Big Tech Has Met With DHS, FBI at Least 3 Times Since May To “Combat Threats to Elections And to Our Democracy”

By Daniel Taylor

Meetings occur amidst Infowars censorship scandal.

Roots of Big Tech “partnership” with feds can be traced to “Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016” signed by Obama.

As Buzzfeed reported last week, tech companies met in private at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco to “share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.”

What was not widely reported was the fact that on the very same day Homeland Security and the FBI, along with Facebook and Microsoft, gave a briefing to the the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors to “share information and actions being taken to combat threats to our elections and to our democracy.”

“Strong relationships with the private sector are a pillar of the FBI’s operational strategy to combat foreign influence operations,” said Michael McGarrity, Acting Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “Companies have a key role in taking action to secure their networks and platforms. Working together with our partners, the FBI shares actionable intelligence to better enable these companies to address any abuse of their systems by foreign actors.”

Facebook and DHS held a separate briefing earlier on Monday, August 7th. It was around this very same time-frame that Alex Jones’ Infowars was banned from Facebook and other social media platforms in a concerted effort to silence the outlet.

Infowars has infamously been linked to the FBI’s Russian influence investigation. McClatchy reported in 2017,

Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories…

An earlier meeting was held in May of this year at Facebook headquarters which included Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter. The Washington Post headline for the meeting was that because big tech “didn’t spot Russian influence” in the 2016 election, they asked law enforcement for help:

Silicon Valley companies and law enforcement are starting to talk about how to ward off meddling by malicious actors including Russia on social media in the November midterms, an attempt at dialogue and information-sharing that was absent during the 2016 presidential elections… Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Snap and the parent company of Yahoo and AOL, Verizon subsidiary Oath, attended, according to four of the people.

The biometrics tech website Mobile ID world speculates that Facebook could be sharing biometric data with the federal government:

And with both the DHS and the FBI having demonstrated a growing interest in biometric intelligence gathering, and Facebook having taken steps over the past year to use facial recognition to protect users’ online identities, it’s quite possible that sharing such data on potential foreign agents is a component of their cooperation.

Roots of this “partnership” can be traced back to December of 2016 when Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

As ZeroHedge reported:

Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.

“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”

Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.”

As big tech continues to censor political content ahead of the 2018 midterms, President Trump warned the companies that they “better be careful.”

You can read more from Daniel Taylor at his site Old-Thinker News, where this article first appeared.