Daily Archives: March 19, 2020

No, professors, the First Amendment does not protect you from receiving a warning from your universityaboutviolating its nondiscrimination policies when you talk to or about your transgender students in discriminatory ways in class.

Nicholas Meriwether, professor of philosophy at Shawnee State University in Ohio,had used sir while responding in his Fall 2018 political philosophy class to a transgender woman student. After class that day, the student asked Dr. Meriwether to refer to her as a woman and use feminine pronouns (she, her) or titles (Miss, Ms.) when addressing or talking about her.He refused. Instead, he resorted to referring tothe student by her last name only, while continuing to address other students in class as Mr. and Ms. followed by their last name.

Nicholas Meriwether

The student filed a complaint with the university, which investigated and presented Dr. Meriwether with a written warning to not violate the schools nondiscrimination policies. (See previous post on this here.)

Dr. Meriwether then sued Shawnee State University, arguing that the warning had violated hisConstitutional rights. From the initial decision:

He is a professing evangelical Christian and member of the Presbyterian Church of America with sincerely-held religious beliefs about gender, and he does not believe that an individuals gender can be changed after the moment of conception He objects to communicating what he believes to be a University mandated ideological message regarding gender identity that he does not believe and which he believes contradicts (and would force him to violate) his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Meriwether sought a judgment that the schools nondiscrimination policies and practices violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Shawnee State University officials named in the lawsuit asked the court to dismiss it.

This past September the court did dismiss the case, making use of various precedents, including the judgments that Universities may sanction professors whose pedagogical attitudes and teaching methods do not conform to institutional standards and that although public universities may not force professors to endorse or eschew specific viewpoints, the First Amendment does not bar a public university from requiring that its faculty treat each other and their students with civility.

Meriwether appealed to the district court, which rejected his appeallast month. Meriwether has now filed a further appeal.

Go here to read the rest:
The First Amendment, a Philosophy Professor, and Pronouns - Daily Nous

By Jim ZacharyPresidentGeorgia First Amendment Foundationhttp://sunshineweek.org/

The media is most definitely not your enemy.

Far from being the enemy of the people, day in and day out we take our role as the Fourth Estate seriously and work hard to protect your right to know, making public records requests and attending public meetings to keep you informed.

Why?

Because we believe all the business government does, whether in open public meetings or behind closed doors, is your business.

We believe every last penny government spends is your money.

We believe it is your right to know every transaction, every decision, every expenditure and every deliberation of your government.

Whether talking about the White House, the statehouse or the county courthouse, all the documents held in government halls belong to the people, and all the business conducted by our governors is public business.

We believe our government your government can only be of, by and for the people when it is out in front of the people. Primary to our republic is the understanding that we are the government and the government is us. The only powers held by federal, state or local government are the powers we give.

So, whether it is Congress, the states General Assembly, county commission, city council or the board of education, it is your right to know all of the peoples business.

When you attend local city, county or school board meetings, ask questions and hold elected representatives accountable, you are not minding their business, you are minding your own business.

When you make a public records request, you are not asking local records custodians to give you something that just belongs to them or the office where they work. You are simply asking for your own documents.

The Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amendment which guarantees the freedom of speech and the freedom of press, is not intended to protect the media per se. Rather, the founders built a hedge of protection around the media because the media guards and fights for the publics right to know.

According to a Brookings Institution report, more than 2,000 newspapers across the country ceased publication in the last 15 years or so. The shuttering of newspapers presents a very real and present danger to our most basic freedoms. Thats why communities should support their local newspapers, through subscriptions and advertising, now more than ever before.

Journalists keep an eye on government, shine the light on its actions, fight the good fight for access to documents and meetings, champion transparency and defend the First Amendment because of a core belief in your basic, fundamental rights principally, your right to know.

CNHI Deputy National Editor Jim Zachary is the president of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

View post:
Sunshine Week: It's always your right to know - The Highland County Press

John Elwood briefly reviews Mondays relists

This weeks installment of Relist Watch will be unlike any one youve ever read. Most of them read like they were written by some unshaven lout in his basement wearing sweatpants. By contrast, this one actually was written by an unshaven lout in his basement wearing sweatpants. So while this post may be bad as ever, at least its authentic.

Practically nothing has happened since our last installment. This week, the Supreme Court found its replacement for Mathena v. Malvo, 18-217, involving a question about whether the Eighth Amendment requires a judge imposing sentence to make a finding that a juvenile is permanently incorrigible before imposing a sentence of life without parole. All the other relisted cases presenting the same issue are now on hold. And I was half right about Pittman v. Harris, 19-466, a first-time relist involving the proper summary judgment standard in a qualified immunity case. I was right that the court would not grant review in the case. But I was wrong that some sort of opinion would be forthcoming: Instead, the court noted in just a single sentence that Justice Samuel Alito would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. All the rest of last weeks relists are back and I suspect well be seeing opinions in some of them soon.

