[Federalist] These people need to lose their jobs, pensions, and be jailed
On Monday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that federal agencies such as the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) restarted discussions with Big Tech platforms. According to NextGov/FCW, this coordination will focus on "removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears." Warner claimed these talks resumed in March, around the same time oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri — which centers on the feds’ censorship efforts — were heard before the U.S. Supreme Court.
When pressed on the validity of Warner’s remarks, an FBI representative confirmed to The Federalist that the agency has resumed communications with social media companies ahead of the 2024 election.
"The FBI remains committed to combatting foreign malign influence operations, including in connection with our elections. That effort includes sharing specific foreign threat information with state and local election officials and private sector companies when appropriate and rigorously consistent with the law," the representative claimed. "In coordination with the Department of Justice, the FBI recently implemented procedures to facilitate sharing information about foreign malign influence with social media companies in a way that reinforces that private companies are free to decide on their own whether and how to take action on that information."
CISA External Affairs Specialist Tess Hyre declined The Federalist’s request for comment on whether the agency has resumed discussions with social media companies to combat what it claims to be "disinformation," but she said that CISA Director Jen Easterly will be participating in an "Election Security" hearing in "the coming weeks."
Neither the FBI nor CISA responded when pressed on when they restarted communications with social media companies on efforts to remove posts containing so-called "disinformation" from their platforms. The FBI and CISA did not identify the specific companies they’re working with on such efforts. Neither agency provided an answer when questioned on how they determine what constitutes "disinformation" or what other federal agencies they are collaborating with in these efforts to have "disinformation" removed from social media platforms.
The issue of government-compelled censorship is front and center in Murthy v. Missouri, a case before SCOTUS focused on allegations from Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government’s pressuring of social media companies to censor free speech online constitutes a violation of the First Amendment. U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction in July 2023 barring federal agencies from colluding with Big Tech to censor posts they don’t like. In his ruling, Doughty wrote, "If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history."
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently upheld Doughty’s injunction in September. While the initial ruling did not pertain to CISA — often referred to by its critics as the “nerve center” of the federal government’s censorship operations — the court later issued a corrected ruling to prevent CISA from colluding with Big Tech to squash free speech online. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, lifted the Fifth Circuit’s injunction in October, effectively allowing the federal government’s censorship operations to resume while it considered the merits of the case.
SCOTUS is expected to issue a final ruling on the merits of Murthy v. Missouri this summer.
Largely ignored by legacy media, the collusion between the federal government and Big Tech to silence online speech the feds do not approve of is extensive and unprecedented. For example, the Biden administration pressured social media companies to censor Covid-related posts they deemed to be “misinformation” shortly after coming into power, even if such posts contained information that is factually true.
Emails unearthed in Murthy v. Missouri indicate health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held regular “misinfo/debunking meeting[s]” with Facebook to discuss the latter’s censorship efforts.
But these efforts are just one facet of the government’s censorship operations. CISA regularly facilitated meetings “between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address ‘mis-, dis-, and mal-information’ on social media platforms.”
Leading up to the 2020 election, for instance, the agency upped its censorship efforts by flagging posts for Big Tech companies it claimed were worthy of being censored, some of which called into question the security of voting practices such as mass, unsupervised mail-in voting. This was done despite CISA privately acknowledging the risks associated with such practices.
Neither the FBI nor CISA responded to The Federalist’s request for comment on whether social media posts highlighting the risks of mail-in voting would be flagged as “disinformation.”
An interim report released by House Republicans in November revealed that CISA’s censorship enterprise was more extensive than previously known. According to that analysis, CISA — along with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) — colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed to be “disinformation” during the 2020 election.
At the heart of this operation was the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), “a consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics” spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC “to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech” ahead of the 2020 contest.
Created “at the request” of CISA, EIP allowed federal officials to “launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.” As documented in the interim report, this operation attempted to censor “true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions” and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship. Among those targeted were The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis.
The feds also played a significant role in pressuring social media companies to censor the New York Post’s bombshell report on the Biden family business dealings ahead of the 2020 election.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 07:42 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11137 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
Gotta keep their thumb on the election scales so we don't vote for the wrong person.
