Rip DHS and CISA’s Disinformation Governance Board out by the roots

ALG urges Congress to defund DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency disinformation analysis and dissemination to private sector authorities

April 29, 2022, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Congress to defund part of 6 U.S. Code § 121(d)(6), which authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to disseminate information to the private sector including social media to combating disinformation:

“Members of Congress who are outraged by the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board are right. Unfortunately, Congress made a grievous mistake in 2018 when it unanimously passed legislation which allows the Department of Homeland Security to be prosecutor, judge and jury on political speech under the guise of combating disinformation. And now, it’s up to Congress to rip the sections of law which allow political speech to be censored by DHS out by the roots by defunding this activity until the law can be more fully amended.

“The existence of this unholy alliance between government and social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, etc. explains their unified messaging on Covid, Russiagate and perhaps even the Hunter Biden laptop, which was labeled Russian disinformation by former intelligence officials. One wondered how it was possible that the social media giants fell in lockstep on many controversial issues in banning unapproved speech, and deplatforming Parler, former President Donald Trump, frontline doctors and many others, and now we know who’s responsible.”

Attachments:

“To disseminate, as appropriate, information analyzed by the Department within the Department, to other agencies of the Federal Government with responsibilities relating to homeland security, and to agencies of State and local governments and private sector entities with such responsibilities in order to assist in the deterrence, prevention, preemption of, or response to, terrorist attacks against the United States.” 6 U.S. Code § 121(d)(6) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/6/121

“The [Mis, Dis, Malinformation] MDM team serves as a switchboard for routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms and law enforcement. This activity began in 2018, supporting state and local election officials to mitigate disinformation about the time, place, and manner of voting. For the 2020 election, CISA expanded the breadth of reporting to include other state and local officials and more social media platforms. This activity leverages the rapport the MDM team has with the social media platforms to enable shared situational awareness.” https://www.cisa.gov/mdm

For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.

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