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Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans To Police Disinformation (theintercept.com) 329

Posted by BeauHD from the arbiters-of-truth dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents -- obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents -- illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms. The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new "Disinformation Governance Board": a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate -- the war on terror -- has been wound down.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information. [...] There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the "content request system" at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. These are the key takeaways from the report: - Though DHS shuttered its controversial Disinformation Governance Board, a strategic document reveals the underlying work is ongoing.
- DHS plans to target inaccurate information on 'the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine."
- Facebook created a special portal for DHS and government partners to report disinformation directly.
- The work is primarily done by CISA, a DHS sub-agency tasked with protecting critical national infrastructure.
- DHS, the FBI, and several media entities are having biweekly meetings as recently as August.
- DHS considered countering disinformation relating to content that undermines trust in financial systems and courts.
- The FBI agent who primed social media platforms to take down the Hunter Biden laptop story continued to have a role in DHS policy discussions.
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Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans To Police Disinformation More

Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans To Police Disinformation

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  • Hidden gem at the end (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Monday October 31, 2022 @10:44PM (#63013971)

    For those of you not paying attention, the Hunter Biden laptop story was NOT disinformation or misinformation.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iMadeGhostzilla ( 1851560 )

      The strange thing is that the hacker (in the 2600 sense of the word) and tech community used to be libertarian, almost anarchist in pursuit of liberties, where now a large part of that community -- or the loudest at any rate -- are in favor of the state curbing all kinds of freedoms because covid, Nazis etc. (Next thing they'll say it's necessary to de-Nazify the internet.) A great subculture has been drowned, if not lost, at least for the time being.

    • Because the point of the story was to say that Joe Biden had illegally arranged for his son to get a cushy job. There was zero evidence of that anywhere and that continues to be the case. But the important thing is if you keep mentioning Hunter biden you'll create a vague feeling of non-specific unease around Joe Biden that you're hoping to exploit in 2024.

      It's frustrating that I even have to engage with you on this but you did get modded up the plus five.

      Although I wouldn't call it this information

      • Because the point of the story was to say that Joe Biden had illegally arranged for his son to get a cushy job. There was zero evidence of that anywhere

        You're right. Drugged out failsons of influential people get cushy jobs all the time. They don't have to actually go out and demand it, usually.

        Some might say that the reality of that, which was illustrated quite crassly in various leaked Biden family documents, might have been newsworthy even if it was technically legal.

        But either way, we don't have the lea

        • But either way, we don't have the leaked documents. Unlike WikiLeaks, which gave us the raw documents with a search engine, the right wing press never shared the actual contents of the laptop. They want the same world of propaganda as the Biden's, they just want to be in control themselves instead of barking at the sidelines.

          If they had a smoking gun, they would have told us about it. Ultimately all that was ever proven is that the laptop had some of his email on it, which would have been the case if it belonged to someone who hacked his email, too. Just like they never had any evidence of election fraud, just stacks of papers that they thumped on but never showed to anyone, including a court. It's just an endless series of Nothingburgers.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Orgasmatron ( 8103 )

        I assure you that no one is intending to exploit any vague feelings of unease around Joe Biden [msn.com] in 2024. (Seek to 1:45 if you are impatient.) It would be counterproductive when there is so much specific unease to go around. You know, things like energy costs, inflation, and crime.

        When the laptop story was coming down the pipes, government actors primed social media companies to suppress it. Because the story got out anyway, the usual liars went on TV to call it Russian propaganda, which it wasn't.

        Joe Bid

        • Re:Yeah. Yeah it was. (Score:5, Informative)

          by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @08:39AM (#63014701) Journal

          The point of the story was 1) the lying, and 2) if you don't fire the guy investigating my son's employer, you don't get the billion dollars.

          No, that's the disinformation. VICE President Biden was conducting PRESIDENT Obama's foreign policy when pressuring Ukraine to replace a corrupt official. He was ONE OF MANY diplomats doing the exact same thing at the time. MOST OF WESTERN EUROPE was pushing this position because...the guy was corrupt and all of the aid was pending progress on stemming corruption in Ukraine.

