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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">How social networks became a 'subsidiary' of the FBI and CIA</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Jonathan Cook - February 20, 2023<br></div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><img src="cid:ii_led3l6tq20" alt="image.png" width="412" height="235"><br><br><p>The
Twitter Files have lifted the lid on a secret alliance between Silicon
Valley, intelligence agencies and the political establishment </p><div><p>The <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us" target="_blank">US</a> Congress last tried to grapple with what the country’s ballooning security services were up to nearly half a century ago.</p>
<p>In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from complete, <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm" target="_blank">snapshot</a>
of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National
Security Agency (NSA) operate. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal" target="_blank">Watergate</a>
scandal, the congressional committee and other related investigations
found that the country’s intelligence services had sweeping surveillance
powers and were involved in a raft of illegal or unconstitutional
acts. </p>
<p>They were covertly subverting and assassinating foreign leaders. They
had coopted hundreds of journalists and many media outlets around the
world to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1tfkESPVY" target="_blank">promote</a>
false narratives. They spied on and infiltrated political and civil
rights groups. And they manipulated the public discourse to protect and
expand their powers. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In an unlikely turn of events, a billionaire has opened another window on covert manipulations by the security services</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Senator Frank Church himself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAG1N4a84Dk" target="_blank">warned</a>
that the might of the intelligence community could at any moment “be
turned around on the American people, and no American would have any
privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything … There would
be no place to hide.” </p>
<p>Since then, the technological possibilities to invade privacy have dramatically <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/top-secret-america/2010/07/19/hidden-world-growing-beyond-control-2/" target="_blank">increased</a>, and the reach of the intelligence agencies, especially after <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/september-11-never-forget-justify-forever-war" target="_blank">9/11</a>, has moved on in ways Church could never have foreseen. </p>
<p>This is why establishing a new Church Committee is long overdue. And
finally, in the most controversial of circumstances and for the most
partisan of reasons, some sort of revival may finally be about to
happen. </p>
<p>A protracted battle last month within the Republican Party to elect <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/mccarthy-speaker-fight-friday/index.html" target="_blank">Kevin McCarthy</a> as the new speaker of the House of Representatives forced him to cave to the demands of his party’s right wing. Not least, he <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/3807584-house-gop-approves-resolution-to-create-panel-to-probe-weaponization-of-federal-government/" target="_blank">agreed</a> to set up a committee on what is being called <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/3807584-house-gop-approves-resolution-to-create-panel-to-probe-weaponization-of-federal-government/" target="_blank">the "weaponisation"</a> of the federal government. </p>
<p>It held its first meeting last week. The panel <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/1155459408/house-panel-on-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-will-hold-its-first-heari" target="_blank">said</a> its task would be to look at "the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties". </p>
<p>Earlier, in a speech to the House on the new committee, Republican Representative Dan Bishop <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFup_rj_X3k" target="_blank">said</a> it was time to cut out the “rot” in the federal government: “We’re putting the deep state on notice. We’re coming for you.” </p>
<p>Democrats are already decrying the committee as a tool that will be wielded in the interests of Donald <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump" target="_blank">Trump</a> and his supporters, saying the Republican right wants to <a href="https://time.com/6246720/house-republicans-weaponization-panel-democrats-debate/" target="_blank">discredit</a> the security services and suggest malfeasance in the treatment of the former president. </p>
<h3>Snowballing powers</h3>
<p>But while the committee will almost certainly end up being used to
settle political scores, it may still manage to shed light on some of
the terrifying new powers the security services have accrued since the
Church Committee’s report.</p>
<p>The degree to which those powers have snowballed should be obvious to
all. Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden a decade ago <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowden-nsa-surveillance-guardian-court-rules" target="_blank">showed</a> illegal mass surveillance at home and abroad by the NSA. And Julian Assange’s transparency organisation Wikileaks published <a href="https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/" target="_blank">dossiers</a> not only revealing US war crimes in <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iraq" target="_blank">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/afghanistan-taliban-moderate-possible" target="_blank">Afghanistan</a>, but a huge global hacking programme by the CIA. </p>
<p>Notably, in what may be a sign of the power of the security agencies
to inflict retribution on those challenging their might, both Assange
and Snowden have suffered dire consequences. </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/despite-twitter-culls-riyadhs-disinformation-network-still-going-strong" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/birds.mee__0.jpg?itok=sU44x1M_" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Saudi Arabia's bot army flourishes as Twitter fails to tame the beast</p>
</div>
<p>Snowden has been forced into exile in Russia, one of the few jurisdictions where he cannot be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/sep/13/edward-snowden-interview-whistleblowing-russia-ai-permanent-record" target="_blank">extradited</a> to the US and locked away. Assange has been jailed as US authorities seek his <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/show-trial-julian-assange-book" target="_blank">extradition</a>, so he can be disappeared into a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life. </p>
<p>Now, in an unlikely turn of events, a billionaire has opened another
window on covert manipulations by the security services - this time in
relation to social media platforms and the US electoral process. The key
players this time are the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), set up by former President George W Bush’s administration in the
wake of the 9/11 attacks. </p>
<p>After he bought the social network Twitter last year, Elon Musk gave a
handful of independent journalists access to its corporate archives. In
a continuing series of investigations named the <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter" target="_blank">Twitter Files</a>,
published as long threads on the platform, these journalists have been
making sense of what was going on under Twitter’s previous owners. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that, after Trump’s election, US security agencies
- aided by political pressure, especially from the Democratic Party -
aggressively wormed their way into Twitter’s decision-making processes.
