In the US, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan is asking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA) to provide documents regarding its “partnering” with authorities in Pennsylvania to target speech related to elections.
And while CISA bills itself as “America’s cyber defense agency” – critics see it rather differently, as one involved in offensive activities against freedom of speech.
Now this “nerve center” has been informed that the Judiciary Committee’s oversight into the government’s collusion with companies has produced a subpoena and that Pennsylvania teaming up with DHS to combat “misinformation” is covered by it.
According to the Pennsylvania State Department, CISA directly will be another partner of what the state’s Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, recently said was an election task force that will “mitigate threats to the election process” using not only preventing voter intimidation but also “providing voters with accurate, trusted election information.”
CISA’s role, according to the Pennsylvania State Department, is to facilitate “sharing intelligence” among different government agencies. What intelligence this might be, however, is not explained, the Federalist stressed.
And now Jordan wants details about the “partnership” submitted to him by April 3.
In his letter, Jordan reminded of the Committee’s work to find out in which ways and to what degree the government either colluded with companies or pressured them into censoring lawful speech.
The letter also expresses fears that the announced “partnership” with what he said was “at least one” state, might further undermine online speech.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
This concern comes in light of the upcoming presidential election, and what Jordan referred to as CISA’s suspected repeated collaboration with third parties (by flagging content for major tech companies to censor, as it has done in the past.)
“We write to notify you that documents about such partnerships are responsive to the Committee’s April 28, 2023 subpoena,” the letter reads.
Some of the accusations leveled at CISA stem from documents released by the America First Legal (AFL), which show CISA at the same time internally warned, back in the fall of 2020, about “the risks of unsupervised mail-in voting” – to then publicly flag posts on social media expressing the same sentiment as “disinformation.”
Meanwhile, consulting company Deloitte was brought in to inform CISA about trends related to vote-by-mail discussion, and “flag specific social media posts for CISA’s awareness and attention.”
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