To be sure, Durham’s report reminded us of the many errors highlighted by the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2019 regarding the evidence used to obtain a FISA order on Carter Page, a former foreign policy advisor on the Trump campaign. And that’s also where some of the confusion starts. According to Politico, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has used Durham’s report to argue that Section 702 “cannot be reauthorized as is,” and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has stated that Durham’s report will “absolutely” play a role in the reauthorization debate. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), called Durham’s report an “indictment” of Section 702.

The conflation of the reauthorization of Section 702 with Crossfire Hurricane suggests that these members of Congress are, at best, unaware of the details of the program or, at worst, deliberately muddying the waters in an effort that will have the unintended consequence of substantially benefiting our foreign adversaries. It therefore is worthwhile to understand what the Section 702 debate is about, and what it is not about.

Unfortunately, too many journalists – and editors and producers – have fallen prey to these misunderstandings in their own reporting and commentary or have allowed such statements by officials to be published without explaining to readers the logical flaw in making these connections.

The purpose of this short explainer is not to do a deep dive into the minutiae of Section 702 or the legal issues raised by the program, but rather to offer a general, broad-brush view of national security electronic surveillance, and how to differentiate the issues raised by surveillance of U.S. persons (USPERs, a useful acronym adopted by the government) in cases like Crossfire Hurricane from the issues raised by Section 702.

The Carter Page Surveillance Was Conducted Under Title I of FISA, Not Section 702

Let’s begin with a quick primer on FISA. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 in response to the abuses in the intelligence community revealed by the Church and Pike oversight committees following Watergate. The framework was created as part of a compromise between the legislative and executive branches on the legal parameters of electronic surveillance conducted for national security (as opposed to criminal) investigative purposes. In accordance with a 1972 Supreme Court case which acknowledged that surveillance conducted for the purpose of obtaining intelligence on foreign powers need not be as onerous as the standard for domestic security surveillance to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, FISA creates for foreign intelligence an analogous process to Title III of the Omnibus Safe Streets Act of 1968, which governs the procedure to obtain “wiretaps” for criminal investigations.

Specifically, FISA established a secret court – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – comprised of 11 (originally 7) Article III judges selected by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who sit in rotation. Unlike requests for Title III criminal wiretaps, which must demonstrate to a neutral magistrate probable cause that electronic surveillance will yield evidence of a crime, applications to the Court under Title I of FISA must demonstrate probable cause that the surveillance target is a foreign power, or an agent of a foreign power, and that a significant purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign intelligence information. FISA applications targeted at USPERs acting as an agent of a foreign power have a more stringent probable case standard and narrower time limits than for nonUSPERs and foreign powers (such as foreign terrorist organizations) and agents of a foreign power (such as foreign diplomats). If approved by the FISA Court, the government obtains an order (technically not a “warrant”) to be given to the target’s communication provider to commence surveillance on the target.

The big takeaway here is that applications to directly surveil USPERs are conducted under Title I of FISA, and they are done on an individualized basis – that is, for each person the government intends to surveil, it must submit a separate application to the FISA Court outlining the probable cause that the individual is an agent of a foreign power.

Title I of FISA is the exclusive statutory means through which the government can directly surveil any USPERs within the United States. It is also the exclusive statutory means by which nonUSPERs may be targeted when they are located within the geographical boundaries of the United States. Other provisions of FISA (sections 703 and 704) allow for targeting USPERs when they travel abroad under the same probable cause standard.

Section 702 is Programmatic Surveillance

The evolution of Section 702 of FISA is much more recent than the broader FISA framework, including Title I orders. Section 702 has its roots in the George W. Bush administration, which, following 9/11, engaged in non-court-ordered surveillance of communications where one end of the communication was inside of the United States, and one end was abroad (known as Operation STELLAR WIND). The government carried out this operation despite its being in part, if not wholly, illegal under FISA (though the Bush administration construed it as permissible under its Article II authority). After the New York Times exposed the Bush administration’s program, Congress moved to codify a version of it to bring it under the FISA legislative framework. This was first done temporarily through the Protect America Act in 2007 and then as Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act in 2008. Since then, Section 702 has been periodically reauthorized, including most recently in 2018.

Section 702 permits the executive branch to conduct electronic surveillance of nonUSPERS who are reasonably believed to be located abroad. Like Title I the aim here is not criminal law enforcement but to obtain foreign intelligence information. Importantly, however, Section 702 does not provide a judicial process to review targeting of persons on an individual basis. Rather, it allows the FISC to “certify” a surveillance program presented to it by the Justice Department and for the FISC to continue to review the overall practice of the program on a periodic basis.

In order to be certified, the Justice Department must detail the following three components of the surveillance program:

• Targeting (whose communications will be obtained and how)
• Minimization (the steps the Justice Department takes to avoid the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of communications of people not intended to be captured)
• Querying procedures (how recipient agencies will search the captured communications)

Once the FISC is satisfied that the procedures comport with the Fourth Amendment and the statute, the program is certified. A key difference here from Title I surveillance is that the FISC is not approving surveillance on any particular individual, but rather, a set of procedures which authorizes the NSA to collect certain communications under the approved procedures, subject to periodic reporting to the FISC. As with Title I, Section 702 surveillance permits the Justice Department to require communications service providers to collect communications under the certified targeting procedures.

So who gets targeted? Section 702 surveillance is not based on particular individuals, but rather “selectors” – email addresses or cell phone numbers – which are associated with nonUSPERs reasonably believed to be located abroad and whose communications are likely to return foreign intelligence information. It is possible that some of the intelligence about Russia’s military movements leaked by Jack Texeira, for example, could have been obtained through 702 surveillance. Of course, communications between members of foreign terrorist organizations located abroad would also be fair game. (See, for example, White House Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Joshua Geltzer’s recent statement, in a Just Security’s podcast interview: “locating the world’s most wanted terrorist last year, I mean Ayman al-Zawahiri, the global leader of al Qaeda, involved 702 collection and of course that enabled us to remove from him the battlefield.”).

So if Section 702 targets nonUSPERs outside of the United States, why is this program so controversial? The main issue concerning USPERs when it comes to Section 702 is not direct surveillance, but rather what is known as “incidental collection.” This means that if, in the course of collecting communications from a nonUSPER reasonably believed to be located abroad (using a selector associated with that person), that person is in contact with a USPER, the USPER’s side of the communication will be captured, even though they were not the intended target. In short, some fraction of the hundreds of millions of communications collected by Section 702 will, by necessity, include a not insignificant number of “incidental” USPER communications.

The main debate in the Section 702 reauthorization is how intelligence agencies – and most importantly, an agency like the FBI with both national security and criminal law enforcement functions – utilize these “incidental” communications. As former NSA litigation counsel George Croner has written, all of the communications collected through Section 702 comprise essentially a database consisting of an undifferentiated, “primordial stew” of information. In order to glean anything of value from it, intelligence agencies must conduct a “query” – that is, seeking inside the database for a particular piece of information. Critics of Section 702 argue that using queries to search this “stew” for information related to USPERs – which has been dubbed “backdoor searches” – particularly for the purposes of criminal investigations, raises Fourth Amendment and policy concerns.

As noted previously, it is beyond the scope of this quick reference guide to explore the merits of this contention. The two-part Just Security series on foreign intelligence surveillance reform offers a detailed summary of the arguments for and against reauthorizing Section 702 as is, or whether there should be additional requirements imposed on the FBI, or the intelligence community more broadly, before the 702 database can be queried for information relating to USPERs. It should be noted that, beginning with the reauthorization in 2018, additional requirements have already been added to FBI queries of the 702 database. Some compliance issues have arisen as a result of those additional requirements, which form the central basis of the current reauthorization debate.

For now, the important point to underscore is that any deficiencies in the Carter Page FISA – highlighted either by the Justice Department Inspector General or John Durham – were not a result of Section 702: It is clear that Page’s surveillance was conducted under Title I of FISA. It may very well be that the flaws highlighted by these reports suggest needed reforms to Title I – such as tightening up the probable cause standard for individual FISAs for USPERs. (Notably, Durham wrote that he was largely satisfied with the DOJ and FBI reforms adopted since the Inspector General revealed the problems with the Carter Page and other Title I applications.) Regardless, such policy recommendations involve a discussion wholly unrelated to the technicalities up for debate with the reauthorization of Section 702.

