Senator Hawley Plans to Strip Big Tech of Legal Immunity

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley is taking Silicon Valley to task with new legislation to hold social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter accountable for their political bias by stripping them of existing Section 230 protections.

The introduction of a new bill follows widespread allegations and evidence that social media platforms treat conservatives and Trump supporters with contempt. The Missouri Republican wants tech companies to demonstrate they are politically neutral in their moderation of user content or be subject to lawsuits they are currently immune to.

The bill he proposes will strip companies of legal immunity for user-generated content provided under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act unless they can prove their moderation practices are not politically motivated.

“With Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys: complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship,” said Senator Hawley. “Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, big tech has failed to hold up its end of the bargain.”

“There’s a growing list of evidence that shows big tech companies making editorial decisions to censor viewpoints they disagree with,” he added.

“Even worse, the entire process is shrouded in secrecy because these companies refuse to make their protocols public. This legislation simply states that if the tech giants want to keep their government-granted immunity, they must bring transparency and accountability to their editorial processes and prove that they don’t discriminate.”

The Communications Decency Act currently protects tech companies from liability for illegal content posted on their platforms. It was created during the nascent stages of the Internet to protect their growth and allow the proliferation of free speech online.

The Internet has long passed its infancy. Tech companies that enjoyed this government subsidy now possess the resources to moderate content. It’s clear platforms like Facebook and Twitter no longer need these protections and are instead abusing the carve out to protect themselves from liability for their political practices.

“Something is happening with those groups of folks that are running Facebook, Google and Twitter,” said President Donald Trump in March. “I do think we have to get to the bottom of it … It’s collusive and it’s very, very fair to say that we have to do something about it.”

The President’s comments came in the wake of a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter over allegations of shadow banning conservatives. Shadow banning is the practice of making the posts invisible to anyone but the original poster.

Big Tech has fought back against charges of bias.

Twitter and Google argue that conservatives removed from the platforms were banned for violating their rules against hate speech and harassment.

Senator Hawley’s bill will remove automatic immunity under Section 230 from big tech companies. It will provide platforms the ability to earn immunity through external audits. They would have to prove to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by “clear and convincing evidence” that their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral.

Furthermore, the FTC will not be able to certify Big Tech companies for immunity except by a supermajority vote. These companies would be responsible for the auditing costs, and only allowed to reapply for immunity every two years.

The Senator’s office added that the legislation does not apply to small and medium-sized tech companies. The bill only applies to companies with more than 30 million active monthly users in the United States, or more than 300 million active monthly users worldwide, or who earn more than $500 million in global annual revenue.

In other words, Twitter, Google, and Facebook would be subject to it.

As Hawley’s office writes, “Because these companies control the very information we receive, we must ensure that they moderate content in a politically neutral manner. Today’s most powerful companies must not be allowed to interfere with the policy Congress established, when passing the CDA, to ensure “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(a)(3).”

“It is time to shine light onto what big tech companies do and force them to provide transparency about their content moderation practices.”

https://humanevents.com/2019/06/19/senator-social-media-twitter-facebook-section-230-immunity/

Former Democratic Senate Aide Gets Four Years In Prison For Mass Doxxing Of Republicans

Part 1

A former Democratic aide was sentenced to four years in prison for what prosecutors called “the largest data breach in Senate history.” Prosecutors said a stiff sentence was also imperative to “deter cyber crimes against the U.S. government.”

Jackson Cosko stole data and used it to publish the addresses and phone numbers of Senate Republicans to intimidate them for supporting Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Judge Thomas Hogan said that Cosko must face punishment lest people think strong political beliefs justified criminal attacks on sitting lawmakers, citing the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise.

A second former aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan was charged with computer fraud and evidence tampering on Wednesday for allegedly acting as an accomplice.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a former Democratic aide to four years in prison for hacking Senate computers, using spy devices and “doxxing” Republicans.

