The office of Arizona’s governor-elect Katie Hobbs, at the time she was Arizona’s secretary of state, requested the censorship of tweets. The revelation was contained within a data dump published back in September – however, the recent Hunter Biden-related release from Twitter has resurfaced the censorship.
Hobbs didn’t contact Twitter directly requesting the censorship. According to the documents, on Jan. 7 2021, the communications director of Hobbs’ Secretary of State Office sent an email to a third party – the Center for Internet Security (CIS) – requesting the review of a Twitter account.
“I’m flagging this Twitter account for your review,” the email to [email protected] read. The subject of the email was “Election Related Misinformation.”
CIS says it is a 501 nonprofit cybersecurity organization that “makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation.”
After receiving the email, CIS’ misinformation department forwarded it to a Twitter employee, writing “Please see this report below from the Arizona SOS office. Please let me know if you have any questions.”
The Twitter employ replied: “Thank you. We will escalate.”
Seven hours later, the Twitter employee emailed again: “Thank you… both tweets have been removed from the service.”