Posts Tagged Privacy
MFIA Amicus in Illinois First Amendment case- with EFF
Posted by Margot in Newspapers, Privacy, first amendment, lamp, news on March 23, 2010
The Media Freedom and Information Practicum is proud to announce that, along with EFF, it has filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Illinois Court of Appeals to block the unmasking of an anonymous online critic of a local political candidate in the comments section of a local newspaper’s website.
Battle Over Message Board Flame War Must Not Circumvent the First Amendment
The First Amendment provides qualified protection for anonymous speakers. MFIA and EFF encourage the court to recognize such protection by instituting the same process established by other courts across the country (see, eg, Dendrite).
The viability of newspaper websites as forums for such political discussion and whistleblowing is at stake, along with fundamental First Amendment values inherent in the protection of political speech.
For the full brief, click here.
why surveillance matters
Posted by Margot in Privacy, Surveillance, first amendment, lamp on October 13, 2009
As a follow-up to Nabiha’s great post on terrorism and open access:
As Nabiha said, our interest in terrorism-related issues has to do with the barriers the government places to access.
Our interest in surveillance speaks more generally to the democratic conditions necessary for newsgathering. Newsgatherers cannot properly gather news if they know that they’re being watched. And journalists and protestors are often the deliberate targets of surveillance, alongside more conventional “threats”; see Ken Krayeske’s experience, or the experience of anti-war protestors with the TALON database.
PATRIOT Act renewal bill has passed Senate Judiciary Committee
The PATRIOT Act renewal bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee without key civil liberties reforms attached.
Missed opportunities for reform include: requiring the government to show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy in seeking Americans’ records through National Security Letters (NSLs); letting the “lone wolf” wiretapping authority expire; stopping the government from using the FISA Amendments Act to collect Americans’ phone calls and internet communications in bulk.
EFF advocates attaching the JUSTICE Act to the renewal bill when it’s debated by the full Senate.
Tweet-Crime?
We’re starting to see more domestic coverage of l’affaire Elliot Madison, the self-described political anarchist who has been charged with using Twitter to apprise protesters of police movements at the recent G20 Summit.
Our own Laura DeNardis weighed in via this Reuters story, highlighting the double standard between Twitter activism in Iran and Pittsburgh.
Is there a newsgathering angle here as well? Madison’s alleged tweet-crime raises First Amendment issues, certainly, and we will be particularly interested to see if it opens the “what is a journalist” Pandora’s box.
EFF has Madison’s motion seeking the return of his confiscated property. We’ll be following this with interest…
DHS Databases & Speech
Posted by Adri in first amendment on October 7, 2009
Comparative Case Studies of Radical Rhetoric, according to the government’s own description, “is a research effort funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Directorate of Science and Technology (S&T), Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division (HFD). The goal of the research project is to determine whether various characteristics of the rhetoric expressed by groups are related to the groups’ likelihood of engaging in violent extremist activity. Researchers will collect personally identifiable information during this research effort.”
Let’s repeat that. This is an analysis of pure rhetoric, performed upon expression that is connected to personally identifiable information, in order to arrive at predictive conclusions about people who express that kind of rhetoric. Needless to say, the program raises some troublesome First Amendment worries.
The program analyzes papers, speeches, and publications of various groups. On a new media note, it will also analyze content on the political party Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website.
The DHS’s Privacy Impact Assessment of the program can be found here.
Intelligence Fusion Centers
We are very interested in Fusion Centers.
For now, let’s just leave it at that.
Some current information: there evidently are 72 state-based intelligence fusion centers, and Janet Napolitano just announced that DHS is creating a new office to support them.
Things this office will do, according to Matthew Harwood at Security Management, include the following:
“It will survey state, local, and tribal law enforcement to get feedback on what information these “first preventers” need to do their job. The office will also develop a mechanism to gather, analyze, and share both national, regional, and local threat information up and down the intelligence network. Third, the office will coordinate with fusion centers to continuously ensure they get the appropriate personnel and resources from DHS. Fourth, the JFC-PMO will provide training and exercises to build solid relationships between fusion center personnel and promote a sense of common mission. Finally, the office will train fusion center personnel to respect the civil liberties of American citizens.”
That last mission sounds great, doesn’t it?
Of FOIA & Free Access
Posted by Adri in Privacy, first amendment, lamp on October 6, 2009
It’s a point of no contention to folks here at LAMP that court documents are and should be legally required to be in the public domain. But public domain currently means paying 8 cents a page to read docs on PACER — the federal judiciary’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records database. This law student can personally attest that the system is, simply put, really annoying to use. ( WIRED Magazine has described the interface as feeling like something designed for the DMV).
Open gov activists have responded to the unwieldiness of PACER by proliferating a variety of alternative online law libraries, a trend that will be discussed in a Yale ISP/ACS talk today entitled: “RECAPture the Law: The Growing Movement to Free the Electronic Record,” by Princeton’s Stephen Schultze and Harlan Yu.
There’s a dark side to this sunshine story, however . . . Last fall, a 22-year-old programmer named Aaron Swartz took advantage of the government’s offering of a free PACER trial period to run a script on a library computer that downloaded (or in the FBI’s language, “exfiltrated”) massive compilations of federal court records to be released the public. When the government realized what was up, they initiated a criminal investigation of Swartz, obtaining his identity, phone number, and home address from Amazon.com — even considering staking out his house. How did Swartz find out about the investigation of him? Through a Freedom of Information Act request for his file.
For you citizen journalists and programmers out there who are curious about what your own file may hold, you can find template FOIA requests at the FBI’s FOIA / Privacy Act website. Don’t let them stonewall you by asking you to send in fingerprints either — you shouldn’t need that unless you are specifically requesting your NCIC criminal record.
A reminder
Posted by Adri in Litigation on October 5, 2009
Some of you may remember that a few weeks ago, Judge Jeffrey White (N.D. Cal) ordered the government to release additional records about telecommunications industry lobbying in the lead-up to the enactment of the immunity laws releasing them from liability for facilitating the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Judge White’s deadline for the release of those records? This Friday — so keep an eye out for some potentially juicy gov’t records.
Is Tweeting a Crime?
Posted by Adri in first amendment, web 2.0 on October 5, 2009
Huffington Post is reporting that a WTO protester was arrested and charged with “hindering prosecution” for using Twitter to direct protester movements at a demonstration against the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.
FBI agents subsequently executed a search warrant at the man’s home, where they seized computers, political writings and anarchist literature.
In other news, you can buy a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook on Amazon here for just $19.77
From what I can tell, it’s got no mention of organizing demonstrations . . . although it may warrant mentioning that there is a section on “electronic sabotage and surveillance.”
A note on anonymous speech
Posted by Margot in Newspapers, first amendment, lamp on October 3, 2009
A First Amendment right to speak about politics anonymously was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1995, when the court held that a lone pamphleteer had the right to distribute political literature without having her identity revealed.
But anonymity online has been subject to concerns about the harm inherent in gossip and reputation demolishing. This has brought up some needed legal analysis of when, and whose, anonymous speech should be protected. (See Nathaniel Gleicher’s YLJ piece)
There are certain cases, though, where anonymity should be completely preserved under American law. The Chinese government recently ordered news websites to require users to log in under their real identities to post comments on news stories. This has caused a noticeable, and understandable, chill in discussion on the sites.
Anonymity does enable the foundations for democracy– the more fearful the government, the more valuable the ability to anonymously speak your mind. But as in much law, legal development occurs on a continuum. It’s important to keep the Chinese scenario in mind even when discussing online gossip– law made in one area inevitably bleeds into its related counterparts.