Lawmakers send a bill to governor making it harder for citizen groups to advance constitutional amendments – Florida Phoenix

Floridians looking to amend the state Constitution to expand Medicaid or allow recreational cannabis will face a more costly and complicated process under a bill headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Florida House on Wednesday voted, 73-45, for a bill (SB 1794) that would impose new barriers for citizen groups seeking to collect enough voter signatures to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.

The Senate voted, 23-17, for the bill earlier in the week. Both votes were along party lines, with the Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition.

The bill will make it harder for citizen groups to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of the ballot measures by increasing the required number of voter signatures from 10 percent of the total voters in the last presidential election to 25 percent. Court approval is a critical step in placing an amendment on the ballot.

This year, citizen petition groups, like those trying to legalize recreational marijuana or expand Medicaid coverage, had to collect 76,620 validated signatures to qualify for a court review. Under the bill, they would have needed to collect nearly 192,000 signatures.

Other changes include requiring citizen initiatives to collect signatures in more congressional districts in order to trigger the court review. It would increase from at least a quarter of the 27 congressional districts to at least half, which would mean 14 districts.

The bill also prohibits citizen groups from using voter signatures gathered in one election for a later election. Currently, the signatures are valid for two years after they are collected.The bill would allow local supervisors of elections to charge the actual cost of verifying the voter signatures that are submitted for review.

And the bill would give the state Supreme Court the authority to decide whether the ballot measures are facially invalid under the U.S. Constitution.

Opponents said the measure is another attempt to limit the use of citizen petition drives that have led to constitutional amendments that limited class sizes in schools, linked a state minimum wage to an inflation index, authorized the use of medical marijuana, established voting rights for ex-felons, and directed lawmakers to spend more money on conservation lands.

Voters will get a chance this fall to vote on another citizen initiative that would raise Floridas minimum wage to $15 an hour over a period of several years.

Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Miami-Dade County Democrat who opposed the measure, said the bill adds more barriers to the petition process that will effectively eliminate the ability of grassroots groups to put issues before the voters.

Were just making the citizen initiative process more costly and more complicated, forcing operations from grassroots to professional, Rodriguez said. Its taking a system that was meant for citizens to act when this Legislature would not and flipping it on its head and making it something that only the billionaires can access.

In the House, Democrats said the increased regulations were an infringement on the First Amendment rights of voters to petition their government.

I just cant sit quietly by while we are taking power away from the people, said Rep. Margaret Good, a Sarasota Democrat. We dont have to have constitutional amendments, if we do what the people wanted us to do.

But Rep. James Grant, a Tampa Republican who supported the bill, said the legislation would not prevent citizen groups from advancing constitutional amendments, although he acknowledged the measure was increasing the signature threshold and adding more regulations.

I stand ready to have lawsuits again filed against this Legislature. I welcome the argument that this would violate the First Amendment, Grant said. Im confident in that argument, our product is sound because nobody here is telling voters that they cant engage or cant speak. What were actually saying is speak louder.

Here is an earlier Florida Phoenix story on the issue.

Originally posted here:

Lawmakers send a bill to governor making it harder for citizen groups to advance constitutional amendments - Florida Phoenix

TP OMahony: Gods representative in the White House – Irish Examiner

Despite criticism of Donald Trump by a Christian magazine and misgivings about his moral outlook, the US president will continue to play the God card, writes TP OMahony

People cheer as President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump bow their heads in prayer before the start of the NASCAR Daytona 500 auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in Daytona Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Last December, a prominent Christian magazine in the US described president Donald Trumps conduct as profoundly immoral and said he should be removed from office.

The editorial in Christianity Today was the first sign of unease about Trump among Americas evangelical community.

Support from within this community a collection of conservative Protestant churches, many of them based in the southern states was crucial for Trump in the 2016 election; he took over 80% of the evangelical vote. Holding on to that support is vital if he is to secure a second term in November.

The fact that the critical editorial appeared in Christianity Today, a magazine founded in 1956 by the late internationally-renowned evangelist, the Rev Billy Graham, who was a frequent visitor to the White House during successive presidencies, gave added cogency to its contents.

The Illinois-based publication, which has 80,000 subscribers to its print edition, has been described as the flagship magazine of evangelicalism. It described Trump as morally lost and confused.

Typically, Trump responded by saying it was a far-left magazine and claiming that no president has done more for the evangelical community.

Despite the fact that Trump has been married three times and has made demeaning comments about women as well as having to face sexual assault allegations and involvement in a legal wrangle with Stormy Daniels, a well-known porn star leading figures among the evangelical churches have stood by him.

His appointment of judges hostile to Roe v Wade the landmark 1973 case in which the US Supreme Court ruling made abortion legal in the US has played a central role in shoring up support for Trump, not just among evangelical Protestants but also within a sizeable segment of the Catholic community.

Shortly after the attack by Christianity Today, Trump attended an evangelical rally on the outskirts of Miami and told the cheering crowd that his Democratic opponents would tear down crosses, and he pledged to put prayer into public schools across the US, even though this would require a constitutional amendment.

I do believe we have God on our side, he told supporters at the rally in the King Jesus International Ministry mega-church. We are defending religion itself, its under siege. A society without religion cannot prosper.

At the opening of the Evangelicals or Trump rally in Miami, the 45th president of the United States was joined on stage by faith leaders who prayed over him as they formed a protective circle around him.

Lord, I thank you that America did not need a preacher in the Oval Office. It did not need a professional politician in the Oval Office, but it needed a fighter and a champion for freedom and, Lord, thats exactly what we have, said one pastor, as Trump stood, head bowed.

God is great in America again.

Nowhere in the Western world does religion play a more important role in elections than in the US. Nobody knows this better than Donald Trump.

He does not have to be reminded that, unlike Europe where Christianity has been hollowed out, God is big in American politics. For him, therefore, playing the God card will be a central feature of his campaign for re-election.

As Madeleine Albright has explained, every president has seen fit during his inaugural address to mention God in one context or another.

Albright, who was raised as a Catholic in Czechoslovakia, and made history in 1997 when she became the first woman to serve as US secretary of state, is well aware that Americans belief that their country has been the special recipient of Gods favour is deep-rooted.

She explored the background to this in her book and she is well aware that the resurgence of religion, particularly evident since 9/11, means that playing the God card is more important than ever for anyone seeking to win the White House.

Trump is acutely conscious of this. And the persistence of religious vitality in marked contrast to the situation in Europe reinforces Trumps recognition of the political importance and impact of religion in the US. Thats why he will shamelessly seek the support of Christian evangelicals.

For a Briton, coming from a nation where regular churchgoing is a declining habit, and where Christian religious contributions to the national debate tend to be corralled, sanitised and de-fanged so as not to cause offence, it is hard sometimes for a foreigner to appreciate the ubiquity, passion and occasional ferocity of the Christian voice beamed out across the USA, wrote Stephen Bates in his book Gods Own Country: Religion and Politics in the USA. It is a country with 200 Christian television channels and 1,500 Christian radio stations.

While it may be unfashionable in Europe to claim that religion matters significantly in public life, the reverse is true in the US. This is a puzzle for some scholars, especially those who, for too long, neglected religion as a political force.

Unlike other advanced or modern societies, America has not experienced widespread secularisation, and certainly not in the sense of keeping religion out of politics.

Secularisation, or the decline of religion, has often been seen as an inevitable consequence of modernisation, explains Linda Woodhead, professor of the sociology of religion at Lancaster University.

A good deal of evidence from Europe, where church-going has declined for well over a century, supports this idea. However, secularisation in Europe has not been matched elsewhere. Not only is religion flourishing in other places, but even in the richest, most powerful and arguable most modern of all Western societies the United States of America religion continues to have a central place both in private and public life.

This is the background against which Trump talks repeatedly about God, faith, and prayer. Trump knows full well, for instance, that promising to introduce prayer in public schools is just playing to the gallery, but then he has shown himself to be very good at that.

The First Amendment of the American Constitution enshrines the separation of church and state: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

This was based on the idea of creating a system of government that neither supported nor depended upon religion.

In her book, Albright expands on this. Separation of Church and State rests on three nos: No religious tests for public office, no established state religion, and no abridgement of the right to religious liberty.

These principles are essential to Americas democracy and to its identity as a nation. However, we must recognise that such a separation does not require and has not led to the removal of God from the civic life, currency, coinage, patriotic songs, or public rhetoric of the United States.

This reality reflects both the depths of Americas religious roots and a universal rule of practical politics: religion may be separated from government, but it is intimately connected to how leaders are judged.

Trump doesnt need to be reminded of this. He will continue to make pledges about prayer in public schools, undeterred by the knowledge that amending the American constitution is a complex procedure (vastly more complex, for instance, than amending Bunreacht na hireann), and he will continue to brazenly play the God card, even though his own personal conduct and his policies on race, gender, and immigration are manifestly in violation of gospel precepts.

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TP OMahony: Gods representative in the White House - Irish Examiner

From the Editor’s Notebook: – faribaultcountyregister.com | News, Sports, Information on the Blue Earth region – Faribault County Register

Editor's note: While I am off this week enjoying some sunshine in Florida, the "Sunshine State," I hope you enjoy this column provided by the National Newspaper Association about it being "Sunshine Week" across the country.

It is written by a South Dakota newspaper publisher, Brian Hunhoff.

'Here comes the sun' moments in government

By Brian Hunhoff

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo)

Here comes the sun, and I say, it's all right

George Harrison's song of spring is a fitting start to my Sunshine Week salute to everyday heroes bringing light to local government.

"Why do you want to know that?" is a question most reporters have heard when asking for public documents. It generally becomes a Freedom of Information teaching moment from the journalist to the reluctant keeper of records.

Many years ago, I was covering a county commission meeting when a department head stood to speak. Before addressing commissioners, he turned to a radio reporter next to me and gruffly ordered him to turn off his tape recorder.

Say what?! We insisted my friend had every right to tape comments at a public meeting, but it took a while to convince the surly official. He clearly didn't know the first thing about open meeting laws.

It goes with the territory. The press must sometimes teach Sunshine 101 to public officials on Main Street, U.S.A. This column recognizes some of those public servants and intrepid reporters with symbolic citations from my Sunshine Week playlist.

"Here comes the sun" award to Hilde Lysiak, a plucky 12-year-old reporter who made headlines on a visit to Patagonia, Arizona. Riding her bike to investigate a tip, Lysiak was stopped by Patagonia town marshal Joseph Patterson and asked for ID. Lysiak gave her name and said she was a reporter. Patterson said, "I don't want to hear about any of that freedom of the press stuff." Lysiak said he also threatened to put her in juvenile detention.

In a second encounter, Lysiak began video-taping Patterson and said, "You stopped me earlier and said I could be thrown in juvie? What exactly am I doing that's illegal?" Patterson warned her (inaccurately) against posting the video online. "If you put my face on the Internet, that's against the law," he said.

Lysiak posted a YouTube video of their exchange on her Orange Street News website. She later received an apology from Patagonia mayor Andrea Wood who said the town respects her First Amendment rights.

"House of the rising sun" award to Brenda Fisk, mayor of Paint Rock, Alabama (population 200). Mayor Fisk drafted a resolution to close town board meetings to non-residents and members of the press. She told the Jackson County Sentinel, "What goes on in Paint Rock is the business of the people who live in Paint Rock." Fisk said she had "personal reasons" for proposing the move, "but I since found out that I cannot do that."

