The unprecedented decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court of 6 December to cancel elections on the basis of claims of alleged abroad influence of “disinformation” on voting results is part of the process of closing the global censorship system. Censorship, declared by President-elect Donald Trump. Romanian case is just the beginning. It announces what will be happening in the future, it is possible that besides in Poland, on the occasion of presidential elections, under the pretext of "defence of democracy", "integrity of information" and "integrity of elections".
Report of 30 October 2024: FBI disinformation operation on Biden household proceeds trading
On 30 October 2024, the Judicial Committee published another mid-term study (Election Interference: how the FBI “prebunked” a actual communicative about the Biden Family’s correspondence in advance of the 2020 presidential election). The study describes how the national Bureau of Investigation, along with another entities, interfered with the electoral process and carried out an action disinformation the public. It was about misleading the trading of influence by the Biden household (compromising the contents of the laptop of the president's son, Hunter), among another things, by suggesting that the disclosure of these data was “Russian misinformation”.
However, it was in the essence real information – facts that were not meant to see daylight before the 2020 presidential election.
It is worth referring to the title of the study immediately explain the concept prebunking, the word commonly utilized in the organisation network fact-checking, self-proclaimed ‘verifiers of facts’ privileged by and predominantly sponsored by the authorities. This applies to both US and European actors.
How read specified an organization called Demagog: “Prebunk is simply a word frequently utilized in space factchecking. It comes from a word debunk (dismasking), meaning preventive disclosure and exposing expected false narratives, misinformation or manipulation techniques. Unlike fact-checking, reacting to any false message which many consider to be late and irreparable, prebunking aims to educate and instill society to face false narratives in advance."
We could briefly sign that prebunking It's specified a preventive effort to disarm alleged manipulation. In fact, it can take the form of preventive censorship if conducted by the service.
As the U.S. Judiciary Committee pointed out, the FBI did prebunking a actual communicative about the corruption of the Biden family.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020, at 5:00 a.m. east time, little than 3 weeks before the presidential election, "New York Post" published Articlewhich may have fundamentally affected the result of the vote. The paper described a pattern of the multi-annual trading of the Biden family's proceeds based on real information obtained. The boy of the then Democratic organization presidential candidate, huntsman utilized his celebrated name to supply abroad officials with access to his father in exchange for crucial financial benefits to his clan. This information was obtained from his laptop's hard drive. The national Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over this disk in 2019. Biden's Justice Department (DOJ) has since authenticated the device as evidence in a national court in 1 of the cases involving the usage of weapons under the influence of drugs.
Shortly after the publication of the article in the fresh York Post, something unusual happened. Almost immediately, major social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook censored the actual communicative of Biden's household influences. As a result, as the committee states, “million Americans cast their vote in the presidential election being unaware of serious, credible accusations of misconduct against 1 of the 2 candidates. This Censorship served to favour 1 candidate at the expense of another and wrongly influenced the 2020 elections. Today, these companies and their directors are late admitting that censorship was a mistake."
For disinformation operations, the FBI prepared large Tech companies almost a year before publishing the article, informing of Russian operations hack-and-leak And pointing out that the attack would be about huntsman Biden. This took place during more than 30 meetings with the highest management of social media.
"Starting in early 2020, the FBI launched a coordinated run to prevent the overthrow – prebunking – accusations of trafficking in the influence of the Biden family. national agencies have repeatedly warned social media platforms about Russian pre-election operation hack-and-leak concerning huntsman Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma. During many of these meetings between national agencies and large Tech, the FBI discussed possible operations hack-and-leak while talking about the integrity of elections and possible abroad influence operations. In response, any platforms adopted fresh rules on content moderation, specifically designed to deal with hacked materials."
