Prohibit the FBI from working on misinformation
What the document says“Prohibit the FBI from engaging, in general, in activities related to combating the spread of so-called misinformation and disinformation by Americans who are not tied to any plausible criminal activity.”
The chapter says the government has no business policing speech, that the First Amendment prohibits it, and asks for a hard firewall between monitoring online activity for threats or evidence of crime, which it treats as legitimate, and asking or demanding that publishers remove material based on content or viewpoint, which it says the department must not do.
What the document actually says“Prohibit the FBI from engaging, in general, in activities related to combating the spread of so-called misinformation and disinformation by Americans who are not tied to any plausible criminal activity.”
Stop the FBI working on false claims spread by Americans. Unless a crime is involved.
The FBI has worked on false claims spread online. The book says that is not its job. It says the government must not police speech.
Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship
2025-01-20 · 90 FR 8243
Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 states that the federal government infringed protected speech under the guise of combatting misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, bars every federal department, agency, officer, employee and agent from acting or spending federal resources in a way that would unconstitutionally abridge an American citizen's speech or facilitate such conduct, and directs the Attorney General to investigate the previous four years and recommend remedies. The prohibition is government-wide and covers the activity the chapter names. It breaks down on scope and on line-drawing: the order names no agency, so it neither singles out the FBI nor ends any identified FBI program, and it forbids only conduct that would be unconstitutional rather than setting the chapter's firewall between monitoring online activity for evidence of crime and asking a publisher to remove material.
The order says the government wrongly curbed speech while fighting false news. It bars all federal staff from acts that cut off free speech. But no agency is named, so the FBI is not singled out and no program of it ends. It bars only acts that break the Constitution.