Government-Funded Censor Told State Dept. Its Testing Wouldn’t Focus On U.S. Audiences — It Then Targeted The Blaze |
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Government-Funded Censor Told State Dept. Its Testing Wouldn’t Focus On U.S. Audiences — It Then Targeted The Blaze
The evidence uncovered during litigation should shake Americans awake to the threat to their liberties.
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Staff with the Global Engagement Center (“GEC”) told a State Department official that its testbed platform “will NOT focus on US audiences,” but then proceeded to fund a trial targeting The Blaze — a Texas-based media outlet. The Federalist uncovered this detail during discovery in its lawsuit against the State Department and the GEC, which the plaintiffs settled last week after the Defendants agreed to detailed prophylactic measures to prevent similar violations of Americans’ First Amendment rights.
The Federalist, along with The Daily Wire, sued the State Department and GEC in December of 2023, after learning that the defendants had funded the testing, development, and promotion of censorship technologies that demonetized, denigrated, and limited the reach of the media plaintiffs’ speech. The complaint alleged both a First Amendment claim and a claim that the defendants exceeded their statutory authority, which was limited to managing foreign affairs.
Discovery evidence confirmed those allegations and revealed that in the waning days of the first Trump Administration, the State Department’s GEC funded a test of three so-called “Countering Propaganda and Disinformation” technology groups, PeakMetrics, NewsGuard, and Omelas. According to a PeakMetrics’ report produced by the State Department, the three companies “collaborated to create a mockup of a joint dashboard incorporating all three companies’ capabilities.” The test ran from December 14, 2020 – January 7, 2021, with PeakMetrics stating it “performed a preliminary analysis on Omelas’ ‘Unrest and........