Other major social media platforms appear to have made similar
arrangements. </p>
<h3>A 'nothingburger'?</h3>
<p>The Twitter Files suggest a rapidly emerging but hidden partnership
between state intelligence services, Silicon Valley, and traditional
media, to manipulate the national conversation in the US - as well as
much of the rest of the world. </p>
<p>The parties in this alliance justify to each other their meddling in
US politics - concealed from public view - as a necessary response to
the rapid rise of a new <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/22/populism-concept-defines-our-age" target="_blank">populism</a>.
Trump and his supporters had come to dominate the Republican Party, and
a populist left headed by Senator Bernie Sanders had made limited
inroads into the Democratic Party. </p>
<p>Social media attracted particular concern from the security services
because it was seen as the vehicle that had unleashed this wave of
popular discontent. According to a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/" target="_blank">report</a>
in the Intercept, one FBI official remarked last year that “subversive
information on social media could undermine support for the US
government”. </p>
<p>The national security state, it seems, viewed an alliance with the
Big Tech private sector as an opportunity to protect the old guard of
politics, particularly in the Democratic Party. Figures such as
President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were seen as a
safe pair of hands, positioned to preserve the legitimacy of a
turbo-charged, neoliberal capitalism, and the forever wars that have
been the lifeblood of the intelligence community. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/musk-twitter-california-january-2023-afp.jpg" alt="Elon Musk, the head of Twitter, is pictured in California on 24 January 2023 (AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="412" height="232"></p>
Elon Musk, the head of Twitter, is pictured in California on 24 January 2023 (AFP)</div>
<p><span></span>This
partnership has served all sides well. Silicon Valley has been the
career of choice for many liberals who believe that progress is best
pursued through technological means that depend on social stability and <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656" target="_blank">political consensus</a>. Populism and the polarisation it engenders naturally discomfort them. </p>
<p>And both the security services and more centrist politicians in the
Republican and Democratic parties understand that they are in the firing
line in populist politics for decades-long failures: a growing
polarisation of wealth between rich and poor, a creaking <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/10/what-a-us-recession-would-mean-for-the-world" target="_blank">US economy</a>,
depleted or non-existent welfare services, the ability of the rich to
buy political influence, the constant loss of treasure and life in
seemingly pointless wars fought in far-off lands, and a media that
rarely addresses the concerns of ordinary people.</p>
<p>Rather than focusing on the real causes of growing anger and
anti-establishment sentiment, the security services offered politicians
and Silicon Valley a more comforting and convenient narrative. The
populists - on the right and left - were not articulating a frustration
with a failing US political and economic system. They were working to
sow <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/origins-russias-broad-political-assault-united-states/" target="_blank">social discontent</a> to advance the interests of <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/russia" target="_blank">Russia</a>. <br></p><p>In practice, claims of 'Russian disinformation' simply served to further polarise US politics
</p>
<p>Or as the minutes of a DHS meeting last March <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/" target="_blank">recorded</a>, the new focus was on curbing “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government”. </p>
<p>This strategy reached its zenith with “Russiagate”, years of
evidence-free hysteria promoted by the intelligence community and the
Democratic Party. The central claim was that Trump was only able to
defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential
election because of collusion with Moscow, and Russian influence
operations through social media. </p>
<p>As in a game of whack-a-mole, any signs of misconduct or criminality
by the security services, or systemic failures by the US political
class, were now knocked down as “Russian disinformation”. </p>
<p>Snowden’s exile to Russia - the only choice left to him - <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-spies-say-snowden-is-working-with-russia-2014-5" target="_blank">was used</a> to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/irony-snowdens-russian-asylum-n118756" target="_blank">discredit</a>
his whistleblowing on the NSA. And the disclosures by Assange and
Wikileaks of war crimes and lawbreaking by the intelligence community
were effectively negated by a supposed collusion with “Russian hackers”
