America First Legal (AFL) have announced its investigation into a UK-based group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
AFL, a non-profit often described as “an alternative to ACLU,” is starting the probe into CCDH – which it refers to as a pro-censorship group that is a party to anti-free speech collusion with the government – by filing several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
We obtained an example of one of the FOIAs for you here.
They are addressed to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of State, and the goal is to obtain any communications they may have had with CCDH, headed by Imran Ahmed.
The basis for looking into the group’s activities in the US is that although based in the UK, it has expanded its “censorship encouraging,” as AFL put it, work to the US as a 501(c) non-profit.
As far as CCDH is concerned, the group is a non-profit and an NGO (non-governmental organization) with nothing but noble intentions – fighting online hate and disinformation.
Ahmed’s professional profile gives a good idea of what exactly CCDH means by that. As per the organization itself, Ahmed is an “authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.”
As is often the case with those that like to add a layer of opaqueness to their work, “the organization of the organization” here is rather complicated: there are ties with top Labour Party officials, the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a “merger” with another online disinformation crusader called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN).
Naturally, Covid lockdown opponents were a prominent target, but when it comes specifically to the US, CCDH put not only those critics based in that country, but also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in its crosshairs, as deplatforming targets.
It appears that the Biden White House, along with a dozen Democrat state attorneys general, was quite ready to oblige – and do so in concert with companies behind social media. US administration officials even used fairly unique phrases first coined by CCDH, like “the disinformation dozen,” in emails sent to social sites.
And now AFL wants to know the details, including how this foreign actor was influencing First Amendment rights in the US, via “illegal censorship activity.”
“The Biden Administration and social media companies appear to have cooperated with a covert foreign influence operation. Every American should be outraged at attempts by foreign nationals to pressure the United States Government and American tech companies to engage in censorship against protected speech,” said AFL’s VP and General Counsel Gene Hamilton, adding:
“We are concerned about the extent and reach of this operation into the inner workings of the United States Government and will work to shine a light and expose the extent of their activities in the United States.”
