Oregon lawmakers and others have filed a motion to block the state’s request for a contract to surveil and counter election “misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information” (MDM), according to court documents.
The Oregon Secretary of State’s office has requested a proposal to solve the issue of false information during elections, but the plaintiffs allege in their motion it would lead to unlawful surveillance and suppression of speech and are seeking a preliminary injunction to block any efforts related to the proposal request. The Secretary of State’s office has awarded the contract to an artificial intelligence (AI) company called Logically AI, Stephen Joncus, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The plaintiffs consist of Oregon lawmakers, talk show hosts, Republican Party officials and other Oregon voters, according to the original complaint filed in November.
“We are one of those states that was represented well by Republicans until we went to mail-in balloting,” plaintiff Rick Riley, who is the Chair of the Clackamas County Republican Party, told the DCNF. “Multiple layers with the ability to manipulate the vote have been installed along the way. AI, and it’s use to be the ‘minister of truth,’ is a layer added designed to silence concern about those manipulations and transparency in our system.”
One reason for the proposal request is that Oregon’s Election Division and county clerks have received a “burdensome” uptick in public records solicitations in recent years, according to its text.
Riley pointed the DCNF to his November letter to the Secretary of State about the proposal, which she has not responded to.
“It is the citizen’s right to accurate and transparent elections,” Riley wrote in the letter. “The increase in public record requests is a direct result not of socalled disinformation, but of the increasing lack of trust in our elections. Citizens know that mail-in voting and computerized tallying is a system that is fraught with opportunities to cheat. Your new contract is aimed at attacking the symptom of the State’s bad governance—when the actual problem is the State’s bad governance itself.”
The plaintiffs tried to come to a solution via a telephone conference with the defendants, including the Secretary of State, but failed to do so, according to the motion.
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“Like authoritarians since time immemorial, Oregon seeks to suppress and silence those who disagree with its message, in violation of the First Amendment,” the motion adds. “Simply an awareness that Oregon is watching, chills expressive freedoms because the government’s unrestrained power to assemble information about individuals is susceptible to abuse.”
The request for proposal is a “blatant” breach of the First Amendment because it aims to intrude on critical public discourse, according to the motion.
“The purpose of this [request for proposal] is to contract with a vendor to help provide a suite of products to identify and mitigate harmful information online as it relates to elections [MDM],” the request states. “The Elections Division is seeking a vendor to help provide a suite of products to identify and disarm harmful MDM information online … [it] is seeking media monitoring and threat detection services to offer a comprehensive view of the media landscape, early warning systems to identify MDM and target MDM activity and allow access to effective countermeasures.”
Logically AI received a comparable contract in 2022, according to the preliminary injunction motion. The company helps “digital platforms in combating mis and disinformation whilst maintaining free speech and open public discourse,” according to its website.
The Oregon Secretary of State’s office plans to send the information gleaned from the contract to the local FBI, State Police, National Guard and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency, according to a pre-proposal meeting.
“It’s surveillance with a velvet glove,” Joncus told the DCNF. “It’s surveillance with the threat of referring people to the FBI, to Oregon’s own surveillance entity … they can go after people and fine them for spreading disinformation of certain types. … Logically AI won’t be implementing — I don’t think — censorship, but they will provide information and will lean on social media companies to take down posts.”
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The date set to execute a deal for the proposal was Oct. 27 and there is currently not a finalized signed contract, according to the court documents.
“We understand that Logically AI won the 2022 contract and understand they’ve been awarded the second contract, but it hasn’t been signed yet,” Joncus told the DCNF. “Not sure why there’s been a delay but there apparently has.”
Logically AI did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. Oregon’s Secretary of State declined to comment.
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