July 10, 2023, House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Armed Services of the Federal Government made public a report entitled “The FBI’s cooperation with a compromised Ukrainian intelligence service to censor American speech”, which stated that due to the influence of Russian agents on the Security Service of Ukraine, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), at the request of the SBU, exerted pressure on American social media campaigns, forcing them to delete accounts of real Americans.
Based on documents, the report details how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) colluded with The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – which, according to the authors of the document, has been infiltrated by pro-Russian forces – regularly sending links to social networks, spreadsheets and other documents containing thousands of accounts with a request for deletion. At the same time, the FBI and the SBU have also marked genuine American accounts as subject to deletion, including verified accounts of the US State Department and those belonging to American journalists. The report also shows how the FBI offered legal cover to Facebook and Instagram to delete accounts labeled by the SBU as pro-Russian.
This information, according to the authors, highlights the unconstitutional role of the FBI in enforcing the SBU’s censorship regime and raises serious concerns about the credibility, reliability and competence of the FBI as the leading law enforcement organization in the United States. The coordination between the FBI, the SBU, and U.S. social media companies is substantial, and the full extent of the FBI’s involvement with the SBU remains subject to further investigation.
The notice was published on the official website of the House Judiciary Committee.
The research and analytical group InfoLight.UA publishes a translation of the report.
On February 15, 2023, as part of an investigation into the federal government’s role in censoring legitimate speech on social media, the Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. The documents obtained in response to these subpoenas revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian intelligence service, demanded – and in some cases instructed – the world’s largest social media networks to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected online speech.
The Committee’s investigation found that the FBI, the federal law enforcement agency responsible for countering foreign malign influence, facilitated censorship requests to U.S. social media on behalf of a Ukrainian intelligence service infiltrated by Russian-linked actors. In doing so, the FBI violated the rights of Americans under the First Amendment to the Constitution and potentially undermined our national security. In light of the FBI’s well-documented record of civil liberties abuses, this new information raises serious concerns about the credibility of the FBI as the nation’s premier law enforcement organization.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) sought to identify and disrupt possible Russian influence operations on social media. The SBU engaged the FBI to support these efforts by providing it with lists of social media accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI, in turn, regularly passed these lists to the relevant social networks, which disseminated this information internally to their employees responsible for content moderation and compliance. The graph above illustrates the FBI’s intermediary role in the SBU’s censorship operation; the graph below demonstrates the striking frequency with which the FBI and SBU sent requests to American social media.
The Committee’s analysis of these “disinformation” registers showed that the FBI, at the request of the SBU, had marked authentic American accounts for social media, including the verified account of the US State Department and accounts of American journalists. The FBI and the SBU have repeatedly demanded that genuine accounts expressing unambiguously pro-Ukrainian views, as well as those expressing opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, be removed or suspended. Sometimes, the FBI even contacted the relevant platform to make sure that “these accounts were deleted.” Regardless of the purpose for which the FBI supported the SBU’s requests, it had no legal basis to facilitate censorship of protected free speech on social media.
In July 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired the head of the SBU due to Russian infiltration of the SBU. Given that during the cooperation with the FBI, the SBU was
compromised by a network of Russian collaborators, sympathizers and double agents, the FBI’s uncritical cooperation with SBU requests is deeply disturbing. The inclusion of American accounts in the SBU’s lists indicates that the FBI either did not properly vet the SBU’s requests or knew about their internal nature and still complied with them. These findings underscore the need for additional oversight and legal reform to protect Americans’ right to free speech.
Committee, through its special subcommittee on federal government armaments,
is responsible for investigating “violations of the civil liberties of United States citizens.” Pursuant to this authority and the Committee’s duty to oversee the FBI, this interim staff report demonstrates a continued commitment to identifying and reporting on the federal government’s use of weapons against the American people. The Committee and the special subcommittee will continue to investigate relevant FBI interactions with the SBU and social media platforms to better inform the Committee’s legislative efforts to protect
civil liberties of Americans.
