The root cause of the September 11, 2001 attacks was US interventionism, for example. As I said in a presidential debate a few years later, they came over here because we were over there. But instead of looking to that root cause it was determined that the real problem was not enough government. So, taking advantage of the crisis, Congress created a Director of National Intelligence, a Department of Homeland Security, and passed the Patriot Act.

The “Russiagate” crisis was invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a dirty trick to use against Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign. It may not have defeated Trump, but it hobbled his presidency. The result of this manufactured claim that the Russians (and Chinese and Iranians, etc) are meddling in our affairs and manipulating our elections is that the federal government determined that the First Amendment no longer applies to us.

They have decided that consuming certain media should not be allowed – for our own safety –  so they have denied Americans the right to access media from countries the US government considers “enemies.” In the name of fighting imaginary foreign meddling in our elections, it’s Americans who find their rights curtailed.

They even created an entire government entity within the State Department – the “Global Engagement Center” (GEC) – right after the phony “Russiagate” operation was launched to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States…”

As it turned out, this “Center” was not at all about countering foreign “bad actors” but about silencing Americans who held views the powers-that-be in DC do not like. As Roger Kimbell wrote in a recent article about the GEC, “Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government…. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.”

And, as Kimbell further points out, even when they were caught red handed violating our rights they just hid the beast within leviathan. Thus, even though funding for the GEC was cut from Speaker Johnson’s 1,500 page omnibus spending bill, the beast lives on. The Biden Administration has re-named the Center the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub” and retained the same old GEC employees.

Now that this switch has been exposed, however, there is a chance – for once – to finally kill a bad government program. Elon Musk was one of the first to expose the evil of the GEC and as it turns out he is now working with the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) to cut this exact kind of government overreach. No more hiding government censorship programs with new names and new branding. Not another dollar should be spent censoring Americans!

In a Dec. 24 press release, Hochul’s office bragged about alleged “Online Safety Legislation.” One bill in particular, S895B/A6789B, “Requires Social Media Companies To Disclose Their Terms of Service Relating to Hate Speech.” But “hate speech” is a vague and easily abused term, often weaponized by anti-speech leftists like Hochul and Big Tech censors as justification for draconian censorship.

In the release, Hochul’s office detailed how the S895B requires social media companies to inform users about terms of service, while also requiring social media “to submit to the [NY] attorney general certain terms of service reports,” and offer “remedies for violations.”

MRC Vice President for Free Speech America Dan Schneider set the record straight:

“We have all seen how the New York AG uses and abuses her office. Her ‘suggestions’ to the Big Tech platforms are really demands that, if not complied with, will result in her bringing all kinds of cases against them. If they don’t censor enough political speech, these tech companies can expect to be sued for not complying with business records laws, not enforcing enough diversity requirements, or not tying their shoes correctly. This is thuggish legislation designed to silence political opposition from the right. It is un-American and unconstitutional.”

Disturbingly, Assembly member Grace Lee (D-District 65) praised the legislation in the release while citing COVID-19 speech as justification for the Orwellian legislation. Lee hysterically whined about “hate and disinformation spread[ing] like wildfire” online and railed against Big Tech platforms for not censoring enough. “These companies have a responsibility to protect users from this hate, but have failed to do so,” she said. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit have both revealed that the federal government pressured social media companies to censor free speech about COVID-19, including humor and satire. […]

— Read More: mrcfreespeechamerica.org

According to those governments/entities, the only “positive use” for AI as far as social media and online discourse go, would be to power more effective censorship (“moderation”).

A new report from the US House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government puts the emphasis on the push to use this technology for censorship as the explanation for the often disproportionate alarm over its role in “disinformation.”

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

The interim report’s name spells out its authors’ views on this quite clearly: the document is called, “Censorship’s Next Frontier: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Control Artificial Intelligence to Suppress Free Speech.”

The report’s main premise is well-known – that AI is now being funded, developed, and used by the government and third parties to add speed and scale to their censorship, and that the outgoing administration has been putting pressure on AI developers to build censorship into their models.

What’s new are the proposed steps to remedy this situation and make sure that future federal governments are not using AI for censorship. To this end, the Committee wants to see new legislation passed in Congress, AI development that respects the First Amendment and is open, decentralized, and “pro-freedom.”

The report recommends legislation along four principles, focused on preserving American’s right to free speech. The first is that the government cannot be involved when decisions are made in private algorithms or datasets regarding “misinformation” or “bias.”

The government should also be prohibited from funding censorship-related research or collaboration with foreign entities on AI regulation that leads to censorship.

