"... since January of 2020, according to the sixth installment of the 'Twitter Files' released Friday. Independent journalist Matt Taibbi described the FBI’s relationship with Twitter as having a 'master-canine quality' with 'constant and pervasive' contact between the bureau and the social media giant.... Friday’s Twitter Files also revealed that the company participated in monthly meetings with not only the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, but also with the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.... Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists,' Taibbi summed up in a tweet following the file drop, 'the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.' The FBI told the Post on Friday that it... 'regularly engages with private sector entities... [which] independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them'...."
ALSO: There's this other article in the NY Post: "Twitter’s top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees" ("More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in October").
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71 comments:
Anyone that supports this regime at this point is just a fascist piece of shit.
Remember the old "sources and methods" canard the FBI always trotted out to hide things? Well, here they are!
But the election was totally secure and legit according to the FBI.
J6 was also international terrorism according to the FBI.
Spec. Agent Elvis Chan's pronouns are he/him/his. Super important detail in case everyone overlooked that. Just fyi.
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I notice AA's editorial decision to leave out part of the FBI's quote.
The deleted part is important: "The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities ... "
But that's not the scenario here. They are flagging people for violating Twitter's TOS and not accusing them of being "foreign malign influence actors." Why leave that out?
The FBI is the Progressive gestapo. It is clear as day for anybody with eyes that can see.
Notice what is important to the FBI. Silencing us. Not pedophiles, Epstein Island perverts, corrupt politicians, real terrorism from Antifa types, ect..ect..ect... All they want is to silence the right. Ask yourself WHY??!!!
From the comment section...."The more we learn, the more we seen that the GOP have been collaborators. Notice how silent they are? Our own government is a bigger threat to our security even than the unknown illegal aliens the government is letting in by the million."
When the hell is America going to wake up??
Mark Felt should have taught us all we needed to know about the FBI when he bragged about being "Deep Throat" in Watergate,
"'the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation."
That the deep state conducted surveillance, particularly to squash any eruptions of deplorableness, we knew. But the sheer petty detail its still striking. The regime is obsessed.
So, lawyers, if private speech is suppressed by a private company at the clear request of a governmental entity, does that violate any basic rights? If so, what recourse do the suppressees have?
Give it the Carthage treatment- salting the ground where the razed J Edgar Hoover building once existed and leaving it unbuilt upon as an unlisted memorial would be a fitting end to the FBI.
In a just world, every member of the FBI would be executed along with their families, as a warning to the next ten generations.
In the interesting part of Taibbi and Walter Kirn podcast they discuss how was it possible that so many bright young people could become what Twitter had become. No humor; where was the American, independent streak of questioning authority? Or has that so called American spirit been a myth? All the conformity surrounding covid, for one, suggest that we, Americans, for the most part just do what we are told. They go into some artistic parallels found in movies and theater.
link to podcast which i recommend you listen to at 1.5x regular speed. Matt wants to be careful about what he says so he pauses sometimes. (may need to subscribe to listen to it, I think it will be available on YouTube a few days after original posting)
Matt also goes a little bit into why it may take a while to finish it.
This seems like a massive conspiracy on the part of the government to deny citizens their civil rights. Every user that the FBI flagged should have standing to file suit. Time for this to end.
"The FBI is the Progressive gestapo. It is clear as day for anybody with eyes that can see."
I don't know about "progressive," but, otherwise, "'twas always thus." Jay Eddie "the Hoov" was an autocratic bully. The careerist bureaucrats that have succeeded him carry on the institutional malfeasance. (And they're not even the worst of the federal "lawnodor" bureaucracies. The CIA? Hoo boy! Talk about 'chur Gestapo!)
American FBI = Putin-like KGB.
Ironic.
People might submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to all the federal spy agencies to reveal their actions directed toward citizens rather than foreign nationals. The spy agencies traditionally had very, very, very high legal standards (on paper) for tracking US citizens...but they were free to spy on foreign nationals. That alone could explain why the Democratic Party claimed there were Russians behind every trashcan and under every leaf.
Even the bloody ACLU complains about warrantless federal eavesdropping (following the G. W. Bush Patriot Act era):
https://www.aclu.org/other/illegal-domestic-spying
"Every user that the FBI flagged should have standing to file suit."