I should note, in conclusion, that while Jordan and others are using the Durham report to conflate Title I and Section 702 of FISA, this obfuscation is not limited to Republicans. In 2018, when 702 was last up for reauthorization, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) invoked the warrantless surveillance on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (on the occasion of his national holiday) to oppose Section 702. Of course, as outlined above, the entire FISA framework was implemented precisely to avoid abuses like those against Dr. King and even if he were alive and being targeted today, Section 702 would not apply to him. Such disingenuous or otherwise mistaken objections to Section 702 reauthorization, regardless of which side of the political aisle they come from, do little to advance a meaningful understanding and discussion of how to balance the need to protect the United States from foreign threats with civil liberties concerns in an evolving technological landscape.

The post Expert Backgrounder: Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act vs. Section 702 appeared first on Just Security.

This year marks both the 30^th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day and the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, this is a doubly fitting year to be fighting to maintain freedom of expression where it exists, to re-establish freedom of expression where it has been suppressed, and to support freedom of expression across the world. Sadly, 2023 is also a year in which it has become more necessary and important than ever to carry on this fight.

Freedom of expression is protected in international law, because, without it, democracy and the rule of law wither away. A free and uncensored press is a vital aspect of this freedom: independent media hold governments to account, facilitate the enjoyment of other fundamental freedoms, and shed light on matters of public interest. And different parts of the media also monitor each other.

The media have rightly been described as the watchdogs of democracy, because journalists often highlight democratic deficits and demand accountability from elected and unelected officials. This is the fourth estate.

The right to freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive, and impart information, online and offline, is also an enabling right without which most other fundamental human rights cannot be properly enjoyed. Exercising these interdependent freedoms, without fear or unlawful interference, is part of the bedrock of a modern democratic and civilized society.

States that strive for balanced social progress and democratic stability should not just protect the right to freedom of expression within their laws and constitution; wider and sustained action is required to ensure that freedom of expression is effectively guaranteed through independent and impartial justice systems. That means any interference with freedom of expression must have a legal basis, meet the standards of strict necessity and proportionality to the danger which the restrictions address, and be subject to independent review.

That is the conceptual framework.

Today’s reality is that civil liberties continue to decline. And this is a global problem. Recent data from Freedom House show that infringement on free expression is one of biggest drivers of the democratic recession being experienced across the world. Among the many rights under attack worldwide during the past 17 consecutive years, freedom of expression — and, in particular, media freedom — appears to have declined more than any other right.

The explanation for this is simple: media freedom poses a genuine threat to corrupt and undemocratic regimes, and accordingly, many governments adopt measures which stifle press freedom and encourage censorship. According to UNESCO, more journalists today are killed outside war zones than inside them, with a mere one in ten such murders resulting in prosecution.

Many journalists today operate in fear of reprisals, facing arbitrary deprivations of their liberty or physical attacks – or even murder — simply for doing their jobs. Legitimate reporting by journalists, often in the public interest, is routinely undermined, with many facing intimidation and harassment through vexatious legal action by State and other powerful actors. Further, regulatory and administrative processes are being developed by States to target independent media in the form of economic and commercial regulations. Even in some democracies, journalists and media workers receive inadequate protection from intimidation and violence.

Add to this the increased challenges we face in the digital world. The internet is one of the principal means by which individuals exercise their right to freedom of expression today. Many governments have introduced repressive laws to the online sphere and adopted invasive technologies to monitor digital communication. They have also sought to control the internet, through shutting it down or slowing it down, or simply removing content inconvenient to the government of the day. All the while, journalists are targeted and harassed online with impunity.

In 2019, the Media Freedom Coalition was established as an international partnership of governments working together to advocate for media freedom and for the safety of journalists, pledging also to hold accountable individuals and governments that harm journalists for doing their jobs. The High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, was convened by the Coalition co-chairs to act as the Coalition’s independent legal advisory body. A Consultative Network was also created, constituted of civil society and media organizations. UNESCO is an official observer to the Coalition and administers its Global Media Defence Fund.

The Coalition is now more than 50 States strong. The High Level Panel has been publishing written advice to the Coalition, and the Coalition’s Member States have started to give effect to the High Level Panel’s recommendations by: (i) introducing and issuing emergency visas for journalists at risk; (ii) protecting their own journalists abroad through strengthening diplomatic support; (iii) working on a feasibility study for an international task force that can investigate violence and other abuses against journalists; and (iv) imposing targeted financial and travel sanctions against those who persecute the press.

The fact that some of the Coalition States are matching their words with action must be the cause for some cautious optimism. But much more needs to be done.

For the High Level Panel, that means continuing to provide legal advice to the Coalition States, reviewing draft legislation impacting on media freedom, accepting invitations by international courts to submit opinions, and making legal interventions in cases of wider public interest. It also means tackling the novel legal issues raised by the spread of disinformation, by the practice of arbitrary detention of journalists in state-to-state relations, and by the misuse of commercial spyware against journalists.

The Coalition offers an interesting model for international co-operation in a key area for democracies. Its tri-partite structure – the States, the independent lawyers and jurists, the civil society organizations – offers checks and balances and the prospect of accountability.

But as we celebrate the 30^th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, we must reflect on this: if the media are silenced and journalists are muzzled, a key pillar of a functioning democracy is crushed. It means that an institution which is vital to a free society, which seeks to ensure accountability, to highlight injustices, to inform the public about matters in their interest, and to serve as a conduit between the people and their representatives, is neutralized. The loss of a free, independent media is essentially the loss of democracy.

IMAGE: Journalists and members of Guatemalan civil society carry a banner reading “Without Journalism There is No Democracy” during a demonstration against the threat to freedom of expression and the criminal prosecution of communicators, outside court in Guatemala City on March 4, 2023. The United States expressed concern on March 2 over Guatemala’s decision to bring legal action against nine journalists from an investigative newspaper, saying the move undermined free speech, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) accused Guatemalan authorities of trying to “intimidate and harass” journalists at the publication who were investigating government corruption. The journalists from the newspaper El Periodico include its founder Jose Ruben Zamora, who had already spent eight months in pre-trial detention on accusations of money laundering and blackmail. (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Freedom of Expression and Media Freedom as a Driver for All Human Rights appeared first on Just Security.

For years, Burhan and Hemedti have wrestled for power and control of Sudan. But until now, they’ve been on the same side. In 2019, they teamed up to remove the country’s long-time President Omar al-Bashir from power. And in 2021, they toppled the civilian government for military rule. The latest fighting is a clash between two men, but it’s also the latest chapter in Sudan’s long fight for freedom.

To help us understand the conflict, what it means for the people of Sudan, and how it will impact the region, we have Quscondy Abdulshafi, Suliman Baldo, and Rebeca Hamilton. Quscondy is a Senior Regional Advisor at the nonprofit organization Freedom House. He has over a decade of experience working on human rights and peacebuilding in Sudan and East Africa. Suliman is the Executive Director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, an organization that develops investigation and analysis of corruption in Sudan, led by Sudanese voices. Rebecca is a law professor at American University. But before that, she covered Sudan as a reporter for the Washington Post. Rebecca is also a member of Just Security’s Editorial Board.

Listen to the podcast (transcript available as well) by clicking below.

The post The Just Security Podcast: The Battle for Sudan appeared first on Just Security.

Now the Delaware state court has decisively ruled that the statements at issue in the case are false. Here’s what the judge wrote on the falsity question (in the only italicized and all-caps sentence in the entire 81-page opinion): “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”

That ruling was part of an extraordinary order partially granting summary judgment in favor of Dominion, and completely denying the summary judgment motion brought by Fox News. Summary judgment is when a party argues that a trial is unnecessary because there are no factual disputes for the judge or a jury to decide and because the law can lead only to one outcome (a win for that party and a loss for the other side). In this case, both parties moved for summary judgment, and the judge mostly sided with Dominion and against Fox News.

