Who are the Arbiters of “Truth” – Who are Fact-Checking the AI Fact-Checkers?

This article originally appeared on Bill Bruch’s All Things Politics and was republished with permission.

Recent public records request (PRR) documents show the Democrat-controlled Washington State Secretary of State (SOS) paid $147,600 of tax-payer money to an overseas Artificial Intelligence (AI) company based in the UK to surveil anyone using social media platforms that question the partisan narrative of “Free and Fair” elections.

The company, named “Logically” targets people using online social media posts and “Fact Checks” what they deem “Misinformation & Disinformation”- then publishes and sends out regular “Threat Alerts” and bi-weekly “Narrative and Threat Reports” to the SOS based on its AI algorithm preferences.

With so much evidence of election and voter fraud literally being exposed every day, why do election fraud deniers get to be the arbiters of truth? And why are these uninformed people and AI entities deciding what is and what is not TRUTH, misinformation, and disinformation?

Who is programming into AI, what narrative is true, and what is not?

Of no surprise, top targets of Logically reports are Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) Chair / State Rep. Jim Walsh and myself; which includes several of my Substack articles expressing concerns of government corruption and possible evidence of election/voter fraud.

This is, in essence, WA State taxpayer-funded Democrat opposition research / spying via a Non-Government Organization (NGO). The Leftist Orwellian big-brother surveillance state most obviously does not care about the U.S. Constitution First Amendment Free-Speech or the protected Freedom of Speech in the WA State Constitution Art 1 Sec 5.

Regular Logically “mis / dis-information” reports also include, election alerts, threats of violence, threat briefings, flagging Conservative events, etc.

How do we know “mis / dis-information” isn’t another army of AI bots as is frequently found on social media doing their thing? And what do you do to combat it without infringing on citizens’ First Amendment rights as was done repeatedly in past recent elections prior to Musk taking over Twitter for example.

INFORMATION SECURITY AND RESPONSE

In the 5D chess war game, the Democrat WA SOS politburo culture warriors have made crystal clear their intentions with their recently formed Information Security and Response (ISR) separate agency division under the SOS. Mission: The ISR division provides cybersecurity, information technology, and a messaging capability to support the integrity of the election process throughout Washington.

PRR and public data shows ISR has its own hierarchy and government administrative state bureaucracy with about 15 employees and is tasked to work directly with Logically under the SOS umbrella. Kylee Zabel, former Communication Director under former SOS Kim Wyman, is the Director of ISR. Zabel is working under Assistant SOS Kevin McMahan, who is directly under SOS Steve Hobbs.

Wyman left in Nov. 2021 to serve with the Biden administration as the Senior Election Security Lead for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Zabel left with Wyman, but returned in 2022 to the SOS and was appointed Director of ISR in Jan. 2023.

A Fifth Circuit federal appeals court recently found in Missouri / Louisiana v Biden that the DHS’s CISA violated the First Amendment by telling social media platforms what and whose content to restrict and bans the feds from working with outside groups that use social-media companies to suppress and delete “protected free speech.” The case is now headed to the Supreme Court.

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee want legislation to address CISA’s ability to collaborate with tech companies to censor content, introducing bills to mandate transparency and accountability regarding CISA’s activities. CISA’s 50% budget growth over the last 5 years and its collusion with big tech and censorship of Conservatives on social media are serious concerns.

According to Senator Rand Paul, “Federal courts have ordered CISA to stop, but the trust CISA has abused cannot be restored until the agency gives a full accounting of what it has done, and Congress changes the law to create severe penalties for anyone who tries to do the same thing in the future.”

Today Congressman Jim Jordan released a Staff Report of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government U.S. House of Representatives exposing the “Censorship Industrial Complex” – How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Speech – and the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). A consortium of “disinformation” academics led by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory (SIO) that worked directly with the DHS and the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department, to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech in advance of the 2020 presidential election.

Created “at the request” of CISA, the EIP provided a way for the federal gov. to launder censorship activities bypassing the First Amendment and public scrutiny. EIP scoured hundreds of millions of social media posts for content disfavored by the government about election processes and outcomes, and collected it from the operation’s governmental and NGO partners to identify the “offending” speech.

Who was targeted? Americans of all political stripes, but especially conservatives.