Two new relists this week. First up is Archdiocese of Washington v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 18-1455. If its facts read like a law-school exam hypothetical, its because they already have been used for that very purpose. WMATA, the entity responsible for running the capital citys worldclass transit system, has a number of advertising guidelines. Guideline 12 prohibits [a]dvertisements that promote or oppose any religion, religious practice or belief. As Christmas 2017 was approaching, the Archdiocese of Washington sought to advertise its Find the Perfect Gift campaign on the exterior of the buses WMATA operated. Its proposed advertisement depicted the silhouette of three shepherds and sheep accompanied by the message: Find the Perfect Gift. Although WMATA accepts a wide variety of advertisements, including secular advertisements addressing Christmas and charitable giving, it refused to run the Archdioceses advertisement because of its policy prohibiting advertisements that promote or oppose religion or reflect a religious perspective. Then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh was on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that heard argument, but he moved to his current position soon afterwards. The remaining two judges then upheld WMATAs policy, holding that it was a constitutional viewpoint-neutral restriction that was consistent with the purposes of the nonpublic forum.

The Supreme Court first considered this case at the so-called long conference at the end of the summer recess on October 1. I presume the court was holding it perhaps for Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which raises another free exercise question. On February 19, it released the hold and set the case for consideration at the March 6 conference, and then relisted it for the upcoming March 20 conference. The case pits two former solicitors general against each other, with Paul Clement for the Archdiocese and Don Verrilli for WMATA. But because Kavanaugh will almost certainly recuse himself from further participation, there is a prospect of the courts dividing 4-4 on the case.

United States v. California, 19-532, should be familiar to inveterate time-wasters, because it was featured in Relist Watch in mid-January. That case concerns several California laws enacted in 2017 that generally prohibit state law-enforcement officials and various employers from providing federal immigration authorities with release dates and other information about individuals subject to federal immigration enforcement, and also restrict the transfer of people in state custody to federal immigration custody. The federal government sued California, arguing that those statutes are preempted by federal law or barred by intergovernmental immunity. The district court enjoined a couple of provisions from going into effect (prohibiting employers from consenting to federal immigration inspections and limiting employers ability to reverify employees work authorizations), but it allowed virtually all to go into force. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the district courts refusal to enjoin most provisions, but vacated its failure to enjoin one provision. The government seeks review, arguing that certain provisions prohibiting state officials from providing information to, or transferring individuals to the feds are preempted. The court briefly held this case after the January 17 conference, but released that hold on March 3. And now the case is relisted.

Thats all this week. Now to get back to pressing business. Everyone stay safe!

New Relists

Archdiocese of Washington v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 18-1455

Issues: (1) Whether the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authoritys policy of refusing to accept advertisements that promote or oppose religion or reflect a religious perspective violates the First Amendment; and (2) whether that discrimination against religious speech violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

(relisted after the March 6 conference)

United States v. California, 19-532

Issue: Whether provisions of California law that, with certain limited exceptions, prohibit state law-enforcement officials from providing federal immigration authorities with release dates and other information about individuals subject to federal immigration enforcement, and restrict the transfer of aliens in state custody to federal immigration custody, are preempted by federal law or barred by intergovernmental immunity.

(relisted after the March 6 conference)

Returning Relists

Andrus v. Texas, 18-9674

Issue: Whether the standard for assessing ineffective assistance of counsel claims, announced inStrickland v. Washington, fails to protect the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and the 14th Amendment right to due process when, in death-penalty cases involving flagrantly deficient performance, courts can deny relief following a truncated no prejudice analysis that does not account for the evidence amassed in a habeas proceeding and relies on a trial record shaped by trial counsels ineffective representation.

(rescheduled before the November 1, 2019, and November 8, 2019, conferences; relisted after the November 15, 2019, November 22, 2019, December 6, 2019, December 13, 2019, January 10, January 17, January 24, February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Cannon v. Seay, 19-311

Issues: (1) Whether, in review of a state decision under28 U.S.C. 2241, when a federal appellate court must determine if double-jeopardy protection bars retrial after a mistrial is granted over a defendants objection based upon the absence of a critical prosecution witness, the required strict scrutiny applied to the legal determination of manifest necessity constrains in equal or greater measure the deference universally accorded a trial courts fact-finding; and (2) whether, in granting relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit egregiously failed to apply clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court inArizona v. Washingtonand accord deference to the state courts ruling finding manifest necessity for mistrial when it resolved that omission of a reference to consideration of alternatives in the courts oral ruling made the ruling fatally insufficient, even though the record shows the state court did not act rashly in granting a mistrial, but pursued a cautious approach that included suspending the trial to allow a search for the missing witness prior to considering and granting the states mistrial motion.

(relisted after the January 10, January 17, January 24, February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

The Rams Football Company, LLC v. St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, 19-672

Issue: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits a court to refuse to enforce the terms of an arbitration agreement assigning questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator if those terms would be enforceable under ordinary state-law contract principles in a non-arbitration context.

(relisted after the January 24 January 24, February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

VF Jeanswear LP v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 19-446

Issues: (1) Whether Title VII authorizes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to continue investigating a charge of discrimination after the commission issues the charging party a right-to-sue notice and after the charging party pursues private litigation; and (2) whether the EEOC can rely on a charge of discrimination to demand information from an employer about acts or practices not affecting the charging party.

(relisted after the February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Davis v. United States, 19-5421

Issue: Whether factual error is categorically immune from plain error review.