This outcome is remarkable for those of us with experience litigating defamation cases. Given the high burden in these lawsuits on plaintiffs such as Dominion, judges are typically inclined either to rule for the defendant, or at least to send the case to the jury. It’s far rarer for a court to rule – even partially – for the plaintiff, as the judge did here for Dominion, especially on the central issue of demonstrable falsehood. At trial, that means the jury will not need to determine if the statements are false because the judge has already ruled as much. The jury need only decide whether Fox News spread the false claims about Dominion while knowing that they were untrue or being reckless as to their falsity, and to determine what, if any, damages Dominion should receive to compensate it for the harm from Fox News’ actions.

Despite the rarity of such a result, extraordinary facts can lead to extraordinary outcomes. Here, the extraordinary background included dozens of lawsuits failing to establish any evidence whatsoever of irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. That track record would have made it difficult for any court to find any question of fact regarding the falsity of statements accusing Dominion of having faked the election’s results.

Nor should anyone have been surprised by some of Dominion’s other victories on lesser issues. As part of the ruling, Dominion won the right to prevent Fox News from raising defenses that it was just voicing opinions for which it couldn’t be held liable, or just fairly reporting the news. Dominion also won its argument that it does not need to prove that what Fox News broadcasted about it was harmful. Given the facts and the applicable law, the court’s decision was entirely reasonable.

Fox News further argued in its court filings that its broadcasts were constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. We strongly disagree, as did the judge in this case. There is little doubt that Dominion’s suit for damages met and indeed exceeded the standard the Supreme Court established in 1964 in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan for deciding when the First Amendment shields whoever disseminates material damaging to the reputation of a public official or public figure from liability. The standard set by that case and respected thousands of times since has been that the publisher of such material can be found liable if it knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregardfor its truth or falsity. The law is clear that reckless disregard – that is, indifference to truth – is enough to establish liability for resulting reputational harm. In Dominion’s case, there appears to be overwhelming evidence that Fox News, its producers, and its hosts were more than just reckless. Dominion’s pinpointing of actual quotations from those individuals, including Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, is breathtaking.

Although former Attorney General William Barr has argued that applying this longstanding rule in the Fox News lawsuit would deal a “major blow to media freedoms generally,” nothing could be further from the truth. Applying Sullivan to this case would curtail no freedom – beyond the spurious “freedom” to broadcast knowing falsehoods that damage the reputations of those they defame without having to be held accountable. Far from “paring back” the First Amendment’s protections, Dominion went the extra mile of conceding the applicability of the Sullivan standard even though the Supreme Court has not yet held that corporations like Dominion must show anything beyond negligent falsehood to prevail when suing for defamatory material dealing with matters of public concern.

Nor is Barr correct when he argues that the First Amendment has previously shielded media outlets from liability based on damaging falsehoods that originate from third parties and that defendants then air on their platforms, at least if the platforms do not expressly endorse those falsehoods. On the contrary, if that had been the rule, then the Supreme Court would have had no need to create the high standard it announced over half a century ago in Sullivan. The allegedly defamatory material in that case took the form of false statements about Sherriff Sullivan which appeared in a fundraising ad in the paper placed by civil rights organizations and was not “endorsed” by the publisher. Rather than holding The Times immunized from liability by the fact that the falsehood was attributable to a third party and not endorsed by the paper, the Supreme Court left no doubt that The Times could have been held liable if it ran the ad knowing it contained false statements of fact or with reckless disregard of that falsity.

Indeed, the recent debates over repealing or modifying Section 230 of the Telecom Act of 1996 would be incomprehensible if Barr’s position correctly stated First Amendment law. That statute provides immunity for online media platforms hosting third party content. No lawmakers, lawyers, or academics of whom we are aware have seriously argued that the First Amendment itself provides that immunity, which would of course make Section 230 altogether redundant and the heated debate over that statute pointless.

In any event, even if it were the case that a media outlet cannot be held liable for third-party material that it disseminates unless it endorses that material – which it emphatically is not – the recently unredacted evidenceDominion plans to introduce easily meets that requirement: its expected proof at trial shows a high likelihood that Fox News hosts did much more than neutrally report the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election had been stolen from then-president Trump by a conspiracy of which Dominion was a part; instead, they deliberately created the strong impression that they believed that lie themselves while saying offscreen that they did not. (Consider just one text chain between Tucker Carlson and one of his staffers. The staffer texted him, “Have you seen last night’s numbers?” and, “It’s a stupid story but this is all the viewers are into right now.” Carlson responded, “I noticed.”)

Nor is it the case, as Barr argues, that media outlets would be prevented from ever broadcasting interviews with blatant liars like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell if Dominion were to prevail at trial. Applying Sullivan in this context simply asks whether the media company published the lies those guests spread with knowledge or reckless disregard of their falsity and deliberately refrained from fact-checking and correcting them.

Barr also suggests that many if not all the statements at issue in Dominion’s case are non-actionable statements of opinion. That would perhaps be a fitting consequence of the “post-truth” era ushered in by Trump, but some of the statements Fox News and Barr brush off as mere expressions of opinion are in fact capable of being proven true or false. The relevant statements in this case fall roughly into four silos: that Dominion rigged the election; that its software and algorithms manipulated vote counts; that the company is owned by a Venezuelan enterprise founded to rig elections for Hugo Chavez; and that Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials. Nothing in the case law supports treating those flagrant misstatements as mere matters of opinion: their factual falsity is demonstrable in all but the “alternative facts” universe that Fox News appears to have promoted.

For the press to function – and to serve its absolutely crucial role of reinforcing democracy by nurturing an educated public and helping the nation’s citizens make informed decisions when they vote or make their views known to those serving in government positions – it cannot be hamstrung by the fear of a lawsuit any time good-faith reporting turns out to have been inaccurate. Nor can the relaxed standard of mere negligence suffice to encourage the robust reporting and wide-open public debate democracy demands when the targets of critique are public figures like the sheriff in Sullivan or even public companies like Dominion.

But that does not mean the media must be given free rein to spew whatever falsehoods those who profit from it believe will drive up their numbers. Such falsehoods do as much to discredit the media and undercut its vital democratic function as would too relaxed a standard of liability. Sullivan’s standard – requiring proof of deliberate or reckless factual falsehood – achieves those goals admirably: good-faith reporters are protected, while those who knowingly air baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories are liable when those lies cause real-world harm. And where that harm is substantial, it is only reasonable that monetary damages must be paid to compensate for the resulting injury. In this case, those damages are potentially astronomical, perhaps starting at Dominion’s claimed $1.6 billion in compensatory damages, which can be multiplied several times over in punitive damages.

A jury will now have to decide these issues – whether Fox News acted with the requisite knowledge of falsity or disregard for truth and how much harm it potentially inflicted. A jury finding that Fox News is on the hook for 10-figure sum in this case would be both a fair outcome and a victory for democracy – and for the continued vitality of the appropriately balanced approach to the First Amendment set forth in Sullivan.

IMAGE: A political display is posted on the outside of the Fox News headquarters on 6th Avenue in New York, NY on July 21, 2020. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)

The post Fox News’ Recent Setback Against Dominion Is a Major Victory for the First Amendment appeared first on Just Security.

Over the past few weeks, major social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reinstated former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts and privileges. Now, in the aftermath of his indictment in Manhattan’s Criminal Court and likely future indictment elsewhere, their decisions will be put to the test. 

After his day in court, Trump was back at Mar-a-Lago, where he addressed the media and streamed his remarks on Facebook Live. He used his platform to lay out a list of grievances against his perceived political opponents, including doubling down on unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and framing his legal troubles as “political persecution” designed to “interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.”

As a whistleblower from inside one of those major social media companies, I can say with conviction that the path we are on is dangerous. I know first hand. As I testified to Congress, while an employee at Twitter I spent months warning the company’s leadership that the coded language Trump and his followers were using was going to lead to violence on Jan. 6, 2021. I am also the person who argued to Twitter executives that they would have more blood on their hands if they did not follow my team’s recommendation to permanently suspend Trump’s account on Jan. 8, 2021. 

