Judge bans US Government from social media contact for violating free speech rights - the exact same thing Australia is trying to put into law right now
Judge bans US Government from social media contact for violating free speech rights - the exact same thing Australia is trying to put into law right now
US Court bans Biden Admin officials, FBI, from contacting social media
Covid censorship violated First Amendment rights
Australia’s Home Affairs and Health departments did exact same thing
New law outsources censorship to Big Tech, controlling what you can say
Australia opens global back door to censorship, may dodge US First Amendment
A US District Court Judge has banned US government officials and agencies from contact with social media firms after they suppressed free speech during the covid pandemic, violating America’s constitutional First Amendment right to free speech.
This is the exact same behaviour that the Australian Government not only engaged in, but is now seeking to codify into law.
The proposed Australian law may open a back door to US media censorship including on Rumble and Substack.
Big Tech social media platforms may simply apply the same “misinformation” censorship codes to the US that they are forced to comply with in Australia.
By getting Australia to set the rules they want, the US Government won’t be violating the First Amendment by directly interfering. This would give the Biden Administration the exact same censorship outcome they enjoyed previously but without legal sanction.
US District Judge Terry Doughty slapped a preliminary injunction on key members of the Biden Administration on Tuesday, along with the US Justice Department and the FBI.
They are banned from having any contact with social media firms for the purpose of discouraging or removing speech protected under the First Amendment, with only limited exceptions for the warning of criminal activity, as reported by Reuters, AP, and Politico.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, were all mentioned by name in the ruling.
The case is not finished as the ruling may yet be appealed.
In his ruling, Judge Doughty wrote: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Judge Doughty said the First Amendment’s free speech clause was purposed to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth can prevail, rather than to countenance a monopolization of the market.
“The principal function of free speech under the United States’ system of government is to invite dispute; it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger … Freedom of speech and press is the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom,” he wrote.
Judge Doughty observed that the US Government had assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.
“The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign,” Judge Doughty wrote.
“The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.”
Glenn Greenwald reports on System Update that Judge Doughty’s preliminary injunction prohibits the defendants from:
Meeting with social-media companies for the purposes of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms;
Specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech;
Urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech;
Emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;
Collaborating, co-ordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content on social media containing protected free speech;
Threatening, pressuring or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech. - Source: Glenn Greenwald, System Update
When Elon Musk bought Twitter he opened it up to journalist Matt Taibbi who exposed how the US and Australian Governments had censored social media users - not just directly but using a raft of front groups to hide their ties to the censorship.
Taibbi called this the censorship-industrial complex.
The government and its proxies such as the Stanford Internet Observatory have created a fake new industry of “misinformation experts” who can brand whatever the government dislikes as “misinformation”, “disinformation” or “hate speech”, then ask for it to be taken down.
This is public-private partnerships - the government working together with corporations and academia to censor you with front groups. It’s a form of corporatism, or international fascism.
Australia’s Home Affairs Department made more than 4200 covid-related requests for Twitter to take action on tweets and accounts it didn’t like during the pandemic including a joke about Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.
The Department of Health and Aged Care emailed Facebook to suppress gene-vaccine injured Australians who had set up a support group to try to help each other. The group was taken down.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant threatened to fine Twitter $700,000 per day if they don’t remove “hate speech” and make itself more available to government demands.
Ms Inman Grant worked at Twitter before Elon Musk fixed it. She was irked by his removal of the “public policy representation” in Australia, which is Permanent Canberra’s hotline for take-down requests, and demanded he reinstate it or similar.
“As someone who started Twitter’s public policy function here, I know how critical the role is in responding to government investigations but also for explaining to Twitter HQ in San Francisco our local context, culture and colloquialisms. Without this real-time knowledge transfer, Australian reports of targeted abuse will increasingly fall through the cracks,” Ms Inman Grant wrote in Tech Policy Press.
This is exactly the kind of thing the US District Court of Louisiana just ruled against.
The judgement set out the awful silencing of university academics which led to the public being deceived by Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the government during the pandemic.
