MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: None months ago, I testified and provided evidence to the subcommittee about the existence of a “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a network of government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and Big Tech media platform that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views. I regret to inform the subcommittee today that the scope, power, and lawbreaking of the Censorship Industrial Complex are even worse than we had realized back in March,
Two days ago, my colleagues and I published the first batch of internal files from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, which show U.S. and U.K. military contractors working in 2019 and 2020 to both censor and turn sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics developed abroad against the American people.
Many insist that all we discovered in the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files, and the CTI Files were legal activities by social media platforms to take down content that violated the terms of service. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and other big tech companies are privately owned, people point out, and free to censor content. And government officials are free to point out wrong information, they argue.
But the First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has ruled the government may not “induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” And there is now a large body of evidence proving that the government did precisely that.
Approved – Obey
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