DHS Mayorkas: False Narratives a Threat to Our Security
Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, appeared at the Bloomberg Technology Summit and spoke with Brad Stone about cyber security and misinformation.
Earlier last week, Mayorkas met with companies like Google and Juniper in San Francisco. According to Stone, the “meetings were described as kind of a charm offensive taking what had been a partnership and moving it into more of an operational collaboration with Silicon Valley.”
During the interview, referring to the operational collaboration, Stone asked Mayorkas, “What exactly does that mean?”
“What exactly does that mean, and I guess frankly why hasn’t there been an operational collaboration with some of the companies who are on the front line of this very fraught cyber security environment.”
I think there has been an operational collaboration, but we want to take it to a really unprecedented level…This requires a public-private collaboration," said Mayorkas.
"There's been a tremendous focus on information sharing," he added, "which of course continues, but we also want…to focus on operational collaboration as well as the exchange of information and intelligence."
During the interview, Mayorkas told Stone that big tech wants to curb speech or expression that it deems misinformation. "I think they're very dedicated to doing so," said Mayorkas. "And I think the 'How to' and 'How we can work together'…is something we're all working through," he added.
When asked whether Mayorkas believed misinformation was part of DHS's mandate, he said, "I think that it's very much within our domain."
He later added, "false narratives present a threat to our security. The propagation of false narratives is something to be condemned."
Why it matters: Misinformation refers to incorrect or misleading information. There appears to be a lot of misleading information or half-truths propagated, particularly on social media platforms. But the problem is who determines whether something is truthful, untruthful, or merely an opinion.
It gets tricky. The so-called fact-checkers often don't get it right and have a lousy track record of determining whether something is factual or not. In a lawsuit brought by John Stossel, Facebook argued that fact checks were merely opinions. The fact-checkers replace the views of others with their own and use the label of "fact" as the instrument to give themselves credibility.
Hyperpartisanship makes matters worse. Big tech and the crew at Silicon Valley tend to skew left, favoring the current administration, and use their platforms to censor information it disagrees with or dislikes.
Twitter and Facebook heavily suppressed the New York Post Hunter Biden story.
All major media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, blacklisted Donald Trump, a then-sitting president.
The list goes on.
So, when Mayorkas talks about a shift from a mere partnership to an active operational collaboration with big tech companies, the expectation is that the public-private alliance will be more robust and substantial. The information-sharing capabilities will improve. The worry, however, is that the strengthened public-private collaboration will have negative consequences on expression within information-sharing and social media platforms. Ultimately, this collaboration threatens to degrade First Amendment rights.
We need more speech, not less speech. The superior ideas rise to the top with free speech, not with the suppression of speech or censorship.
Key takeaways:
Technology companies are very committed to curbing speech that they believe to be “misinformation.”
Department of Homeland Security will continue the exchange of information and intelligence with big tech companies.
Mayorkas believes that false narratives present a threat to national security.
Increased partnership agreement between big tech and big government can have First Amendment implications.
Watch the full interview here: