On Censorship

One of the aspects of censorship that I have yet to see reported on was the ability of the powers that be to shut down Russian internet sites at the start of the Ukrainian war. I get it, these are considered to be "Russian Propaganda" however, the People who were not allowed to view this information were Americans. We the People should be free to view Russian propaganda if we so choose.

Is it OK to censor Russian websites? Absolutely not, because the First Amendment protects YOUR rights and one of them is the ability to read what you choose to read. When they shut down a Russian site, they are Censoring YOUR information. They are filtering what you get access to. The Government of course will claim they had nothing to do with shutting down these sites, it was hackers or some other non-state entity. But was it really? We all know, well those of us who pay attention know, that our government employs tens of thousands of cyber specialists who created an entire series of tools to hack with. In fact, there is little doubt that the US intelligence agencies have the ability to hack pretty much anything in the world that can be hacked.

It's safe to assume that they either hacked these sites or know who did, either way, it's not their job to hack them or look the other way as someone else does. That information belongs to the American people, since we are employing tens of thousands of cyber experts it's their job to assure We the People have access to a free press, regardless of who is doing the publishing.

 
Yet what did our cyber experts do recently? They sent thousands of requests to Twitter to censor tens of thousands of Americans and in the process censored the information available to Everyone who goes on Twitter, which is millions of people. They did this in regard to topics ranging from Russia to Covid and everything in between, essentially anything they didn't want published was censored.

 
What are the odds that they would shut down Russian sites, I'd say it's close to 100%. That is censorship too folks, yet nobody that I know of has ever mentioned that it doesn't matter if they are Russians or not, this is still a way to Censor what the American people get access to. It's still 100% censorship because the result is they are Censoring YOU. They are filtering the information you are allowed access to. This isn't about whether or not they can censor Russians, because ultimately the target isn't the Russian people at all, they will get access to this information anyway. It's all about Censoring what the American People were allowed to access.

Furthermore, this should be a wake-up call in regards to what they are capable of doing in an "Emergency" situation. This time it was Russian websites, but what will they do if We were ever in a shooting war with Russia or China? I think this was a trial run, if any real war breaks out they will do this same thing only to every single site in America that dares present information that goes against their war narrative.

- Brad Smith