Source: the Washington Examiner
Originally published by ZeroHedge
The US Department of State has been funding a “disinformation” tracking group through its Global Engagement Center (GEC), which reportedly works at demonetizing sites it accuses of disseminating “disinformation,” – which are overwhelmingly conservative news outlets, the Washington Examiner reports.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported. This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.
GDI through its website maintains a “dynamic exclusion list” of the worst offenders of disinformation online, which it then distributes to ad tech companies – such as Microsoft’s Xandr – in order to try and “defund and downrank these worst offenders,” and deprive said sites of ad revenue.
Click to see full-size image
According to The American Conserviative executive director Emily Doak, “They might consider TAC a ‘high-risk’ publication because we have consistently taken on the bipartisan establishment’s sacred cows, whether it’s the war in Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, or the harm done by free trade and open borders — and we’ve been proven right time and time again,” adding “They know they can’t say we’re wrong, only that we’re biased and ‘high-risk,’ so we will wear that designation as a badge of honor.”
In 2018, the GEC began funding Disinfo Cloud, a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. The GEC awarded roughly $300,000 to an investment group called Park Advisers, which fights “disinformation, terrorism, violent extremism, hate speech” to manage Disinfo Cloud, the spokesperson said.
Park Advisers implemented Disinfo Cloud “to provide the U.S. government and its partners with a database of the tools and technologies available to help push back against foreign propaganda and disinformation,” according to its website, which links to Disinfo Cloud’s former landing page that has since been pulled off the internet. -Washington Examiner
One State Department-funded group which supports GDI is the nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy, which receives nearly 100% of its funding from congressional appropriations ($300 million in 2021), which critics have argued is essentially giving money to a government grantmaking body despite its status as a private entity.
In 2020, $230,000 went from the NED to the AN foundation, a GDI group that also goes by the Disinformation Index Foundation. The grant was to “deepen understanding of the challenges to information integrity in the digital space” in Asia, Africa and other foreign countries, and to “assess disinformation risks of local online media ecosystems.”
The Global Engagement Center notably appeared in the Twitter Files reported by @mtaibbi https://t.co/M3LM3PkkrX
— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023
Meanwhile in September 2021, the GEC hosted the US-Paris Tech Challenge – an event which sought to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the UK. The event was a “collaboration with U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” and several other organizations.
Civil rights experts are appalled.
“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” said Jeffrey Clark, former acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in a statement to the Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”
In addition to Park Advisers and Disinfo Cloud, partners for the Paris challenge included the Atlantic Council, a major think tank, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and others, according to the State Department.
— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023
Meanwhile, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said: “Last year, under tremendous bipartisan pressure, I refused to reauthorize the Global Engagement Center because such a step seemed premature,” adding “The most recent allegations, if verified, confirm the need for a strict accounting of all U.S. taxpayer funds going to the GEC.”
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) says that the Biden administration is “knee deep” in left-leaning efforts to “crack down” on speech – telling the Examiner: “House Republicans will be hauling these bad actors before Congress, and I absolutely support legislation to ban federal funding of anti-free speech groups.”
It’s as expected. Another underhand tactic of evil
United States of America, now is IV REICH !!!!
uh huh… Have you ever heard of a legal entity called the FCC? Those are the guys that green light anything and everything that is any way whatsoever broadcast in the United States. If you happen to be physically present in the United States, and you are watching something on television, reading something on the internet, listening to something on the radio, reading something in a magazine or a newspaper, it’s because those guys said so. If you were listening to or reading a broadcast of any kind whatsoever that they had not okay’ed, they would be kicking down whatever door you were on the other side of before you were finished doing it.
Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
Why isn’t SouthFront on the least risky list? The only risk I can think of here is Jens Holm spreading STDs.
When you realize the “riskiest” are just mainstream media….. don’t be fooled. The real journalists have been banned from everywhere long time ago.
Did a piece of shit from the Southfront troll farm just threatened with Interpol? How the fuck did that happen? Don’t tell me that the terrorist state of Russia is in bed with that organization. That would be hilarious.
Lol, they have been doing that for over a decade, its part of the deep state. The media and social media companies would rather lose money than report the news.
The whole game is create CONFUSION BY THE RULING ELITES TO FOOL THE WORLD BEHIND THE CLOSED DOOR THEY UNITED AND ENJOYING CHAMPAGNE AND CAVIAR
And these elites like to use lumpen proletariat.
Truth will always out. It takes time but those that did not get the “moon landing” hoax are mostly triple covaid$ squirted and boooooosted. Reality has always been an intelligence test and life doesn’t give a rat’s ass who lives it or chucks it away. Anyone that is still fooled by the drooling pedovore filth spewing demon presstitutes of the “West” should and indeed will keep squirting themselves with pfiZer poi$on until it works. Evolution is wonderful.
Meanwhile in the real world Mr Bear is busily cleaning up his back yard and NOTHING can stop him. Simple.
Z
This had it’s start in 2018? When Trump returns to office, he will have a distinct advantage over last time: The swamp rats are now exposed.
The US State Department considers your mind a “territory” to be captured and held. There is no freedom in a country where the government actively tries to limit what you know and control what you think.
“Government” has been a problem like this ever since it was invented to give human slaves the illusion of being free range chickens…