"I can see clearly now" award to Kirby Delauter, a county councilman from Frederick, Maryland. Delauter once threatened to sue the Frederick News-Post for "unauthorized use of my name." The newspaper responded with an editorial using his name 26 times. They also explained why newspapers in America are actually allowed to write about public officials without their permission. Delauter later apologized.

"Let the sunshine in" award to Jerry Toomey, former mayor of Mitchell, South Dakota. A citizen called Toomey "a drunk" during the public forum portion of a Mitchell City Council meeting. His accusation set off a heated exchange, and stemmed from an earlier altercation between the two men in the citizen's driveway.

In an interview with the Mitchell Daily Republic, Toomey called the incident "a black eye" for the city, but added, "The public forum has a critical place in government and it is important to let people voice their issues, valid or not."

"Ain't no sunshine" award to the Kentucky State Police spokesman who sent the following email to the Barbourville Mountain Advocate: "From this point forward when KSP is working on an investigation, you are to wait until OUR press release is sent out before putting anything on social media, radio, and newspaper If this continues, you will be taken off our media distribution list."

Jon Fleischaker, general counsel for the Kentucky Press Association, said the order violated the First Amendment and state agencies cannot withhold information "just because they don't like what the media outlet is writing." "Walking on sunshine" award to Art Cullen, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Storm Lake Times in Iowa. Cullen's editorials about agricultural impact on his state's poor water quality were not popular with some prominent Republicans. The GOP-controlled Iowa Senate stalled a resolution to recognize his national writing prize. Cullen responded, "I would not want the support of a den of philanderers and oafs." He added, "I honestly do not care if I am ever honored by the Iowa Senate, the U.S. Congress, or any other institution of dysfunction and cynicism."

Brian Hunhoff of the Yankton County Observer is a member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame. He received the 2005 S.D. First Amendment Committee Eagle Award "for protecting the public's right to know" and the 2014 Golden Quill award for editorial writing. He is a two-time winner of the National Newspaper Association Freedom of Information Award.

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From the Editor's Notebook: - faribaultcountyregister.com | News, Sports, Information on the Blue Earth region - Faribault County Register

Editorial: Preserving the First Amendment – Opinion – The Providence Journal

The First Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms. That is why it stands atop our Bill of Rights, which spells out strict limits on the governments power to crush individuals and deny them their liberty.

Under the First Amendment, Congress and, by extension, state legislatures shall make no law abridging freedom of the press.

Freedom of the press has been of incalculable value to the people of the United States. It has brought to light corruption and other problems that powerful officials would rather have suppressed. It has informed the American people about the issues so that they may govern themselves. It has righted injustice and championed justice.

Given the hunger for power reflected in the gnawing desire of some politicians to micromanage peoples lives the First Amendment provides an essential check against tyranny. Many politicians would like nothing better than to shut up the public and have their way. Certainly, this is how authoritarian regimes function.

Members of the Rhode Island legislature should understand all that. If they do not, it seems clear that our civics education is even worse than advertised.

Last week, we learned that four senators, all Democrats Sandra Cano, of Pawtucket; Elizabeth Crowley, of Central Falls; Ana Quezada, of Providence; and Harold Metts, of Providence sponsored legislation that on its face was an assault on the First Amendment.

It sought to dictate to the press what must be reported.

As the bill ludicrously put it: The state has a compelling interest to compel the press to promote the objective truth for the sake of the viability of democracy and for the safety, health, and welfare of our communities and in keeping with the spirit of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and to stop the press from serving as a slander machine.

Needless to say, such an approach would be blatantly unconstitutional. As Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU, noted, These types of efforts to control the press have absolutely no place in a democratic society.

Sponsoring an assault on the peoples most basic freedoms for whatever reason is a black eye to those members and should be of concern to the voters in their districts.

Fortunately, even the sponsors backed off late last week.

According to Senate spokesman Greg Pare, Senator Cano sponsored the Senate legislation as a favor to Rep. Grace Diaz, D-Providence. Ms. Diaz said she withdrew her House bill after a colleague told her, you are setting yourself up for a headache.

Senator Cano then withdrew her bill and vowed in a tweet, My family came to this country for the freedoms of the 1st Amendment & I will do better in defending it!

It is, of course, the responsibility of the news media to strive to be fair and balanced.

But, for obvious reasons, you dont want politicians and bureaucrats dictating whats fair and what isnt in news coverage. And, under our glorious First Amendment, they may not.

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Editorial: Preserving the First Amendment - Opinion - The Providence Journal

Sen. Blumenthal to receive the First Amendment Defender Award – WTNH.com

WASHINGTON D.C. (WTNH) Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal received the First Amendment Defender Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation on Thursday evening.

Blumenthal was honored at the 30th annual recognition of First Amendment champions.

The award is presented to an individual or an organization that takes a public stand in support of press freedom.

At a time when press freedoms and access have been under attack, Sen. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut has stood tall for the rights of journalists to do their jobs and inform the public. He has an impressive record of fighting for the truth and defending the publics need to know.

Sen. Blumenthal is currently serving his second term in the U.S. Senate representing Connecticut. Previously, he served five terms as Connecticuts Attorney General, fighting for individuals against large and powerful special interests.

In a statement about the award, RTDNF explained Blumenthal was chosen for the honor for his relentless work eradicating corruption in state government and making state contracting accountable, fair, honest and transparent.

RTDNF goes on to say, in 2018, Sen. Blumenthal co-sponsored a resolution condemning the Trump Administrations attempts to restrict media access and affirming the importance of a free press. The RTDNF says Blumenthal also helped introduce and reintroduce the Journalist Protection Act, making it a federal crime to intentionally cause bodily injury to a journalist in the course of reporting. In 2019, he cosponsored the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, a bill that would create a new memorial in Washington D.C. to honor journalists, photographers, and broadcasters that have died in the line of duty.

News 8s General Manager, Rich Graziano, joined Nexstar President, Tim Busch, and RTDNF Chairman and Vice President of Local Content Development of Nexstar Broadcasting, Jerry Walsh, at the First Amendment Awards show and dinner on Thursday night.

According to Graziano, This years honorees are a mix of local and network journalists that provide illuminating reporting, a respected national news program which holds the powerful accountable and a visionary who defends the publics right to know.

Blumenthal joined such honorees as the news show 60 Minutes, David Muir of ABC News, Steve Andrews of WFLA-TV, Lori Montenegro of Telemundo, Barbara Maushard of Hearst Television and Robert (Bob) Horner of NBC News.

Original post:

Sen. Blumenthal to receive the First Amendment Defender Award - WTNH.com

The Cyberlaw Podcast: Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? – Lawfare

This episode features a lively (andfair warninglong) interview with Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford Universitys Cyber Policy Center. We explore themes from her recent paper on regulation of online speech. It turns out that more or less everyone has an ability to restrict users speech online, and pretty much no one has both authority and an interest in fostering free-speech values. Conservatives may be discriminated against, but so are Black Lives Matter activists. I serve up one solution to biased moderation after another, and Daphne methodically shoots them down. Transparency? None of the companies is willing, and the government may have a constitutional problem forcing them to disclose how they make their moderation decisions. Competition law? A long haul, and besides, most users like a moderated Internet experience. Regulation? Only if we take the First Amendment back to the heyday of broadcast regulation. As a particularly egregious example of foreign governments and platforms ganging up to censor Americans, we touch on the Europe Court of Justices insufferable decision encouraging the export of European defamation law to the U.S.with an extra margin of censorship to keep the platform from any risk of liability. I offer to risk my Facebook account to see if thats already happening.

In the news, the FISA follies take center stage, as the March 15 deadline for reauthorizing important counterterrorism authorities draws near. No one has a good solution. Matthew Heiman explains that another kick-the-can scenario remains a live option. And Nick Weaver summarizes the problems that the PCLOB found with the FISA call detail record program. My take: The program failed because it was imposed on NSA by libertarian ideologues who had no idea how it would work in practice and who now want to blame NSA for their own shortsightedness.

Another week, another couple of artificial intelligence ethics codes: The two most recent ones come from DOD and the Pope? Mark MacCarthy sees a lot to like. I offer my quick and dirty CTRL-F bias test for whether the codes are serious or flaky, and both fail.

In China news, Matthew covers Chinas ever-spreading censorship regimenow reaching Twitter users whose accounts are blocked by the Great Firewall. We also ask whether and how much the U.S. name and shame campaign has actually reduced Chinese cyberespionage. And whether China is stealing tech from universities for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banksthats where the IP is.

Nick recounts with undisguised glee the latest tribulations suffered by Clearview and its facial recognition system: Its app has been banned from Android and Apple, and both its customers and its data collection methods have been doxed.

Mark notes the success of threats to boycott Pakistan on the part of Facebook, Google and Twitter. I wonder if that will simply incentivize Pakistan to drive its social media ecosystem toward the Chinese giants. Nick gives drug dealers a lesson in how not to store the codes for 53.6 million in Bitcoin; or is he offering a lesson in what to say to the police if you want that 53.6 million waiting for you when you get out of prison?

Finally, in a few quick hits, we cover new developments in past stories: It turns out, to the surprise of no one, that removing a GPS tracking device from your car isnt theft. West Virginia has apparently recovered from a fit of insanity and now does not plan to allow voting by insecure app. And the FCC is taking it slow in its investigation of mobile carriers for selling customer location data; now we know wholl be charged (pretty much everyone) and how much it will cost them ($200 million), but we still dont know the theory or whether the whole inquiry is going to kill off legitimate uses of location data.

Download the 302nd Episode (mp3).

Take our listener poll at steptoe.com/podcastpoll!

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed!

As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to [emailprotected]. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

Link:

The Cyberlaw Podcast: Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? - Lawfare

Donald Trump And Charles Harder Continue Their Assault On The 1st Amendment, Suing The Washington Post – Techdirt

from the opening-up-our-libel-laws dept

It appears whatever modest amount of restraint that our President had regarding his early promise to "open up our libel laws" have gone away. As you may recall, during the campaign he made such a promise, perhaps not realizing that defamation laws are not under the purview of the federal government -- and any changes at the state level are limited by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution (not something he can write away with an executive order). Right before he was inaugurated, he seemed to back down a little on that promise -- telling the NY Times that someone had pointed out to him that with more open libel laws, he was more likely to get sued as well.

Over the first three years of his Presidency, while constantly lashing out ridiculously at the press, and the Washington Post and the NY Times in particular -- including his constant authoritarian attack of calling them "the enemy of the people" -- he had not sued. Until last week when he tapped lawyer Charles Harder (who, we'll remind you, was the lawyer in the lawsuit against us), to represent the Trump Campaign (rather than Donald directly) to sue the NY Times over an opinion piece. Trump and Harder have now done so again, this time suing the Washington Post over two opinion pieces.

The complaint -- like the one against the NY Times -- is laughable and will be thrown out of court. Again, opinions are not defamatory, and the articles were opinion pieces. The statements they make, that the Trump campaign declares defamatory are basically all ones based on disclosed facts. The complaint is short and not very detailed. It highlights just a single line in each post that it claims is defamatory:

On or about June 13, 2019, The Post published the article entitled Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely (the June 13 Article), by Greg Sargent, which contained the defamatory claim that Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the Campaign tried to conspire with a sweeping and systematic attack by Russia against the 2016 United States presidential election.

The statement in the June 13 Article is false and defamatory. In fact, Special Counsel Muellers Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election released on or about April 18, 2019 (the Mueller Report), nearly two months before the June 13 Article, came to the opposite conclusion of the June 13 Article, namely, the Mueller Report concluded there was no conspiracy between the Campaign and the Russian government, and no United States person intentionally coordinated with Russias efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

On or about June 20, 2019, The Post published the article entitled Trump: I can win reelection with just my base (the June 20 Article), by Paul Waldman, which contains the defamatory statement who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?

