House committee claims cybersecurity agency engaged in censorship
Daniel Nuccio
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According to a recently released report from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a little-known agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security has been violating the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.
Established in 2018 and charged with protecting the country’s critical infrastructure from cybersecurity threats, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, quickly expanded its mission to encompass not only the protection of critical infrastructure like the electrical grid or transportation systems from hackers but the safeguarding of “election infrastructure.” CISA initially concerned itself with foreign disinformation that could threaten U.S. elections, although later would consider mis-, dis-, and malinformation within the agency’s purview regardless of the information’s origins.
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Inevitably, this led to CISA engaging in surveillance and censorship activities despite being authorized for neither. Standard operating procedure at CISA, as described in the report, often entailed local election officials submitting complaints regarding allegedly false or misleading information to CISA or an organization with ties to it such as a CISA-funded nonprofit group. In response, CISA or a group associated with it would notify social media companies of the troublesome content for subsequent censorship.
Notable examples highlighted in the report include a tweet containing unedited footage of a Loudoun County official, allegedly sent as part of a campaign to discredit the official by an organization opposed to critical race theory, and a snarky post by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) concerning delays in the tallying of election results in blue cities.
A June 2022 report from CISA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee recommended similar efforts be targeted at mis- and disinformation that could undermine faith in financial systems or public health measures. The same report also recommended CISA consider amplifying preferred sources of information and fighting mis- and disinformation across the entire information ecosystem which would include not just social media but cable news, talk radio, and numerous other outlets.
Around the same time, however, according to the report from the House Committee on the Judiciary, as public knowledge of government censorship programs became more widespread and public disapproval grew, especially following the DHS’s April 2022 announcement of their short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, which many likened to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, CISA officials explored ways to better distance themselves from their censorship activities, as well as protect and improve their image if people learned of the full scope of what they were doing.
Some officials at CISA, according to the report from the House Committee on the Judiciary, suggested preemptively remedying these potential problems by better “socializ[ing]” CISA’s activities and “be[ing] proactive in telling [their] story.” Although these suggestions were ultimately rejected, CISA did eventually rework its website to downplay its goals to combat domestic mis-, dis-, and malinformation. They apparently believed that being more secretive about their actions would help build public trust in them.
Ironically though, through its treatment of the First Amendment as a technicality to be circumvented, CISA has given the public yet another reason to lose trust in their government.
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Daniel Nuccio is a Ph.D. student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.