in revealing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-hillary-clinton-julian-assange-wikileaks-tool-for-russian-intelligence-2019-4" target="_blank">corruption</a> in the Democratic Party during the 2016 election. </p>
<p>In practice, claims of “Russian disinformation” simply served to further polarise US politics. </p>
<p>The key issues raised by the Twitter Files - of deep-state collusion
with the tech and media industries, election meddling, and narrative
manipulation and deflection - have been subsumed within, and obscured
by, political partisanship. </p>
<p>Interest in the Twitter Files has been largely confined to the right. In knee-jerk fashion, Democrats have mostly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BST9J0Z7ug" target="_blank">dismissed</a> the revelations as a “nothingburger”. </p>
<h3>Climate of fear</h3>
<p>Perhaps coincidentally, Musk has found himself transformed since his
takeover of Twitter from a darling of liberals - for his Tesla electric
cars - into a near-pariah. In October, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-not-true-that-there-is-national-security-review-elon-musk-2022-10-24/" target="_blank">denied reports</a> that it was considering a national security review of his businesses <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/biden-spokeswoman-unaware-of-talks-on-musk-security-review-1.1837240" target="_blank">in the face</a> of Musk’s “increasingly Russia-friendly stance”. His status as the world’s richest man has rapidly <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-breaks-world-record-for-largest-loss-of-personal-fortune-in-history-12784805" target="_blank">collapsed</a> alongside his reputation. </p>
<p>The irony is that the same security agencies that whipped up the
“Russiagate” hysteria are now exposed in the Twitter Files as
perpetrating the very interference of which they accused Moscow.</p>
<p>During the 2016 presidential election, Russia was said to have
colluded with Trump and assisted him by weaponising social media to sow
discord and manipulate the US electorate. A subsequent official <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/" target="_blank">inquiry</a> by Robert Mueller failed to stand up those allegations.</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story
from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media
platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism
grown out the control of its designer.</p>
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598824834334687236?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank">December 2, 2022</a></blockquote>
<p>Instead, I believe the Twitter Files indicate that it was not Russia
but the FBI, DHS and CIA - the very agencies arguing that Russia
threatened political order in the US - that were aggressively and
clandestinely seeking to <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589031773769739" target="_blank">influence</a> American public opinion. </p>
<p>The Twitter Files suggest that it is the US security state, much more
than Russia, that poses the real menace to US democracy. The climate of
fear these agencies fuelled over supposed “Russian disinformation” not
only swayed public opinion, but gave the intelligence community even
greater leverage over social media networks and further licence to
accumulate <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857673665011718" target="_blank">greater powers</a>. </p>
<p>State actors are increasingly in charge of deciding who is allowed to
be heard on social media - even Trump was banned while president - and
what can be said. Those decisions are often taken not to prevent a crime
or enforce laws, or even for the public good, but to tightly control
political discourse to marginalise serious criticism of the
establishment. </p>
<p>The fact that the collusion between social media platforms and these
agencies has taken place in secret is itself an indication of the
nefarious nature of what's been going on.</p>
<h3>Hidden pressure</h3>
<p>The Twitter Files open a window on a phenomenon that appears to have been playing out across all social networks. </p>
<p>Traditionally, liberals have defended social media’s use of
censorship on the grounds that these platforms are private companies
that can do as they please. Their behaviour supposedly does not
constitute a violation of First Amendment protections of free speech.</p>
<p>The reality exposed by the Twitter Files, however, is that the
networks have often been responding to hidden pressure, either directly
from the federal government or via its intelligence agencies, in
restricting what can be said. As the Files have repeatedly noted,
Twitter, like other social media, has come to function less as a private
company and more as “a kind of <a href="https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607379394204516354" target="_blank">subsidiary</a> of the FBI”. </p>
<p>In 2017, at the height of the Russiagate panic, the FBI <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857548645318656" target="_blank">set up</a>
a Foreign Influence Task Force whose numbers soon swelled to 80 agents.