The statement in the June 20 Article is false and defamatory. There has never been any statement by anyone associated with the Campaign or the administration inviting Russia or North Korea to assist the Campaign in 2019 or beyond. There also has never been any reporting that the Campaign has ever had any contact with North Korea relating to any United States election.

These are both issues that are subject to interpretation, and neither piece comes anywhere even remotely close to the necessary standard for defamation of a public figure (which, uh, the President absolutely is). On the first one, Harder is leaning heavily on the "conspiracy" word. While the Report did not show direct coordination between the campaign and the Russians, it did show multiple connection points. Indeed, the report itself says:

The investigation alsoidentified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. Althoughthe investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trumppresidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefitelectorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did notestablish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russiangovernment in its election interference activities.

So this comes down to interpretation. The Mueller report showed links between the Russians and the Campaign, but did not find enough evidence to prove a conspiracy -- which is not definitive evidence of no conspiracy. Indeed, the report shows multiple situations in which members of the Trump Campaign appeared interested in working with the Russian government -- but not enough evidence of an actual conspiracy was found. But to say that's evidence of no effort to conspire is just silly. The opinion piece's summary of that as "tried to conspire" is... not anywhere near defamatory, in which case the Post would have to have believed this was false or published it with reckless disregard for the truth. That's... not the case.

On the second one, I'll note, with amusement, that the final sentence only mentions North Korea as a government that the Trump Campaign has not discussed the election with and leaves out Russia. Interesting. But, more to the point, the article in question was discussing a Trump interview with George Stephanopoulos in which Trump is asked if he'd accept damaging information on election opponents from foreign nations, and Trump replied:

"I think you might want to listen, there isn't anything wrong with listening," Trump continued. "If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] we have information on your opponent' -- oh, I think I'd want to hear it."

That is easily, and fairly, turned into the statement in the Post opinion piece that the Campaign was "inviting" foreign help. There is no way that such a statement could or would be seen as defamatory.

In the meantime, I feel the need to remind both Harder and Trump that not too long ago, in defending Trump against a defamation lawsuit in which Trump was the defendant, Harder wrote a stirring statement in support of the 1st Amendment and warned that:

A defamation standard that turns typical political rhetoric into actionable defamation would chill expression that is central to the First Amendment and political speech.

I wish the two of them would remember that sometimes.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, charles harder, defamation, donald trump, free speech, slappCompanies: washington post

Link:

Donald Trump And Charles Harder Continue Their Assault On The 1st Amendment, Suing The Washington Post - Techdirt

First Amendment Gives You A Right To Be A Jerk, But With A Price – Big Easy Magazine

Years ago, at the now defunct Warehouse Grille (since rebranded Flamingo A Go Go) on Magazine & St. Joseph and hours before the Saints were scheduled to play the Carolina Panthers, a woman from Baton Rouge decided that was the perfect time to confront me over an alleged tweet that insulted her.

While I believed that this was the wrong place and time to do it, as well as an ambush of sorts, I also felt that the woman, who was rather profane in the confrontation and wouldnt give me a chance to profusely apologize, was well within her right to voice her displeasure. She was allowed that space to express how she felt, regardless of the tone and the word choice she used in her interaction with me.

Recently, two well-known jerks, former baseball player Aubrey Huff and insufferable gun advocate Kaitlin Bennett, have gone off the deep end about their First Amendment rights being trampled on by people who disagree with their political views. To them, they feel that being made fun of at Ohio University or being disinvited to a championship celebration is some liberal agenda.

When in actuality, its not.

The reason why Aubrey Huff, who played a major role in the Giants winning their first World Series since 1954, had nothing to do with his freedom to be a jerk or even his unwavering support of Donald Trump.

Huffs disinvite to the 10-year celebration of the 2010 championship celebration was largely in part due to the fact that he posted tweets about teaching his kids how to use a gun in the event that Bernie Sanders defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election as well as insulting tweets about MLBs first full-time female coach, Alyssa Nakken, who was hired by the Giants earlier this year.

Of course, like any clueless jerk, Huff was too stupid to realize that the Giants were well within their right to disinvite him to any event revolving around the team. So much so that he decided to tweet at Major League Baseball and Trump about what he felt was a grave injustice.

Over 2,000-plus miles away in Athens, Ohio, insufferable gun advocate Kaitlin Bennett (Im not sure we can even call her that) decided to pay a surprise visit to Ohio University on Presidents Day to ask students questions about the holiday. And while Bennett was well within her right to appear on the Ohio University campus unannounced, the students, who probably wanted to spend their Mondays doing something else, was well within their right to voice their displeasure about her visit.

Hours after being chased off the Ohio University campus, Bennett took a page out of the Aubrey Huff playbook, lamenting that the Ohio University campus police didnt do enough to protect her from protestors and said that Trump should strip funding from schools that dont do enough to protect his supporters.

This is what happens when a Trump supporter goes to a college campus, she wrote on Twitter about the protest.

Im pretty certain that Ohio University, like any other university in the country, has their lions share of Trump supporters on campus.

But the reason why the students at Ohio University, just like everyone else she comes into contact with, confronts her and makes her whine on social media like my four year-old surrogate niece in Broadmoor when things dont go her way, is because she goes out of her way to look for a fight when she goes into journalist mode.

Instead of asking questions without personal bias and a snarky tone, she does the complete opposite when she talks to college students, people that are for the most part 2-4 years younger than her. More importantly, she becomes petulant when the students that she interview dont agree with her controversial opinions.

According to the framers of the United States Constitution, the First Amendment means that we have the freedom to voice our opinions without the government stepping in. Meaning that both Bennett and Huff have the freedom to support whoever they want and be a jerk along the way.

However, while we as Americans have the freedom to be jerks, it doesnt mean that our jerk-like ways come without consequence.

For Huff, who actually had a solid baseball career and won two rings with the Giants, his jerk-like ways on social media, not his political support, cost him a chance to partake in the championship ceremony with his 2010 teammates.

The Giants were well within their rights to deny him that privilege.

That same line of thinking applies to Bennett as well. While she has the freedom to be a jerk and support whoever she wants, the downside of that is paying a hefty price, something that I learned years ago in a crowded Warehouse Grille and what Huff sorely doesnt want to learn.

You can huff and puff, tweet to Trump, and take your ball.

But sooner or later, youre going to be a sideshow attraction that everyone ignores.

More:

First Amendment Gives You A Right To Be A Jerk, But With A Price - Big Easy Magazine

A sneaky attempt to end encryption is worming its way through Congress – The Verge

A thing about writing a newsletter about technology and democracy during a global pandemic is that technology and democracy are no longer really at the forefront of everyones attention. The relationship between big platforms and the nations they operate in remains vitally important for all sorts of reasons, and Ive argued that the platforms have been unusually proactive in their efforts to promote high-quality information sources. Still, these moves are a sideshow compared to the questions were all now asking. How many people will get COVID-19? How many people will die? Will our healthcare system be overwhelmed? How long will it take our economy to recover?

We wont know the answers for weeks, but Im starting to fear the worst. On Wednesday the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 had officially become a pandemic. A former director for the Centers for Disease Control now says that in the worst case scenario, more than 1 million Americans could die.

This piece by Tomas Pueyo argues persuasively that the United States is currently seeing exponential growth in the number of people contracting the disease, and that hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed. Pueyos back ground is in growth marketing, not in epidemiology. But by now we have seen enough outbreaks in enough countries to have a rough idea of how the disease spreads, and to understand the value of social distancing that is, staying behind closed doors. So I want to recommend that everyone here reads that piece, and consider modifying your behavior if youre still planning events or spending a lot of time in public.

* * *

One risk of having the world pay attention to a single, all-consuming story is that less important but still urgent stories are missed along the way. One such unfolding story in our domain is the (deep breath) Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, which was the subject of a Senate hearing on Wednesday. Heres Alfred Ng with an explainer in CNET:

The EARN IT Act was introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican of South Carolina) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Democrat of Connecticut), along with Sen. Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Democrat of California) on March 5.

The premise of the bill is that technology companies have to earn Section 230 protections rather than being granted immunity by default, as the Communications Decency Act has provided for over two decades.

For starters, its not clear that companies have to earn what are already protections provided under the First Amendment: to publish, and to allow their users to publish, with very few legal restrictions. But if the EARN IT Act were passed, tech companies could be held liable if their users posted illegal content. This would represent a significant and potentially devastating amendment to Section 230, a much-misunderstood law that many consider a pillar of the internet and the businesses that operate on top of it.

When internet companies become liable for what their users post, those companies aggressively moderate speech. This was the chief outcome of FOSTA-SESTA, the last bill Congress passed to amend Section 230. It was putatively written to eliminate sex trafficking, and was passed into law after Facebook endorsed it. I wrote about the aftermath in October:

[The law] threatens any website owner with up to 10 years in prison for hosting even one instance of prostitution-related content. As a result, sites like Craigslist removed their entire online personals sections. Sex workers who had previously been working as their own bosses were driven back onto the streets, often forced to work for pimps. Prostitution-related crime in San Francisco alone including violence against workers more than tripled.

Meanwhile, evidence that the law reduced sex trafficking is suspiciously hard to come by. And there is little reason to believe that the EARN IT Act will be a greater boon to public life.

Yet, for the reasons Issie Lapowsky lays out today in a good piece in Protocol, it may pass anyway. Once again Congress has lined up some sympathetic witnesses who paint a picture that, because of their misfortune, whole swathes of the internet should be eliminated. It would do that by setting up a byzantine checklist structure that would handcuff companies to a difficult-to-modify set of procedures. One item on that checklist could be eliminating end-to-end encryption in messaging apps, depriving the world of a secure communications tool at a time when authoritarian governments are surging around the world. Heres Lapowsky:

The EARN IT Act would establish the National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, a 19-member commission, tasked with creating a set of best practices for online companies to abide by with regard to stopping child sexual abuse material. Those best practices would have to be approved by 14 members of the committee and submitted to the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission for final approval. That list would then need to be enacted by Congress. Companies would have to certify that theyre following those best practices in order to retain their Section 230 immunity. Like FOSTA/SESTA before it, losing that immunity would be a significant blow to companies with millions, or billions, of users posting content every day.

The question now is whether the industry can convince lawmakers that the costs of the law outweigh the benefits. Its a debate that will test what tech companies have learned from the FOSTA/SESTA battle and how much clout they even have left on Capitol Hill.

The bills backers have not said definitively that they will demand a backdoor for law enforcement (and whoever else can find it) as part of the EARN IT Act. (In fact, Blumenthal denies it.) But nor have they written the bill to say they wont. And Graham, one of the bills cosponsors, left little doubt on where he stands:

Facebook is talking about end-to-end encryption which means they go blind, Sen Graham said, later adding, Were not going to go blind and let this abuse go forward in the name of any other freedom.

Notably, Match Group the company behind Tinder, OKCupid, and many of the most popular dating apps in the United States has come out in support of the bill. (Thats easy for Match: none of the apps it makes offer encrypted communications.) The platforms are starting to speak up against it, though see this thread from WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart.

In the meantime, Graham raises the prospect that the federal government will get what it has long wanted greatly expanded power to surveil our communications by burying it in a complex piece of legislation that is nominally about reducing the spread of child abuse imagery. Its a cynical move, and if the similar tactics employed in the FOSTA-SESTA debate were any indication, it might well be an effective one.