Just weeks after that, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress that Twitter played a role in the violence of Jan. 6. However, the exact role that social media played in the violent attack on the Capitol has never been fully disclosed, though it was investigated by the House Select Committee. 

The committee heard days of detailed accounts from myself, another brave former Twitter employee, and employees from other social media companies about the failings we saw with our own eyes. But, the committee’s almost 900 page final report, released in early January 2023, did not present the findings from the team tasked with looking into social media. 

An unpublished draft of this team’s findings was leaked in late January. It painted a damning picture of the culpability of social media companies in the Capitol attack. Chief among its key findings was that “social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”

But the report didn’t stop there. It went on to detail critical failings within specific social media companies. It said, “key decisions at Twitter were bungled by incompetence and poor judgement,” and “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.” By the time these findings were shared, however, the former president’s account had been reinstated at Twitter by its new owner, Elon Musk, following a Twitter poll. 

According to the committee’s social media team’s findings, Twitter was not alone in sharing responsibility for allowing violence to be inspired on its platform in the runup to Jan. 6. Rather, the committee’s investigators found: “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.” The investigators also noted that Facebook was due to review the former President’s suspension. The draft report clearly states, “President Trump could soon return to social media—but the risk of violence has not abated.” 

Yet, within days of the committee’s draft social media report publicly leaking, Meta announced that it would reinstate the former President’s accounts. Nick Clegg, the company’s President of Global Affairs, boldly proclaimed that after assessing the serious risk to public safety and the current security environment, “our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded.” He then hedged, “Mr. Trump is subject to our Community Standards.” 

The January 6th committee’s draft social media report also singled out YouTube in its key findings. It detailed the company’s “failure to take significant proactive steps against content related to election disinformation or Stop the Steal.” It also concluded that “YouTube’s policies relevant to election integrity were inadequate to the moment.” 

Last month YouTube also decided to reinstate Donald Trump’s posting privileges. YouTube’s vice president of public policy, Leslie Miller, said the platform’s determination was made after it “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence” and “the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.” Like Meta, YouTube also promised that the former president’s account would still be subject to company content moderation policies. 

How does this happen? How do social media companies come to the exact opposite conclusion of a year’s long congressional investigation? 

It’s like January 6th never happened. It’s like we haven’t learned our lessons. Or maybe we just want to forget. 

But I haven’t forgotten. In February, I was a witness at a congressional hearing that highlighted the extreme political polarization that our country is currently undergoing. 

During the hearing, I was called by representatives an “American hero” and a “sinister overlord.” I was told by members of the United States Congress that I should be celebrated for speaking the truth, and that my arrest for unspecified crimes was imminent. Throughout the hearing, people on the internet posted images of nooses directed toward me. 

Since then, members of Congress who swore oaths to uphold the Constitution have continued their veiled calls for an American civil war on Twitter. As Donald Trump faced his indictment in New York City, he posted on Truth Social with language that directly mirrored the dog whistles he used in the days leading up to January 6th, 2021, and he gathered his followers in Waco, where he glamorized the Capitol attack.

These repetitions of history did not go unnoticed. During Trump’s court appearance this week, the prosecutor raised concerns over the former President’s threatening statements and social media posts, such as Trump’s warning of “potential death and destruction” that he said would follow his indictment. While the judge did not impose a gag order, he  noted his serious concerns about this activity, requesting the defense counsel to tell their client to “please refrain from making comments or engaging in conduct that has the potential to incite violence, create civil unrest, or jeopardize the safety or well-being of any individuals.”

While there thankfully was no immediate political violence in the aftermath of Trump’s arraignment, the threat of violence is nowhere near over. 

Trump’s New York indictment, ongoing criminal investigations at both the state and federal level, and his political campaign will be a pressure test of companies’ decisions to reinstate the former president. While these companies have promised that the former president will now be subject to their rules, the truth is, we’ve heard this promise before. As I testified, companies previously bent and broke their own rules behind closed doors in order to protect Trump’s dangerous speech. After Trump’s remarks on social media this week which led to the judge and prosecutor having reportedly been subject to an increase in death threats,what indication do we have that this time will be different? 

Even if platforms do decide to enforce their rules, the reality remains that these baseline policies are insufficient. As I testified to Congress, in 2020 my team at Twitter advocated for the creation of a new nuanced policy that would prohibit coded language like dog whistles that would lead to the incitement of violence. Despite seeing the interpretation of Trump’s statements by his base, it was not until the Capitol had been attacked on Jan. 6, 2021 that we were allowed to implement the policy. 

Both the other Twitter whistleblower and I testified that we left the company in part after this policy was eliminated and we realized that the rolled back enforcement would inevitably lead to more political violence. The riots on Jan. 8, 2023 in Brazil’s capital showed us that companies have still not created policies that address nuanced or coded language, and that world leaders and their followers can still employ anti-democratic campaigns that incite violence. It has become an off-the-shelf playbook.

The normalization of hate, dehumanization and harmful misinformation within political discourse on social media has put us on a cataclysmic course. Politicians skirting the lines of content moderation policies under the guise of open communication with constituents has fueled lawless actions. And companies have not only failed to update their policies to address these gaps, many have scaled back or wholly removed the teams who were responsible for moderation.

As social media companies now reevaluate whether to stay the course, I encourage company leaders to learn from our not too distant history. Allowing former President Donald Trump to retake his algorithmically amplified megaphone on the largest social media platforms poses a threat to our democracy. Not only does it lead us down the exact path to violence we have already walked, it signals to would-be authoritarians all over the world that there is safe harbor for dangerous speech at American technology companies. 

I challenge my former colleagues and peers at other platforms to ask themselves: Do you really want to bear responsibility when violence happens again?

IMAGE: Supporters hold “Witch Hunt” signs as former US President Donald Trump speaks during a 2024 election campaign rally in Waco, Texas, March 25, 2023.  (Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Trump’s Reinstatement on Social Media Platforms and Coded Forms of Incitement appeared first on Just Security.

Social media platforms’ recent decisions to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s accounts were based on empirical claims about the threat landscape for political violence in the United States. These kinds of assessments are the type that the social media companies could apply in other countries as well. Their evaluation of the threat in the United States may face its first test in the days and weeks ahead. We asked several experts to evaluate the companies’ assessments of the threat of political violence.

On Saturday, the former U.S. president indicated in a post on his social media network, Truth Social, that he anticipates he will be arrested on charges stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump urged his followers to protest and “take our nation back!”

The timing of any potential indictment is unknown, but reports suggest a grand jury could decide as early as this week. So far, Trump’s call for protest has drawn only small crowds near his Mar-A-Lago residence in Florida and at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. But whether his arrest may spur larger crowds in the future remains to be seen. On fringe sites such as The Donald, Gab and 4Chan, there is talk of “civil war” and in some instances threats of violence, though some far-right activists are apparently too concerned about a supposed law enforcement ‘trap’ to demonstrate.

Nevertheless, Trump’s call for protests “echoed his rhetoric before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” reported The Washington Post. Multiple analyses, including that of the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, noted the importance of Trump’s appeals on social media to summon the crowds that day, and to propagate the false claims that motivated many to violence. 

In recent weeks, Facebook and YouTube reinstated Trump’s accounts citing a reduction in the risk of political violence, the threat of which served as part of the rationale for their decisions to suspend him following the events of Jan. 6, 2021. 

“We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” said YouTube vice president of public policy Leslie Miller last Friday, a day before Trump’s latest call for protests.

“To assess whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021 has sufficiently receded, we have evaluated the current environment according to our Crisis Policy Protocol, which included looking at the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the current security environment,” wrote Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg in January. “Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded,” and thus Trump was reinstated on Facebook.

(Shortly after acquiring the platform in November last year, Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account after running a Twitter poll.)

If Trump is indicted, as the criminal process proceeds, it may represent the first true test of the platforms’ threat assessment. And, that test may have implications beyond the narrow question of whether it was prudent to reinstate Trump’s accounts. It may indicate whether the platforms are prepared to take swift action in the case of future demagogues, in the U.S. and abroad, who use their accounts to incite violence or propagate false claims about the result of an election.