Its ostensible job was to liaise with the various networks to stop
alleged foreign interference in elections. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/fbi-seal-washington-august-2022-afp.jpg" alt="The FBI seal is seen outside its headquarters in Washington on 15 August 2022 (AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="412" height="232"></p>
The FBI seal is seen outside its headquarters in Washington on 15 August 2022 (AFP)</div>
<p><span></span>Twitter executives were soon meeting and communicating with senior FBI officials on a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-executive-met-with-fbi-weekly-around-2020-election-documents-show/" target="_blank">regular basis</a>, while receiving an endless stream of demands for content takedowns to prevent “Russian disinformation”. The CIA <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701415879311361" target="_blank">appears</a> to have attended meetings too, under the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701433780592641" target="_blank">moniker</a> of OGA or “other government agency”. Although the task force’s remit was foreign influence, it <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701438654386177" target="_blank">reportedly</a> became a “conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police”. </p>
<p>Under growing pressure behind the scenes from the intelligence
services, and in public from politicians, the social networks reportedly
started to draw up secret blacklists, aided by information from the
security services, to limit the reach of accounts or stop topics
trending. The effects were often hard to miss, with Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1022447980408983552" target="_blank">declaring</a> he would investigate the practice in 2018. </p>
<p>In response, Twitter executives publicly denied that they practised “shadow banning” - a <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html" target="_blank">term</a>
for when posts or accounts are made difficult or impossible to find. In
fact, Twitter had simply invented a different phrase for the exact same
regime of speech suppression. They <a href="https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601014175366402048" target="_blank">called</a> it “visibility filtering”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rather than take on the Democratic Party ... Twitter followed 'a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such censorship was used not only against suspected bot accounts, or
those peddling obvious misinformation. Even eminent public figures who
had authority to speak on a topic were secretly targeted if they
challenged key establishment narratives. </p>
<p>Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, for example, suffered from “visibility filtering” during the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/covid" target="_blank">Covid-19</a> pandemic after he criticised lockdowns for inflicting harm on children. He was put on a “trends <a href="https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601011428579717121" target="_blank">blacklist</a>”.</p>
<p>Amid recent mass layoffs at Twitter, Middle East Eye was unable to
contact the company for comment on these and other allegations made in
the Twitter Files. The CIA had not replied by publication time, while
the FBI sent a response stating: “The correspondence between the FBI and
Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional,
longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector
engagements … As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides
critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to
protect themselves and their customers.”</p>
<p>Other leading doctors who questioned government orthodoxy have also
been sidelined by Twitter, the Files found, often under direct <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1612526697038897167" target="_blank">pressure</a> from the White House or vaccine company lobbyists. </p>
<p>But the highest-profile casualty of the Twitter censorship regime was
Trump himself. He was banned on 8 January 2021, even though staff
reportedly agreed behind the scenes that they could not base such a <a href="https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602372771052367872" target="_blank">decision</a> on any direct violation of their rules. </p>
<h3>Russian 'influence'</h3>
<p>The fallout from Russiagate drew Twitter more deeply into the embrace
of the security services. In early 2018, a Republican representative,
Devin Nunes, submitted a classified <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16957588/nunes-memo-released-full-text-read-pdf-declassified" target="_blank">memo</a> to the House Intelligence Committee detailing alleged abuses by the FBI in surveilling a figure connected to Trump. </p>
<p>The FBI allegedly relied on the so-called Steele dossier, which had
been partly financed by Clinton and the Democratic Party but was
initially presented by the media as an independent, intelligence-led
inquiry verifying <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php" target="_blank">collusion</a> between Trump’s team and Moscow. </p>
<p>News of the memo provoked a storm on social media among Trump supporters, fuelling a viral hashtag: <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935/" target="_blank">#ReleaseTheMemo</a>. Nunes’s allegations were verified nearly two years later by a Department of Justice <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589044428173312" target="_blank">inquiry</a>. Nonetheless, at the time, Democratic politicians and the media rushed to ridicule the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589047926226944" target="_blank">memo</a>, characterising any <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589051470381056" target="_blank">demand</a> for its publication as a “Russian influence operation”. </p>
<p>The heat was dialled up on Big Tech. Twitter’s own investigations
could not pinpoint any Russian involvement, suggesting that the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589077906919432" target="_blank">hashtag</a> was <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589080096350208" target="_blank">trending</a> organically, driven by VITs - Very Important Tweeters. </p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">7.Nonetheless, national media in January and
