A Four Person NATO-Funded Team Advises Facebook On Flagging "Propaganda"

This is not at all comforting: during a week that's witnessed Alex Jones' social media accounts taken down by Facebook, Apple, Spotify and Google, and what appears to be a growing crackdown against alternative media figures including several prominent Libertarians, notably the Ron Paul Institute director, and the Scott Horton Show, who found their Twitter accounts suspended — we learn that the Atlantic Council is directly advising Facebook on identifying and removing "foreign interference" on the popular platform.

While the initiative was initially revealed last May through an official Facebook media release, more details of the controversial think tank's role have been revealed.

Supposedly the whole partnership is aimed at bringing more objectivity and neutrality to the process of rooting out fake accounts that pose the threat of being operated by nefarious foreign states.

And yet as a new Reuters report confirms, Facebook is now itself a top donor to the Atlantic Council, alongside Western governments, Gulf autocratic regimes, NATO, various branches of the US military, and a number of major defense contractors and corporations.

What's more is that the team of four total individuals running the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFR Lab) is headed by a former National Security Council advisor for the last four years of the Obama administration, Graham Brookie, who is also its founder.

Apparently the group's work has already been instrumental in Facebook taking action against over two dozen "suspicious pages" flagged potential foreign actors such as Russia. According to Reuters:

Facebook is using the group to enhance its investigations of foreign interference. Last week, the company said it took down 32 suspicious pages and accounts that purported to be run by leftists and minority activists. While some U.S. officials said they were likely the work of Russian agents, Facebook said it did not know for sure.

This is indeed the shocking key phrase included in the report:"Facebook said it did not know for sure." And yet the accounts were removed anyway.

The Facebook-Atlantic Council alliance reportedly springs from the social media giant's finding itself desperate for outside "neutral" help after a swell of public criticism, mostly issuing from congressional leaders and prominent media pundits, for supposedly allowing Russian propaganda accounts to operate ahead of the 2016 elections.

The suspiciously simultaneous censorship of Infowars by Google, Apple, Facebook came just one week after U.S. Senate intelligence committee hawk Mark Warner (D) circulated this policy paper threatening new regulation against those same media companies: https://t.co/8kLI1GAedM pic.twitter.com/Qdo0frJbPJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 7, 2018

And in perhaps the most chilling line of the entire report, Reuters says, "But the lab and Atlantic Council bring geopolitical expertise and allow Facebook to distance itself from sensitive pronouncements." This is ostensibly to defuse any potential conflict of interest arising as Facebook seems a bigger presence in emerging foreign markets.

more:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-07/four-person-nato-funded-team-advises-facebook-flagging-propaganda

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Defendant Released from Local Custody Despite Outstanding ICE Detainer Pleads Guilty to Illegal Reentry following Philadelphia Conviction for Rape of Child

Philadelphia, PA – U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain announced that Juan Ramon Vasquez, a citizen of Honduras, pleaded guilty today to illegal reentry after deportation. In May 2009, the defendant was deported from the United States. Thereafter, in March 2014, the defendant was found back in the United States by U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) officers. At that time, Vasquez was in the custody of the Philadelphia Department of Prisons.

The City of Philadelphia thereafter chose not to comply with a detainer lodged by ICE for the defendant, who was instead released from custody by the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. After his release, the defendant was rearrested and convicted for rape of a child and unlawful sexual contact with a minor. The defendant is currently serving a sentence of 8 to 20 years in state prison.

The defendant, having now pleaded guilty to the federal charge of illegal reentry after deportation, faces a maximum possible sentence of two years in federal prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on November 20, 2018, by the Honorable Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro.

“The facts of this case highlight the danger posed by the City of Philadelphia’s decision to disregard ICE detainers and release previously deported aliens from local custody,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “Those of us in the law enforcement business should be doing everything in our power to protect vulnerable children from predators like Vasquez. Instead, this defendant received a free pass from the City of Philadelphia and its Department of Prisons, headed straight back into our community, and committed a heinous crime he never would have had the chance to commit had the City of Philadelphia complied with the ICE detainer.”

The case was investigated by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Vineet Gauri.

>>2503063

What to watch: Voters in Ohio’s 12th District are choosing a replacement for Representative Pat Tiberi, a Republican who resigned to work for a business group. The candidates are Troy Balderson, a Republican endorsed last week by Mr. Trump, and Danny O’Connor, a Democrat.

The race is expected to be close, and both national parties are spending heavily. But whoever loses will get a rematch in the regularly scheduled election in just three months.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/07/us/elections/results-ohio-special-house-election-district-12.html