Trending up: Amazon and the Gates Foundation might team up to deliver coronavirus test kits to Seattle homes. The test kits include nose swabs that can be mailed to the University of Washington for analysis.

Trending up: Amazon will give all employees diagnosed with coronavirus or put into quarantine up to two weeks of paid sick leave. The policy includes part-time warehouse workers. COVID-19 has really been a watershed for tech giants treating their contract workers like the human beings they are.

On the policy front:

The White House met with Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Apple, and Microsoft to coordinate efforts over the coronavirus outbreak. (Reuters)

YouTube will begin letting creators make money from their videos about the coronavirus. Its a reversal of an earlier decision the company made to automatically demonetize videos that talked about the outbreak. That decision angered creators, and now the company has walked it back. (Julia Alexander / The Verge)

On the economy:

Apple is closing all 17 of its retail stores in Italy until further notice as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the country. (Mark Gurman / Bloomberg)

The coronavirus outbreak is hurting Airbnb hosts as travel screeches to a halt. The economic downturn is also impacting airlines and hotels, but hosts have fewer resources to cope. (Erin Griffith / The New York Times)

Travel influencers also say the spread of COVID-19 has impacted their lives and bottom lines. (Tanya Chen / BuzzFeed)

On the office front:

Google is asking all employees in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to work from home due to coronavirus concerns. Employees in North American have already been given the same advice. (Isobel Asher Hamilton and Rob Price / Business Insider)

On the conference front:

The Council on Foreign Relations had to cancel a roundtable discussion about doing business under coronavirus due to, well, the coronavirus. Its one of many events that have been canceled or rescheduled in recent weeks to do the viruss spread. (David Welch / Bloomberg)

The biggest trade show in video games, E3 2020, was canceled due to coronavirus concerns. The event was supposed to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center this June. (Jason Schreier / Kotaku)

On the misinformation front:

A Facebook group called U.K. Preppers & Survivalists is trying to stop misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic from spreading. One of the moderators said that while people should question news and politicians, questioning doctors isnt helpful. (Hussein Kesvani / Mel)

Hackers are sending emails with fake HIV results and coronavirus information that infect computers with malware, according to cybersecurity researchers at Proofpoint. The fake HIV emails are designed to look like they come from Vanderbilt University. (Jane Lytvynenko / BuzzFeed)

WeChat users in China are evading censors by translating a viral interview from a coronavirus whistleblower in Wuhan, China. Theyre rewriting it backward, filling it with typos and emojis, sharing it as a PDF, and even translating it into fictional languages like Klingon. (Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed)

We need to combat misinformation about coronavirus the same way were combating the virus itself: with a communitarian focus. This strategy emphasizes the needs of the community rather than just focusing on the individual, this piece argues. (Whitney Phillips / Wired)

Elsewhere:

Microsoft, Google, and Zoom are trying to keep up with demand for their software, which allows people to work remotely. The companies have also started giving it away to companies and schools for free, as the coronavirus pandemic intensifies. (Rani Molla / Recode)

Heres the case for why coronavirus quarantines could be good for memes. Finally, some good news! (Brian Feldman / Intelligencer)

Maryland, Nebraska, and New York have all proposed taxes that would force tech companies to hand over a portion of the revenue generated from digital advertising. The proposals mirror taxes countries like France have also considered. Ashley Gold at The Information has the story:

The proposals vary in approach and scope, but they all center around the idea that big internet companies, having built their fortunes in part through the use of consumers personal information, should be contributing more to government coffers. The bills, which face mixed prospects for adoption, have drawn the ire of tech companies and other business groups, who say it could be challenging to determine precisely how much of their ad revenue comes from each state. In addition, tax experts said, the proposals could run afoul of federal law.

But lawmakers and other advocates believe the proposals might find favor with voters concerned about the power wielded by Silicon Valley and large corporations in general.

Also: The UK government confirmed that it will levy a 2 percent tax on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces which derive value from U.K. users starting on April 1st. The United States government has been strongly opposed to the plan. (Shakeel Hashim / Protocol)

After 2016, Americans are alert to Russian election interference and outside attempts to spread discord. But conspiracy theories and vitriol are now coming from influencers in the United States verified users, many from within the media, and passionate hyper-partisan fan groups that band together to drive the conversation. (Rene DiResta / The Atlantic)

Joe Biden has more than tripled the amount of money his campaign is spending on Facebook ads following a strong showing on Super Tuesday. His spend on Facebook ads in March has exceeded that of Bernie Sanders and President Trump. (Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC)

As big tech companies struggle to moderate content with a mix of algorithms, fact-checkers, and policies, Wikipedia is quietly managing to stave off misinformation with an army of anonymous volunteers. (Alex Pasternack / Fast Company)

Clearview AI let multiple people associated with the Trump campaign use its facial recognition app. Venture capital firms including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Founders Fund also ran searches. Clearview previously tried to claim that the app was only for law enforcement. (Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins and Logan McDonald / BuzzFeed)

Microsoft organized 35 nations to take down one of the worlds largest botnets malware that secretly seizes control of millions of computers around the globe. The move was unusual because it was carried out by a company, not a government. (David E. Sanger / The New York Times)

Content related to far-right candidates in Poland makes up a greater percentage of general Facebook content than of content on mainstream outlets Facebook pages, according to researchers at Stanford. Evidence suggests this might be because far-right pages are especially good at boosting engagement on Facebook by posting content simultaneously across their networks. (Daniel Bush, Anna Gielewska, Maciej Kurzynski / Cyber Policy Center)

TikTok is launching a Transparency Center in Los Angeles to give outside experts more insight into how the company makes content moderation decisions. Its one of many moves the company has made in recent months to quell the concerns of US regulators and lawmakers. This ones interesting. Reuters explains:

The center would later provide insights into the apps source code, the closely guarded internal instructions of the software, and offer more details on privacy and security.

Several U.S. agencies that deal with national security and intelligence issues have banned employees from using the app, whose popularity among teenagers has been growing rapidly.

According to a 2017 Chinese law, companies operating in the country are required to cooperate with the government on national intelligence.

Egon Durban of Silver Lake is the latest Twitter board member to have never tweeted before joining the board.

Rihanna just announced shes opening a Fenty Beauty House for TikTok creators as part of a promotion for her makeup line. Creators will be able to raid the fully stocked Make-up Pantry to create their own beauty-focused content. What a fun time to be trapped together in a house with a bunch of people you barely know! Dont share make-up brushes yall! (Bianca Betancourt / Harpers Bazaar)

Alphabet was supposed to help Google invent its next blockbuster technologies. But nearly a half-decade has passed since it launched, and the breakthrough new businesses havent materialized. (Nick Bastone and Jessica E. Lessin / The Information)

Google has pressured TV manufacturers not to use Amazons Fire TV system. The strategy has slowed Amazons efforts to expand its Fire TV platform. (Janko Roettgers / Protocol)

Googles sibling company Sidewalk Labs is walking back plans to create a futuristic city in Toronto. The plans, which combined environmentally advanced construction with sensors to track residents movements, raised privacy concerns. In May, the government will announce if the project will proceed. (Ian Austen / The New York Times)

Send us tips, comments, questions, and EARN IT Act worse-case scenarios: casey@theverge.com and zoe@theverge.com.

Originally posted here:

A sneaky attempt to end encryption is worming its way through Congress - The Verge

Newark warns of criminal prosecution for ‘false reporting of coronavirus’ | TheHill – The Hill

TheDepartment of Public Safety of Newark, N.J., is warning residents they could be prosecuted for falselyreportingcoronavirus cases in the city.

The citys public safety director, Anthony Ambrose, cautioned Newark residents against posting false information aboutcases on social media, saying it can cause unnecessary public alarm.

Ambrose said in a statementthat the department will investigate and try to identify those making false claims on social media, adding that state laws carry penalties for causingfalse public alarm.

The State of New Jersey has laws regarding causing a false public alarm and we will enforce those laws, Ambrose said. Individuals who make any false or baseless reports about the coronavirus in Newark can set off a domino effect that can result in injury to residents and visitors and affect schools, houses of worship, businesses and entire neighborhoods, he added.

Public Safety Director Ambrose warns against false reporting of coronavirus in Newark via social media https://t.co/U1fS0RALHu via @Nextdoor pic.twitter.com/m75Y2CuB8L

Some on social media criticized the announcement, saying it violates the First Amendment.

The coronavirushas infected more than 1,000 people in the U.S. and killed at least 29.

The global outbreak is affecting the worlds economy and causing many events to be canceled, including sports competitions and political rallies. Several events, like the next Democratic debate, will occur without a live audience.Schools and universities are also canceling classes or moving them online.

See the original post:

Newark warns of criminal prosecution for 'false reporting of coronavirus' | TheHill - The Hill

Lt. Governor Of Texas Gets Offended By An Anti-Police Shirt, Decides He Needs To Start Violating The First Amendment – Techdirt

from the fuck-the-drafting-of-residents-into-Dan-Patrick's-war-over-words dept

Another challenger to the First Amendment has appeared. And his name is Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor of Texas.

Apparently offended by a Senate hearing witness garbed in an anti-police t-shirt, the Lt. Governor welcomed all challengers via Twitter to sue him for violating people's free speech rights.

In case you can't see the tweet, it says:

Outraged to see this T-shirt at a Senate Hearing Thur. Future witnesses beware. No one will ever be allowed to wear such a vulgar shirt in a Senate hearing again-especially one that denigrates the brave men & women of law enforcement. Want to take me to court? Ok. Make my day.

If you can't see the shirt (and you can't, because Dan Patrick blurred out the offending words/images), it's a hand with the middle finger extended above the phrase "Fuck the police."

Clearly of the belief that Supreme Court precedent almost exactly on point has no bearing on Texas Senate proceedings, the state's second-in-command has promised to ban any t-shirt he subjectively feels is "vulgar," but "especially" the ones that "denigrate" law enforcement.

The Supreme Court precedent -- delivered nearly 50 years ago -- dealt with a 30-day jail term given to a courthouse attendee who wore a "Fuck the Draft" jacket. That clearly denigrated the brave men and women who decided who was eligible to go die for their country in the United States' most infamous losing effort. The Supreme Court ruled that the government violated the First Amendment by demanding citizens only wear/make the most innocuous of statements while in the government's presence.

Patrick's proposal sounds exactly like a content-based ban on speech, which is exactly the sort of thing the First Amendment guards against. But there are those who believe time-and-place restrictions could allow Patrick's ban to bypass the First Amendment. Why? Because the state legislature can do whatever the hell it wants, apparently.

Chuck DeVore, vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Austin, disagrees with Patricks critics.

Legislative chambers, DeVore said, have the power to set their own rules of decorum as a co-equal branch of government. While the courts have the power to review laws passed by a legislature, they cannot tell lawmakers how to pass those laws or run their affairs, he said.

Well, that assertion aside, the desire to ban things that offend one government official sure sounds like something a court should rule on. The Lieutenant Governor is on (Twitter) record as welcoming legal challenges to his "won't someone think of the cops?" content-based restriction. These are the oh-so-brave words of a man willing to spend other people's money to defend a move many of those people likely don't agree with. That's the luxury legislators have: the ability to force people to defend indefensible positions by proxy (but also directly via their tax dollars).

