The House Committee on Homeland Security is investigating allegations of 2020 election censorship efforts from the federal government. 
House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC) sent a letter to the Center for Internet Security (CIS) about its efforts to facilitate censorship. The letter concerns the CIS’s “misinformation reporting system” that also involved Big Tech and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “[The] evidence uncovered so far suggests CISA has, in fact, engaged in proxy censorship through partners…circumventing Americans’ First Amendment protections,” wrote Green and Bishop in the letter.
Green and Bishop, in their letter sent to Marci Andino, the Director of the CIS Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, requested information on CISA’s “partnership with non-governmental organizations and social media companies that potentially suppressed Americans’ speech.”
Green and Bishop described a well-oiled campaign involving election-related organizations, to facilitate censorship, in their letter. For instance, CIS would send CISA a “misinformation report” shared by election officials or the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). From there the report went to CISA’s Countering Foreign Interference Task Force and thence to Big Tech for censorship. The congressmen wrote that 61 percent of cases reported were either labeled or removed by social media companies, per CIS’s own estimate. CIS and EIP “worked closely” together, the letter noted.
“The CIS after-action report makes clear that CISA directly engaged with social media companies to suppress Americans’ social media content,” the congressmen wrote. Social media platforms could be reluctant to participate in future projects, according to CIS, but their cooperation is “critical.” CIS noted a lack of “leverage” to “compel” cooperation, the letter explains, an ominous observation. Why would the government seemingly consider compelling censorship cooperation?
“This note begs the question – if there was no legal leverage to compel social media cooperation during the 2020 election, was the federal government, through CISA, used as a strong arm?” Green and Bishop asked.
Such censorship has major impacts, and can even alter election results, as a Media Research Center poll found in November 2020. Censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal, which we now know was done after government pressure, helped shift the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech and government agencies be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
