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Home » The Biden administration’s…

The Biden administration’s…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Department of Homeland Security plans to create a Minitrue:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday before a House committee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to combat disinformation and ‘misinformation’ ahead of the 2022 midterms.

What could possibly go wrong?

[NOTE: In case you’re not familiar with Orwell’s Minitrue, please see this.]

Comments

The Biden administration’s… — 68 Comments

  1. It is often said by conservatives that Orwell’s brilliant novel serves leftists not as a warning of the evils of totalitarianism but as a blueprint for revolutionary social change, and yesterday’s performance in Congress by the truly odious and pathologically mendacious Mayorkas (even worthier of removal from office than Biden and Garland) has demonstrated this in truly alarming fashion. Nina Jankowicz would seem to be an especially loathsome swamp-creature and fully as hostile to the very idea of freedom of expression as the hysterical employees of Twitter and their comrades in the MSM.

  2. Harmeet Dillon, who seems to be reasonable and well connected to the GOP end of the lawfare game stated that, “They are coming after Elon Musk and his Twitter acquisition.”

    Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but Mayorkas appears to be dramatically worse than Obama’s DHS head, Jeh Johnson.

  3. It should be known as The Ministry of Truth
    If they are going to use it as a blueprint might as well be proud of it.

  4. Are these Biden people so stupid and uneducated that they didn’t realize they’d immediately be mocked for creating Orwell’s Ministry of Truth?

    And I never liked the word “homeland.” That’s a British word. Bad form.

  6. Minitrue qua term is far superior to Ministry of Truth. For all the reasons. Don’t be fixin’ what ain’t broken. Sheesh.

  7. Cornhead: ‘And I never liked the word “homeland.” ‘

    I don’t mind that word alone, but “Department of Homeland Security” gave me a chill the first time I heard it, and still does.

  8. I always associated Homeland to Russia’s Motherland, and like Mac, it still bothers me. Reagan once noted that any new government entity that is created is never removed. This Board is one government entity that should be destroyed by Congress. Any representative that goes soft on it needs to be removed from office.

  9. @Mac: Especially since ‘DHS’ emphasized the lie inherent in the name of the reincarnated Department of War. What is a Department of Defense for if it doesn’t do homeland security?

  10. ‘And I never liked the word “homeland.”’

    Indeed. Give me the “Heartland” anytime….

  11. I remember my father telling me about the Japanese ‘Thought Police’. Seems hard to believe that such a thing could actually exist…

  12. This is very disturbing, but unfortunately inevitable, under the Democrats. They must, in their opinion, have total control.

    The Department of Homeland Security has always creeped me out, too.

  13. Has anybody under 30 even read “1984”? I am under the impression, true or false, that my class of 1988, was likely near the last.

  14. This strikes me as an illegal use of government funds for political purposes. It should be sued out of existence before it even gets going.

  15. jon, it’s definitely being read…but, as they say, the more recent readers have mistaken it for a DIY manual.

  16. Jason Chaffetz stated that this proposed “Disinformation Governance Board” is the US Government Internet Censorship effort 2.0. The 1.0 version, from 2011, was called SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act and it was killed in committee.

    Whoa. It was introduced by Lamar Smith (TX-R). Nominally, it was about piracy, but included measures to stop online misinformation. I don’t remember any of that.

  17. Boobah: yeah, exactly.

    John Baker: ‘Has anybody under 30 even read “1984”?’

    I’ve had many occasions, especially during Trump’s administration, to remark that if they did read it they didn’t understand it. And it wasn’t under-30s in particular, it was people way old enough to know better.

  19. Anybody here still buy the “it was a private company” argument regarding Twitter?

    Here’s hoping this backfires. But in any case it shows: for all the ink I write about foreign affairs and their ramifications here, stuff like this is the most imminent and dangerous threat.

  21. Not sure it matters whether or not it’s a “private company” if what it ACTUALLY does is put all its vast power at the service of a political party with which it is in ideological lockstep…and in so doing breaking the law…with the tacit (and not-so-tacit) approval of that particular party (which party is sworn, officially, to uphold the law it seems to delight in breaking).

    That way (corporate) fascism—AKA “antifa”, AKA the “myth of antifa”, AKA the Democratic Party—lies.