(rescheduled before the January 10, 2020 conference; relisted after the February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Bazan v. United States, 19-6113

Issue: Whether factual error is categorically immune from plain error review.

(relisted after the February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Bazan v. United States, 19-6431

Issue: Whether factual error is categorically immune from plain error review.

(relisted after the February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Halprin v. Davis, 19-6156

Issue: Whether Randy Halprins second federal petition raising a judicial bias claim is second or successive under28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(2)if the judge concealed his bias by failing to recuse himself, and the public exposure of his bigotry after the conclusion of Halprins initial habeas proceedings in the district court created Halprins first fair opportunity to present his claim.

(relisted after the February 21, February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Avery v. United States, 19-633

Issue: Whether 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(1) applies to federal prisoners seeking relief under 28 U.S.C. 2255.

(relisted after the February 28 and March 6 conferences)

Posted in Archdiocese of Washington v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, U.S. v. California, Andrus v. Texas, Cannon v. Seay, The Rams Football Company, LLC v. St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, Avery v. U.S., VF Jeanswear LP v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Davis v. U.S., Bazan v. U.S., Bazan v. U.S., Halprin v. Davis, Jones v. Mississippi, Featured, Cases in the Pipeline

Recommended Citation: John Elwood, Relist Watch in the Time of Cholera, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 19, 2020, 9:22 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/03/relist-watch-in-the-time-of-cholera/

Originally posted here:
Relist Watch in the Time of Cholera - SCOTUSblog

The transparency of today, as good or as bad as it is, is not the transparency of tomorrow.

Disclosure of online advertising, micro-targeting, and true identity issues of election-advertising spenders frame key new areas of concern for democracy advocates and for journalists because its difficult to hold elected officials accountable without robust disclosure of whos behind those candidates political campaigns and the issues they advocate for or against.

Follow the money, the decades-old adage born from the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration, is no simple task if the money is hidden behind layer upon layer of deception. Its a type of deception practiced by Russian oligarchs to protect their standing with elected leaders, and their billions of rubles. Its a type of deception practiced by dictators to retain power even when their people are starving and protesting. And its a type of deception practiced by unscrupulous candidates, lawmakers, and political money-launderers in this country to gain and to hold on to power.

Nixon wasnt the first to practice this deception, and he wont be the last unless we the people make a change. That means:

Ask candidates to make disclosure and transparency a priority in their campaigns. And practice what they preach. Scholarly analyses show that voters elect candidates who do so.

Call on elected lawmakers to properly fund and staff disclosure agencies tasked with ensuring candidates run campaigns within the legal boundaries, file their campaign finance reports in a timely manner, and quickly release that information for public eyes. The Federal Election Commission is the dismal example of a disclosure agency that has been neutered by politicians who say theyre against onerous bureaucracy but who really fear accountability.

Support efforts to bring disclosure and accountability into the twenty-first century with technology available to any middle school student. Candidates and committees shouldnt be filing financial reports on paper, but in many states they still do. In fact, the U.S. Senate filed paper reports until just a few years ago.

Demand that candidates acknowledge and denounce deceptive campaign practices and advertising online, in direct mail, and on the television and advocate for best practices for twenty-first century disclosure. States like California, Maryland, and Washington are exploring and implementing new online disclosure rules. Countries in Europe are setting strict standards for online activity and policing them vigorously.

Bring back civic education in schools. Reward high schoolers who sign up to register voters or be election judges. Give them extra credit for knocking on doors for local candidates, stuffing envelopes, or even building a candidates web page and developing social-media outreach.

Those opposed to disclosure and the transparency and accountability that it enables argue that it infringes on their First Amendment rights. But those who respect the First Amendment understand that it is something to be honored and cherished. No good can come of soiling it to win elections with lies and deceptions.

Edwin Bender is executive director and a founding incorporator of the National Institute on Money in State Politics (1999). He emphasizes the need to break down barriers to public disclosure of campaign finance and related information in poor-reporting states, while pushing advances in cross-state issue analyses and web-based data aggregation and dissemination. Prior, he worked as a journalist for 10+ years at newspapers in Montana, Alaska, and Washington.

Link:
Transparency is transforming | Columns - Weatherford Democrat

Everyone should obey the law. Obeying the law protects peace, public order, and good health.

The First Amendments Religion Clauses were designed to protect such a legal system. They aimed to keep a diverse population at peace by giving them one shared system of law. That system sensibly arose from the terrible Wars of Religion, which are the main historical background to religious freedom in the United States. Religions always disagree, and frequently dispute their disagreements. Therefore, the common law cannot be religion-based, and everyone must follow it. Professor Ellis West made this point in his book, The Free Exercise of Religion in America: Its Original Constitutional Meaning, when he concluded it is highly unlikely that early Americans believed that the free exercise of religion entails a right to religion-based exemptions from civil laws that the government has a right to pass (p. 305).

Occasionally the Supreme Court understands this point, as it did in Employment Division v. Smith, the sensible, yet controversial, case that ruled everyone must obey the law, without judicially-concocted religious exceptions. Smith is frequently criticized, and may be overruled soon. Post-Smith, moreover, Congress and many state legislatures granted legislative exemptions to religions through their federal and state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs).

