No, Dear, There is a First Amendment RIght

Posted on July 13, 2023 by marcia

Court Hands Down A MASSIVE Victory for Freedom on the Fourth of July

BY ROBERT SPENCER 3:53 PM ON JULY 04, 2023

On Independence Day, July 4, 2023, the forces of freedom won a major victory, and the Biden regime suffered a historic defeat. May there be many more days like this.

The Biden regime is authoritarian to the core. Like every hard-Left authority in the history of the world, it is intolerant of dissent and determined to stamp out all opposition, not by defeating it at the ballot box, and certainly not by besting it in the court of public opinion, but by forcibly silencing it. But on Tuesday, Judge Terry Doughty, Chief U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, put a massive roadblock in the way of Biden’s handlers’ ongoing efforts to ensure that only their own perspective can be heard in the American public square.

In a landmark ruling in Missouri v. Biden, Doughty struck back hard against what he called “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” Doughty even began his decision by quoting the most famous adage regarding the importance of the freedom of speech: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it,” a statement that is often attributed to Voltaire but which Doughty credits to the early twentieth-century English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall (whom he mistakenly calls Hill, but that doesn’t detract from the power of his ruling).

Doughty declares that “in their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.” He noted that “Plaintiffs allege that Defendants, through public pressure campaigns, private meetings, and other forms of direct communication, regarding what Defendants described as ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ have colluded with and/or coerced social-media platforms to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms.”

Specifically, Doughty noted:

Plaintiffs allege that Defendants suppressed conservative-leaning free speech, such as: (1) suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election; (2) suppressing speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin; (3) suppressing speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns; (4) suppressing speech about the efficiency of COVID-19 vaccines; (5) suppressing speech about election integrity in the 2020 presidential election; (6) suppressing speech about the security of voting by mail; (7) suppressing parody content about Defendants; (8) suppressing negative posts about the economy; and (9) suppressing negative posts about President Biden.

All that is abundantly true, and there are plenty of other examples of the regime’s hatred of dissent as well. Regime spokesbeings, however, will tell you that all they really want to do is protect poor, ignorant, distracted, gullible Americans from “disinformation.” It became clear when the Biden regime established its ill-fated and quickly disbanded Disinformation Governance Board that it had decided that labeling reports that departed from the officially approved line as “disinformation” was a likely winning strategy, both to circumvent the First Amendment and to hoodwink Americans into thinking that the crushing of dissent was a valuable service.

Doughty, however, pointed out that it was not the government’s role at all to silence opposition voices; rather, he reminds us that “the principal function of free speech under the United States’ system of government is to invite dispute; it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.” This is as far from the Biden regime’s conception of the function of free speech as Los Angeles is from Pluto’s moons, and that’s precisely why this ruling is so urgently needed, and so welcome.

Doughty wrote: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign.” He added: “It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.” Yes, they do, and in Missouri v. Biden, Doughty has done a great deal to protect that right. This decision prohibits the government from working with social media giants to censor American citizens.

Will the regime fight back? Almost certainly. Will it craft a deceptive, Orwellian, disingenuous, paternalistic argument for censorship based on its claimed responsibility to protect Americans from “disinformation”? That seems likely as well. But the more it fights in cases of this kind, the more its authoritarian nature becomes clear. Will Americans quietly accept the yoke of censorship? We have a history of resisting tyranny. It is no accident, comrade, as Biden’s Marxist friends would say, that Doughty’s ruling came on Independence Day.

America Needs a Lifeline

Posted on June 17, 2023 by marcia

RFK Jr. and Elon Musk Discuss ‘Reclaiming Democracy’

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

STORY AT-A-GLANCEfree speech

June 5, 2023, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk co-hosted a live Twitter discussion about issues they believe ought to be at the forefront of the political debate going into the 2024 presidential election
Topics covered included free speech versus censorship, the destruction of democracy, the Ukraine war, foreign policy, the humanitarian crisis at the border, COVID, the link between mass shootings and antidepressants, the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and more
If elected president, Kennedy will issue an executive order forbidding federal agencies from participating in any efforts to censor speech by the American public
Kennedy is adamant about stopping the ever-growing influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border and is currently formulating policies to make the border “impervious,” while simultaneously opening up legal immigration pathways
Kennedy also wants to shut down gain-of-function research and bioweapons development

June 5, 2023, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk co-hosted a live Twitter discussion with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, venture capitalist David Sacks, investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger and securities attorney Omeed Malik, about issues they believe ought to be at the forefront of the political debate going into the 2024 presidential election.

Topics covered included free speech versus censorship, the destruction of democracy, the Ukraine war, foreign policy, the humanitarian crisis at the border, COVID, the link between mass shootings and antidepressants, the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and more.

Also you can mark your calendars as I and Dr. Pierre, Kory, Dr. Patrick Gentempo, Del Bigtree, Mikki Willis and others will be participating in a Health Policy Roundtable, where we will be able to grill Bobby about your concerns. It will be Tuesday, June 27 at 7:00 PM EDT.

