shutting down censorship? don't bet on it.

"we don't do that stuff no more," they said, as they prepared to do that stuff some more.

this has been much in the news over the last day or so:

on its face, this seems like a big deal. the stanford internet observatory was a nexus of social media censorship, twitter files, and all manner of mendacious manipulation and malfeasance.

it’s the precise sort of cut out and “constitutional violation by proxy” that murthy v missouri (originally missouri v biden) has placed before the supreme court who seems quite likely to rule quite emphatically that “governments hiring people to break the constitution for them is still unconstitutional.”

but i fear we must consult the tinfoil cat on this one.

seeing the agent and agencies used to such potent perniciousness seems at first blush like it must be a Very Good Thing but: before getting too excited about this "good news" consider:

if you were an expert in media and perception manipulation and you knew you were about to get busted and rolled up by SCOTUS, what would you do?

yup. you’d try to get in front of it and make it a non-story to take all the air out of it by giving people nowhere to dig or to take the narrative.

“it’s old news. it’s over. why are we even still talking about this?”

you'd very publicly wind down the key culprits and so by the time the ruling hits you can claim it's moot and "we don't do that stuff no more!"

universities and academics need to distance themselves and the IC needs to look like it stopped manipulating media and social media.

there is zero chance it actually will.

they will just move this to new locations, new agencies, likely including the military. they will take it underground, likely offshore. you move this to the ukraine (oddly fortuitous timing on this 10 year security deal, nice pretext to embed large military intel sites in a place flooded with unaccountable and unaccounted money) as a part of "keeping russia in check" and you duck all scrutiny and disclosure requirements by wrapping it in "international counter-intel and threat assessment" and you ramp up to be twice as bad while finding fun ways to make it look like international election and political interference which, technically, it will be.

these are the locales and processes to which the utmost secrecy appends. it’s “spy stuff” and no one really gets to look closely at it. they just say “national security, terrorism, security clearance” and everyone backs off and nods and says “oh, yes, of course, keep us safe.” it would hardly be the first time the IC went abroad to play silly buggers at home.

shutting down stanford constitutes a perfect limited hangout with faux compliance and penitence while the reality is you are doubling down and just taking scary poppins overseas where FOIA, lawsuits, and even congressional oversight are not a thing. leopards like these do not change their spots.

and these people have the sort of “ends justify the means and the collateral damage” ethics of borgia level realpolitik that would make a scorpion riding on a frog blush.

they really do not much care what they they do and to whom. the mission is all and it justifies everyhting else. presuming they’ll magically draw some line at “domestic” seems optimistic to the point of dangerous delusion.

and let’s face it, it’s an election year in america. this is not the time they will drop this. not with the stakes being what they are and especially when certain longstanding playbooks and practices are also coming under fire.

CISA seem to have weighed in oddly heavily on dominion and the truly astonishing shutdown of investigations into seemingly odd, dissonant, and outright implausible outcomes was striking especially given the known vulnerabilities. one would think those charged with assuring election security would be endlessly inquisitive on such matters, but i guess one must really ask some pointy questions about “secure for whom?” here, mustn’t one?

i’m not really sure we have the info to connect all the dots on this matter. it always sort of disappears into some thicket into which we cannot gain access. but there certainly seems to be quite a bit about which to be suspicious.

as we speak, the political establishment seem to be setting up a narrative of “the polls are wrong, biden is winning, and trump will fail to accept it.”

and this seems to be their only and obvious play. it’s not a subtle one and it’s not a play where you take the IC and their ability to manipulate social media off the field. brace for some fun new psyop for fall to muck with elections again coming from some new as yet unidentified vector be it bird flu, russian attacks on the election, or who knows what else. these folks are creative and it’s hard to be positive what they’ll come up with, but one things does seem certain: the “closing up of shop” is just a “move to a new location.”

sure, this all can be said to sound like conspiracy, but, umm..

and is it really a conspiracy theory or is it just a good working theory of conspiracy which is being discredited by the very message manipulation experts who are running it?

ask yourself: which seems more plausible: that the IC has really truly learned its lesson this time and promised not to be bad actors anymore, or that this is just another game of hide the ball and get right back to business?

i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but anyone who thinks the IC will just pack up their tents and go home because they got wrist slapped at the supreme court or in congress must be reading a very different history than the one with which i am familiar.

they are not about to give this up.

they will double down instead.

welcome to the CISA blacksite.

meet the new boss, worse than the old boss.

cats in blacksite