health and human services – Techdirt (original) (raw)

HHS' New Spokesman So Good At Communications Strategy That He Thinks He Can Delete Tweets From The Internet

from the noooooooope dept

It never ceases to amaze me how often people that really should know better seem to think that they can simply remove their own histories from the internet effectively. It seems the be a lesson never learned, be it from major corporations or even the Pope, that the internet never forgets. Thanks to tools like The Wayback Machine and others, attempts to sweep history under the rug are mostly fruitless endeavors. And, yet, people still try.

Such as Michael Caputo, the new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. That department is just a tad important at the moment, given the COVID-19 pandemic we’re all enduring. Well, Caputo got the job and decided he better get to Twitter to delete all that racist and conspiratorial shit he said so that we all don’t find out about it.

The new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in a series of now-deleted tweets made racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people, said Democrats wanted the coronavirus to kill millions of people and accused the media of intentionally creating panic around the pandemic to hurt President Donald Trump.

Michael Caputo, a longtime New York Republican political operative who worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was appointed last week as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS, a prominent communications role at the department which serves a central role in the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Caputo, a prolific user who often tweeted insults and profanity, recently erased nearly his entire Twitter history from before April 12. CNN’s KFile used the Internet Archive’s “The Wayback Machine” to review more than 1300 deleted tweets and retweets from late February to early April many of which were regarding the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

If you feel like wallowing in the muck, you can see more of Caputo’s once-musings from Twitter here, where someone saved them. Now, I know precisely what you’re thinking: But, Tim, how can we go and see these tweets when Caputo very smartly and correctly deleted them?

Great question, Michael Caputo, and thanks for coming to Techdirt to read this. See, the internet isn’t a piece of paper in front of you that you can crumple up and light on fire after you’ve finally written down all the hateful stuff you’ve wanted to say but never had the guts to say out loud. Instead, it’s made up of computers and servers and probably lots of other things too! Like transistors or something, who knows! But what I do know is that there are ways to go back and capture things that are deleted on the internet. And then, you know, discuss them out loud like we are now.

It’s called The Streisand Effect. It’s how you go from “Hey, I’ll just delete these tweets” to “Holy shit, CNN now has an article discussing those tweets I didn’t want anyone to see!”

In Caputo’s defense, his comments to CNN after the publication amount to him telling CNN he doesn’t really mind if anyone sees the tweets he went and deleted.

After publication, Caputo responded to CNN’s request for comment by saying that reporting on his past tweets is “fair game, dude. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me at all.” He claimed that he deletes his tweets “every month and I do it because it drives people mad.”

He added “when you tweet in spirited fashion, KFile is going to have them. I’ve known that all my days. So I don’t mind what you’ve done.” Caputo defended his past Twitter behavior saying he was “a defender of the President” tweeting in a “spirited manner” that included calling out reporters, but he said he’s “now a servant of the American people and some might be disappointed, but my tweets will be different.”

And we’ll look for those different tweets to get deleted every month on the month, too, I’m sure.

Filed Under: deleting tweets, erasing history, health and human services, hhs, michael caputo, tweets

Health And Human Services Ex-Cybersecurity Director Convicted Of Kiddy Porn

from the guarding-the-chicken-coop dept

There seems to be someone asleep at the wheel in the federal government’s HR department, given how many questionable people have been put in high profile/high responsibility security positions. Kieth Alexander, uber-Patriot, locked his cyber-security expertise up with a patent. The White House’s cyber-security guy can’t wait to tell you how little he knows about his job. Homeland Security’s former Inspector General was accused of a ridiculously long list of questionable behavior (in addition to having no qualifications for the job). And now, ex-director of cybersecurity for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been convicted on kiddy porn charges.

Timothy DeFoggi, 56, formerly of Germantown, Md., is the sixth individual to be convicted as part of an ongoing investigation targeting three child pornography websites, the Justice Department said. He faces sentencing on Nov. 7 based on the findings Tuesday that he engaged in a child-exploitation enterprise, conspired to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessed a computer with intent to view child pornography in connection with his membership in a child-pornography website.

Oh, well that’s just great. The head cyber-security guy for a government organization that includes divisions for preventing child abuse and child support enforcement was a pedophile at best. Let’s be clear: according to the evidence presented by prosecutors, DeFoggi is simply as bad as it gets.