Media Bias

Not surprisingly, the liberal media chastised Kennedy for championing “right-wing ideas and misinformation” during the interview. In fact, that was The New York Times’ headline.¹

The NYT went on to smear Kennedy as “a leading vaccine skeptic” who promotes “conspiracy theories” and “sounded like a candidate … in the mushrooming Republican presidential contest.” Translation: He’s a rational realist who doesn’t shy away from difficult truths and inconvenient facts.

“He said he planned to travel to the Mexican border this week to ‘try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently,’ called for the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians and said pharmaceutical drugs were responsible for the rise of mass shootings in America,” The NYT complained, adding:

“He claimed, without evidence, that ‘COVID was clearly a bioweapons problem.’ American intelligence agencies do not believe there is any evidence indicating that is the case.”

Similarly, CNN wrote Kennedy off as a “marginal candidate who espouses debunked medical claims,” complaining he “attacked the closing of churches, social distancing and government track-and-trace surveillance.”²

I suggest listening to the discussion for yourself, as most mainstream media reporting on it didn’t do it justice. Below, I’ll review some of the key issues discussed, with a focus on Kennedy’s stances and election promises, seeing how the establishment is doing everything in their power to prevent people from learning what he stands for.

Kennedy on Social Media Censorship

Proving the ties between the Biden administration and Big Tech are still alive and well in the post-COVID era, Instagram recently suspended Kennedy’s official presidential campaign page, after reinstating his personal page, which had been banned for the last couple of years. Kennedy commented:

“I was evicted from Instagram … in the spring of 2021. The day I was evicted, I had about 770,000 [followers], but I had been up to 900,000. Whenever I hit 900,000, they would cut them back to 800,000 or 700,000, so I was losing followers all the time.

They said it was because I was promoting misinformation. But the term is ‘information,’ and [has] nothing to do with … factual accuracy or inaccuracy. It was simply a euphemism for any statement that departed from the government orthodoxies and government proclamations …

Since I’ve declared the presidency [run], now we have about 50 people working for the campaign, and each of those people has an Instagram handle — for example, my daughter-in-law is Amaryllis@TeamKennedy.com — and when they attempted to register, Instagram would send them a flag saying ‘You’ve been suspended for 180 days.’

So, none of them were allowed on. And, of course, that’s illegal under Section 413 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which regulates speech. It protects speech during presidential and other federal election campaigns …

But I don’t want to be pointing the finger at Meta right now, because I think it’s time for healing in this country. I’m happy that I’ve been reinstated, and they gave me back all my old posts, and all my old followers …“

If elected president, Kennedy vows to call the heads of all social media companies into the Oval Office and “not walk out until we have figured out how to make this work and make it consistent with democracy.”

Like Sachs, Kennedy doesn’t believe that social media companies want to censor any of their users. Rather, they’re pressured to do so by advertisers and the government itself, which is using private companies to circumvent the U.S. Constitution. Were social media companies to continue censoring anyway, then turning them into common carriers could be one solution.

“I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist,” Kennedy said, “and I think the remedy for misinformation is more information, and the remedy for bad speech is more speech. It’s never censorship. Censorship is by far the worst solution. There are forms of speech that are not protected, [such as] inciting violence [and] pedophilia … and you can censor those.

But if it’s protected speech, I don’t think it should be censored. But I think in any case, we should understand the logic, the algorithms and the methodologies, and we should all have access to those. That’s key, because these institutions are now the public square. They are a place where speech takes place … and we have to figure out a way to integrate them into our democratic values system.”

Musk is also adamant about the need for free speech. “I think if we don’t protect free speech at all costs, we don’t have a functioning democracy. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, nothing else matters,” Musk said. Ironically, since his acquisition of Twitter, the Democratic Party and its press allies have routinely portrayed Musk as a “threat to democracy,” primarily based on his support of free speech.

How Do We Combat Government Capture of Corporations?

Malik also brought up an interesting point. Kennedy has frequently discussed the problems we have with regulatory capture — the fact that most of our regulatory agencies, including the FDA, CDC and EPA are controlled by the very industries they’re supposed to regulate.

As a result, there’s no one to make sure the public is not harmed by dangerous drugs, vaccines and chemicals. But a reverse kind of capture has also taken place, as elements within the federal government are pressuring private companies to violate the Bill of Rights on the government’s behalf, while pretending these companies are doing it of their own volition.

“How do we prevent our Bill of Rights from being violated by private actors when the government uses them to do their dirty work?” Malik asked Kennedy. “I’m not just talking about censorship here. I’m actually talking about the deprivation of economic liberty.”

Kennedy replied:

“In terms of the role of these agencies in compelling behavior from U.S. corporations, it is appalling, and as soon as I get into office, I’m going to issue an executive order forbidding the federal agencies — whether it’s NIH, the CIA, the FBI — from participating in any efforts to censor speech by the American public, or to compel other behavior from the American public that is not legally required.