When a trio of medical professors from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford published the Great Barrington Declaration on 4 October, 2020, urging sensible policies in response to the pandemic, they were crushed by Google, Reddit, YouTube and Facebook all acting in concert.
“Social-media platforms began censoring the GBD shortly thereafter. In October 2020, Google de-boosted the search results for the GBD so that when Google users googled “Great Barrington Declaration,” they would be diverted to articles critical of the GBD, and not to the GBD itself. Reddit removed links to the GBD. YouTube updated its terms of service regarding medical “misinformation,” to prohibit content about vaccines that contradicted consensus from health authorities. Because the GBD went against a consensus from health authorities, its content was removed from YouTube. Facebook adopted the same policies on misinformation based upon public health authority recommendations,” the ruling said.
It’s just one example of many.
A US District Judge has ruled this illegal in the United States as it is a violation of constitutional First Amendment speech protections.
Australia doesn’t have any free speech protection in its constitution, all we have is an “implied right” to political communication. It’s not the same thing.
A proposed new Australian law is now seeking to make the government regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), into a Ministry of Truth that will control everything you can see, hear and say online.
It will do this by setting invasive industry speech codes on “misinformation and disinformation” that tech platforms have to follow and report on, or face big fines.
This will, in turn, censor traditional print and online platforms such as News.com.au and Daily Mail Australia. These outlets rely on social media sharing for clicks to boost their stories, and to justify their revenue sharing agreements under the News Media Bargaining Code with tech platforms Meta (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) and Google (YouTube).
The Australian Government has exempted itself from having to comply with the misinformation standards.
Letters From Australia has this afternoon emailed media requests for a response to Home Affairs, the Department of Health and Aged Care, the eSafety Commissioner, ACMA, Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (Communication and Arts division).
The eSafety Commissioner responded on Wednesday as follows:
“As the Australian Government’s online safety regulator, the eSafety Commissioner applies Australian law.
“The laws of other countries are not relevant to the exercise of her powers under the Online Safety Act or other legislation.
“The recent notice sent to Twitter by the eSafety Commissioner is a transparency notice lawfully issued under the Online Safety Act 2021.
“The notice seeks information from Twitter about steps it is taking to enforce its own rules, which define and prohibit online hate.”
The Department of Health and Aged Care responded on Thursday to say they have no comment on the US court proceedings.
This story will be updated if any further responses are received.
Biden v Missouri update: On July 14 a US federal appeals court temporarily paused the preliminary injunction granted on July 4, allowing the respondents to once again contact the social media platforms. The administrative stay was issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans without comment as reported by AP via NPR. The case continues.
Biden v Missouri update 2: On June 26, 2024, the US Supreme Court dismissed Murthy v Missouri (formerly Biden v Missouri) on the grounds the plaintiffs had no standing, arguing they were not at risk of suffering imminent personal harms of a concrete nature. The issue has not died even though this case can no longer be appealed, as presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr has launched a new case on the exact same issue, that US Government officials induced the three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech including his own - and he has standing as he had personal harms.
EDITS:
07 July 2023 - added more (and better) quotes from Judge Doughty’s ruling. Added top bullet point, edited last bullet point, edited intro, added pars up high explaining how the US Security State can sidestep the First Amendment protections by having Australia mandate it instead of them, corrected “injunction” to “preliminary injunction” for greater accuracy. Added Glenn Greenwald’s details of what was banned from his excellent Rumble explainer, Added Department of Health and Aged Care response. Added second screenshot of the proposed Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023.
08 July 2023 - added response from the eSafety Commissioner
02 August 2023 - updated to include emergency stay overturning the ban, tweaked & reordered bullet points.
05 August 2024 - update 2 on Supreme Court final dismissal of the case and RFK jr’s new suit
Thanks Alison for your untiring efforts to maintain our liberty 🗽 and towards a decent society.
What the Australian government is trying to do is so scary! I hope it doesn’t go through 🙏🏻
Thank you for highlighting this topic! Hope the Australian people wake up!