FULL REMARKS: Matt Taibbi Details How Obama Order Led To 'Censorship Industrial Complex' — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Uh, Mr. Taibbe, you have five minutes.
2. 0:02The foreign mentioned, uh, Twitter
3. 0:04files, author, founder of Racket News,
4. 0:06you have five minutes,
5. 0:08Mr. Chairman, um, Madame Ranking member,
6. 0:12uh, thank you. My name is Matt Taibbe.
7. 0:14I'm the editor of the independent site
8. 0:15Racket, and I've been covering digital
9. 0:17censorship issues since 2018, the
10. 0:20fictional ones. Um, on March 14th, 2016,
11. 0:24Barack Obama signed Executive Order
12. 0:2713721, developing a new integrated
13. 0:29global engagement center to support
14. 0:32governmentwide counterterrorism
15. 0:33communications activities directed
16. 0:35abroad. It directed the Secretary of
17. 0:37State to create a new body, the GEC or
18. 0:40GEK, to quote, "Counter the messaging
19. 0:42and diminish the influence of
20. 0:44international terrorist organizations,
21. 0:46including ISIL, al-Qaeda, and other
22. 0:49violent extremists
23. 0:51abroad." Seven years later, while
24. 0:53working on a story involving internal
25. 0:55communications at Twitter, I found
26. 0:56myself reading emails between GEK
27. 0:58officials and Twitter executives about
28. 1:01subjects ranging from COVID 19 to the
29. 1:032020 election to Donald Trump.
30. 1:06Once chairman, you uh you were Mr.
31. 1:08Chairman, you were right to point out
32. 1:10that they were once focused abroad. Uh
33. 1:12but by this time, GEK officials were
34. 1:15largely concerned with domestic English
35. 1:17language accounts, people with no ties
36. 1:20to terror groups or relationships with
37. 1:21adversary nations like Iran, China, or
38. 1:24Russia.
39. 1:26When I went back this weekend through
40. 1:27those documents to find examples of GECK
41. 1:30pressuring Twitter to remove or
42. 1:31deamplify Americans accused of
43. 1:34misinformation, I found an exchange that
44. 1:37we Twitter files reporters missed. In
45. 1:392023, a lawyer at the company asked
46. 1:42several other executives if they had any
47. 1:44quote appetite for writing GEK a letter
48. 1:46to ask them to stop going to the media
49. 1:49with sensationalist claims about
50. 1:51epidemics of foreign bots. One of the
51. 1:54company's senior communications
52. 1:55executives gave a remarkably candid
53. 1:58answer. From my chair, it would be very
54. 2:01helpful, he wrote, referencing a
55. 2:02well-known Washington reporter. He went
56. 2:04on, the pre-briefed Ellen Nakushima
57. 2:07article in the Post on Bernie and this
58. 2:10Corona virus story, no heads up, are
59. 2:12making me worry a little about how good
60. 2:15faith these players will be through the
61. 2:16press into 2020. So, it wasn't just
62. 2:20conservatives, it was also Bernie
63. 2:22Sanders. The date on that email was fe
64. 2:25February 24th,
65. 2:262020. 3 days after the Washington Post
66. 2:29ran a devastating feature titled,
67. 2:31"Bernie Sanders briefed by US officials
68. 2:33that Russia is trying to help his
69. 2:35presidential campaign. This was an
70. 2:37extremely impactful story that opened
71. 2:39the floodgates on a conspiracy theory uh
72. 2:42that Sanders was the recipient of
73. 2:43Russian help. It claimed bots helping
74. 2:46Bernie online were part of quote
75. 2:48Russia's broader interest in sewing
76. 2:50division in the United States and
77. 2:52uncertainty about the validity of
78. 2:54American
79. 2:55elections. In response to this odd
80. 2:57sequel of claims about Russian bots
81. 2:59aiding Donald Trump, the company's head
82. 3:01of trust and safety, Yolo Roth, gave an
83. 3:03unflattering description of Gex methods.
84. 3:06quote, "They use Brandwatch to monitor a
85. 3:09handful of openly Russian accounts, for
86. 3:11instance, RT and an unspecified number
87. 3:14of accounts that they
88. 3:16baslessly assert are inauthentic." This
89. 3:19is the exact formula we previously found
90. 3:22found behind another often used online
91. 3:24tool called Hamilton 68, whose founders
92. 3:27were also quoted in the post piece.
93. 3:29Hamilton 68 mixed a smattering of real
94. 3:32Russian accounts with a crowd of mostly
95. 3:34American, mostly anti-establishment
96. 3:36accounts uh to create a dashboard that
97. 3:39synthesized falsely the appearance of
98. 3:42Russian social media backing for
99. 3:44everything from the Devon Nunes memo uh
100. 3:46to the Parkland shooting. Although many
101. 3:49of the most controversial stories about
102. 3:51GECK involved their their funding of
103. 3:53commercial media scoring operations that
104. 3:55downranked conservative news outlets,
105. 3:58the GEK also pressured Twitter about
106. 4:00left-leaning figures like Sanders,
107. 4:02anti-war accounts, libertarians, and
108. 4:05independents as well as conservatives.
109. 4:07They managed this by using a trick that
110. 4:10gave domestic propaganda the appearance
111. 4:12of a counterterrorist operation. GEX
112. 4:14sent out reports that would first
113. 4:16identify a few social media accounts
114. 4:18with real ties to Russia or China or
115. 4:20Iran. Then it would separately list
116. 4:22accounts they called highly connective
117. 4:25to that country country's propaganda
118. 4:27ecosystem. These would be American or
119. 4:29European citizens with inconvenient
120. 4:32views. For instance, GEK identified the
121. 4:34Twitter accounts of former Italian Prime
122. 4:36Minister Jeppi Kee and former Italian
123. 4:38Democratic Party Secretary Nicole
124. 4:40Zingeri, who was often compared to
125. 4:42Bernie, as being highly connective to
126. 4:44Russia. All you had to do to to do to
127. 4:47get on the list was retweet what they
128. 4:49called anti-US propaganda or GEK's
129. 4:51subjective definition of pro-Russian
130. 4:53propaganda. No actual connection was
131. 4:55required. Through this means, the GEK
132. 4:58exactly rehabilitated the fellow
133. 4:59traveler concept used by infamous smear
134. 5:01artists and witch hunters from history
135. 5:03from Leontrosky to the House on American
136. 5:06Affairs Committee. It was a way to
137. 5:08accuse someone who hasn't done anything
138. 5:10wrong of guilt by ideological
139. 5:13association. And I'll just wrap up on
140. 5:16gone over my time, but they weren't
141. 5:18looking for misinformation and
142. 5:19disinformation. They were looking for
143. 5:21orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, obedience and
144. 5:24disobedience. The idea behind GECK in
145. 5:26particular was finding a way to
146. 5:28propagandize American citizens and
147. 5:30encourage acceptance of official policy
148. 5:33the way we always done to foreign
149. 5:35populations. It's a flagrant violation
150. 5:37of First Amendment ideals and should be
151. 5:39eradicated from the government
152. 5:40completely. No one should have this
153. 5:42tool. Not Democrats, not the Trump
154. 5:44administration, nobody. Gentleman's time
155. 5:46has expired. Thank you. Yeah. Uh with
156. 5:49that, uh Mr. for wine garden. Uh invest