Tag: disinformation

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Bills of Suppression

censorship, misinformation, disinformation, surveillance

In 2021, Democrats took aim at persons who donate to Democrats’ opponents with legislation called the For the People Act, which Republicans successfully blocked.

Back then, Bradley Smith, chairman of Institute for Free Speech, observed that the legislation aimed to violate the rights of groups “who do nothing more than speak about policy issues before Congress.” It would also have limited political speech on the web.

Now the bill is being resurrected as two separate pieces of legislation, each with language purporting to counter the purported threat of artificial intelligence. They are the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the AI Transparency in Elections Act.

Some Republicans seem to be buying into the resuscitated anti-​speech agenda, even though the legislation incorporates many proposals — even much of the same language — from the earlier bill. Again, says Smith, the goal is to expose conservative donors to “to harassment and boycotts.” Also to outlaw content called “materially deceptive content” as judged by a “reasonable person.” 

Of course, “reasonable persons” can and do disagree about the meaning of various speech and whether it’s “deceptive.” It’s reasonable to assume that the legislation, if enacted, will be used against speech that enforcers happen to disagree with.

As for actually deceptive speech: all manner of jabberwocky is protected by the First Amendment unless uttered to rob or defraud someone. If I tell you the moon is green cheese and you believe it, that may be sad. But I haven’t picked your pocket … or made you eat lunar cheese.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders

De- and Re-certified

doctor, medicine, association, group think, censorship

“Around the country, a slew of doctors had board certifications removed and licensure threatened for sharing their COVID-​related opinions,” explains The Epoch Times, in an article devoted to one of those persecuted, Dr. John Littell of Florida.

Early in the pandemic, “Dr. Littell, a longtime family physician in Ocala and a medical school professor, began posting videos sharing his thoughts about COVID-​19 testing, treatments, and vaccines early in the pandemic,” Natasha Holt’s Epoch Times article narrates. “He was frustrated to find his content often was pulled down from his YouTube channel.” 

But the establishment’s efforts didn’t stop there. “[I]n January 2022 and again five months later, he received warning letters from the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), the organization that issued his certification for his medical specialty.”

His videos on YouTube and then the safe, free-​speech haven Rumble, spread “medical misinformation,” the board charged, warning that he could lose certification. But these were warnings. The board got a bit more serious and physical when they removed Littell from a public meeting, giving him the bum’s rush.

And then the board de-​certified him.

It’s a long story, but appears to have a happy ending, with Littell re-​certified and organizing a support group for medical professionals’ free speech rights, and the basic need to practice independent, patient-​centered medicine, and to disagree with the gimcrack “consensus” policies that establishment organizations impose.

While there are multiple medical certification boards in America, these are not free-​market concerns competing for customers. The government is heavily involved at every level. And the policies and “science” that Dr. Littell and others ran up against were not only political, but wrong — medically and morally. 

As we are increasingly discovering.

Which makes medical freedom more important than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Big Ask

Adam Schiff, liar

With Twitter in the news, and revelation after revelation coming out about how governments and politicians used the social media giant to skew public opinion with algorithmic fiddling and outright bans, let’s not forget Facebook.

Adam Schiff hasn’t.

Last week, the Democrat Congressman from California, together with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D‑R.I.), sent what amounts to an open letter to Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nicholas Clegg, urging Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous election denial content off its platform.

These Democrats worry that Facebook — Meta’s most successful product — might “alter or roll back certain misinformation policies, because they are temporary and specific to the election season,” say Schiff and Whitehouse.

Rollbacks on censorship, they say, “would be a tragic mistake. Meta must commit to strong election misinformation policies year-​round, as we are still witnessing falsehoods about voting and the prior elections spreading on your platform.”

Why “must” Facebook continue to patrol its platform, striking down or underplaying “unfounded election denial content”?

Schiff and Whitehouse assert that Donald J. Trump spreads “the Big Lie” and it would be a huge mistake to allow that lie to air on their platform. They don’t want Trump allowed back on Facebook.

It’s been just weeks since Trump was permitted back on Twitter, where he has not taken up his old hyper-​posting habits. Trump’s so far confining himself to his own “Truth Social” platform.

But as far as “the Big Lie” goes, would Schiff & Co. argue that The Epoch Times should also be censored? After all, in its coverage of this issue, by Frank Fang, the concluding section of the article was devoted to showing that Trump’s “Lie” might be in parts, uh, true.