As shortly as the "NYP" reported on the Biden family's proceeds trading in the morning of October 14, 2020, "Big Techy did precisely what they were prepared to do. Social media companies obediently treated the article as a possible Russian operation and applied their rules to average content to censor it, prevent its spread and hide from the Americans." The Commission added: “It was clear at the time, as it is now widely recognised, that the laptop was real and authentic. It wasn't Russian misinformation. The FBI besides knew this – it had been in possession of huntsman Biden's laptop since late 2019 and utilized it in 1 or more ongoing investigations in 2020. In fact, in June 2024, the Department of Justice utilized the contents of the laptop as evidence against huntsman Biden in his firearms crime trial. And yet the FBI not only prepared social media companies in advance to distrust the accusations of Biden's family's influence, but besides misled social media companies as to the authenticity of huntsman Biden's laptop after the article in PostIt’s okay. ”
It was added that "Despite the duality of the FBI, large technology companies are besides to blame".
Trump was right about Hunter's "hell laptop," although Biden claimed it was "Russian misinformation".
The sending of “NYP” interior large Tech emails indicates that everything was going “as planned”.
For example, on the morning of October 14, Facebook employees exchanged messages on this subject:
"• 8:37 a.m. of east time: "What happened in the sphere of burglaries/dishes ... is about precisely what we expected."
- 8:42 a.m. east Time: “It looks precisely like the burglary/leak script we expected.”
- 9:06 a.m. east Time: “Can we check with FBI Delaware if they have anything [about this] [...] The article claims that the FBI has had HDD [hard disc] since December".
- 9:09 a.m. east Time: ‘Exact content expected in the event of burglary and leakage’.
- 9:10 a.m. east Time: “As planned”.
Other papers propose that key employees of social media companies understood that their censorship would affect the elections. Therefore, in an interior exchange in July 2020, a associate of Facebook's trust and safety squad stated: "when we are called up to the hill [Capitol] to attest about why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say that we met from the LAT with the [US government] to plan this".
The FBI defends itself by claiming that it was a kind of exchange of information with private sector partners in order to prevent amorphous operations of "foreign malicious influence".
The Judicial Commission comments that "if the intention of the FBI was truly to aid social media companies fight real abroad influence operations, then the FBI should have made the most crucial data available to them: allegations of money trading in the article Post was based on genuine, reliable information, including information held by the FBI." Meanwhile, “the FBI did not. Although the FBI yet admitted that there was no reason to claim that the charges contained in the article Post were Russian misinformation – only after an FBI agent mistakenly revealed to Twitter that the laptop was authentic – The FBI continued to conceal the fact that it seized and authenticated huntsman Biden's laptop a fewer months earlier. As a result, Twitter and Facebook continued to censor the most crucial news of the election cycle, limiting the scope of corruption charges in the Biden household and yet bringing benefits to Biden – Harris' campaign. Twitter hides the communicative Post, removing links to it, utilizing ‘safety’ warnings and blocking the anticipation of sending it through a direct message.
Twitter abolished the ban on spreading past the next day, although the "NYP" account was suspended until October 30. Facebook manually lowered content by 50 percent to importantly reduce the probability of reading it on its own channel.
Meanwhile, Biden's team's triumph was decided by only 45,000 votes...
Censorship infrastructure, "election integrity"
The Commission recalls that "the roots of the strategy prebunking The 2020 FBI reaches the 2016 presidential election, followed by sensational reports that abroad misinformation affected the integrity of the elections. It was created – fueled by left-wing electoral negationism – a pseudo-scientific industry, think tanks and university centres to fight the alleged increase in misinformation and misinformation, which were meant to contribute to president Trump's victory. The FBI formed abroad Influence Task Force to coordinate activities with social media companies and prevent the alleged abroad misinformation from reaching American voters. She censured statements, primarily conservative to halt misinformation and promote democracy. The disclosure by the FBI of allegations of trafficking in the influences of the Biden household in the last weeks of the 2020 presidential election was only "continuation of erstwhile efforts to prevent president Trump's victory. It was the FBI who fabricated the evidence to support the unlawful surveillance of Trump's run associate. It's the same FBI that high-ranking officials were bragging about. insurance plan to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president and promising each another that he would They'll stop. It's the same FBI that removed conservative agents from their ranks and asked employees if their colleagues were supporters of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. There's no way to know what would have happened if the FBI hadn't ignored charges of trading Biden's family's influence. However, it is clear that the activities of the FBI influenced the 2020 presidential election. And they can no longer be repeated."
