Twitterfiles #6: The FBI is not amused
The latest Twitterfile drop is from Matt Taibbi, and it focuses on the camaraderie between the FBI and the folks at Trust and Safety at Twitter. It’s not solely limited to the FBI, either; there were other government players, but the FBI was most heavily involved. In fact, we learn there were 80 FBI agents dedicated to the task of going though Twitter and rooting out “disinformation,” which seems to have been heavily focused on jokes.
I kid you not. Then again, tyrannies rarely have a sense of humor and I guess they don’t want anyone else to have a belly laugh, eithe.
Some excerpts:
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary…
10. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.
And as you read this next bit, remember the DOJ’s refusal under Obama to allow the New Black Panther election interference lawsuit to come to fruition [see NOTE* below]:
11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines: pic.twitter.com/cm9JjEXUSm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
As I already mentioned, one very consistent target of the FBI seems to have been humorous tweets, especially those involving the election. The campaign against humor extended to tweets from users who had very few followers. It seems that no account was too small to be stamped out for humor.
Also, classified information was apparently allowed to be shared with the FBI’s buddies at Twitter:
5.The Twitter exec writes she explicitly asked if there were “impediments” to the sharing of classified information “with industry.” The answer? “FBI was adamant no impediments to sharing exist.”
Here’s a summary:
44.The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.
Twitter was also riddled with ex-intelligence officers in its employ.
Some people are saying “Well, we already knew all this.” My answer is no, we didn’t, although we strongly suspected it. Now we know it.
[*NOTE:
I referenced this article about the New Black Panthers case, which concerned actual voter intimidation of an egregious sort. The article was written in 2010, and here’s an excerpt [emphasis mine]:
The [US Commission On Civil Rights] is investigating the [Obama] Administration’s politically-motivated dismissal of a voter intimidation lawsuit against members of the racist, anti-semitic New Black Panther Party. Career justice department lawyers brought and won the lawsuit, which was then dismissed by political appointees in the Justice Department, so that they could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Members of the New Black Panther Party, one of whom was an Obama campaign poll watcher and local Democratic official, used nightsticks and racial epithets to drive white voters away from the polls in a Philadelphia precinct. But the Obama administration killed a successful lawsuit against them, dismissing it after career Justice Department lawyers had already obtained a default judgment against the defendants (As a result of the dismissal, the only consequence for the defendants was a temporary injunction telling just one of the three defendants not to repeat his crimes in Philadelphia for a short period of time.) The New Black Panther Party, which attacks what it refers to as “bloodsucking Jews,” is recognized as a racist, anti-semitic hate group even by liberal civil-rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
After the case was dismissed, the Civil Rights Commission began investigating the Obama administration’s actions. The administration ordered the career attorneys who had worked on the lawsuit to remain silent and not comply with the Commission’s investigation (contrary to federal law, which mandates that “all Federal agencies shall cooperate fully with the Commission“), and refused either to comply with the Commission’s subpoenas, or to bring a motion to quash the subpoena (which is the appropriate step to take if a subpoena is somehow invalid). This left the subpoena and one of the career lawyers “in limbo” and in apparent violation of the law, forcing him to run up thousands of dollars in legal bills. (The other lawyer was transferred to the civil-service equivalent of Siberia to take him “out of reach of the subpoena power of the Civil Rights Commission.”)…
(The idea that the civil rights laws do not protect whites or apply to minorities was rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in 1976, in an opinion authored by the black justice and civil-rights icon Thurgood Marshall. See McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. There are limited to exceptions to bans on race discrimination for affirmative action, but they do not apply to voting, as the Supreme Court made clear in its 7-to-2 ruling in Rice v. Cayetano (2000).
Yes, they really cared about election interference.]
Why should the FBI care about actual crimes (with real victims) when far more dangerous thought-crimes (especially those involving humor and mockery) are clearly being committed on social media, not to mention hoaxes involving nooses? One is sadly reminded of the no-longer-Great-Britain, in which, for years, the police have spent far more effort and time tracking down citizens who post “mean” (i.e. non-woke) comments and memes on Twitter and Facebook than on arresting vicious Muslim rape-gangs preying on vulnerable young English girls. How far indeed is the Anglosphere fallen!
call it Airship one as in 1984 I call this leviathan, a sysgy, a word that suggests a seamless blend of two things corporate power, as in tech sector and govt agency, these dozens of ex law enforcement and intelligence at twitter, what is their allegiance to, certainly not the constitution,
what are the graduates of critical legal studies, like bell and de unger, who obama was mentored by, many of these ended up at justice, as court clerks et al, orientation, they dismiss that marshall decision as an oversight,
The FBI being so invested in rooting out jokes on Twitter reminds me of when the Ayatollah Khomeini famously proclaimed: “There are no jokes in Islam”.
As Neo noted, tyrannies rarely have a sense of humor.
Eighty FBI agents surveilling Twitter?
This is a massive violation of free speech rights by government action. What legal remedies are available?
Then again, tyrannies rarely have a sense of humor.
Great line.
I’m afraid there is only one real answer to your question Kate. Win elections. There are no legal remedies and no one cares – at least no one to the left of the people on this blog.