Jackson Cosko — a former aide to Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer and Democratic Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee — stole the entire contents of Hassan’s computer systems in October 2018 and published the private information of Republicans, including home addresses and cell phones. He hoped to intimidate them over Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

The same day, prosecutors charged a second Democratic aide with computer fraud and tampering with evidence for her role as an accomplice to Cosko.

Kavanaugh is now on the Supreme Court, while Cosko found himself in front of a different judge: Judge Thomas Hogan of federal criminal court.

“It was a rather vicious offense. You were upset politically, perhaps you thought in today’s world it’s OK to lash out because of that but it’s not. There needs to be a deterrent,” Hogan said. “You put those people in harm’s way in a polarized society. You can’t pass this off as simple political extremity that is OK to do.”

Cosko hoped to change the outcome of a Supreme Court nomination proceeding. Instead, he will not be able to so much as cast a ballot in a general election. “You’ve got to live with five felony convictions, you lose your right to vote,” Hogan said.

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, whose information was posted to the internet by Cosko, released a “statement about how it caused distress to have his wife upset, when he’d already been attacked” physically in his neighborhood in a different incident, Hogan said.

Hogan noted that Republicans, including Paul, had also been targeted for their political views during a baseball practice during which Republican Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was shot in 2017. “In today’s political world, Republicans at the baseball game in Virginia were shot at,” he said, and Democrats have also been threatened. “It hurts the respect for the law when people do things like this.”

Prosecutor Demian S. Ahn said “The political and social environment we’re in, people think it’s justified to lash out because you disagree politically. … He doxxes senators, laughs, then doxxes more, all because they have different political opinions.”

In a sentencing memo, Ahn added that Cosko had “self-righteous entitlement” and a “belief that he could violate the sanctity of the United States Senate at will and threaten individual Senators as he pleased.”

“The government believes that there appears to have been an increase in similar criminal harassment, particularly through social media channels, by people across the political spectrum,” the memo says.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/19/judge-sentence-doxxing-senate/

>>6803978

Former Democratic Senate Aide Gets Four Years In Prison For Mass Doxxing Of Republicans

Part 2

Sentencing guidelines not set up to punish political cyber-crimes

One might think that hacking a high-profile political entity or governmental entity would come with stiffer penalties than hacking a company, but that’s not necessarily the case because federal sentencing guidelines are based on money, and it’s hard to put a dollar figure on political attacks, Ahn said.

“The guidelines simply do not reflect the severity of this data breach — it’s a high value network. Sentencing is driven by economic harm, and this is not economic — computer hacking that is driven by political goals or revenge,” Ahn said. “This is the largest data breach in Senate history. … What will deter cyber crimes against the US government including the Senate?”

Also on Wednesday, prosecutors charged a second staffer to Hassan, Samantha Deforest Davis, with computer fraud and evidence tampering for acting as Cosko’s accomplice so he could steal Hassan’s data after he was fired. Davis allegedly gave Cosko a key knowing he would use it to break in and also wiped his fingerprints off computers after he was caught in the act.

“SAMANTHA DEFOREST DAVIS, by aiding and abetting JACKSON COSKO, did intentionally and illegally access protected computers without authorization, and thereby obtained information from those computers, said computers belonging to a department or agency of the United States, that is, the United States Senate,” prosecutors said. They added that she tampered with evidence by wiping down keyboards to hide Cosko’s fingerprints.

The Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively reported Davis’ identity in April.

Cosko will also receive three years of probation during which he will be prohibited from using social media that does not use his real name, and his computer will be monitored.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/19/judge-sentence-doxxing-senate/

‘Size Does Matter’: Amy Klobuchar Makes Outlandish Claim That 2020 Democrat Rallies are as Large as President Trump’s — It’s Even Too Much for CNN Fake Newser Chris Cuomo to Accept

Chris Cuomo Had the Proper Reaction to Amy Klobuchar Saying Democrat Rallies are As Large as Trump’s

Trump’s packed rallies are hard to ignore. The polls telling us that Trump is being crushed under the heal of the Democrat of the day can be thrown around till the cows come home, but it’s hard to square numbers someone gives you with numbers you can physically see.

