The FBI has declined to identify how many social media companies it interacts with, defending their conduct after it emerged that agents from the bureau regularly visited with Twitter executives and gave over lists of accounts they thought dubious.
Officials from the FBI even asked for Twitter to provide up the locations from where the Twitter accounts were being managed, in a troubling action that many saw as an attack on the First Amendment.
One person targeted by the FBI, who goes by @Lexitollah, said: ‘Seems like prima facie 1A violation.’
Charlie Hurt, the opinion editor of The Washington Examiner, claimed it was ‘a blatant violation of the First Amendment.’
He told Tucker Carlson: ‘They were literally building up new back channels on platforms I’ve not heard of before, in order to keep in touch with one another.
‘If this was happening during the Pentagon Papers, and we were seeing this amount of coordination be
tween the federal government and press, there would properly be an outcry.’
Charlie Hurt, opinion editor of The Washington Examiner, claimed Twitter’s assistance with the FBI constituted a ‘obvious breach’ of the First Amendment
The list of accounts (above) had been supplied to Chan by the FBI’s National Election Command Post, and included the actor Billy Baldwin. The FBI asked Twitter for location information
Carlson added: ‘The FBI was working for a political party – the one in charge. How is this different from what the secret police do in authoritarian countries?’
The revelations came from a new trove of internal communications from Twitter, published by journalist Matt Taibbi, which showed that the FBI maintained persistent contact with company employees in recent years, frequently proposing user bans – including for strident Trump critic and actor Billy Baldwin, and what appear to be satire accounts.
‘Twitter’s interaction with the FBI was constant and widespread, as if it were a subsidiary,’ asserted Taibbi, who revealed the documents in a Twitter thread on Friday afternoon.
Taibbi alluded to a November 6, 2022 email from the National Election Command Post to the FBI, seeking for their help in coordinating with Twitter over 25 accounts ‘that may merit more action’.
One of the 25 accounts was Baldwin’s; another was Lexitollah’s.
The FBI forwarded the NECP’s request, which was threefold: to determine whether Twitter’s policies had been violated, to issue “preservation letters” in the event that legal proceedings were initiated against the users, and to determine “any location information associated with the accounts that Twitter will voluntarily provide to assist the FBI.”
According to an internal memo, FBI officials previously assured Twitter executives there was “no impediment” to sharing secret information with them.
Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, granted a select number of journalists access to the company’s internal records. The papers were the latest in a sequence of documents to be made public after Musk granted journalists access to Twitter’s internal records.
Between January 2020 and November 2022, the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety executive Yoel Roth exchanged over 150 emails, according to Taibbi.
‘However, the FBI has made a startling amount of requests for Twitter to remove election-related misinformation, including humorous tweets from accounts with little followers,’ he noted.
Those picked out were astonished, with one wondering how ‘an amoeba’ like himself made it onto the FBI’s radar and another calling it ‘insane’ that the FBI was ‘policing jokes’
A third said, “Anyone incapable of distinguishing between clear comedy and reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the federal government.”
New records indicate the FBI requested Twitter to ban actor Billy Baldwin, pictured above last month with wife Chynna Phillips, without success.
On November 6, 2022, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan forwarded a lengthy list of accounts, including Baldwin’s, to Twitter employees for evaluation.
FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan provided Twitter personnel a huge list of accounts for evaluation in an email dated November 6, 2022.
Chan reported that the FBI suspected the accounts violated Twitter’s terms of service by spreading incorrect information regarding the time, location, or method of the impending elections.
The list of accounts had been supplied to Chan by the FBI’s National Election Command Post, which accumulates and forwards complaints, indicating that the list may have been based on community reports filed to the FBI.
Baldwin, the brother of actors Alec and Stephen Baldwin, along with what appear to be various spoof accounts and the right-wing news and commentary site Right Side Broadcasting Network were placed on the list.
One account had as little as seven followers, while the vast majority of the 29 accounts reported by the FBI had fewer than 10,000 followers.
Baldwin’s, with 204,900 followers, and Right Side Broadcasting Network’s, with nearly 875,000, were the most prominent.
Two of the remaining individuals had more than 10,000 followers.
Taibbi stated, “It is no secret that the government analyzes massive amounts of data for a variety of purposes, including tracking terror suspects and creating economic forecasts.”
The #TwitterFiles reveal something novel: that government agencies such as the FBI and DHS routinely send social media content to Twitter via various entry points that have been flagged for moderation.
An employee of Twitter responded to Chan on November 8 in the morning, detailing which accounts had been suspended.
Twitter did not suspend Baldwin’s account, nor did it suspend numerous other accounts that the FBI had identified, including RSB Network.
FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan provided Twitter personnel a huge list of accounts for evaluation in an email dated November 6, 2022.
An employee of Twitter responded to Chan on November 8 in the morning, detailing which accounts had been suspended. Baldwin’s account was treated kindly.
This email discussion occurred after Elon Musk assumed ownership of Twitter at the end of October.
It is unknown which of Baldwin’s tweets placed him on the FBI’s list.
