrial complex: the network of US govt agencies, contractors, big tech platforms

Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger testifies about the censorship-industrial complex, the network of U.S. government agencies, contractors, and big tech platforms conspiring to censor ordinary American citizens.

Internal files from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League reveal military contractors using psychological operations against Americans.

Critics argue social media platforms have the right to censor, but evidence suggests government involvement violating the First Amendment.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that the government may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what is constitutionally forbidden.

There is now a large body of evidence proving that the government did precisely that.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) has been at the center of gravity for much of the censorship, with the National Science Foundation financing the development of censorship and disinformation tools and other federal government agencies playing a supportive role.

Emails from CISA's NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory and other U.S. Government contractors.

EIP and its successor, the Virality Project, urged Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms to censor ordinary citizens' and elected officials' social media posts.

EIP reported a 75% response rate from the platforms and that 35% of the URLs they reported were either removed, labeled, throttled, or soft-blocked.

In 2020, CISA violated the First Amendment and interfered in the election.

In 2021, CISA and the White House violated the First Amendment and undermined America's response to the COVID pandemic by demanding that Facebook and Twitter censor content that Facebook itself said was "often true," including about vaccine side effects.

This is profoundly unAmerican.

I encourage Congress to defund and dismantle the government organizations involved in censorship.

That includes phasing out all funding for the National Science Foundation's Track F Trust and Authenticity and Communication Systems and its Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Track.

I also encourage Congress to abolish CISA in DHS.

Short of taking those steps, I encourage significant guardrails and oversight to prevent such censorship from happening again."