“In fact, we learn there were 80 FBI agents dedicated to the task of going though Twitter and rooting out ‘disinformation,’ which seems to have been heavily focused on jokes.”
I well imagine that they’re quite up to speed on Saul D. Alinsky’s Rule #5 of his well-known “Rules For Radicals” [and I quote] . . .
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
. . . and they are very determined to stifle any ridicule of their beloved deep state.
Eh, it’s the classic stupidity of bureaucracy. The FBI agents were given directions to go after election interference or serious misinformation. They give them a simple algorithm or vague guidelines, resulting in “the other party, remember to vote on Wednesday!” becoming a danger to free and fair elections. You never know if a Russian might be behind it!
The problem is that FBI is both a law enforcement investigative body for crimes already committed, and a counter-intelligence body expected to anticipate malfeasance and block it if possible. Senior FBI turns their minions loose with badly conceived objectives to please their political masters and co-conspirators and wasteful heavy handed buffoonery results. Trampling the rights of the people, big deal, we had to protect Our Democracy!
Most of these Twitter files revelations have so far been pretty mild as far as proving some of the worst behaviors that undoubtedly took place, the reporting team may never find clear documentary evidence that will truly shock people. We are all so cynical now because of the Progressive capture of every segment of the government, and we know the Progressive distaste for the systems of checks and balances getting in their way.
as pointed out in other threads, they are very diligent in blunting the threat of the ballot to their powerbase, I note the same incipient dross, is trending on twitter,
I have hope, to quote Sir Winston, that this is “not the end, not even the beginning of the end but, possibly, the end of the beginning.”
Yet another outrageous and depressing lesson in American decline and corruption that will again be ignored. Perhaps the coming Holiday news hole (ie, the week between New Years and Xmas) will find me diving into more proof that the “Deep State’s” Swamp is fetid and deeper than imaginable. Perhaps then….
Besides stomping on citizens 1st Amendment rights the Eff Bee Eye was also actively working for Democrats/ Marxists and their own Deep State elections.
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary…
Then 4. says that 150 emails passed between the FBI and Yoel Roth over an 11 month period. Well, … Roth is only one person, or was he thee person in contact with the FBI? That number 150 doesn’t seem like a lot to me, though maybe there were many others through other channels.
OTOH, almost all these emails are likely inappropriate or illegal.
44.The takeaway: what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.
Fusion GPS founded by Glenn Simpson, the weasel formerly of the Wall Street Journal, was a contractor to the FBI and, for a time, had complete access to the entire NSA surveillance database. Unbelievable. I’m surprise that NSA head Adm. Mike Rogers, who blew the whistle on this, stayed out of jail. And hasn’t been Epsteined.
TommyJay:
I don’t know whether Roth was the only one who got the FBI’s emails, but my guess is that Gadde (the Twitter attorney) got some too. They were the 2 head censorship honchos. This was in addition to 80 FBI agents working on Twitter, people like James Baker embedded there, and weekly face-to-face meetings with at least Roth and perhaps others. Perhaps also phone calls? Then of course there were other agencies of various kinds, some of them governmental and some NGOs, etc.
I’ve noticed that Taibbi is not the most precise writer in the world. Of course, he’s working under great pressure on this, including time pressure.
The only remedy is for the new House of Representatives to completely zero out funding for the entire FBI.
That will, of course, never happen.
Because Republican house members only care about bringing pork back to their districts so as to be re-elected.
The nation would be vastly improved if the Democrats restricted their antics to the same.
Let’s just rename them the Ministry of Truth and be done with it.
Once you’ve successfully demonized those you want to see disposed of, there’s no limit to what you can do.
“Legality” is defined as anything that enables you to dispose of those you’ve demonized.
As is “Morality”.
As is “Ethics”.
As is “Patriotism”.
As is “Decency”.
To destroy those demons, EVERYTHING is permitted.
Encouraged.
Legalized.
Trumpeted.
This is what is referred to as “The Soul” of the Democratic Party.
One might have assumed that those who really ought to know better would understand what’s going on.
But one would be, in all too many cases, dead wrong.
In their defense, one COULD make the claim that the “low dishonest decade” started almost 90 years ago, while Auschwitz was 80 years past; and who could POSSIBLY remember all that after such a long time has gone by…?
Rodney whitaker who went by the name trevanian in shibumi conjured up a corporate govt merger called the mother company (ht to janis joplin) they are the foes of the zen like assasin nicholas hel
Twitter as a corporate entity with tendrils deep in the government has become the mother company
“…The FBI is not amused.”
Neither is the Honorable Ted Lieu, apparently.
As Musk releases information on the Child-porn-to-Jan-6 switching tactics used by the FBI to artificially boost the number of “Internal (right-wing, of course) insurrectionists” being “investigated”. (The short version: That more agents are put to work looking for insurrectionists MUST mean that there’s a whole SLEW of ’em out there to be found!)
But Taibbi can take care of himself….
…along with the obliterating backup of an FBI whistleblower…:
“Taibbi Hits Back After Rep. Ted Lieu Calls Him A Liar”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-whistleblower-slams-ted-lieu-says-he-was-moved-child-porn-cases-focus-j6