I. FBI units involved in the FBI-SSU censorship scheme A. Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)
Director Christopher Wray organized the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) in the fall of 2017 to “identify and counter malicious foreign influence operations directed against the United States.” According to Director Wray, the FITF is “specifically authorized to identify and counter foreign influence operations that target democratic institutions and values in the United States.” The FITF is tasked with identifying and countering foreign influence operations that target democratic institutions and values in the United States. “The FITF is led by the Counterintelligence Division and consists of agents, analysts, and professional staff from the Counterintelligence, Cybersecurity, Counterterrorism, and Criminal Investigations Divisions.”
FITF actively coordinates its work with social media platforms, holding frequent meetings with companies. FITF representatives also participate in broader joint meetings of members of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Intelligence Community and social media companies.
FBI Division Chief Laura Demlow is the chair of the FITF. On March 1, 2022, Director Demlow briefed the Subcommittee on Disinformation, which advises CISA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, “on the FBI’s role and responsibilities in combating foreign influence.” According to Chief Demlow, the FITF is responsible for responding to “foreign malicious information.” As Chief Demlow told the subcommittee, the FITF is responsible for responding to “foreign malicious information”which she defined as “subversive data used to drive a wedge between the population and the government.” During the meeting, Chief Demlow also said that the government “must educate the public as soon as possible” about false, misleading and disinformation, as “critical thinking seems to be a problem nowadays”.
B. San Francisco office
The main link between the FBI and Silicon Valley is Elvis Chan, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Cyber Division in the FBI’s San Francisco office. During the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, Agent Chan was responsible for organizing and hosting bilateral meetings between social media companies and the FTA. In one of the emails sent to a Facebook employee shortly before the 2020 election, Agent Chan asked him to “ensure that all requests to Facebook for foreign influence…go through San Francisco/Me”. Agent Chan added that the FITF “specifically requested that anything related to [Facebook’s handling of foreign influence, elections, and cyber threats to national security] go through San Francisco because we know all the players and want to make sure they’re all in the loop.”
C. Legal Attachés (Legats)
The FBI has “offices of legal attaches – commonly known as Legats – and more than two dozen sub-offices in key cities around the world.” According to the FBI, Legats “serve as the personal representative of the FBI Director in the country where they have regional responsibility.” FBI Special Agent Oleksandr Kobzanets worked as an assistant legal attache in Kyiv in 2020-2022 and “worked very closely with his Ukrainian cybersecurity counterparts on all issues.” After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2012, Agent Kobzanets acted as the main conduit for social media censorship requests from the SBU to American social media platforms.
Agent Mark Kellett, who along with Agent Chan was copied in many of Agent Kobzanets’ Meta messages, “managed operational and strategic leadership and preparedness for 13 Legal Attaché offices in Eastern Europe and Eurasia” from January 2021 to May 22. Agent Kellett is currently an Assistant Special Agent in Charge who “leads the Joint Terrorism Task Force’s efforts to identify and disrupt terrorist plots by individuals and organized networks, with responsibility for six operational units.”
II. Russian infiltration of the SBU
The FBI’s reliance on SBU information and judgment is particularly troubling because of the well-documented, deeply entrenched Russian influence in the SBU. In July 2022, President Zelensky fired the head of the SBU – months after the FBI had complied with SBU censorship requests – because of Russian infiltration of the SBU.
A. SSU’s historical ties with Russia, the KGB and FSB
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Ukrainian government established the SBU as “the successor organization to the Soviet-era KGB, from which it inherited its personnel, structure, and methods of operation.” Since its inception, the SSU has been fighting large-scale infiltration by Russian double agents, sympathizers and collaborators. Throughout its history, the SBU’s “ties with Russian special services,” among other factors, have provided the SBU with “services that Western colleagues are in no hurry to cooperate with.”
According to an interview with Major General Viktor Yahun, who served as deputy head of the SBU in 2014-2015, published in the Guardian, the SBU “has long had too close a relationship with its Russian counterpart, the FSB.” Moreover, “although the generation that worked in the Soviet special services has retired, Yahun added, the SBU’s recruitment practices have meant that their sons and daughters now work for the agency. . . Of course, there have always been [Ukrainian] patriots in the SBU, but they were in the minority,” he said. This assessment is shared by Oleksandr Danyliuk, who served as Mr. Zelenskyy’s national security adviser in 2019 and was in charge of intelligence at the time. Shortly before the invasion, Danyliuk told the Wall Street Journal that as of February 2022, “Russia still maintains a large network, including in the SBU.”