At some point, Patrick and his stupid new rule triggered by his triggering will have their day in court. And it seems highly unlikely he'll prevail. When he's done blowing money on forcing the public to respect cops, maybe the state's residents will be kind enough to vote his censorial ass out of office. Until then, the lieutenant governor will remain dissed like the cops he loves so much that he's willing to violate the Constitution for them.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, dan patrick, free speech, fuck the police, texas

More here:

Lt. Governor Of Texas Gets Offended By An Anti-Police Shirt, Decides He Needs To Start Violating The First Amendment - Techdirt

TOM WARD Beyond the headline, complainer had a point – Valley Breeze

3/11/2020

Well, that didnt take long, thankfully. It seems last Thursday afternoon, a piece of legislation was filed by local state senators Sandra Cano and Betty Crowley, along with others. The Stop Guilt by Accusation Act was meant to ban media from selectively reporting certain facts.

Legislators noted that the First Amendment to the Constitution, the first and most important article in the Bill of Rights, said Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. Then came the bill, abridging freedom of the press and promising $10,000 fines for non-compliance.

The senators had filed the bill at the request of Rep. Grace Diaz, of Providence, who met a man last year who felt he had been mistreated by the media.

Our editor, Ethan Shorey, upon learning of the bill, immediately tweeted it out, and the race was on as WPRIs Ted Nesi and others began asking questions.

Soon after, the bill was withdrawn. Well done! But then came the Friday Providence Journal story, and the headline and story became more about the man who asked for the bills filing than about the First Amendment. It seems the man, Chris Sevier, of Atlanta, is an anti-abortion and anti-LGBT activist. Wrote the Journal: According to a March 2 story about Sevier on the website Mississippitoday.org:He sued Apple for their laptops not blocking porn that he said killed his marriage. Hes drafted anti-LGBT bills that have been pushed by lawmakers in several states. He tried to marry his laptop in three states in apparent protest over same-sex marriage.

OK, so hes a right-wing activist making some very strange claims (and thats being kind).

But I was disappointed to read Diaz say, My feeling is beyond what I can express, after learning of Seviers history. If I knew, I would run ten-thousand-million miles away from that guy.So her sin, apparently, was talking to a right-winger, and not trying to limit press freedom. Wow. Lets never do that again!

Let me just say this: Obviously, I stand with journalists who were horrified by this bill. Every legislator should know from Civics 101 that there will never be a case or reason to abridge the free press. Period! There will never, ever be a circumstance where people would come to trust government censors and busybodies over their own ability to sort through news.

That said, I think Sevier has a point. His complaint was that the media did stories on accusations about him, but never followed up when he was acquitted. Sevier was left, he said to Diaz, with a damaged reputation and no recourse to set the record straight.

I wont speak for anyone beyond myself, but yes, this happens. And it can be damaging, especially in the new world of Google, where facts live online forever.

It would be a huge undertaking for any news outlet to track down every arrest they ever reported and then be forced to report the follow-up facts. But as a publisher, I can see where those accused unjustly would expect exactly that. I didnt begin this newspaper 24 years ago to anger and hurt my neighbors, but it can happen. It is a challenge.

Still, the government will have to live with the medias best efforts at self-policing, as well as monitoring by our readers and those accused. We must do our best, case by case. And yes, even if the complainer is on the fringe of the right-wing. He may be extreme, and I dont support his limits on a free press, but it doesnt mean he doesnt have a point.

Ward is publisher of The Valley Breeze

The rest is here:

TOM WARD Beyond the headline, complainer had a point - Valley Breeze

The legal needs of local news: What we learned from the Local Legal Initiative proposal process – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Executive Summary

In 2019, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press announced its Local Legal Initiative, an ambitious expansion of its legal services to provide direct, targeted legal support for local enterprise and investigative reporting in five jurisdictions across the country. Made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Local Legal Initiative, or LLI, expects to add a Reporters Committee attorney in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee in 2020.

The attorneys we hire in these states will be fully integrated members of the Reporters Committees existing legal team. Their presence on the ground in local communities will help our attorneys based in Washington, D.C., target legal issues in those jurisdictions in a systematic way while, at the same time, continuing to represent journalists across the country.

To identify the five local news ecosystems to launch the LLI, the Reporters Committee wanted to hear directly from journalists, news organizations, and other stakeholders around the country about where they see the greatest need for support for local journalism. We put out a request for proposals asking respondents to tell us about the biggest legal challenges reporters face in their communities, as well as how additional legal support would enable them to pursue more local enterprise and investigative stories. We sought collaborative proposals that demonstrated a clear need for pro bono legal services, and included for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms, state press associations, and freedom-of-information organizations.

In all, we received 45 proposals representing more than 30 states, territories, and regions. More than 240 organizations, newsrooms and individuals submitted or signed on to a proposal for a Reporters Committee attorney in their jurisdiction.

The results showed an extensive need for pro bono legal help across the country, but they also highlight clear opportunities for the Reporters Committee and others who are committed to building support for local journalism.

Heres what we learned from the proposals:

The proposals we received reflect a widespread need for legal support for local journalism in states and communities across the country, and we faced a difficult decision in selecting only five jurisdictions to launch the LLI. Ultimately, we selected our first five states Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee with the goal of growing the program beyond those jurisdictions in the coming years, though the Reporters Committee will continue to provide legal services and resources for journalists and news organizations nationwide from our headquarters in Washington, D.C.

This report quotes extensively from proposals sent to us from states and regions all over the United States, not just the five we selected to launch this program. By quoting their applications and sharing what we learned throughout this process, we hope to illuminate some of the clear legal obstacles that journalists and news organizations face each and every day.

Introduction

In 2017, a bidding war with significant economic implications was in full swing and the public was in the dark.

As local governments around the nation engaged in a high-profile contest to become the home to Amazons second headquarters, news organizations submitted public records requests seeking information about the tax breaks and other incentives public officials were offering one of the worlds most valuable companies.

In many cases, however, those requests were met with secrecy. For example, local governments in Colorado withheld their proposals from multiple news organizations, blocking important, timely reporting on major economic development proposals that had the potential to transform their communities for decades. The same was true in Pennsylvania, where government leaders went to court in an effort to shield their bids even after the states Office of Open Records ruled that they should be released to the public.

Newsroom leaders in both states cited government secrecy surrounding local and state governments pursuit of Amazon as one reason why they sought a Reporters Committee attorney through our new Local Legal Initiative, which we announced one year ago after a generous investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. But it wasnt the only reason: They also described other important stories that have gone untold, including reporting on political corruption and the opioid crisis, because government officials blocked them from accessing crucial data and documents.

Across the country, local newsrooms trying to investigate everything from law enforcement and the environment to education and poverty have met a similar fate. While journalists are digging into consequential issues like affordable housing, police officer misconduct, and climate change, they are routinely being stymied by a culture of secrecy that is pervasive in local and state governments.

These are just a few of the things we learned from reporters and news organizations after we asked, as part of our Local Legal Initiative, where they see the greatest needs for legal support.

What we learned about the legal needs of local news

The proposals made clear that, in order to pursue local enterprise and investigative journalism, newsrooms need a dedicated attorney to help journalists and news organizations defend their rights to gather and report the news, gain access to public records and court proceedings, and hold state and local government agencies and officials accountable.

That sentiment was echoed by more than 240 organizations, news outlets, and individuals that submitted or signed on to a proposal seeking a Reporters Committee attorney. In all, we received 45 proposals representing more than 30 states, territories, and regions across the country.

While we recently announced that we plan to launch the Local Legal Initiative this year in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, the need for local pro bono legal services stretches far beyond these five states.

Collectively, the proposals described the impressive enterprise and investigative journalism at all types of news organizations nationwide from legacy newspapers to public media outlets to nonprofit newsrooms reporting on under-covered communities but they also painted a picture of elected officials frequently thwarting important local reporting, especially by denying access to public records and public meetings.

The Local Legal Initiative proposals revealed how these officials have grown emboldened in their efforts to hide their actions from the public, confident that the local watchdogs facing plummeting revenues and shrinking staff are losing their bite.

While local accountability journalism has been boosted in recent years thanks to major philanthropic investments in nonprofit news and the establishment of innovative reporting partnerships, the challenges local news organizations face are daunting. In addition to financial hardships, they must battle rampant misinformation, polarization, and a deluge of anti-media attacks that seek to undermine meaningful, factual reporting that is foundational to a functioning democracy.

The proposals we received show that local news organizations are hungry to produce enterprise and investigative journalism, but they need strong, on-the-ground legal support in order to hold the people in power in their communities accountable, said Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce Brown. We are proud to offer legal services at no cost to news organizations through our new Local Legal Initiative. And thanks to this proposal process, the attorneys we hire now have a roadmap to helping local journalists as they continue to produce groundbreaking, consequential reporting in the public interest.

Buyouts, layoffs, and dwindling resources

Most of the applications the Reporters Committee received confirmed a hard truth about local journalism today: Newsrooms are finding it increasingly difficult to fund the legal battles frequently required to support investigative reporting at the local and state level.

In making their case for a Reporters Committee attorney, more than 86 percent of the Local Legal Initiative proposals specifically mentioned the financial hardships faced by local newsrooms. Some applicants said that news organizations cant afford to spend limited resources to fight government officials and agencies for data and documents.

Citing recent newsroom mergers and layoffs, a proposal from Massachusetts said community news organizations in the state are now covering larger areas with fewer resources and are facing more barriers and costs to obtain public records.

In Oregon, even the states most dogged reporters wont pursue certain stories because they know getting necessary records will be too time-consuming or expensive to justify, another proposal said. Agencies understand this dynamic and exploit it.

Its certainly no secret that many local newsrooms are struggling. Over the past 15 years, more than one in five local newspapers have shut down. For the ones that have survived, a combination of falling advertising revenues and dwindling subscriptions has resulted in buyouts and layoffs the collective toll so severe that researchers at the University of North Carolina have dubbed many downsized newsrooms ghost newspapers.

As purse strings have tightened, news organizations have been forced to cut budgets intended to fight for public records that help them tell critical stories in the public interest. Even newsrooms that can afford legal counsel often have to make difficult decisions about which battles they can take on. In fact, more than two-thirds of editors who responded to a 2016 Knight Foundation study said that the news industry was less able to pursue legal activity around First Amendment issues than it was a decade prior.

Foundation-funded initiatives and nonprofits like Report for America and the American Journalism Project, as well as the Marshall Project and ProPublicas Local Reporting Network have gone a long way toward keeping local enterprise and investigative journalism alive in these difficult times. So have the many creative reporting partnerships and collaborations that have allowed newsrooms even longtime competitors to share resources and pursue watchdog journalism.

Still, despite these important investments and partnerships, its clear from the applications we received that the success of local investigative journalism in many ways depends on whether newsrooms have the strong, sustained legal support they need to stand up to public officials and fight government agencies in court.

As an applicant from Ohio put it, Only when journalists pose a credible threat of litigation do public officials begin to obey the law.

The fight for access to public records, meetings

Anyone who follows journalism closely is well aware that reporters are frequently frustrated by government entities that delay and deny their public records requests. But the Local Legal Initiative applications revealed the extent to which they are stifling accountability journalism at the local level.

Almost all of the 45 proposals indicated that access to public records is a major issue. Frequent complaints included extensive delays, excessive processing fees, overuse of exemptions, and problems related to the release of large datasets.

More than half of the proposals specifically highlighted issues accessing law enforcement records, while others mentioned problems accessing records on the opioid crisis, child welfare and state prisons, among others.

Limited access to records has hampered the ability of news organizations to fully document police shootings, biased policing, bullying and harassment of students of color, inmate complaints and municipal corruption, an applicant from Vermont told the Reporters Committee. Restricted access to documents has obscured information about test scores, pesticide use and critically important accountability investigations of state waste, abuse and corruption.