          The photos of Hunter with prostitutes and drugs is what HUNTER WAS FAMOUS FOR. It was well publicized that he had serious addiction issues and none of that was NEWS is was OLD NEWS. He suffered TBI and a fracture skull as a child in the same automobile crash that killed his mother and sister and seriously injured his brother. That brother, Beau, that later died of a brain tumor leaving Hunter the sole survivor of the family, other than his father. The dude is seriously fucked up and has been since forever.

          The pictures and recordings of Hunter totally trashed, with prostitutes, on multi-day benders WE NEVER CALLED RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA. The uncorroborated e-mails claiming payments to his father from foreign entities were.

          • "uncorroborated" is a funny way to refer to emails with valid DKIM signatures, that also match other copies of those emails from other sources.

      • Re:Yeah. Yeah it was. (Score:5, Informative)

        by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:12AM (#63014531) Journal

        Wait, what?
        I mean,, speaking of "big lie"...

        Hunter Biden had a ridiculously cushy, well compensated position in the famously corrupt Ukrainian corporate energy sector. This was a government who discontinued investigations into that energy sector and specific company, actually firing the lead investigator SPECIFICALLY at the behest of then give-president Biden. (You know the sort of do me a personal favour government-backed political threat a recent president was impeached for...?)

        Very narrowly framing a strawman question ("did Biden actually get him that job?") is absolutely and exactly the sort of disingenuous building that would be called mal-information.

        Further, the Hunter Biden laptop was swollen with pictures of simple illegal activities, to say nothing of ample communications talking about sharing illicit compensation with "the big guy" - who do you think he meant, Babar?

        You are exactly the problem.

        • Re:Yeah. Yeah it was. (Score:5, Informative)

          by ToasterMonkey ( 467067 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @01:45PM (#63015947) Homepage

          Wait, what?
          I mean,, speaking of "big lie"...

          Hunter Biden had a ridiculously cushy, well compensated position in the famously corrupt Ukrainian corporate energy sector. This was a government who discontinued investigations into that energy sector and specific company, actually firing the lead investigator SPECIFICALLY at the behest of then give-president Biden. (You know the sort of do me a personal favour government-backed political threat a recent president was impeached for...?)

          You're lying about the order of operations there.

          The Ukraine Prosecutor General was obstructing anti-corruption efforts and discontinued investigations of Burisma, his own fucking self, because the prosecutor general, the owner of Burisma, the former president of Ukraine, etc. were all corrupt as fuck.

          Read this from 2015
          https://www.congress.gov/116/m... [congress.gov]

          Furthermore, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting criminal actions, the Prosecutors Office recently dropped its cases against Zlochevskyi and his company Burisma. The NABU continues to investigate[i] several cases.

          He. Dropped. The. Case. Himself.

          No one in the Prosecutor General’s Office has been punished for the dumping of Zlochevskyi’s case. No prosecutor or investigator has been found liable. The leadership of the office, which tried to cover up the dumping of the criminal case concerning Zlochevsky, resigned only under enormous public and diplomatic pressure.

          Read it.

          THAT is why our government wanted that corrupt asshole out. The whole "I was really close to really investigating Burisma's board, for realz guys!" BULLSHIT came out after he was forced out. Which was after he fucking AIDED the Burisma owner by stymying the UK's corruption investigations.

          https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

          Was appointing Hunter and his buddy to the board done in good faith? I doubt it, but stop fucking lying that the US officially or covertly through Biden, then the VP, somehow helped that dickweed in charge of Burisma, he was in everyone's sights as well as Ukraine's prosecution office, and the former president of Ukraine. Somehow you forget all that.

    • So in American English: Department of Homeland Sensorship

    • For those of you not paying attention, the Hunter Biden laptop story was NOT disinformation or misinformation.

      I've read the whole sorry saga and your statement is correct in the sense that the story was not even wrong, therefore it can't really be disinformation or misinformation. It's just so batshit-crazy and ludicrous that its true classification would be more like... I dunno, black comedy? Really bad third-rate thriller? Attempt at mystery crime drama written by a fourteen-year-old boy? Something like that.

    • For those of you not paying attention, the Hunter Biden laptop story was NOT disinformation or misinformation.

      That's not what the story says.