“Through the website, DeFoggi accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from other members, and exchanged private messages with other members where he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children,” prosecutors added. “DeFoggi even suggested meeting one member in person to fulfill their mutual fantasies to violently rape and murder children.”

I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone reading this that the United States federal government has engaged in widespread surveillance on its own people. They’re watching what you do, particularly online. They’re intruding on our lives in ways Orwell couldn’t have dreamed of. And they’re doing it all under the notion that it’s for our protection. If we must live with that kind of intrusion for the time being, is it too much to ask that the government manage to weed out violent child-rapists from their own ranks as some kind of accommodation?

Filed Under: child porn, cybersecurity, doj, health and human services, timothy defoggi

from the because-shut-up dept

Another day, another story of someone with skin way too thin not comprehending satire and dashing off an angry legal threat. In this case, it’s worse than usual because the bogus legal threat is coming from the US government. Popehat has the full story of how some of the legal geniuses at the Department of Health and Human Services have sent a bogus cease-and-desist letter over a pair of obviously satirical posts on the site AddictionMyth.com. While we’ve long been skeptical of the medical profession’s desire to label all sorts of things “addictions,” that particular site takes it to extreme levels, arguing that there’s nothing that’s addictive, and all talk of addictions (including drug and alcohol addictions) are just a big scam “perpetrated by law enforcement, rehab groups and the entertainment industry.” I think that’s nuts, but they certainly have their right to say so.

They also have the right to post a satirical conversation with a so-called “addiction guru.” As Ken at Popehat points out, there’s no way to read this without realizing it’s satire:

AM: According to your research, blackouts occur not just in middle age alcoholics, but in young college students who may not have built up much tolerance for alcohol. Their drinking often ended up in unprotected sex, vandalism, and fights, of which they had no memory until cued by a friend. What was their response to their memory? Regret? Horror? Delight? Glee? A little of each?

AW: I wasn’t the author of the research. But I would say a little of each, at least based on my own experience. I suspect they remembered more than they wanted to admit. Though one time I got really drunk at a party and my friend told me that I was talking to his sister in French, and I had absolutely no recollection of that. It was surprising to me as a brain scientist because alcohol has been shown to suppress activation of the inferior frontal region (Broca’s area also known as the ‘language center’). I probably shouldn’t have been able to talk at all, let alone French, given my BAC. But what was really weird was that I don’t even know French!

Following this, AddictionMyth posted a bogus mocking satirical cease-and-desist, which pretends to be angry about the satirical interview. This too, is obvious satire. I mean, the letter includes this line:

Do you realize how psychotically insane that sounds? In my field we have a term for it: CRAY-CRAY!

Either way, this bogus cease-and-desist appears to have stirred up the attention of a lawyer at the real US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which apparently has some extra time on its hands now that Healthcare.gov’s website is kinda, sorta working. Lawyer Dale Berkley sent a cease-and-desist in which he argues both that (1) the interview is clearly not true and (2) that it might be defamatory. You can’t really have both of those things be true.

We recently became aware of two items that you posted on your website directed to two employees of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (“NIAAA”)–one which purports to be an interview with NIAAA Project Manager Dr. Aaron White, and the other a letter from NIAAA Director Dr. George Koob.

Of course Dr. White did not in fact participate in the interview and Dr. Koob did not write the letter attributed to him.

We are concerned that, especially with respect to the mock interview, the public could be deceived and misled into believing that Dr. White in fact contributed to the interview. Those items are defamatory, and expose you to potential liability.

We therefore request that you either remove the articles from your website, or provide a prominent disclaimer indicating that Dr. White and Dr. Koob did not participate in the interview or write the letter.

As noted above, by admitting it’s obviously fake, Berkley undermines his own legal argument. Ken White summarizes it nicely:

When the target of satire complains that it is defamatory, the relevant question is whether the satire can reasonably be taken as a statement of fact about its subject. Dr. Berkley, by saying that “of course” the satirical articles do not reflect the actual words of the subjects, has just proclaimed that the satire he is complaining about cannot be taken as a statement of fact.

You paid taxes for that.

White goes into a more in-depth legal analysis of just how preposterously bogus the letter from HHS is, and questions if Berkley was even remotely aware of the law before sending the letter, or if any other lawyer at HHS bothered to look it over. In the meantime, we’re wondering if HHS has any programs for helping with the tragically satire-impaired?

Filed Under: addiction, cease and desist, defamation, free speech, health and human services, hhs, satire, threats