Standing? You mean like all those people who had their votes essentially cancelled by other, unverifiable, "votes"? That sort of standing?
what does wray know, and when did he know it.
So which one of y'all is the fed?
I was saying to my kids earlier today: It used to be ridiculous to think the FBI had time to monitor every little thing. People who thought they were doing it were paranoid. But now it turns out...no! They have time to monitor every little thing and every little person.
How alarming!
Also....do you think they flag things to newspapers and magazines? Is there and FBI unit monitoring the NYTs and emailing them to remove content when they get it wrong (according to the FBI)?
People keep going on about the FBI didn't force Twitter to do anything, so no crime.
From what I've seen, they didn't have to. It was all volunteer, junior G-men help chasing down the evvvil Nazis. The FBI have always been good at having "informants and volunteers" do the dirty work.
This is what it is like to live in a shit hole country.
Matt Taibbi responds to the criticism from some journalist about what he is NOT doing at Twitter.
This morning highlights were passed on to me by friends. The gist was expressed by MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, who’s taken over the role of Ardent Establishment Moralist from Rachel Maddow, who had a firm grip on it until she spent three years bollocking the Trump-Russia story. Mehdi’s had a raging cable-on for all things Elon Musk for a while, apparently. Here’s a tweet from yesterday:
a tweet from Mehdi Hasan:
Is this a joke? Taibbi is doing a new Twitter Files thread while continuing to ignore what Musk has done to journalists on this platform for the past 24 hours? Even Weiss has called him out, but Taibbi seems to want to tweet through it. Wow.
Back to Matt Taibbi:
I actually wasn’t silent about it (see last night’s Substack piece), but even if I had been, so what? These Twitter Files stories that are coming out are getting at issues that have nothing to do with Elon Musk, Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar, Barney the Dinosaur, or anyone else.
This is a chance for ordinary Americans to see, from the inside, how their tax dollars have been spent building an elaborate, systematized method of censorship and opinion control, with agencies like the DHS and the DOJ/FBI at the helm. These “enforcement” agencies are not fighting or investigating crime (or even, say, terror plots), they’re just collecting domestic intelligence on a grand scale, and seeking to distort the public’s perception of reality through mass moderation, via programs we’ve been told little to nothing about.
Hasan believes that just as we’re getting this state-sponsored mass-censorship program in our sights, I should stop, beat my breast on Twitter about an unrelated topic every other corporate journalist in the world is already wailing about, and make the story about me at exactly the moment we’ve found good reason for people to focus their attention on agencies like the FBI and the DHS...
click here for the rest of it
Time for another Church Committee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
I have a story about the FBI from the 60's. My mother who was an attorney was invited to a John Birch Society meeting by one of her clients who wanted to assure her it was not an anti-Semitic organization. She went. The next day she got a call from a local FBI agent asking what she was doing there. She was an active ACLU person back when they were in favor of freedom of association and free speech. She asked him how he knew she was there. He did not answer. When she told us about it, my father remarked that not a sparrow can fall without the government knowing.
As Assistant Attorney General for the Organized Crime Division, James J Wells, famously said in “Absence of Malice”…”That’s not his job. His job is to abide by and enforce the law.”
He's a Stasi
She's a Stasi
I'm a Stasi
We're all Stasi
Wouldn't you like to be a Stasi too?
Be a Stasi, snitch on your neighbors,
Be a Stasi, snitch on your neighbors...
It's bizarre to see some of the accounts the FBI wanted looked at for jokes like, "[Other political party], remember to vote on Wednesday!", accounts with less than 500 followers.
From what I read of the committee, nothing happened.
From what I read not a damn thing happened after that committee?
Jay Quenel said...
People keep going on about the FBI didn't force Twitter to do anything, so no crime.
From what I've seen, they didn't have to. It was all volunteer, junior G-men help chasing down the evvvil Nazis.
NY Post: Twitter’s top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini
Unfortunately the education establishment has failed in educating Americans on 20th century history. Trump an MAGA supporters are not the fascists. This relationship between America's deep state and big tech is classic fascism. And most Americans are too stupid to realize it.
But at least we're moving on from Donald Trump, right? Unbelievable. The one guy out there furthest from fascism. America's downfall can be blamed on pure ignorance and stupidity. Especially among the highly credentialed.
