by Frank Holmes, reporter
You may have thought you had a First Amendment right to say anything you like, but the Biden administration thinks otherwise.
The federal government has invested in a massive technological network that would allow government agents to monitor everything you write—in email, online forums, or private messages to other users—and suppress any ideas you share that they consider “disinformation”
Experts who looked into the federal grants, which reach back at least through the entire Biden administration, say the government is creating an apparatus of censorship that would touch every subject in public debate… and potentially put the bullseye on you.
The details came to light in a blockbuster exposé and deep-dive investigative research article in The Federalist.
“Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens,” writes legal correspondent Margot Cleveland. “Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.”
The foundation is being laid through government grants driving two new technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) undertakings.
AI “allows machines to model, or even improve upon, the capabilities of the human mind,” explains BuiltIn.com, while ML studies patterns in things human beings write—and researchers say it can describe its content, predict what you will write next, or “make suggestions about” what you should write.
Biden thinks these technologies are the wave of future censorship—and is closing your mouth with handfuls of your own money.
The Federalist tracked more than 500 grants related to “misinformation” and “disinformation” going back to 2020 and found the government and Big Tech have colluded to create an enormous, taxpayer-funded “Censorship Complex.”
For instance, the government gave almost $1 million to Omelas Inc., which combs through information posted everywhere from “the most influential newspapers, TV channels, government offices, militant groups, and more across a dozen social networks and messaging apps,” to “thousands of websites, and thousands of RSS feeds.”
But the feds don’t plan to restrict themselves to major media organizations and “militant” groups. The government gave another $49,000 to the Alethea Group, which Cleveland reports, watches “mainstream and ‘fringe’ social media platforms, peer-to-peer messaging platforms, blogs and forums, state-affiliated media sites, ‘gray’ propaganda sites, and the dark web.”
In other words, they’re watching everything you write on Facebook, Twitter, and Truth Social—but also Telegram, Reddit, and Discord. And they’re watching the messages you send to your friends and family.
What do they want with all that information?
PeakMetrics received multiple grants, including one paying the firm for “rapid assessment and quantification of disinformation” for the Defense Department.
We know the government “asks” Big Tech to remove the “disinformation” after finding it.
These grants don’t plan to focus just on Russia or China; they’re looking at U.S. citizens’ private communications with each other.
The messages don’t have to be false to be classified as “misinformation” or “disinformation.” During COVID, the government flagged private users’ posts saying that natural immunity protects people… and even flagged posts pointing out that there were runs on grocery stores.
All of these were true, but they went against the government’s narrative, so the government tried to swat them down… and they plan to do the same on a mass scale, says Cleveland—and they don’t plan to stop at pandemic-related information.
“Speech on any topic, touching even tangentially on America’s “power, influences, and interests,” will be fair game for censorship efforts,” writes Cleveland.
For instance, after the run on a well-connected Silicon Valley bank, Senator Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., asked whether there was “a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”
Kelly isn’t alone; every liberal in Washington is all in, warns a First Amendment advocate.
“At every relevant Congressional hearing I watched over the last 3 years, Dems explicitly defended various regimes of censorship,” said Glenn Greenwald, a left-wing journalist who believes in the value of free speech. “Under Trump, when Dems controlled Congress, they repeatedly summoned tech CEOs and threatened them with reprisals if they don’t censor more.”
After Elon Musk released the Twitter Files, which showed the Deep State demanding social media platforms to take down posts that went against the government narrative and to ban account users who regularly engage in thoughtcrime, Republicans were outraged. But “virtually every Dem –explicitly – defended Big Tech’s collaboration with CIA/FBI,” Greenwald pointed out.
The phrase "free speech" — and, increasingly, the values it represents — absolutely now codes as a right-wing marker in US politics.
At every relevant Congressional hearing I watched over the last 3 years, Dems explicitly defended various regimes of censorship. https://t.co/tMx6oWw3Vf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 23, 2023
What hope do we have?
Cleveland hopes that “enough ordinary Americans will hear the message before it is too late and demand Congress close the Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”