According to recently uncovered emails, the Department of Homeland Security advised the State Department to engage with a group they later collaborated with to exert pressure on social media platforms. This pressure was aimed at curbing speech from conservative voices in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
The recently discovered coordination highlights the significant involvement of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). This comes amidst scrutiny from House GOP members who have accused CISA of collaborating “with Big Tech and ‘disinformation' partners to censor Americans” during the 2020 elections.
On October 14, 2020, following Twitter's blocking of a New York Post story related to Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) contacted researchers associated with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
The EIP, a collaborative effort involving universities, left-wing think tanks, social media companies, and the U.S. government, aimed to combat alleged misinformation online leading up to the presidential election. This outreach by the GEC, an office primarily focused on foreign affairs and currently under investigation by Republican lawmakers for its alleged involvement in anti-speech initiatives within the United States, was reportedly guided by the Department of Homeland Security and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), according to internal documents.
Despite initial attempts by both CISA and Alex Stamos, who led the Stanford Internet Observatory responsible for the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), to downplay CISA's involvement in the partnership, recently released records suggest a closer relationship between CISA and EIP than previously acknowledged.
The disclosure regarding CISA's apparent recommendation of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) has raised concerns about the “close coordination between agencies involved in domestic matters and those involved in foreign policy” during the 2020 initiative, stated Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public's Trust, a watchdog group that obtained the internal records. Notably, individuals associated with the EIP are currently facing a lawsuit from the Trump-affiliated America First Legal group for their alleged facilitation of “probably the largest mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program in American history.”
Read more here: Source-The Washington Examiner