EIP and CISA pressuring platforms to target speech that included statements by President Trump; opinions about election integrity rooted in government records, think-tank white papers; and speculative tweets from statesmen and everyday citizens alike (notable instances here).

According to Jordan, “The federal government, disinformation “experts” at universities, Big Tech, and others worked together through EIP to monitor & censor Americans’ speech. EIP “stakeholders” (including the federal gov’t) would submit misinformation reports -EIP would “analyze” the report and find similar content across platforms -EIP would submit the report to Big Tech, often with a recommendation on how to censor.

The American people deserve to know if they were targeted by their own government and so-called “disinformation” experts. The Committee is making the data from these reports publicly available here.”

“One look at these documents shows the government and these organizations working hand-in-glove to suppress the speech of Americans” – Congressman Dan Bishop.

With the Federal constitutional and legal issues of Democrat-controlled government censoring their opposition being exposed and stalled, it should be no surprise that Democrats’ next move via the States would be to hire independent third-party NGOs to be agents of the government and do their dirty work for them. Apparently, if NGOs like Logically, can contract with Secretaries of States via agency divisions like ISR to have the end goal of being able to coerce social-media platforms into censoring certain social media content, then so be it!

Problem being, this publicly funded censorship activity is still in violation of the First Amendment…And Protected Free Speech.

OF NOTE: As of this writing there has been no evidence provided that neither the SOS’s ISR, nor its funding was ever approved by the WA State Legislature.

How is this not illegal election interference / tampering / manipulation with the misuse of tax-payer funds by favoring a certain political agenda and biases over another’s political viewpoint? This SOS surveillance process could without a doubt lead to censoring and shadow banning of the rival party and their candidates, which in turn can reduce vote share, especially if their content is deleted altogether.

Logically has a scale based on levels of threat per their Statement of Work Agreement with the WA State SOS which states:

The State of Washington, Secretary of State’s Office is engaging Logically (Logically or Contractor) to help provide services to identify harmful online narratives about the election process and online threats to election officials and the election process.

Description of Services
Logically will review daily (Monday – Friday) publicly available online content across five (5) social media platforms for narratives and threats related to election officials or the election process in Washington. These platforms will include: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Truth Social, and Rumble.

Logically shall provide the following overarching services:
1. Narrative Alerts
2. Threat Alerts
3. Bi-Weekly Narrative and Threat Trend Reports
4. Final Narrative and Threat Report Trend Report
5. Narrative and Threat Briefings

Total Monthly Cost $12,300 Billed Monthly – Total Contract Cost $147,600

Period of Performance: Logically shall provide this service beginning on June 14, 2023, through January 26, 2025, for a total of approximately 19 months, with an option of extending the contract after the January 26, 2025 date.

According to Logically’s fact-checking partnership with Facebook: When Logically rates a piece of content as false, Facebook will significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it, apply a warning label to let people know that the content has been rated false, and notify people who try to share it.

The use of taxpayer money to fund online Democrat Opposition Research and Censorship of Republicans and Conservatives through the 2024 election is blatantly wrong! The SOS is a Constitutional officer entrusted with the supposed fair and unbiased conduct of elections. Neither our constitution, nor our laws, empower the SOS to use public funds to surveil / spy on the people of our state, or to suppress or punish debate among the people of a different viewpoint.

It is unconstitutional and unethical for the SOS to use such Orwellian Totalitarian State means to promote the views of their party and censor the rival party. The WA SOS actions are part of the destruction of civil society and have absolutely no consideration for the people or the Constitution.

So, we now know the Democrat WA SOS and their Administrative State have been totally corrupted! The next question is, besides censoring online content, what do they do with their Logically provided reports and information? Most probably the data goes to the DHS, FBI, CIA, and other Federal and State agencies so perpetrators and political opponents can be put on a “Watch List.”

According to The Hill March 2021 interview with Lyric Jain, founder and CEO of Logically since 2017: The Logically Intelligence (LI) platform collects data from tens of thousands of websites and social media platforms then feeds it through an algorithm to identify potentially dangerous content and organize it into narrative groups. Our intensive focus on combating these untruths has culminated in the development of Logically Intelligence, based on several years of frontline operations fighting against the most egregious attacks on facts and reality.

