Officials said they created the board in April to combat extremism fueled by misinformation that could endanger national security, but Republicans and conservative media have portrayed it as an Orwellian tool that could infringe on privacy and free speech.
The board’s director resigned after several weeks amid a wave of online criticism, and Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked the advisory council to study the matter.
Michael Chertoff, co-chairman of the council subcommittee that drafted the recommendation and a former DHS secretary, did not explain the panel’s reasoning before the larger council voted to approve the recommendation on Monday. He said the subcommittee is working on a full report on the disinformation due Aug. 3.
“There is no place for a separate disinformation governing board,” Chertoff, who served in the George W. Bush administration, told the meeting.
The 36-member advisory council is mostly elected by Mayorkas. He asked Chertoff and Jamie Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, to co-chair the subcommittee.
The public part of the meeting was held via audio only. Officials did not identify all the members on the call or respond to questions afterward. The council had a quorum and approved the recommendation by voice vote.
Mayorkas said the Department of Homeland Security created the board to protect against security threats related to disinformation, which DHS defined as “false information that is intentionally disseminated with the intent to mislead or deceive.” Disinformation can take many forms, officials said, such as false reports “spread by foreign countries such as Russia, China and Iran,” as well as by criminal organizations and people smugglers.
DHS later emphasized that the board was an internal task force that “does not have any operational authority or capability.”
But Republicans worried that the board reached the police speech in the United States and some cheered the decision on Monday.
Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee tweeted: “Hate to say we told you so… From its initial failed introduction, the ‘Department of Truth’ lacked a defined mission or even direction. It was clearly a political tool to be used by the party in control.”
DHS has said the agency is “deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects the freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy of Americans.” But the agency has acknowledged “confusion about the task force, its role and its activities.”
The backlash against DHS and the board’s director, Nina Jankowicz, an author and disinformation expert, prompted DHS to “pause” the board’s activities in May.
The council’s recommendation came two months after Jankowicz’s resignation. On Monday, she tweeted that harassment of her continues and called on several Republican lawmakers to “stop amplifying” false information against her.
She said some people mistakenly believed her role “included law enforcement and censorship”.
“Far from the manufactured image of power-hungry censorship that many have reinforced, my career has been dedicated to nonpartisan work *protecting* free expression,” she wrote.
“Disproportionately personalized attacks have become endemic to American political discourse. No one deserves to be subjected to such jealousy and it is those in positions of power who silently encourage it,” she added. “They can choose to set a different tone and example.”
In addition to Chertoff and Gorelick, members of the council’s subcommittee on disinformation best practices and safeguards are venture capitalist Ted Schlein; Sonal Shah, executive vice president at United Way Worldwide; former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan; and attorney Matthew F. Ferraro.