That’s what we saw during the pandemic. We saw it in the vaccine mandates, and we saw it in the censorship of speech. I will forbid that, and make sure that it does not happen [again], at least not during my term in office. Immediately, the first week I’m in office, I will sign that executive order.”

Kennedy on the Border Crisis

Kennedy is also adamant about stopping the steady and ever-growing influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border.

“We need to seal our border,” Kennedy said. “A key existential function for every nation in the world is to be able to control immigration at its borders … Having millions of people … flowing across the border is not something any nation can or should put up with.

Worst of all, it’s created a humanitarian crisis … The notion that we have an open border is now a gospel around the world so that people are flying in from all over the world, from Europe, from China, from Asia … and being assisted by nonprofit groups and by government groups to actually make their way to the United States’ border within buses, and that needs to be shut down.

We have people in this country who are poverty-stricken and who don’t have access, because of the paucity of public assistance … to public assistance.

We need to be protecting the people in this country, in our urban populations, rural populations. Seventy percent of Americans could not put their hand on $1,000 if there’s an emergency. We don’t have the capacity to support …. this huge flood of new immigrants that’s coming into our cities and stressing the school systems, stressing the social service systems for … Americans who are already struggling. It needs to be turned off.

Over the next three days I’ll be meeting with people from the border patrol and elsewhere to try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently … That’s what I will do as President. I will make that border impervious … I will also open up legal immigration, so that the immigration that we do need, that’s going to be beneficial to our country and economy, will continue.”

Kennedy Wants to Shut Down Gain-of-Function Research

Kennedy is equally adamant about shutting down gain-of-function research, which is nothing more than a convenient cover for bioweapons development. According to Kennedy, the CIA continued developing bioweapons in secret after the Biological Weapons Convention went into force in 1975, and never stopped.

“We should shut the whole thing down,” Kennedy said. “COVID was clearly a bioweapons problem and you saw what that did to us. What if it was a real disease? A disease that had a 50% mortality like dengue fever or Ebola, or … one of these other real deadly viruses?

They got those in the labs too … Let’s shut it down around the world. Let’s have a real shutdown of all bioweapons development … and make sure that one country does not develop a weapon that is going to kill all the rest of us.”

Kennedy also stressed that, as we now face true existential threats such as bioweapons and AI, we must get off our war footing, as the constant threat of war “gives these institutions the excuse to be super secret and nontransparent and put us in a security state where they can develop all these crazy technologies in secret that are going to kill us all.” He believes in negotiation and working with other countries, including China and Russia, to ensure that everyone benefits and prospers.

Elon Musk on Neuralink and AI

Kennedy, in turn, wanted to know how Musk, who years ago warned we should all be terrified of AI because “first, it’s going to take our jobs, and then it’s going to kill us,” justifies being on the leading edge of that risky work.

Musk’s company Neuralink received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval at the end of May 2023 to test its implantable brain chips in human subjects.³ This is the first step in Musk’s stated vision to merge and augment the human mind with AI.

“It seems to me that [Neuralink] is a technology that could potentially be really … denigrating to democracy and human freedoms,” Kennedy said. “What are your thoughts about that?” Musk replied:

“Well, first of all … Neuralink … is about developing brain-to-computer interfaces to allow direct communication with the brain. The neural link will progress very slowly, because anytime you have a device implanted in a human, the FDA requirements are extremely difficult …

The first applications that we’re talking about are simply enabling someone who is a quadriplegic, or paraplegic, someone who has lost the connection from their brain to their body, to be able to communicate …

Long term, I think, it has some chance of mitigating [the] artificial intelligence existential risk by enabling a closer symbiosis of AI and humans. And I certainly agree that this is not without risk. Certainly we need to be very, very careful with how it’s done …

Looking at the advancement of artificial intelligence, I think we will probably have digital super intelligence before a neural link is sufficiently advanced to have high bandwidth communication between your cortex and the AI extension of yourself. But no question, we need to be extremely careful, and we will be extremely careful, and it will move slowly.

So, you’ll definitely see it coming up. People are going to have an opportunity to object and raise concerns and issues. With Neuralink, we’re also trying to be extremely ‘open book,’ so there’s nothing hidden and we are audited extensively by the FDA.

With respect to artificial intelligence or more digital super intelligence, there are levels of artificial intelligence that are not dangerous. Like, I don’t think self-driving cars are really dangerous, or having better autocorrect is dangerous. It’s when you have some deep intelligence that is far smarter than the smartest human — that’s where things could get dangerous.

I don’t want to go too far down a rabbit hole, because that’s a big one, but I think AI digital super intelligence or AGI [artificial general intelligence] is definitely a bad thing … and that there is certainly risk of it … acting in a manner contrary to the interests of humanity. We need to be cognizant of that risk, and we need to be very careful and thorough, and do our best to ensure that it is beneficial rather than harmful.”