[Georgia Recorder] The Georgia Election Board voted Tuesday to reprimand Fulton County and appoint an independent monitor for the 2024 election for violating state law while conducting a recount of the 2020 presidential election.
In a 2-1 vote on the panel that oversees how counties conduct elections, members agreed to admonish Fulton County and order a monitor for this year’s campaigns. That allows the county to avoid paying a fine or having the attorney general investigate the double-counting of 3,075 ballots and other allegations of irregularities during the 2020 presidential recount. Georgia election officials determined mistakes in 2020 by county election workers would not have changed the outcome.
Georgia Secretary of State investigators said they are unable to determine how many of the invalid ballots were included in the results used to certify the 2020 election. Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated GOP nominee Donald Trump by nearly 12,000 votes.
State officials reported that there were 3,075 duplicate ballot images, but they were unable to determine how many of the ones cast were tabulated in the recount. The court case revolves around apparent discrepancies between the initial recount totals in November 2020 and the corrected totals released a day later by Fulton County.
According to Fulton’s initial results, Trump received 137,240 votes out of 524,659, while Biden received 381,144. Following a recount requested by Trump’s lawyers, the final results led to the former president gaining seven additional votes and Biden losing 932.
In January 2021, Fulton officials acknowledged failures to properly back up data to servers during the recount. A Fulton election official told the state election officials that the discrepancy likely resulted from the mishandling of ballot batches and that changes have since been made to separate ballots once they’re scanned.
Election board member Ed Lindsey Jr. offered a motion Tuesday to reprimand Fulton and appoint an independent monitor who could be in place prior to the November general election.
If the state election and Fulton officials fail to agree on who to hire as the election monitor, he said, then he would recommend in July that the board ask the state attorney general to take the case.
"My purpose here is not to let it ride but to move this matter forward so that we can have some assurance regarding the 2024 election," said Lindsey, a Republican and former lawmaker who was appointed to the state election board by the Georgia House of Representatives in January 2022.
#2
Everyone except the people who watch CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc., etc. Oh, don't forget the people who read WaPo or the New York Times. They'll never know what happened in Fulton County.
[DC] A senior official in the FBI reportedly advised agents to use its warrantless surveillance authorities against targets on U.S. soil, according to an internal email obtained by WIRED.
In April, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate urged subordinates to find ways to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702 authority, which allows for warrantless surveillance under certain conditions, against "U.S. persons," according to WIRED, which obtained the internal email. While the FBI and other proponents of Section 702 have described the law as an essential tool for national security, the bureau controversially used the espionage tool to target former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, a sitting member of Congress and thousands of Americans.
"To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements," Abbate wrote in the email, according to WIRED. "I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use U.S. person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law."
Section 702 allows the FBI to request that American companies allow the bureau to access various communications without a search warrant, according to WIRED. However, the law requires that at least one of the targets is a foreigner who is reasonably thought to be somewhere other than the U.S.
"Today’s reporting in Wired magazine is a complete misrepresentation of the FBI Deputy Director’s email to the FBI workforce. Their allegation that the FBI instructed its employees to violate the law or FBI policies is categorically false and insulting," a spokesperson for the FBI told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "The email emphasized Congress’ recognition of the vital importance of FISA Section 702 to protect the American people and was sent to ensure that FBI personnel were immediately aware of, and in compliance with, the privacy enhancing changes the law has put in place."
In the 2016 election, the FBI spied on the Trump campaign using FISA, basing its application on information contained in the since-debunked Steele Dossier. After its role in the 2016 elections and subsequent allegations of abuse of the tool, many lawmakers opposed reauthorizing Section 702 when the time came to do so earlier this spring, but Congress ultimately reauthorized the program on April 20, the same day that Abbate sent the email in question.
The FBI first began disclosing statistics about its use of the surveillance tool in 2021, a year in which the bureau claims to have searched U.S. phone numbers or email accounts 2.9 million times, according to WIRED. Since 2021, the FBI has changed how it counts Section 702 searches, and it now discloses the total number of unique searches; for example, five distinct searches of the same phone number would count only as one search.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 07:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
If you can get away with it, it's not really illegal illegal.
