In addition to working with Deloitte to report on daily social media trends in the US, including Vote-By-Mail conversations, CISA focuses on tracking the narratives surrounding mail-in voting. Additionally, they mark particular posts for review by CISA.
A few of Deloitte’s “flags” to CISA were:
- Twitter flagged President Trump’s post that there are “big problems and discrepancies with Mail-in Ballots.”
- “A conservative online activist claimed that Twitter is censoring his tweets about voter fraud to help the Democratic presidential nominee.”
- President Trump “retweeted a political pundit who accused a Democratic Congressional candidate of ‘election fraud’ after thousands of ballots were mistakenly sent to his district.”
- “The Governor of Texas quoted an article from a local news outlet on the state’s recent history of voter fraud convictions and claimed that it reveals “Mail ballot vote fraud in Texas.”
- “A conservative pundit accused Twitter of ‘SUPPRESSING’ a story about the Democratic presidential nominee’s son to help the nominee win the election.”
- “A conservative online activist accused Twitter of censoring her posts about voter fraud she is ‘witnessing here in Nevada,’ and expressed her frustration with Twitter’s disclaimers stating that mail-in ballots are secure.”
As AFL noted, “Deloitte’s reports provided CISA with confirmation that its social media monitoring and censorship apparatus was working. In Missouri v. Biden, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that ‘the platforms’ censorship decisions were made under policies that CISA has pressured them into adopting and based on CISA’s determination of the veracity of the flagged information’.”
It was found by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that CISA had created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) with the unlawful purpose of limiting free speech in the United States.
After Director Krebs told Congress quite bluntly that “narratives are narratives,” CISA decided to handle all social media activity on the same footing, regardless of where it came from.
As America First Legal summarized:
- CISA was aware that voting in person had no effect on the spread of COVID.
- Mail-in voting was less secure, as CISA was aware.
- Nevertheless, CISA was in favor of changing the law to permit previously unheard-of widespread mail-in voting.
- The EIP was established by CISA in order to control stories about mail-in voting.
- In order to identify unapproved “narratives” about mail-in voting and to ensure that social media platforms were appropriately filtering them, CISA kept a close eye on them.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, cybersecurity expert Mike Benz describes how government-funded organizations like CISA suppressed public discourse on the 2020 election.
“So DHS was basically deputized. It was empowered through this obscure little cybersecurity agency to have the combined powers that the CIA has abroad with the jurisdiction of the FBI at home. And the way they did this, how did… an obscure little cybersecurity agency get this power… was they did a funny little series of switcheroos.”
“So this little thing called CISA — they didn’t call it the Disinformation Governance Board, they didn’t call it the Censorship Agency — they gave it an obscure little name that no one would notice called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who its founder said, ‘we care about security so much, it’s in our name twice.’ Everybody sort of closed their eyes and pretended that’s what it was.”
“But it was created by Act of Congress in 2018 because of the perceived threat that Russia had hacked the 2016 election, had physically hacked it. And so we needed the cybersecurity power to be able to deal with that. And essentially on the heels of a CIA memo on January 6th, 2017 and a same day DHS executive order on January 6th, 2017, arguing that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and a DHS mandate saying that elections are now critical infrastructure. You had this new power within DHS to say that cybersecurity attacks on elections are now our purview.”
“And then they did two cute things. One, they said, mis-, dis-, and and mal- information online are a form of cybersecurity attack. They are a cyber attack because they are happening online. And they said, ‘well, actually Russian disinformation is we’re actually protecting democracy and elections’. We don’t need a Russian predicate after Russiagate died.”
“So just like that, you had this cybersecurity agency be able to legally make the argument that your tweets about mail-in ballots, if you undermine public faith and confidence in them as a legitimate form of voting, was now you were now conducting a ‘cyber attack’ on US critical infrastructure by articulating ‘misinformation’ on Twitter…”
“Yes, you could literally be on your toilet seat at 9:30 on a Thursday night and tweet, ‘I think that mail-in ballots are illegitimate.’ And you were essentially then caught up in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security classifying you as conducting a cyber attack on US critical infrastructure because you were doing ‘misinformation’ online in the cyber realm.”
The most pernicious aspect of CISA’s censorship operation was that, even as it attempted to suppress American criticism of mail-in ballots, its leadership was well aware that a large portion of this so-called “disinformation” was, in fact, valid criticism.
What’s even more concerning is that many states have made no-excuse mail-in ballots a permanent fixture of their state elections, despite CISA’s awareness of the risks associated with mail-in ballots and the passing of the COVID emergency.
States that don’t adhere to best practices are endangering the integrity of elections. Paper ballots, voter IDs with photos, and one-day elections are necessary for safe voting both domestically and internationally.
