A federal government agency set up to protect cybersecurity and critical infrastructure tried to cover up its domestic censorship practices, according to an interim report released by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The report released on Monday sheds light on the concerning nexus among the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Big Tech companies, and government-funded third parties. CISA is a little-known agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Previously undisclosed, nonpublic documents have revealed that CISA acted beyond its power to surveil speech on social media and colluded with Big Tech companies like Twitter and government-funded third parties to “censor by proxy.” Messages presented in the report show that CISA then tried to conceal its “plainly unconstitutional activities” from the public.
The report accuses CISA of trying to circumvent the First Amendment by using government-funded third parties to collude with Big Tech companies to suppress certain viewpoints.
“CISA is not a law enforcement agency and is not authorized to act as an intelligence agency. But, in practice, that is how CISA has behaved, arrogating to itself the authority to conduct surveillance of Americans on social media,” the report states.
“CISA expanded its unconstitutional practice by developing an elaborate social media censorship apparatus spanning multiple organizations in order to facilitate the censorship of Americans’ political speech both directly and by proxy.”
The report highlights particularly concerning practices, such as CISA’s contemplation of establishing a “rapid response” anti-misinformation team, relocating censorship operations to a third-party nonprofit to avoid negative perceptions, and the agency’s intention to employ the non-profit as a mouthpiece to evade accusations of government propaganda.
What Is the CISA?
CISA sits within the Department of Homeland Security with the statutory mission to lead “cybersecurity and critical infrastructure security programs, operations, and associated policy.”
The agency was created to protect the electrical grid and other “critical infrastructure” sectors from cybersecurity threats. However, after the 2016 elections, former DHS secretary Jeh Johnson designated “election infrastructure” as a “critical infrastructure subsector.”
Furthermore, CISA director Jen Easterly argued in November 2021 that the term critical infrastructure, along with the agency’s remit, also included “cognitive infrastructure.”
“One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” Easterly said.
CISA set up a subcommittee known as MDM, which focused on misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Malinformation refers to factual information that requires “context” to ensure it isn’t spun into what CISA considered a “harmful” narrative. Twitter’s censoring of the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop falls into this category.
CISA’s cybersecurity advisory board established a “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation” subcommittee known as the “MDM Subcommittee.”
The MDM Subcommittee brought together government, Big Tech, and academic misinformation experts. This included Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public; Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer of Twitter; and Suzanne Spaulding, a former assistant general counsel and legal adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Rapid Response Misinformation Team
The report highlighted one instance as a “particularly notable departure from [CISA’s] legal authority,” which occurred at an MDM meeting on June 14, 2022.
Messages and meeting notes show that CISA considered establishing an anti-MDM “rapid response team” to physically deploy across the United States. The idea was well-received by attendees.
Geoff Hale, the director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative, commented that “this is a fascinating idea that takes CISA’s existing operational responsibilities to consider MDM as part of its core mission set.”
Twitter’s former head of legal, Vijaya Gadde, noted “that the idea of a rapid response team must include the ability to engage whether or not a cyber component is present.”
“Dr. Starbird agreed with Ms. Gadde’s point that threats to critical infrastructure are not limited to cyber threats,” meeting notes stated.
“CISA has transformed into a domestic intelligence and speech-police agency, far exceeding its statutory authority,” the report states.
After Joe Biden took office, CISA admitted in a 2022 pamphlet titled, “Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials,” that it was also targeting MDM originating from domestic sources.
The report describes CISA’s involvement in policing MDM as “a direct and serious threat to First Amendment principles.”
At its peak, CISA’s MDM team had 15 dedicated part- and full-time staff, who focussed on disinformation activities targeting elections and critical infrastructure, the report states.
Censorship by Proxy, Switchboarding
Shedding light on the extensive censorship machine, the report highlights instances of CISA outsourcing its activities to third parties to facilitate so-called “misinformation reports” from across the country and deliver them to social media companies during the 2020 and 2022 elections.
“CISA has transformed into a domestic intelligence and speech-police agency, far exceeding its statutory authority,” the report states.
CISA funds a nonprofit called the Center for Internet Security (CIS). It provided $27 million for fiscal year 2024 to operate the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC).
