00:00The committee will come to order without objection. The chair is authorized to declare recess at any time.
00:05We welcome everyone to today's hearing on Europe's threat to American speech and innovation.
00:10The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:18I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,
00:26one nation, another God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:39The chair is now recognized for an opening statement.
00:43And then we will move to the ranking member's opening statement, and then our witnesses will get five minutes.
00:48I want to just take an opportunity, maybe before I even do an opening statement, to welcome everyone back.
00:52Hope everyone had a good break.
00:53The ranking member and I, along with a few other members, Mr. Kiley, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Correa,
01:00I think Mr. Swalwell and Ms. Crockett all had a wonderful visit to, and Mr. Cohen, to Europe,
01:06where we talked about this issue, and we've learned some, I think, some valuable information.
01:09And so we look forward to today's hearing and hearing from our witnesses.
01:12But first, you've got to listen to the chairman and the ranking member talk.
01:15On August 12th of last year, Thierry Breton wrote Elon Musk a letter.
01:20Thierry Breton is the commissioner in charge of enforcement of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Marketing Act.
01:26In the very first sentence, the guy in charge of enforcing this legislation passed by the EU writes this.
01:32Dear Mr. Musk, I am writing to you in the context of recent events in the United Kingdom
01:39and in relation to the planned broadcast on your platform, X,
01:43of a live conversation between a U.S. presidential candidate and yourself.
01:48So think about it.
01:49A guy in Europe in charge of enforcing a European Union law writes an American about an American company,
01:56about an American election, and he says the context for the letter,
02:00the reason for the letter are events that are happening in the U.K., a non-European Union country.
02:06That's not Europe trying to influence what happens here.
02:10I don't know what is.
02:11He goes on throughout the letter and says this.
02:13Since measures need to be taken to combat disinformation, he's told this to Mr. Musk,
02:19we're concerned about any, quote, illegal content you may have.
02:22And he ends his letter, he ends his letter by saying, my services and I, very last sentence,
02:28my services and I will be extremely vigilant to any evidence that points to breaches of the Digital Services Act
02:34and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox.
02:37So he ends the letter with a threat.
02:41So before the interview even takes place, he's threatening an American, running an American company,
02:48about an interview regarding the most important election we have, election of the President of the United States.
02:53And again, saying the reason for doing so are events that are happening in a non-European Union country,
02:58the U.K., comments about events happening in the U.K.
03:01Concerned about this, quote, spillover effect.
03:03That is why we're having today's hearing.
03:05That's why we went to Europe last month, or actually in July, to study this issue.
03:11Now, here's what's interesting.
03:12Mr. Breton, after he sends this letter, we, this committee, sent him two letters, and then he suddenly resigns.
03:19We asked him to come today, but he refused to come.
03:22We asked him to send written testimony.
03:24He refused to do that.
03:25We asked him to appear, he refused, he just wouldn't come.
03:28I think it's important to remember what the House Judiciary Committee did last Congress.
03:34We investigated our government, the Biden administration, their attacks on free expression here in the United States.
03:40What Michael Schellenberger called, journalists called, the censorship industrial complex.
03:45Big government, big tech, big media, big academia, all working together to censor Americans.
03:52And we learned all kinds of things in that investigation.
03:55We learned on April 27th of 2022 that the Biden administration had established a disinformation governance board.
04:03That's right.
04:04A bunch of bureaucrats are going to get together and tell you what you can say, what you can tweet, what you can post, what you can read.
04:10What's misinformation?
04:11What's disinformation?
04:12In the new term, they come up.
04:14What's malinformation?
04:14Thank goodness, because many of us raised concerns about that, they disbanded that disinformation governance board.
04:22We no longer had that.
04:23We heard from journalists like Mr. Schellenberger, like Matt Taibbi, regarding the Twitter files.
04:30We heard from Tulsi Gabbard.
04:32We heard from RFK Jr., all Democrats, frankly.
04:35In fact, I took some heat for that.
04:37What are you doing bringing Democrats in front of the district?
04:39We brought them in because they care about the First Amendment.
04:41It was interesting, when RFK Jr. came in to testify, the Democrats actually made a motion to go to executive session, kick everyone out.
04:51No journalists, no one was allowed.
04:52They wanted to kick everyone out, go to executive session, so no one could hear what RFK Jr. was going to testify to in a hearing on censorship.
05:01You can't make this stuff up.
05:02Well, we learned that on January 23rd, think about that, by the way.
05:10Well, we learned on January 23rd, 2021, maybe point this one out first, that there was an email.
05:15So the third day of the Biden administration, there was an email sent from the White House to Twitter, which said, take down this tweet ASAP.
05:22And who had issued the tweet?
05:25Who had put out the tweet?
05:26RFK Jr.
05:28So you had the Biden administration trying to censor a fellow Democrat who was going to run against him in the Democrat primary.
