5 Critical Points About America’s Speech Police

The homepage of the CISA website in a file photo. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is an U.S. federal agency under Department of Homeland Security oversight. (Tada Images/Shutterstock)

Commentary

Recently, I testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability for a vital hearing titled Censorship Laundering: How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Enables the Silencing of Dissent.

That hearing centered on the role of DHS sub-agency CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in censoring the speech of Americans—directly and by proxy—first on election integrity, then on COVID-19, and now on seemingly every contentious issue.

As I noted in my opening remarks:

“Overwhelming evidence suggests federal agencies, top White House officials, and lawmakers, colluding with big tech and often government-coordinated and -funded ‘counter-disinformation’ groups, have imposed a mass public-private censorship regime on the American people.

“This regime has suppressed opinions that diverge from its orthodoxy and even facts inconvenient to its agenda on an ever-growing number of topics ... under the guise of national security and public health.

“CISA is core to these efforts.”

Indeed, CISA has served as a censorship conductor, driving meetings between security agencies and social media companies to get the platforms to censor speech that’s disfavored by the government that regulates them.

CISA has served as a censorship “switchboard,” relaying purported misinformation from the government and nongovernmental organizations—including even private Facebook messages—to the platforms to squelch it.

And CISA has served as an architect of the broader public-private censorship regime, helping originate, consult, and network government-linked third parties to serve as First Amendment-circumventing mass-surveillance and mass-censorship enterprises.

These efforts have been integral to a broader war on wrongthink, the first casualty of which has been our speech. Authorities have sought to shut down dissent in no small part by fomenting a moral panic over “mis-, dis-, and mal-information,” equating words critical of institutions with would-be, if not actual, domestic violent extremist attacks on them and censoring the wrongthinkers accordingly—using our own money to silence us.

In developing my testimony, some critical observations about the insanity and insidiousness of this effort occurred to me. Here are five of the most salient points:

Point 1: We never voted to have agencies such as CISA relay requests to censor Americans on social media to relevant platforms or for agencies such as CISA to work with third-party actors to effectuate the same. Instead, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to serve as arbiters of truth, telling us that unauthorized opinions are dangerous to the homeland and that we must be censored accordingly. Yet what’s more dangerous: What Americans say or a government that determines what can and can’t be said without our consent?

Point 2: It’s manifestly the job of the national security and law enforcement apparatus to protect us from threats. But authorities are supposed to deal in actions—attacks or plots to attack—not words. Only the federal government could take a mandate such as protecting critical infrastructure to mean that it’s acceptable to censor domestic skepticism about mail-in ballots, as if critical speech is tantamount to attacks on ballot boxes. Now, the right to speak isn’t absolute. Certainly, authorities ought to pursue cases of clear incitement to violence. But views on elections once held by Jimmy Carter and presented as legitimate by The New York Times or criticism of draconian and often anti-science Chinese COVID-19 policies aren’t that. Speech policing doesn’t keep us safe. Its aim is to keep those who do the policing safe from criticism.

Point 3: For the sake of argument, let’s say one were to concede that there’s a nexus between disfavored perspectives on public policy issues and those who threaten the homeland. Let’s also expand the range of perspectives to include not just those perhaps held disproportionately by conservatives on issues such as election integrity or the Chinese coronavirus but also include progressives’ anti-cop sentiment, pro-abortion sentiment, or radical environmentalist sentiment. Still, the far graver threat in my view would be the evisceration of the First Amendment, which would ultimately lead to the erosion of every other right. Authorities can and should neutralize threats, not speech. The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact. But neither is it a mere piece of parchment to be discarded on the whims of those in power—particularly to quell their political foes.

Point 4: As a matter of prudence, the first question for representatives and the public when evaluating the merits of a policy should always be the following: Would you entrust your worst political foes with this power? When it comes to the power to censor the speech of Americans on highly subjective and contentious matters of public policy, the answer would clearly be “no.” Imagine, for a moment, the reverse scenario, in which conservatives called for deplatforming all those who say voter ID laws are bigoted, who promoted the Steele dossier or claims of Trump–Russia collusion, or who said the COVID-19 vaccines will stop you from contracting the virus and spreading it. Would anyone who took these positions want national security authorities censoring or directing them to be censored?

Point 5: Historically, we would have held in total and utter contempt authorities who would suggest we’re incapable of thinking for ourselves and that, for our own benefit, since the authorities know best, they'll do the thinking for us—while silencing those who dare dissent. No American should stand for it today.

We’re a free people capable of evaluating information and ideas for ourselves, of separating fact from fiction and good ideas from bad.

If we give up our freedom of speech, we'll become helpless subjects, not citizens—and America will neither be democratic nor safe.

We'll become like the very adversaries our authorities are supposed to be protecting us from.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.