      For anyone wondering what it actually said who is too lazy to read the story (and not just intellectually lazy like Orgasmatron) it says:

      the Washington Post confirmed that at least some of the emails on the laptop were authentic. The New York Times authenticated emails from the laptop

      None of that proves that it's Hunter Biden's laptop, or that if it was, it wasn't massively tampered with. It proves it had some of Hunter Biden's email on it. If I'm up in your data, I can have

    • Re:Hidden gem at the end (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:32AM (#63014569)
      Fair enough. Hunter Biden is clearly a train wreck, and it’s likely that he’s benefited from some nepotism, but at least Daddy keeps him well away from the levers of national power.

      The problem is that you’re suggesting we bring back Trump instead, or whatever Trumo-copy comes next. Oh, yeah, that’ll REALLY drain the swamp. He can reinstall family members on every floor of the white house and hand them control over projects with national importance, no qualifications necessary beyond family name. Other Trump relatives can staff the hotel across the street, checking in a steady stream of Russian and Chinese “businessmen” at a $10,000 per-night rate. Much better for the country.

  • So I guess it's back to the old analogue methods (Score:3)

    by willoughby ( 1367773 ) on Monday October 31, 2022 @10:50PM (#63013981)

    If the U.S. Government is going to patrol the interweb we'll need to go retro for our disinformation - like playing vinyl records backwards to learn Paul is dead.

    • Remember to play The Number of the Beast backwards so you can listen to the backwards masking in the middle of the album. Fuck Tipper Gore and PMRC.

  • This should worry everyone of every political pov (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoB235423424 ( 6928344 ) on Monday October 31, 2022 @11:25PM (#63014007)

    This is exactly what Authoritarian governments do. Anyone of any political persuasion should be horrified of this. Controlling "dangerous" information is always used and abused to keep those in power in power. Neither Democrat nor Republican administrations should be working with private companies to police information. If you want to talk about Fascism and 'Threats to Democracy', this is what it looks like.

    • Concentration of Social Media is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:11AM (#63014083)

      Social media should be like email. A standard for communication. Lots of different servers. You subscribe to what you want and post what you want, which other servers may or may not accept.

      Then it is distributed and not open to censorship.

      Why must I use Facebook to communicate with others on Facebook?!

      • When was the last time you were involved with the operations of a major email server? With all the spam and phishing around these days, "censorship" is considered an essential part of basic cybersecurity. Add in SPF and DMARC and you have intrinsic structures to the protocols that disfavor small operators in favor of the large providers that have already established public trust and mature policing of their platforms.

        • I run a service that sends email reminders to people who have specifically requested them. No matter what I do, and what the users do, there are some people who simply can not receive the emails (to be fair, these people are dealing with email servers set up by their it departments, not gmail or something like that). It’s amazing that the spammers can get through, though they have the benefit of being able to put whatever they want in their emails, mine have to look like they’re a standard form.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That's basically what Mastodon is. It's struggling to gain popularity because although it supports federation, in practice it ends up being a bunch of smaller networks that are not well connected.

        The EU may have the solution. It plans to force these platforms to offer federation and interoperability. Mastodon's problem is scale and lack of users, but forcing Facebook to open up would go a long way to fixing that.

  • The DHS, DOE, and FBI have run their course... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2022 @11:57PM (#63014055)

    They've lived long enough to see themselves become the villains.

    Time for the next administration to disband them with extreme prejudice.

    • Re: The DHS, DOE, and FBI have run their course... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:24AM (#63014101)

      No. The premise behind DHS was to solve the problem of the different agencies basically working against one another, which ultimately allowed 9/11 to happen. That was, and remains to this day, a good idea.

      At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you tear them down, if you're not careful you'll always end up back where you started.

      "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Wendell Phillips

      Continual reformation is likely the best option rather than continual rip and replace, otherwise it's harder to benefit from the lessons of past mistakes.

      And for fuck's sake, stop with the conflating of free speech absolutism with Nazism. Yes, they're bad people, but under both the letter and the spirit of the constitution they too deserve a voice, even if we don't like it. If ever, at any point, there's a category of people that you say don't deserve a voice, at some point you'll be tempted to expand the definition of what qualifies under that category, just as the progressive movement is actively doing right at this moment, that likely culminated in the problem at hand. And if you want to know where that eventually leads, set your gaze eastward.

      • The problem stems from their belief these mechanism will never be used against them, that government, academia, media, and the corporate world walking in lockstep can be trusted. It's complete ignorance of history, not least of all the history of leftist movements.

