Harold Hutchison
A watchdog group filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security Friday in an effort to force the agency to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding a task force set up to combat alleged “election threats” in Pennsylvania.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced the formation of the “Election Threats Task Force” in a Feb. 29 release, claiming it would provide “trusted election information” and “mitigate threats” to elections. The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) says the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged its request seeking information on Pennsylvania’s collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), but claims it has received no documents or contact since then, according to court documents provided first to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
CASA’s FOIA request came following a March report by The Federalist that the Shapiro administration was collaborating with CISA as part of the task force, something not explicitly stated in Shapiro’s Feb. 29 release.
“In March, the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) submitted a FOIA request to DHS-CISA in order to uncover communications related to the creation of the Pennsylvania Election Task Force, which is designed to censor election-related speech that it deems as ‘misinformation’. CISA is yet to respond to CASA’s request,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.
Federal law requires the government to respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days of it being received, according to the National Archives. In its suit, CASA is asking the court to order DHS to provide the documents within ten days of its decision.
“CASA filed this FOIA request to DHS 145 days ago. We are now 80 days from the election, and the public still has not seen the communications on the creation of this task force, which may be empowered to potentially censor election-related speech in the top battleground state in America,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF. “We are filing suit to force DHS to comply with the law and immediately provide these records to the American people.”
Shapiro claimed in the original release that the task force, composed of multiple federal and state agencies and offices, would “share information and coordinate plans to mitigate threats to the election process, protect voters from intimidation and provide voters with accurate, trusted election information” and “establish clear, strategic communication and information sharing among public agencies and officials to identify and mitigate threats to the election process.” Shapiro also touted a web page that would “fact-check” claims about the state’s election processes in the release.
The Supreme Court ruled against an injunction provided by a lower court that prevented multiple government agencies, including CISA, from asking social media companies to censor posts on hot-button issues like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and election integrity in June. CISA and other agencies resumed collaborating with social media companies in March, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said during a conference.
Censorship became a hot-button issue during the 2020 presidential election after Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the personal account of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, for sharing an Oct. 14, 2020 report by the New York Post about the contents of a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden.
“The Department of Homeland Security regularly receives and responds to more than half a million Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests each year,” a spokesperson for CISA told the DCNF. “While the Department makes every effort to respond in a timely manner to each request, the complexity of the request and the FOIA backlog may impact the FOIA office’s ability to respond.”
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