A newly released tranche of documents shows senior Biden-Harris administration officials gained pointers from British “disinformation” officials about partnering with social media companies and establishing an all-of-government effort for fighting disfavored content that includes elections and COVID-19.
The revelation, which comes as Congress investigates potential censorship efforts by the executive branch in the lead-up to the 2024 election, has prompted a House Republican to propose legislation to prevent U.S. tax money going to countries that regulate online speech.
The National Security Council held a private meeting with the U.K. government’s Counter Disinformation Unit on Aug. 21, 2021.
The Counter Disinformation Unit is part of the British government’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
America First Legal, a conservative watchdog group, obtained a slide deck shown at the meeting through a larger Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The slides were part of hundreds of pages of documents obtained from the CDC.
The document release comes shortly after Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, wrote President Biden and Vice President Harris to request information on suppression campaigns the administration might be engaged in regarding political speech.
Mace is also pushing free speech abroad.
Last week, she introduced the No Funds for Fascists Act, a proposal to prohibit taxpayer funds from assisting foreign governments that abridge free speech and bars aid to governments that coerce social media platforms or news outlets to block speech.
The NSC meeting with the British unit was “over-the-top,” Mace said.
“The Biden-Harris administration is so desperate to control speech and information they’re actually taking advice from foreign governments on how to violate our core constitutional rights,” Mace said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“It’s extreme, over-the-top, and un-American. We introduced our ‘No Funds for Fascists’ bill in response to this.”
A congressional probe into censorship and meetings with foreign governments “that have taken place and are likely still taking place” would be helpful, said Michael Ding, counsel to America First Legal.
“Whether it’s election misinformation or COVID-19 disinformation, you can trace these actions to a web of international NGOs pushing to police free speech, whatever the cause of the day might be,” Ding told Fox News Digital.
Although the stated focus of the NSC conference was about combating lies regarding COVID-19, the British presentation veered into elections. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Annabelle Gordon/Reuters |
A British government unit devoted to fighting online “disinformation” gave high-ranking U.S. officials a detailed presentation on their efforts to pressure social-media platforms into censoring speech, newly disclosed documents show.
The U.K.’s “counter-disinformation unit” (CDU) met with U.S. officials from a variety of intelligence agencies in 2021 and delivered a presentation on its strategies for flagging content deemed “misinformation” to social-media companies to ensure the content would be suppressed, according to a slide deck revealed Friday by America First Legal, a conservative legal activist group. America First Legal obtained the documents through ongoing litigation against the Centers for Disease Control.
The slide deck features two slides on the CDU’s “coordination structure” displaying how the agency works with other government bodies, officials, and outside partners to gather information and to flag “disinformation.” British cabinet ministers and intelligence agencies are involved with the information sharing process that the CDU oversees.
Around election time, the CDU creates a “central election cell” to further its efforts to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” across a variety of domains such as public health and national security. The “misinformation” flagged by CDU falls into several categories, including content touching on democratic processes, public safety, and national security. It’s unclear what kind of information specifically falls into those far-reaching categories.
In responding to “harmful” speech online, the CDU acts operationally to flag specific content and to evaluate the effectiveness of a platform’s policies and enforcement for combatting misinformation, one slide indicates.
The British government works with international partners in Europe and North America to prioritize the fight against “disinformation,” training governments and NGOs on how identify and curtail the allegedly harmful content.
Additionally, the presentation has slides on British legislation empowering companies to strictly enforce content moderation and empowering the government to take action against companies that fail to comply with the government’s online speech regulations.
The presentation provides an inside look at how various governments are working together to influence online discourse and exposes the British government’s perception of its mandate to suppress speech online, an objective shared by American intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party. Although its mission is the same, the British government rebranded the CDU as the National Security and Online Information Team last year. --->READ MORE HERE
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