  22. Turtler, not I. Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest claim to offer unlimited use to anyone, except for pornography (which exception they mostly ignore), criminal activity, and credible direct threats of violence. They are, in my opinion, common carriers. Any charges of libel would belong to the people posting falsehoods, not to the carrier.

  23. And it’s just another shameless leftist coverup… This time by Twitter:
    ‘Twitter Misses Revenues, Admits “Over-Stating” Millions Of Users’—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/twitter-misses-revenues-admits-over-stating-millions-users

    And it’s Elon Musk to the rescue!!
    (But what are the chances he had no idea that the company was overvalued?)
    – – – – – – – –
    Compare/contrast…with another coverup…
    Or, rather, an un-coverup(?)!
    “Is Twitter “Burning The Evidence” By Unshackling Conservative Accounts?”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/twitter-burning-evidence-unshackling-conservative-accounts

    File under: Hysterically unburying–and madly resuscitating!—the bodies….

  24. “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” ” . Yes, it all evokes images of marble-columned edifices and jackboots, and Jankowicz – she could be the kid sister to Gretchen Whitmer, their appearance and determined, hard-bitten wrath is so similar. Who’s their mother, Nurse Diesel???

    “…to combat disinformation and ‘misinformation’ ahead of the 2022 midterms.” But: Where will they get their funding and their mission statement from, and who will decide their authorities? I foresee lots of court cases and lots of judges trying to weasel their way out of decision-making with ‘Standing’ and other flimsy excuses. This is the new Lawfare 2.0, in preparation for the ’22 election. File your cases early, Conservatives.

  25. Everything’s connected.
    What would they do differently if their stated (rather than their concealed) goal was destruction/transformation/transition/”equity”?

    Let’s look at inflation (First, kill the currency!…and twist the knife of relentlous anxiety into the backs of the citizenry).
    Compare and contrast:
    “Inflation Is No Accident”—
    https://compactmag.com/article/inflation-is-no-accident
    H/T Powerline blog.
    Opening graf:
    ‘President Biden is hanging on to Vladimir Putin for dear life. Earlier this month, he estimated that Vlad the Invader was responsible for 70 percent of the latest wave of inflation to roll over the United States. Back in December, the administration blamed “the greed of meat conglomerates” for Americans’ waning purchasing power. In November, it was the “anti-consumer behavior” of two oil companies….’
    Key phrases:
    “Inflation has always signaled a deficit of legitimacy.”
    “The Biden stimulus was wildly out of line with anything his predecessors had tried.”

    ‘IMF Director Admits “We Printed Too Much Money”;
    “Mostly we get lies, spin and obfuscation from central bankers, politicians and bureaucrats. But every once in a while, one of these people accidentally wanders into the truth.”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/oops-our-bad-imf-director-admits-we-printed-too-much-money

  27. Barry –

    I would bet that Musk suspected it was over-valued (he’s made mention of a goal of cleaning out the bot accounts), and that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t appear to be buying Twitter for financial reasons. Instead, it appears to have been a reaction to Twitter going after The Babylon Bee, which had recently interviewed him.

  28. Anybody here still buy the “it was a private company” argument regarding Twitter? Here’s hoping this [Disinformation Governance Board?] backfires. — Turtler

    They are, in my opinion, common carriers. — Kate

    A caveat to my comment below : There’s the law (not my expertise) and then there is the politics of whatever-we-can-get-away-with as practiced by Democrats. Not to be confused.

    Yes, but social media companies are private companies. And they can censor without much restriction. Maybe they can’t censor black people because they are black because of civil rights legislation. Not sure about that.

    Worse yet, this Section 230 stuff that congress gave them makes them immune to lawsuits over censorship or at least libel issues.

    There is statutory law for common carriers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile. The social media companies don’t have it. Interestingly, Clarence Thomas has spoken publically stating that the solution is simple. Pass a law making them common carriers. It really pisses me off that not one single politician that I’ve heard has said anything about this. Possibly there really is a good reason to avoid this, but I can’t see it.