Lastly, “Avoid needless AI regulation that gives the government coercive leverage,” the document recommends.

The Committee notes the current state of affairs where the Biden-Harris administration made a number of direct moves to regulate the space to its political satisfaction via executive orders, but also by pushing its policy through by giving out grants via the National Science Foundation, once again, aimed at building AI tools that “combat misinformation.”

But – “If allowed to develop in a free and open manner, AI could dramatically expand Americans’ capacity to create knowledge and express themselves,” the report states.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The Legacy Media’s Descent into Propaganda

The legacy media, once a bastion of journalism, has devolved into a propaganda machine for the political left. With declining influence and revenue, these outlets have abandoned any semblance of objectivity, opting instead to push pre-packaged narratives that serve the interests of the establishment. During the 2024 election cycle, networks like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC provided Kamala Harris with 78% positive coverage, while former President Donald Trump was subjected to 85% negative coverage. This blatant bias was not just a failure of journalism; it was a deliberate effort to manipulate public opinion.

The media’s obsession with framing Trump as a “threat to democracy” and a “Putin puppet” was nothing more than a smokescreen to distract from the real issues — inflation, illegal immigration, and a failing economy. Yet, when Trump won, the media’s response was not introspection but a desperate attempt to blame alternative media for their own failures. The truth is, Americans have rejected the legacy media’s lies, turning instead to alternative sources for truthful information.

Government and Big Tech’s Collusion to Censor Truth

The collusion between government agencies and Big Tech has reached unprecedented levels. The American First Legal team’s litigation against Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has exposed the chilling extent of this partnership. Facebook employees trained CDC officials on how to censor Americans, creating a portal titled “COVID & Vaccine Misinformation.” Through this system, the CDC censored over 16 million pieces of content, silencing dissent on critical issues like COVID-19 lockdowns, masks, and the dangers of the vaccines.

The Biden administration’s pressure on social media companies to eliminate “misinformation” was a thinly veiled attempt to control public discourse. Facebook, under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, caved to this pressure, allowing the government to wield unprecedented power over online speech. This censorship not only violated the First Amendment but also harmed countless lives by suppressing the truth about the vaccines’ adverse effects, including spike protein shedding and increased miscarriage risks.

The Congressional report on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveals an even more sinister plot: the collaboration between federal agencies, universities, and private firms to censor Americans’ political speech. The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), funded by the Department of Homeland Security, worked with organizations like the Atlantic Council, Stanford Internet Observatory, and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public to target conservative voices. These groups used sophisticated algorithms to shadow-ban, de-platform, and defame individuals who dared to question the official narrative.

The Atlantic Council, for example, employs former intelligence officials to “expose falsehoods and fake news,” but in reality, they are censoring the truth and promoting government propaganda. The Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public have built psychological profiles on dissenters, isolating them from public discourse and destroying their reputations. This coordinated effort to control information is not just anti-democratic; it is a direct attack on the First Amendment.

The fight for Free Speech and truth must continue

The Censorship-Industrial Complex has shown its true colors: a network of government agencies, Big Tech corporations, and left-wing organizations working together to silence dissent and maintain control over public discourse. This collusion is not just unethical; it is unconstitutional. The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, yet this right has been systematically undermined by those in power.

It is time to demand accountability. Congress must investigate the collusion between government agencies and social media companies. The Supreme Court must uphold the First Amendment and strike down any laws that seek to regulate “misinformation.” And most importantly, the American people must reject the legacy media’s propaganda and seek out alternative sources of information. It is time to dismantle the Censorship-Industrial Complex and restore the First Amendment to its rightful place as the bedrock of the American republic.

Sources include:

• AMGreatness.com
• Censorship.news
• Censorship.news

Speaking to Tucker Carlson, he called attention to the way that the West has been criminalizing the platforming of Russian media outlets. It’s a big departure from the Cold War, when mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times would regularly publish speeches that were given by Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.

He told Carlson: “Now it’s practically criminalized.”

He pointed out how obvious this was when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine first escalated in February of 2022. He said: “One of the very first steps [the EU] took legislatively was to ban the platforming, to criminalize the platforming of Russian media, like RT and Sputnik. They made it a crime, and YouTube immediately pulled it off because they didn’t want their citizens hearing any information from the Russian perspective.”

This is putting us at a disadvantage by preventing us from getting a better idea of their viewpoints, he says.

“I mean, you can hate Russia, you can think Russia’s evil, you can think whatever you want about Russia, but why wouldn’t you want to hear from the other side?” he asked.