FBI = Ministry of Truth
How upset do you think they were when DHS tried to intrude on their turf?
The FBI assures you the FBI has done nothing wrong.
And if you doubt that, the FBI's assurance will be in tomorrow's NYT.
Now go pay your taxes.
Remember when James Clapper went on Capital Hill and committed perjury telling the US Congress that the FBI/CIA/NSA don't spy on America. And Edward Snowden released all the intelligence agency documents proving that this is all these agencies do?
Remember how nothing ever happened?
The FBI doesn't care if you know that the FBI is spying on you and controlling your speech because the FBI already knows you're not going to do anything about it.
You're all weak. And you've done nothing ever to EARN your rights. So you don't have them now.
"Time for another Church Committee"
Church Committee didn't fix anything last time.
No, it's time for real Americans to stop joining the United States military.
Achilles: "But the election was totally secure and legit according to the FBI."
But the election was totally secure and legit according to the FBI, the dems, the legacy media and the GOPe.
FIFY
The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem. I oppose it in both cases. And I think those journalists who were reporting on a story of public importance should be reinstated.- Bari Weiss
Good. Hopefully the new house of representatives will investigate this after the Biden impeachment and the Hunter lap-dance scandal.
Maybe I’m dyslexic, but I find myself spelling the organization - Stasi
- Krumhorn
Why does everyone act surprised about this?
The Fbi was founded in 1908 (as the "Bureau of investigation") by Roosevelt SPECIFICALLY to keep tabs on people the president viewed as political enemies or undesirable.
Roosevelt asked congress to authorize it, they refused saying they would not fund a political police. That it was unconstitutional and offensive to Americans ideals.
To this day, no act enabling the Fbi has ever passed congress.
Congress has passed acts establishing Cia, dept of education and a hundred other agencies.
It has never passed one establishing the Fbi.
John Henry
"Twitter’s top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees"
"Ex"? Or just embeds?
Blogger Rabel said...
So which one of y'all is the fed?
If I told you I'd have to kill you.
Blogger Tank said...
This is what it is like to live in a shit hole country.
Joe Biden as President is a hint that we live in a lawless 3rd world region that has no borders.
It was never really about Right versus Left. It was Locke versus Hobbes and team Leviathan has been winning for the past century.
What came first, Respect For Marriage Act, or [Anti]fascism?
Diversity, Inequity, Exclusion (DIE) is the progressive path and grade. Lose your Pro-Choice ethical religion.
The legislative branch (both parties) is complicit.
It's not called The Swamp for nothing.
The FBI has become the very thing they sought to stop.... And the DOJ covers for them.
Roy Lofquist: "Time for another Church Committee."
I am afraid there is zero chance of Schumer/McConnell allowing that.
Worse is the GOPe-ers in the Senate have already declared there will be no impeachment of Biden or any administration officials.
It will be interesting to watch the McConnell-tards excuse away this latest GOPe backstabbing like they do all the others.
I suspect they will just infinite-tuple down on some OrangeManBad faux "crisis".
So which one of y'all is the fed?
The rule is the feds are the ones pushing for extravagantly illegal activity.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini
Ayn Rand wrote an essay along these lines though I don't recall her mentioning fascism. She viewed the concept as a sick joke.
She asked (quoting from memory) "what kind of partnership is it when one partner has all the power, including the ability to compel at gunpoint and the other has none?"
Isn't that the kind of "merger" that formed the basis of fascism (and Fascism)
Remember this next time you hear Brandon or other pols of both parties speak of public-private partnerships. They are advocating fascism as defined by its inventor.
And, using mussolini's definition, how is this not socialism?
John Henry
Only 30 days left to celebrate Trumpmas!
Paul said...
The FBI has become the very thing they sought to stop.... And the DOJ covers for them.
No they have not.
They are acting exactly as designed in 1908 and exactly as they have operated ever since.
The only thing that has changed is public awareness.
John Henry
The FBI told the Post on Friday that it... 'regularly engages with private sector entities... [which] independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them'...."
The FBI regularly works with private entities to violate people's First Amendment rights.
It is solidly established case law that if the police go to a private company, and ask that company to search your property, for 4th Amendment purposes that's exactly the same as the police doing the search themselves.
