Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The transcription discusses the relationship between Twitter and government agencies in censoring and deplatforming individuals. It highlights that both left-leaning and right-leaning accounts have been targeted, including Trump supporters and leftist organizations. Various government agencies and private entities have been involved in flagging accounts for misinformation, leading to de-platforming not just on Twitter, but also on other platforms like PayPal and GoFundMe. The role of the press is also discussed, with journalists partnering with these groups rather than investigating them. The testimony emphasizes the importance of protecting the First Amendment and the threat that censorship poses to democratic rights. The exchange with the committee members further highlights concerns about the weaponization of the government against free speech and the FTC's involvement in targeting journalists. We saw the first hints and communications between Twitter executives before the 2020 election, when we read things like flag by DHS or police see attached report from FBI for potential misinformation. This would be attached to an Excel spreadsheet with a long list of names whose accounts were often suspended shortly after. Again, Ranking Member Plaskett, I would note that the evidence of Twitter government relationship includes lists of tens of thousands of names on both the left and right. The people affected include Trump supporters, but also left-leaning sites like Consortium and Truthout, the leftist South American channel Telesur, the Yellow Vest movement. That in fact is a key point of the Twitter files, that it's neither a left nor right issue. We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CAA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same thing, including Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership, NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, and many others, many taxpayer-funded. A focus of this fast-growing network, as Mike noted, is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for true but inconvenient. Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of digital McCarthyism. Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for de-amplification or de-platforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xander, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge. As someone who grew up a traditional ACLU liberal, this mechanism for punishment and deprivation without due process is horrifying. Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which should be the people's last line of defense in such cases. But instead of investigating these groups, journalists partnered with them. If Twitter declined to remove an account right away, government agencies and NGOs would call reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who in turn would call Twitter, demanding to know why action had not yet been taken. Effectively, news media became an arm of the state-sponsored thought policing system. I'm running out of time, so I'll just sum up and say, it's just not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is, however possible, becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we're looking at. This is a grave threat to people of all political persuasions. The First Amendment and American population accustomed to the right to speak is the best defense left against the censorship industrial complex. If the latter can knock over our first and most important constitutional guarantee, these groups will have no serious opponent left anywhere. If there's anything the Twitter files show, it's that we're in danger of losing this most precious right, without which all democratic rights are impossible. Thank you for the opportunity to appear, and I'd be happy to answer any questions from the committee. So let me ask, have you combed the so-called Twitter files to look at other examples that aren't about the Biden White House or the FBI that might in fact involve people from the right, ideologically, or from the Republican ranks? Just to be clear. Well, again, Mr. Congressman, I mentioned before, we're focused not on the Biden administration or the Trump administration. In fact, just this morning, we released an exchange where Twitter talked about vetting the accounts of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. And really, we were looking at the intelligence agencies when we were doing this research. And as I mentioned before, their conclusions targeted people on both the left and the right globally, again, including the Yellow Vest movement in France, the pro-Maduro accounts in South America, and leftist news organizations in America like Truthout and Consortium. Some of those people are my friends, actually. And we found those in intelligence lists that were passed on to Twitter, just as we found lists that included ordinary Trump supporters. Thank you. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate that. Because in some ways, what you just said undermines the premise of this select committee, which is that the federal government has been organized to weaponize against conservative voices. And of course, what you've just indicated in your testimony is, well, actually, that's not the evidence you found. No, I think this committee, my understanding is that they're concerned about the weaponization of the government against free speech, which is certainly over- Thank you. My time has expired, but I appreciate your understanding of our committee. I have a different understanding. I yield back. Well, you got the wrong understanding. Last week, in the full... But the truth is, we want to focus on protecting the First Amendment. Mr. Schellenberger, are you a Republican? No, I'm not. You got any pro-Trump bumper stickers on your car? I voted for Biden. Voted for Biden. You don't have any MAGA hats laying around your house, right? I do not. Yeah. But you said earlier, both you and Mr. Taibbi said, this is the most chilling thing you've ever seen as journalists. Mr. Taibbi, the same thing. You're not a Republican either, right? No, I'm not. You didn't vote for Trump. This is about protecting the First Amendment. Mr. Taibbi, I want to read from your Twitter file number nine. You say this. After weeks of Twitter files, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday, referring to the FBI. Here's what the FBI said. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency. You then follow up. This is why I think you're award-winning author. You then follow up. They must think we're unambitious if our sole aim is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the Twitter file. And then you go on to in this particular Twitter file and talk about what Mr. Bishop was just talking about, the GEC at the State Department. You talk about the CIA. You talk about the DOD. You talk about the FBI. You talk about DHS. You talk about the Foreign Intelligence Task Force, which is a combination of all these. But there was one agency you didn't mention because you didn't know at the time. One agency, one. You get almost the whole alphabet, but you didn't mention one agency, the FTC. You know about them now. Yes, we know about them now in an up-close and personal way. You didn't know then, but you do know now. December 2nd, as I said earlier, December 2nd, the first Twitter file comes out, Mr. Taibbi, and I think there are five others, including the ones from Mr. Schellenberger. December 13th, the very first letter that the FTC sends to Twitter after the Twitter files, 11 days after the first Twitter file, there have been five of them come out. The FTC's first demand in that first letter after the Twitter files come out is, identify all journalists, I'm quoting, identify all journalists and other members of the media to whom Twitter worked with. You find that scary, Mr. Taibbi, that you got a federal government agency asking a private company, who in the press are you talking with? I do find it scary. I think it's none of the government's business which journalists a private company talks to and why. I think every journalist should be concerned about that, and the absence of interest in that issue by my fellow colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low the business has sunk. There was once a real esprit de corps and a camaraderie within media. Whenever one of us was gone after, we all kind of rose to the challenge and supported it. That is gone now. We don't protect one another. What else used to happen? Democrats used to care about protecting First Amendment free speech rights, too. Now it's like, okay, if you're attacking... And I said this on the House floor. I said, don't think they won't come for you. Oh, the big tech, big media, cancel culture. They may come for Republicans and conservatives now, but the mob is never satisfied. They will keep coming. Mr. Schellenberger, you know who the chair of the FTC is? Not personally. Lena Kahn. Lena Kahn. You know who she used to work for? My understanding is the Judiciary Committee? Yeah, she used to work for these folks. The same folks have been attacking you today. Same folks. Chair of the FTC. Work for them. Here's what they said. Here's what she said in a letter where they ask about who these journalists... Again, they named four personally, four journalists by name. You were two of the four. As I said before, I think it's frankly courageous and brave of you to show up today when you know the federal government's got an eye on you personally. Here's what they asked for in that letter. Any credentialing or background check Twitter has done on journalists. Now think about that. The federal government is saying, we want you to do a background check on members of the press. Freedom of the press. Mentioned in the First Amendment. And they're doing best. They want Twitter to do a background check on you before they can talk to you in America. The FTC, led by Lena Kahn, who used to work for these guys, is asking that question. Now we know. Now we all know why. You guys said at the outset, this is the most chilling story. And you guys are New York Times bestsellers, award-winning journalists. But in all your time in the journalism field, this issue, most important. And how this... I think, what'd you call it, Mr. Shellenberg, this complex? What'd you call it? The censorship industrial complex. Totally. This web of censorship, big government, big tech, NGOs, all this web of censorship that Mr. Bishop was getting into in his line of questioning. That's what this committee is going to get to. And that's not right or left. That's not, this is just right or wrong. This is wrong. We know it's wrong. And it's about protecting the First Amendment. In part nine of the Twitter files, Mr. Taibbi notes that the main conduit sending requests to Twitter would routinely label these flags as violations of Twitter's terms of service. Even Jim Baker, a Twitter employee at the time, and someone who is allegedly a former general counsel of the FBI, stated, quote, but also odd that they are searching for violations of our policies. Mr. Taibbi, what was the approximate percentage of the FBI requests to Twitter being based on the justification that the tweet violated the company's terms of service? Ms. Congressman, I would say that that was a standard disclosure or a standard disclaimer in almost all the communications from the FBI to Twitter. There would usually be a line in there saying something like, for your consideration, we believe the following 207 accounts may have violated your terms of service. But notably, they were, they very rarely focused on words like truth or inaccuracy. Very often they use the words malinformation, misinformation or disinformation. And so I think they were trying to shift the focus from one idea to the other. I think that's interesting as well. What do you make of the finding that the FBI found it its responsibility to police violation of a private company's terms of service as a priority over policing violations of U.S. federal law? There were a couple of very telling emails that we published. One was by a lawyer named Sasha Cargill, where the company was being so overwhelmed by requests from the FBI. And in fact, they gave each other a sort of digital high five after one batch, saying that was a monumental undertaking to clear all these. But she noted that she believed that the FBI was essentially creating, doing word searches keyed to Twitter's terms of service, looking for violations of terms of service specifically so that they could make recommendations along those lines, which we found interesting. Do you believe it's the FBI's responsibility to police the terms of service for a private company? I do not. I think you cannot have a state-sponsored anti-disinformation effort without directly striking at the whole concept of free speech. I think the two ideas are in direct conflict. And this is a fundamental misunderstanding. I think of a lot of the people who get into this world, some of them, I believe in a well-meaning way. I think they're actually trying to accomplish something positive, but they don't understand what free speech means and what happens when you do this. It undermines the whole concept that truth doesn't come from, isn't mandated that we arrive at it through debate and discussion. Well, in fact, wouldn't you agree with me that the First Amendment is broader than Twitter's terms of service? Absolutely, yes. And wouldn't you also agree with me that the FBI is responsible for complying with the First Amendment, not Twitter's terms of service? I would hope so, yes. You also highlighted the presence of people like Jim Baker at Twitter. And again, I've noted that he is allegedly a former FBI employee. Part nine also speaks of a former other government association employees working at Twitter. What was the extent to which you found former FBI or other intelligence community employees working at Twitter? And did you find it odd? There was a significant quantity of people who had come from the intelligence world or who had worked at state agencies. In fact, that was a very common method by which members of people who are currently working in government would reach out to Twitter. For instance, we found an email by a current State Department official who reached out to a former State Department official asking that 14 ordinary Americans have their accounts deleted. That was in a recent Twitter files release. So yes, there's an extraordinary number of these people. A lot of them come from the intelligence world, which we did find unusual, I think. Okay. Thank you very much. And I yield back.