Carlson agreed, saying that a speech he heard from Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he announced his military operation was very insightful. He said that most Americans aren’t aware of what Putin is thinking, and he doesn’t understand why people want to remain ignorant.

Greenwald and Carlson concluded that this is due, at least in part, to the fact that “propaganda works.”

Russian state media target of censorship campaigns

The media outlet RT has been described by the U.S. State Department as a major part of the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation campaign and was blocked in the European Union and Canada in 2022. However, replicas of its articles appear on numerous other websites, and there has been a concerted effort to try to stop its message from spreading.

German Marshall Fund senior fellow Bret Schafer said: “It was quite evident when we were running the search results in the E.U. that if Russian propaganda is not showing up on Russian domains, it’s getting through, which is sort of a double whammy because it’s not just evading restrictions and bans, it’s doing so on sites that are less transparent than RT itself.”

YouTube blocked global access to all channels that are affiliated with RT and has taken steps to remove what it claims is “harmful misinformation.”

RT acknowledged in a statement that its content doesn’t follow the “U.S. State Department/NATO party line” but is glad to hear its content is reaching different platforms and users.

In September, Facebook owner Meta said that it would be banning RT along with Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media outlets from all of its platforms, which include WhatsApp and Instagram, on the grounds that they allegedly used deceptive tactics to conduct influence operations online.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the social media company said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the world should treat RT’s activities like they would covert intelligence operations.

Sources for this article include:

• RT.com
• NYTimes.com
• Reuters.com

Schmidt, who played a pivotal role in shaping the digital world, including the carelessness when it comes to online privacy, asserted that the original developers of social media did not foresee its potential negative impacts on democratic values. “None of us thought when we invented social media that we would become a threat to democracy,” Schmidt said.

In his critique, Schmidt called out social media companies for their allegedly lax approach to “misinformation,” suggesting that their failure to police content stemmed from a lack of regulatory compulsion and was driven by profit motives. “The misinformation one is easy,” Schmidt explained, claiming that “the social media companies have chosen not to police it because they haven’t been required to and they make more money because of it.”

However, Schmidt’s stance will raise concerns among free speech advocates who argue that his call for more stringent regulation could lead to excessive censorship and infringe on free expression. Critics argue that the solution to “misinformation” should not rely solely on increased regulation and censorship, but by encouraging open discourse that allows ideas to be debated and scrutinized in the public space.

Schmidt has been a controversial figure in privacy and surveillance discussions. His leadership saw Google vastly expand its data collection, using personal information to tailor advertisements, which raised significant privacy concerns. Schmidt’s views on privacy, epitomized by his statement, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” showed a dismissive attitude toward privacy concerns and alarmed both privacy advocates and the public.

Schmidt’s tenure also involved privacy breaches, such as the unauthorized collection of data from unsecured WiFi networks by Google Street View cars, leading to international fines and investigations. Further controversy stemmed from Google’s alleged cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA), sharing user data without clear user consent.

Schmidt has, more recently said there should be no online anonymity when using AI.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The report by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business stated:

“The Federal government has funded, developed, and promoted entities that aim to demonetize news and information outlets because of their lawful speech.”

The government’s actions fueled “a censorship ecosystem” that suppressed “individuals’ First Amendment rights” and “the ability of certain small businesses to compete online.”

The report focused on the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which promoted and funded “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space … with domestic censorship capabilities.”

The “fact-checking” firms named in the report include the International Fact-Checking Network — owned by the Poynter Institute — and NewsGuard.

The International Fact-Checking Network, established in 2015, has received funding from another State Department-affiliated group, the National Endowment for Democracy — and from Google, the Open Society Foundations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the House report, the federal government “assisted the private sector in detecting alleged MDM [misinformation-disinformation-malinformation] for moderation” and “worked with foreign governments with strict internet speech laws,” including European Union member states and the United Kingdom, to censor speech.

The report determined that the GEC and the National Endowment for Democracy violated international restrictions by “collaborating with fact-checking entities” to assess the content of domestic media outlets.

The “fact-checking” operations targeted independent media outlets, and as a result, “the scales are tipped in favor of outlets which express certain partisan narratives rather than holding the government accountable.”

Whether the State Department’s actions rise to “unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment is currently before the courts,” the report stated.

The State Department and several GEC officials are defendants in Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit alleging the Biden administration colluded with social media to censor free speech.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and its chairman on leave, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden, a similar lawsuit that last year was consolidated with Murthy v. Missouri.