Immediately after the Russian invasion, Ukraine faced the consequences of “a long-running Kremlin operation to infiltrate the Ukrainian state with secret agents,” many of whom held senior positions in the SBU. For example, on February 24, 2022, Russian troops arrived at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where they met little or no resistance, successfully seizing the plant “in less than two hours and without a fight.” A Reuters investigation later revealed that “Russia’s success in Chernobyl was no accident” but the result of Russian infiltration of the SBU and Ukrainian security agencies. A few months later, the Ukrainian government requested the extradition of Andriy Naumov, the former head of the SBU’s internal security department. Naumov fled Ukraine shortly before the Russian invasion, and is now under investigation “on suspicion of treason for handing over the security secrets of Chernobyl to a foreign state.”
B. President Zelensky purges SBU of Russian collaborators after SBU cooperates with FBI on censorship
On July 16, the Ukrainian authorities arrested Oleg Kulinich, the former head of the SBU Main Directorate in Crimea. According to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), Kulinich, who “controlled part of the work of the SBU Counterintelligence Department,” “knew about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine from the territory of Crimea, but concealed this information from the SBU central office.” The next day, on July 16, Oleg Kulinich, the former head of the SBU Main Directorate in Crimea, was arrested. The next day, July 17, President Zelensky dismissed Ivan Bakanov, the head of the SBU, citing “a large number of SBU officers suspected of treason.” Zelenskyy also said that “a case of alleged treason and collaboration has been opened against individuals in law enforcement and the prosecutor’s office.”
The extent of Russian influence in the SBU today is unclear. According to an interview with a SBI spokesperson in April 2023, “Russian FSB intelligence officers infiltrated both the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, and local authorities, undermining Ukraine from within with the help of pro-Moscow Ukrainian officials who had fled.” The spokeswoman went on to “suggest that the revelations made to date may be just the tip of the iceberg.”
All of the FBI’s interactions with the SBU described in this report took place before Zelenskyy removed Bakanov as head of the SBU and arrested Kulinich, Bakanov’s “personal advisor.” Simply put, the FBI was working with and on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that was known to be compromised by Moscow at the time, and directly contributed to attempts to censor Americans engaging in protected speech. As a result, the actions of FBI agents could have provided significant assistance to the Kremlin’s military efforts.
FBI’S CENSORSHIP EFFORTS ON BEHALF OF AND IN COORDINATION WITH THE SBU
I. The FBI and SBU sent Meta huge spreadsheets with thousands of accounts to be deleted, including authentic American accounts
On March 1, 2022, FBI Special Agent Kobzanets sent an email to Meta’s employee with the subject line “additional disinformation accounts.”
Copying agents Kellett and Chan, agent Kobzanets wrote: “I have several other accounts on Instagram and [Facebook], which, according to the SBU, spread Russian disinformation. For your review and appropriate action”. According to the signature on his email, Agent Kobzanets was then holding the position of “Assistant Attaché for Legal Affairs in Ukraine and Belarus.”
Agent Kobzanets attached two spreadsheets to his email to Meta. One table contained a catalog with a timestamp, text, and URL for 15,865 individual Instagram content items, including posts, stories, and videos. Another table contained a detailed register of 5,165 Facebook accounts allegedly suspected of “spreading Russian disinformation.” This table contained the date, the text of the offending post or comment, various interaction indicators, the URL, the classification of the content’s “tone” as “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative,” and a mark of “aggression” or lack thereof, among other categories. It also contained the name, gender, and physical location of the account holder.
In a table of 5,165 Facebook accounts that Agent Kobzanets sent to Meta on March 1, the three rightmost columns were labeled “country,” “region,” and “city.” Most of the SBU table consists of posts and comments from accounts located in Russia and Belarus. However, among these accounts, there is a list of accounts belonging to residents of the United States of America. These accounts are labeled “USA” or “USA” in Cyrillic.
By cross-referencing the names and biographical data associated with the flagged accounts with other social media platforms and public documents, the Committee verified that many of the accounts flagged as “US” were genuine and belonged to real individuals. In fact, although individual posts and comments from this list are no longer available, a number of accounts labeled as “US” remain active on the Facebook platform. Here are some examples of such accounts:
- Photographer working with a studio in New York;
- Manager of a moving company in South Carolina;
- Musician and vocalist from Minnesota;
- Professor at the University of California;
- She is a children’s book author based in Washington State.
