The FBI’s claims of protecting the public were called into question last week when a cache of Twitter Files showed that the organization had been complicit in blatant violations of citizens’ rights by working with one tech giant to stifle their political speech. Despite its protestations, this revelation has exposed frightening violations of our freedoms and provided damning proof against America’s leading law enforcement agency.
The independent journalist leading the Twitter Files discoveries, Matt Taibbi, today disclosed that the FBI’s initial reports of big disclosures were met with a surprising lack of action. For all the details, continue reading!
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“It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried ‘conspiracy theorists’ publishing ‘misinformation,’ whose ‘sole aim’ is to ‘discredit the agency,’” Taibbi wrote, referencing the way the FBI dismissed censorship allegations as a conspiracy theory.
According to information released on Christmas Eve, the FBI served as the “doorman to the huge operation of social media surveillance and control.” According to Taibbi, several government organizations were involved, including the “State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA.”
Taibbi said the process is “far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF),” that was referred to in previous disclosures. Taibbi said Twitter worked with so many agencies the executives at the company “lost track.”
“Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying,” Taibbi wrote.
The disclosures state that “thousands of official ‘reports’ flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.”
Elvis Chan, a San Francisco FBI agent, wrote to Twitter executives on June 29, 2020, requesting permission to invite a “OGA” to a conference. According to Taibbi, OGA is an acronym for “Other Government Organization,” which could be code for the CIA.
“‘Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),’ said retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.”
Chan alluded to the executive’s “former employment” because Taibbi claimed it was a “open secret” inside Twitter that one of its executives had previously worked for the CIA.
“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille said to Twitter lawyer Jim Baker (former FBI).”
The latest revelations show how the FBI moved away from a purported foreign influence mission to domestic content moderation; “from state governments, even local police,” Taibbi added.
“Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish,” Taibbi revealed.
“Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending lists of hundreds of problem accounts,” the disclosures revealed. “Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment.”
The FBI was “obviously tailoring searches to Twitter’s regulations,” according to Taibbi, who also disclosed that there were so many government demands that “Twitter staff had to invent a system for prioritizing/triaging them.”
Even in the subject line, the FBI frequently framed its censorship requests as pointing up a “potential terms of service violation.”
Jim Baker, a former FBI attorney, even expressed confusion in response to all the inquiries, writing: “Odd that they are hunting for infractions of our standards.”
The “user IDs and handles” of a list of accounts mentioned in a Daily Beast article were requested by the FBI office in New York. Executives at Twitter said that they were “supportive” and “totally comfortable” with their compliance.
“It seemed to strike no one as strange that a ‘Foreign Influence’ task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material,” Taibbi said.
The FBI’s clandestine “foreign influence” operation had another goal in mind: to influence American internal political discussions. It is understandable that this severe politicization of the federal law enforcement agency has caused outrage and calls for congressional action, urging them to take steps to ensure that a breach like this never occurs again.