And that's entirely correct: the private entity is acting as an agent of the Federal gov't, and therefore is bound by the same respect for an individual's rights as when the Federal Gov't is directly doing the acting.
It's no different here. The FBI is violating people's First Amendment rights, and there should be a massive number of lawsuits for that hitting the US courts.
The FBI and other law enforcement organizations treated Twitter as a 'subsidiary,' flagging numerous accounts for purportedly harmful 'misinformation' since January of 2020
Hey Drago, Achilles, etc: That's the last year of the Trump Admin
The more I learn about what Trump let the Deep State get away with while he was President, the less interested I am in having him run again.
Trump failed at personnel, which means he was guaranteed to fail in DC.
And I've seen ZERO indication that he's gotten any better at it since getting the election stolen from him.
I prefer winners, I prefer someone who hires people who will carry out his agenda, and who fires the people who won't.
So right now that's looking like DeSantis
"Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists,' Taibbi summed up in a tweet following the file drop, 'the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts."
Well..when not rounding up paraders or investigating garage door pulls.
Remember this next time you hear Brandon or other pols of both parties speak of public-private partnerships. They are advocating fascism as defined by its inventor.
Oh yes, what we have now is a form of fascism. I am too old, as Inga says, to worry about it too much. I would love to see Kari Lake win her lawsuit on the stolen election but I don't expect her to. We are in the hands of idiots who think because they are Harvard grad students, they know things. The country is heading for a crash, which might result in sensible people taking over but might also result in a Hitler.
What we see is the end result of democracy when serious people are not around. Socrates would understand.
Greg: "So right now that's looking like DeSantis"
Terrific.
Now get out there and win the primary!
Sounds like it will be a cakewalk so here's an early congratulations to you! Team DeSantis has certainly earned it by nailing down the endorsements of the GOPe DC consultant master blasters and Wall Street globalist class, not to mention the neo-con vote which DeSantis should be competitive for due to his previous congressional support for the forever wars.
And once the Deep Staters deliver on an indictment of Trump with clear GOPe support, I am certain the republican base will quickly rally to the best GOPe supported candidate.
Its coming together very nicely for the establishment.
Again, kudos.
And Greg, it appears more congratulations are in order for Team GOPe with their pending alliance (ANOTHER ONE!) with Schumer on the budget deal.
I should also say thanks for clarifying your position that Trump was in complete control of the FBI/DOJ during his tenure since it further validates my now thoroughly proven thesis that Trump has become the greatest GOPe Get Out Of Jail Free card for the establishment in the history of politics.
McConnell and Schumer and Wray and Ryan smile....
The more I learn about what Trump let the Deep State get away with while he was President, the less interested I am in having him run again.
AND, he didn't change NK, complete the wall, lower the national debt, bring complete peace to the MidEast, move our manufacturing base out of China, get all NATO members to cough up their fair share, change the educational system, fix the voting system, among his many other failures. He had 4 whole years to get it done. I say we take him outback and hang the motherfucker.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
The FBI and other law enforcement organizations treated Twitter as a 'subsidiary,' flagging numerous accounts for purportedly harmful 'misinformation' since January of 2020
Hey Drago, Achilles, etc: That's the last year of the Trump Admin
The more I learn about what Trump let the Deep State get away with while he was President, the less interested I am in having him run again.
Trump failed at personnel, which means he was guaranteed to fail in DC.
And I've seen ZERO indication that he's gotten any better at it since getting the election stolen from him.
I prefer winners, I prefer someone who hires people who will carry out his agenda, and who fires the people who won't.
So right now that's looking like DeSantis
Right now Desantis is taking their money and hiring those people to run his campaign though.
Not sure why you are thinking that.
Conspicuous by their absence are links to the NYT, the WaPo and the Grauniad.
Right now Desantis is taking their money and hiring those people to run his campaign though.
Look at all the people DeSantis has surrounded himself with. Now explain how those people are different than GOPe
DeSantis has fought a lot of the right battles...now has surrounded (sold) himself with (to) all the wrong people.
I am not the Trump or nothing school. But until someone emerges that knows how to fight like Trump, He's my first choice.
The same donors who previously gave to Trump - are now suddenly pure evil.
I'm so old I recall when the left was suspicious of the Feds gathering information on citizens due to the war on terrorism.
