Cruz Seeks ‘Censorship’ Details From FBI, CISA, State, NSF
Officials at the FBI, Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, State Department and National Science Foundation violated the First Amendment when they pressured social media companies to remove content, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote Wednesday. He sent…
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letters to the State Department, FBI, CISA and NSF asking for information related to “censorship” activity. According to Cruz, the State Department sent social media companies a list of individuals they identified as “inauthentic,” but the list included American citizens, not just foreign actors. The NSF “doled out millions to fund Stanford University and the University of Washington’s Election Integrity Partnership, which successfully influenced social media companies into ‘moderating’ millions of tweets flagged by CISA and the FBI,” said Cruz. The lawmaker is seeking information on “applicable taxpayer-funded grant making and non-governmental partnerships processes.” NSF doesn’t “engage in censorship and has no role in content policies or regulations,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday. NSF invests in research on communications technology based on congressional and statutory guidance, it said: It’s in the U.S.’s best economic and security interest to understand how scammers and foreign adversaries are using communications tools. The other agencies didn’t comment.