FBI ‘Facilitated Censorship Requests’ on Behalf of Ukrainian Intelligence Agency

According to a new report from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, President Joe Biden’s Federal Bureau of Investigation “facilitated censorship requests to American social media companies on behalf of a Ukrainian intelligence agency infiltrated by Russian-aligned actors.”

According to the report, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) asked the FBI to assist it in identifying and eliminating accounts spreading Kremlin propaganda in the wake of Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor. Later, it was discovered that SBU had been “compromised” by those obedient to Putin.

The FBI received lists from the SBU of “thousands” of social media accounts at the start of the conflict that were allegedly “spreading Russian disinformation,” which the FBI subsequently disseminated to social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Documents obtained through subpoenas from the tech giants showed that many of the accounts targeted belonged to Americans using First Amendment-protected speech, including those “expressing unambiguously pro-Ukrainian views, as well as those voicing opposition to Russian

 President Vladimir Putin.” This, the report argued, shows that “the FBI did not meaningfully vet the SBU’s lists.” A verified account for the US State Department and several journalists were among the accounts targeted.

Most content posted by flagged accounts had very little to no engagement, something the report pointed to as evidence of the “expansive online surveillance apparatus” of the SBU and its “desire to crack down on content in the early stages of dissemination, before it approaches the ‘virality threshold’.”

The SBU, which replaced the KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union, has long been a hotspot of Russian infiltration. After the FBI and SBU worked together in July 2022, President Zelensky terminated Ivan Bakanov as the organization’s leader, citing “the large number of SBU staff suspected of treason.”