Kennedy expressed mild disagreement with Musk on some of these points, noting that even self-driving cars pose a significant threat to society considering some 40% of American jobs involve driving. What kind of productive work can we replace all those lost jobs with?

Kennedy on the Ukraine War

Kennedy also didn’t mince words when asked to comment on the Ukraine war. He pointed out that the people of the West have been massively propagandized with “comic book depictions” of President Putin as the “bad guy” who attacked Ukraine unprovoked.

“The problem is, we’re being victimized by our own agencies, which are leaving out contextual information, leaving out the nuances, leaving out the entire history in this case, of U.S. provocations, which brought us and Ukraine into a war that is not helping Ukraine.

Ukraine has now lost probably 350,000 kids, and they are in much worse position than when they began … There’s credible information that there are seven [Ukrainian] deaths for every one Russian killed. And the Ukrainians are not going to win this war. They cannot afford to win this war. This war is existential for Russia …

We’ve turned this country [Ukraine] into a slaughterhouse of the flower of Ukrainian youth to benefit the geopolitical ambitions of the U.S. neocons who want to exhaust the Russian army and exercise regime change over Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is a victim in this war. It’s a proxy war. It’s a victim of Russia, yes … but they’re almost equally a victim of U.S. policies and ambitions and aspirations of neocons who wanted to get into this war no matter what.”

Sacks agreed, saying:

“I think the war was easily avoidable if you had been willing to use diplomacy and basically give a written guarantee to the Russians that Ukraine would not become part of NATO. That is what they were demanding in December of 2021, in a written ultimatum to the White House.

Those negotiations ended when we said we wouldn’t close NATO’s door. The other thing we didn’t do was give support to the Minsk agreements, which would have provided some limited autonomy to the ethnic Russians in the Donbass … If we had just done those two things, I think there’s a really good chance that this war never would have occurred.”

‘Put Yourself in Your Adversary’s Shoes’

Kennedy continued by elaborating on the importance of the Minsk agreement when it comes to reestablishing and maintaining peace with Russia:

“France agreed, Germany agreed on the Minsk accords, which was a reasonable settlement. Keep NATO out of Ukraine. My uncle, President Kennedy, used to say, ‘The only way to have peace is if you put your yourself into the shoes of your adversary.’

In that speech … he was explaining, for the first time, to the American people the role and the suffering that Russia had endured during World War II. I grew up in a generation where we were told that America had won the war against the Nazis … Without America, the world would have been lost.

My uncle was telling the American people, that’s not true. [We] beat Hitler with the Russians, and they made a sacrifice that is unimaginable to anybody else in the world. Hitler invaded Russia, through Ukraine, and killed one out of every seven Russians and leveled one-third of the nation.

He said, ‘Imagine if all of the American continent, the continental United States, was reduced to rubble between the East Coast and Chicago. That’s what happened to Russia. You’ve got to understand that if we’re going to have peace with [Russia]. And we need to understand that today. We need to put ourselves in their shoes.

Either way, it’s not just Putin. The Russian leadership back in 1992 made an agreement [with us]. They said, ‘We will pull our 400,000 troops out of East Germany, and we will turn East Germany over to a hostile army, the NATO army. The concession that we want from you for that is that you will not move NATO to the east,’ and President Bush famously told them, ‘We will not move NATO one inch to the east.’”

In short, everyone knew that inching NATO eastward would be viewed as a direct confrontation and a formula for war. Yet that’s what NATO and the U.S. did. NATO kept expanding eastward, until only Ukraine was left. And that was Russia’s “red line” that could not be crossed. “It’s just dumbfounding,” Kennedy said. “We’re picking a fight with a country that has 1,000 more nuclear weapons than we do. It’s just insane.”

Kennedy on Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

Video Link

To learn more about Kennedy’s views and political stances, listen to the 2.5-hour discussion in its entirety. Epoch News’ Roman Balmakov also recently interviewed Kennedy, and that interview is embedded above.

In closing, the foundational principle that guides Kennedy, no matter what the issue, is the U.S. Constitution. He views himself as a “Constitutional absolutist,” so while he has grave concerns about the rise in gun violence, for example, he opposes placing restrictions on the Second Amendment.

“I want to stop the school shootings,” he says, “and it comes down to protecting the schools the way that we protect airlines … I also look very closely at the role of psychiatric drugs in these events. There are no good studies right now. That should have been done years ago on this issue, because there’s tremendous circumstantial evidence that SSRIs, benzos and other drugs are doing this …

You have to look at almost all of these drugs. If you look at our manufacturers’ inserts, they include a side effect of homicidal and suicidal behavior, and prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country … I will do those studies immediately when I get into office …

The only way we’re ultimately going to get gun control in this country is through consensus, and that consensus cannot happen when we’re all at each other’s throats. We need to assure the people who feel insecure about the Constitution that our Constitution is no longer under threat, and nobody wants to come and take away their guns.

That will bring people to the table and say, ‘OK, how do we protect our children?’ And that’s what I’m going to try to do as president.”

