A sketchy new report released Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government tries to paint an ominous picture of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Some quick background: In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security officially designated election infrastructure as falling within CISA’s purview. The agency has since been key in garnering insight and offering guidance to private and public entities on how to stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.
The issue of online disinformation came to a head during the 2016 presidential election, and it remains a problem in the lead-up to the 2024 elections. Of course, many Republicans these days rely on propaganda rooted in falsehoods to advance their political goals, so they have portrayed federal agencies’ war against disinformation as a war on conservatives.
That’s how we get to Tuesday’s interim staff report, which accuses CISA of “unconstitutional behavior” and refers to the agency as “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.”
That word — “censorship” — appears dozens of times in the 36-page report, which accuses CISA of “censorship by proxy.” In other words, the committee is claiming that the agency is engaged in censorship by merely sharing information (such as tips received from local election officials) with social media companies, because the companies could feel pressured to adopt CISA’s suggestions. But the “Twitter Files” conspiracy theory (also pushed by the “weaponization” committee) ironically disproved this by showing that companies can receive information from the government and still independently reach conclusions about content moderation.
However, the committee’s chair, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, isn’t letting the facts drown out some useful propaganda. He and his conservative allies have been building up to this report for several months now. ProPublica reported in March that Jordan had begun issuing “sweeping information requests” to universities and a think tank, in which he accused the institutions of participating in the Biden administration’s “censorship regime.”
On June 6, The Washington Post reported on Kate Starbird, the co-founder of an anti-disinformation think tank at the University of Washington who has faced online harassment over her work. Some of the documents Jordan obtained relating to Starbird appear to form the basis of the committee report’s dubious “censorship” claims.
For example, the report notes that Starbird formerly served as chair of the now-defunct Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation subcommittee, which the Department of Homeland Security established for disinformation experts to provide insight to CISA. The report cites communications from Starbird in which she expressed concern about public attention.
And reading the report, one might conclude Starbird thought the advisory board had something to hide. But at the time, right-wing conspiracy theorists were spreading lies about the disinformation work within the DHS — including the creation of a now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board. With that as context, Starbird’s words read as though she’s simply concerned about the public perception of the advisory board’s work — perhaps even concerned that its intentions would be misstated by bad actors. But not concerned about the value of the work itself.
On Tuesday, Starbird told CBS News that the report from Jordan’s committee “grossly misrepresented” her work and the advisory board’s:
This report disregards clarifying information within the broader record of our subcommittee’s communications and final recommendations — as well as my voluntary testimony to this Committee — to push a misleading narrative of censorship. Our subcommittee played no role in censoring any speech, nor did we advocate for the social media platforms to take any action to limit the spread of speech.
The facts are on Starbird’s side. There’s still no evidence of a government conspiracy to suppress right-wing views. Unfortunately, the GOP’s search for victimhood is not a fact-driven enterprise.