In order to understand whether their more relaxed posture is consistent with independent analyses on domestic extremism and the potential for civil unrest, we put the following question to the seven experts:

Is your assessment of the current threat of domestic extremist violence related to Donald Trump congruent with the assessment of these social media platforms?

Below, find responses from:

• Jacob Glick: Glick is Policy Counsel with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center. He previously served as Investigative Counsel on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he was a lead counsel on the Committee’s investigations into domestic extremism and social media’s role in the attempted insurrection

• Donell Harvin, DrPH: Harvin is on the faculty at Georgetown University, where he teaches on the subjects of homeland security and terrorism. He is the former Executive Director for the Washington, DC Fusion Intelligence Center and oversaw it during the insurrection on January 6th. He met with and testified before the House Select Committee investigating January 6 on several occasions. 

• Jared Holt: Holt is a Senior Research Manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, working on topics of hate and extremism in the United States. Prior to joining ISD, he worked at The Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, Right Wing Watch and Media Matters for America.

• Tom Joscelyn: Joscelyn was a senior professional staff member on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and has testified before Congress on more than 20 occasions.

• Mary B. McCord: McCord is Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She served as legal counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force Capitol Security Review appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the January 6 attack. 

• Candace Rondeaux: Rondeaux is director of the Future Frontlines program at New America, a professor of practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies, a senior fellow with the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University, and the author of an investigative report into the role of alt-tech platforms such as Parler in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

• Peter Simi: Simi is a Professor of Sociology at Chapman University. He has studied extremist groups and violence for the past 20 years, is coauthor of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate, and frequently serves as an expert legal consultant on criminal cases related to political extremism.

* * *

Jacob Glick

The Select Committee’s evidence showcased the crucial importance of mainstream social media networks in President Trump’s attempt to incite his supporters and topple American democracy. In deposition after deposition, witnesses described how they learned about the President’s summons to “be there, will be wild” as it circulated on Twitter and Facebook, which is how many of them decided to travel to D.C. for January 6th. We also collected testimony from employees inside Twitter and Meta that illustrated how these companies were blindsided by Trump’s willingness to embrace political violence and extremism. Ahead of January 6th, they hesitated to act against his brazenly authoritarian conduct and gave him an extraordinary amount of leeway as he railed against the results of the 2020 election.

 By refusing to decisively confront pro-Trump extremism, these companies helped to enable the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and only belatedly acted to ban his accounts once the damage had already been done. Now, as Trump calls for protests ahead of his expected indictment, it’s clear that he is once again preparing to leverage his social media megaphone to incite his most fringe supporters. Over the weekend, his initial post echoed the bellicose language he deployed prior to the Capitol attack. He also made his first post on Facebook since his account was reactivated, in a clear signal that he plans to take advantage of Meta’s decision to allow him back on the platform.

 This is the dangerous – and entirely predictable – result of the decision to re-platform Trump. Since the insurrection, the former president has only tightened his embrace of the Big Lie, violent conspiracies like QAnon, and even political violence. The evidence for this should have been plainly recognizable to major social media companies. Over the past year, we’ve seen Trump incite an attack against the FBI for their search of Mar-a-Lago, dismiss a brutal attack on Paul Pelosi that was fueled by the Big Lie, and amplify a message that called for his supporters to be “locked and loaded” ahead of the 2024 election. His verbal attacks on the LGBTQ+ community also illustrate his enduring symbiosis with violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys. This all should make it obvious that Trump remains aware of his ability to rally his supporters to engage in intimidation and violence when it suits his political needs.

Despite these clear signals, major social media companies have decided to act as if the threat has passed. This places all Americans at great risk, despite these companies’ promises to keep Trump in check this time around. There is no reason to believe that the political considerations that convinced Meta, Twitter, and other companies to tiptoe around Trump in 2020 will be any different now, as he attempts to re-energize his followers with a sense of conspiracy and grievance. In failing to learn the lessons of January 6th, these companies have paved the way for Trump to launch another, even more embittered assault on our system of democratic self-government. Let’s hope that American democracy can survive their mistake.

Donell Harvin

The current threat of extremist violence associated with Trump is incongruent with the assessment of the social media (SM) platforms, but it is a complicated situation that these companies find themselves in. There are several important factors that must be considered in discussing how social media companies engage in content moderation of the former President:

1. The assessment that went into the decision to re-platform Trump likely unfolded over a period of time, and those engaged in the process would not be expected to predict the recent events associated with the former President. The question is, are they committed to reevaluating their decision should the need arise, and have they developed a fair and transparent mechanism to deplatform him for future incidents of incitement? Multiple studies have shown that deplatforming those that spread hate speech and violent rhetoric is highly effective in decreasing its spread. 
2. Trump supporters and those on the right often decry their deplatforming as a violation of “freedom of speech,” however the First Amendment does not apply to these social media companies. Private entities can create user agreements and remove users and their posts without running afoul of the Constitution. Yet, while they may have legal, moral and ethical grounds for deplatforming, they may assess that doing so may be inconsistent with their business model. Twitter has made the decision to replatform individuals, including the former president, that spread mis and disinformation, and other hateful and other unsavory views online. Since Elon Musk took over the platform, there has been an exponential rise in antisemitism, anti-minority, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. 
3. Trump’s latest calls for protests were made on his own platform, Truth Social, and not posted on his official accounts on other social media platforms. Social media companies would be hard-pressed to deplatform a national figure for views expressed on another platform, unless there is a clear violation of their user terms of agreement. This makes it difficult for social media companies to take action, while also providing them cover for failure to do so.
4. The ability for social media companies to accurately determine the current extremist threat environment is questionable, and not necessarily their responsibility. The government is tasked with homeland security, and considering that multiple federal intelligence and law enforcement entities were unsuccessful in recognizing the threat that Trump’s supporters posed in the lead up to January 6th, it is unreasonable to expect private companies to assume that responsibility or be more successful at threat analysis. That said, the social media companies play an outsized role in online extremist radicalization and should be held accountable for the consequences that their lack of content moderation and algorithms play in contributing to the explosion of online violent extremism in this country. 
5. Lastly, OSINT (open-source intelligence) has become limited in accurately detecting violent actors or predicting widespread violence. OSINT entails the collection and analysis of online content to determine if individuals or groups pose a threat. The collection and analysis of OSINT is resource intensive, and when performed by the government, is fraught with legitimate civil rights and civil liberties concerns. Post January 6th, many domestic extremists and potential violent lone actors have abandoned (or been deplatformed) from the sites that OSINT is routinely gleaned from. These malign actors now share violent ideologies, rhetoric, memes and conspiracies on platforms and encrypted chat rooms that do little to no moderation, such as Reddit, 4chan, 8kun and online video games. Detecting violent intent through “leakage” from online actors across multiple platforms has become a daunting enterprise for the government, and it is not the responsibility of social media companies to police sites other than those that they control.

Hate is a profitable enterprise in the US and the reality is that the public should not expect social media companies to accurately assess and respond to evolving threats, especially if that response is inconsistent with their financial interests. 

Jared Holt

The landscape around domestic extremist violence has changed in major ways since the Capitol riot and the legal, social, and political fallout afterward that fell upon far-right groups that were supportive of Trump. There are also valid questions as to whether Trump is still able to wield influence over the spectrum of far-right movements as he was in 2020–something I would argue is not the case, at least to the degree he once did. De-platforming Trump certainly played some sort of role in those shifts, though I don’t know that kicking Trump off big platforms did a whole lot to actually change the trajectory of extremist and political violence in the United States. Banning Trump and other movements that were most visible on January 6 probably disrupted those organizing spaces enough to prevent further wreckage, but extremist movements adapted and overcame those hurdles, like they always do. It’s a fluid problem.

For Meta and Google, I think what ultimately matters here is Trump’s behavior, which I’d argue hasn’t changed at all since he lost the 2020 election. (I’m not going to pretend Elon Musk is interested in content moderation policy.) Trump is living his own Groundhog Day, waking up every morning and stirring up his most loyal followers with forms of election denialism, hate, and conspiracy theories. Meta and Google might believe the broader cultural conditions have changed, but I can’t imagine any coherent argument to claim Trump will behave better once he starts using the platforms again. Trump’s behavior is a crucial part of assessing the risk here, especially considering he is the widely presumed front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination and that whatever loss of influence he may have suffered is theoretically still up for grabs in the years ahead.