As I covered on Wednesday, the attendance at Trump’s rallies is eclipsing the numbers seen at Democrat gatherings, even frontrunner Joe Biden’s. This fact is worrying for Democrats, and so far, only CNN’s Chris Cuomo is addressing the Republican elephant in the room.

In an interview with Amy Klobuchar on Wednesday, Cuomo asked the Democrat 2020 candidate up front why Democrats aren’t attracting the kinds of crowds Trump is. Klobuchar responded by flat out saying that Democrats are packing stadiums like Trump, it’s just that you don’t see it because there are so many Democrats.

“Why don’t Democrat pack stadiums the way this president does?” asked Cuomo.

“Oh but we do!” responded Klobuchar. “We just have a lot of stadiums we’re packing at the same time.”

Cuomo didn’t verbally respond, but the incredulous expression on his face spoke for him louder than words ever could.

Cuomo later admitted that he doesn’t agree with Klobuchar at all and that “size does matter.”

He’s not wrong. In 2016 we saw the same exact thing happen with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton continuously beat him in the polls, yet Trump packed stadiums while Clinton had to find various ways to play with crowd optics.

The difference is enthusiasm and groundswell. It’s one thing to have a mob online that will sit behind a keyboard and throw their support behind a candidate, and it’s another to get up to go stand in line with thousands of other people for hours on end to see a guy speak for a bit. People are doing that for Trump, but no one is doing that for Democrats.

This might change as the Democrat’s field of candidates is whittled down, but even with a single candidate opposing Trump, it’s hard to see how the enthusiasm for the left’s candidate will match that of Trump’s. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, it’s not just crowd size, it’s the fact that Trump is also garnering more donations than any other Democrat candidate.

Klobuchar and Democrats pretending that they’re doing just as well isn’t going to change the fact that they’re not. It’s just one more fantasy they chose to add to their ever-expanding fantasy world.

Even if Klobuchar isn’t telling lies for her sake but for yours, then this is proof that Democrats think you’re stupid enough to believe them. Given, the rabid defense of everything Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says has given them a proper reason to think that, but regardless, heads buried in the sand don’t win elections.

When even Cuomo recognizes this, maybe it’s time to get real.

https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/06/20/chris-cuomo-proper-reaction-amy-klobuchar-saying-democrat-rallies-large-trumps/

Polish MP Invites AOC for Educational Visit to REAL Concentration Camps

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Polish lawmaker and committee chairman on trans-Atlantic trade has invited Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to visit former concentration camps in his country in an effort to educate the freshman legislator.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has recently been embroiled in a war of words with the political right, and indeed members of her own Democratic Party, after suggesting the Trump administration was running “concentration camps” in the United States.

Dominik Tarczyński, a member of the Polish Sejm (parliament), wrote to Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, in a letter seen exclusively by Human Events.

In his communication, Tarczyński writes: “I write to you out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps.

“As you should be aware, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) who led Germany, were responsible for the darkest period in my country’s and our whole continent’s history by devising a chain of concentration camps in order to exterminate those who they believed were subhuman, or a threat to their imperialistic machinations- this included both Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles and as a result we lost six million of our citizens.

“While under German Nazi occupation, a number of concentration camps were set up in my country, Poland. It has caused a deep wound that persists on our proud Polish and European history that we must deal with every single day, and that we reaffirm to one another can never be forgotten, and never allowed to happen again.

“This is why when someone cheapens the history, or uses it for political point-scoring, we become agitated and upset.”

(Full copy of the letter in article)

Tarczyński concludes: “You speak often of bipartisanship, and I feel this is one area in particular where we can begin to live that ideal.”