#2
It appears that Abbate was part of the FBI cover-up in Libya, and it was there that he made his bones.
Mr. Abbate returned to the Counterterrorism Division in 2009 as an assistant section chief, providing oversight of U.S.-based international terrorism investigations. The next year, he moved to the Los Angeles Field Office as the assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism matters.He was promoted in 2011 to section chief in the Counterterrorism Division, providing oversight of international terrorism and counterterrorism operations outside the USA. He was appointed special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division of the Washington Field Office in 2012. During this time, he also served as the FBI on-scene commander in Libya.
In 2013, Mr. Abbate was promoted to special agent in charge of the Detroit....
#3
The new security laws that are being passed are for the purposes of legalizing what they are already doing. It probably the same with Ukraine aid. Not approving aid to Ukraine is not tolerable because the money is already gone.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/09/2024 12:15 Comments ||
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[AG] In a bombshell admission by the prosecutors working for Special Counsel Jack Smith, it has been revealed that the FBI brought fake props to its raid of Mar-a-Lago in order to stage the "crime scene" photos which were then widely publicized.
As reported by the Daily Caller, lead Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor Jay Bratt admitted in a new court filing that the cover sheets reading "Top Secret" were brought on the raid by the FBI and placed over the tops of the documents before they were photographed. This would constitute tampering with evidence, as well as staging fake photos to generate public outrage as if the documents possessed by President Trump were clearly marked as confidential.
"[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet," Bratt confessed in a new filing. "The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose."
In addition, both the Special Counsel’s team and the defense team for President Trump have confirmed that the documents that were initially seized have since become mixed up and are now out of order, despite prior claims by the prosecution that they were preserved exactly as they had been found.
"Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes...and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information," wrote Waltine Nauta, defense attorney for President Trump. Nauta was Trump's aide, not Atty
More of a valet than a proper aide, it seems to me.
#5
OK, you shot a dog. Why did you have to put it in a book?
I am concerned that these narcicists always seem to think somebody wants to read a book about them.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/09/2024 8:57 Comments ||
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#15
I once had to do the same thing. The dog was killing my chickens, attacking my 2 other dogs, and even biting my horses' legs. No shelter would take it. I had no other choice. Sad thing to do but necessary.
#21
GWs only have what the sub gives them to work with.
Unless sabatuers get input.
Noem told the story, thought it was a good story. A definite insight into a flawed mind.
And over at Breitbart other flawed minds are screeching to cover for her, because "rising star."
Gag...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 14:08 Comments ||
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#22
She showed her inexperience with vetoing the the bill banning trans in girls sports. Inexperience, poor judgement and little experience outside of SD is not a resume for the world stage.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/09/2024 14:20 Comments ||
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#23
Pretty isn't what we need in Washington.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 14:24 Comments ||
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#24
Obama drones a few Americans, Americans abort 54 million babies…. and the true outrage is the killing of a dog. For rural Americans and farmers life and death are two sides of the same coin. East and West coasters can never relate to such a story because it is absent from their lives.
#25
You are an idjit for crafting an apolagia for something that may be necessary but certainly isn't anything to celebrate.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 15:22 Comments ||
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#26
Deacon @15, living in the country, I shot dogs that decided to chase the horses, etc. I didn't feel the need to put it in a book.
I just dug a hole and that was that. This whole thing speaks to poor judgement.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/09/2024 15:40 Comments ||
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#27
No. It speaks to someone who thinks the unspeakable needs spoken about because "meeeee."
We are learning a lot about the people who are trying to mitigate explain it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 15:45 Comments ||
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#28
I have a Very. Hard. Time. connecting with anyone who tries to explain away her sick excitement in recounting something any cowboy would left unsaid.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 15:50 Comments ||
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#29
"Rising Star" is a mean curse. Hopefully I'm way too old to ever have it tossed my way.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 15:53 Comments ||
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#30
I have a whole lot of stories nobody will torture out of me.
