State of #press #freedom around the #world

This is what #DarrenBeattie — & #MikeBenz —have long called for. Many of the names & keywords he included in his request reflect #ConspiracyTheories & #grievances promoted by Revolver News—which Beattie founded after being fired from his job as a speechwriter during the first #Trump admin when CNN reported that he had spoken at a conference with #WhiteNationalists.

#disinformation #law #privacy #InfoSec #RevengePolitics #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #FreePress #democracy
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/19/politics/darren-beattie-mencken-club/index.html

Several people familiar with the matter say that by early April, #DarrenBeattie had received many of the documents he’d requested, retrieved through eRecords, as well as a list of grantees. One source says the more sensitive list of subgrantees was not shared.

…5 weeks after Beattie made his requests for #information, the #State Dept shut down R/FIMI.

#FreePress advocates expressed alarm about the inclusion of #journalists…, as well as the possibility of their communications being released to the public, which goes “considerably well beyond the scope of what…leak investigations in the past have typically focused on,”says Grayson Clary, staff atty at the #Reporters Cmte for #FreedomOfThePress. Rather, the effort seems like “a tactic designed to…make it much harder for journalists to strike up those source relationships in the first instance.”

#DanielFried echoes this sentiment. “I spent 40 years in the #State Dept, & you didn’t collect names or demand email records…I’ve never heard of such a thing”—at least not in the American context, he clarifies. It did remind him of Eastern European “Communist Party minder[s] watching over the untrusted bureaucracy.”

He adds: “It also approaches the compilation of an #EnemiesList.”

When told of their inclusion in the records request, multiple people expressed alarm that such a list exists at all in an American institution. “When I was in government I’d never [have] done anything like that,” #BillKristol, a fmr chief of staff to VP Dan Quayle, says. “What would be the innocent reason for doing that?”

The document also seeks all staff communications that merely reference #Trump or people in his orbit, like #AlexJones, #GlennGreenwald, & #RFKJr. In addition, it directs a search of communications for a long list of keywords, including “Pepe the Frog,” “incel,” “q-anon,” “Black Lives Matter,” “great replacement theory,” “far-right,” & “infodemic.”

A previously unreported document distributed by snr US #State Dept ofcl #DarrenBeattie reveals a sweeping effort to uncover all communications between the staff of a small govt office focused on #online #disinformation & a lengthy list of #public & #private figures—many of whom are longtime targets of the #FarRight.

Garland changed the policy after the revelation in 2021 that the #DOJ, under #Trump AG #BillBarr, had secretly pursued email records of reporters at The NYT, WaPo & CNN during Trump’s first term. At the time, Garland said that a flat ban on such tactics was necessary to “allow #journalists to perform the crucial work of informing the public without fear of legal consequences.”