Big Tech Giant Companies Have A Private Meeting To Censor AmericaReps from up to a dozen of the US’s biggest tech companies plan to meet in San Francisco to discuss efforts to counter manipulation of their platforms.
Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.
Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.
The meeting, the Facebook official wrote, will have a three-part agenda: each company will present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations; there will be a discussion period for problems each company faces; and a talk about whether such a meeting should become a regular occurrence.
In May, nine of those companies met at Facebook to discuss similar problems, alongside two US government representatives, Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs and Mike Burham from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, created in November. Attendees left the meeting discouraged that they received little information from the government.
Tech companies, Facebook and Twitter in particular, have faced intense scrutiny for how slowly they initially reacted to reports that foreign intelligence and affiliated operations used their platforms to manipulate users ahead of the 2016 election, leading to drops in user confidence and a threat of regulation from lawmakers.
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office charged 13 people affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency — a “troll factory” where employees created personas across multiple platforms — with breaking laws in order to influence American voters. Since then, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube have each had at least one public purge of accounts believed to be foreign influence operations.
The meeting highlights tech companies’ recent efforts to be more proactive with governments’ use of their sites to achieve political goals. Several companies have announced operations this week where they partnered with other organizations to address such problems.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it had, for the 12th time since 2016, legally acquired control of a handful of web domains registered by Russian military intelligencefor phishing operations, then shut them down. The next day, after receiving a tip from the threat intelligence company FireEye, Facebook and Twitter announced they had taken down a network of fake news sites and spoofed users meant to create sympathy for the Iranian government’s worldview. Google made a similar announcement about YouTube on Thursday.
DOJ attorney George Toscas will be deposed Thursday as part of a congressional investigation into possible FISA abuse.
Staffers with the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees will quiz Toscas about DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Ohr will be interviewed on Aug. 28.
House Republicans will resume an investigation of the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Russia investigation on Thursday with a deposition of George Z. Toscas, a national security attorney at the Department of Justice.
Toscas, who handles counterterrorism and counterespionage cases, will appear for a deposition at 10 a.m. before staffers with the House Judiciary and House Government & Oversight Committees, a source familiar with the matter tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Toscas was one of 17 current and former FBI and Justice Department officials included on a list submitted to the two House committees by California Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Nunes suggested interviewing Toscas and the other officials regarding an investigation into the FBI and Justice Department’s possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Congressional Republicans have probed whether the agencies misled federal surveillance judges by relying on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Toscas is mentioned throughout text messages exchanged between former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page. Strzok and Page, neither of which work for the FBI (Strzok was fired on Aug. 10), mentioned Toscas most often during the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The Washington Post has reported that Toscas was the Justice Department official who reminded then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. McCabe had been informed about the emails weeks earlier but failed to take action on them until late-October 2016.
Strzok and Page, who have already been interviewed by the House panels, also mention Toscas in text messages sent at key points in the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Strzok sent one message to Page on July 30, 2016, the day before the FBI opened the Russia probe, that appears to reference Toscas and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“Do you know if Andy got concurrence back from George about the preamble? No need to ask Andy right now, I think we can in very good faith date the [letterhead memorandum] July 2016,” Strzok wrote.
TheDCNF’s source says that Republicans will ask Toscas about the origins of the government’s Russia probe as well as about Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who served as a back channel between the FBI and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier.
Ohr was also in contact with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele as part of an anti-Trump project financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Ohr’s wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS on the Trump project.
Ohr, who was demoted in December from his position as assistant deputy attorney general, will be interviewed by the two House committees on Aug. 28.
Republicans want to know who at the Justice Department, if anyone, directed Ohr to maintain contact with Steele. The relationship has raised questions because the FBI cut ties with Steele on Nov. 1, 2016 because of the former spy’s unauthorized contacts with the media.
Lawmakers have also questioned why Ohr was meeting with Steele despite claims from top DOJ officials that he was not on the team leading the Russia investigation.
“To my knowledge he wasn’t working on the Russian matter,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified on June 28.
Ohr was interviewed a dozen times by the FBI after the election about his interactions with Steele. Text messages and emails recently provided to Congress also show that Ohr and Steele were in contact throughout 2016 and 2017.
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan called President Donald Trump’s decision Wednesday to revoke his security clearance an “attempt to suppress freedom of speech” and to “punish critics.”
John O. Brennan
✔@JohnBrennan
This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.
NBC News
✔@NBCNews
BREAKING: President Trump is revoking former CIA Director and high-profile Trump critic John Brennan’s security clearance, White House says. https://nbcnews.to/2w9hobN
Brennan was a controversial figure during the Obama administration
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders read a statement earlier Wednesday from the president that explained his decision, citing his constitutional authority and duty to protect the nation’s secrets:
Mr. Brennan has a history that calls in to question his objectivity and credibility. In 2014, for example, he denied to Congress that CIA officials under his supervision had improperly accessed the computer files of congressional staffers. He told the Council on Foreign Relations that the CIA would never do such a thing. The CIA’s Inspector General however contradicted Mr. Brennan directly, concluding unequivocally that agency officials had indeed improperly accessed congressional staffers files. More recently, Mr. Brennan told Congress that the intelligence community did not make use of the so-called Steele dossier in an assessment regarding the 2016 election, an assertion contradicted by at least two other senior officials in the intelligence community, and all of the facts.
Additionally, Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations, wild outbursts on the internet and television about this administration. Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries which is to sow division and chaos.
The president also said that the clearances of several other former Obama administration officials — “James Clapper, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr” — was also under review. Yates was briefly acting Attorney General under Trump before she was fired for refusing to enforce the travel ban, a revised version of which was later upheld by the Supreme Court. Ohr still works at the Department of Justice.
