More evidence of Facebook colliding with the Biden administration to target political opposition has emerged. In the latest expose, it has been learned that Facebook spied on its conservative American users and reported those to the FBI who had expressed doubt about the controversial 2020 presidential elections.
According to sources in the Department of Justice, Facebook spied on private messages sent using its messenger service, and red-flagged those containing messages against the Biden administration, or those that questioned the election. Facebook continued with the illegal spying for the past 19 months, and then transmitted them to the domestic terrorism operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, in a redacted form.
Facebook intercepted the private messages and sent them to the FBI without any subpoena, which is required in such interventions. “It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” a source in the department told the media. The source further said, “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.”
These illegally obtained messages were used by the FBI as ‘leads’ to obtain subpoenas from the judicial offices for further probe against the targeted people, which included requests to officially obtain private conversions from Facebook. As soon as the subpoena was requested, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go as Facebook had already collected all the data. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it, the source in the justice department said.
But the FBI found nothing criminal against the targeted people in the subsequent investigation, and the entire operation that lasted 19 months was a waste of time. “They were gun-toting, red-blooded Americans 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,” the source said.
Reportedly the Facebook users who were targeted in this illegal operation by Facebook and the FBI were all conservative right-wing individuals. “They were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types,” the source said.
According to the source, the initial messages sent to the FBI from Facebook were redacted containing only the most egregious comments. But when the complete messages were revealed after obtaining the subpoenas, it was found that those comments were taken out of context and they didn’t threaten any violence. The targeted Facebook users had photos of themselves shooting guns, which is not a crime in the USA itself, and had complained about the 2020 elections.
Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin said that the claims against the company are wrong, but did admit that Facebook had collaborated with the FBI. She said that Facebook’s interactions with the FBI were designed to “protect people from harm.” In an earlier statement, she had called the allegations ‘false’, but later issued a second statement calling them ‘wrong’. She said that there is zero evidence to support that Facebook spied on private messages and flagged those who made anti-govt comments or questioned the 2020 election.
On the other hand, the FBI neither confirmed nor denied the allegations. Responding to questions on the issue, the FBI chose to focus on “foreign malign influence actors”, and acknowledged that it maintains close relationship with social media platforms for ‘quick exchange of threat information’.
Facebook had given private messages of a teen about alleged abortion to police
Last month, Facebook handed over private messages of a teenage girl in Nebraska to the police which helped the police to book the girl and her mother for an illegal abortion of the girl. The maximum limit for abortion is 20 weeks, and allegedly the 17-year-old girl had discussed the abortion of her 23-week-old pregnancy with her mother over Facebook. Based on the messages handed over by Facebook to the police, the girl and her mother were booked under anti-abortion laws.
Facebook helping police to prosecute a girl for ‘illegal’ abortion is ironic, because the Left-liberal social media platform has been a vocal supporter of abortion rights, and is critical of the Supreme Court for overturning the Roe v. Wade that had given the right to abortion to women. Meta even has said that it will reimburse the cost of its employees who travel to other states for health care and reproductive services, which includes abortion.
Facebook is able to access private messages on its platform because end-to-end encryption is an optional feature. Users can opt for end-to-end encryption, but as most people are not aware of it, they don’t enable it. After the huge backlash Facebook faced after the Nebraska girl incident, the company said that it is testing end-to-end encryption as the default setting in Messenger chats.