Daily Archives: December 17, 2014

NBC 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

Posted: December 17, 2014 at 3:47 pm

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Chris Hansen

On Wednesday, the 10thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge had too quickly dismissed an insurance broker's defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, reporter Chris Hansen and others over a 2008 Dateline segment titled "Tricks of the Trade."

"This case is anything but normal," writes Circuit Judge Terrence O'Brien.

PHOTOS Hollywood's Most Fascinating Legal Sagas, From Casey Kasem to Michael Jackson

Among other things, the case addressed whether a journalists privilege, commonly understood to protect the identity of anonymous sources, extends further in Colorado. It also raises the issue of whether journalists, acting with government cooperation, can enter a private place under false pretenses without violating an individual's or company's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit and appeal were brought by Tyrone Clark and his company, Brokers Choice of America (BCA), upset with the way Dateline had used snippets of Clark's two-day seminar for insurance brokers located on the company's property in Colorado. With assistance from Alabama officials, Dateline's crew surreptitiously filmed the seminar, and according to Clark's company, used its own tricks of the trade selective editing and commentary to present Clarks statements out of context.

The Dateline segment presented Clark as using or teaching scare tactics to get seniors to buy annuities, but BCA says that a complete viewing of Clark's seminar would show him taking a more nuanced approach to annuities that Clark said they were not for everyone and urged his students to probe their customers' situations for suitability and obey a code of conduct that included disclosures.

PHOTOS THR's 2014 Power Lawyers List: Portraits

NBC's primary defense against the lawsuit was that its presentation of statements in the Dateline program were "substantially true," and on a motion to dismiss, a trial judge bought that argument.

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NBC 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

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NBC Must Contend With 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit After Appellate Ruling

Posted: at 3:47 pm

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Chris Hansen

On Wednesday, the 10thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge had too quickly dismissed an insurance broker's defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, reporter Chris Hansen and others over a 2008 Dateline segment titled "Tricks of the Trade."

"This case is anything but normal," writes Circuit Judge Terrence O'Brien.

PHOTOS Hollywood's Most Fascinating Legal Sagas, From Casey Kasem to Michael Jackson

Among other things, the case addressed whether a journalists privilege, commonly understood to protect the identity of anonymous sources, extends further in Colorado. It also raises the issue of whether journalists, acting with government cooperation, can enter a private place under false pretenses without violating an individual's or company's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit and appeal were brought by Tyrone Clark and his company, Brokers Choice of America (BCA), upset with the way Dateline had used snippets of Clark's two-day seminar for insurance brokers located on the company's property in Colorado. With assistance from Alabama officials, Dateline's crew surreptitiously filmed the seminar, and according to Clark's company, used its own tricks of the trade selective editing and commentary to present Clarks statements out of context.

The Dateline segment presented Clark as using or teaching scare tactics to get seniors to buy annuities, but BCA says that a complete viewing of Clark's seminar would show him taking a more nuanced approach to annuities that Clark said they were not for everyone and urged his students to probe their customers' situations for suitability and obey a code of conduct that included disclosures.

PHOTOS THR's 2014 Power Lawyers List: Portraits

NBC's primary defense against the lawsuit was that its presentation of statements in the Dateline program were "substantially true," and on a motion to dismiss, a trial judge bought that argument.

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NBC Must Contend With 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit After Appellate Ruling

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RWW News: Mike Vanderboegh Promises ‘Second Amendment Remedies’ To Washington Background Check Law – Video

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RWW News: Mike Vanderboegh Promises #39;Second Amendment Remedies #39; To Washington Background Check Law
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-government-leader-promises-second-amendment-remedies-washington-background-check-law Right Wing Watch reports on the extreme rhetoric and ...

By: RWW Blog

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RWW News: Mike Vanderboegh Promises 'Second Amendment Remedies' To Washington Background Check Law - Video

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Concealed Carrie – Satchel – Video

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Concealed Carrie - Satchel

By: The Second Amendment Armory

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Concealed Carrie - Satchel - Video

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12.16.14 | Second Scoop: Obama pick conf, Bushmaster sued, Gun Rights WINNING, Good Guys, SilencerCo – Video

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12.16.14 | Second Scoop: Obama pick conf, Bushmaster sued, Gun Rights WINNING, Good Guys, SilencerCo
The Second Scoop: Chris Cheng provides humor, insight, and commentary on the top gun stories you should know about. Come back every Tuesday night for a delicious serving of Second Amendment.

By: Top Shot Chris Cheng

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12.16.14 | Second Scoop: Obama pick conf, Bushmaster sued, Gun Rights WINNING, Good Guys, SilencerCo - Video

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First Amendment Rights Violations in Buffalo, NY – Video

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First Amendment Rights Violations in Buffalo, NY

By: Ignite The Youth

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First Amendment Rights Violations in Buffalo, NY - Video

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I Think Outside My Box: A Movement for Artistic Expression – Video

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I Think Outside My Box: A Movement for Artistic Expression
Street art may seem like just that, but this community-driven sculpture has become a movement for the First Amendment.

By: Skyler Bouchard

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I Think Outside My Box: A Movement for Artistic Expression - Video

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First amendment Interview with Miss Wilkinson – Video

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First amendment Interview with Miss Wilkinson

By: marina ruiz

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First amendment Interview with Miss Wilkinson - Video

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Your Company E-mail: OK for Union Organizing, Not for Bake Sales

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The First Amendment doesnt stop companies from cracking down on their employees speech. So your boss can ban you from using work e-mail to share funny cat gifs, or organize a bake sale, or mourn the passing of your favorite celebrity. But now your boss cant ban you from using work e-mail to organize a union.