Would Democrats ask Meta to suppress The Epoch Times, too?

Censorship is a hard habit to break.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The FBI Is Misinformed

disinformation, FBI, free speech, 1st Amendment

The FBI is misinformed if it thinks that prosecuting persons who misinform solely for misinforming is consistent with freedom of speech.

The utterance of false statements, whether unknowingly or willfully, is nothing new in human history. And such utterances are impossible to avoid in any kind of discourse — for example, political debates — in which people disagree with each other about facts as well as values.

Indeed, one often hears both true things and false things. We must evaluate claims as best we can, using observation, logic, common sense and so forth.

But, somehow, the FBI has decided that “misinformation” and “disinformation,” chronic in campaign ads, political pronouncements, and domestic quarrels, are a crime when communicated in the context of an election.

An FBI document leaked to Project Veritas wants to explain “What Are Election Crimes.” This document lumps misleading speech with such actual crimes as electoral fraud and intimidation of voters.

Robert Spencer has questions about this assumption for the FBI’s, ahem, Election Crimes Coordinator, Lindsay Capodilupo. For example, how does the FBI determine what is and is not misinformation? Will there be an appeals process given the fact that certain notorious so-​called “misinformation” — like the once-​upon-​a-​time contested claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop is indeed Hunter Biden’s laptop — has turned out to be true information?

And — most important — how can wrongspeak as such be classified as any kind of crime in light of the First Amendment?

Stay tuned for the FBI’s answers. But not with bated breath, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights First Amendment rights general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Just a Board Whose Intentions Were Good?

Homeland Security, censorship, spying, social networks, free speech, disinformation

They say it was all a terrible misunderstanding.

The Department of Homeland Security has caved and is now closing its new Disinformation Governance Board. Critics had been disinformatively saying that the board would probably be used for censorious purposes.

Au contraire, says DHS — even though the board was originally headed by an exponent of countering wrongthink about such matters as the “alleged” Hunter Biden laptop. No. Per DHS, this board really, truly, deep down, supposedly had only benign intentions.

When announcing the shutdown, DHS also announced that it has a bridge to sell you.

(Gotcha! DHS didn’t announce anything about a bridge. That’s just a bit of disinformation that I perpetrated with the help of my woefully abused First Amendment – protected freedom of speech!)

In May, DHS Secretary Mayorkas insisted that the board was no threat to free speech. The point was to address threats “without infringing on free speech.” Rather, the board would be doing things like disputing the strangely persuasive misinformation that the U.S. now has an open southern border.

Even early on, though, the board had been planning to coordinate its anti-​disinformative efforts with Big Tech social media firms, which have been censoring on behalf of government. And various government officials will still be working to delegate the nuts and bolts of violating the First Amendment to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, et al. No letup on that front in sight.

DHS may be ending its ill-​named board. But beware: its spirit and agenda live on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: This board was previously discussed in these pages on May 2, in “Homeland Censorship Board.”

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The Pushers

Brazil, disinformation, propaganda, media

They’re skulking around, speaking in furtive tones, lurking in dark places … hiding from oversight so they can do their dirty deeds unimpeded.

Who?

The disinformation pushers.

They grab hold of one or more incorrect propositions and, indifferent to how wrong it is to be less than infallible in their utterances, willfully communicate their blunderful asseverations to others.

Some pushers use encrypted services to peddle their verbal wares and evade beneficent censors who want only to help.

Public policy is one of the topics the pushers brazenly yap about. 

Result? Political discourse is a mess, with not everybody agreeing about everything, as they simply must. 

In Brazil, for example, where “Far-​Right Disinformation Pushers Find a Safe Place on Telegram,” experts worry that the Telegram messaging app “could become a powerful vector for lies and vitriol before next year’s presidential elections,” explains The New York Times. And that would be regrettable, making for “a tense political moment in the country.”

Thank goodness for the Times, eh? 

Now we finally know that people disagree in Brazil, sometimes indelicately. Even during elections!

Note the unmentioned presuppositions.

First, that there’s no far-left disinformation in Brazil, as anyone who peruses all the inaccessible encrypted messages on Telegram would know.

Second, making do by relying upon better speech as the only way to counter erroneous or dishonest speech is out of the question. 

At least according to the Times. 

Which, being in the Better Speech/​Better Press business, does seem a bit odd.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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