All posts and comments from accounts marked as “US” in the Facebook Accounts table had fewer than 100 likes and 130 total interactions, including shares and comments, at the time the table was created. Such a limited level of interaction is indicative of the extensive online surveillance apparatus and demonstrates the SBU’s desire to combat content in the early stages of its spread, before it approaches the “virality threshold.”
II. FBI offers Meta legal cover for deleting SBU accounts
It appears that Meta did not immediately take any noticeable action against these accounts. Three days after Agent Kobzanets’ email, Agent Chan forwarded the message to Agent Christopher Stark and Agent Patrick Miller, both of whom work in the FBI’s San Francisco field office. Agent Miller subsequently wrote an email to a Meta employee: “I work with Elvis Chan at the FBI [San Francisco]. Could you let me know if these accounts have been deleted or if you need any legal action on our part?”
In this email, Agent Miller, an FBI officer, offered to come up with a legal justification for removing the flagged accounts if Meta did not find that the posts and comments violated the terms of service. This email also demonstrates that the FBI had little concern for both censorship and encouraging social media to meet the censorship requests of foreign intelligence agencies.
III. The FBI, on behalf of the SBU, demanded the deletion of a verified account of the US State Department and an American journalist
The most audacious request from the SBU came just a day after Agent Kobzanets sent two large tables to Meta on March 1. On March 2, Agent Kobzanets sent an email to Meta with the subject line “additional accounts received from the SBU, believed to be involved in disinformation”. In an attachment to this letter, the SBU accused the list of Instagram accounts provided of “disseminating content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, and justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law,” among other things. Unbelievably, this list includes the @usaporusski account, which is the official, verified, Russian-language account of the US State Department. Neither the FBI nor the SBU provided any explanation as to how the US State Department account was “involved in disinformation.”
It is unclear why the Ukrainian government is trying to delete one of the Instagram accounts confirmed by the US State Department. However, as noted above, according to President Zelenskyy, the SBU was widely infiltrated by Russian-linked forces during this period. What is even more striking is that the FBI either negligently or intentionally passed on the SBU’s request to delete the official US government account to Meta.
The list of Instagram accounts that the SBU asked the FBI to delete also included the account of an American journalist working for a self-described “socialist” news organization based in the United States. The journalist has written extensively in defense of transgender rights and has repeatedly criticized Republicans.
Agent Kobzanets continued to submit SBU requests for removal and suspension throughout March 2022. In just one month, Agent Kobzanets sent at least ten separate requests to the same Meta employee related to content moderation on behalf of the SBU. For example, on March 5, Agent Kobzanets sent an email to Meta with the subject line ” [Instagram] accounts suspected of disinformation”. In the email, Agent Kobzanets wrote: “I am sending you a list of accounts suspected of spreading disinformation. To familiarize yourself and take the necessary measures. The SBU asks, if necessary, to declare the accounts suspicious.”
IV. The FBI and SBU also sought to remove Facebook and Instagram posts that were supportive of Ukraine and critical of Russia, the invasion, and Vladimir Putin.
Contrary to the Biden administration’s statements of support for Ukraine, the FBI, on behalf of the SBU, flagged accounts and posts by Americans that criticized Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For example, in response to a post by a government official serving the Russian region of Tuva, one of the flagged American accounts wrote: “I find it strange that in this tragic time of international crisis initiated by Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, Tuva’s highest elected official has time to argue with a foreigner trying to convince me that the Ukrainian government and their Jewish president are Nazis.” “The flagged post is no longer available, but the original post by the Russian government official to which the American was responding has not been deleted.
Another post in Russian reads: “I am lucky to wake up in sunny California. But my family is back in Ukraine. My parents, stepfather, aunt, sister, nephew, my child’s nanny, mother-in-law, who has already survived the war as a child, my friends, my colleagues, my city and my country.” The same American poster also responded to allegations of persecution of the Russian minority in Ukraine by writing: “I am half Russian. I am a Russian Ukrainian… I have never been asked to switch to Ukrainian, by anyone, anywhere. Neither I nor anyone else was forbidden to speak Russian in Ukraine.” The post ends with a number of hashtags in English, including “#stopputin,” “#freeukraine” and “#nowarinukraine.”