Election officials around the country used EI-ISAC as a “singular conduit” to send purported false or misleading online content about the 2020 elections to social media companies.
During the 2020 election cycle, CISA was involved in what Brian Scully, the head of its MDM team, called “switchboarding.” This was the resource-intensive process of CISA officials passing on alleged misinformation reports to social media companies for censorship.
This process was outsourced to EI-ISAC for the 2022 midterm elections, Scully said when he was deposed as part of ongoing litigation in federal court.
In August 2022, a Loudoun County, Virginia, government official reported a post on Twitter featuring an unedited video of a county official “because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of” that official.
“The Loudon County official’s remark that the account she flagged ‘is connected to Parents Against Critical Race Theory’ reveals that her ‘misinformation report’ was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt,” the report states.
Messages show CISA officials implicitly and explicitly acknowledged on multiple occasions that the agency was not authorized to conduct the kind of surveillance and censorship.
Messages, meeting notes, and comments on documents obtained by the committees show Starbird, Twitter’s Gadde, and the CIA’s Spaulding discussing “ the limitation of CISA’s work regarding monitoring” of Americans’ speech.
On March 15, 2022, Starbird “posed how CISA could work with or otherwise support external groups, such as researchers and non-profits, to support MDM response and how this work would be funded in the future.”
Gadde, who was then Twitter’s chief legal officer, “highlighted the many sensitivities, beyond legal ones, in terms of the relationship between social media companies and government concerning media monitoring and the perception this plays globally.” She also noted the need for this government-social media partnership not to result in “any form of surveillance.”
Starbird responded that “this work should come from outside of government due to the sensitivities in this relationship.
“Rather than abandon the consideration of surveilling Americans, Starbird and Gadde attempted to find ways to circumvent the First Amendment’s strictures by outsourcing the ‘monitoring’ activity from the government to private entities,” the report states.
In the same meeting, Spaulding warned that “the government cannot ask an outside party to do something the Intelligence Community cannot do.” But further notes left by Spaulding on MDM’s June recommendation reveal that the MDM members were still considering relying “upon third parties” months later.
Covering Tracks
After the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board draw strong criticism in April 2022, and before it was disbanded in May 2022, CISA officials expressed worry about perceptions of their work as “government propaganda.”
Meeting notes show that MDM officials Spaulding and Hale proposed outsourcing the censorship work to the EI-ISAC, making it a sort of “clearing house for trusted information.” On July 26, 2022, CISA’s Kim Wyman expressed concern about CISA operating the so-called switchboard “given the current lawsuit filed by Louisiana and Missouri against CISA over perceived suppression of free speech.”
On May 10, 2022, Starbird suggested refining the name of the subcommittee to avoid public confusion with the work of the DHS Disinformation Governance Board. Gadde agreed and warned the group not to pursue any social listening recommendations in the June quarterly meeting.
On May 19, 2022, Starbird sent an email to the other members of the MDM Subcommittee, stating that she “removed ‘monitoring’ from just about every place where it appeared” in the group’s June recommendations.
On May 20, 2022, Spaulding expressed her concerns about growing public attention in an email to Starbird, writing: “It’s only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work … I’m not sure this keeps until our public meeting in June.”
“As CISA’s operational scope expanded further into unconstitutional territory, the agency and its advisors tried to cover their tracks and cover up CISA’s censorship of domestic speech and surveillance of American citizens’ social media activity,” the report states.
As public awareness of CISA’s role in government censorship increased, CISA scrubbed its website of references to domestic “misinformation” and “disinformation.” It previously stated under a section titled, “What is MDM?” in which it is written that “foreign and domestic threat actors use MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division. These malign actors are seeking to interfere with and undermine our democratic institutions and national cohesiveness.”
“Now, the same URL redirects to a different page titled ‘Foreign Influence Operations and Disinformation,’ which omits any reference to ‘domestic’ MDM,” the report states.
The investigation by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is ongoing. It’s report comes after the weaponization select subcommittee held two hearings about social media censorship and published an interim report exposing the Federal Trade Commission’s “politically motivated harassment campaign against Elon Musk’s Twitter.”
The Epoch Times contacted CISA for comment.
