The US’s House Judiciary Committee released a report yesterday on the FBI’s cooperation with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) to suppress the social media accounts of Americans suspected of disseminating alleged “Russian disinformation.” Of note, a major source of the SBU’s list of offenders is Kiev’s infamous “Center for Countering Disinformation” (CCD), a subdivision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), run out of the Office of the President. The CCD is notorious for labeling a discussion about peace or about negotiations as “Russian disinformation,” and the files on such ‘disinformation warriors’ are to be treated as enemy combatants in warfare. Of course, the CCD is obligated to turn over those names to the SBU, which is supposed to take the appropriate active measures to deal with the targeted individual.
The 27-page Judiciary Committee report said that the SBU/FBI combo “flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists.” The FBI then checked back with the likes of Meta, Google, and Twitter to see if the blocking activity was carried out or even, sometimes, whether “these accounts were taken down.” The report was based in part on subpoenaed material from Meta and Alphabet in February.
A high-ranking member of Google’s cybersecurity team told the authors of the report that the company had been “deluged with various requests” for the removal of content, mainly from “the Ukrainian government, other Eastern European governments, the European Union, and the European Commission.”
At one point the report describes some of the Americans targeted: “A photographer working with a studio in New York; a manager of a moving company in South Carolina; a musician and vocalist based in Minnesota; a professor at a university in California; and a children’s book author living in Washington state.”
CNN reports that a Judiciary Committee aide said that Republicans on the committee plan to scrutinize FBI Director Christopher Wray, when he testifies before them on July 12.
Here’s the 27-page report: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/fbi-sbu-staff-report-7.10.23-sm.pdf