early February of 2018 denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical
language, calling it a “joke”: <a href="https://t.co/IkTXRGrfaH" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/IkTXRGrfaH</a></p>
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589047926226944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank">January 12, 2023</a></blockquote>
<p>But Twitter executives were in no mood for a fight. Rather than take
on the Democratic Party - and most likely behind it the FBI, concerned
by the memo’s revelations - Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589110932869137" target="_blank">followed</a>
“a slavish pattern of not challenging Russia claims on the record”,
noted Matt Taibbi, one of the journalists who worked on the Twitter
Files. </p>
<p>Soon, Russia was being <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613589118826549278" target="_blank">blamed</a>
by major media outlets for any embarrassing hashtag that went viral,
such as #SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting and #GunControlNow. As the
campaign of Russiagate claims intensified, Twitter came under
ever-greater pressure for action. In 2017, it manually examined some
2,700 accounts flagged as potentially suspicious. The vast majority were
cleared. Twitter suspended 22 as possible Russian accounts, while a
further 179 were <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372365753499650" target="_blank">found</a> to have “possible links” to those accounts. </p>
<p>Democratic politicians were incensed, apparently <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372367909363714" target="_blank">relying</a>
on intelligence sources to support their claim that social media was
overrun with Russian bots. Twitter responded by setting up a “Russia
task force” to investigate further, but again found no evidence of a
Russian influence campaign. All it identified were a few lone-wolf
posters <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372385932443648" target="_blank">spending</a> limited money on ads. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Twitter was plunged into a PR crisis, with politicians
and establishment media accusing it of inertia. Congress threatened
draconian legislation that would starve Twitter of <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372412419280899" target="_blank">advertising revenue</a>. Twitter’s inability to find Russian influence accounts led to an indictment from <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610372404903313408" target="_blank">Politico</a>:
“Twitter deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes.” Twitter’s
original investigation of the 2,700 accounts fuelled outlandish claims
in the media that a “new <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610375673868156935" target="_blank">network</a>” of Russian bots had been discovered. </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-israel-facebook-hate-speech-silence-critics" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/facebook-logo-2021-afp.jpg?itok=XpXmQrgh" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Social media giants allow hate speech against Russia but silence Israel's critics</p>
</div>
<p>In the midst of this firestorm, Twitter suddenly changed tack, publicly stating that it would remove content “at our <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610376851377061888" target="_blank">sole discretion</a>” - but in truth it was far worse than that. As Taibbi reported in one of the Twitter Files, it was as the company <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610376851377061888" target="_blank">decided</a>
privately to “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S. intelligence
community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber operations”. </p>
<p>Twitter increasingly found itself besieged. A Twitter File <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029851146682368" target="_blank">released</a>
last month argues that a prominent online lobby called Hamilton 68 -
with ties to the intelligence community - perpetrated “a scam” about
Russian disinformation. </p>
<p>The site elicited endless headlines in the US media after indicating it had <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029823271350272" target="_blank">uncovered</a> a Russian influence campaign on social media, involving hundreds of users. Media outlets <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029921883656193" target="_blank">published</a> these claims as proof that the social networks were overrun with Russian bots. Hamilton 68’s staff were even invited to <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029921883656193" target="_blank">testify</a> before senior congressional politicians. </p>
<p>Despite this furore, however, Hamilton 68 never made public the list of bots it said it had <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029826614218752" target="_blank">unearthed</a>. Internal Twitter investigations <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029849125060608" target="_blank">revealed</a> that almost all of those on the list were ordinary users.<b> </b></p>
<p>The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which hosted Hamilton 68
and its successor Hamilton 2.0, issued a “fact sheet” in response to the
Twitter Files denying the allegations, and <a href="https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/fact-sheet-hamilton-68-dashboard-2017-2018/" target="_blank">suggesting</a>
that its data had been “consistently misunderstood or misrepresented”
by the media and lawmakers, despite “extensive efforts to correct
misconceptions at the time”. The ASD noted that it never suggested all
the bots were Russian, but it was monitoring some that might have been. </p>
<p>Notably, Hamilton 68 was <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029809417584640" target="_blank">headed</a> by a former senior FBI official. Twitter executives did not publicly stand up to the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029887809122304" target="_blank">media pile-on</a>, and found themselves given the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029906498949122" target="_blank">brush-off</a> when they tried to raise their concerns privately with reporters. </p>
