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Notes -
Twitter Files 7
Another Twitter Files post: Link
Michael Shellenberger writes this one, arguing that the FBI worked hard to prime social media platforms into thinking a hacked release would come out prior to the 2020 election. He writes the following.
The FBI's regular meetings with people like Yoel Roth were characterized by the latter as telling him that state actors might try a "hack and leak" operation prior to the election.
The FBI was aware that there wasn't anything to go by on this claim, as Special Agent Elvis Chan testified.
Twitter found no evidence of significant Russian/foreign interference on the platform, and Roth repeatedly informed Chan/the FBI on multiple occasions about this.
Twitter repeatedly resisted efforts by the FBI to get data outside the normal search warrant process and was aware that the FBI was trying to probe a lot.
The FBI eventually got temporary clearances to share top-secret info with Twitter executives regarding APT28, a Russian hacking organization. Roth described himself as being "primed primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out."
Former FBI employees were so numerous at Twitter that they had their own internal slack channels.
In September 2020, Roth and others partook of a tabletop exercise to simulate a "hack and dump" operation regarding the Biden campaign. The goal was apparently to "shape" how the media would respond.
When the Hunter Biden leak finally happened, Roth would argue that it appeared more like a subtle leak, since nothing appeared in clear violation of the rules. Jim Baker would respond that it seemed hacked, so Twitter was reasonable in suppressing it until more information came out. But this is nearly impossible, since the FBI's subpoena for the laptop was attached to the NYPost article.
Roth appeared to buy this story now, and in an email said that it was likely that hacked materials were uploaded to the laptop and given to the shop.
There is a pattern of the FBI trying to warn elected officials with a goal of leaking to the news. They did this with Senators Grassley and Johnson, who were investigating and believed that it compromised their credibility. Jim Baker was apparently investigated twice for leaking information (in 2017 and 2019).
As a reminder, the above is what he's arguing, not what I think is necessarily true.
From what I can see, it appears the FBI was very insistent upon the possibility of a 2016 DNC-style hack. I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable until the election is settled - that the hack didn't happen doesn't mean you could conclude it wouldn't were you in the months leading up to the election.
Far more damning is the attempts at getting Twitter's information outside the normal search warrant process. Twitter and its staff are vindicated in this regard, they appear to not have given in to the FBI's requests in 2020. A caveat to this, however, is that we don't necessarily know why they shut off this access in the first place, and how long it was open before that.
A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here. The closest I could come to explaining my feelings here is that I don't want these people to ever be more than formal acquaintances because it ends up reducing the chance of them acting as independent stations of power.
I don’t think twitter is look awful in these exchanges. They have a heavy left bias and act on it. Nothing we didn’t know. With the power of twitter to dominate the narrative I don’t think it’s a good thing to have the predominant speech platform dominated by one side but the right would probably be worse if they controlled it. All the pronoun people would have been banned.
The FBI and alphabets look as bad as I thought they were since they do have a true mandate to be neutral and not interfere with elections.
The FBI had the Hunter laptop for nearly a year. What did these people know? Did they knowingly misinform the American people on a true story? Baker was a higher up fbi guy when they had the laptop. What did he know.
The fbi was paying twitter. Granted it comes off as reimbursing for expenses but paying and requesting censorship gets well past the “twitter is a private company and Can do what they want” into a direct bribe for censorship plot.
How often did they interfere with Israelis twittering about American politics?
How many pro-Biden accounts were run by non-Americans and band?
Are non-Americans allowed to tweet about American politics? Does it depend on if they openly state that they aren't American? Can a British person have a pro-Biden twitter account? What if 100%. 50% oor 10%? of Tweets are about American politics?
It would be impossible to come up with an objective set of rules or goals that was imposed by the FBI and it fairly clear that the FBI was actively campaigning for a side in an election.
Ya i see no reason why foreign nationals should be limited in their discussion of US politics. First of all the US has a long arm and what we do effects them as much as their own government. So their speech is about the only thing they can do.
The problem with taking this stance is that you arrive at the conclusion that a Macedonian troll farm spamming pro-Trump propaganda and funded by the Russian state then becomes this is fine. They're just foreigners discussing American politics, why would anyone complain?
Whats the problem with a bunch of bots talking to themsleves?
But overall I have no problem with bots not getting promoted to others since their low quality and not human.
Giving bots human rights isn’t a core belief of mine or an American value (humans get free speech).
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