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/17/reclaiming-democracy-with-rfk-jr-and-elon-musk.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20230617_HL2&mid=DM1418261&rid=1831260799

What You Say Might Just Get You

Posted on March 29, 2023 by marcia

Grants Reveal Feds’ Horrific Plans To Censor Americans’ Speech

IMAGE CREDIT U.S. ARMY / FLICKR / CC BY 2.0, CROPPED

POSTED BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND MARCH 24, 2023

The founding fathers should have included extra text in the First Amendment: “Congress shall not make any law, Executive shall not make any rule or order, Judiciary shall make no ruling” abridging freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceable assembly and right to protest the government for redress of our grievances.There is indisputable evidence that our own government is the driving vehicle to completely obliterate free speech in America. The Congress can rein in the Administration but unfortunately, many in Congress are complicit and even encouraging Biden and staff to intensify the attack.

The current trajectory of this war on the First Amendment will result in criminalizing speech, imposing penalties like fines, court cases and imprisonment. ⁃ TN Editor

Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.

While the “Twitter Files” offer a glimpse into the government’s efforts to censor disfavored viewpoints, what we have seen is nothing compared to what is planned, as the details of hundreds of federal awards lay bare. Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.

Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

AI and ML Technology Will Monitor Everything We Say and Read

The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to “misinformation” or “disinformation” since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet “conversations.”

Originally used as a marketing tool for businesses to track discussions about their brands and products and to track competitors, the DOD and other federal agencies are now paying for-profit public relations and communications firms to convert their technology into tools for the government to monitor speech on the internet.

The areas of the internet the companies monitor differ somewhat, and each business offers its own unique AI and ML proprietary technology, but the underlying approach and goals remain identical: The technology under development will “mine” large portions of the internet and identify conversations deemed indicative of an emerging harmful narrative, to allow the government to track those “threats” and adopt countermeasures before the messages go viral.

With AI and ML identifying in real-time the origins of supposed influence operations and how the messages spread, the government will have the ability to preempt the amplification of the speech, squelching even true reporting before the general populace has an opportunity to learn the news. To appreciate fully the danger this poses to free speech requires Americans to consider the use of that technology with these seven additional details.

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once

First, the AI and ML technology under development will mine every conceivable mode of conversation for the government. Consider, for example, the databases monitored by just a few of the companies the government is paying to develop this AI and ML technology.

PeakMetrics, the recipient of a $1.5 million award, tracks millions of news sites, blogs, global social platforms, podcasts, TV and radio, and email newsletters.

Omelas Inc., which received more than $1 million in taxpayer money, culls data from “the most influential newspapers, TV channels, government offices, militant groups, and more across a dozen social networks and messaging apps, thousands of websites, and thousands of RSS feeds.”

Alethea Group, which received a Phase I award of nearly $50,000 to develop a “machine learning tool for proactive disinformation/misinformation detection, assessment, and mitigation,” boasts it covers data sources including mainstream and “fringe” social media platforms, peer-to-peer messaging platforms, blogs and forums, state-affiliated media sites, “gray” propaganda sites, and the dark web.

Newsguard, awarded $750,000 by the DOD, offers two databases, including its unreliable reliability ratings database of thousands of news and information websites and a second database of purported hoaxes.

Primer, which scored a $3 million award to develop its technology, offers a database that looks to news and media data sources, publicly captured images, the dark web, cyberattacks shared by the general public, and classified—presumably for government clients—and unclassified data sources. Primer also partners with Flashpoint, which adds “Telegram, Reddit, Discord, and “the deep and dark web” to the databases mined.

2. We’re Talking Americans, Not Just Russian Bots

It is also important to recognize that the AI and ML technology under development will not just mine foreign or state-connected actors, but will monitor everyone’s speech. Both the government grants and the web pages of the monitoring companies confirm this reality.

We also know from the “Twitter Files” that the government and its fellow residents in the Censorship-Industrial Complex view the speech of Americans as related to foreign influence operations merely because the viewpoint matches what they claim is an adversary’s perspective. And we know the government pushed for the censorship of ordinary Americans.

By its nature, AI and ML technology has unlimited potential to flag problematic speech on any imaginable subject. Here, the past is prologue: Speech need not involve terrorism, acts of war, or even our electoral process for our government to consider it within its purview to fact-check. (It also need not be false; see point 4).

The “Twitter Files” and recent events provide Americans a glimpse into the breadth of the topics the government may deem harmful narratives worthy of censor—from elections, to vaccines, to runs on grocery stores. Underlying the government’s obsession with silencing misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information is the “Great Power Competition” perspective of foreign relations, under which China and Russia represent a constant threat to America’s power, influences, and interests.

With the government viewing foreign relations through the Great Power Competition paradigm, speech on any topic, touching even tangentially on America’s “power, influences, and interests,” will be fair game for censorship efforts.