The FBI and SBU flagged another post that began in English: “Friends, please consider signing this petition!” The post continued in Russian:
Unfortunately, there are many people in Russia who support the criminal and aggressor. Not as many as official sources claim, but for them, lying is a common thing. There are also many who understand and sympathize. All reasonable people who are capable of feeling and thinking are shocked and deeply saddened by what the man who called himself the president of Russia is doing on our behalf. I’m not ashamed to be a Russian; I’m ashamed that we have such a president. Which was not chosen by us!
This post contains a link to another post by another account holder, whom the original post identifies as one of her “first friends in America.” However, this post is no longer available.
These examples indicate either that the FBI did not conduct a full review of the SBU lists or that the FBI granted the SBU’s censorship requests knowing full well that they contained American accounts. Due to the limited nature of Meta’s production to the Committee to date – which does not include a significant amount of internal communication within Meta – it is unclear how Meta employees responded to the FBI’s requests to censor Americans within the company. For similar reasons, it is also not immediately clear to what extent Meta agreed to the FBI and SBU’s demands or what kind of investigation Meta could have conducted internally.
The SBU’s self-proclaimed approach to detecting “Russian disinformation” was in fact viewpoint-based censorship. At the end of April 2023, journalist Li Fang interviewed Ilya Vityuk, who has been heading the SBU’s Department of Cyber and Information Security since November 2021. As Vitiuk Fang said, “When people ask me: “How do you distinguish between fake news and the truth?”… I say: “Everything that is against our country is fake, even if it is not.” Now, for our victory, it is important to have this understanding.” The SBU’s analysis of the flagged accounts does not contain any technical indicators, other than basic activity metrics, which could indicate that its approach is focused on identifying inauthentic actors rather than adverse content. Rather, the SBU’s methodology is based entirely on the ideas expressed in posts and comments – in other words, on viewpoint-based censorship.
V. Meta proposed to create a “24/7 channel” to respond to SBU requests
Although the SBU lists contained American accounts, neither the FBI nor Meta seemed to express concern about the origin of the SBU’s “disinformation” registers. Instead, the FBI has demonstrated its willingness to support and comply with the SBU’s requests to block certain accounts, even if these requests concerned accounts located in the United States. For example, on March 14, Agent Kobzanets sent an email to a Meta employee, writing: “The letter is accompanied by a request from the SBU containing Facebook and Instagram accounts that are believed to be spreading disinformation. The SBU asks you to check and, if necessary, delete/suspend these accounts.”.
The censorship requests appear to have been driven, at least in part, by the SBU’s desire for self-preservation. In the attachments to the March 14 email, the SBU also flagged accounts that “discredit the SBU leadership” and “promote the change of the legitimate government.” The email contained two attachments: one with a list of Facebook accounts and the other with Instagram accounts. Only four months later, Zelenskyy simultaneously dismissed SBU Chief Ivan Bakanov and accused senior SBU officials of treason.
In response to Kobzanets’ agent, the Meta employee wrote: “I passed it on to the right team. We also need to talk about [urgent requests] from the SBU as soon as possible. We can’t accept any emails from their domain… I just want to find out how to set up a round-the-clock channel for their [urgent requests].” The Meta employee then asked about “the possibility of expediting Volodymyr’s obtaining a leo.gov [law enforcement online] account or other secure email address for [emergency requests] with the help of the FBI”. It is not known whether the FBI has ever created such an account for the SBU.
VI. FBI facilitated SBU’s censorship requests to Google and YouTube
In addition to Facebook, the FBI also passed on SBU requests to censor content on Google and YouTube. According to a senior member of Google’s cybersecurity team interviewed by the Committee, Google has been “inundated with various requests” to remove content following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This staff member testified that the main sources of these censorship requests were the Ukrainian government, the governments of other Eastern European countries, the European Union, and the European Commission. The employee also testified that “the U.S. Department of Justice has been redirecting [censorship] requests from foreign governments.”