Some proposals said that officials who block public records requests are essentially daring journalists to file a lawsuit, knowing its unlikely to happen. Thats especially true in states that have no administrative appeals process, meaning that members of the press and the public must challenge records request denials in court.

One applicant said that having an attorney to fight against wholesale records denials would be a godsend locally and statewide.

In addition to issues obtaining public records, about one-third of Local Legal Initiative proposals also cited problems accessing public meetings, court records, and court proceedings. News organizations in some states noted how they have been shut out of closed-door meetings that should be open to the public, while others mentioned that judges sometimes seal court dockets and close courtrooms, leaving journalists unable to report on the judicial system.

A proposal from New Jersey specifically mentioned how the mayor of Newark barred journalists from attending a public meeting about the high levels of lead in the citys water. Another proposal from Texas said that reporters and attorneys were being prevented from observing court proceedings in tent cities near the border with Mexico. And applicants in a handful of states specifically highlighted access issues in tribal communities.

In one recent instance, a proposal from Alaska said, a journalist seeking to report on sexual violence in a remote community was barred, in writing, from visiting the village by the communitys Alaska Native corporation and tribal council.

Some applicants stressed that the need to access public records and meetings is arguably greatest in communities of color. News organizations ability to substantively report on the often systemic issues affecting those communities is frequently hampered by public officials and agencies that prefer to operate in secret.

A proposal submitted by organizations in Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., specifically mentioned that having the support of a local Reporters Committee attorney would help them cover housing issues in vulnerable neighborhoods along the eastern shore of Maryland.

Investigations into senior housing, rent control, mold and maintenance issues, and section 8 issues would be especially meaningful particularly because currently the agency ignores requests and stonewalls reporters, the proposal stated.

A RCFP attorney would greatly enrich our coverage into immigration services, public health departments and local police agencies, among many others, that deal directly with under-served communities in our region, a proposal from California said.

In Tennessee, an applicant noted that additional legal support would help journalists there fight for access to internal investigations into schools and their employees. We could take a deeper look at issues such as how qualified teachers are in under-served communities and other disparities that we suspect exist but cant get access to the records to prove it.

The need for training, education, and defense

While access issues were cited most frequently in Local Legal Initiative applications, proposals mentioned a variety of other ways in which an attorney could help improve local journalism and hold officials accountable: by offering training and education; pre-publication legal review; and defensive support.

About one-third of applicants identified a need for increased training and education. One state press association said reporters would benefit from training on access and defamation issues, while a state press association in a different state noted that many judges could use training on the same topics.

Another proposal suggested an attorney could lead regional workshops to teach members of the press and the public about their rights and responsibilities.

Such training and evangelizing could embolden small or startup news organizations to undertake more ambitious and possibly litigious projects, the applicant wrote. It could empower ordinary citizens to gain access to and knowledge about institutions in their communities, an antidote to the alienation all too many Americans currently feel.

Media law workshops would be particularly valuable in todays age of misinformation and fake news. For example, a recent survey by PBS Newshour, NPR, and Marist found that 59 percent of Americans said it was hard to tell the difference between what is fact and what is misleading information.

All news organizations have faced intense pressure in recent years because of a profound cultural shift surrounding alleged fake news, one applicant from California told the Reporters Committee. We need resources to push back and educate our sources, particularly in local government, about the publics rights under the First Amendment.

About one-fifth of the proposals mentioned the need to have an attorney review investigative stories before publication to make sure they are legally sound. Such pre-publication consultations often give journalists the confidence to pursue important investigative stories without fear of facing a lawsuit.

An attorney will know where the minefields are when reporting on sensitive topics, an applicant from Wisconsin wrote.

Free legal counsel would allow reporters to conduct more aggressive investigations without fear of reprisals masked as lawsuits, a proposal from New Jersey added.

But the fear of such lawsuits is real. While fewer than one-tenth of the proposals received by the Reporters Committee mentioned the need for defensive support, such as fighting subpoenas or responding to demand letters or libel suits, the ones that did revealed just how risky investigative reporting can be at the local level.

Fear of the defense cost for a libel complaint, a long court case or multiple lawsuits has a tremendous chilling effect on enterprise and investigative reporting, an applicant from West Virginia told the Reporters Committee, calling it an expense most news operations cant bear.

A press association proposal from Nevada cited the troubling case of local journalist Barbara Ellestad, who was served with six subpoenas in three different courts in response to her reporting on a local water district. The reporter was forced to spend $27,000 of her own money to fight orders asking her to turn over notes, documents and recordings, among other reporting materials.

All six of the subpoenas were eventually quashed, but the press association wrote in its application that Ellestad was served with yet another subpoena last June. When the Reporters Committee learned during the proposal process that Ellestad could no longer afford to defend herself against the continued threats, we quickly connected her with a Las Vegas media attorney who is now representing her pro bono.

As the press association stated in its application, the cases against Ellestad illustrate how vulnerable reporters can be without legal support.

Her cases describe the kind of run-of-the-mill pressure tactics power brokers and their aggressive lawyers employ in Nevada to make reporters disappear, the proposal said. Theyre less likely to disappear, of course, if they have the kind of pro bono legal support that can defend their reporting.

Conclusion

Local newsrooms pursuing vital enterprise and investigative reporting about issues affecting their communities face a variety of challenges, particularly around access to information. Confronting dwindling revenues, many newsrooms no longer have the resources to pay for legal services meaning records request denials go uncontested, governments avoid scrutiny, and the public is left in the dark.

It also means that historically under-served communities and voices are more often missing from coverage.

The Local Legal Initiative aims to change that by providing direct legal services in places where we, at the Reporters Committee, and our partners in each of those places, which will include lawyers in the private bar as well as law school clinics, can meet those needs. While we are launching this program in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, we hope to expand it in the coming years, and the information weve received throughout this process will help inform those next steps.

Beyond these five states, Reporters Committee attorneys will continue to provide legal services and resources for journalists and news organizations across the country from our home base in Washington, D.C., as we have done for the past 50 years.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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The legal needs of local news: What we learned from the Local Legal Initiative proposal process - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Ro Khanna introduce bill to reform Espionage Act – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

This week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Or.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal.) introduced what is only the second proposal to reform the federal Espionage Act since that law was enacted in 1917.

The Espionage Act read literally permits the government to prosecute anyone who discloses government secrets to others not authorized to receive them (including persons who have never agreed to protect government secrets as part of their work). It is the main federal law used to prosecute national security media leaks.

The Wyden-Khanna bill focuses on journalists and news organizations. It would make only modest improvements to the sections of the law that permit the government to prosecute journalistic sources who have agreed to protect secrets. But it also comes at a time when press freedom advocates fear that the chance of something that has until now been thought unlikely the prosecution of a journalist for publishing government secrets is significantly higher than in the past.

As detailed in the Reporters Committees comprehensive survey of federal news media leak cases throughout history, there has been a dramatic uptick in just the last decade in cases involving national security reporting.

Prior to 2009, the government had successfully prosecuted only one source under the Espionage Act, a naval analyst charged with leaking photographs of Soviet ships. President Bill Clinton pardoned that man, Samuel Loring Morison, in 2001 precisely because his case was so unusual. Never before had a journalistic source been prosecuted successfully as a spy.

That changed with investigations started under President George W. Bush, which led to prosecutions under President Barack Obama. Obama brought 10 cases against journalistic sources and one against a Navy contractor accused in part of sending classified documents to a public archive. These include a number of high-profile cases, including the Chelsea Manning court martial and the still-pending Espionage Act indictment of Edward Snowden.

That trend continues under President Donald Trump. To date, his administration has brought charges in eight journalistic source cases and in one that involves the public disclosure of classified information, that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Assange case is particularly concerning because prosecutors were able to secure an indictment against Assange under the Espionage Act based in part on the sole act of publishing government secrets. This is the first time in American history where the government has deployed this legal theory, and there is nothing in the text of the Espionage Act stopping the Justice Department from using the same theory against a member of the press.

How would the Wyden-Khanna bill narrow the Espionage Act?

The bill introduced this week would make two primary changes to the law.

Before detailing these reforms, its helpful to understand a basic concept in criminal law. Generally speaking, there are two different types of crimes. First, there are completed crimes that is, crimes that one has performed oneself (think pulling the trigger in a shooting). A defendant in these completed crimes is charged as the principal.

Second, there are incomplete crimes, like conspiracy, acting as an accomplice, aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, and failing to report a crime. In other words, these are cases where one hasnt pulled the trigger, but where the defendant, say, buys the gun or lets the shooter hide out on their property.

Under the literal text of the current Espionage Act, even individuals who dont have a security clearance and havent promised to keep government secrets can be charged as a principal. The applicable section of the Espionage Act covers anyone who has access to national defense information, and who communicates, delivers, [or] transmits that information to someone not entitled to receive it. The Justice Department has consistently and repeatedly taken the position that communicates or transmits includes the act of publication.

The Wyden-Khanna bill would effectively eliminate this provision and would prohibit cases charging anyone other than individuals who have authorized access to classified material and who have signed a non-disclosure agreement. In other words, members of the general public, including journalists, could no longer be charged under the law as a principal as if they had pulled the trigger.

The bill preserves liability for agents of a foreign power as defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The specific definition is complicated, but the basic concept is that individuals who are acting at the direction of a foreign power and who are assisting someone who has signed a secrecy agreement are much more likely to be engaged in what we would all consider traditional espionage, and should therefore be easier to charge with an incomplete crime.

For non-foreign agents who havent signed a secrecy agreement, the Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly narrow the potential scope of liability for those who havent themselves pulled the trigger, which is particularly important for journalists. Under current law, there is a significant concern that a national security reporter interacting with a source in a story involving the disclosure of classified information even if eminently newsworthy and in the public interest could be charged as a conspirator or abettor of the disclosure.

Conspiracy can be thought of as a meeting of the minds where two or more people agree to do the bad thing. If I contract out a hit, Im a conspirator, and I can be charged the same as the person who pulls the trigger. Abetting is even broader, and the word abet can encompass just encouraging someone to pull the trigger.

In the context of national security journalism, there is a significant concern that the act of soliciting, receiving, and agreeing to publish government secrets could be the basis of a conspiracy or abetting charge against a journalist.

Thats the basic theory behind most of the Assange charges: that Assange abetted Mannings violation of the Espionage Act by encouraging the leak and agreeing to publish the material. (The indictment prominently quotes Assange as saying curious eyes never run dry when Manning suggested there might not be more material to pull.) It was also the argument the FBI made in a 2011 search warrant for a national security reporters emails in a leak investigation.

The Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly limit the governments ability to charge a national security reporter under this theory.

First, it would require that the defendant directly and materially aid or pay for the commission of the underlying offense by the person who signed a non-disclosure agreement. Granted, the language here could be tighter. It should be read to require participation in the underlying acquisition of the classified information, like giving a source a key or a password. Nevertheless, even in its current form, it would be a significant improvement over current law.

Second, it would require that the defendant act with the specific intent to harm the national security of the United States or benefit any foreign government to the detriment of the United States.

Again, although this language could still be subject to misuse against, say, a columnist critical of U.S. foreign policy, it would significantly limit the scope of existing law and require prosecutors to introduce evidence at trial that the defendant was motivated to harm U.S. national security. National security reporting on newsworthy stories in the public interest particularly stories that reveal improper government actions would almost certainly not meet this intent standard.

