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** The US Government's New 'Ministry of Truth': The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ([link removed])
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by Peter Schweizer • July 18, 2023 at 5:00 am
* A new interim report from the House Judiciary committee highlights politically motivated mission creep where we might least have expected it: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
* The agency went, for example, from, ensuring the digital security of American voting systems to censoring criticism of those systems.
* After the Biden administration was sued in federal court, CISA outsourced its censorship operation to a non-profit group funded by CISA itself. The Judiciary Committee report charges that the outsourcing was an implicit admission that CISA knew that its censorship activities were unconstitutional. CISA, meanwhile, said that it out sourced material to another agency to "avoid the appearance of government propaganda."
* There is more to see here, however, than just a thwarted attempt by a government bureaucracy to police the political speech of the American people in violation of the First Amendment. It is the use of funded or politically affiliated non-profit groups to do the government's dirty work for it.
* This parallels the behavior of the Justice Department under then Attorney General Eric Holder during the Barack Obama administration. The Government Accountability Institute did research into the DoJ's pattern of using "consent decrees" to force private companies with threats of anti-discrimination lawsuits to donate funds to one or more designated non-profit organizations on a list helpfully provided by the Justice Department. These groups were largely "social justice warriors" who would then use the money to exert political pressure. This practice was immediately banned by the Trump administration when it took office in 2017, but that ban was quietly reversed by Biden four years later.
* Not only that, but after the Biden administration took office, Vijaya Gadde -- the woman who, a few weeks before the October 2020 presidential election decided that Twitter should censor the New York Post's scoop about Hunter Biden's laptop -- became a member of CISA's "Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation" subcommittee. Gadde, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired by Elon Musk on his first day of owning Twitter.
* According to a report in The Intercept, this committee in 2022 recommended that CISA closely monitor "social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.
* What the Judiciary Committee's work so far has highlighted is the creation of "feedback loops": that an agency of the government can create and use advisory boards to go well beyond its statutory mission, giving it cover for exercising power Congress never meant it to have.
* How many more federal agencies are doing similar things?

A new report by the House Judiciary Committee documents how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency "has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries." The agency, under the administration of President Joe Biden and under the leadership of Jen Easterly (pictured), ramped up efforts to flag "misinformation and disinformation" on social media. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Mission creep is a serious problem in the federal government, and the ongoing investigations by House Republicans into "weaponization" of government misdeeds have shown how pervasive and deep the problem can be.

The FBI, Justice Department, CIA and even the Internal Revenue Service all look as we have seen, like tempting operatives for use against political opponents or to run interference for allies. But what about an agency that is supposed to protect us against cyber threats? A new interim report from the House Judiciary Committee highlights politically motivated mission creep where we might least have expected it: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

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