In a party-line 3-2 decision (pdf), the National Labor Relations Board ruled Thursday that employees who use company e-mail to do their jobs can also use it to organize to improve them. That includes trying to form a union as well as other forms of collective action at work. Under the new ruling, companies can still impose some restrictions on the kind of e-mails they allow on their servers (such as no gigantic attachments), and they can still keep tabs on their employees e-mail activities, though they cant single out union activism for scrutiny. But outside of rare exceptions, companies cant prohibit e-mailing your co-workers to try to transform your workplace.

That new decision overturns a precedent from just seven years ago, when Republicans who then had a majority on the labor board wrote (pdf) that it would be kosher to allow e-mail solicitations for the Salvation Army but not for a labor union. The consequences of that error are too serious to permit it to stand, the three Democrats who now hold a majority on the NLRB wrote. Neither the fact that e-mail exists in a virtual (rather than physical) space, nor the fact that it allows conversations to multiply and spread more quickly than face-to-face communication, reduces its centrality to employees discussions, including their [National Labor Relations Act] Section 7-protected discussions about terms and conditions of employment, they argued. If anything, e-mails effectiveness as a mechanism for quickly sharing information and views increases its importance to employee communication.

In siding with employees yesterday, the NLRB rebuffed arguments that allowing pro-union e-mails would increase the risk of computer viruses; that employees dont need to organize over work e-mail because they have Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR); and that forcing companies to let their Internet servers be used to spread pro-union messages they disagree with would violate employers First Amendment rights. E-mail users typically understand that an e-mail message conveys the view of the sender, the majority wrote, not those of the e-mail account provider.

The NLRBs new approach to organizing over work e-mail accounts echoes a series of decisions in recent years that protect workers right to use Facebook and Twitter to talk about how to improve their jobs. For most other speech, companies have free rein to punish their employees for what they say online, even if they do it on their day off. Chatter about banding together and organizing is one of the only things companies are legally prevented from silencingeven if its something they would most like to choke off.

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Your Company E-mail: OK for Union Organizing, Not for Bake Sales

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Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

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A little more than 16 months ago, word emerged that the FBI exploited a recently patched Firefox vulnerability to unmask Tor users visiting a notorious child pornography site. It turns out that the feds had waged an even broader uncloaking campaign a year earlier by using a long-abandoned part of the open source Metasploit exploit framework to identify Tor-using suspects.

The Decloaking Engine went live in 2006 and used five separate methods to break anonymization systems. One method was an Adobe Flash application that initiated a direct connection with the end user, bypassing Tor protections and giving up the user's IP address. Tor Project officials have long been aware of the vulnerability and strenuously advise against installing Flash. According to Wired:

The decloaking demonstration eventually was rendered obsolete by a nearly idiot-proof version of the Tor client called the Tor Browser Bundle, which made security blunders more difficult. By 2011, Moore says virtually everyone visiting the Metasploit decloaking site was passing the anonymity test, so he retired the service. But when the bureau obtained its Operation Torpedo warrants the following year, it chose Moores Flash code as its network investigative techniquethe FBIs lingo for a court-approved spyware deployment.

Torpedo unfolded when the FBI seized control of a trio of Dark Net child porn sites based in Nebraska. Armed with a special search warrant crafted by Justice Department lawyers in Washington DC, the FBI used the sites to deliver the Flash application to visitors browsers, tricking some of them into identifying their real IP address to an FBI server. The operation identified 25 users in the US and an unknown number abroad.

Gross learned from prosecutors that the FBI used the Decloaking Engine for the attack they even provided a link to the code on Archive.org. Compared to other FBI spyware deployments, the Decloaking Engine was pretty mild. In other cases, the FBI has, with court approval, used malware to covertly access a targets files, location, web history and webcam. But Operation Torpedo is notable in one way. Its the first timethat we know ofthat the FBI deployed such code broadly against every visitor to a website, instead of targeting a particular suspect.

The tactic is a direct response to the growing popularity of Tor and, in particular, an explosion in so-called hidden servicesspecial websites, with addresses ending in .onion, that can be reached only over the Tor network.

Hidden services are a mainstay of the nefarious activities carried out on the so-called Dark Net, the home of drug markets, child porn, and other criminal activity. But theyre also used by organizations that want to evade surveillance or censorship for legitimate reasons, like human rights groups, journalists, and, as of October, even Facebook.

A big problem with hidden service, from a law enforcement perspective, is that when the feds track down and seize the servers, they find that the web server logs are useless to them. With a conventional crime site, those logs typically provide a handy list of Internet IP addresses for everyone using the site quickly leveraging one bust into a cascade of dozens, or even hundreds. But over Tor, every incoming connection traces back only as far as the nearest Tor nodea dead end.

Taken together, Operation Torpedo and the campaign used last year to identify Tor-using child porn suspects demonstrate the determination feds show in bypassing Tor protections. They also underscore the feds' rapidly growing skill. Whereas Operation Torpedo abused a six-year-old weakness that ensnared only people who ignored strenuously repeated advice, the latter operation exploited a vulnerability that had only recently been patched in Firefox.

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Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

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