Earlier today the Congresswoman was reprimanded by the official Twitter account of Yad Vashem, the world Holocaust memorial center in Israel.

https://twitter.com/yadvashem/status/1141267813249835008/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1141267813249835008%7Ctwgr%5E363937393b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhumanevents.com%2F2019%2F06%2F20%2Fexclusive-polish-mp-invites-aoc-for-educational-visit-of-real-concentration-camps%2F

Ocasio-Cortez has accused the Trump administration of running “concentration camps” on the U.S. Southern Border, despite the Obama administration operating the same policy.

https://humanevents.com/2019/06/20/exclusive-polish-mp-invites-aoc-for-educational-visit-of-real-concentration-camps/

>>6804149

Dominik Tarczyński's twitter post directed at AOC, with copy of letter.

He starts out by saying, "With this letter, I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland,where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies"

KEK

https://twitter.com/D_Tarczynski/status/1141704905436160001/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1141704905436160001%7Ctwgr%5E363937393b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fnews%2Fcongress%2Fmember-of-polish-parliament-invites-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-to-visit-former-nazi-concentration-camps

9/11 First Responder Pleads To Lawmakers In His Final Days

9/11 first responder former NYPD detective Luis Alvarez sacrificed his own life to save countless American lives on that fateful day. Earlier this month, Alvarez testified before lawmakers pleading them to fund the 9/11 Victim Compensation’s Fund.

“You made me come down here the day before my sixty ninth round of chemo and I’m going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 first responders,” testified Alvarez.

Now, Alvarez is battling against a stage IV cancer. He never made it to that last round of chemo therapy because doctors detected liver failure. Still, Alvarez cares about others in situations similar to his and is still speaking out and fighting for what he says is justice.

Alvarez is spending his final days in hospice care with family by his side. Despite this, the 9/11 hero spoke with Fox News’ Shephard Smith Thursday to send one final message to Congress.

“I’ve been blessed. I got sick 16 years after the fact,” said Alvarez.

Alvarez accompanied by one of his three sons David who is 29 years old.

“I’m leaving them without a father, and there’s plenty like me. Like I said, I’m not special. There’s plenty of guys like me,” explained Alvarez.

At his weakest moment, Alvarez appeared a warrior for the cause and humble.

“I’m nobody special, I did what all the other guys did and now we’re paying the price for it,” said Alvarez.

His final ask, however, was for Congress to provide longterm funding for the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund.

“We did our job, Congress has to do theirs,” said Alvarez. He is truly a forever hero.

https://saraacarter.com/9-11-first-responder-pleads-to-lawmakers-in-his-final-days/

African American Jon Miller of The Blaze Shreds Slavery Reparations Argument

South Carolina: Man converts to Islam, plants bombs disguised as teddy bears for children to find

Yet another convert to Islam gets the idea that his new, peaceful religion requires him to commit treason and mass murder. Authorities the world over maintain a steadfast indifference regarding this ongoing phenomenon.

“‘YOU’RE NO LONGER SAFE’ ISIS maniac, 27, disguised ‘lethal’ shrapnel bombs as teddy bears and dumped them in US streets where kids could find them,” by Christy Cooney, The Sun, June 18, 2019:

An ISIS supporter disguised potentially lethal bombs as household items and left them in the street for members of the public to find.

Wesley Dallas Ayers, 27, planted three real bombs, including one disguised as a teddy bear, and three fake ones around South Carolina.

The FBI has now released images of the disturbing packages planted by Ayers, who was given a 30-year prison sentence in February.

One man received minor burns to his leg after a wicker basket he had noticed glowing while driving with his daughter exploded.

Police later discovered a note written in Arabic and referencing Osama bin Laden.

In the following weeks, two more genuine bombs were found by members of the public but rendered safe by law enforcement.

The teddy-shaped bomb was found left in the road, its eyes also glowing to make it visible.

FBI Special Agent Christopher Derrickson said: “This was deliberately placed where a child or passerby could have found it.

“Fortunately, someone saw it and knew to call us.”

Three hoax objects were also found in different locations with notes declaring that the community was no longer safe.

One object designed to resemble a bomb was left in a black box containing a letter pledging allegiance to the Islamic State….

Another sick bastard.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/06/south-carolina-man-converts-to-islam-plants-bombs-disguised-as-teddy-bears-for-children-to-find