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.