It was the federal RFRA, not the Free Exercise Clause, that granted employers the right to refuse contraceptive insurance to their employees in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Even though using contraceptives is a constitutional right, and even though the government was trying to pass universal health care coverage in the Affordable Care Act, i.e., health care coverage that would cover everyone, RFRAs religious exemption gave many employers the right to disobey health law and set their own no-contraception standard. President Donald Trump has expanded the exemption so that even more employers can deny their employees the insurance coverage. The employers no longer have a responsibility to report their denials to the government or the insurance company. Trump also threatened to cut off all federal health aid to California because it has a law that requires insurance companies to cover constitutionally-protected abortions.

Trump has also enlarged medical conscience against patients rights. Medical personnel already enjoyed extensive conscience clause protection, a legal right given to protect them from providing any service they do not want to provide. Trumps new religious freedoms policies allow medical personnel to refuse patients for any reason of conscience. The medical conscience trumps the health of women, LGBTQIs, people of color, minorities, the poor, or anyone the doctors or nurses conscience dislikes. The more appropriate, follow-the-law, standard would be to recognize that health law is supposed to protect patients health first, not consciences of medical providers.

LGBTQIs are a special object of discrimination. The dissenting justices in the gay marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, urged the protection of anti-gay conscience. Next term, the Supreme Court will hear a case, Fulton v. Philadelphia, in which Philadelphia refused to fund Catholic adoption agencies because they discriminated against same-sex couples in the placement of children. Philadelphia correctly wants the same antidiscrimination laws to apply to everyone. The religious freedom asked for in the case gives Catholics the possibility of winning a case in which Smith is overturned, and they earn a right to set the law their own way instead of obeying the law as it is.

Vaccines are needed by everyone in order to preserve herd immunity and protect each other from disease. States are learning what happens if they hand out religious or philosophical exemptions, letting people be vaccine-exempt for any personal reason. Outbreaks of measles in California, New York and other states have taught that everyone needs to be vaccinated. States have been changing their laws to require vaccination, realizing only everyones obedience to the health laws can protect everyone else.

For many years, religious sex abusers hid their abuse under the argument that the First Amendment protected them from the law. That claim allowed them to hide their abusers records, and to protect the abusers instead of the abused. Gradually the courts learned in many abuse cases that religious people of any status need to be sued and to be required to obey the laws that protect children. Unfortunately, not all states allow these lawsuits to proceed. There is still the wrong idea that unlawful religions are protected from court scrutiny by the First Amendment.

Due to numerous court decisions from both state and federal courts, the First Amendment now leaves religious organizations free to discriminate against anyone they call a minister. According to the Court, the right to discriminate on the basis of age, disabilities, gender, sexual orientation, race and all the other antidiscrimination laws belongs to religions. This rule is called the ministerial exception, which is an affirmative defense. It generally protects employers instead of employees because the case never gets to trial if the affirmative defense is met.

The Ninth Circuit recently ruled, correctly, that a Catholic laywoman and a non-Catholic woman were teachers, not ministers, and so able to sue their employers for disabilities and age discrimination. The Supreme Court was originally scheduled to hear oral argument in the two cases, St. James School v. Biel and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, on April 1, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has postponed argument. We wait to see if the Court will affirm the Ninth Circuit, or will instead expand the ability of employers to turn their religious employees into ministers who can never sue for wrongdoing.

It is hard to imagine a peaceful United States that allows religions a constitutional or statutory right to discriminate against all types of people. A system that, at the same time, allows them tax benefits. Church status with the IRS gives churches tremendous advantages, allowing churches to keep private much information about them. A whistleblower recently complained that the privacy of the tax laws allowed the Latter-day Saints to make $100 billion in a supposedly tax-exempt investment fund requiring the funds to be distributed.

Bob Jones should have set that issue straight. In 1983, the Supreme Court, 8-1, upheld the IRSs decision to revoke Bob Jones Universitys tax-exempt status because the school discriminated on the basis of race. Justice Samuel Alito asked in the oral argument at Obergefell if Bob Jones would apply to cases involving sexual orientation discrimination:

Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to taxexempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?

The answer to that question should be yes, but the IRS has not yet moved to make it so. The non-exempt rule should be applied to all organizations that violate antidiscrimination laws. They should not have a constitutional right to break the laws and be tax exempt while they do it.

Imagine what that a law-obeying country would look like. Everyone would obey the laws banning racial discrimination. All employers would provide contraceptive insurance. All employers and stores would respect LGBTQI rights. No law would protect child abuse or abusers. Everyone would be vaccinated to protect their own and everyone elses health. Conscience clauses would not provide medical providers a reason to deny sterilization, contraception, abortion, the right to die, or any other medical procedure to any patient.

Thats what would happen if everyone would follow the law.

Link:
Obey the Law - Justia Verdict

In 2017, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit looking to force the FBI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to cough up info about Tatt-C (also known as the Tattoo Recognition Challenge): a tattoo recognition program that involves creating an open tattoo database to use in training software to automatically recognize tattoos.

