The Biden administration openly signaled it will continue its march against alleged “disinformation” in a report released Wednesday.
The Homeland Security Advisory Council report shows that so-called “disinformation” around COVID-19, election security and “domestic violent extremism” are leading focus areas that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is targeting on social media in coordination with Big Tech. Leftists commonly wield these issue areas to censor and smear those who disagree with the leftist narrative.
“When CISA [DHS’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency] receives information from state and local election officials on disinformation campaigns utilizing social media, CISA passes that information to the social media companies for whatever action those companies see fit to take,” states the report.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick led a review of the Biden administration’s DHS-housed Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) after its work paused in May. The review led to the board’s official termination, announced Wednesday by DHS. Yet the report said that DHS "can and must" still work to counter so-called disinformation “consistent with the law and best practices.”
Does that simply mean the DGB’s work is going underground?
The report highlighted the alleged “disinformation”-related dangers associated with domestic violent extremists. It calls for DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to bolster its notification process on “significant disinformation threats,” including domestic violent extremism-driven “disinformation that elevates risks of violence.”
The report also plays up DHS’s efforts to combat 5G-related conspiracy theories around the formation of COVID-19, even though they ostensibly motivated attacks only overseas, none in the U.S. homeland.
“[I]n the early summer of 2020, a conspiracy spread widely online that 5G cell towers are responsible for the spread of the coronavirus, leading to attacks on cell phone towers and telecommunications workers, particularly in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and New Zealand,” the report notes. “As a result, DHS issued an advisory to the U.S. telecommunications industry that the dangers of coronavirus conspiracists inciting attacks against communications infrastructure would probably increase as the disease spread.”
DHS even touted a graphic novel it recently released, “Bug Bytes,” which follows a protagonist who uses “wits and journalism skills” to thwart a “disinformation campaign” to damage “critical” U.S. 5G infrastructure.
Finally, the report calls for more DHS control over election-related “disinformation” in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms. It cites a supposed “far-ranging influence campaign” by Russia during the 2016 presidential election, cites “increased threats” to election workers and ties “Iranian adversaries” to the fringe Proud Boys.
“Disinformation undermines confidence in the security of U.S. elections,” the report notes. “False statements on this topic have had significant operational impacts on U.S. elections.”
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