The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 12, 2023 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News Helena Independent Record: Alec Greven: A moral panic in Montana comes for free speech By Alec Greven .....A moral panic has descended upon Montana. Lawmakers here have rammed through overly broad laws in response to vague and unsubstantiated threats. On the chopping block? Your First Amendment rights. First, legislators banned the popular social media platform TikTok starting in 2024. The governor said he signed the bill into law to stop the Chinese government from accessing data. While state government officials failed to offer compelling evidence, we know for sure the ban will censor vast amounts of constitutionally protected speech. Supreme Court SCOTUSblog: Jack Daniel’s wins big in challenge to spoofing “Bad Spaniels” dog toy By Ronald Mann .....Thursday’s decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products firmly rejected the use of the Jack Daniel’s trademarks by a manufacturer selling a line of dog toys that mock various beverage manufacturers. The one at issue here copies numerous elements of the famous Jack Daniel’s bottle. In the words of Justice Elena Kagan: The Courts Wall Street Journal: How the Government Justifies Its Social-Media Censorship By Philip Hamburger .....The organization I lead, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, represents plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s campaign to censor speech on social media. For years, officials at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies have pressured tech companies to suppress “misinformation.” Much of the targeted speech doesn’t deserve that Orwellian label. Some of the speech is truthful, and some is simply opinion that dissents from the government’s viewpoint. Yet even actual misinformation—with a few exceptions such as commercial fraud and defamation—is fully protected by the First Amendment. The government makes no claim that the speech it seeks to suppress is unprotected. So how does it defend its actions? On May 3, the Justice Department filed a 297-page argument that reveals how so many officials could suppress speech with so little fear of violating the Constitution. The root of the problem is judicial negligence. AP News: Philly cops fired over offensive Facebook posts can pursue First Amendment claim, court rules By Michael Rubinkam .....A dozen Philadelphia police officers who were fired or suspended for racist and violent social media posts can pursue a lawsuit against the city claiming their First Amendment rights were violated, a federal appeals court ruled. Congress Washington Post (Technology 202): The Senate is dialing up its AI work — but taking its time By Cristiano Lima .....Senate leaders are lining up hearings and briefings on artificial intelligence as they weigh potential next steps to tackle the rapid development of tools like ChatGPT. But even as lawmakers ramp up efforts, few if any are calling for immediate action — and key players are preaching patience, even as Silicon Valley companies speed ahead on AI... [One] Senate panel, led by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), announced its own hearing for next week to “advance the Senate’s study of machine learning and AI” by focusing on “the impacts of revolutionary artificial intelligence technology on human rights.” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is developing a “high-level framework” on AI, this week separately announced three senators-only briefings on AI this summer, including the chamber’s first classified session on the topic. “The Senate must deepen our expertise in this pressing topic,” Schumer and other senators wrote to colleagues in a letter released Tuesday. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who co-signed the letter with Schumer, told my colleague Cat Zakrzewski on Wednesday that they plan to hold the briefings before Congress leaves for its August recess. But he declined to give a target date for releasing an AI bill... Rounds also suggested that lawmakers could form a select committee focused on AI, an idea Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) recently floated as well. Washington Examiner: House Republicans plot budget war against Biden agencies 'censoring' conservatives By Gabe Kaminsky .....House Republicans are beginning to wage a budget battle to choke off funding to federal agencies for "disinformation" initiatives in the United States they say have led to conservatives being "censored." ... "We're looking at different language to put on the appropriation bill that says 'No money can be used to set up a Disinformation Governance Board, money can't be used for federal agents or federal employees to in any way pressure social media companies to limit America's speech and label speech [misinformation],'" House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) told the Washington Examiner in an interview. Free Expression Wall Street Journal: SPLC Puts Moms on Its ‘Hate Map’ By Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich .....We started Moms for Liberty in 2021 because we served as school board members and we saw parental rights were under attack. Kids were locked out of schools and later subjected to mask and vaccine mandates. For every vocal parent it seems there were a hundred who would say: “Thanks for fighting. I’d lose my job if I spoke up, but I am so glad you are.” Last week the Southern Poverty Law Center put us on a “Hate Map” alongside neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan chapters. The SPLC labels us an “extremist group” that is “antigovernment.” Because we have fought name-calling and attempts to marginalize us for so long, this wasn’t alarming to us. But every parent should pay attention to this smear and what it means for parental rights. If it is now “hate” or “extreme” or “antigovernment” to ask questions of public education officials, what does that say about parents’ ability to be involved in