LI works with governments and nongovernmental organizations to identify and counter online misinformation using a blend of artificial intelligence and human expertise. Once misinformation narratives have been detected, LI offers users several countermeasures, including investigative reports from Logically’s subject-matter experts and ways to flag content to platforms and built-in fact checks.

Logically touts its AI and team of expert researchers as a differentiating factor that will help it be quicker and better at organizing content in useful ways. LI provides users with a customizable “Situation Room” that organizes potentially dangerous pieces of content and shows links between them.

Lyric Jain hopes the platform will help information and intelligence sharing in the wake of the J-6 deadly insurrection at the Capitol, noting that the service could also help identify drivers behind coronavirus vaccine hesitancy. 

Now that these Logically reports have been published and distributed to the SOS, the SOS could certainly be deemed liable for not taking appropriate timely action, having been informed of such critical alerts and well documented incidents such as the King County Secret Server Swap issues, and policies like sending signature form letters to everyone on the voter rolls, knowing many of these “registered voters” do not live at the addresses, allowing bad actors to steal voter identities, vote illegal ballots and ultimately steal elections.

Who is responsible to see that these valid issues and concerns are addressed? And what true issues and facts are deemed acceptable speech vs actionable ‘threats?’

The new AI quasi-police force industry of “Thought Police Fact-Checkers” is exploding just in time for the 2024 Elections.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• AI surveillance technology is spreading at a faster rate to a wider range of countries than experts have commonly understood. At least 75 countries globally are actively using AI technologies for surveillance purposes. This includes: smart city/safe city platforms (56 countries), facial recognition systems (64 countries), and smart policing (52 countries).
• China is a major driver of AI surveillance worldwide. Technology linked to Chinese companies—particularly Huawei, Hikvision, Dahua, and ZTE—supply AI surveillance technology in 63 countries.
• Governments in autocratic and semi-autocratic countries are more prone to abuse AI surveillance than governments in liberal democracies. Some autocratic governments—for example, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia—are exploiting AI technology for mass surveillance purposes. Yet all political contexts run the risk of unlawfully exploiting AI surveillance technology to obtain certain political objectives.

Following WA State’s surveillance lead, the Oregon SOS also decided to jump into the fray and implement this technology, hiring UK Logically AI to be their “misinformation-disinformation” conqueror – impossible not to see how federal and state government are being weaponized using taxpayer funds.

An entire “AI Threat & Risk Analysis” industry has been created to track and monitor your words and activity, here are a few more examples:

Seerist – Combining ever-evolving artificial intelligence with expert ears-to-the-ground risk analysts.

Pendulum (Seattle based)- Disrupting the threat that harmful narratives pose on society every day.

The Carnegie Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program – Strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of international scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and safeguard peace…

Perhaps election officials should take heed, as even according to the EAC Helping America Vote -AI Toolkit for Election Officials: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis of Emerging AI Tools and Technologies – Page 9 THREATS – states:

New AI technologies will likely increase the amount of misinformation shared on social media platforms. As this content becomes more engaging and easier to produce, fact-checking misleading content online will likely become ever more challenging.

The potential disruptive nature of AI-generated content has already been seen in AI-generated faked images of an explosion at the Pentagon that briefly caused a dip in the stock market. Additionally, as more and more political campaigns use AI-generated images, it could become harder for voters to spot the difference between real and fabricated information.

This could be particularly problematic during an election. For example, an AI-generated image of excessively long lines at a polling location may be used to try to affect voter behavior on Election Day.

Do citizens have a right to be notified that their speech has fallen under review by their government via leftist controlled AI companies?

For those seeking truth, transparency, and exposing corruption that landed their speech in front of state bureaucrats for “mis/dis-information” review, will they be entitled to a response or dialog to address their concerns?

These are serious Constitutional Freedom of Speech issues!

It is time for the people and their elected representatives in the state legislature to weigh in on this. The public must be involved in such important Constitutional issues to provide input for weaponized WA State agencies that have gone rogue.

Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman, WSRP Executive Board Member, 4-Term Skagit County GOP Chairman, Citizen Journalist, Blogger, Business Owner, “2021 Citizen Activist of the Year” award by the Olympic Conference, 2020 WA State House Representative Candidate, Former Council Member, and WA State 2016 RNC National Convention Delegate.