    Another interesting thing that happened within the last several months is that some judge (sorry I don’t have any citations) wrote an opinion citing an instance where the White House (I think) suggested that somebody be censored in a social media account, and shortly thereafter that person was censored. The judge said that the company could have censored on their own volition, but the government is forbidden from censorship even if the action is laundered through a private company. In effect, the volition comes from government and that’s not permitted.

  29. It’s the gravest of threats to liberty and absolutely about control.

    The Left has already started to target and focus upon destroying Musk.

    BTW, anyone here have any idea what “irregular migration” refers to?

  30. Having said the above, just wait until Musk tries to fix things at Twitter. The Democrats will come up with all sorts of creative legal excuses that will tie Twitter in knots. That’s what I think the Disinformation Governance Board is about.

    So Twitter had few restrictions under Parag Agrawal but will have a ton of restrictions under Musk.

  31. “Worse yet, this Section 230 stuff that congress gave them makes them immune to lawsuits over censorship or at least libel issues.”

    That’s not exactly what Section 230 says. Here’s the text:

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

    It basically protects the interactive computer service from liability for content posted *by users*, not by themselves.

    I discuss the legislative history of this legislation at my post Do the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop Approve?

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/63087.html

  32. anyone here have any idea what “irregular migration” refers to? — Geoffrey Britian

    When Cuban anti-communists try to cross our southern border into the US?

    That’s a joke, except I believe there are in fact some special rules promulgated by the Biden admin. specifically to block some of these awful conservative people.

    I think it means that some immigration rules or laws are being violated or are in some kind of non-compliance. See this.

  33. david foster,

    Well, section 230 as you stated it, would in fact protect the company from a user libeling some other person online. Which is half of what I said. But that is interesting. Why have GOP congresspersons talked endlessly about the possibility of getting rid of 230?

    Following your stated logic, if a user is censored and can’t post anything, then 230 doesn’t have any bearing. Is that correct? But it also doesn’t protect the company from lawsuits regarding the act of censorship? Maybe such lawsuits are always moot for other reasons?

  35. david foster,

    I think I disagree with what you said. I confess that I stink at reasoning out legal issues.

    Section 230 excerpt:

    (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

    (2) Civil liability
    No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

    (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

    It may have been intended to address pornography or stalking related content. But all they have to do is claim that people like Donald Trump are routinely offensive racists, and it is case closed. Censor him. You are protected by Section 230.

  36. I re-read that excerpt a couple times.

    … material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, …

    Is it just me, or is that phrase “or otherwise objectionable” a loophole that is a mile wide?

  37. The drafting is poor (‘otherwise objectionable’) but legislative intent, I believe, was that the allowance of restriction under this section was intended to be limited..see the Stratton Oakmont vs Prodigy case, which was part of the motivation for 230.

    What I’ve often observed on Facebook is the FB appends its OWN ‘fact checks’ to somebody’s post (the ‘fact check’ may be generated by a third party, but it was FB’s decision to publish it in the context of a particular post. Seems to me that FB does *not* have Section 230 protection in this case, because it deals with their own post, not a user’s post.

    My concern is that if Section 230 were just to be eliminated, then not only social media providers but also web hosting companies could be liable for anything anyone said…indeed, even individual bloggers might be liable for anything said by their commenters. This could mean the end of political commentary by people outside the professional-journalist class.

  38. Orwell actually patterned 1984 after the Stalin regime and added some high tech futuristic elements and revved the whole thing up a notch. So the Left was the instruction manual for the book rather than the other way around.

  39. So there are two major facets of Section 230. One is the protection of what is posted and the person posting, but the other is the protection of the action of blocking or censoring by the host. Oh, excuse me. “Good Samaritan” blocking! One could eliminate the latter and not change the former.

    Of course, having done that, there would be a lot of porn, trolls, and really mean spirited stuff put online. That issue does come back to the old historical saw, “I’ll know what is pornographic when I see it.” Can somebody come up with something better that that? Or don’t bother?

  40. I’m not a lawyer, but as a lay person I think David Foster is correct in his reading of 230. Bear in mind that, in terms of the speed of development of the internet, 230 is an old law.

    Forget Twitter for a moment and think of how it applies to Neo’s site. She posts an article and has a comments section where we can post. Section 230 was designed to protect content creators like her from liability if somebody posts kiddy-porn, copyright encumbered works or other such illegal things. As long as she has a contact so illegal posts can be reported which she then removes she is protected from any liability.

