Reports Archive
Online censorship continues to proliferate in government agencies, using hidden meanings for everyday terms in order to spread a paradigm of distrust that turns censorship tools against US citizens.
- Buzzwords like "campaign" or "threat actor" are used by federal agencies to identify domestic censorship targets.
- The deceptive use of common terminology allows censorship professionals to mislead the public into a false sense of safety about domestic censorship.
- The contrast between these words' explicit and implicit meanings require us to educate ourselves on censorspeak in order to keep track of the government's actions and intentions.
The public-private domestic censorship operation coordinated by the federal government has quietly been organized to quell the online opinions of everyday Americans.
- The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Primary Censorship coordinating agency has quietly purged what stood for two years as a public confession of targeting US Citizens, labeling them as "Domestic Threat Actors."
- A Foundation For Freedom Online investigation of Wayback Machine archives determined that, late last week, DHS scrubbed and re-directed a longstanding website link that was home to the DHS censorship team that coordinates private sector "counter-disinfo."
- The scrubbing comes against the backdrop of mounting public awareness and proactive Congressional inquiry and subpoenas into the federal government's role in domestic censorship.
For years, Renée DiResta has been one of the most prominent thought leaders, ubiquitous media voices, and influential “disinfo experts” in the emergent field of professional social media censorship (i.e. the “content moderation” vocation associated with “counter-disinformation” work).
- Renée DiResta now works closely with one of the most powerful censorship operations with ties to Big Government and Big Tech: the Stanford Internet Observatory.
- Renée DiResta "worked for the CIA" before Alex Stamos recruited her to her current Stanford role.
- In a video from 2019, Stamos praised DiResta's career and her work in with the CIA before recruiting her to work at the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Before we describe the “Science of Censorship” federal grant program that is the focus of this report, perhaps the most disturbing introduction is to watch how grantees of your tax dollars describe themselves.
- The US government is giving millions to university labs and private firms to stop domestic US citizen opinions on social media.
- The National Science Foundation is taking a program set up to solve "grand challenges" like quantum technology and using it for the science of censorship.
- Government-funded projects are sorting massive databases of American political and social communities into categories like "misinformation tweeters" and "misinformation followers."
When most people think of the National Science Foundation (NSF), they think about the US government investing tax dollars in grand advancements in mathematics, aerospace and engineering.
- National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $38.8 million on government grants and contracts to combat ”misinformation” since the start of the Biden administration.
- 64 NSF grants totaling $31.8 million were given to 42 different colleges and universities to research the science of stopping viral populist ideas.
- Some grants explicitly target “populist politicians” and “populist communications” to scientifically determine ”how best to counter populist narratives.”
So begins a government memorandum recently circulated by the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC)
- The US gov't produced a cat-themed “disinformation” video game to “inoculate” young people against populist news content.
- The game aspires to create a “psychological vaccination against fake news” in those surfing social media.
- The US and UK gov'ts plan to embed the game in local schools and educational curricula around the world, especially “ahead of elections.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) quiet coup to establish, for the first time in US history, an explicitly inward-facing domestic censorship bureau.
- Network throttled millions of posts ahead of 2020 election, blocked “emerging narratives” from reaching “virality threshold.”
- Censors boast on video of getting tech companies to ban entire categories of election speech under threat of “huge regulatory pressure.”
- Months before the 2020 election, censors systematically targeted all speech categories that could challenge a future “red mirage, blue shift” election scenario.
This is Part 2 of a multi-part “deep dive” investigation into DHS domestic censorship.
- DHS used US taxpayer dollars to create a cartoon encouraging young people to report their family members to tech platforms for posting 'disinformation' about Covid-19.
- DHS designates US citizen social media opinions about Covid-19 as a 'cyber attack on critical infrastructure' because 'disinformation' is a 'digital threat' to that 'undermines confidence' in public health.
- This means any citizen grievances against US government policies can now be censored by DHS, simply by treating disagreement as a digital threat.
This is Part 1 of a multi-part “deep dive” investigation.
- A little-known DHS agency assigned to protect cybersecurity has covertly switched its mission to cybercensorship.
- DHS pulled off a 'foreign-to-domestic switcheroo' by working with tech companies first to censor 'foreign, inauthentic, coordinated' social media activity (i.e., 'Russian interference') and then switching in summer 2020 to censoring 'domestic, authentic, organic social media activity (i.e., all American citizens accused of spreading 'misinformation').
- DHS invokes a 'whole of society' approach to censorship, meaning every institution in society is pressured to censor the same topics.
Censors targeted “trust in family and friends” as a threat to “trust in institutions”, and therefore a threat to democracy.
- Brazil’s election court announced it may nullify election winners who spread online “misinformation”.
- Hundreds of censorship professionals have been hired to read text message chats in Telegram and WhatsApp for 'misinformation' to report for apps to ban.
- Financing for censorship of Brazilian citizens' text messages is coming from USAID, the State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy.
New documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show staffers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) working hand-in-hand with Google, Twitter, and Facebook/Meta to shut down social media posts challenging Covid orthodoxy.
- The US government asked Google to run recruitment ads for the role of “Infodemic Manager Unicorns”, whose job is to censor the “pandemic of misinformation” on the Internet.
- 'Unicorns' would scan use artificial intelligence software to scan social media for speech patterns expressing dissent with government Covid policies and mandates .
- CDC directly asked Google to manually alter its search engines results so that CDC pages would “come up higher in [search] results”.
