Is FBI Still Colluding With Big Tech To Interfere In Our Elections?

By Kara Frederick & Daniel Cochrane, The Daily Signal | October 28, 2024

Four years ago this month, the FBI worked with Facebook and Twitter to suppress a New York Post story detailing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, just weeks before the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Today, on the eve of another contentious election, America could see a repeat of what federal District Court Judge Terry Doughty called the “most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

The FBI knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic in November 2019. Yet, it repeatedly warned social media platforms of an impending “hack and leak operation” ahead of the 2020 election.

The FBI’s false flag served as the pretext for Facebook and Twitter to suppress the New York Post story as likely “Russian disinformation” in October 2020. At the same time, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force  flagged other “domestic disinformation” without distinguishing between foreign and American users-generated content.

Following a brief pause due to a court injunction, the FBI resumed coordination with platforms this July after the U.S. Supreme Court punted on a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech due to the plaintiff’s lack of standing.

In other words, not much has changed.

In response to a two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, the FBI declassified a summary of its standard operating procedures for engaging with social media platforms to counter foreign malign influence.

Before engaging with platforms on specific content, FBI personnel  are supposed to identify “specific, credible, and articulable facts” indicating that flagged social media activity “is attributed to” foreign actors—not Americans.

FBI personnel are also required to make clear that platforms are not expected to act or change their policies in response to information shared with them.

That all sounds nice, but these processes lack any real oversight or transparency. Moreover, FBI officials maintain that the bureau already follows those practices, and strenuously deny that protected First Amendment speech was ever targeted by Foreign Influence Task Force activities.

According to court documents, Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan denied “that the FBI urged the social-media platforms to change their policies on hacked material … .” Nevertheless, Chan admitted that the bureau repeatedly inquired as to whether the platforms made changes regarding “hacked” materials.

FBI officials also told the inspector general that it “does not monitor social media content” and does not “investigate specific narratives related to foreign malign influence being spread online.” A Foreign Influence Task Force unit chief even claimed that the FBI acts “based on intelligence concerning the activities of specific foreign actors,” not Americans’ speech.

But the FBI often acted contrary to these assurances. In fact, two years after the Biden laptop suppression scandal, the FBI once again censored Americans under the guise of combating foreign malign influence.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee found that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine sent the FBI lists of social media accounts allegedly spreading Russian disinformation. The FBI forwarded those lists to Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube, which removed some of the content as a result.

While the FBI claimed to target only foreign actors, the lists included posts from verified American users expressing views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Surprisingly, some lists contained posts from journalists critical of Russia’s invasion and even included @usaporusski, the official Russian Instagram handle of the U.S. State Department.

Like the bureau’s flagging of so-called “domestic disinformation” during 2020, appropriate safeguards were not in place to prevent protected First Amendment speech from getting caught up in the sweep.

Apparently, the FBI learned nothing from its past blunders in 2020.

And to add insult to injury, the FBI continues to retain some of the core personnel responsible for facilitating censorship of Americans in 2020 and again in 2022.

For example, Chan, who served as the “primary liaison” between the Foreign Influence Task Force and social media companies, and who helped orchestrate the agency’s collusion with Big Tech, appears to still be employed by the agency. Chan lied under oath, the New York Post reported, regarding his knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and flouted a congressional subpoena to testify last year.

Given the FBI’s blatant misrepresentation of its own actions and evasion of accountability, the declassified standard operating procedures ring hollow.

It merely reiterates processes that FBI officials claimed to follow while colluding with Big Tech platforms to censor Americans.

With just over a week before the 2024 presidential election, collusion between the FBI and Big Tech remains a clear and present danger.

Kara Frederick is the director of the Tech Policy Center at The Heritage Foundation. Daniel Cochrane is a senior research associate for the Tech Policy Center at The Heritage Foundation.

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