Good times, good times.
HBTPFH: "The same donors who previously gave to Trump - are now suddenly pure evil."
You are extraordinarily stupid and ill-informed. So much so that its got to be an act.
These were never Trump donors.
I know its difficult for idiots like you who falsely claim the Saudi's are funding the Trump campaign to understand this but you really need to up your Team GOPe/Dem game.
Drago said...
Greg: "So right now that's looking like DeSantis"
Terrific.
Now get out there and win the primary!
Now let's look at the part you didn't respond to:
Hey Drago, Achilles, etc: That's the last year of the Trump Admin
The more I learn about what Trump let the Deep State get away with while he was President, the less interested I am in having him run again.
Do you have a response to people pointing out Trump's failures, other than to dishonestly call DeSantis a member of the GOPe?
Or do you agree that Trump was a total failure, and will be another one if re-elected?
Achilles said...
Right now Desantis is taking their money and hiring those people to run his campaign though.
DeSantis is a politician. He will, and should, take just about any legal donor's money.
Could not care less
So, before we get to the rest: a question:
Do you have a problem with the way DeSantis ran his 2022 re-election campaign?
I don't. Rather than rest on his laurels, and run to the "middle" / establishment side, he picked a fight with the Parent's Bill of Rights in Education, publicly kicked Disney in the balls, and teamed up with parent's groups to run school board candidates against the TU thugs
And won, with massive coattails
IMO, there's not a more "un GOPe" way to run.
Agree or disagree?
Now "hiring those people to run his campaign" would be a valid charge, if true.
But you've provided no support for that claim.
Note, suport means:
1: Names and job titles of GOPe scum he's hired
2: Names of the people from his Gov re-election campaign who were turfed out to make places for these weasels
According to Ace there's a GOP consultants cartel that keeps candidates from getting funding unless they hire people in the "in crowd". I'm sadly wiling to believe that's true.
Trump got around that in 2016 because CNN et al were willing to carry his campaign rallies as massive in-kind donations during the primary, and he continued to mainly rely on rallies to get the word out during the GE
But if the sum total of your story is that he's picked up some GOPe consultants whose current "duties" are solely to extra money from GOPe donors, I'm going to laugh and say "good for him".
Unless the decision makers for the 2022 campaign are being turfed out and replaced by GOPe consultants (and I'll be shocked of DeSantis is that stupid), you've got nothing.
So, what have you got?
Greg: "Do you have a response to people pointing out Trump's failures, other than to dishonestly call DeSantis a member of the GOPe?
Or do you agree that Trump was a total failure, and will be another one if re-elected?"
Very quickly:
- My responses to people pointing out Trump's failures depends on what the "failure" supposedly is and what other factors might be involved
- I have never called DeSantis a member of the GOPe (don't go down the HBTPFH path). I have simply pointed out his entire campaign advisor staff are DC GOPe insiders as well as his major funders (DeSantis only gets around 6% of his donations from small donors)
Hey, I just realized that your purposeful mischaracterization of my comments could be characterized as dushonest. Ironic, eh?
- I disagree completely that Trump was a "complete failure" and I believe anyone making such an argument is being quite dishonest...or worse.
- No, I don't believe Trump would be a "complete failure" if reelected. However, as I've said repeatedly, Team GOPe/Dem is going to indict and convict Trump in DC .
But that's not the scenario here. They are flagging people for violating Twitter's TOS and not accusing them of being "foreign malign influence actors."
That's the magic key for the FBI. They can investigate any domestic citizen under the assumed suspicion that they are being manipulated by foreign actors. It allows extra judicial secret warrants through FISA, it allows them to bully 3rd parties to do their bidding like Twitter. Who would be opposed to protecting the US from foreign involvement?
It is solidly established case law that if the police go to a private company, and ask that company to search your property, for 4th Amendment purposes that's exactly the same as the police doing the search themselves.
And yet if a "confidential informant" tells the police that they saw something they can then wrangle that into a search warrant. Even if the confidential information is compensated by the police!
In this case the FBI leaks to the media (WP/NYT) then uses those leaks as their confidential informant to justify asks to 3rd parties to censor and spy on users.
That's why they have the weekly meetings with Yoel. To gather information. Yoel was their confidential source.
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