Thanks to the Twitter Files, we’ve known for a while that the company’s official censorship partnerships extended far beyond the United States. In Australia, for instance, the company had extremely close contact with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), whose responsibilities include oversight of national security, law enforcement, border control and the country’s lead intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). …

As is the case with American counterparts, Twitter didn’t just seek to comply with government requests, but frequently referred to the DHA as a “partner.” Twitter’s hospitality also left them open to large-scale requests. “Thank you in advance for reviewing this hefty list!” was the response when DHA sent 44 requests on July 7, 2021.

These “hefty lists” included jokes, accounts with as few as 20 followers, claims that turned out to be true, and non-Australians “circulating a claim in Australia’s digital information environment.”

Even a humorous commentary on masks was deemed too much for the fun police. In one case, a mere reply to a tweet claiming “masks are useless” was considered to have contradicted “official information,” making it “potentially harmful”[.]

[No matter what else Elon Musk does with Twitter, he’s done an enormous amount of good for personal liberty in exposing the encroaching Big Brother censorship programs of the West. — Ed]