FBI Flagged Twitter Accounts Of American Journalists Over Ukraine War Disinformation

Leaked emails revealed that the FBI helped a Ukrainian intelligence agency to censor Twitter users. Some of the people that were targeted are American and Canadian journalists, raising First Amendment concerns. Previous reports have already covered how the FBI was approached to aid in online censorship regarding the Ukraine war. In March 2022, a special agent at the FBI sent Twitter a list of accounts that “are suspected by the SBU [Ukraine’s intelligence agency] in spreading fear and disinformation.” The email included a memo from the SBU requesting that Twitter ban the accounts and provide their user data, according to a Twitter Files report by Aaron Maté. The email to Twitter was sent by Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the assistant legal attaché at the American embassy in Ukraine. “Thank you very much for your time to discuss the assistance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am including a list of accounts I received over a couple of weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. “These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation. For your review and consideration.” The SBU said that the accounts have been “used to disseminate disinformation and fake news to inaccurately reflect events in Ukraine, justify war crimes of the Russian authorities on the territory of the Ukrainian state in violation of international law.” The agency continued to say that “to stop Russian aggression on the information front,” Twitter should “take urgent measures to block” the accounts “and provide us with user data specified…FBI Flagged Twitter Accounts Of American Journalists Over Ukraine War Disinformation