Tom Joscelyn

On Dec. 19, 2020, then President Trump announced via Twitter that there would be a “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” He added: “Be there, will be wild!” As demonstrated in the January 6th Select Committee’s hearings and final report, rightwing extremists from around the country read this tweet as a call to arms. Within hours, they began planning for violence on January 6th. Within days, the Proud Boys and others made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol. There is no material dispute over these facts. For the first time in American history, there was no peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021. Trump’s incendiary use of social media caused the violence we witnessed. So we should not be surprised if Trump’s tweets and other social media posts incite violence once again. 

Mary McCord

It’s hard to comprehend what the social media platforms were considering when determining that the risk to public safety from Trump’s presence on their platforms has receded.  Knowing his history of calling on his base whenever he feels threatened, and knowing he is the subject of multiple ongoing criminal investigations–one of which he already used to publicly put a target on the backs of federal law enforcement, DOJ officials, and judges–the social media platforms had more than enough reason to continue their suspensions of Trump. The recent escalating calls to “TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” and “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” along with the veiled threats against the Manhattan District Attorney affirm that. The platforms should answer now how they will treat posts like those on Truth Social over the last several days.

Candace Rondeaux

It appears America is facing another DeJa’Vu moment as Donald Trump once again whistles his dogs onto the streets and tech platform companies are set for yet another rude awakening. It’s clear the corrective lies with Congress but few are likely to be motivated to take action in the run up to the 2024 elections.

Peter Simi

No, these social media platforms once again seem to be putting their bottom line ahead of public safety and democracy. Their assessments lack credibility and, of course, transparency, so there is no way for experts or anyone else to evaluate how these companies made their determinations. What is clear, however, in terms of the threat landscape is that threats to public officials are at all time highs and many of those threats are communicated on these very same platforms. The threat environment is not receding as some of the social media officials claim, and most experts that I am aware of have grave concerns about the current threat level and a rapid increase in the threat landscape as we inch closer to the 2024 presidential election.

IMAGE: People show their support for former President Donald Trump near his Mar-a-Lago home on March 21, 2023 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The post 7 Experts on Trump’s Call for Protests and Social Media Threat Models appeared first on Just Security.

Editor’s note: The video below is also available on C-SPAN.

IMAGE: Investigators who worked on the January 6th Committee, including Mary B. McCord (L) and Jacob Glick (R) speak at the Georgetown University Law Center about the ongoing threat of violent domestic extremism on Feb. 23, 2023. (via C-SPAN) 

The post Video: January 6th Investigators Speak About Ongoing Threats of Violent Extremism appeared first on Just Security.

To achieve this success, Ukrainians have employed critical adaptations to identify and overcome Russian government efforts to simultaneously delegitimize the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign and democratic state, legitimize and obscure the violence and depredations of the Russian invasion, and ultimately fracture the democratic alliance.

In its fight against the Kremlin’s distortions, Ukrainian society has seized three key advantages — deep preparation, networks of cooperation, and active utilization of new technology, including artificial intelligence — that have aided civil society organizations and governments to build trust and tell Ukraine’s story, unite Ukrainians and their allies, and ensure resilience in the face of a pervasive authoritarian disinformation campaign. These efforts have fortified public support across much of Europe and the United States, support that has been critical to Ukrainians’ ability to maintain the integrity of their State and defend themselves on the battlefield in the face of Moscow’s assault.

The Importance of Preparation

Ukrainians have learned to mitigate risks in the information space through hard-won experience. Moscow’s use of disinformation in Ukraine goes back to Soviet times and extends to Russian influence activities in the aftermath of the union’s 1991 collapse. As the Kremlin’s encroachments have intensified since 2014, Ukraine’s civil society, news media, and activist community have built their capacity, working with democratic partners to counter malign authoritarian narratives.

Ukrainians trace the origins of this response to the Revolution of Dignity in late 2013 and early 2014, when Kremlin campaigns smeared the Euromaidan’s pro-Europe protesters as fascists and neo-Nazis in order to lay the groundwork for the annexation of Crimea and rolling invasion of eastern Ukraine. Many of the same narratives were redeployed to explain the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

As Galyna Petrenko of Ukrainian civil society organization Detector Media observes in a forthcoming report that we author (now available here), the period between 2014 and 2022 represented a crucial stage of development for the counter-disinformation community in Ukraine, during which its ability to coordinate and build essential response mechanisms matured. During this time, many Ukrainian organizations shifted their focus to securing the integrity of the information space and began experimenting with new methods of countering Kremlin narratives. They improved collaboration and information sharing to build a community of trust, educating the Ukrainian public about Moscow’s goals in the information space and strengthening citizens’ media literacy and resilience to manipulation.

The emerging critical mass of activity to counter the Kremlin’s information distortions had the effect of greatly improving the Ukrainian public’s knowledge and awareness of Russian narratives and tactics. For example, according to national survey data, the percentage of Ukrainians who understood the war in Donbas to be the result of Russian aggression increased from 49 percent in February 2019 to 65 percent in December 2021.

 Deepening Cooperation

In an increasingly complex information space, Ukrainian civil society organizations have leveraged diverse skill sets to form cooperative networks that have the scale, sophistication, and speed necessary to stay ahead of the adaptations in messaging strategy churned out by the Kremlin’s multiheaded propaganda machine.

Such collaboration includes the efforts of data scientists, narrative researchers, web-traffic analysts, web marketers, sociologists, and investigative journalists. Through dedicated information-sharing across sectors, these networks can identify disinformation narratives and design timely, effective responses. They also help civil society organizations achieve valuable economies of scale that would otherwise be out of reach.

Given the tendency of disinformation narratives to cross platforms and outlets to reach diverse audiences, cooperation across and between sectors is critical to building the capacity to resist and counter disinformation. The National Democratic Institute’s Counter Disinformation Coordination Hub – an adaptable network of roughly 25 local civil society groups, media organizations, and international organizations – has provided a platform to Ukrainian civil society organizations as they sought to react to Moscow’s pivot to “hyperlocal” disinformation campaigns. In those operations, Russian state-controlled outlets have attempted to influence Ukrainians through content-sharing agreements with cash-strapped local news outlets and localized channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging application that has become one of the most popular information sources in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The Hub also connects Ukrainian civil society organizations to local journalists across the country– many of whom are operating in active conflict zones. This allows them to better understand the dynamics of Russian disinformation operations in context and design localized messaging in response.

Leveraging New Technologies

It would be difficult, if not impossible, for even the most well-staffed civil society organizations to directly monitor emergent disinformation narratives across the global media ecosystem. However, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning tools have made it easier to rapidly detect patterns across a complex and evolving information ecosystem. This, in turn, empowers disinformation researchers to quickly pick up on emergent Russian narratives, and gives messaging specialists more time to design an effective response before narratives cross channels and platforms to influence larger audiences. Further, by facilitating historical analysis of Russian disinformation over time, AI and machine-learning tools enable counter-disinformation specialists to predict future campaigns on the basis of societal fault lines, cultural tropes, annual events, and historical knowledge.

For example, the organization Texty in Ukraine uses AI and machine-learning tools to identify new pro-Kremlin narratives across a number of platforms, including Telegram. Texty has used its advanced technology to rapidly perform analyses of thousands of Telegram channels, where Russian narratives may be impactful but otherwise difficult to identify and counter.

Detector Media, mentioned previously, uses AI and machine learning to better understand Moscow’s efforts in information ecosystems beyond the transatlantic community. Cooperating closely with LetsData, a Ukrainian private-sector firm that provides AI and machine-learning services, Detector performs real-time discourse monitoring in more than 30 countries. It is possible to do this work manually, but an algorithm can detect in 10 seconds what might take an unassisted researcher an hour (or longer) to discover.