For years, the EFF has been saying that developing algorithms that the FBI and law enforcement can use to identify similar tattoos from images similar to how automated facial recognition systems work raises significant First Amendment questions. The thinking goes like this: you can strip out names and other personally identifiable information (PII) from the tattoo images, but the images themselves often contain PII, such as when they depict loved ones faces, names, birthdates or anniversary dates, for example.

As part of the Tatt-C challenge, participating institutions received a CD-ROM full of images to test the third parties tattoo recognition software. That dataset has 15,000 images, and most were collected from prisoners, who have no say in whether their biometrics are collected and who were unaware of what those images would be used for.

Since 2017, when the EFF used a FOIA lawsuit to get at the names of the participating institutions, its been trying to find out whether the entities realize that theres been no ethical review of the image collection procedure, which is generally required when conducting research with human subjects.

On Tuesday, the EFF presented a scorecard with those institutions responses.

The results: nearly all of the entities that responded confirmed that theyd deleted the data. However, 15 institutions didnt bother to respond, or said You can count us as a non-response to this inquiry, to a letter sent by the EFF in January.

In that letter, the EFF requested that the entities destroy the dataset; conduct an internal review of all research generated using the Tatt-C dataset; and review their policies for training biometric recognition algorithms using images or other biometric data collected from individuals who neither consented to being photographed, nor to the images being used to train algorithms.

Nearly all the entities that responded confirmed that the data had been deleted. But at least one university was still conducting research with the dataset five years later: the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) School of Engineering Computer Engineering in Brazil. The university sent a letter saying that researchers are only required to seek ethics review for human data collected within Brazil. Thus, its researcher would keep working on the tattoo images through the end of year and then would delete them.

UNICAMP also refused to acknowledge that the images contained personal information, the EFF says. The groups take on the matter:

Tattoos are also incredibly personal and often contain specific information and identifiers that could be used to track down a person even if their face and identity have been obscured. For example, even though the names of the inmates were removed from the Tatt-C metadata, the tattoos themselves sometimes contained personal information, such as life-like depictions of loved ones, names, and birth dates that all remain viewable to researchers.

UNICAMP also said that its researcher Prof. Lo Pini Magalhe is adding to the dataset by grabbing images of tattoos from the web: a practice that the EFF noted has increasingly come under fire from Congress in light of the Clearview AI face recognition scandal.

Clearview has been sued for scraping 3 billion faceprints so it can sell its facial recognition technology to law enforcement and other clients; been told to knock it off by Facebook, Google and YouTube; and has lost its entire database of (mostly law enforcement agency) clients to hackers.

Its not that the FBI and NIST didnt at least try to strip PII from the images metadata. Its that they failed to identify PII in the images themselves. In one example, by using image data such as the photo-realistic images of inmates relatives, their names, dates of birth and death, EFF says it was able to identify the individual within minutes with a Google search.

After the EFF raised concerns about the PII in the images, NIST retroactively stripped images containing PII from its dataset. It was too late to strip the PII from the dataset copies it had distributed to third parties, however.

As well, NISTs and the FBIs evaluation of the dataset also failed to consider that the individuals associated with the tattoos could be reidentified when their inked biometrics were combined with other datasets, such as those compiled from Flickr or other social media sites.

The EFF has found a number of cases where the recipients of the dataset have, in fact, identified individuals via their tattoos:

Documents produced in response to our FOIA suit include a presentation showing that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation had the ability to match tattoos from websites to a national criminal database. Researchers at Nanyang Technological University used the Flickr API to download thousands of images, which it then used in research that also involved the NIST dataset.

The EFF maintains that tattoos are unique: unlike other biometrics, such as faceprints or fingerprints, theyre an expression of identity. The choice to get a tattoo is a form of speech, it says, whether that means promoting their favorite sports team, celebrating the birth of a child, or a traditional tattoo tied to ones heritage.

That makes this a free-speech issue, the group says:

Its rare for a tattoo not to be an expression of the wearers culture and beliefs. In recognizing the First Amendment right to get a tattoo, and limitations on the government from preventing citizens from expressing this right, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has said, We have little difficulty recognizing that a tattoo is a form of pure expression entitled to full constitutional protection.

In fact, NIST itself has justified the usefulness of tattoo recognition in identifying individuals, saying that the images suggest affiliation to gangs, subcultures, religious or ritualistic beliefs, or political ideology.

Go here to see the original:
NIST shared dataset of tattoos thats been used to identify prisoners - Naked Security

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has published new resources outlining recommendations for journalists, legislators, and courts to ensure the press and publics right of access to government information and proceedings is protected while entities take necessary steps to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Press freedom and government transparency during COVID-19 addresses frequently asked questions that journalists and others may have about court access, public records and open meetings, and the impact of measures implemented under governments emergency powers in response to the coronavirus. Specifically, it provides guidance on:

The Reporters Committee will continue to update these resources and others as the situation around COVID-19 and how federal, state, and local governments respond to it evolves. Anyone who has information about government responses to COVID-19 that impact newsgathering rights or public access should submit them to media@rcfp.org. The Reporters Committee will use this material for addditional updates as conditions warrant.