Finally, the reform bill includes a provision that clarifies that direct and material aid cannot include counseling, education, or other speech activity or the provision of electronic communications services to the public, which is likely meant to protect news organizations that provide services like SecureDrop for the anonymous collection of potentially classified information.

But doesnt the First Amendment already protect journalists?

There is an argument that the bill actually authorizes a new crime that was until now hypothetical and potentially unconstitutional. In other words, its still up in the air as to whether the public disclosure of information in the public interest by someone who hasnt promised to protect secrets can constitutionally violate the spying laws. By passing this law, the argument follows, Congress is confirming to a court that it believes such activity can be punished under the First Amendment.

This concern should not be discounted, but there are a couple of responses.

One, every court that has addressed whether the existing Espionage Act can constitutionally apply to journalistic sources has found that it can. The arguments in that context are similar to the arguments one would advance in defense of a journalist. Things are, in other words, already quite grim under existing law.

Two, a constitutional challenge would still be available even under the Wyden-Khanna bills reforms. If an aggressive prosecutor attempted to try an opinion writer who merely expressed ideological disagreement with some specific U.S. foreign policy position or action while reporting on classified information, any defendant could still bring an as-applied challenge to the reformed Espionage Act. All laws have to comply with the First Amendment.

While it is true that the fact Congress has spoken on the issue could make a judge more likely to reject an as-applied challenge, the state of the law is so bad and the uptick in journalistic source cases over the last decade so concerning that the improvements proposed in the Wyden-Khanna bill are worth that risk.

Finally, contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, there is no guarantee that a constitutional challenge to the post-publication punishment of a news organization for disclosing government secrets will succeed. The Pentagon Papers case, for instance, only held that the government cant restrain the publication of secrets, but at least five judges signaled they would uphold the post-publication punishment of a journalist for reporting secrets.

Additionally, the other line of cases news organizations would point to, which hold that a journalist who lawfully acquires information can publish that information without fear of prosecution, even if it has been unlawfully acquired by a source, have never addressed whether that rule applies to the Espionage Act. The most recent Supreme Court case on the question, Bartnicki v. Vopper, dealt only with whether a radio talk show host could be sued for broadcasting an illegally wiretapped conversation.

In sum, the concern that passing reform legislation could be counterproductive is valid, but, on balance, the Wyden-Khanna bill would probably result in stronger protections for journalists than currently exist even under the First Amendment.

What happens if the bill gets worse as it moves through Congress?

Many First Amendment advocates who work in this area have long feared that opening up the Espionage Act could actually make the law worse because national security hawks in both parties could seek to expressly criminalize the public disclosure of government secrets, much like the Official Secrets Act in the United Kingdom.

This concern is, again, well taken. As introduced, the Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly protect journalists from being treated as spies for reporting newsworthy government secrets. Were it amended in a way that would make existing law worse (or significantly decrease the viability of a First Amendment defense), press advocates would almost certainly oppose the bill. But the need for greater protections in this area is pressing and the bill would, if passed in its current form, make the world a better place.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Ro Khanna introduce bill to reform Espionage Act - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A Mississippi Woman Gave Diet Advice Without a License. The State Threatened To Throw Her in Jail. – Reason

Mississippi Department of Health officials threatened to turn Donna Harris' eight-week weight loss challenge into six months behind bars, but now the state stands accused of putting the First Amendment on a diet.

Harris, a personal trainer and fitness expert, has run a Facebook page since 2018 dedicated to encouraging healthy eating habits. Earlier this year, she launched a small side business, offering one-on-one diet coaching and weight loss tips to anyone willing to pay $99 to participate in an eight-week contest where participants could compete to shed the most pounds. Before it could even start, however, the state government shut it down.

On January 22, Harris received a cease-and-desist letter from the Mississippi Department of Health. Talking about healthy eating on Facebook and getting paid to do it, the department said, could trigger a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. In the eyes of the state, Harris was an unlicensed dieticianand apparently enough of a threat to public safety that she might need to be put behind bars.

"When I learned I would have to cancel my weight-loss class, I was devastated," said Harris in a statement. "People were counting on me and they were so excited about learning how to lose weight in a healthy way, and they were so disappointed when I told them I was not going to be able to go through with the program."

Harris wasn't pretending to be a licensed dietician. In fact, her Facebook page and website both specify that she isn't one. Anyone willing to pay her for advice on eating healthier was engaged in a voluntary transactionone that has little to do with the state government's interests.

In a lawsuit filed this week on Harris' behalf, the Mississippi Justice Institute, a nonprofit law firm, argues that Mississippi's overzealous enforcement of its dietician licensing law violated Harris' First Amendment rights.

Aaron Rice, the group's director, is particularly galled by what happened when Harris asked the state what information she could legally provide without a license. She was told to stick to "government-approved guidelines, like the food pyramid," Rice says. "So you can engage in government-approved speech, but not non-government-approved speech?"

Getting a permission slip to speak freely about healthy diets is no easy task in Mississippi. It requires a bachelor's degree and more than 1,200 hours of supervised practice. Starting in 2024, the license will require a graduate degree. Harris actually has one of thosea master's degree in occupational therapy, to go along with her bachelor's degree in nutrition and food sciencebut not the one the state will soon require.

Mississippi is not the only state to require that dieticians be licensed, and this is not the first time a state has gone to extreme lengths to enforce its mandatory permission slip regime. In 2017, Florida Department of Health officials ran a sting operation to catch Heather Kokesch Del Castillo giving out unlicensed diet advice online. She, too, was threatened with jail time. A judge rejected a subsequent challenge to the state's dietician licensing laws brought on Del Castillo's behalf by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm.

"Laws that restrict who can give dietary advice clearly implicate the First Amendment," says Paul Sherman, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. "If the government wants those laws on the books, it bears the burden of justifying them."

States get away with regulating all sorts of economic activity via occupational licensing laws, in part because of the so-called "professional speech doctrine," a legal practice in which courts have held that governments may limit or compel speech under the guise of regulating business activity. But the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down the professional speech doctrine in a 2018 ruling that overturned a California law requiring pregnancy centers to tell women where they could get an abortion.

Sherman says that the 2018 rulingNational Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerrawas a "game-changer" that has caused lower courts to begin to grapple with how occupational licensing laws may run afoul of the First Amendment too. He predicts there will be more litigation in that space.

Rice notes that Mississippi has a reputation for being one of the most obese states in the nation, as well as one of America's highest incarceration ratestwo things that won't be improved by treating unlicensed dieticians like serious criminals.

"Telling healthy adults what they should eat or buy at the grocery store is a freedom we all have as Americans," he says, "whether we are paid for that speech or not."

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A Mississippi Woman Gave Diet Advice Without a License. The State Threatened To Throw Her in Jail. - Reason

Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? – Reason

This episode features a lively (and fair warning long) interview with Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center. We explore themes from her recent paper on regulation of online speech. It turns out that more or less everyone has an ability to restrict users' speech online, and pretty much no one has both authority and an interest in fostering free-speech values. The ironies abound: Conservatives may be discriminated against, but so are Black Lives Matter activists. In fact, it looks to me as though any group that doesn't think it's the victim of biased content moderation would be well advised to scream as loudly as possible about censorship anyway for fear of losing the victimization sweepstakes.

Feeling a little like a carny at the sideshow, I serve up one solution for biased moderation after another, and Daphne methodically shoots them down. Transparency? None of the companies is willing to allow real transparency, and the government may have a first amendment problem forcing companies to disclose how they make their moderation decisions. Competition law as a way to encourage multiple curators? It might require a "magic" API, and besides, most users like a moderated Internet experience. Regulation? Only if we want to take First Amendment law back to the heyday of broadcast regulation (which is frankly starting to sound pretty good to me).

As a particularly egregious example of foreign governments and platforms ganging up to censor Americans, we touch on the CJEU's insufferable decision encouraging the export of European defamation law to the US with an extra margin of algorithmic censorship to keep the platform from any risk of liability. Turns out, that speech suppression regime is not just an end run around the first amendment; it's protected by the first amendment. I offer to risk my Facebook account to see if that's already happening.

In the news, FISA follies take center stage, as the March 15 deadline for reauthorizing important counterterrorism authorities draws near. No one has a good solution. Matthew Heiman explains that another kick-the-can scenario remains a live option. And Nick Weaver summarizes the problems that the PCLOB found with the FISA call detail record program. My take: The program failed because it was imposed on NSA by libertarian ideologues who had no idea how it would work in practice and who now want to blame NSA for their own shortsightedness.

Another week, another couple of artificial intelligence ethics codes: The two most recent ones come from DOD and the Pope? Mark MacCarthy sees a lot to like. I offer my quick and dirty CTRL-F test for whether the codes are serious or flaky, and both fail.

In China news, Matthew covers China's ever-spreading censorship regime which now reaches Twitter users whose accounts are blocked by the Great Firewall. We also ask whether and how much the US "name and shame" campaign has actually reduced Chinese cyberespionage. And whether China is stealing tech from universities for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks that's where the IP is.

Nick recounts with undisguised glee the latest tribulations suffered by Clearview AI's facial recognition system: Its app has been banned from Android and Apple, and both its customers and its data collection methods have been doxed.

Mark notes the success of threats to boycott Pakistan on the part of Facebook, Google, and Twitter. I wonder if that will simply incentivize Pakistan to drive its social media ecosystem toward the Chinese giants.

Nick gives drug dealers a lesson in how not to store the codes for 53.6 million in Bitcoin; or is it a lesson in what to say to the police if you want that 53.6 million waiting for you when you get out of the clink?

Finally, in a few quick hits, we cover new developments in past stories: It turns out, to the surprise of no one, that removing a police tracking device from your car isn't theft. West Virginia has apparently recovered from a fit of insanity and now does not plan to allow voting by insecure app. And the FCC is doing a slow striptease in its investigation of mobile carriers for selling customer location data; now we know who'll be charged (pretty much everyone) and how much it will cost them ($200 million), but we still don't know the theory or whether the inquiry is going to kill off legitimate uses of location data.

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As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

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Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? - Reason

Hearst Television executive honored with RTDNF First Amendment Leadership Award – WLKY Louisville

A Hearst Television executive has been honored with a prestigious award.On Thursday evening, Barbara Maushard received the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation.Maushard is the senior vice president for news. Hearst is the parent company of WLKY.The First Amendment Leadership Award honors a business, government or other leader who has made a significant contribution to the protection of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.Maushard was one of seven award First Amendment Award winners who represent the role journalists play in local and national media.This was the 30th time the awards have been handed out.Click here, for a full list of 2020 First Amendment Award winners.

A Hearst Television executive has been honored with a prestigious award.

On Thursday evening, Barbara Maushard received the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation.

Maushard is the senior vice president for news. Hearst is the parent company of WLKY.

The First Amendment Leadership Award honors a business, government or other leader who has made a significant contribution to the protection of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

Maushard was one of seven award First Amendment Award winners who represent the role journalists play in local and national media.

This was the 30th time the awards have been handed out.

Click here, for a full list of 2020 First Amendment Award winners.

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Hearst Television executive honored with RTDNF First Amendment Leadership Award - WLKY Louisville

Senator Blumenthal receives the First Amendment Defender Award – WTNH.com

WASHINGTON D.C. (WTNH) Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal received the First Amendment Defender Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation on Thursday evening.

Blumenthal was honored at the 30th annual recognition of First Amendment champions.

The award is presented to an individual or an organization that takes a public stand in support of press freedom.

At a time when press freedoms and access have been under attack, Sen. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut has stood tall for the rights of journalists to do their jobs and inform the public. He has an impressive record of fighting for the truth and defending the publics need to know.

