US government shuts down disinformation board that GOP criticised

Three months after conservative outrage led the Department of Homeland Security to suspend a new effort to combat disinformation spread with the aim of harming US national security, the programme has been officially cancelled.

In a statement, the department said it was accepting the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s recommendation that it formally terminate the Disinformation Governance Board it had established in April to coordinate efforts to fight disinformation between the department’s various agencies.

“The Department welcomes the recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which has concluded that countering disinformation that threatens the homeland, and providing the public with accurate information in response, is critical to fulfilling the Department’s missions,” the department said. “In accordance with the HSAC’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective … August 24, 2022”.

The leader of the aborted DHS effort, Nina Jankowicz, told NPR in May that the board’s function was to “coordinate among the Department of Homeland Security's components — agencies like FEMA or the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency or Customs and Border Patrol — and make sure that Americans had trustworthy information about issues connected to homeland security”.

Though DHS officials repeatedly stressed that the board was to have no role in policing speech of any kind, the idea that the federal government would have any role in fighting disinformation — even disinformation spread by drug and human smuggling cartels or foreign nations intent on interfering in US elections — was seized on by conservatives who claimed DHS would weaponise the board to “target” Republican politicians.

Ms Jankowicz, a respected expert in disinformation who has done extensive work on Russian information operations and has advised Ukraine’s government, became a lighting rod for GOP critics, who seized on public statements they perceived to evidence bias against conservatives. In the weeks following news of her appointment to lead the DHS board, she was inundated with harassment and death threats.

Despite the end of the Disinformation Governance Board effort, DHS said it would “continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law, while upholding the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work”.