Twitter Files Part 6: Twitter, FBI/DHS Subsidary

Yes, it’s worse than we even thought. Absolute treachery. This is a monumental scandal made possible by, ironically enough, the Patriot Act.

“This is the scale of corrupt political compromise on both sides of the DC dynamic that we are up against. Preserving this system is also what removing Donald Trump is all about. The targeting of President Trump in order to preserve the system, the system that was weaponized during the Obama administration, is what the actions of the DOJ and FBI are all about.”

Sundance over Conservative Treehouse:

Taibbi begins by noting, “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.  This dynamic within the relationship explains some of the more curious elements that Taibbi struggles to fully understand.

Notice the timing of escalation by DHS/FBI: “The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.”

As we have noted from the lead into and out of the 2016 election, the surveillance state took action specifically to protect itself from President Trump.   This activity included the NSA, FISA court, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI while specifically and purposefully enmeshing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Protecting Washington DC from the risk President Trump represented was a whole of government approach.  The executive and legislative branches worked together and weaponized national security claims to involve the judicial branches in the effort.  In the aftermath of the 2016 election outcome, now we see social media being pulled further into the approach.

The next three paragraphs are key in this Taibbi outline:

8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.

Highlight: “security contractors,” now where have we heard that before?  Yes, the same FBI contractor access to raw/bulk NSA metadata that was discovered being extracted in the height of the 2016 GOP nomination contest.   In the aftermath of the election, and in coordination with the Twitter context, now those same security contractors are part of the surveillance system generating actionable items.

Keep reading…..

1. THREAD: The Twitter Files, Part Six
TWITTER, THE FBI SUBSIDIARY

By: Mike Taibbi, December 18, 2022:

2. The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content.

3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.

4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.

5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations.

6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.

7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.

8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.

9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.

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.

11. What stands out is the sheer quantity of reports from the government. Some are aggregated from public hotlines:

12.An unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? “You have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” says one former intelligence officer.

“HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts:

14.Twitter personnel in that case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts, including @fromMA, whose tweets are almost all jokes (see sample below), including his “civic misinformation” of Nov. 8:

15. Just to show the FBI can be hyper-intrusive in both directions, they also asked Twitter to review a blue-leaning account for a different joke, except here it was even more obvious that @ClaireFosterPHD, who kids a lot, was kidding:

16. “Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” said @ClaireFosterPHD, when told about the flagging.

17.Of the six accounts mentioned in the previous two emails, all but two – @ClaireFosterPHD and @fromMA – were suspended.

18.In an internal email from November 5, 2022, the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which compiles and sends on complaints, sent the SF field office a long list of accounts that “may warrant additional action”:

19.Agent Chan passed the list on to his “Twitter folks”:

21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter:

21.Many of the above accounts were satirical in nature, nearly all (with the exceptions of Baldwin and @RSBNetwork) were relatively low engagement, and some were suspended, most with a generic, “Thanks, Twitter” letter:

22.When told of the FBI flagging, @lexitollah replied: “My thoughts initially include 1. Seems like prima facie 1A violation 2. Holy cow, me, an account with the reach of an amoeba 3. What else are they looking at?”

23.“I can’t believe the FBI is policing jokes on Twitter. That’s crazy,” said @Tiberius444.

24.In a letter to former Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker on Sep. 16, 2022, legal exec Stacia Cardille outlines results from her “soon to be weekly” meeting with DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

Keep reading….