The Commission describes in item how, while inactive under Donald Trump's presidency, the FBI took action – under the pretext of fighting mis-, mal- and misinformation – to grow the censorship system, influencing the results of the elections besides in another countries under the pretext of ensuring their "integration":
Trump himself explained his decisions to increase FBI powers by being "new" in Washington and trusting the services. Now it announces that it will wipe them out and release any official, an agent active in censoring U.S. citizens.
In autumn 2017, the FBI formed, among others, abroad Influence Task Force (FITF). In the same year, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an interagency unit located in the State Department, set up by president Obama in early 2016 to fight terrorism, extended its mandate to counter abroad misinformation. The Cyber safety and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) formed the Countering abroad Influence Task Force (CFITF) in 2018, which in 2021 became Mis, Dis, and Maliinformation (MDM) Team, limiting freedom of speech not only in the US but besides in the world.
When the Biden administration took over, these censorship efforts only expanded. The Office of the National Intelligence manager (ODNI) launched the abroad Malign Influence Center in 2021.
DHS formed the Disinformation Government Board in May 2022. The MDM Advisory Subcommittee operates consisting of large Tech directors and pseudo-scientists dealing with disinformation.
The executive authority has besides started working with private and academic institutions, creating an “industrial complex of censorship” (I compose more about this in my book). The Stanford net Observatory (SIO) of Stanford University, Election Integration Partnership (EIP) is of large importance.
"EIP allowed national government to launder censor activities through university in hopes of circumventing both the first amendment and public control. This constellation of censor organizations, alongside large Tech, worked after hours to nominally secure 2020 elections before abroad interference. In fact, this meant censorship of election-related statements, including questions about the validity of unlimited correspondence vote. It besides meant vaccination Public opinion against harmful stories about Biden's household influence. After the FBI obtained a laptop with information on corruption in Biden's household in late 2019, it began to conditional large Techy to treat it unfairly as Russian misinformation."
The Commission and the Selected Subcommittee are to proceed to oversee the FBI's interaction with social media companies in content moderating. It added that “the modern marketplace must be free from direct and indirect government pressure. Government engagement will clearly distort the debate and lead to disastrous political results. A flourishing and functioning democracy depends on freedom of expression, so that ideas and viewpoints are successful and fail, depending on their advantages." This is what the first amendment requires – added.
Other investigations
Other more targeted investigations are besides taking place in the US Congress, including the impact of the censorship complex on the competitiveness of tiny enterprises (Small Business: Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex The home Committee on tiny Business).
The mid-term study of the committee indicated, among another things, that “the national government drove the censorship ecosystem, affecting not only the rights of individuals under the first amendment, but besides the ability of any tiny companies to compete online. The national government has financed, developed and promoted entities whose aim is to demonetise information services due to their lawful freedom of expression, affecting the activities, reputation, scope and gross of national companies." The Global Engagement Center (GEC), located in the U.S. State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has cooperated with the organization's network fact-checking etc. The investigation is due to proceed until 2026, and the reason for the long-term termination is the request to wait for any documents.
The Commission has established that national officials have cooperated with various start-ups, to test the mechanisms of automated censorship, mapping information space and marking entities allegedly sowing "MDM information" (projects Atlantic Council or NewsGuard, Global Disinformation Index, etc.).
33 operational tools were tested with 25 participating offices including GEC, DOD, embassies and abroad governments. 8 tests resulted in a longer implementation, while others resulted in an interest in a longer period of usage by participants outside the GEC, depending on the availability of funding.
Testbed technologies and their results from the analysis stages were hosted in a repository called Disinfo Cloud, developed with a grant of $1 179,000 from the Park Advisors award.
More than 100 technologies took part in the GEC method demonstration series, including “psychological resilience tools, information validation technology based on blockchain, verification of information based on crowdsourcing and social media monitoring products".
So-called artificial intelligence is utilized not only to verify content but besides to monitor trends, identifying anomalies in discussions, misinformation and misinformation and identifying their sources.
Data are collected from various sources of social media, microexpressions and another physiological and biometric data obtained from observing the behaviour of video users, assessing indicators of emotional context, projection and hidden expression and physiological reactions to stimuli. Millions of films are processed from global, publically available sources.
