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CDC and Census Bureau had direct access to Twitter portal where they could flag speech for censorship

More Big Tech-Big Government censorship collusion.

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Emails between an employee at the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Twitter have revealed that at least one CDC staff member and the US Census Bureau had access to Twitterโ€™s dedicated โ€œPartner Support Portalโ€ which allows approved government partners to flag content to Twitter for censorship.

The emails were released by the nonprofit organization America First Legal and show Twitter enrolling a CDC employee into this portal through their personal account in May 2021 (pages 182-194).

On May 10, 2021, the CDCโ€™s Carol Crawford sent Twitter employee Todd Oโ€™Boyle a list of example posts highlighting โ€œtwo issues that we [the CDC] are seeing a great deal of misinfo about.โ€ Oโ€™Boyle responded by saying that enrolling in Twitterโ€™s Partner Support Portal is the best way for Crawford to get posts like this reviewed in the future.

Crawford asked Oโ€™Boyle if she could enroll in the portal with her personal Twitter account and on May 27, 2021, Oโ€™Boyle confirmed that Crawford had been enrolled in the portal.

In other emails, Crawford asked Oโ€™Boyle whether the federal government could flag โ€œCOVID misinformation on the portal using the existing census.gov accounts that have accessโ€ and questioned how to flag โ€œmisinformationโ€ via the portal.

June 2021 emails (pages 359-360) also show another CDC employee attempting to enroll in a Facebook portal but getting error messages. While these emails donโ€™t describe the portal, it appears to be Facebookโ€™s content takedown portal which is similar to the Twitter portal and allows government agencies to flag content for censorship.

Additionally, a February 4, 2021 email (pages 354-355) shows Facebookโ€™s US Head of Public Policy, Payton Iheme, asking Crawford whether sheโ€™s aware of the US Department of Homeland Securityโ€™s (DHSโ€™s) misinformation work.

โ€œI saw that DHS/CISA is planning /possibly working on COVID-19 misinfo concerns?โ€ Iheme wrote to Crawford. โ€œAre you aware of that aspect?โ€

This email was sent more than a year before the DHS announced its controversial โ€œDisinformation Governance Boardโ€ in April 2022.

Related: Former Twitter exec, Vijaya Gadde, who was appointed adviser to President Bidenโ€™s DHS in 2021, played a key role in suppressing Hunter Biden story a year earlier

Another revelation from this email is that Iheme acknowledges the focus on misinformation โ€œgrowing among members of Congress.โ€

These emails provide more evidence of the Big Tech-Biden administration censorship collusion thatโ€™s currently facing a legal challenge over potential First Amendment violations.

โ€œIn recent months, millions of Americans have witnessed the peeling of the โ€˜misinformationโ€™ onion,โ€ Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice-President and General Counsel, said. โ€œBeneath each layer of shocking details about a partnership between the federal government and Big Tech is yet another layer of connections, conspiracy, and collaboration between power centers that seek to suppress information from the American people. We are proud to play a leading role in fighting for the rights of all Americans and revealing this vital information to the American people.โ€

We obtained a copy of the emails for you here.

The emails also shine a light on the government departments that have access to these direct Big Tech censorship portals. Previous reports and document releases have shown that the California Secretary of Stateโ€™s Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC) has access to the Twitter portal while the DHS and the New Zealand government have access to the Facebook portal.

If youโ€™re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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