The U.S. government and leftists of all stripes have set out to silence speech on Big Tech platforms to protect their preferred narrative on a number of issues, and the latest bailout news following recent bank failures is apparently no exception. 
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted March 12 that “[a] Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.” As it turns out, there just might be. The cybersecurity branch of the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (or CISA), published a report adding financial “misinformation” and “disinformation” in June 2022 to a list of threats that supposedly pose “a significant risk to critical functions” of the federal government that it should act on.
“With every passing day it seems we learn of yet another nefarious way in which Big Tech and government are working to silence Americans,” MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris stated. “Over and over again we hear from leftist elites in both the government and private sector how they will protect us from impending doom. But how they will protect Americans, it seems, is often the same, by censoring constitutionally permissible speech online. Simply outrageous.”
Mike Benz, the executive director of the free speech watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), responded to Congressman Massie’s tweet, acknowledging that CISA will censor alleged financial “misinformation” or “disinformation” under the guise of preventing so-called cyber attacks. “Rep. Massie: DHS efforts are already underway to add censorship of ‘financial misinformation’ to CISA's portfolio of ‘critical infrastructure’ domains it can classify tweets as a cyber attack on, & thus censor. …” Benz tweeted along with screenshots from the report. Benz’s tweet came in response to a tweet from Massie, who slammed a Democratic Party senator for allegedly asking whether there was a government program that could “censor information on social media” to prevent a run on banks.
“Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate,” Massie tweeted. “A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.”
Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger later identified Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) as the senator speculating about social media censorship to prevent bank runs. A spokesperson for Kelly reportedly denied the allegations.
Shellenberger also responded to the appalling allegations against CISA, writing that such censorship efforts directly violate the First Amendment.
“This entire government agency, CISA, part of DHS, should be abolished. Its leaders & programs have flagrantly & repeatedly violated the First Amendment,” he tweeted. “The Supreme Court rejects gov't censorship save those rare cases when speech immediately incites *physical* violence.”
The CISA memo added that it “is uniquely situated to help build awareness of [mis-information, dis-information, and mal-information] risks and provide a robust set of best practices related to transparency and communication when addressing mis- and disinformation, specifically in the election context.”
Shellenberger called CISA’s targeted censorship campaign “deranged.”
“CISA is a deeply dishonest and creepy government agency,” he added. “It tricked everyone into thinking it was doing ‘cyber security’ when it was actually doing censorship. This is truly deranged stuff.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and senators and demand that government be held to account to uphold the First Amendment and Big Tech be held to account to mirror it while providing transparency. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