It follows, measures and analyses narratives, sub-narrations and basic content from more than 20 sources, including social media. It identifies, quantifies and traces narratives in large-scale media conversations. It analyses memes, automates communicative investigation on visual platforms specified as TikTok, detects and measures viral moments erstwhile they begin to appear before reaching critical mass.
The ‘artificial intelligence’ shall be utilized to identify the most influential ‘actors’ in any set of cumulative or recently collected data, to identify links, to find hidden activities and to identify sponsors.
Data sets from physical, information and cognitive dimensions are integrated utilizing geospatial contextualisation.
It uses social media and temper analysis to get data to make behavioral change campaigns that solve mark problems. It fights misinformation, utilizing local influencers. Many of these operations affect United States government agencies: DOD, DOJ, FBI, DHS, CISA, GSA, USAID and USAGM.
Negative consequences in Europe
All these activities are not limited to the US market. They already have negative consequences in Europe. due to posts posted on social media Condemns thousands of people are jailed, for example, in the UK, while any are awaiting conviction due to the deficiency of place in prisons – by the way, emptied of real criminals – for critical remarks about the killing of 3 girls in 1 of the dance schools by the British with Rwandan roots in the summertime of 2024 (the riot of the turn of July and August 2024).
But there are besides actions specified as the decision of the Romanian tribunal to annul elections (previously the same body ordered re-numbered votes) due to the consequence And a ballot tour favorable to the candidate of the extremist right, who was to be promoted by TikTok.
Let's put together the authoritative end position Biden's administration on this issue. In a message issued by U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on 6 December, the United States stressed the importance of "the integrity of elections" and the democratic will of the Romanian people. "The U.S. stands on the side of the Romanian people, which faces unprecedented situation regarding the integrity of elections. Romanians must be certain that their elections reflect the democratic will of the Romanian people and are free from alien bad influences aimed at undermining the integrity of the elections. The integrity of elections in Romania is of paramount importance for the hard-earned democracy of the Romanians. It's the choice of the Romanian people. No another country or abroad entity has specified a right,” says the U.S. State Department press release.
Biden's administration supported the Constitutional Court's ruling and expressed assurance in the democratic institutions of Romania and ongoing investigations into alleged Russian interference in elections
Meanwhile, the prosecution, despite raids on the homes of sympathizers of the right-wing candidate, is incapable to find any evidence to support earlier claims of alleged Russian misinformation.
President-elect U.S. boy Donald Trump Jr. commented in a post on X: “The Constitutional Tribunal just cancelled the first circular of presidential elections. Another effort by Soros/marksists to fake results and deny the will of the people. She will neglect and they know it.”
In a post on X, in view of the situation in Romania, Ursula von der Leyen expressed her commitment to guarantee that digital platforms comply with the requirements of the Digital Services Act (DSA). She announced that action would be taken towards platforms to prevent abroad influence on the "integration of elections" in another European countries in 2025.
Romania's president Iohannis besides posted a message on social media after a telephone conversation with Ursula von der Leyen, stating: "We agreed that we must strengthen social media safety after the elections in our country".
Klaus Iohannis said he would stay in office until his successor was sworn in, which could take respective months.
The decision to cancel the election was made after the papers presented at the gathering of the ultimate National Defence Council on 28 November were declassified. However, Ukrainian intelligence claims of alleged Russian interference in the Romanian electoral process were not confirmed.
Foreign media are helping to find “proofs”. Bloomberg cites a study prepared by Reset Tech and Check First, Facebook and Instagram social networks to be utilized in the presidential run to spread polarizing political messages.
The French paper “Le Monde” suggests that “FA Agency” played a role, a marketing company from South Africa, whose office are to be located in Warsaw. ‘FA Agency’ is to have ‘a network of 10 accounts consisting of influencers and marketing professionals. Its employees are mostly Ukrainians, associated with the planet of "affiliation marketing", a semi-legal and highly developed net advertising sector in Ukraine".
Agnieszka Stelmach
Censorship and disinformation of services against citizens. Shocking legislature Reports [1]