Sen. Blumenthal is currently serving his second term in the U.S. Senate representing Connecticut. Previously, he served five terms as Connecticuts Attorney General, fighting for individuals against large and powerful special interests.

In a statement about the award, RTDNF explained Blumenthal was chosen for the honor for his relentless work eradicating corruption in state government and making state contracting accountable, fair, honest and transparent.

RTDNF goes on to say, in 2018, Sen. Blumenthal co-sponsored a resolution condemning the Trump Administrations attempts to restrict media access and affirming the importance of a free press. The RTDNF says Blumenthal also helped introduce and reintroduce the Journalist Protection Act, making it a federal crime to intentionally cause bodily injury to a journalist in the course of reporting. In 2019, he cosponsored the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, a bill that would create a new memorial in Washington D.C. to honor journalists, photographers, and broadcasters that have died in the line of duty.

News 8s General Manager, Rich Graziano, joined Nexstar President, Tim Busch, and RTDNF Chairman and Vice President of Local Content Development of Nexstar Broadcasting, Jerry Walsh, at the First Amendment Awards show and dinner on Thursday night.

According to Graziano, This years honorees are a mix of local and network journalists that provide illuminating reporting, a respected national news program which holds the powerful accountable and a visionary who defends the publics right to know.

Blumenthal joined such honorees as the news show 60 Minutes, David Muir of ABC News, Steve Andrews of WFLA-TV, Lori Montenegro of Telemundo, Barbara Maushard of Hearst Television and Robert (Bob) Horner of NBC News.

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Senator Blumenthal receives the First Amendment Defender Award - WTNH.com

The University’s First Amendment Rights | Leadership in Higher Education – Inside Higher Ed

When we talk about the First Amendment and freedom of expression in higher education, our analysis typically focuses on individual rights. We talk about the rights of unpopular speakers to express their views, the rights of students to invite such speakers, the rights of protesters to respond to or disrupt those with whom they disagree, and the rights of faculty members to say or teach without interference. But what about the First Amendment rights of the college or university itself, as an institution? Does a college or university have First Amendment rights in cases like these?

The traditional answer in these cases is no. While university speakers, students and faculty members have First Amendment rights, the university is a mere neutral forum. The university provides the setting, the context, in which individuals seek to express, protect and vindicate their rights, but it is not itself viewed as a significant First Amendment actor. The university can be sued for lack of neutrality, but in free expression cases, it basically serves as the arena, not as a player with its own unique values and interests.

I believe this is wrong, both as matter of law and of fundamental principle. I believe that colleges and universities have strong First Amendment rights as institutions, and that those institutional rights are so important to a free society, they may, in some instances, trump the rights of many individuals who seek to speak in the university setting.

The foundation of this robust idea of institutional First Amendment rights lies in Justice Frankfurters famous concurrence in the case of Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). In Sweezy, a state attorney general sought to question an economist and magazine editor who had delivered a lecture on Marxism at the University of New Hampshire. Sweezy refused to answer, was held in contempt and ultimately took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his contempt conviction was overturned.

The Sweezy decision is often cited as the foundation of the individual First Amendment right of faculty members to teach free from government interference, but a careful reading of Frankfurters opinion reveals that it is really the university, not the individual, that possesses the most important rights under the First Amendment. Frankfurter noted that the existence of our free society depends on free universities. This means, he continued, the exclusion of governmental intervention in the intellectual life of a university.

How can we protect universities from unconstitutional intervention? By respecting what Frankfurters opinion, quoting a South African study on academic freedom, called the four essential freedoms of a university -- to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study. In Frankfurters view, Sweezy had a right to speak at the University of New Hampshire not because of his own right to free expression, but because the university has a right to control its own intellectual environment, and thus the right to choose who will and who will not speak in its halls, free from government dictates.

Justice OConnor reasserted this strong view of university rights and university autonomy in the landmark affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). In Grutter, OConnor noted that in the United States, universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition. The Supreme Court, she wrote, has long recognized that universities have a right of educational autonomy that is grounded in the first amendment. This includes, she wrote, quoting Justice Powell in Bakke, the freedom of a university to make its own judgments as to education.

These basic constitutional principles have never been questioned, but their implications have long been ignored. If, as Sweezy, Bakke and Grutter recognize, universities occupy a special and protected place in First Amendment jurisprudence, with a right to autonomy and to control their own educational and intellectual environments, the implications are profound. On this reading, universities do not have to be a passive neutral forum. They may, instead, exercise a strong First Amendment right to define for themselves the appropriate educational and intellectual setting for learning, free from interference by legislatures and courts. This means that universities may, contrary to current practice, exclude some speakers whose views have no place in an intellectual setting devoted to science, rational argument and the creation of a proper learning environment.

How might this robust First Amendment institutional right to autonomy play out in specific cases? Imagine a white supremacist is invited by a student group to speak at a public university. Under traditional neutral forum analysis, the university does not have a right to exclude him or her. But if, as Sweezy, Bakke and Grutter suggest, the university has a right to control its intellectual and educational environment, it may exclude a speaker it believes will harm the academic environment it seeks to maintain. If the university believes the speaker will undercut the seriousness of intellectual discourse or the right to students to study free from harassment, they do not need to provide a forum for that person to speak.

This notion of strong institutional rights under the First Amendment has not been tested in the courts. It may be that when push comes to shove, the courts will insist on content neutrality even if it interferes with a universitys autonomous right to create a proper intellectual and learning environment. But we wont know this, of course, until universities try to assert and protect what Justice OConnor called their right to educational autonomy based on their special niche in our constitutional tradition.

John Kroger served as the president of Reed College and as attorney general of Oregon.

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The University's First Amendment Rights | Leadership in Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed

When Protestors Carry Guns, Does It Impede Others Free Speech? – The Trace

In late January, thousands of pro-gun activists descended on Richmond, Virginia, to protest a package of gun reform bills advancing through the state General Assembly. Many of them were armed. The specter of a massive open carry demonstration was difficult for anyone to ignore, but the day was also significant because of the people not in attendance outside the state Capitol grounds.

Fearing violence, untold numbers of counter-protesters diverted their plans to advocate for legislation on the same streets as the pro-gun activists. Among those who sat it out that day were members of a student group advocating for undocumented immigrants and gun reform advocates who had planned to hold a vigil in memory of gun violence victims. In their absence, the loudest voices in the proverbial room were those in support of gun rights.

Some legal commentators found the dynamic vexing and questioned if the protest was a healthy picture of free speech and debate. Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, was one of many to surface concerns about the First Amendment rights of the unarmed. In The Atlantic, he declared, The right to bear arms in political debate is not the power to speak for oneself; it is, at least implicitly, the power to silence others. The late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged this clash of rights in a dissent from 2010. Your interest in keeping and bearing a certain firearm, he wrote, may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence.

Below, we look at the free speech implications of open carry demonstrations, and whether officials can regulate guns in protest settings to foster free speech.

Is there a First Amendment right to attend a protest free of guns?

The short answer is no, at least not right now. While some may feel that armed protesters trample on the speech rights of others, the reality is that no court would currently hold that carrying guns openly at a demonstration violates First Amendment rights to free expression and political assembly.

A First Amendment lawyers argument against open carry at protests would go something like this: Firearms violate the speech rights of unarmed protesters because they chill expression through intimidation.

But this reasoning suffers from two major problems. For one thing, freedom of speech protects individuals from government intrusion on expression, but in armed protest settings, the government is not directly involved in silencing anyone. Its not the government carrying the guns, said Timothy Zick, a law professor at William and Mary Law School who has written extensively on the issue. Indirectly, yes, the government allows people to carry guns. But its the individuals decision to carry it.

Moreover, chills on expression, which are not outright bans on speech, violate the First Amendment only under certain circumstances. Zick said, It can be a struggle to deal with the legal concept of chill versus the human concept of it.

For a chill on expression to cross over into a free speech violation, the threatening consequence of speech has to be immediate like getting arrested for your dissenting speech, losing your job for your political views, or being shot at a protest. It has to be some kind of tangible, compulsive, coercive impingement on you, said Zick. Ones own perception that speech could get them into trouble is called subjective chill, and the Supreme Court has held that First Amendment claims based on that definition are dead on arrival.

As a result, a court would likely find no immediate threat to people who dont attend protests because of open carry practices. As Zick noted, Your willingness to rally amongst guns depends heavily on what you believe about guns. Not everyone thinks that guns are inherently dangerous, and open carry laws by themselves dont guarantee that people will use their firearms in a dangerous way. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relied on this reasoning in a 2018 case about concealed carry in public university classrooms in Texas. A group of University of Texas professors argued that the presence of weapons in class would chill their First Amendment academic freedoms. But the court found they were choosing to self-censor their speech based on the hypothetical future decisions of students.

Do some scholars take exception to the current state of the law?

Some legal experts disagree with the jurisprudence and believe that guns in public spaces are incompatible with a functioning democracy. In a paper arguing that the Second Amendment right should exist only in the privacy of ones home, Darrell Miller of Duke Law School argued, The presence of a gun in public has the effect of chilling or distorting the essential channels of a democracy. He added, Valueless opinions enjoy an inflated currency if accompanied by threats of violence.

Likewise, Mary Anne Franks of the University of Miami has argued that, under the sway of the gun lobby, the Supreme Court has transformed the Second Amendment into a superright one with the ability to override others with the power to cancel out the freedom of speech by intimidating people into silence. This chilling effect, she noted in her book The Cult of the Constitution, is felt most acutely by the least powerful members of society.

If theres no First Amendment case against armed protest, can open carry events still be restricted?

Governments are far from helpless to stop people from bringing guns to protests. There are many different gun regulations we could use that preserve both Second Amendment rights and free speech rights, Zick said.

First, its important to note that the Supreme Court has itself contemplated limits on the right to bear arms, including bans on guns in sensitive places. Many of these locations, including Capitol grounds and university campuses, are common protest sites. Local governments can grant protest permits on the condition that the gathering is free of firearms without running afoul of the Second Amendment. Similarly, local officials can require guns to be unloaded or restrict the types of firearms protesters may carry.

Furthermore, its worth remembering that the Second Amendment does not grant gun carriers the right to commit crimes. Existing criminal laws prohibit brandishing or discharging firearms outside of the context of self-defense. As The Trace has reported, states could enforce very old laws that penalize people for going armed to the terror of the public. And many states, including those that permit open carry, have banned paramilitary activity for over a century. These laws prohibit private militias from assembling and holding drills in public. Virginia recently relied on its own anti-paramilitary statute to prevent some groups at the 2017 Charlottesville rally from protesting with guns in the future. (A bill currently making its way through the General Assembly would amend that law with language prohibiting armed persons from assembling with the intent to intimidate others.)

Still, this face-off of rights is far from over. There are more states that permit open carry, and more people are starting to exercise that right, said Zick. Armed protest is going to be part of the protest landscape.

The law in this area is still developing, and courts will likely consider how armed protests play out in real life. If violence transpired at future open carry rallies, he predicted that might bolster a First Amendment claim that weapon-toting demonstrators are limiting others free speech. I think it would be difficult for any judge, whether they admitted it or not, to ignore news reports of mayhem in the streets.

Lower courts will also have to follow new pronouncements from the Supreme Court, which has yet to establish a Second Amendment right to carry in public. But Zick believes that will change. I think the writing is on the wall, he said.

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When Protestors Carry Guns, Does It Impede Others Free Speech? - The Trace