<h3>FBI 'belly button'</h3>
<p>In a sign of how close the relationship between the FBI and Twitter had grown, Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604894334561660928" target="_blank">recruited</a>
as legal counsel James Baker, the FBI’s former top lawyer. Baker had
been one of the central figures in the efforts to paint a picture -
again now discredited - of <a href="https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james-baker-a-familiar-figure-reemerges-with-the-release-of-the-twitter-files/" target="_blank">collusion</a> between Trump and Moscow. </p>
<p>Plenty of others who left the FBI <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/" target="_blank">headed</a>
straight to Twitter. They included Dawn Burton, the former deputy chief
of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the Russiagate
investigation. She became Twitter’s director of <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604894964961357824" target="_blank">strategy</a> in 2019. </p>
<p>Similar ties existed with the British security services. Twitter
recruited Gordon MacMillan as its top editorial adviser on the Middle
East. It was a part-time post, as he was serving at the same time in the
British military’s <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit" target="_blank">psychological</a> warfare unit, the 77th Brigade. </p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/baker-twitter-testify-washington-february-2023-afp.jpg" alt="James Baker, former deputy general counsel of Twitter, testifies at a hearing before the House oversight and accountability committee in Washington on 8 February 2023 (AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="412" height="232"></p>
James Baker, former deputy general counsel of Twitter,
testifies at a hearing before the House oversight and accountability
committee in Washington on 8 February 2023 (AFP)</div>
<p><span></span>By
2020, as the pandemic unfolded, other government agencies saw their
chance to wage a parallel campaign against Twitter focused on China’s
supposed efforts to spread Covid-19 disinformation. An intelligence arm
of the State Department, the Global Engagement Center, using federal
government data, alleged that 250,000 Twitter accounts were <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394226226765824" target="_blank">amplifying</a> “Chinese propaganda”, once again to sow disorder. Those accounts <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394226226765824" target="_blank">included</a> the Canadian military and CNN. </p>
<p>Emails between Twitter executives show that they had their own views
about what the campaign hoped to achieve. State Department officials
wanted to “insert themselves” into the consortium of agencies, such as
the FBI and DHS, that were allowed to take down Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394229553115136" target="_blank">content</a>. </p>
<p>It is telling that Twitter argued against State Department inclusion -
and in terms that contrasted strongly with their approach to the FBI
and DHS. State was <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394244388388864" target="_blank">viewed</a> by executives as more “political” and “Trumpy”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As Twitter grew more supine, even senior US politicians tried to get in on the act</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the end, it was suggested that the FBI would serve as the “<a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394266999881729" target="_blank">belly button</a>”
through which Silicon Valley would keep other government agencies
informed. The result, according to the Files, was that Twitter “was
taking <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394278617878529" target="_blank">requests</a> from every conceivable government body”, and often <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394300277219329" target="_blank">in bulk</a>. The platform almost never said no to requests to delete accounts accused of being Russian <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385" target="_blank">bots</a>. </p>
<p>As Twitter grew more supine, even senior US politicians tried to get
in on the act. Adam Schiff, then head of the House Intelligence
Committee, <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394284867436547" target="_blank">asked</a>
for a journalist he did not like to be deplatformed. Though Twitter was
reluctant to accede to such requests, it “deamplified” some <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932031142133761" target="_blank">accounts</a>. </p>
<p>As the 2020 election drew near, the flow of security-service demands became a <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394315938992129" target="_blank">deluge</a>
that threatened to overwhelm Twitter. Many were unrelated to foreign
influence - the FBI task force’s ostensible purpose. Instead, the
submissions often appear to have <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701456920543234" target="_blank">concerned</a> domestic accounts. They rarely detailed law-breaking or terror threats, presumably the FBI’s main area of interest, but <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701454911483904" target="_blank">focused</a> instead on much less-well-defined violations of Twitter’s “terms of service”. </p>
<p>Often, accounts faced “digital execution” not because what was said
was verifiably disinformation, but because tweets crossed political red
lines: by <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701503850643456" target="_blank">noting</a>
a neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine, or being too sympathetic to Venezuelan
leader Nicholas Maduro or Russian President Vladimir Putin. </p>
<h3>Laptop revelations</h3>
<p>Once embedded in Big Tech, the security services reportedly used
their powers to covertly shape the national conversation around the 2020
presidential election. </p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest single disclosure so far - confirming suspicions
on the right - is that social media and state security agencies played a
