'Truth cops': How DHS is trying to stop 'dangerous' ideas from spreading on the internet

The government is not going to start regulating what websites say or do, or how people communicate on social media. But the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security is endeavoring to stop "dangerous" ideas from spreading on the internet in a way that is drawing concerns.

The Intercept is sounding the alarm about the “Truth Cops,” who are warning that the federal government is growing increasingly interested in working with tech platforms to police content. To the Department of Homeland Security, this means a variety of programs involving social media monitors that The intercept characterizes as being on a constant mission to “expand the scope of the agency’s tools to foil disinformation,”

"In 2019, DHS created a separate entity called the Foreign Influence and Interference Branch to generate more detailed intelligence about disinformation, the inspector general report shows," said The Intercept. "That year, its staff grew to include 15 full- and part-time staff dedicated to disinformation analysis. In 2020, the disinformation focus expanded to include Covid-19, according to a Homeland Threat Assessment issued by Acting Secretary Chad Wolf."

The report is titled "DHS needs a unified strategy to counter disinformation campaigns." The report comes on the heels of an internal effort beginning in 2018 to devise "internal and external coordination efforts" to stop the disinformation appearing on social media. It was primarily focused on election infrastructure lies. Ironically, it came just as the former president was promoting election misinformation and lies.

"In recent years, cyberattacks, intellectual property theft, and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns against our Nation have increased significantly," said DHS as the reason they did the study. "Our objective was to determine the internal and external coordination efforts the Department has taken to counter disinformation that appears in social media."

They go on to discuss the recommendation that a department within DHS be started to secure "critical infrastructure."

"As more people rely on the internet for information, they become more vulnerable to manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda campaigns that appear in social media. False news, such as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation4 are used to shape public opinion, undermine trust, amplify division, and sow discord," said the background for the report.

It goes on to talk about "deep fake" videos which are digitally generated videos showing a person saying something they never said or did. Within the context of DHS's concerns, they explained a concern that "such as convincing video of U.S. military personnel engaged in war crimes intended to radicalize populations, recruit terrorists, or incite violence."

Joseph Cuffari, the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security, was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019 and a strong exodus of lawyers in the department has been observed ever since, NPR reported last month. Cuffari is also the official that failed to tell Congress for nine months that the Jan. 6 text messages had been deleted by the Secret Service.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) recalled that the J6 committee had been trying to get information from the Secret Service and DHS for about a year.

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"Last October, after months of wrangling with the Secret Service and other parts of DHS to obtain January 6-related records, career watchdog staff drafted a management alert detailing the access problems," POGO reported. "The alert would have been public had it been approved, sources say, in line with other alerts. But Inspector General Cuffari ultimately rejected sending the alert, sources say, although he raised the issue with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas."

In April, the Biden administration announced their solution to the problem identified by the Trump appointee was to launch a Disinformation Governance Board, which the GOP labeled as a version of the "Ministry of Truth," in George Orwell's book 1984. It was quickly disbanded. Instead, the efforts have been operating behind the scenes as part of the CISA, or Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. As Gizmodo explained, they have been the most active in efforts to combat "mis-,dis-, and mal- information."

"The threat of disinformation to society is very real. It’s no secret that social media platforms are unregulated hellscapes that spew an incessant stream of propaganda and bullsh*t. Gullible people eat up a gross diet of disinfo and loosely-factually-vetted, ideology-soaked infotainment, then run off to cause chaos in the real world. Who knows how bad things could get now with Elon on the loose," Gizmodo reported. "That said, giving the government the power to fix this problem is like trying to put out a forest fire with a blowtorch. As the subjects of controversy and conjecture, governments are not neutral actors—and, therefore, handing them the reins to arbitrate truth creates a clear conflict of interest."

Gizmodo also worried about mission creep.

The story concluded, "whether a government is a democracy or a dictatorship, it will always be driven by some incentive structures that don’t necessarily align with the public interest or the truth. The desire to clean up the internet is a noble one, but I just don’t think we should trust federal cops to do the sweeping."

Read the full DHS report.