A pro-free speech group is requesting the declassification of any potential documentation from the new Director of National Intelligence on government-Big Tech censorship coordination.
America First Legal (AFL) sent a letter on April 2 to DNI Tulsi Gabbard, requesting a “declassification review and release of the Biden Administration’s domestic surveillance strategy,” including labeling online free speech “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “disinformation” or “domestic terrorism.”
The DNI oversees America’s intelligence community, including the FBI and CIA, which along with the DNI office are accused of colluding with tech companies to censor speech, according to the House Judiciary Committee and the Twitter Files.
AFL wrote that, in 2021, the Biden administration developed a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which AFL subsequently attempted to investigate. In a surprising development, AFL declared it found evidence through a separate lawsuit at the Department of Homeland Security that there was a classified version of the strategy. AFL noted that this strategy was both different from the already exposed version and much less “broad and generalized” in its language. It is that classified strategy that AFL asks Gabbard to release.
Based on the letter, AFL posits that the classified strategy could have more specific information on what exactly the government labeled “disinformation” or “hate speech” in its efforts to pressure tech companies to censor speech.
AFL is not the only entity accusing the DNI office of censorship activities. Last January, the House Judiciary Committee slapped Biden administration DNI Avril Haines with a subpoena to “gauge the extent to which ODNI officials have coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech.”
Moreover, in December, The Wall Street Journal reported that Haines also did not invite FBI experts with evidence to support the credibility of the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origins to a White House briefing, and that the Biden administration subsequently pressured tech companies to censor those arguing for the lab leak theory.
The FBI and CIA—both agencies overseen by the DNI—also pressured platforms for online censorship, according to the Twitter Files.
Notably, Gabbard has herself been censored, including by the Transportation Security Administration, which placed her on the “Quiet Skies” blacklist. MRC Free Speech America also exclusively exposed Wikipedia for smearing Gabbard with biased critiques after President Donald Trump nominated her to be DNI.
Read It: How Wikipedia Portrayed Tulsi Gabbard Before/After Trump Nominated Her
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account and that the recommendations found in MRC Free Speech America’s study on 57 Biden censorship initiatives be heeded. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
