Two months after it first scrapped the Disinformation Governance Board, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now admits there is "no need" for the board at all.
A DHS advisory subcommittee made the declaration on Monday, according to The Washington Post. Previously the board had technically been "paused."
First announced in April, the disinformation board attracted scrutiny from conservatives and civil libertarians due to concerns that its director, Nina Jankowicz, was a progressive ideologue with a poor track record of identifying misinformation. She had fallen for narratives that had hoodwinked other liberals, including the false notion that the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was a hoax of Russian origin. Federal law enforcement officials played a prominent role in providing cover for this false notion; 50 of them signed a letter asserting the story was Russian disinformation, which provided the mainstream media and social media companies with intellectual cover to suppress the story. There is good reason to worry that Jankowicz's disinformation board could have done the same had it been up and running at the time.
Given all that, DHS' decision to affirm the board's demise seems wise. If even the federal Homeland Security bureaucracy—which still requires airline passengers to remove their shoes and belts before boarding a plane, for no legitimate safety-connected reason whatsoever—thinks a program, agency, or protocol is pointless, you can bet that it's really pointless.
The post Homeland Security Agrees That the Disinformation Board Was a Bad Idea appeared first on Reason.com.