05:35I mean, that is, and everything in that tweet actually were true statements.
05:38So we learned all that last year, and, of course, our investigation culminated with a letter from Mr. Zuckerberg on August 26, 2024, last year, where he said, yes, the Biden administration pressured us to censor.
05:53We did it.
05:54We're sorry, and we won't do it again.
05:57In meta, Facebook has now subsequently changed policy.
06:00They now go to the community notes policy instead of the, quote, independent fact checker approach that was being used before.
06:08We had one other witness last Congress, journalist from Canada, Rupa Zupramanya, who I thought said something that was really important.
06:19She said, free speech is a core value of Western culture, and that is true, and that's what our concern is.
06:27We're concerned about the attacks on free expression in Europe, the censorship, the arrest for offensive posts, the chilling effect it all has on speech.
06:36But we're more concerned, frankly, as Americans, about the limits the DSA, the Online Safety Act in the U.K., put on Americans' First Amendment rights, and the shakedown.
06:49And I think that's the appropriate term, the shakedown of American tech companies under the DSA, the OSA, and the Digital Marketing Act, Digital Markets Act in the European Union.
07:00These acts target our tech companies that provide the modern town square, and they are the engines of innovation in our global economy.
07:10Since the turn of the century, European tech companies have languished behind their American counterparts.
07:16European governments have tried everything to change this except what might actually work, deregulating their own economy and letting free enterprise flourish.
07:25Instead of cutting red tape and allowing their own companies to innovate and grow, the EU and the U.K. are going after American companies that have grown to dominate the global tech landscape.
07:36Regulations like the EU's Digital Markets Act and the U.K.'s Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act impose burdensome requirements on U.S. tech companies while leaving their European counterparts untouched.
07:48But these attacks on American companies won't result in a so-called European champion.
07:54Instead, China wins as Europe hurts both itself and America.
07:59They make the user experience worse.
08:02They distort the digital marketplace by allowing less innovative and less efficient foreign competitors to simply steal from U.S. tech companies.
08:11In addition to attacking American tech companies, Europe is attacking free speech around the world, including here in America.
08:17Laws like the Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Act are the engines of global censorship regime targeting political speech disfavored by European bureaucrats.
08:27The censorship mechanism is simple.
08:30The DSA and the OSA effectively require social media platforms to change their terms of service to moderate more content.
08:37These companies have one set of standards that they apply globally because it's costly, impractical, and harmful to user privacy to change content moderation rules based on a user's location.
08:50So when platforms are forced to change their terms of service to comply with European laws, it affects what we see, what we read, what we say online here in America, infringing on Americans' First Amendment rights.
09:02And this is no accident.
09:05Even the New York Times, The Atlantic, have acknowledged that these foreign censorship laws are intended to have global impact.
09:12And European actions have proven it.
09:14Again, just look at Mr. Breton's letter.
09:16Supporters say these laws make the online environment safer for children, something that we all agree with.
09:21We all want to protect kids.
09:23But censorship laws are never about disinformation or child safety or anything else.
09:27They're always about censoring criticism of the government.
09:30Social media is a relatively new technology, but censorship is as old as time.
09:36Misinformation, disinformation, hate speech labels are always used by the people in power to censor their critics.
09:44And my experience has taught me that today's misinformation is tomorrow's truth.
09:49And we have seen it time and time again.
09:51I always like to point out everything the government told us about COVID turned out to be wrong.
09:56Everything our government told us about COVID.
09:58I'm not even talking about Europe here.
09:59Everything.
10:01They told us that the virus didn't come from a lab.
10:04Sure looks like it did.
10:05They told us it wasn't gain-of-function research done at the lab.
10:08Yes, it was.
10:08They told us it wasn't our tax money used at the lab.
10:11Yes, it was.
10:11They told us vaccines.
10:13They told us that the vaccinated can't get it.
10:15They told us the vaccinated can't transmit it.
10:17They told us mass work.
10:18They told us six feet social distance was based on science.
10:21And they told us this was the first virus in history where there's no such thing as natural immunity.
10:26They were 0 for 8.
10:28And yet they're going to define with some disinformation governance board what we can say, what we can tweet, what we can read, what we can post.
10:35You've got to be kidding me.
10:36As RFK Jr. testified before our committee, I never forgot what he said.
10:42He said, when you look at history, when you look at history, it is never the good guys who are for censorship.
10:47It is always the bad guys.
10:49And that's our concern.
10:50We need debate.
10:51The best way to answer bad speech, wrong speech, stupid speech, crazy speech, even hate speech, is more speech.
10:57We need the First Amendment.
10:58Our committee will continue to move legislation that protects free speech from threats, including threats from abroad.
11:05With that, I now recognize our ranking member for his opening statement.
11:09Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses.
11:12I imagine that in a hearing about threats to freedom of speech abroad.
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