On March 5, 2022, FBI Agent Kobzanets sent an email to a Google employee, copying Agent Chan and Agent Kellett. Referring to a previous misunderstanding about custom labels on Google Maps, Agent Kobzanets thanked the employee and his team “for being very responsive to Ukrainian requests.” Agent Kobzanets then wrote that he was “in constant contact with all relevant institutions responsible for cybersecurity in Ukraine, and they know that everything has to go through me. If I receive any inquiries, please let me know and I will be able to verify the name/agency and/or request additional information if necessary.
It is unclear whether Agent Kobzanets or anyone else at the FBI took any steps to “vet” the lists of accounts that the SBU sought to delete to determine whether the requests were legitimate and appropriate.
On March 11, 2022, a Google employee sent an email to the FBI about the requests that Google had received directly from the SBU: “Today we received about 30 [urgent disclosure requests]… All of them seem to be related to YouTube. We forward all requests for deletion to the deletion team.
The employee attached a form titled “Request for Urgent Disclosure of Google LLC Information” submitted by an “employee of the International Cooperation Department” of the SBU. The SBU officer listed a number of YouTube channels and asked Google to “block the specified channels, as well as provide us with the subscriber data provided during registration.”
Agent Chan thanked Google: “We appreciate all your help in this matter.”
As with the requests to Meta, the FBI also sent lists of YouTube accounts from the SBU. These accounts, many of which have been deleted, were allegedly “used in the interests of the aggressor country to incite hatred, disseminate content that propagates war, and inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine,” among other accusations. For example, on March 14, Agent Kobzanets sent an email to a Google employee, attaching “a request from the SBU, which contains a list of some Youtube channels that are believed to be spreading disinformation. The SBU requests to review and, if necessary, remove/suspend access to these channels/videos.
VII. FBI and SBU also tried to censor American journalists on Twitter
Recent reports have shown that the FBI has also expanded the SBU’s ability to censor users on Twitter. On March 27, 2022, Agent Kobzanets sent an email to Twitter, writing: “Attached is a list of accounts I have received over the past few weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. These accounts are suspected by the SBU of spreading fear and disinformation.” Agent Kobzanets attached a document from the SBU, similar to those he had sent to other social media outlets, with a list of Twitter accounts allegedly “used to spread disinformation and fake news,” among other things.
In response to an email from Kobzanets’ agent, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and security, warned that the list is “a mix of individual accounts…and even a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists.” Roth concluded his email: “Any additional information or context … is of course welcome and appreciated.” Despite reports that he tried to censor “American and Canadian journalists,” Agent Kobzanets did not admit to his misconduct and did not withdraw the request. Instead, Agent Kobzanets replied to Roth that it was “unlikely that there would be any additional information or context.”
VIII. The FBI continued to pass on requests to the SBU even after the FBI was notified that it had unconstitutionally flagged U.S. accounts for deletion
The FBI’s involvement in the SBU’s censorship of American social media platforms continued even after Twitter’s Joel Roth warned the FBI about American accounts on the SBU’s lists, and requests continued to be received until at least May 11, 2022. On May 11, agent Kobzanets sent “several requests from Ukraine with a list of accounts suspected of spreading disinformation” to Meta. Among these requests was a letter from the SBU listing various Facebook groups allegedly used, among other things, to promote “the separation of political forces and Ukrainian society as a whole.” The letter read: “We ask you to block these Facebook pages, as well as the accounts from which they are administered.”
The full extent of the FBI’s cooperation with the SBU in censoring the American language is unknown. For example, the subject line of Agent Kobzanets’ March 1 email to Meta – “additional disinformation accounts” – means that Agent Kobzanets or other FBI agents had sent Meta censorship requests prior to that date. If such additional requests from the FBI and SBU exist, Meta has not provided the Committee with these documents. As detailed in this report, the coordination between the FBI, the SBU, and U.S. social media companies was very close.
It is clear that the FBI’s involvement in the SBU’s censorship activities was a voluntary and conscious choice by the FBI, involving at least seven agents from across the Bureau. As evidenced by the FBI’s desire to obtain assurances from Meta that the “accounts” designated by the SBU had been deleted, the FBI’s role was not simply the result of technical necessity or legal obligation. Nothing in the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) between the United States and Ukraine, ratified in 2001, obligates the FBI to assist the SBU’s efforts to censor Americans on American social media platforms. Even if this were the case, any such requirement would be unconstitutional and therefore invalid.