3. The Great Power Competition Renders Everything Fair Game for Censorship

While to convincingly prove this reality requires a deeper exposé—coming soon—on the Great Power Competition’s connection to the government’s focus on misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, last week Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, showcased the current thinking inspiring our leaders. During a conference call with the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation about the Silicon Valley Bank bailout, Kelly asked whether there was “a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”

Kelly’s question was “couched” “in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this,” Rep. Thomas Massie told Public, but, according to Massie, Kelly “didn’t suggest the censorship should be limited to foreigners or to things that were untrue.”

The move from the censorship of terrorism to the silencing of supposed interference in elections to censoring posts about “bank runs” follows naturally from the shift in foreign relations paradigms from the War on Terror to the Great Powers Competition. The latter views anything affecting American power or influence as fair game. We also saw this shift with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) proposal to consider “financial misinformation” within its purview.

The government’s censorship efforts won’t stop at supposed “financial misinformation,” however, because anything and everything journalists report and citizens discuss affects America’s “power, influence, and interest.” So, the government’s development of technology to monitor the entirety of the internet foretells a much more dangerous threat than apparent on the surface.

4. The Government Brands True Speech Misinformation

The threat to free speech stemming from the government’s monitoring of the internet is further increased by our overlords’ willingness to brand true speech “misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information” and then seek to censor it. The “Twitter Files” also exposed this reality, with our government and its lackeys seeking the censorship of true facts that might lead to “vaccine hesitancy” or reveal runs on grocery stores.

That our government would seek to silence true speech on such matters gives Americans reason to fear further censorship of true information.

5. Faulty Analysis and Biased Censors

The “Twitter Files” also revealed that censorship demands by the government, think tanks, and academic institutions relied on faulty misinformation analyses, including ones that identified innocent Americans as foreign actors. Also, many of those involved in the disinformation industry maintain left-leaning bias and a penchant for targeting conservatives.

In furthering its plans to monitor the internet for supposedly harmful narratives to silence, the government is continuing to work with biased groups, including ones that pushed faulty analyses, adding to the threat to free speech.

6. The Government’s Partners Are Poised to Censor

The government’s push to develop AI and ML technology to mine the internet is even more terrifying knowing that a Censorship Complex has already been built. The “Twitter Files” revealed the breadth and depth of the complex, with every alphabet-soup federal agency working with the social media giants and an array of think tanks and academic institutions, and with the legacy media providing an assist when censorship requests went ignored.

While Elon Musk may have exited Twitter from the group, the Censorship Complex still stands tall and ready to silence the speech of those who dare dissent. This public-private collaboration makes the government’s move to monitor the internet even more threatening to free speech.

7. Those Who Could Warn the Public or Stop the Plot Are All-In

The threat is further heightened because those with the power to warn the public and demand the government stop silencing Americans’ speech are complicit. The corrupt media’s coverage, or lack thereof, of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger’s congressional testimony on the Censorship Complex proves this point. So too does the Democrats’ pathetic performance during the hearings, when they exposed themselves as enemies of free speech.

With Democrats, the legacy media, and many Republicans all in on the government’s efforts to censor misinformation and disinformation, it will be extremely difficult for the public to recognize the risks free speech faces—especially since those trying to sound the alarm have already been falsely branded purveyors of disinformation.

A chance remains, though, that enough ordinary Americans will hear the message before it is too late and demand Congress close the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

Read full story here…

from: https://www.technocracy.news/grants-reveal-feds-horrific-plans-to-censor-americans-speech/

Who Is Censoring You?

Posted on September 15, 2022 by marcia

al Collusion Between Government and Big Tech Exposed

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

Federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret and illegal censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines
The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022
Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed
Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory
Discovery documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, engaged in illegal censorship activities. Emails from the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold also reveals outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to violate Americans’ Constitutional free speech rights

In a September 1, 2022, article,¹ the Post Millennial reveals how federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines.

The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit² brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022.

During the discovery process, the plaintiffs sought to identify “all meetings with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation,” which is how we now know that such illegal meetings did, in fact, take place.

Illegal Collusion to Suppress Free Speech

Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed.

Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.³ According to the New Civil Liberties Alliance:⁴

“… scores of federal officials … have secretly communicated with social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech federal officials disfavor. This unlawful enterprise has been wildly successful.

Under the First Amendment, the federal government may not police private speech nor pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is precisely what the government has done — and is still doing — on a massive scale not previously divulged.

Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media companies — pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed …

Communications show these federal officials are fully aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the need to overcome social-media companies’ ‘hesitation’ to work with the government …

This unlawful government interference violates the fundamental right of free speech for all Americans, whether or not they are on social media. More discovery is needed to uncover the full extent of this regime — i.e., the identities of other White House and agency officials involved and the nature and content of their communications with social-media companies.”

Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance added:⁵

“If there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased. The shocking extent of the government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social-media companies, has now been revealed …”

Federal Agencies Involved in Free Speech Suppression

Documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, who participated in these censorship meetings or otherwise engaged in illegal censorship activities.⁶ This includes officials from:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team

Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis

The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce

The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence

White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)

Health and Human Services (HHS)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

The Office of the Surgeon General

The Census Bureau

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The State Department

The U.S. Treasury Department

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Emails from a strategic communications and marketing firm called Reingold⁷ also reveals that outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to censor Americans. For example, Reingold set up a “partner support portal” for the CDC so that CDC officials could link emails to the portal for easier flagging of content it wanted censored by social media companies linked to the portal.

Big Tech Companies Involved in Government Censorship

On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings include:

Google	Facebook
Twitter	YouTube
Reddit	Microsoft
Verizon Media	Pinterest
LinkedIn	Wikimedia Foundation

While some social media companies may have “hesitated” to censor on the government’s behalf at times, Facebook was certainly an eager beaver from the get-go. As early as February 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in contact with the State Department, offering its services to help “control information and misinformation related to coronavirus.”⁸

Biden Administration’s ‘Executive Privilege’ Denied

As you might expect, the White House has not cooperated with discovery and have fought to keep communications secret — especially with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s correspondence — claiming all White House communications as “privileged.”

However, executive privilege does NOT apply to external communications, so the plaintiffs called on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to “overrule the government defendants’ objections and order them to supply this highly relevant, responsive and probative information immediately.”

September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty did just that. The Biden administration’s claim of executive privilege was rejected and Doughty ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.⁹ That includes correspondence to and from Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and many others. According to the judge’s order, they have three weeks to comply.

Examples of Illegal Government Censorship

On Twitter,¹⁰ Missouri AG Schmitt has shared a long list of examples of government censorship, including one document in which Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19 response digital director at the White House, asked Facebook to take down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” a parody account dedicated to making fun of Fauci.¹¹ Facebook complied.

Schmitt also shared emails^12,13 between a senior Facebook official and the surgeon general, stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email came on the heels of the surgeon general’s July 2021 “misinformation health advisory.”

The CDC also coordinated with Facebook, providing them with talking points to debunk various claims, including the claim that spike protein in the COVID shots is dangerous and cytotoxic. In a July 28, 2021, email, a CDC official provided Facebook with the following counter-narrative, taken straight from the “How mRNA Vaccines Work” section on the CDC website:¹⁴

“Messenger mRNA [sic] vaccines work by teaching our cells to create a harmless spike protein …” (Emphasis in the original.)

Fast-forward to mid-June 2022, and the CDC was suddenly less sure about the harmlessness of the spike protein.

Up until then, the words “harmless spike protein” had always been bolded, but in this June revision, they removed the bolding, along with an entire section in which they’d previously claimed that mRNA was rapidly broken down and spike protein did not last more than a few weeks in the body.¹⁵ Clearly, the truth was catching up to them and certain lies were getting too risky to hold on to.

CISA also reached out to Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft and Twitter for help, shortly after the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board was announced.¹⁶ Fortunately, public outcry put an end to this Orwellian Ministry of Truth before it got started.

When Censorship Becomes Election Interference

According to The Washington Times:¹⁷

“Details about the Biden administration’s conduct raised the hackles of Republican lawmakers. ‘Confirming that this is the most dangerously anti-free speech administration in American history AND that Facebook … is nothing but an appendage of the deep state,’ Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Twitter as he shared news of the court filing.”

Other lawmakers are also getting involved. In an August 29, 2022, letter^18,19 to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin requested records of the government’s contacts with social media companies to ascertain whether the FBI and/or DOJ did, in fact, instruct them to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by falsely referring to it as “Russian disinformation.”²⁰

Zuckerberg has also been asked²¹ to provide any correspondence involving the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, especially as it pertains to the FBI’s instructions to censor this political hot potato — something he openly admitted in a recent Joe Rogan interview (see video above).²²

Lawmakers Pursue Legislation to Penalize Gov’t Censorship

Three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees — Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington — have also introduced the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act²³ (HR.8752), aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.

The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.

While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool, as people might tend to think twice when they know there’s a real and personal price to pay.

from: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/09/15/government-and-big-tech-collusion.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20220915_HL2&cid=DM1261937&bid=1604984985

On Free Speech

Posted on June 9, 2020 by marcia

The Union of the Unwanted — 30 Alternative Media Podcasters Discuss The Social Media Censorship

June 9, 2020

By Macroagressions with Charlie Robinson

The Union of the Unwanted mega group podcast is now available! Sam Tripoli (Tin Foil Hat), Ricky Varandas (The Ripple Effect), Midnight Mike (OBDM), and Charlie Robinson (Macroaggressions) had a crazy idea of getting a large group together to discuss the censorship of the alternative media. Last night it happened.

Please share this video. This discussion needs to happen now before it is too late.

Special guests include:

James Corbett, Ben Swann, Greg Carlwood, Those Conspiracy Guys, The Conspiracy Farm, Monica Perez, Luke Rudkowski, Josh Sigurdson, Tim Picciott, Ernest Hancock, Red Pill 78, Jay Dyer, OBDM, Issac Weishaupt, Jason Bermas, XG, Tommy G, Kate Awakening, Scott DeGroat, Fame, Jamie Dlux, and more.

from: https://www.activistpost.com/2020/06/the-union-of-the-unwanted-30-alternative-media-podcasters-discuss-the-social-media-censorship.html

How Free is Speech Now?

