“The United States government is unconstitutionally targeting millions of Americans for their political speech by directly contracting with private ‘third parties’ that flag their viewpoints for alleged ‘misinformation,’” writes Kyle Becker in El American.
Building on reporting by John Solomon and Greg Piper at Just the News, Becker points to five private companies or non-profits that are contracted by U.S. government institutions to take down “misinformation.” They include the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and the social media analytics firm Graphika, all of which are part of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). These four have worked with the Department of Homeland Security and/or the Department of State.
The EIP set up “a concierge-like service in 2020,” write Solomon and Piper, “that allowed federal agencies ... to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.” The Democratic National Committee was also able to file tickets.
To this list Becker adds Newsguard, which also partners with U.S. agencies.
But the U.S. Constitution demands the freedom to speak and to consider information freely.
“The right to speak and the right to publish under the First Amendment has been interpreted widely to protect individuals and society from government attempts to suppress ideas and information, and to forbid government censorship of books, magazines, and newspapers, as well as art, film, music, and materials on the internet,” writes the American Library Association, which quotes Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1965 as writing, “I think the right to receive publications is such a fundamental right. The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing if otherwise willing addresses are not free to receive and consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that had only sellers and no buyers.”
But this is precisely what these entities are doing, under government contract — creating lists of information and publishers that may not be heard, or whose viewpoint will be suppressed.
Former White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki explained how it works, explaining that the White House would express “where we have concerns about information that’s inaccurate, that is traveling out there in whatever platform it’s traveling on.”
Government pressure on, and direction to, social media companies plainly violate the protections Americans enjoy under the First Amendment.
