The story got buried amid all the drama in the House, but the Biden administration just got hit with a huge injunction that is going to have huge implications moving forward.
Inside the DHS a group was formed called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
According to a report from the Hosue Judiciary Committee the group “coerced and colluded with private companies and other third-party groups to censor speech.”
The Judiciary Committee explored the abuse claims after Elon Musk exposed how the Biden administration was working with Big Tech.
From the House Judiciary Committee:
The investigation is ongoing, information obtained to date has revealed that the CISA has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries. The report also details how:
- CISA considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the United States.
- CISA moved its censorship operation to a CISA-funded non-profit after CISA and the Biden Administration were sued in federal court, implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional.
- CISA wanted to use the same CISA-funded non-profit as its mouthpiece to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”
- Members of CISA’s advisory committee agonized that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”
In response to mounting public scrutiny, CISA scrubbed its website of references to its domestic surveillance and censorship activities.
On July 4, 2023 a Federal Court ruled that the Biden Administration must cease communication with social media companies to moderate their content. The ruling forbade agencies like the Department of Helath and Human Services and the FBI from talking to social media companies for “he purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
It was a big blow and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision in September of 2023.
The Fifth Circuit wrote, “We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”
But CISA was not part of the injection.
However, on October 3, 2023, a federal court expanded the ruling to include the CISA, stating that the agency pushed social media companies to “adopt more restrictive policies on election-related speech.”
🚨BREAKING: We’ve just obtained an injunction against CISA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, that blocks them from violating the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
The order also applies to the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, and FBI.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) October 3, 2023
It was a big win and a blow to the Biden administration.