Posted on October 17, 2018 by marcia

As always, do your research:

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have performed “perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history” as they now have committed to an about-face to the American value of free speech.

That is the assessment of Breitbart New‘s Allum Bokhari who exclusively presented a leaked Google internal briefing titled “The Good Censor” to the public on October 9th, exposing the world once again to major tech companies’ attitude towards the bedrock of traditional American attitude.

“The Good Censor” is an 85-page briefing that openly admits that Google and other tech platforms are undertaking a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world. Unsurprisingly – especially after leaked video showed google employees in an emotional meltdown after the election victory of Donald J. Trump – The Good Censor cites the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the rise of the populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany as unwelcomed events.

While admitting the shift away from free speech it is also simultaneously admitted that those select few giants “control the majority of online conversations.”

The briefing goes into how Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are stuck in a position of going along with the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” (free speech and free markets) vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” (censorship). These two directions are also described as the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility” and the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The internal pages claim that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.

Perhaps the most significant part of the brief, as Breitbart’s Bokhari reports, is when it associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.”

This is significant, given that Google, YouTube, and other tech giants publicly claim they are not publishers but rather neutral platforms — a categorization that grants them special legal immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Elsewhere in the document, Google admits that Section 230 was designed to ensure they can remain neutral platforms for free expression.

Bokhari wrote on Wednesday:

What ordinary Americans long suspected, The Good Censor has proven beyond doubt. According to Google’s own analysis, tech companies have performed perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history, promising their users free speech while they were taking over the market, only to go back on their word once they came to “control the majority of online conversations.”

What better example to prove this bait-and-switch than the statement given by Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa who told British politicians at the end of last year that it’s “no longer possible to stand up for all speech.”

Just 5 years prior, Twitter’s first executive in the UK, Tony Wang, described the company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

The once acceptance and defense of free speech by these big tech players is discussed in The Good Censor, as the document reads: “This free speech ideal was instilled in the DNA of the Silicon Valley startups that now control the majority of our online conversations.”

And while Google hubrisly boasts that its free speech bait-and-switch has placed them and a few other giants as controllers of “the majority of online conversations” (aka the majority of all conversation happening on earth) the company has come out and finally admitted directly that it has a censored Chinese search engine project in the works. What better guarantor of “civility”, “publisher, “editor” could the masses of internet users wish to oversee the majority of online conversation?

See more at PlanetFreeWill.com.

For more on this from Mke Adams, see text from: https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-10-17-tech-giants-pull-off-epic-bait-and-switch-in-turning-against-free-speech.html

US Border Guards Checking/Copying Laptop Files

Posted on January 1, 2014 by marcia

U.S. border guards may check, copy laptop files

Jan. 1, 2014 at 12:30 AM | 1 comments

NEW YORK, Jan. 1 (UPI) — U.S. border guards have a right to inspect and copy files from travelers’ laptops and other devices without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, a judge ruled.

Such searches are rare, with “about a 10 in a million chance” of happening, so “there is not a substantial risk” someone’s laptop, cellphone or other device will be searched and seized at the nation’s borders, including at airports and on trains, U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman wrote.

But for people whose devices do get searched, the government doesn’t need reasonable suspicion to examine or confiscate them, he wrote, citing case law that holds “searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless ‘reasonable.'”

In making his ruling, Korman, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, dismissed a lawsuit by graduate student Pascal Abidor, an Islamic studies scholar and a dual French-U.S. citizen, who had his laptop inspected and taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in May 2010 while he was on an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York.

The officers also handcuffed him, placed him in a cell and questioned him for several hours, the New York Times said.

The law enforcement agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, returned the laptop 11 days later.

Abidor could prove no legal injury from the laptop’s confiscation, the Washington Post said.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association joined Abidor in the case, arguing their members travel with confidential information that should be protected from government scrutiny.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, they all alleged the policy violated their rights to privacy and free speech.

“While it is true that laptops may make overseas work more convenient, the precautions plaintiffs may choose to take to ‘mitigate’ the alleged harm associated with the remote possibility of a border search are simply among the many inconveniences associated with international travel,” wrote Korman, who is also a visiting judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California.

That court ruled in March extensive “forensic” searches required reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, but simple checks of photos and other files did not. Korman was not one of the judges in that case.

The ACLU said it was considering an appeal.

Catherine Crump, the ACLU attorney who argued the case in July 2011, said in a statement the searches Korman’s ruling addressed were “part of a broader pattern of aggressive government surveillance that collects information on too many innocent people, under lax standards and without adequate oversight.”

Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard said, “These checks are essential to enforcing the law, and protecting national security and public safety, always with the shared goals of protecting the American people while respecting civil rights and civil liberties.”