The move comes after the Supreme Court dealt a blow to free-speech advocates who say the coordination violates the First Amendment.
The FBI is going to resume its coordination with social-media companies on content moderation ahead of the 2024 election, after the Supreme Court dealt a blow to free-speech advocates who argue the federal government’s close cooperation with Big Tech firms violates the First Amendment.
According to a Department of Justice memo drafted earlier this month, the FBI “will resume regular meetings in the coming weeks with social media companies to brief and discuss potential [Foreign Malign Influence] threats involving the companies’ platforms.”
The memo is featured in a report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the effectiveness of the department’s information-sharing system for monitoring foreign threats to U.S. elections. National Review has reached out to the FBI for comment on the memo.
Horowitz recommended the DOJ increase its transparency around the policies it put in place to ensure information sharing does not trample on the First Amendment, and to ensure the coordination strategy evolves to keep up with ever-changing foreign threats. The report’s appendix says both of the recommendations have been taken up by the DOJ, and requests documentation of the FBI’s outreach to social-media companies over the coming months.
The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and local offices will be tasked with building relationships with social-media companies in areas under the purview of various FBI field offices. As part of this outreach strategy, FBI officials are being instructed to make companies aware of the new standard operating procedure for monitoring suspected foreign influence operations online.
In February, the DOJ implemented the new standard operating procedure for coordinating content moderation with social-media companies in a way they say does not violate the First Amendment. Since February, the FBI has been sharing information about foreign threats within the parameters of the standard operating procedure, the memo says.
To prevent government officials from overreaching, the new procedure requires them to tell social-media companies that the FBI is not expecting them to take any particular action in response to the information they provide. For FBI officials to be permitted to share information with a social-media company, they must share detailed assessments of information suspected to be part of a foreign-influence operation, the new guidelines say.
Acknowledging its lack of transparency, the DOJ plans on launching a website and informing the public of its strategy to engage with social-media companies.
The intent of government officials who shared information with social-media companies that later implemented censorship guidelines is a major question for legal challenges to the arrangement.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs in the Murthy v. Missouri online censorship case lacked standing to sue, in a win for the Biden administration. Troves of evidence unveiled during the litigation appeared to show efforts from various government agencies to pressure platforms into restricting certain viewpoints, especially those related to the coronavirus pandemic. Last summer, the FBI suspended its coordination with social-media platforms due to a lower court’s preliminary injunction restricting the bureau’s ability to coordinate with the companies because of likely First Amendment violations.
Internal Twitter documents known as the “Twitter Files,” released when Elon Musk purchased the platform in late 2022, demonstrated the extensive correspondence between government officials and the platform leading up to the 2020 election. The FBI’s FITF was heavily involved in the coordination with social-media platforms, paving the way for censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story weeks before the 2020 election.
Almost four years later, FBI special agent Erica Jensen testified to the laptop’s validity at Hunter Biden’s criminal gun trial, where prosecutors used evidence from the device to help demonstrate that Biden was addicted to crack cocaine when he purchased and possessed a firearm in October 2018. The FBI verified the computer’s hard drive by cross referencing its serial number with Biden’s Apple iCloud backup servers for his other devices in late 2019.
House Republicans have produced multiple reports detailing the relationships between social-media platforms, third party “disinformation” research organizations, and government agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department. The House reports spotlight the push by Biden administration officials and federal agencies to restrict speech online.
Last week, Representative Harriet Hageman (R., Wyo.) asked FBI director Christopher Wray about the FBI’s meetings with online platforms during Wray’s testimony about the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump less than three weeks ago.
“The guidance makes all kinds of additional steps to underscore that the FBI has no interest in participating in any way whatsoever in the companies’ decision-making,” Wray said. “We are simply passing information on to them for them to do whatever it is they want to do independently.”
U.S. intelligence officials have warned repeatedly about Russia, China, and Iran’s attempts to influence the 2024 election results.