photo #4100860

The United States government has been exposed as running a shadowy censorship operation in contravention of the Constitution of the United States. The federal government has been contracting with third-party actors to censor the political opinions of U.S. citizens, particularly, conservative Americans, according to new research from The Federalist.The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) used a covert corporation led by a former intelligence officer to finance and promote the blacklisting of conservative media outlets and other censorship efforts, according to the report.The GEC not only provided funding for the development of censorship tools, but also utilized government employees as sales representatives to pitch these products to Big Tech. Further investigation has now revealed that the GEC used one or more for-profit businesses to lead four separate censorship initiatives, with contractors at times performing “inherently governmental functions.”The Global Engagement Center (GEC), as stated on its website, has a platform called Disinfo Cloud that serves as a repository for cataloguing tools and technologies aimed at countering propaganda and disinformation (CPD). Initially limited to “.mil and .gov” users, access to Disinfo Cloud was later expanded to include the private sector.Under its “Silicon Valley Engagement” initiative, the GEC actively encouraged social media companies to join Disinfo Cloud, which assists users in identifying technologies for speech censorship. This raises significant concerns regarding the First Amendment, as the details of Disinfo Cloud’s operations and funding remain opaque, but it is evident that U.S. tax dollars were used to develop and maintain the platform.A State Department spokesperson has previously explained that an external group called Park Advisors was tasked with managing Disinfo Cloud, with approximately $300,000 awarded to the group for this purpose.“In other words, our government paid for the infrastructure of GDI’s ratings system that resulted in conservative news outlets being blacklisted — $100,000 worth of U.S. tax dollars in total, funneled by the GEC to the Global Disinformation Index through Park Advisors,” the report stated.“While Disinfo Cloud was a GEC initiative, it appears Park Advisors and Nemr controlled the platform at DisinfoCloud.com, which has since been shuttered,” the report noted.