August 22, 2024

The Courts

Courthouse News: Blocked by city manager, Facebook user gets second chance at discovery in First Amendment case

By Kevin Koeninger

.....In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, an appeals court panel ruled additional evidence is needed to determine whether a city manager violated his constituent's First Amendment rights by blocking him on Facebook.

Kevin Lindke sued Port Huron, Michigan, City Manager James Freed after Freed blocked him on Facebook following comments that were critical of the city's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reason: Feds Seek 20-Year Sentence for Backpage Co-Founder Michael Lacey

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

.....Federal prosecutors are recommending a 20-year prison sentence for Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, who was found guilty last fall of one count of international concealment of money laundering. It's an insane ask for someone whose only conviction is for one nonviolent crime, especially considering the circumstances of that conviction.

"The context for the international concealment money laundering conviction is critical," writes Lacey's lawyers in a motion seeking a less severe sentence. "This is not a case where the defendant went off on his own to hide an asset. Instead, in the years that preceded the international wire transfer at issue, federal law enforcement officers

had visited his banks and suggested to those banks that it would be bad for their reputation to have him as a client, which then resulted in the banks terminating their relationship with him. This occurred when there were no charges pending."

In other words, the federal government worked to deny Lacey access to U.S. banks and then charged him for trying to park his money somewhere.

Congress

Washington Post (Tech Brief): How government can cut kids’ social media use without doing more harm

By Editorial Board

.....Rules that require platforms to verify age — as those state social media bans explicitly did, and as other regulations requiring special protections for children often do in practice — come with real trade-offs. Driver’s license and Social Security numbers can be vulnerable to hacking. The same goes for biometric tools, such as face scans.

Lawmakers targeting social media’s demonstrable ills rather than social media in general are on the right track. But even this is more complicated than it might sound. Take the Kids Online Safety Act, recently passed by the Senate and now on hold in the House. The proposal establishes a “duty of care” for companies not to expose young people to harms including sexual exploitation, drug promotion, bullying and disordered eating. Though the bill’s authors say they’re targeting the way platforms are designed, going after certain types of content at all could still open the door to politically motivated enforcement — say, if conservatives exploit the legislation to restrict posts about gender identity or progressives to suppress right-of-center opinions by labeling them as dangerous hate speech.

Newsmax: Sen. Schumer: Voting Rights First If Dems Take Control

By Jim Thomas

.....In addition to voting rights, Schumer highlighted other significant priorities for a potential Democrat Congress. One primary focus is curbing the impact of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allows unlimited corporate and outside group spending in elections. Schumer and Senate Democrats back the Disclose Act, legislation requiring organizations that spend money in elections to disclose donors contributing $10,000 or more.

Racket News: The Worm Turns: House, Senate Investigate TSA Surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard

By Matt Taibbi

.....Two weeks ago, former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard found out she’d been placed on the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” watch list, and put under “Special Mission Coverage” surveillance by Federal Air Marshals. A Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves who enlisted and served in Iraq after 9/11, Gabbard was almost speechless at reports of her placement on a terror list. She felt “the deepest sense of betrayal,” she said, adding: “It cuts to the core.”

Since then, multiple Air Marshals came forward as whistleblowers and their firm, Empower Oversight, sent letters to eight House and Senate Committees of jurisdiction. Each was asked to “get to the bottom” of why Gabbard was surveilled and look into Quiet Skies more generally. Today, Racket learned members of at least three of those Committees decided to investigate, giving deadlines to Transportation Security Administrator David Pekoske to answer a range of queries, and not just about Gabbard.

Free Expression

First Amendment News: A few reflections on the Benjamin Gitlow story as that landmark case nears its centennial anniversary — First Amendment News 436

By Ronald K.L. Collins

.....His is a story about an odd man with both bad luck and good luck — a man who made it into the pages of First Amendment history. In so many ways, however, it is a complicated story with more than one unpredictable ending. Along the way, some remarkable lawyers and judges got involved so that the name Benjamin Gitlow would go down in legal history. His story is a vital part of the history of the First Amendment, a history that Gitlow v. New York helped to shape.

Fox News: UK looks to treat misogyny as extremist violence, raising free speech crackdown concerns

By Peter Aitken

.....The United Kingdom is looking to treat some forms of misogyny as a form of extremism under the new government’s Home Office, according to reports.

Online Speech Platforms

Washington Post (Tech Brief): AI researchers call for ‘personhood credentials’ as bots get smarter

By Will Oremus

.....In the paper, published online last week but not yet peer-reviewed, a group of 32 researchers from OpenAI, Microsoft, Harvard and other institutions call on technologists and policymakers to develop new ways to verify humans without sacrificing people’s privacy or anonymity. They propose a system of “personhood credentials” by which people prove offline that they physically exist as humans and receive an encrypted credential that they can use to log in to a wide range of online services.

Free Beacon: Soros-Funded Fake News Network Swamps Nevada Voters With Disinformation

By Andrew Kerr

.....The George Soros-funded Democratic propaganda network Courier Newsroom is ramping up in Nevada, spending big on misleading digital ads disguised as news stories claiming, among other things, that former president Donald Trump would bring back a military draft.

Courier in 2023 added The Nevadan to its roster of local "news" websites that push Democratic talking points. Courier’s founder, the Democratic operative Tara McGowan, says the network’s goal is to combat disinformation, but The Nevadan has inundated voters in the swing state since June with deceptive Facebook advertisements attacking Republicans and propping up Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D., Nev.).

Independent Groups

The Hill: Crypto industry spending ‘unprecedented’ money on 2024 election: Report

By Julia Shapero

.....The cryptocurrency industry has spent more than $119 million on federal elections in 2024 to help boost crypto-friendly candidates and defeat crypto skeptics, according to a new report from Public Citizen. 

This “unprecedented” spending represents nearly half — 48 percent — of all corporate money contributed to this year’s elections, the report from the progressive consumer rights watchdog group found. 

The States

Politico: Google agrees to America’s first newsroom funding deal. It’s already unpopular.

By Tyler Katzenberger, Jeremy B. White, and Lara Korte

.....Google has brokered a first-in-the-nation deal with California lawmakers to direct millions of dollars to local newsrooms, the latest in a series of global efforts to require tech companies to support the journalism they profit from.