Whatever happens to the ‘disinformation’ board, the Feds are spying

Facing an increasing backlash against the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governing Board (DGB), Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised it would not monitor Americans. It was not enough. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to put the DGB on “pause,” and its director, Nina Jankowicz, resigned under public pressure. …

No matter what happens with the board, it is hard to take Mayorkas’s promise not to monitor Americans seriously. Several recent cases of the federal government spying on Americans as well as DHS’s own actions were certain to make people skeptical.

For example, in February of this year, DHS issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin, a memo prioritizing “false or misleading narratives” as a top domestic security threat. The bulletin states that “there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.”

This bulletin clearly referenced Americans inside our borders. Also, unlike with the DGB, DHS made no promise to not monitor Americans’ speech. (My organization, the Center to Advance Security in America, submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests for records regarding the NTAS bulletin and the DGB.)

Don’t forget Carter Page, either.