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As recently reported by The BFD, Freedom of Information requests in New Zealand have revealed that “the government […] censorship is extending to its own regulators and […] even its lawyers”. “Hold my booster,” says the Australian government.
In less than three years the federal government intervened at least 4213 times to restrict or censor posts about the Covid-19 pandemic on digital platforms.
It speaks sad volumes about the bipartisan ubiquity of Covid censorship that the FOI request had to be made by a member of the very party in government for most of the pandemic.
And the Australian Deep State is still clinging to its secrets.
A freedom of information request by Liberal senator Alex Antic has revealed the number of interventions, but details about the reasons or the guidelines under which they were made remain secret.
“It is entirely unclear to me why the Department of Home Affairs, a department which is primarily charged with the duty of overseeing matters like border control, has been using a backdoor arrangement with social media companies to influence the media in relation into matters such as public health,” Senator Antic said.
As Antic has discovered, the government colluded with foreign-owned social media mega-corporations to appoint itself judge, jury and censor of so-called “misinformation”. At the same time, the government was treating Covid debate as tantamount to “terrorism”.
The Department of Home Affairs Online Content Incident Arrangement Procedural Guideline […] details how the government works with digital platforms such as Facebook, Meta, Twitter, Instagram and Google to monitor and intervene on content.
The document is subheaded “Australia’s domestic crisis response protocol for online terrorist and extreme violent content” designated as version 1.3 from November 2022. It runs to 28 pages but aside from the title, every page has been fully redacted.
Under the guise of “online terrorist and extreme violent content”, the government colluded with foreign social media companies no less than 4213 times to censor “Covid-19-related referalls”. These were more than 30% of its “terrorist” interventions.
The Covid-19 interventions represent nearly four requests per day over that period. The Coalition was in government for most of that time […]
A spokesperson for the Home Affairs Department failed to provide further details on the nature of the Covid interventions but revealed that such pandemic referrals would not occur after June 30 this year.
The Australian
Naturally, we all believe them without question.
Well, we have to — because if we do question, they’re not going to tell us.