And I'm not running for office
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 16:09 Comments ||
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#31
Hah. Just tried to send Kristi an email. My email address is "invalid."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 16:17 Comments ||
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#32
A Mike Johnson Republican
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 16:21 Comments ||
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#33
Next time vet your ghost writer.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/09/2024 16:53 Comments ||
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#34
MM: 17 of 32 comments?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 18:28 Comments ||
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#35
Guess I got a bug up my ass about Kristi. She must remind me of someone in ny own lame life.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 18:34 Comments ||
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#36
That's what I was guessing. She's toast.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 18:35 Comments ||
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#37
Well, half the comments aren't mine so I didn't pollute the stream. Statical minutae like that makes your day, Frank? Oh for gadh's sake.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 18:42 Comments ||
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#38
Statistical minutae. Thanks spelchek.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 18:43 Comments ||
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#39
I think people who are invested in political personalities reveal themselves when their idols take a fall.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 19:05 Comments ||
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#40
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/09/2024 19:18 Comments ||
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#41
Contrary to your "implications" she was NEVER my investment, no matter how many times you say it. I never liked Bachmann (yeah, 'crazy eyes' was part of it) and I've thought Palin, Noem were thin for any national slot. Burgum too
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 19:21 Comments ||
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#42
My only "point" is that you're arguing with nobody
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2024 19:36 Comments ||
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#43
When 20 comments are a heavily discussed thread, putting in that number by one person is not minutiae. It could even look like numbers padding.
Minutiae would be noting the number of minutes between posts over the last hour, peak hour, and previous nine hours would be.
[Twitter] FULTON Co. GA. after a Georgia State Elections Board level audit was finally conducted. It has Fulton Co. finally admitting it can't find 380,761 voter ballot images. Which is officially about 72.5+/-% of the total claimed 524,659 votes cast on Nov 3rd, 2020 for Fulton Co. Ga.
Yes! This is the same Ga. County where Trump is being politically dragged through a Politically ran the court trial by Fulton Co. DA Willis. All because President Trump, on learning of the massive voter fraud there, asked GA to investigate the massive voter fraud.
#7
What has prevented accountability in Arizona and Georgia is complicit Republicans. With a couple of them like Raffensperger, I am not sure that they even are Republicans. There is a whiff of fake uniforms like the Battle of the Bulge about him.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/09/2024 12:10 Comments ||
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[WirePoints] As an alternative to a primary election, Illinois law allowed for a party to get its candidates on the ballot for General Assembly spots by party slating procedure, along with collection of a requisite number of public signatures on nominating positions. A number of Republican challengers have been proceeding accordingly.
But over the course of just 30 hours on the first days of this month, the Democratic supermajority changed the law to retroactively disallow that procedure, thereby barring challengers from the November ballot as Republican party candidates.
The new law almost certainly gives Democrats a win in races in which Republicans did not run a candidate in the primary and could result in dozens of unopposed races.
Gov. JB signed the new law the day after it was passed, hours after telling reporters he didn’t know all the details. He also claimed it was an "ethics" bill."
My take is that "JB" (D-Ukraine) wouldn't know "ethics" if they crawled up his a$$ and sat next to his brothers "missing" sex Toy.
#2
..thereby barring challengers from the November ballot as Republican party candidates.
Section 4
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. - US Constitution
..seems to be at odds to the text, but hell the Left is allowing an invasion, so it looks like they're going all out for one party rule. These are the same people who get judges to throw out voter ID because its racist (even though minorities still seem to buy alcohol and tobacco products).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Federalist] 
[DC] A senior official in the FBI reportedly advised agents to use its warrantless surveillance authorities against targets on U.S. soil, according to an internal email obtained by WIRED.
"Today’s reporting in Wired magazine is a complete misrepresentation of the FBI Deputy Director’s email to the FBI workforce. Their allegation that the FBI instructed its employees to violate the law or FBI policies is categorically false and insulting," a spokesperson for the FBI told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "The email emphasized Congress’ recognition of the vital importance of FISA Section 702 to protect the American people and was sent to ensure that FBI personnel were immediately aware of, and in compliance with, the privacy enhancing changes the law has put in place."
[Mediaite]
[Twitter] FULTON Co. GA. after a Georgia State Elections Board level audit was finally conducted. It has Fulton Co. finally admitting it can't find 380,761 voter ballot images. Which is officially about 72.5+/-% of the total claimed 524,659 votes cast on Nov 3rd, 2020 for Fulton Co. Ga. 
