An interim House committee report released Monday details how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a group within the Homeland Security Department, "colluded" with Big Tech and "disinformation" partners to censor Americans.
The report was prepared by the staff for the Committee of the Judiciary and the select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The 36-page report said: "The First Amendment recognizes that no person or entity has a monopoly on the truth, and that the 'truth' of today can quickly become the 'misinformation' of tomorrow. Labeling speech 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' does not strip it of its First Amendment protection. As such, under the Constitution, the federal government is strictly prohibited from censoring Americans' political speech. The government also may not use third parties to bypass the First Amendment and conduct censorship by proxy.
"The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have been conducting an investigation into government-induced censorship on social media," the report continued. "Although the investigation is ongoing, information obtained to date has revealed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — an upstart agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries.
The following were findings of the report that were tweeted by Republicans on the House Judiciary panel:
- "CISA is 'working with federal partners to mature a whole-of-government approach' to curbing alleged misinformation and disinformation.
- "CISA considered the creation of an anti-misinformation 'rapid response team' capable of physically deploying across the United States.
- "CISA moved its censorship operation to a CISA-funded non-profit after CISA and the Biden Administration were sued in federal court, implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional.
- "CISA wanted to use the same CISA-funded non-profit as its mouthpiece to 'avoid the appearance of government propaganda.'
- "Members of CISA's advisory committee agonized that it was 'only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.'"
The report goes on to say: "Founded in 2018, CISA was originally intended to be an ancillary agency designed to protect "critical infrastructure" and guard against cybersecurity threats. In the years since its creation, however, CISA metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government's domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media. By 2020, CISA routinely reported social media posts that allegedly spread 'disinformation' to social media platforms. By 2021, CISA had a formal 'Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation' (MDM) team.
"In 2022 and 2023, in response to growing public and private criticism of CISA's unconstitutional behavior, CISA attempted to camouflage its activities, duplicitously claiming it serves a purely 'informational role.'"
The report said CISA "exploited'' its relations with Big Tech and government funded non-profits to "censor" by proxy as a way for circumventing the First Amendment.
"CISA has transformed into a domestic intelligence and speech-police agency, far exceeding its statutory authority," the report noted. "CISA's focus on 'cybersecurity' quickly expanded into social media surveillance of real and perceived foreign actors. Shortly after CISA became its own agency, then-DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen created the 'Countering Foreign Influence Task Force' (CFITF) within CISA to focus on election infrastructure disinformation. Following the unfounded claims by Democrats that foreign — particularly Russian — influence changed the outcome of the 2016 election, CISA expanded its 'cybersecurity' role to include countering foreign malign influence operations.
"In its public materials, CISA emphasized at the time that it was primarily concerned with addressing foreign, rather than domestic, disinformation. Starting in January 2019, Brian Scully served first as the head of the CFITF and later as the head of the MDM team at CISA."