    Beyond that 230 doesn’t address how she moderates her comment section. She can delete any comment or ban any poster as she sees fit. So, there are really two issues: moderation and the removal of infringing material.

    Twitter — and for that matter Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. — are in reality just comment sections unanchored by any article (as is an open thread).

    The real problem of updating 230 is how do you declare Twitter to be a common carrier and not get Neo’s comment section caught in the same net? Why can she have carte blanche in how she moderates but not a larger site?

    I think that 230 needs to be revised, I’m just saying it is not as easy fix as just tossing out a blanket ‘common carrier’ tag. Do we really want a system that would require Neo to bullet-proof and justify her moderation decisions or drop her comment section altogether? It is an issue that needs serious thought to solve properly. The issue of scale needs to be looked at in a workable manner.

  41. Actually orwell based a lot of the mechanics of newspeak on his experience with the bbc world service sadly

    Years ago i mentioned a certain muckraking reporter on another blog and he went after me, i didnt about secti9n 230 then.

    Dezinforma as these political officers understand it refers to the source not the subject matter so the new york times can never intentionally be wrong fox cannot purposely be right, unless it agrees with the times. See wallace shep et al

  42. Chris rufo cannot be right even though he presents source document michelle goldberg cant be wrong

  43. For those with understand this apparar is not that new except in scope it was called the creel committee in woodrow wilsons day

  44. It would be better if more people would focus their online political & other discussion on individual blogs, substack pages, etc, rather than on social media sites. Intelligent discussion doesn’t really scale up to a mass-participation environment.

    But, I’m afraid most people will prefer to stick to the Walled Gardens (guaranteed complete with serpent)…I’ve tried to get several thoughtful FB & LinkedIn friends involved in the blog world, but have had a poor success rate. So, I wish Elon Musk well on his quest to liberate and humanize Twitter (and also to pay off the debts and make some money)…hard work, but he’s done hard things before.

  45. Think of social media as bridges and road and the data as the vehicles you see how they have deemed anything thaf challenges the skydragon like anthony watts blog as unpassible same with other public blogs of certain viewpoint what they do openly saturate would make your head explode like the poor schlub in scanners

  47. They have incorporated the 1619 mind arson into the mainframe it is literally the dissolution of this country that cant be overstated.

  48. One doesnt knowing distribute malware in your own system, because you cause it to melt down.

  49. Sundance says that Twitter can’t be a profitable business without relying on US Gov’t computer infrastructure. I don’t know if this is true; he does reference Twitter’s recent $128M operating loss.

    He wrote “If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy.”
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/28/jacks-magic-coffee-shop-reports-2nd-quarter-financials-net-operating-loss-of-128-million/#more-232434

    I read on the web a theory that Facebook was started in cooperation with the CIA. Instead of CIA having to spy on citizens, people would voluntarily put their private info online.

  50. That was in person of interest finch the designer of an ethical dafa mining system

    Clearly zuckerberg designed for more mundane ends getting dates but it has metastasized like the plant in little shop of horrors

  53. Re: Leland wrote: “This Board is one government entity that should be destroyed by Congress. Any representative that goes soft on it needs to be removed from office.”
    Ditto, 100%!! But Dems won’t even consider that. They will be counting on the new “dis-info board” as a pro-Democrat election tool.
    Along with mail-in ballots, harvestors, dead voters, …

  57. I suspect that the First Amendment to prevail, after a quarter mill in legal fees. Per case.

  59. Maybe one solution might be a significantly modified version of 230 with rules that only apply to the big guys, meaning something like sites/apps with greater than something like 100,000 users. It could have language that states that once a site or app achieves a critical mass of users, new rules go into effect that prohibit blocking of users who express political opinions but still allow the blocking of users who post obscene content or other “bad faith” type users. The language would have to be very carefully crafted since obviously what one person or group of people consider to be obscene or bad faith may differ greatly from others. It’s similar to the whole concept of “hate speech”, which could mean any speech that a given person disagrees with.

    Obviously protecting the political speech of users while allowing the site owners some ability to moderate out the really bad actors is an extremely difficult needle to thread, and maybe it can’t realistically be done. I honestly don’t know.

