Chairmen Green, Bishop Probe DHS, Big Tech Censorship Laundering

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC) sent a letter to the Director of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center at the Center for Internet Security (CIS), concerning its work to facilitate a “misinformation reporting system” between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Big Tech, which was used to target and possibly censor Americans’ free speech during the 2020 election.

Read more in the Daily Mail.

In the letter, the Members state, “[T]he Committee is seeking information on the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) partnership with non-governmental organizations and social media companies that potentially suppressed Americans’ speech.”
 
The Members continue, “During the 2020 election, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) created a ‘misinformation reporting system’ that ‘allowed election officials to report a case of election infrastructure misinformation to a single source . . . .’ According to its after-action report, CIS employed the Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP) to ‘facilitate interaction between election officials and their representatives, CISA, CIS, and social media platforms.’ Specifically, CIS would receive a ‘misinformation report’ from election officials or the Election Integrity Project (EIP) and CIS would forward the reports to CISA’s Countering Foreign Interference Task Force, which would then forward those reports to social media companies. CIS claimed that 61 percent of cases it ‘reported’ up the chain to social media companies were taken down or labeled as misinformation.”
 
The Members conclude, “While both CIS and EIP published final reports describing their work, much of the process, particularly the extent of CIS’s and CISA’s participation in monitoring online speech remains unclear. Additionally, CISA officials repeatedly deny engaging in censorship, but the evidence uncovered so far suggests CISA has, in fact, engaged in proxy censorship through partners like CIP and EIP, circumventing Americans’ First Amendment protections.”
 
Read the full letter here.

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