According to an investigative report from the folks at the Daily Caller, major technology companies and firms such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and Twitter, have hired close to 250 employees who formerly worked for federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
That’s not a good look for companies that are claiming they care about free speech. I’m looking at you, Twitter.
“Silicon Valley and tech companies have recruited 248 employees from the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security, DOJ, and FBI, according to the report. Several of the employees fill top roles at the companies after having held positions in government agencies for more than two decades in many cases,” TheBlaze reported.
“Much of the hiring came between 2017 and 2022. Google alone hired 130 former CIA, DHS, DOJ, and FBI employees. Meta hired 47. Even Chinese-owned TikTok has employed 25 former CIA, DHS, DOJ, or FBI employees,” the report continued.
The report then reveals that Twitter recruited several employees from the FBI who had worked for the agency for over two decades. An “embedded security manager” worked for Twitter for a total of 10 months after spending 22 years with the bureau, but he now works for Chevron. A “senior security manager” for the social media giant also had a 22-year career with the FBI.
Oh and that’s not all. The company’s director of information security for the insider threat program was an employee who worked for the FBI for 23 years. Twitter’s corporate security manager and crisis manager also had 25 and 23 years respectively with the federal law enforcement agency.
“Google, Meta, TikTok, and the former FBI employees mentioned in the report either did not respond to inquiries from the Daily Caller or declined to comment. Twitter reportedly responded with a poo emoji, which is standard practice for the company,” TheBlaze report said.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk is currently fighting battles on a variety of fronts and experiencing varying degrees of success.
Musk is being hounded about the company’s credibility after it labeled National Public Radio as “state-affiliated media,” before making adjustments and changing it to “government funded media,” which is the same annotation that has been given to the BBC.
However, at the same time that fight is going on, Musk has changed, temporarily, the Twitter logo to the “doge,” which is a heavily used and massively popular cartoon image of a Shiba Inu dog.
TheBlaze concluded by saying, “As well, in late March 2023, Musk and 1,000 others from the tech industry urged a pause in the development of artificial intelligence due to “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Freedom of speech is one of the most critical rights we have as a society. Without it, we cannot criticize our government and ideals that could potentially be destructive, not only to our way of life, but to our individual lives as well. Look at any communist society that has clamped down on free speech and you’ll find an extensive body count.
This is why it’s critical to fight for free speech in every arena. It’s the only way to avoid falling into the same pitfalls other nations have tumbled into in the past.