Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans To Police Disinformation

 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, disinformation, and malinformation that allegedly threatens U.S. interests.

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.

DHS justifies these goals - which have expanded far beyond its original purview on foreign threats to encompass disinformation originating domestically - by claiming that terrorist threats can be "Exacerbated by misinformation and disinformation spread online." But the laudable goal of protecting Americans from danger has often been used to conceal political maneuvering.

In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the "Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation" team, which was created "To promote more flexibility to focus on general MDM." By now, the scope of the effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include domestic versions.

Meeting records of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, the main subcommittee that handles disinformation policy at CISA, show a constant effort to expand the scope of the agency's tools to foil disinformation.

While free speech advocates cheered the dissolution of the board, other government efforts to root out disinformation have not only continued but expanded to encompass additional DHS sub-agencies like Customs and Border Protection, which "Determines whether information about the component spread through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is accurate." Other agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Science and Technology Directorate, and the Secret Service have also expanded their purview to include disinformation, according to the inspector general report.

A June 2020 memo bearing the subject line "Actions to Address the Threat Posed by Domestic Terrorists and Other Domestic Extremists" prepared by DHS headquarters for Wolf, Trump's acting DHS secretary, delineates plans to "Expand information sharing with the tech sector" in order to "Identify disinformation campaigns used by DT actors to incite violence against infrastructure, ethnic, racial or religious groups, or individuals." The memo outlines plans to work with private tech sector partners to share unclassified DHS intelligence on "DT actors and their tactics" so that platforms can "Move effectively use their own tools to enforce user agreements/terms of service and remove DT content."

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/