Journalists who have questions about or need assistance with their legal rights, or who encounter issues while reporting on COVID-19, can contact the Reporters Committees hotline by filling out an online form, emailing hotline@rcfp.org, or calling 1-800-336-4243.

View Press freedom and government transparency during COVID-19.

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.

Read more:
COVID-19: Press Freedom and Government Transparency - RCFP - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

An important reform that was removed from the bill would have allowed the amicus to directly petition the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review to examine a FISA Court ruling the amicus disagreed with. This is a commonsense measure. Currently, if the FISA Court sides with the amicus, the Justice Department can appeal to the review court, but the amicus does not have the same option if the FISA Court sides with the Justice Department. But instead, the final bill only permits the amicus to ask the FISA Court to submit a petition to the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review, requesting that it review the case on appeal. The effect is that the amicus essentially must ask FISA Court judges to facilitate an effort to get their own opinions overruled. The bill does require the judges to provide a written explanation (which will then become public) if they refuse the amicuss request, which will hopefully limit bad-faith refusals of petitions for review. But there is no practical reason for the FISA Court to serve as a gatekeeper for petitions to the review court, which already has the authority to choose to accept or refuse cases.

In a positive, but too-limited step, the House bill also expands the amicuss ability to participate in cases involving First Amendment-protected activities. The bill requires the amicus to be brought in for cases that present exceptional concerns to First Amendment-protected activities; in contrast, a previous version of the bill contained a broader provision that would have allowed the amicus to participate in cases involving significant concerns. While the final language is a positive expansion of the amicuss role, it is indefensible to cut the amicus out of situations that present significantbut not necessarily exceptionalconcerns to First Amendment-protected activities.

The bill provides some improved access to information for the amicus. It allows the amicus to request the FISA Court provide access to any particular materials or information (or category of materials or information) that are relevant to the amicuss duties, which will aid the amicus in participating effectively in proceedings. And including category of materials or information is especially important to prevent a situation where the amicus wouldnt know what materials to ask for without seeing what materials exist. Its worth noting, though, that this provision was watered down from a previous version of the bill, which included a requirement for the FISA Court to disclose basic information, such as applications, certifications, petitions, and motions.

Given the recent concerns about the veracity of claims the government makes in FISA Court proceedings, its disappointing to see such limited reforms to the role of the amicusparticularly in the wake of the inspector general report on government misrepresentations of fact related to surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Experts have highlighted how the amicus should serve as a watchdog against this type of abuse, and a bill introduced by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee included a thoughtful proposal to involve the amicus in surveillance applications targeting U.S. persons. (Several minor provisions of that bill were incorporated into the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, but its expansion of the amicus role was not.)

More:
PATRIOT Act Morass: Gains and Stalled Reforms - Project On Government Oversight

Donald Trump at the NBC Universal 2015 Winter TCA Press Tour. (Joe Seer / Shutterstock)

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Every month, it seems, brings a new act in the Trump administrations war on the media. In January, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exploded at National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly when he didnt like questions she askedand then banned a colleague of hers from the plane on which he was leaving for a trip to Europe and Asia. In February, the Trump staff booted a Bloomberg News reporter out of an Iowa election campaign event.Ad Policy

The president has repeatedly called the press an enemy of the peoplethe very phrase that, in Russian (vrag naroda),was applied by Joseph Stalins prosecutors to the millions of people they sent to the gulag or to execution chambers. In that context, Trumps term for BuzzFeed, a failing pile of garbage, sounds comparatively benign. Last year, Axios revealed that some of the presidents supporters were trying to raise a fund of more than $2 million to gather damaging information on journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outfits. In 2018, it took a court order to force the White House to restore CNN reporter Jim Acostas press pass. And the list goes on.

Yet it remains deceptively easy to watch all the furor over the media with the feeling that its still intact and safely protected. After all, didnt Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rail against the press in their presidencies? And dont we have the First Amendment? In my copy of Samuel Eliot Morisons 1,150-page Oxford History of the American People, the word censorship doesnt even appear in the index; while, in an article on The History of Publishing, the Encyclopedia Britannica reassures us that in the United States, no formal censorship has ever been established.

So how bad could it get? The answer to that question, given the actual history of this country, is: much worse.

Though few remember it today, exactly 100 years ago, this countrys media was laboring under the kind of official censorship that would undoubtedly thrill both Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. And yet the name of the man who zestfully banned magazines and newspapers of all sorts doesnt even appear in either Morisons history, that Britannica article, or just about anywhere else either.

The story begins in the spring of 1917, when the United States entered the First World War. Despite his reputation as a liberal internationalist, the president at that moment, Woodrow Wilson, cared little for civil liberties. After calling for war, he quickly pushed Congress to pass what became known as the Espionage Act, which, in amended form, is still in effect. Nearly a century later, National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden would be charged under it, and in these years he would hardly be alone.

Despite its name, the act was not really motivated by fears of wartime espionage. By 1917, there were few German spies left in the United States. Most of them had been caught two years earlier when their paymaster got off a New York City elevated train leaving behind a briefcase quickly seized by the American agent tailing him.Current Issue

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Rather, the new law allowed the government to define any opposition to the war as criminal. And since many of those who spoke out most strongly against entry into the conflict came from the ranks of the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World (famously known as the Wobblies), or the followers of the charismatic anarchist Emma Goldman, this in effect allowed the government to criminalize much of the Left. (My new book, Rebel Cinderella, follows the career of Rose Pastor Stokes, a famed radical orator who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act.)