The Poynter Institute is a defendant in another censorship lawsuit, CHD v. Meta, that CHD filed against Facebook’s parent company.

NewsGuard partnered with CDC, WHO to censor online content

According to the report, NewsGuard used money it received from the GEC and the U.S. Department of Defense to fund efforts to lower the advertising revenue “of businesses purported to spread MDM.”

“A system that rates the credibility of press is fatally flawed as it is subject to the partisan lens of the assessor, making the ratings unreliable,” the report states.

NewsGuard leveraged taxpayer dollars to develop Misinformation Fingerprints, a product that “catalogues what it determines to be the most prominent falsehoods and ‘misinformation narratives’” circulating online, “essentially outsourcing the U.S. government’s perception of fact to NewsGuard,” the report states.

NewsGuard later partnered with dozens of companies, organizations, universities and media outlets, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of the Surgeon General and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“During the pandemic, the WHO enlisted NewsGuard for its input, including regular reports, on which COVID-19 narratives it determined to be misinformation were prevalent online,” the report states. “The WHO then contacted social media companies and search engines asking them to remove this content.”

‘Nobody wanted’ fact-checkers until ‘actual truths started getting out’

Tim Hinchliffe, publisher of The Sociable, told The Defender, “These so-called ‘fact-checkers’ are not in the business of actually checking facts. They are in the business of controlling narratives … Nobody wanted or needed these organizations until actual truths started getting out.”

Catherine Austin Fitts, founder and publisher of the Solari Report and former U.S. assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told The Defender the government increasingly relies on censorship to promote its favored narratives.

“They need to institute more and more censorship,” Fitts said. “It’s hard to refute the gaslighting that flows from this imagination factory.”

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender he wasn’t surprised that the State Department is “working to censor those who disagree with U.S. government policies and their globalist agenda.”

The report recommends that no federal funds “should be used to grow companies whose operations are designed to demonetize and interfere with the domestic press” and that federal agencies “should not be outsourcing their perception of fact to speech-police organizations subject to partisan bias.”

GEC also faces the loss of its government funding. According to the Washington Examiner, “A provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill, which passed the House this summer and will be negotiated in the Senate, aims to ban future checks to the GEC.”

But for Boyle, this is not enough. He said the State Department has, “at a minimum,” committed “the federal crime of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.”

Censorship ‘a pendulum that swings both ways’

The Gateway Pundit last week reported on additional links between the International Fact-Checking Network, other “fact-checking” firms and Big Tech.

In 2015, Poynter partnered with Google News Lab, which earlier that year, helped establish First Draft News. Active until 2022, First Draft was a consortium of social media verification groups that shared methods for combating “fake news.”

Another First Draft founder, fact-checking firm Bellingcat, also received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy.

First Draft was previously led by Claire Wardle, Ph.D., a Brown University professor who, according to “Twitter Files” released last year, advised the Biden administration on COVID-19 “misinformation” — despite having no science or medical credentials.

In 2016, Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network partnered with First Draft “to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the [news] verification process.” Other partners included Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, NBC News and BBC News.

In 2017, Google News Lab partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network “to dramatically increase the searchable output of fact-checkers worldwide, expand fact-checking to new markets and support fact-checking beyond politics, such as in sports, health and science.” The following year, Poynter acquired PolitiFact.com.

Google was also one of the original funders of The Trust Project, a consortium of news organizations that developed eight “trust indicators” to help the public “easily assess the integrity of news.”

These “trust indicators” later became “one of the sources being used by NewsGuard Technologies for a new product to improve news literacy,” and formed “a foundation for NewsGuard review development.”

Hinchliffe warned that the beneficiaries of censorship based on today’s “fact-checking” may become its targets in the future.

“One of the problems of censorship that operates under the guise of misinformation and disinformation, apart from stifling free speech and suppressing actual truths, is that it’s a pendulum that swings both ways,” he said. “The people calling for censorship now may be in a greater position of power to do so, but it will one day swing back at them.”

The Defender on occasion posts content related to Children’s Health Defense’s nonprofit mission that features Mr. Kennedy’s views on the issues CHD and The Defender regularly cover. Mr. Kennedy, an independent candidate for president of the U.S., is on leave from CHD. In keeping with Federal Election Commission rules, this content does not represent an endorsement of Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy or his support for President Donald Trump’s campaign.

While Clinton acknowledged the importance of indicting foreign actors, namely Russians, directly responsible for meddling in US elections, she argued that Americans who play a role in amplifying “disinformation” should not be overlooked.