By coordinating such AI-driven narrative and audience research, public polling data, and focus groups, counter-disinformation networks can direct their efforts to the specific narratives that are empirically gaining the most traction among crucial audiences, and create narrowly tailored responses that reach the right people.

One challenge of implementing technology-driven approaches more broadly within Ukraine and beyond hinges on the difficulty of hiring talented AI engineers away from the private sector, where compensation is greater. Moreover, digital-rights activists raise valid concerns about the threats that AI-driven tools such as ChatGPT pose to the integrity of the information space, since such tools may be used to automatically generate convincing disinformation at scale.

Russia’s Larger Information Ambitions

The Russian authorities’ ambitions in the information domain are global and therefore relevant to all free societies. Over the past year, far beyond Ukraine, the Kremlin has wielded disinformation to blame Kyiv or NATO countries for the conflict, or otherwise dampen support for Ukraine’s cause. Such investments in the information space have yielded far greater results in regions such as Latin America and Africa, where the Kremlin’s toxic messaging goes virtually unchallenged as a result of political, economic, and historical ties to Moscow in addition to less awareness about the dangers to democracy that such narratives pose.

There is little evidence to suggest that the leadership in Moscow or like-minded authoritarian regimes will change course in their disinformation efforts. Given the significant payoff derived from their relatively inexpensive and low-risk disinformation activities to date, these regimes can be expected to continue to exploit asymmetries that enable them to sow confusion in information spaces around the world.

The threat Moscow’s disinformation machine poses is clear. While its claims about Ukraine typically defy observable reality, they are a critical component of the Kremlin’s information strategy, which aims to unmoor societal perceptions from fact-based reporting and experience. Through such activities, Russian leadership undermines the very concept of knowable truth. Philippine journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa puts the risk such actions pose into stark relief: “Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world’s existential problems.” Given the high stakes, democratic societies must work together more intensively with and in support of Ukraine to see through its vision for victory, and to apply the relevant lessons learned from the conflict to democratic societies elsewhere.

(This article is drawn from a report, now available: “Shielding Democracy: Civil Society Adaptations to Kremlin Disinformation About Ukraine.”)

IMAGE: This illustration photo taken on February 14, 2023 shows a phone screen displaying a picture of rescuers working on a residential building destroyed after a missile strike, in Dnipro, Ukraine, on January 16, 2023, with the WarOnFakes.com website in the background displaying a fake video of the same residential building. A Russian missile smashed a Ukrainian apartment complex, killing dozens. Pro-Russian propagandists offered a slick counter narrative that shifted the blame away from Moscow — using pseudo fact-checking as a tool of disinformation. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

The post One Year Later, Lessons from Ukraine in Fighting Disinformation appeared first on Just Security.

According to Jordan and GOP organizers, the purpose of the committee is to investigate how the executive branch allegedly gathered information on citizens and worked across both the government and the private sector “to facilitate action against American citizens” in silencing conservatives “at all levels.” Their premise is that U.S. government institutions, principally law enforcement and the intelligence community, have been “weaponized” by Democrats to repress legitimate, conservative political agendas.

I served for more than 34 years in the CIA’s Clandestine Service and made multiple journeys to Capitol Hill to brief oversight members on the most sensitive aspects of agency operations. I detailed the CIA’s successes, as well as its failures. The experiences were time-consuming and not always pleasant, but I firmly believe that congressional oversight is a necessary and essential component of a functioning democracy. The process facilitates public trust and provides for appropriate accountability and reforms, as needed, for a secret organization like the CIA as it operates in an open and democratic society.

But that’s oversight, a bipartisan endeavor conducted in the interest of all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. The oversight structure that came from the Church Committee investigations adopted legal and sensible rules of the road and protections for all stakeholders. Such supervision is conducted in controlled settings, shielded from public exposure, in a way that promotes candor and trust among both the auditors and the audited, facilitating transparency.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. I’ve seen lawmakers’ bias for or against various programs unrelated to partisan politics cloud their judgment. One example was the largely bipartisan seduction of members of Congress by the Predator armed drone program, which dazzled with extraordinarily slick videos featuring the bells and whistles of precision strikes that often supplanted important conversations about targeting methodology and strategic effectiveness. Or members’ fascination with a tool or tradecraft methodology they funded, despite CIA disinterest that impeded rather than facilitated mission success.

Still, up until my 2019 retirement, with few exceptions, I found that oversight members acted responsibly, at least behind the closed doors of our engagements. Similarly, and again with a few exceptions, members were unlikely to leak or make political fodder from what they came to learn, good or bad. The CIA took its deserved lumps when appropriate, but also came away at times with even more support than had been requested for critical initiatives.

Not Oversight

Jordan’s committee will not be oversight. Rather, it promises to be the very politicized weapon it claims interest in exposing. The body’s spectacle and powers pose dangerous implications for the ability of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities to effectively conduct their mission.

The CIA strives to adhere to the mandate that it does not operate as a policymaking institution, though there have been unfortunate exceptions. The CIA’s misguided endorsement of the George W. Bush White House’s contention that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein retained weapons of mass destruction is one famous example. And arguably, former CIA Director Gina Haspel’s deflection of Havana Syndrome concerns and reported interference with reporting that cast Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a bad light so as not to provoke President Donald Trump is another.

But it’s a requirement that CIA officers embrace and that Director William Burns affirmed in a rare December 2022 PBS interview. “We are an apolitical organization,” Burns observed. “Our  job is to provide the best intelligence that we can collect and analyze to the president, to policymakers, to discuss that with our Oversight Committees in the Congress as well, and to do that without any policy agenda, any whiff of politics.”

The reality is that the CIA generally does not offer recommended courses of action or suggest a right or wrong approach to policymakers. CIA officers are so conditioned to refrain from policy prescriptive prose that my own transition to writing publicly on national security matters has frustrated no small number of editors. CIA officers are trained to tell it like it is, warts and all, and ideally, have the courage to speak truth to power, even as uncomfortable as it could be before Congress. It’s literally written in stone at our entrance: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

Intelligence officers are trained to see the world without absolutes, judgment, political bias, or even in the context of their own religious beliefs and personal values. Whether raw reporting from field agents or finished intelligence products, their language is clinical, without passion, and excludes even mention of U.S. policy, let alone criticism. That’s not a moral issue, but rather a requirement for objectivity in getting things right. Absolutes, judgment, and the like are filters that undermine one’s ability to see the world as it is, rather than how we would like it to be. Emotion and qualifiers convey imperative and can come across as a policy prescriptive. These characteristics are unfortunately more prevalent among policymakers, on both sides of the political aisle.

The Intelligence Community-Policymaker Tension

Herein lies the ultimate tension between intelligence professionals and the decision-makers they support. For the most part, national-level leaders, even autocrats, are politicians who see the world through ideological prisms aligned with their supporters and constituencies (though it’s sometimes unclear who is following whom). They represent platforms and ideology, coming into their jobs with predetermined judgments and, in democracies, campaign promises that limit maneuvering room. The enlightenment of even reliable intelligence does not necessarily always sway their thinking.

As a CIA case officer whose career required befriending and recruiting sources with moral standings that varied from selfless patriot to mercenary opportunist, my world was a no-judgment zone; my mission was to carry out lawful direction. Clinically, there was no absolute right and wrong, nor good versus evil, even among our enemies, but instead, we were forced to operate within the context of political realities. Not situational ethics per se, but rather a mindset concerning the need to mitigate risk and protect national security.

Nurturing this mindset among intelligence professionals is key to avoiding the political deep state Jordan’s new committee contends it seeks to investigate and reform, but risks creating instead. One need look no further than how Russia’s systemic intelligence failures contributed to Putin’s calamitous decisions in Ukraine. Putin’s intelligence agencies may have validated the Russian dictator’s predetermined judgment that the war would be a short and largely uncontested affair. Putin appears to have been certain that Ukrainians would greet Russian forces as liberators or otherwise acquiesce, and that the United States and the world’s liberal democracies would lack the backbone to do more than protest and impose further toothless sanctions.