Censorship was central to that repressive era. As the Washington Evening Star reported in May 1917, President Wilson today renewed his efforts to put an enforced newspaper censorship section into the espionage bill. The Act was then being debated in Congress. I have every confidence, he wrote to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, that the great majority of the newspapers of the country will observe a patriotic reticence about everything whose publication could be of injury, but in every country there are some persons in a position to do mischief in this field.

Subject to punishment under the Espionage Act of 1917, among others, would be anyone who shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.

Who was it who would determine what was disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive? When it came to anything in print, the Act gave that power to the postmaster general, former Texas Congressman Albert Sidney Burleson. He has been called the worst postmaster general in American history, writes the historian G. J. Meyer, but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and improved rural service. It is fair to say, however, that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general.

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Burleson was the son and grandson of Confederate veterans. When he was born, his family still owned more than 20 slaves. The first Texan to serve in a cabinet, he remained a staunch segregationist. In the Railway Mail Service (where clerks sorted mail on board trains), for instance, he considered it intolerable that whites and blacks not only had to work together but use the same toilets and towels. He pushed to segregate Post Office lavatories and lunchrooms.

He saw to it that screens were erected so blacks and whites working in the same space would not have to see each other. Nearly all Negro clerks of long-standing service have been dropped, the anguished son of a black postal worker wrote to the New Republic, adding,Every Negro clerk eliminated means a white clerk appointed. Targeted for dismissal from Burlesons Post Office, the writer claimed, was any Negro clerk in the South who fails to say Sir promptly to any white person.

One scholar described Burleson as having a round, almost chubby face, a hook nose, gray and rather cold eyes and short side whiskers. With his conservative black suit and eccentric round-brim hat, he closely resembled an English cleric. From President Wilson and other cabinet members, he quickly acquired the nickname The Cardinal. He typically wore a high wing collar and, rain or shine, carried a black umbrella. Embarrassed that he suffered from gout, he refused to use a cane.

Like most previous occupants of his office, Burleson lent a political hand to the president by artfully dispensing patronage to members of Congress. One Kansas senator, for example, got five postmasterships to distribute in return for voting the way Wilson wanted on a tariff law.

When the striking new powers the Espionage Act gave him went into effect, Burleson quickly refocused his energies on the suppression of dissenting publications of any sort. Within a day of its passage, he instructed postmasters throughout the country to immediately send him newspapers or magazines that looked in any way suspicious.

And what exactly were postmasters to look for? Anything, Burleson told them, calculated tocause insubordination, disloyalty, mutinyor otherwise to embarrass or hamper the Government in conducting the war. What did embarrass mean? In a later statement, he would list a broad array of possibilities, from saying that the government is controlled by Wall Street or munition manufacturers or any other special interests to attacking improperly our allies. Improperly?

He knew that vague threats could inspire the most fear and so, when a delegation of prominent lawyers, including the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow, came to see him, he refused to spell out his prohibitions in any more detail. When members of Congress asked the same question, he declared that disclosing such information was incompatible with the public interest.

One of Burlesons most prominent targets would be the New York City monthly The Masses. Named after the workers that radicals were then convinced would determine the revolutionary course of history, the magazine was never actually read by them. It did, however, become one of the liveliest publications this country has ever known and something of a precursor to the New Yorker. It published a mix of political commentary, fiction, poetry, and reportage, while pioneering the style of cartoons captioned by a single line of dialogue for which the New Yorker would later become so well known.

From Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg to Edna St. Vincent Millay and the young future columnist Walter Lippmann, its writers were among the best of its day. Its star reporter was John Reed, future author of Ten Days That Shook the World, a classic eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. His zest for being at the center of the action, whether in jail with striking workers in New Jersey or on the road with revolutionaries in Mexico, made him one of the finest journalists in the English-speaking world.

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A slapdash gathering of energy, youth, hope, the critic Irving Howe later wrote, The Masses was the rallying centerfor almost everything that was then alive and irreverent in American culture. But that was no protection. On July 17, 1917, just a month after the Espionage Act passed, the Post Office notified the magazines editor by letter that the August issue of the Masses is unmailable. The offending items, the editors were told, were four passages of text and four cartoons, one of which showed the Liberty Bell falling apart.

Soon after, Burleson revoked the publications second-class mailing permit. (And not to be delivered by the Post Office in 1917 meant not to be read.) A personal appeal from the editor to President Wilson proved unsuccessful. Half a dozenMassesstaff members including Reed would be put on trialtwicefor violating the Espionage Act. Both trials resulted in hung juries, but whatever the frustration for prosecutors, the countrys best magazine had been closed for good. Many more would soon follow.

When editors tried to figure out the principles that lay behind the new regime of censorship, the results were vague and bizarre. William Lamar, the solicitor of the Post Office (the departments chief legal officer), told the journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, You know I am not working in the dark on this censorship thing. I know exactly what I am after. I am after three things and only three thingspro-Germanism, pacifism, and high-browism.

