Facebook spied on private messages of Americans who questioned 2020 election

[Ubiquitous]

Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of American
users and reporting them to the FBI if they express anti-government or
anti-authority sentiments — or question the 2020 election — according
to sources within the Department of Justice.

Under the FBI collaboration operation, somebody at Facebook red-flagged
these supposedly subversive private messages over the past 19 months
and transmitted them in redacted form to the domestic terrorism
operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, without a
subpoena.

“It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,”
alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of ­anonymity.

“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are
protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.”

These private messages then have been farmed out as “leads” to FBI
field offices around the country, which subsequently requested
subpoenas from the partner US Attorney’s Office in their district to
officially obtain the private conversations that Facebook already had
shown them.

But when the targeted Facebook users were investigated by agents in a
local FBI field office, sometimes using covert surveillance techniques,
nothing criminal or violent turned up.

“It was a waste of our time,” said one source familiar with subpoena
requests lodged during a 19-month frenzy by FBI headquarters in
Washington, DC, to produce the caseload to match the Biden
administration’s rhetoric on domestic terrorism after the Jan.?6, 2021,
Capitol riot.

‘Red-blooded Americans’

The Facebook users whose private communications Facebook had red-
flagged as domestic terrorism for the FBI were all “conservative
right-wing individuals.”

“They were gun-toting, red-blooded Americans [who were] angry after the
election and shooting off their mouths and talking about staging
protests. There was nothing criminal, nothing about violence or
massacring or assassinating anyone.

“As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent
back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just
waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”

Facebook denied the allegations yesterday.

In two contrasting statements sent one hour apart, Erica Sackin, a
spokesperson at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, claimed Facebook’s
interactions with the FBI were designed to “protect people from harm.”

In her first statement, she said: “These claims are false because they
reflect a misunderstanding of how our systems protect people from harm
and how we engage with law enforcement. We carefully scrutinize all
government requests for user information to make sure they’re legally
valid and narrowly tailored and we often push back. We respond to legal
requests for information in accordance with applicable law and our
terms and we provide notice to users whenever permitted.”

In a second, unprompted “updated statement,” sent 64 minutes later,
Sackin altered her language to say the claims are “wrong,” not “false.”

“These claims are just wrong. The suggestion we seek out peoples’
private messages for anti-government language or questions about the
validity of past elections and then proactively supply those to the FBI
is plainly inaccurate and there is zero evidence to support it,” said
Sackin, a DC-based crisis response expert who previously worked for
Planned Parenthood and “Obama for America” and now leads Facebook’s
communications on “counterterrorism and dangerous organizations and
individuals.”

Agency doublespeak
In a statement Wednesday, the FBI neither confirmed nor denied
allegations put to it about its joint operation with Facebook, which is
designated as “unclassified/law enforcement sensitive.”

Responding to questions about the misuse of data only of American
users, the statement curiously focused on “foreign malign influence
actors” but did acknowledge that the nature of the FBI’s relationship
with social media providers enables a “quick exchange” of information,
and is an “ongoing dialogue.”


“The FBI maintains relationships with U.S. private sector entities,
including social media providers. The FBI has provided companies with
foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and
customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors. U.S. companies
have also referred information to the FBI with investigative value
relating to foreign malign influence. The FBI works closely with
interagency partners, as well as state and local partners, to ensure
we’re sharing information as it becomes available. This can include
threat information, actionable leads, or indicators. The FBI has also
established relationships with a variety of social media and technology
companies and maintains an ongoing dialogue to enable a quick exchange
of threat information.”

Facebook’s denial that it proactively provides the FBI with private
user data without a subpoena or search warrant, if true, would indicate
that the initial transfer has been done by a person (or persons) at the
company designated as a “confidential human source” by the FBI, someone
with the authority to access and search users’ private messages.

In this way, Facebook would have “plausible deniability” if questions
arose about misuse of users’ data and its employee’s confidentiality
would be protected by the FBI.

“They had access to searching and they were able to pinpoint it, to
identify these conversations from millions of conversations,” according
to one of the DOJ ­sources.

‘None were Antifa types’
Before any subpoena was sought, “that information had already been
provided to [FBI] headquarters. The lead already contained specifics of
the information inside the [users’ private] messages. Some of it was
redacted but most of it was not. They basically had a portion of the
conversation and then would skip past the next portion, so it was the
most egregious parts highlighted and taken out of context.

“But when you read the full conversation in context [after issuing the
subpoena] it didn’t sound as bad … There was no plan or orchestration
to carry out any kind of violence.”

Some of the targeted Americans had posted photos of themselves
“shooting guns together and bitching about what’s happened [after the
2020 election]. A few were members of a militia but that was protected
by the Second Amendment …

“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing
individuals. None were Antifa types.”

One private conversation targeted for investigation “spun up into
multiple cases because there were multiple individuals in all these
different chats.”

The DOJ sources have decided to speak to The Post, and risk their
careers, because they are concerned that federal law enforcement has
been politicized and is abusing the constitutional rights of innocent
Americans.

They say more whistleblowers are ready to join them.

Unrest has been building among the rank and file across the FBI and in
some parts of the DOJ for months. It came to a head after the raid last
month on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“The most frightening thing is the combined power of Big Tech colluding
with the enforcement arm of the FBI,” says one whistleblower. “Google,
Facebook and Twitter, these companies are globalist. They don’t have
our national interest at heart.”

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Let's go Brandon!