Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas is coming under more fire for a possible coverup.
DHS has reportedly been working with social media outlets to censor "disinformation."
As we now know, these efforts were mostly centered around silencing conservative critics.
Now, watchdog groups believe the agency is burying evidence that it was taking part in such activities.
The Cover Up
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is the agency that was tasked with battling misinformation regarding elections, COVID vaccines, and a range of other issues.
Mike Benz, the Foundation for Freedom Online's executive director, believes the agency is now going into overdrive to cover up its efforts to monitor domestic content, reports Fox News.
The problem is that the agency is supposed to be monitoring "foreign influence operations and disinformation … targeting election infrastructure," not average Americans.
That page on its website, however, has only recently been updated. The previous page said that it monitored "foreign and domestic threat actors [using] MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division."
The website also previously offered more information how this took place, stating that it worked "in close coordination with interagency and private sector partners, social media companies, academia, and international partners on a variety of projects to build resilience against malicious information activities."
Now that the GOP is investigating social media outlets for their coordination with the government, does anyone really think it is a coincidence that the verbiage has been changed?
The domestic monitoring started when the pandemic hit, but that now just looks like it was the excuse the agency wanted to start operating domestically.
Jen Easterly, who President Biden appointed as director of CISA, admitted as much during a 2021 interview, stating, "One could argue we're in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important."
Benz stated, "CISA pulled a fast one on the American public by setting up a social media censorship division in the name of fighting foreign influence, but then quickly seizing long-arm jurisdiction over domestic opinions online as well.
"CISA officials knew they lacked the legal authorization to do what they did. Now, CISA appears to be burying the evidence of its domestic censorship activities, right as oversight of potential malfeasance is heating up."
Republicans have not missed this move, with Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) stating, "CISA's stealth course correction raises more questions than answers about the focus and priorities of the agency. CISA should be acutely focused on protecting critical infrastructure against foreign threats, not on domestic censorship of Americans.
"It's unacceptable, point blank. CISA can expect inquiries from the Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Subcommittee to ensure that it does not deviate from its critical mission."
Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public's Trust, stated, "At the same time DHS was assuring the American public that all of their disinformation activities were legitimate and above-board, it appears they were also secretly scrubbing their website of mentions of the actions people were objecting to.
"Are they truly altering their behavior or just trying to hide information they don't want us to know about? Either way, it appears to be a tacit admission that what they were doing could have been infringing on the rights of American citizens, which goes a long way toward explaining the precipitous decline of trust in the federal government."
CISA, of course, says that it was doing nothing wrong. That the changes were nothing more than a "recent redesign" of the website.
I think it is safe to say that most Americans have lost trust, so that denial will largely fall on deaf ears.