        Everybody gets their turn on the guillotine, even Jacobins.

  • Nice to see these people made it as far as (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Monday October 31, 2022 @11:58PM (#63014059)

    The first amendment.

    Really the current crop of Washingtonians seem hell bent on summoning a horde of guillotines.

  • and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine

    who would have thunk! X'DDDD

  • this is terrifying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quake1v1 ( 5328633 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:02AM (#63014067)

    If you're in support of this, in ANY WAY, you will learn to be terrified when the political party that you hate has control of this power.

    • I'm really struggling here. The explosion of social media combined with a population willing to believe anything is causing major problems; to pretend these aren't very real is foolish. IF we could trust the government, then this solution has something to commend it. The fact that we can't is actually the problem. Yet all newspapers can be shown to have lied on occasion.

      I suspect a system where the government is required to make substantial payouts - starting at $1,000,000 for its first offence against a pe

  • First amendment, for real (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:23AM (#63014097) Homepage

    Lots of folks say that it doesn't matter, if private platforms censor speech, because the first amendment only applies to the government. This is,imho, arguably untrue, when those platforms have effectively become the public square.

    However, thanks to this bunch of power-hungry bureaucrats, it doesn't matter anymore. If the government is involved in "shaping public discourse", the first amendment *is* fully applicable. Also, this is frighteningly Orwellian.

  • Orwell's Ministry of Truth (Score:3)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:43AM (#63014129)

    Wait until lolcatz as designated as a danger to society.
    Orwell's book wasn't a novel, it was an implementation manual.

  • There's a lie going around (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @02:11AM (#63014185)
    That says the man who attacked Nancy pelosi's husband was his gay lover. It's ridiculous on the face of it but every single right-wing media outlet ran with it in some capacity.

    It's brilliant. We're all talking about the fact that there's this insane lie going around and not the fact that a terrorist attacked the husband of a major political figure after being encouraged to do so by multiple members of the opposition party through stochastic terrorism.

    When folks talk about misinformation this is what they mean. It's the ability to control the narrative to such an extent that truth can't even breathe. It's a level of control Joseph Goebbels could only dream of.

    • Re:There's a lie going around (Score:4, Informative)

      by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @03:46AM (#63014263)

      That says the man who attacked Nancy pelosi's husband was his gay lover. It's ridiculous on the face of it but every single right-wing media outlet ran with it in some capacity.

      Can you provide some links to this? This is the first I've heard that story. And by "in some capacity", do you perhaps mean: Reported that there was an obiously crazy story going around as a comment on social media or something? (As I said, I haven't heard about this at all until your comment here, though.)

      It's brilliant. We're all talking about the fact that there's this insane lie going around and not the fact that a terrorist attacked the husband of a major political figure after being encouraged to do so by multiple members of the opposition party through stochastic terrorism.

      The police have not established that this was a politically motivated attack. However, it seems unlikely that it was partisan, since the attacker was an ultra-lefty, rather than the opposition party.

      Mainly, the guy is very mentally ill. For example, sometimes he says he is Jesus, among other things.

      When folks talk about misinformation this is what they mean. It's the ability to control the narrative to such an extent that truth can't even breathe. It's a level of control Joseph Goebbels could only dream of.

      I think when most folks talk about misinformation, they mean posts like yours here.

      • Can you provide some links to this?

        Can you learn to internet [google.com]?

        • Trolls internet better than we can.

        • What's funny about this "proof link" is that it's to a CNN article which just repeats the assertion, it doesn't offer any evidence. In fact, it doesn't even identify a single, solitary instance. The exact phrase it uses is "an explosion of social media posts". That's the sum of their in-depth reporting of the facts.

          I do have to give them one pat on the back: in two places, they mention that the theory "traces back to an incorrect early news report". Do tell! You mean the very theory you're complaining about

          • link is ... to a CNN article

            Which link? The link above is to a Google search.
            And in that Google search, there's this CNN article:
            https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31... [cnn.com]

            That CNN article lists some people who amplified the nutcase theory, including an obscure Twitter user named Elon Musk.

            Musk deleted it later, but some users took screenshots:
            https://twitter.com/emptywheel... [twitter.com]

          • What's funny about this "proof link" is that it's to a CNN article which just repeats the assertion, it doesn't offer any evidence.