Within a week of the Espionage Act going into effect, the issues of at least a dozen socialist newspapers and magazines had been barred from the mail. Less than a year later, more than 400 different issues of American periodicals had been deemed unmailable. The Nation was targeted, for instance, for criticizing Wilsons ally, the conservative labor leader Samuel Gompers; the Public, a progressive Chicago magazine, for urging that the government raise money by taxes instead of loans; and the Freemans Journal and Catholic Register for reminding its readers that Thomas Jefferson had backed independence for Ireland. (That land, of course, was then under the rule of wartime ally Great Britain.) Six hundred copies of a pamphlet distributed by the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, Why Freedom Matters, were seized and banned for criticizing censorship itself. After two years under the Espionage Act, the second-class mailing privileges of 75 periodicals had been canceled entirely.

From such a ban, there was no appeal, though a newspaper or magazine could file a lawsuit (none of which succeeded during Burlesons tenure). In Kafkaesque fashion, it often proved impossible even to learn why something had been banned. When the publisher of one forbidden pamphlet asked, the Post Office responded: If the reasons are not obvious to you or anyone else having the welfare of this country at heart, it will be uselessto present them. When he inquired again, regarding some banned books, the reply took 13 months to arrive and merely granted him permission to submit a statement to the postal authorities for future consideration.

In those years, thanks to millions of recent immigrants, the United States had an enormous foreign-language press written in dozens of tongues, from Serbo-Croatian to Greek, frustratingly incomprehensible to Burleson and his minions. In the fall of 1917, however, Congress solved the problem by requiring foreign-language periodicals to submit translations of any articles that had anything whatever to do with the war to the Post Office before publication.

Censorship had supposedly been imposed only because the country was at war. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the fighting and on the 27th of that month, Woodrow Wilson announced that censorship would be halted as well. But with the president distracted by the Paris peace conference and then his campaign to sell his plan for a League of Nations to the American public, Burleson simply ignored his order.

Until he left office in March 1921more than two years after the war endedthe postmaster general continued to refuse second-class mailing privileges to publications he disliked. When a U.S. District Court found in favor of several magazines that had challenged him, Burleson (with Wilsons approval) appealed the verdict and the Supreme Court rendered a timidly mixed decision only after the administration was out of power. Paradoxically, it was conservative Republican President Warren Harding who finally brought political censorship of the American press to a halt.

Could it all happen again?

In some ways, we seem better off today. Despite Donald Trumps ferocity toward the media, we haventyetseen the equivalent of Burleson barring publications from the mail. And partly because he has attacked them directly, the presidents blasts have gotten strong pushback from mainstream pillars like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, as well as from civil society organizations of all kinds.

A century ago, except for a few brave and lonely voices, there was no equivalent. In 1917, the American Bar Association was typical in issuing a statement saying, We condemn all attemptsto hinder and embarrass the Government of the United States in carrying on the war. We deem them to be pro-German, and in effect giving aid and comfort to the enemy. In the fall of that year, even the Times declared that the country must protect itself against its enemies at home. The Government has made a good beginning.

In other ways, however, things are more dangerous today. Social media is dominated by a few companies wary of offending the administration, and has already been cleverly manipulated by forces ranging from Cambridge Analytica to Russian military intelligence. Outright lies, false rumors, and more can be spread by millions of bots and people cant even tell where theyre coming from.

This torrent of untruth flooding in through the back door may be far more powerful than what comes through the front door of the recognized news media. And even at that front door, in Fox News, Trump has a vast media empire to amplify his attacks on his enemies, a mouthpiece far more powerful than the largest newspaper chain of Woodrow Wilsons day. With such tools, does a demagogue who loves strongmen the world over and who jokes about staying in power indefinitely even need censorship?

The rest is here:
Trump Isn't the First President to Attack the Press - The Nation

Operating Engineers Local 701 parked its giant inflatable rat in front of the Vancouver, Washington, office of General Labor & Industrial Staffing Services (GLISS) on March 5. Union members were there to inform the public about GLISS paying subpar wages and benefits to workers and doing so without providing any apprenticeship opportunities. Holland Residential recently contracted with GLISS to provide workers on its new construction project at SW 6th and Washington in downtown Vancouver. According to the union, those workers earn less than half the established area standard wage. Temp agencies like GLISS often pocket 30 to 50% of the wages earned by the worker while providing fewer benefits and offering no employment protections, Local 701 said in a press release. GLISS responded to the rats arrival by calling the police and threatening legal action.

Displays and public appeals like this one are protected by both the First Amendment and the National Labor Relations Act, according to several federal court cases and National Labor Relations Board decisions, said Local 701 Business Manager Jimbo Anderson. Were exercising out First Amendment rights to raise awareness about family wage jobs and apprenticeship programs.

Local 701, which represents heavy equipment and stationary operators in Oregon and Southwest Washington, has had an increased presence in the region recently, touring with a new outreach and education trailer and encouraging women and people of color to apply for union apprenticeship programs so that everyone can earn a fair days wage for a fair days work.

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Rat spotted in Vancouver, Washington - Nwlaborpress