In Russia’s organized kleptocracy, where survival, let alone advancement, is secured by fealty, corruption, and personal networks, who is going to disagree with the party line, tell Putin that he’s wrong, speak truth to power, and tell it like it is? Putin’s intelligence echo chamber is systemically cultivated, from leadership to those in the trenches, resulting in skewed strategic assessments based on sloppy tradecraft and politicized analysis to fit the answers he and his cronies expect to hear.

Wasteful Durham Probe

During Trump’s tenure, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel to investigate potential misconduct against the president or his associates in the Trump-Russia probe. Beginning in 2019, Durham was expected to reveal the deep state Trump claimed had created “the hoax” of Russia’s election interference and enmity toward the United States. The Durham investigation had cost at least $6.5 million through the end of 2022 but resulted in the conviction of only a single low-level FBI lawyer, who avoided jail by pleading guilty to doctoring a 2017 email that the FBI used to justify the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide.

Durham had complete access to all of the intelligence, operational information, and personnel involved in the intelligence community and to law enforcement assessments and products, details including the nation’s most sensitive secrets and capabilities. Moreover, then Director of  National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in an effort to assist Trump’s 2020 campaign, declassified nearly 1,000 pages of intelligence material for Durham’s use. He did so over CIA Director Gina Haspel’s objection, an action that given the scale and the topic, Russia, put sources at risk and jeopardized the cooperation of agents and the CIA’s foreign government partners. Still, as the New York Times just reported, “after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.”

In addition to taking intelligence and law enforcement personnel offline from their work to answer questions, Durham’s inquiry struck fear among underpaid, junior-level intelligence and law enforcement professionals who had worked on the investigations, collection operations, and ensuing assessments that his probe targeted.

Civil servants, some of whom struggle just to make ends meet, suddenly had to concern themselves with the cost of expensive legal counsel and the threat of professional consequences for work that diverged from the president’s narrative. “Go back to school,” Trump angrily exclaimed, when the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment challenged many of his claims.

It’s hard to imagine Jordan’s new committee finding evidence of politically motivated malfeasance in the U.S. Intelligence Community that eluded a determined, experienced, well-trained, and well-staffed Durham, who operated with the sitting president’s support, unrestricted access, and essentially unlimited resources. But that doesn’t mean the committee won’t cause havoc, at minimum posing a worrisome distraction and consuming time and resources the intelligence and law enforcement communities could better use to protect the country.

The greatest danger, though, is the impact on these communities’ protection from political pressure. Professionals dedicated to national service will have to assess the risks of telling it like it is and speaking truth to power. Even those at the bottom of the professional ladder might find themselves having to lawyer up and consider the prospect of subsequent purges depending on who is in office. It also doesn’t make for good buzz among the talented Americans these agencies are trying to recruit into their ranks who might think twice about signing up.

The GOP and the American people need to reflect on what type of national security institutions they want: Russia’s failed system or a cadre of professionals committed to country rather than party and guided by the Constitution and their oaths. The wrong choice will ultimately be borne by us all in blood and treasure.

(Editor’s note: Readers may also be interested in this article on the new select subcommittee by Noah Bookbinder, “Decoding the “Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.”)

IMAGE: (L-R) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Lt. General Scott Berrier testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 10, 2022 in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on worldwide threats. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The post Rep. Jordan’s Dangerous New Panel is Nothing Like the Church Committee appeared first on Just Security.

Many aspects of the new select subcommittee that the House Republican majority created — headed by Rep. Jim Jordan and ominously called the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” — are worthy of comment and concern in that regard, but let’s start with the irony.

For four years, Donald Trump systematically misused the federal government for his own political and personal gain, and Jordan and many of his colleagues stood by or affirmatively defended Trump’s actions. The list is long, and hopefully well-known to many. Trump directly interfered in prosecutions of his friends and allies, with his compliant attorneys general dropping charges and undercutting the sentencing recommendations of career prosecutors, and eventually abused the pardon power to ensure close allies like Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon saw no consequences for criminal conduct. He explicitly encouraged investigations of perceived enemies and fired inspectors general whom he perceived to be a threat. He steered federal business to his hotels and resorts, turning the presidency into a personal profit-making enterprise.

Even the Department of Interior under Trump produced propaganda videos promoting the president and allowed him to use national park land for political events. His administration was characterized by repeat and replete violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits most federal officials from using their official positions for politics, and he effectively encouraged those violations by making clear he would not follow recommendations of disciplinary action for senior administration officials who violated that law.  And of course Trump ultimately tried to use federal agencies and resources to keep himself in power after he lost a free and fair election, pushing the Department of Justice to endorse bogus claims of election fraud and considering ordering the military to seize voting machines.

Trump’s term as president was the very model of weaponization of the federal government. It exposed vulnerabilities in our system that demand inquiry, and from which we can draw lessons to safeguard the rule of law and our democratic institutions. But the new House subcommittee isn’t going to be investigating any of that.

Instead, what Jordan’s new select subcommittee will in fact be investigating, apparently, are those in the federal government who have been investigating that very weaponization of government under Trump. It’s exhausting to contemplate, and it’s a prime example of the classic Trumpian tactic of accusing your perceived enemies of doing exactly the thing that you are actually doing. We can’t allow this to be accepted as an honest or upright enterprise.

Jordan, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and other House Republicans argue that conservatives from Trump on down have been subjected to a double standard by the federal government and particularly by law enforcement. This is, of course, nonsense.

Federal law enforcement has approached the rampant illegality of the Trump administration with tremendous restraint. Despite a plethora of credible allegations of criminal conduct by Trump and those around him, the many different instances of illegality during Trump’s presidency prior to efforts to overturn the 2020 election have been subject to little investigation and few charges. When there was finally an armed insurrection incited by Trump to stop the peaceful transition of power in the United States–a historically shocking and dangerous event in this country’s story–an investigation into the events leading up to and on that day started slowly and is only now approaching a level proportionate with the severity of the conduct at issue.

The real reason for “investigating” the investigations into efforts to overturn the election and of Trump-era abuses is to protect Donald Trump and his allies by effectively kneecapping those seeking to finally ensure accountability for these historic abuses. Of course, Jordan himself stands to benefit from these efforts; he is a staunch Trump ally who was himself referred by the January 6 Committee to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to cooperate with its investigation for which he was a potential direct witness. Rep. Scott Perry, another staunch Trump ally in the House who was even more involved in efforts to overturn the election and the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, has said that he would not recuse from oversight of those same investigations despite the obvious conflict of interest.

So the House select subcommittee is being set up to ignore Trump’s actual systematic weaponization of the federal government and examine, in what will surely be sensational terms, entirely appropriate federal conduct that is not weaponization at all. But beyond that, the House also appears poised to do some weaponizing of its own.

Congressional oversight, in general, scrupulously refrains from interfering with ongoing criminal investigations. This subcommittee, though, has been expressly authorized in its mandate to look into “ongoing criminal investigations.” Congress publicly and privately opening up ongoing investigations can undercut those investigations by tipping off targets, discouraging witnesses, making it harder to obtain evidence, and infecting a potential jury pool with bias, among other possible effects. Doing so intentionally and in a systematic way is dangerous and looks a lot like interfering with the justice system for politics. Moreover, the Department of Justice is likely to refuse to provide much of the information requested, particularly since some requests might implicate grand jury secrecy and others would undercut law enforcement, leading to needless controversy and gridlock.

The new House of Representatives has also restarted a formerly discarded practice that allows Congress to target for cuts or for zeroing out the funding for specific agency programs and even the salaries of specific federal employees they don’t like. That’s about as weaponized as it gets.

It’s important to call out what is really going on here and keep calling it out as this misinformation effort proceeds. We have seen this in our nation’s history before. There is a real danger that, as this subcommittee continues about its assigned business for weeks and months and with the trappings of congressional power, the press and the American people will start to accept its premise and present this as a legitimate look into government excess. It is not; it is a smokescreen to protect those who actually weaponized the government. Those trying to keep the public informed have to say that, very clearly, every time this subcommittee does anything. Only then can we combat the real weaponization of government against our democratic system.

IMAGE: US Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, speaks as the US House of Representatives convenes for the 118th Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 3, 2023. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Decoding the “Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government” appeared first on Just Security.