role in suppressing the so-called Hunter Biden <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856" target="_blank">laptop story</a> weeks before the 2020 election. </p>
<p>In the run-up to the vote, the FBI task force prepared the ground by claiming to Silicon Valley executives that Russia <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604892289800605697" target="_blank">would try</a>
to “dump” hacked information to damage the Democratic candidate for
president, Biden. This was supposedly a rerun of the 2016 election, when
publication of internal emails from the Democratic Party harmed the
then-candidate, Hillary Clinton. </p>
<p>After Trump’s election, much of the Russiagate narrative grew out of
evidence-free claims by the security services that those embarrassing
emails, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/russia-hackers-democratic-national-committee-email-leak" target="_blank">indicating</a> political corruption among the Democratic Party leadership, were hacked by Russia. </p>
<blockquote>
<div dir="ltr" lang="en"><p>1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7</p><p>
The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop</p><p>
How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information
about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before*
The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14,
2020</p></div>
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank">December 19, 2022</a></blockquote>
<p>Evidence suggesting a different explanation - that the emails were <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4785866/Report-claims-hacked-DNC-emails-leak-not-hack.html" target="_blank">leaked</a>
by a disgruntled insider - was widely ignored. The furore provoked by
the story obscured the fact that the emails, and their damning
revelations about the Democratic Party, were all too real. </p>
<p>Based on the warnings from the intelligence community, social media
platforms hurriedly blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story, which <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10475335/Former-diplomat-Kiev-warned-State-Department-Hunter-Bidens-business-dealing-Ukraine.html" target="_blank">alleged</a> problematic <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/hunter-biden-investigation-federal-prosecutors-weighing-charges/index.html" target="_blank">ties</a> between the Biden family and foreign officials in Ukraine. Joe Biden’s officials <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lashes-out-new-york-post-429486" target="_blank">denied</a> any wrongdoing by the then-presidential candidate, while Hunter himself was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ksa9z2kIrw" target="_blank">evasive</a> about whether the laptop belonged to him. The story, which was broken by the right-wing New York Post, was immediately <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276" target="_blank">declared</a> a Russian influence operation by dozens of former intelligence officials.</p>
<p>But in truth, the FBI knew nearly a year before the story became
public that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden and that the information
it contained was not likely forged or hacked. A Delaware computer store
owner asked by Hunter Biden to repair his laptop had reported his
concerns to the FBI. The agency had even subpoenaed the <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604902464741785602" target="_blank">device</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The social networks took the unprecedented step of blocking attempts
to share the story on their platforms, which might have impacted the
outcome of the 2020 election</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This chain of events raises questions over whether the FBI decided to
pre-empt the impacts of the laptop story, which threatened Joe Biden’s
electoral chances in 2020, before the right-wing press could publish. It
appears that they manipulated the media, including social networks,
into assuming that any story harming Biden before the election was
Russian disinformation. </p>
<p>Big Tech had other reasons at the time to believe the story was
likely true. The New York Post had carried out the usual verification
checks. Other reporters soon <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604903049339604994" target="_blank">confirmed</a> that the information had come from Hunter Biden’s laptop. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Twitter hurriedly accepted the claim that the story <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604904052126404608" target="_blank">violated</a> its policy against publishing hacked material, <a href="https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604904052126404608" target="_blank">echoing</a> the FBI’s claim that it was Russian disinformation. Others, such as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhHroQvtXa0" target="_blank">accepted</a> the FBI’s claims on trust too, as he later admitted.</p>
<p>The social networks took the unprecedented step of blocking attempts
to share the story on their platforms, which might have impacted the
outcome of the 2020 election - something viewed by much of the
Republican right as a crime against democracy, and by many Democratic
Party supporters as an unfortunate necessity to <a href="https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1560373641556021248" target="_blank">defend</a> the democratic order.</p>
<h3>Psychological warfare</h3>
<p>The collusion between social media platforms and the US security
state over Russiagate was no aberration. According to the Files, Twitter
gave the Pentagon special dispensation, in violation of its own
policies, to set up <a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765" target="_blank">accounts</a> to carry out “online psychological influence ops”. </p>
<p>Twitter assisted the military in “whitelisting” 52 fake Arabic-language <a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294744833343488" target="_blank">accounts</a> to “amplify certain messages”. These accounts promoted US military objectives in the Middle East, including messages attacking <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran" target="_blank">Iran</a>, supporting the Saudi-led war in <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/yemen" target="_blank">Yemen</a>, and claiming that US <a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605295735553118245" target="_blank">drone strikes</a> hit only terrorists. </p>
