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| FB BEGINS BANNING CONVOY GROUPS |
| Facebook has booted the rapidly growing “Convoy to DC 2022” group from its platform after it gained 137,000 members.
The group had been gaining tens of thousands of members per day and was calling on all truckers in the US to form a convoy to protest COVID-19 mandates. Organizers were planning to begin the convoy in California and end in Washington DC. |
| According to congressional candidate Tyler Lee, who was helping organizers of Convoy to DC 2022 and was planning to join the convoy, Facebook claimed that the group was banned for “repeatedly violating our policies around QAnon.”
However, Lee described Facebook’s actions as a “stunt” and added that this “is exactly why Americans are fed up.”
The QAnon policies that Facebook cited when banning Convoy to DC 2022 were blasted when they were first introduced with lawyers, journalists, and authors warning that they were arbitrary and gave Facebook an unchecked license to censor.
“Facebook just shut down our page,” Brian Brase, one of the organizers of Convoy to DC 2022 tweeted. “Apparently we don’t fit their agenda. People United is scary I guess. Convoy is still on.”
Facebook’s decision to boot the Convoy to DC 2022 group follows another convoy that’s protesting vaccine mandates, the “Freedom Convoy” in Canada, going viral on social media after mainstream media outlets downplayed the convoy and suggested that Russia was behind it.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has banned a rapidly growing grassroots protest movement that’s being shunned or disparaged by the mainstream media. Anti-critical race theory groups, anti-lockdown groups, groups supporting exceptions to COVID vaccine mandates, and more have also been booted from the platform as they gain traction and attract lots of new members.
In addition to banning specific groups, Facebook has introduced new censorship rules that make it harder for group members to see each other’s content. |
| The White House has again shown its support for online censorship by praising Spotify for adding content warning labels to The Joe Rogan Experience.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki even added that, “there’s more that can be done,” in a press conference this week.
The new Spotify labels will be based on many of the recent Big Tech labels where a label will be attached to a piece of content that goes against the ideas of government authorities.
“This disclaimer is a positive step but we want every platform to continue doing more to call out mis and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information,” Psaki said, when asked about the new Spotify label policy.
“Our view is it’s a good step,” Psaki added. “It’s a positive step, but there’s more that can be done.”
Psaki asked online platforms to do more to combat “misinformation.”
“That certainly includes Spotifly (sic)” she said, pronouncing the audio platform incorrectly.
Watch the video here. |
| SUPPORTING CIVIL LIBERTIES |
| Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie have made a statement in support of civil liberties and against the use of domestic vaccine passports by turning up at Big Board in Washington D.C.
Big Board is a bar and restaurant that had its liquor license revoked and was then ordered to shut down by the state after it refused to implement a divisive vaccine passport system. |
| Senate Paul, along with his aides, visited on Tuesday evening, not long after the state put a closure notice on the door.
“I’m proud of the owner for not submitting,” Paul said.
Congressman Massie praised the owner Eric Flannery for pushing back against the affront to civil liberties.
“I’m just a little old bar owner,” Flannery said. “I’ve been down here for ten years and I love everybody who comes.”
Flannery pushed back against having staff check medical passports at the door. “The government doesn’t send me a paycheck…I am not an agent of the government to do this,” Flannery said in a video from The Daily Signal. “If they want to come down and check people’s medical status, they’re more than welcome to.”
Flannery has been one of the most vocal opponents of vaccine passports in the D.C area.
Speaking to The Daily Signal, Senator Paul said, “If you came to me and you said you’re going to take my liberty ‘but I’m going to keep you from dying and I’m gonna keep you from the plague’ you might have an argument. You’d still be wrong.”
Senator Paul said that people can make their own decisions, adding, “Don’t go to the restaurant. If it’s really deadly, stay home.” |
| The National Security Agency (NSA) has internal and court-approved procedures that are supposed to prevent the surveillance of Americans and they’ve been laughable ever since they were introduced.
According to a report released this week by the Office of the Inspector General, the intelligence agency has not been strictly following those rules.
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows intelligence agencies to gather foreigners’ communications, including emails and phone calls, without having to get warrants.
The law does prohibit the surveillance of Americans. But, it has a massive loophole that allows intelligence agencies to search for information on Americans if “a query is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information.”
This loophole is very easily exploited.
In the report, the Inspector General “revealed a number of concerns involving identifiers used as query terms against FISA Section 702 data.”
Investigators for the NSA’s office of the inspector general found out that queries in the database for search terms, or “selectors,” for Americans “did not always follow NSA procedural and policy requirements.”
Additionally, a tool that automatically blocks queries with US persons selectors did block some selectors.
Civil liberties and privacy activists insist that Section 702 should be amended to require intelligence agencies to get warrants before searching for any information on an American citizen. The groups argue that such surveillance on Americans is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. |
| Thanks for reading,
Reclaim The Net |
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