(Newsworthy.news) – An Arizona town is under fire for using over a million dollars to pay people to spy on the private social media accounts of town employees, scanning for conservative sentiments.
The Office of Digital Government (ODG) of the town of Gilbert, Arizona has actively promoted left-wing political causes like gender ideology and Black Lives Matter (BLM) while formally reprimanding city workers who promote conservative figures or ideas like former president Donald Trump.
According to public records requests that shared many documents with the conservative think tank Goldwater Institute, the ODG has been spying on city employees to monitor their private social media accounts to censor personal conservative views.
The Goldwater Institute shared that, per the records they were given, up to 12 employees work for the ODG, being paid salaries between $60,000 to $200,000. The program was first established more than a decade ago in 2012. However, it gained considerable attention after the recent publication of an investigative article put out by a local news outlet.
AZ Free News published its report on January 18, in which it detailed how the ODG program is “controlling online speech.” The outlet described the program as a “progressive pioneer” of digital censorship. Author Corinne Murdock further described the practices of the agency as being conducted in “Orwellian fashion,” equating the censorship schemes to George Orwell’s famous book 1984.
Austin Vanderheyden, the Goldwater Institute’s liaison for municipal affairs, said that he has been investigating the program for months. He explained that the ODG will “let you know” if they “don’t like” whatever city employees are posting online. He added that the program has “taken” the freedom of individual city department’s to “speak for themselves” and have replaced it with their own control of “that narrative.”
Vanderheyden expressed that the local government censorship was a first in his experience. The Institute further cited an anonymous former ODG employee who left a previous position due to the program’s advocacy of “woke” agendas instead of focusing on other issues.
Copyright 2024, Newsworthy.news