The actor is a vocal leftist and frequent critic of Donald Trump, therefore the incident provides little to support the fundamental charge of the so-called “Twitter files” revelations, namely that Twitter repressed conservative views covertly.
Nonetheless, it illustrates the strong relationship FBI investigators built with Twitter workers and raises issues as to how and why the bureau requested bans against certain Twitter users.
One of individuals identified, @lexitollah, who has 1,003 followers, expressed surprise that the FBI had noticed him.
My instant thoughts were: 1. Seems to be a prima facie 1A violation; 2. Holy cow, I have an account with the reach of an amoeba; and 3. What else are they looking at?
Another account, @Tiberius444, has 912 followers and a bio on Twitter that reads, “I am the Beer Master.” Because I said so. Don’t ask questions just do what I tell you.’
His Twitter profile contains an image of a squirrel with a drink.
He stated, “I can’t believe the FBI is censoring jokes on Twitter.” “That’s insane!”
Two days after Twitter staff responded to Chan’s email and detailed the activities they had taken, another email was received.
This one, dated 10 November 2022, was submitted by ‘Fred’ from the FBI’s San Francisco office and included four additional names.
All except one of those four are suspended.
The remaining account, @fromMA, has 9,163 followers and shares anti-Trump commentary, book reviews, and Elon Musk-related thoughts.
The ‘civic misinformation’ he was reported for was a tweet on November 8, 2020, in which he joked that Republicans should vote the day after the election, on Wednesday.
From a Twitter account stating, “Clowns to my left.” The user @fromMA tweeted, “Republicans, I want to remind you to vote tomorrow, Wednesday, November 9.”
However, the account was not suspended.
Another parody account, @ClaireFosterPHD, was detected by the FBI after the user declared she was a ballot counter and would count Democrat votes twice for every critical comment she received, after stating that all voters should don face masks.
She stated, “Anyone who cannot distinguish between clear comedy and truth has no business making decisions for others or working for the federal government.”
The relationship between the FBI and Twitter was long-established.
Stacia Cardille, Twitter’s director and associate general counsel for the company’s global policy legal team, sent a note to her employer, Twitter’s deputy general counsel Jim Baker, on September 16, 2020.
In September 2020, Twitter legal executive Stacie Cardille emailed her supervisor Jim Baker a summary of her monthly meeting with the FBI.
She provided a summary of a 90-minute monthly meeting she attended with members of the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to discuss election threats.
Cardille informed Baker that the meeting would become weekly shortly.
In her memo, she writes: ‘I specifically asked if there were any restrictions on the government’s capacity to share classified or other pertinent information with industry.
The FBI was certain that there are no barriers to information sharing.
Ahead to the 2020 election, she stated that 2,300 ‘high-risk politicians and journalists’ had been instructed to alter their privacy settings.
And she updated them on her work ‘to attempt to get this awful imitation account spreading 9/11 conspiracy theories while posing as a DCCC staffer whose father died on 9/11’
Cardille said, ‘Reported a specific Tweet about Illinois’ use of modems to transmit election results as a possible breach of the civic integrity rules’
In January 2021, the FBI provided Twitter a second batch of tweets they deemed suspicious.
The majority of tweets had the cliche “Get out and vote on Wednesday!” and had poor engagement, according to Taibbi.
This is what the FBI does with its time.
In March 2021, an FBI official wrote Cardille to alert her about ‘items’ that may be of interest, such as DHS bulletins emphasizing the need for enhanced cooperation between law enforcement and ‘commercial sector partners.’
In light of the 2016 involvement, according to Taibbi, the FBI became anxious and prone to overreact due to fears of Russian meddling in the 2020 election.
He asserts that they took advantage of the worries to impose excessive restrictions on ordinary Twitter users.
“It is impossible to emphasize the prevalence of the 2016 Russian involvement narrative as the declared pretext for expanding the censoring machine,” Taibbi added.
It is comparable to how September 11th prompted the expansion of the security state.
‘While the DHS in its ‘products’ criticizes ‘permissive’ social media for providing ‘operational advantages’ to Russians, it emphasizes that the ‘Domestic Violent Extremist Threat’ necessitates closing ‘information gaps’
He says that in October 2020, Chan contacted Roth to inform him of Teleporter, the FBI’s technique for accepting tips.
Twitter got information from state governments, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Stanford Election Integrity Project (EIP), according to Taibbi.
Taibbi reaches the following conclusion: “The ‘deep state’ is a complex partnership of state agencies, commercial contractors, and (often state-funded) non-governmental organizations.”
The FBI stated in a statement to DailyMail.com that their engagement with Twitter was regular.
A spokesperson stated that the FBI routinely collaborates with private sector firms to offer information on subversive, undeclared, clandestine, or criminal activities of identified foreign malign influence players.
After receiving notification from the FBI, private sector firms independently determine what, if any, action to take on their platforms and for their customers.
»FBI files reveal an attempt to blacklist actor Billy Baldwin and satirical Twitter accounts«