DHS deletes video encouraging people to report family members for spreading COVID ‘disinformation’ online: Report

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency quietly deleted a video posted in June 2021 that encouraged Americans to report their family members to social media platforms for spreading “disinformation” online regarding COVID, a Tuesday report from the Foundation for Freedom Online revealed.

The FFO, which archived a copy of the “dystopian” video, accused the DHS’ CISA of attempting to hide evidence that it supports censorship in online discourse.

The now-deleted, animated video featured a teacher providing a lesson on “Countering Disinformation: Cybersecurity 101.”

“Since 2020, there has been a lot of false and inaccurate information about COVID-19,” the video stated.

The CISA’s instructional video depicted a cartoon version of a social media feed from the perspective of a made-up character named Susan.

“Consider this post from Susan’s feed: It’s from her Uncle Steve, who claims everybody knows COVID is no worse than the flu,” the video continued.

In the fictional scenario, Susan’s uncle is accused of using unreliable sources, including a “fake news story,” to back up his claims about COVID. Meanwhile, Susan argues her stance and is praised in the video for using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, which the video described as a “trustworthy” and “fact-based” source “due to large government funding.”

The video concludes with Susan reporting her uncle’s statement on social media as “disinformation.”

“You can’t win every argument online, but you can protect yourself from disinformation. You can stop it from spreading, too,” the video stated.

In 2022, Tucker Carlson covered the CISA’s video during a Fox News segment alongside United States Senate candidate Republican Blake Masters. He explained that the cartoon-formatted video appeared to be targeted toward children.

“By definition, if you’re trying to separate children from their parents, break apart the family so that you can have more control over the country – that’s the very definition of authoritarianism,” Carlson said.

According to the FFO, the video was removed from the CISA’s YouTube account sometime between April 9 and May 9 of this year, leading up to the landmark Missouri v. Biden censorship lawsuit that the Supreme Court is set to hear.

The CISA was formed in 2018 to combat threats of foreign cyberattacks, the FFO report noted. However, the DHS subdivision orchestrated two “switcheroos,” including changing the meaning of “cybersecurity” to include online so-called disinformation and expanding its focus from foreign attacks to domestic, the report added.

FFO Executive Director Mike Benz told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “DHS now has no defense to a Supreme Court injunction prohibiting them from future domestic censorship activity. If DHS is deleting evidence of its past behavior today, it should have no problem with a court order today barring such activity in the future.”

The CISA did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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