DisInfoGate – Big Tech and Intel

Today CNAV introduces another new Twitter journalist taking advantage of the new freedom Twitter now affords. True, that freedom is not absolute – no one has a simpler and less restrictive set of content standards than Gab. But the new DisInfoGate thread is exactly the sort of journalism Elon Musk said he wants to see. And a user calling himself “Name Redacted 247” at last fleshes out the history of Big Tech as State actors. Or rather, Deep State actors. Recall that The Intercept revealed that the public-private partnership with Big Tech began in 2018. Now the DisInfoGate thread also says this sort of thing has been going on since 2018. We can therefore assume that the Intercept piece and the DisInfoGate thread describe the same operation.

DisInfoGate precursor threads

This account has been very active but has not, until today, gotten the attention it deserves. During the first Twitter Files releases, of course, Elon Musk fired an obvious troublemaker, Jim Baker. So the nameless tipster apparently asked Elon how many federal agents were on Twitter’s payroll. When Elon didn’t answer, the account dropped a thread beginning with this tweet, naming names – lots of them.

He then turned his attention to Facebook, with even larger results – 115 of them.

Readers will recall that CNAV covered that thread at the time.

The next day, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) released his own thread, a short one linking to an article in National Review covering FBI collaboration with Twitter.

On the day after Christmas, Name Redacted 247 dropped another thread, giving the same treatment to Google:

The accountholder calls for investigation into the hiring practices at Twitter, Meta (Facebook), and Google. Why, he (and we!) want to know, did these companies go on a hiring spree of the worst sort of troublemakers? Those people made trouble for innocent accountholders because they’re spooks and that’s what spooks do. When you’re a spook, everyone else is either an enemy spy or has secrets only you should learn. That’s how they think; that’s how they act.

And now (February 6, 2023 at 5:44 p.m. EST) Name Redacted 247 releases the most important tales. After telling us who those spooks are, now he tells us what they do – and have been doing.

The DisInfoGate thread

Herewith the thread – the odd numbers. (It runs to twenty-three tweets.)

Note that he links to the other three threads naming names of spooks working at Twitter, Meta and Google. (Once a spook, always a spook!) He also includes a postscript – a link to a tweet by Jeff Landry, Attorney General of Louisiana. General Landry is a top-tier plaintiff in the case of Missouri v. Biden, the big State actor case. Here Landry links to the full deposition of intel player Brian Scully.

Reaction

This thread came to CNAV’s attention after another account retweeted the anchor tweet. Besides the retweeters, reaction varies from “Wow” to “There, you see” to “It’s still happening.” Here is a sample:

The “he” is Bill Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC). Of course he’s proud of the censorship – he’s a spook and that’s how spooks think, and what they do. This user points out that Mr. Evanina is in breach of his oath to

support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Analysis

In the DisInfoGate thread, Name Redacted 247 has compiled yet more evidence that Big Tech companies acted as State actors. (And continue so to act.) Recall what Justice Clarence Thomas said: when a company, however private, acts on instruction from the government, it becomes an agent of the government. When such orders violate the Constitution, the government does wrong, and the private actor doesan equal wrong in obeying.

This does not explain all the behavior of Meta/Facebook, Google, and pre-Musk Twitter. Twitter’s non-spook personnel clearly felt a desire to suppress facts and narratives with which they disagreed. If they could act on government orders, that would give them the satisfaction any tattler craves. The government is power, and the tattler wants a share of that power, either to stand a little taller – or to get his own revenge.

But it does show the urgency of building parallel structures. Imagine what would have happened to the telephone company had they hired such people.

[Do, sol, ti!] We’re sorry. This communication is being monitored. The connection has been broken for reasons of national security.

Those lines came from a 1970 movie – a lurid thriller about a sample-return space mission gone horribly and fatally wrong. But maybe you will hear that message someday. This thread reveals several officials who would love to write that script.