  60. Nonapod,
    I was thinking the same thing but with the “bigness threshold” defined by companies with a revenue over say $100M. Your threshold might be better, though Neo’s site doesn’t really have “users” or subscribers.

    I don’t think I’m telling you anything new by saying this, but in your second part you are just rewriting section 230 part c(2) a little. Lord knows it would not be hard to improve it some. That’s really stupid language as it stands.

    BTW: ambisinistral’s statement that Neo’s site is governed by section 230 surprised me. That’s not correct, I thought. Oh, yes it is. (As far as I can tell.)

    In terms of general fairness, I don’t see why smaller web operators like Neo shouldn’t be treated differently than monsters like Facebook and Twitter.

  61. To be clear, that 100,000 user threshold was somewhat arbitrary, it could be a million or whatever.

    At any rate, it could get complicated in terms of determining what constitutes a “user” across different platforms. There’s a distinction between active users versus total users. For example, there’s a fair number of internet forum sites that have been around for literally decades that no doubt have well over 100,000 registered accounts (users) that have been accumulated over the years, yet may only have less than a 1,000 or even 100 regular or semi-regular users who still post or have posted within living memory. Also there’s spam bots that register accounts. It’s a somewhat tricky thing to define what’s a legitmate active user versus an orphaned account or a bot.

    Then of course there’s all sorts of unforeseeable, black swan type things that we may see in the future with regards to new technology and how events unfold in unpredictable ways.

    I might just spitballing here but one hopes that any modification of 230 would consider all these things.

  62. TommyJay:

    There’s a very big difference between a social media interaction platform and a blog. A blog is vehicle run by one (or at most a few) people who pay for its operation and use it to express their views. That person (or couple of people) provide the content and make all the decisions about content. Sometimes blogs choose to allow commenters who comment on that content at the discretion of the blog owner. It’s a privilege that the blog owner can limit or revoke at any time. It’s not an open social media platform – it’s essentially a vehicle for the expression of one person, with guests.

  63. TommyJay,

    I visited your link and the verbiage defines a term that IMO, is intentionally designed to be ambiguous. An “exhausted idiom”.

    “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.” George Orwell

  64. neo,

    “Sometimes blogs choose to allow commenters who comment on that content at the discretion of the blog owner.”

    That is of course their right. Lately, I find myself skipping over blogs and media outlets that have no comment section or that require I register before being allowed to comment.

    Far more often than not, the post or article overlooks salient aspects or makes questionable to faulty assertions. An inability for the reader to respond indicates at best a disinterest in feedback. Having to register, too often places one on their email list.

  65. I just want to add a “hear hear” to the post above. I come to this website, not just for the articles but for the free comments

  66. “Forget Twitter for a moment and think of how it applies to Neo’s site. She posts an article and has a comments section where we can post. Section 230 was designed to protect content creators like her from liability if somebody posts kiddy-porn, copyright encumbered works or other such illegal things. As long as she has a contact so illegal posts can be reported which she then removes she is protected from any liability.”

    My critique here is that she is the content creator of what she posts, but hopefully under § 230, isn’t the content creator of the stuff that she doesn’t delete.

  67. Apologies to those who have seen this from me elsewhere.

    I have been cynical by nature for quite some time. Comes with age, as many here will agree. So, why the establishment of MiniTrue within the dysfunctional DHS? Why now? Elections. If they don’t do anything, the Dems are likely to get blown out in November. And the 2020 election is going to hover very prominently over this election, and effect the 2024,election too. That is because esp in some of the states with stolen electoral votes in 2020 have significantly tightened up their election processes, making what was done extra double illegal. Our corrupt Republican AG here in AZ is now, finally, going after election fraud, including against the even more corrupt, Soros funded, Dem Sec of State. Took long enough. Point is that in 2024, likely none of the 5-6 states whose electoral votes were stolen in 2020, will have Soros funded Dem Secretaries of State. Most won’t have Dem governors or AGs either. And that likely means investigations into the 2020 election throughout 2022-2024. Except that whatever they find will be considered misinformation by MiniTrue, and grounds for prosecution by the corrupt FJB/Garfield DOJ as White Supremacy and domestic terrorism.

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