Brennan, who describes himself in his Twitter profile as “Nonpartisan American who is very concerned about our collective future,” has emerged as a vociferous, even alarmist, critic of President Trump. Last month, he accused the president of treason for his press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and hinted that Republicans should help impeach him.
John O. Brennan
✔@JohnBrennan
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
The left has argued in recent weeks that conservatives who are banned from social media platforms or targeted by boycotts do not have a “free speech” argument — yet that is the same argument Brennan invokes in defense of his former privilege to access the nation’s secrets.
Indict Comey and Investigate Daniel Richman for the damn leaks.
The Daily Caller News Foundation is suing the Department of Justice for failing to produce records regarding the Columbia University professor who received four memos from former FBI Director James Comey, one of which was leaked to The New York Times.
Cause of Action Institute, a conservative nonprofit watchdog, filed the lawsuit on behalf of TheDCNF Monday after the Justice Department and the FBI failed to produce any records related to Daniel Richman in response to the news organization’s April 25 Freedom of Information Act request.
Meanwhile, Comey, in a July 5, 2016 press conference, absolved then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of any criminal activity in using her private server for government business while she served as secretary of state, saying that she was “extremely careless,” but not grossly negligent in using a private server for official government business. Gross negligence would constitute a federal offense tied to the mishandling of classified government secrets.
Comey hired Richman as a special government employee, or SGE, to conduct an assortment of personal duties for him, including the task of developing “talking points” about the bureau’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Richman served on “special projects” as an SGE for at least 19 months and “served at the pleasure of” Comey, FBI records show, according to Fox News.
Richman also gave multiple interviews to reporters between July 2015 and February 2017 defending Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case.
TheDCNF seeks all of Mr. Richman’s work product developed on behalf of the former FBI director. It also seeks “all communications between the bureau and Mr. Richman concerning his SGE work assignments, all intra-bureau communications about Mr. Richman and his assignments and activities, as well as all work product delivered to Director Comey or to others within the bureau.”
The suit was filed under FOIA before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Justice Department released some information about Richman to Congress after both House and Senate members waged a bitter campaign to obtain them, along with Comey’s private memos. Some of the documents were released beginning last April.
But the FBI and the Justice Department have hidden the full range of Richman’s activities on behalf of Comey and his interactions with the former director and other bureau officials.
Rand Paul continued to make his case for revoking former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance in a Thursday Breitbart op-ed, citing a 2012 leak that “helped compromise” an operation in Yemen and risked an agent’s life.
Stating that Brennan is “no stranger” to the problem of “vital, secret details” being leaked by security clearance-holding television commentators, Paul hearkened back to 2012.
The Kentucky Senator claimed that Brennan, then Obama’s top White House adviser on counter-terrorism, gave classified information to a group of former Obama advisers turned TV commentators about a Yemen terror plot that Washington had “inside control” of through a double-agent.
After Brennan’s briefing, one of the call’s participants, Richard Clarke, went on ABC and broadcast the government implying that there was a Western spy inside the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomb-making group.
John Brennan’s careless leak to former intelligence officials turned television commentators helped compromise an operation and risk the life of a double agent, and who knows what other objectives it also hindered or outright prevented. This is exactly why former intelligence officials who are now talking heads on television should not continue to have a security clearance.
Reuters reported in 2012: “At stake was an operation that could not have been more sensitive — the successful penetration by Western spies of AQAP, al Qaeda’s most creative and lethal affiliate. As a result of leaks, the undercover operation had to be shut down.”
Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?
This Child Molester Looking SOB Should Be Investigated For Obstruction.
Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and other House Republicans introduced articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday.
Meadows and Jordan argued that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had problematic decision-making during the 2016 presidential campaign and failed to comply with House oversight requests. The House conservatives also chastised the DOJ and Rosenstein for withholding “embarrassing documents,” knowingly hiding information from Congress, abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, and “failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas.”
The Constitution empowers the House to impeach any officer of the executive or judicial branches. However, that only occurs in rare instances. The House only requires a simple majority of of the legislative chamber, or roughly 218 votes, to impeach a member of the executive or judicial branch. If the House were to impeach Rosenstein, then the Senate will require a two-thirds majority to remove him from office.
Jordan said in a statement on Wednesday, “The DOJ is keeping information from Congress. Enough is enough. It’s time to hold Mr. Rosenstein accountable for blocking Congress’s constitutional oversight role.”
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said:
With Attorney General Sessions’ recusal, Rod Rosenstein has been in charge of the Department of Justice as the agency has made every effort to obstruct legitimate attempts of Congressional oversight. The stonewalling over this last year has been just as bad or worse than under the Obama administration. Multiple times we’ve caught DOJ officials hiding information from Congress, withholding relevant documents, or even outright ignoring Congressional subpoenas—and now we have evidence that Mr. Rosenstein signed off on a document using unverified political opposition research as a cornerstone of a FISA application to spy on an American citizen working for the Trump campaign. This level of conduct, paired with the failure to even feign an interest in transparency, is reprehensible. And whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, this kind of obstruction is wrong—period.
For 9 months we’ve warned them consequences were coming, and for 9 months we’ve heard the same excuses backed up by the same unacceptable conduct. Time is up and the consequences are here. It’s time to find a new Deputy Attorney General who is serious about accountability and transparency.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said:
Congress gave Mr. Rosenstein plenty of time to comply with our requests. We have been reasonable and up front with him. Unfortunately, at almost every opportunity, Mr. Rosenstein has resisted and defied Congress’s constitutional oversight. His time to obstruct our investigations has expired. Mr. Rosenstein’s Department is subject to constitutional checks and balances. I call on my colleagues to assert our constitutional responsibility and approve these articles of impeachment.
So far, the articles of impeachment have 11 cosponsors.