            You haven't offered any evidence. Now you want counterevidence to the evidence you haven't provided. Cheap tricks are cheap, and so are you.

    • I wish that the Pelosis would release security footage of the break-in (which *has* to exist at the residence of the 3rd-in-line person to the presidency) to squelch the rumors (which are highly likely to be bullcrap, imo) - but I don't think they will, because they benefit from the rumor existing. I want them to help the ignorant, not demonize them. This, to me, is part of the problem we're facing in politics today. Not necessarily demonizing opponents (that's been going on forever), but add that to th

    • "It's ridiculous on the face of it but every single right-wing media outlet ran with it in some capacity."

      Actually, you may not be quoting your sources correctly. The assertion I just read from CNN was that "social media posts" ran with it, not "right-wing media outlets".

      I find this kind of equivalency really interesting. I hope no one actually thinks that random people talking on the interwebs are equivalent to media outlets, but if so, I guess that would explain a lot.

    • Every single one? That's strange, because so far this is the one and only mention of that I've ever seen or heard. So, you're spreading misinformation and misinformation about the misinformation.

    • This is in direct reaction to the immediate corporate leftist media narrative that the hippie nudist hemp campaigner who lived in a commune was SOMEHOW BY DEFAULT a white supremacist Republican.
      You might have accidentally left that bit out? I wonder why?

      Personally, I'd like journalists to want to ferret out the truth.
      How did this naked druggie manage to get past secret service level security, and never show up on what must be a plethora of cameras?
      Do a lot of murderous home invaders give their victim a cha

  • DHS Plans To Police Disinformation

    Isn't that a violation of the 1st amendment and a frontal assault on the entire ideological framework of what used to be the Republican party?

    • Planning sedition isn't protected speech.

      • As below, to be a crime, something has to cause actual harm. The act of sedition is a crime. Talking about sedition, dreaming of sedition, writing a paper on sedition, meeting with others about sedition, telling jokes about sedition, none of those rise to the level of a crime.

    • DHS Plans To Police Disinformation

      Isn't that a violation of the 1st amendment

      Disinformation is fraud (as in, for profit or other gain) and fraud is a felony. You don't know how anything works.

      • No, "fraud" is fraud. It's an act. To be a crime, it has to cause actual harm. "Disinformation" is not fraud, it is lying. You can lie your head off all day in the United States if you want to. Heck, you can be the President of the United States and lie your head off on camera in front a flag-draped, red-lit building and not be charged with a crime.

        • No, "fraud" is fraud. It's an act. To be a crime, it has to cause actual harm.

          It not only doesn't have to cause harm to be an attempt to defraud, but the election lies spread willfully by Republican senators (and also idiots who listen to them) have in fact caused harm. They have decreased faith in our election process to the benefit of our adversaries. If we were in a state of declared war and not just helping someone else defend themselves against an undeclared war, it would literally be treason. But since we aren't, it's just fraud.

  • Unpopular opinion: free speech doesn't work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gestalt_n_pepper ( 991155 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:02AM (#63014515)

    Let's face it. Bullshit abounds and if enough stupid people believe it, it's dangerous.

    In the old days of centralized one-way media, this was controlled by editors - the mods of yesteryear. These days, media has become truly democratized. Any idiot and every idiot has a globe spanning bullhorn.

    I'm not sure of much, but I'm sure this won't continue. The money will see to that. Even Elon will be censoring pretty soon at the behest of his cohorts.

    Our only choice here is to regulate speech in a rational way. F'rinstance, what if there were severe penalties for publishing a story you couldn't prove?

    That would be a start towards healing a media ecology that is sadly broken.

  • Again, we should have two channels:
    Facts, information, boring s**t
    I'm just f*****g with you

    Regulate the first very publicly for factual statements by established standards.
    The second one they can regulate in private or however they want, but the primary consequences are a div over the top that says "this guy is full of $#1+".

    If they determine the latter *IS* dangerous, fall back to 'fire in a crowded theatre' and prosecute.

    Why is this necessary? Because 'we' have decided that 2 can negate 1. Those people s

  • That slippery slope looks like great fun, lets go slide! I'm sure we can find our way back up later.

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