<p>By May 2020, Twitter had detected dozens more accounts the Pentagon had not disclosed that <a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605299620393156609" target="_blank">tweeted</a> in Russian and Arabic on topics such as <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria" target="_blank">Syria</a> and the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/islamic-state" target="_blank">Islamic State</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605296971408986131" target="_blank">According</a>
to Lee Fang, one of the journalists who worked on the Twitter Files:
“Many emails from throughout 2020 show that high-level Twitter
executives were well aware of [the Department of Defense’s] vast network
of fake accounts & covert propaganda and did not suspend the
accounts.”</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/us-pentagon-december-2011-afp.jpg" alt="The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense (AFP)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="412" height="232"></p>
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense (AFP)</div>
<p><span></span>Other research has exposed an extensive Pentagon propaganda <a href="https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford_internet_observatory_report_unheard_voice.pdf" target="_blank">network</a> on other social media apps, such as Facebook and Telegram. </p>
<p>Twitter’s indulgence of these covert Pentagon accounts contrasts
strongly with its handling of media and individuals accused of being
affiliated with countries considered by the US government as enemy
states. They are prominently labelled as such, including western
dissident journalists and academics alleged to have <a href="https://twitter.com/georgegalloway" target="_blank">worked</a> with Russian, Chinese, Iranian or Venezuelan <a href="https://twitter.com/tracking_power" target="_blank">outlets</a>. </p>
<p>According to research by the media watchdog group FAIR, Twitter
continues to conceal the state affiliations of accounts funded by the US
government, including those advancing its propaganda aims in Ukraine
and elsewhere. FAIR could find no examples of accounts <a href="https://fair.org/home/under-musk-twitter-continues-to-promote-us-propaganda-networks/" target="_blank">identified</a> as “United States state-affiliated media”, nor any labelled as such in Britain or Canada. </p>
<p>The group concluded: “Twitter enables US propaganda outlets to
maintain the pretense of independence on the platform, a tacit
endorsement of US soft power and influence operations … Twitter is
serving as an active participant in an ongoing information war.”</p>
<h3>Thick pall of secrecy</h3>
<p>After the Twitter Files began dropping in December, the FBI responded
not by addressing the veracity of the documents, but by playing the
same game as before. It accused the journalists involved of spreading
“conspiracy theories” and “misinformation” <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701401299914753" target="_blank">intended</a> to “discredit the agency”. </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of the Democratic Party establishment, continues to <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1614648929114640384" target="_blank">blame</a> Russian disinformation for her country’s woes. </p>
<p>The truth is that both the security services and the political
establishment have far too much invested in their current, secret
arrangements with the social networks to agree to change.</p>
<p>And the pressure to do so is not likely to increase while the US
continues to lurch from crisis to crisis: from the “war on terror”, to
the Trump presidency, to the Covid-19 pandemic, to Russia’s <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-us-invasion-paved-how" target="_blank">invasion of Ukraine</a>.
All of these crises - in their different ways, it should be noted - are
the legacy of policy decisions taken by the very same actors now
rebuffing scrutiny and oversight. </p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/middle-east-digital-authoritarianism-permeated-how" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/Digital%20Authris%20copy.jpg?itok=gcyWbJ1-" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>How digital authoritarianism has permeated the Middle East</p>
</div>
<p>These crises provide the pretext not only for inaction but for
ever-closer, tighter policing of the digital public square by the state -
and not transparently, but under a thick pall of secrecy.</p>
<p>As Church warned nearly half a century ago, the biggest threat the US
faces is the possibility that its security agencies will turn their
enormous powers inwards, against the American public. And that process
is exactly what the Twitter Files document. </p>
<p>They show that the intelligence community has come to redefine its
primary role - protecting the American public from foreign threats - to
include the American public itself as part of that threat. </p>
<p>In 2021, one of the Biden administration’s first priorities was to
unveil a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. It <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf" target="_blank">described</a>
the loss of faith in government and extreme polarisation as “fueled by a
crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through
social media platforms”. </p>
<p>The rise in dissatisfaction among the US citizenry is not the fault
of a failed political leadership or an overweening deep state, it seems.
Instead, that same failed establishment views the popular backlash -
and electoral discontent - in self-serving terms only, as proof of
foreign meddling. </p>
<p>In the Twitter Files, Musk has thrown open a small window to show a
little of what has been going on behind closed doors. But even that
window will shut again soon enough. And then the dark will return -
unless the public demands its right to know more. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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