Open source information suggests that the FBI’s cooperation with the SBU continues. On April 25, 2023, Agent Kobzanets spoke at a panel discussion in San Francisco with SBU officer Ilya Vityuk, with Agent Chan in the audience. During the discussion, Vitiuk called the FBI the SBU’s “main partner.” To date, the FBI has not made any public statements about its work with the SBU to remove American “disinformation” on social media, nor has it issued any statements acknowledging its role in fulfilling foreign requests to censor legitimate speech domestically. The full extent of the FBI’s involvement in these activities remains the subject of investigation by the Committee and the Special Subcommittee.
CONCLUSION
They say that foreign policy is domestic policy in a hat. In a sense, this is true
Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, June 29, 1966.
While granting requests from compromised foreign intelligence agencies to censor Americans, the FBI has never indicated in the documents the Committee and the Select Subcommittee have received so far that the requests included accounts belonging to Americans or the U.S. government. Agent Kobzanets never told social media companies to ignore specific requests because the FBI had checked the accounts and determined that there were Americans on the list. Neither Agent Chan nor Agent Kellett ever stated that the FBI has no right to demand censorship of domestic political speech.
To make matters worse, no one in the FBI appears to have expressed concern about potential Russian influence on SBU censorship requests. Instead, the FBI appears to have approved the SBU’s censorship requests, routinely redirecting them to social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. The FBI has even contacted platforms when it believes that the platform’s response was inadequate.
This report details the FBI’s unconstitutional actions. It also contradicts the Biden administration’s stated goals of U.S. support for Ukraine and jeopardizes our national security. The FBI’s conflation of domestic politics with foreign malign influence poses a serious threat to American civil liberties. As the testimony of FBI informants before the Select Subcommittee demonstrated, the FBI’s propensity for misconduct is not limited to this particular incident or subject area.
This is not the first time that the federal government’s efforts to counter “foreign disinformation” have targeted genuine American accounts. According to journalist Matt Taibbi, an interagency organization called the Center for Global Engagement (GEC) sent Twitter a list of “Chinese … accounts” that allegedly engaged in “state-sponsored coordinated manipulation.” According to Taibbi, “the GEC’s ‘Chinese’ list includes numerous Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad.” The Atlantic Council’s GEC-funded Digital Forensics Lab operates in a similar fashion. “The Atlantic Council’s GEC-funded Digital Forensics Lab similarly tweeted “about 40,000 accounts that our researchers suspect are engaged in inauthentic behavior…and Hindu nationalism more broadly. Not surprisingly, “the list was full of ordinary Americans.” The Committee and the Ad Hoc Subcommittee sent a subpoena to the GEC demanding the relevant documents; this subpoena remains outstanding.
Whenever Congress vests an executive branch agency with explicitly foreign policy-oriented powers to address issues related to unfavorable political speech, it is inevitable that the agency will eventually turn its sights on domestic policy. As detailed by the Special Subcommittee in its recent report, shortly after its creation, CISA began monitoring social media platforms under the guise of combating “foreign disinformation.”
Whenever Congress vests an executive branch agency with explicitly foreign policy-oriented powers to address issues related to unfavorable political speech, it is inevitable that the agency will eventually turn its sights on domestic policy. As detailed by the Special Subcommittee in its recent report, shortly after its creation, CISA began monitoring social media platforms under the guise of combating “foreign disinformation.” Despite the lack of legal authority to do so, CISA quickly and easily expanded its scope of activities from “disinformation, disinformation, and disinformation” to include surveillance and suppression of domestic political speech on social media. Almost half a century ago, the Church Committee exposed a similar lure by the National Security Agency (NSA). Like the GEC, CISA, and NSA, the FBI has taken over a part of its mission that was supposed to be foreign policy-oriented and unconstitutionally turned the power of the federal government inward, against the American people.
Efforts to counter alleged foreign “disinformation” campaigns, no matter how noble their intentions, cannot justify censoring Americans. The federal government’s censorship of domestic broadcasting cannot and should not be accepted as collateral in a perpetual war against real or perceived foreign influence. In order to better inform legislative action to prevent further erosion of Americans’ civil liberties, the Committee and the Special Subcommittee will continue to examine how and to what extent the FBI and other executive branch agencies
authorities were involved in censoring Americans.
.