their children’s education? The SPLC and its donors want the parental-rights movement to end. They find it threatening that parents have become vocal and involved in the education system since the pandemic, and they want us to sit down and shut up. National Review: Covid and ‘Disinformation’ By Andrew Stuttaford .....Weaponized disinformation is a real enough phenomenon, but it’s no great secret that the “disinformation” label can be used as a device to suppress or muffle opinions opposed to the, not infrequently flawed, official orthodoxy of the day. It’s also no great secret that the pandemic revealed that rather more of Leviathan lurks within the West’s democracies than we like to think. Shut down economies for months? Why, sure. A series of stories from the Daily Telegraph provide a striking example from across the pond of the way that efforts to stamp out “disinformation” can go far beyond what might be regarded as legitimate security concerns. Here’s an extract from the latest (it’s from yesterday) of these reports: “A secretive government Covid unit accused of seeking to suppress free speech during the pandemic was in “hourly” contact with social media firms, the official in charge of the operation has disclosed.” Aaron Maté: FBI helps Ukraine censor Twitter users and obtain their info, including journalists .....The Federal Bureau of Investigation has aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to censor social media users and obtain their personal information, leaked emails reveal. In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data. Online Speech Platforms Washington Post (Technology 202): Trump charges will test social media rules on violent rhetoric By Cristiano Lima .....Tech companies are now poised to face another major test as calls for violence mount on social media in response to Trump’s latest indictment... The indictment has triggered a wave of violent rhetoric by some of Trump’s backers, including social media posts likening it to an act of war and calling for retribution. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) tweeted Friday that “we have now reached a war phase.” Biggs, who also posted the remarks on Facebook, added: “Eye for an eye.” Trump ally Kari Lake, a former GOP gubernatorial candidate in Arizona who refused to concede defeat last year, shared videos Saturday on Twitter, Facebook and Instragram warning the Justice Department not to “lay a finger on President Trump.” “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me, and I’m going to tell you … most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” Lake said in the video of a recent speech. Lake said the remarks were “not a threat” but rather a “public service announcement.” ... Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) called it “deeply concerning to see calls for political violence” in response to the Trump indictment. “Social media platforms have a responsibility to enforce their own terms of service,” he said in a statement to The Technology 202. Fox News: Zuckerberg says 'establishment' asked Facebook to censor COVID misinfo that ended up true: 'Undermines trust' By Gabriel Hays .....Meta (Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed recently that the scientific "establishment" asked his platform to "censor" posts about COVID-19 that ended up being "debatable or true." In his comments during Thursday's episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast," Zuckerberg discussed the "issues and challenges" of executing his platform's policies on removing "misinformation." He said it can be "really tricky" when some content is false, "but may not be harmful, so it's like, alright, are you going to censor someone for just being wrong, if there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing?’" As an example, Zuckerberg said, "Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts." Zuckerberg noted the "establishment" encouraged him to enforce these shaky facts, saying they "asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true." He admitted to Fridman that he believes the requests made to him by the scientific community hurt their credibility with the public. "It really undermines trust," he added. Candidates and Campaigns Washington Post: DeSantis ushers in our fake-images-in-politics nightmare By Aaron Blake .....You might want to take note of the following date: June 5, 2023. Because we might one day regard that as the date on which our politics very quietly crossed the Rubicon on AI-generated images. Few people noticed until Thursday, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign that day released a deceptive web video featuring fake images of Donald Trump hugging former White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci. While others have used artificial intelligence in their political messages before, this appears to be the first example of a major presidential campaign using it in such an obviously misleading fashion. And the DeSantis campaign is anything but apologetic about it. The States Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Private Employers May Not Fire Employees for Writing to the Legislature, Tennessee Court Holds By Eugene Volokh .....In Smith v. BlueCross BlueShield of Tenn., decided today by the Court of Appeals of Tennessee (in an opinion by Chief Judge Michael Swiney, joined by Judges John McClarty and Kristi Davis), Smith alleged that BlueCross had wrongly fired her for, among other things, "email[ing] Tennessee state legislators with her concerns and grievances regarding vaccine mandates." The court concluded that this stated a claim under Tennessee law: Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Beto O'Rourke Wins Appeal in Libel Case By Eugene Volokh .....From O'Rourke v. Warren, decided yesterday by the Texas Court of Appeals (Austin), Chief Justice Darlene Byrne, joined by Justices Gisela Triana and Edward Smith: Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." 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