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Why Reforms to Section 230 Could Radically Change How You Use the Internet – NBC Connecticut

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Does the phrase 'Section 230' mean anything to you? Well, if you've ever used the internet it actually does whether you realize it or not. Here's what it is and why it matters.

Section 230 is just 26 words, passed into law in 1996, that protects internet providers and websites from legal liability if someone using their platform or service posts something illegal.

It reads, "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. It's often considered the single most-important piece of legislation that helped innovate the internet.

The legal protections offered by Sec. 230 have allowed sites like Google, Yelp, YouTube, Facebook and countless others to provide users a place to quickly and easily post their videos, reviews, photos, and other content. It also allows internet service providers to provide cheap and easily-accessible internet.

Without that law, websites and internet service providers could be liable for users actions online, meaning they might otherwise restrict the ability to create and post content without moderation.

Given the sheer size of user-generated websites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, it would be infeasible for online intermediaries to prevent objectionable content from cropping up on their site. Rather than face potential liability for their users' actions, most would likely not host any user content at all or would need to protect themselves by being actively engaged in censoring what we say, what we see, and what we do online.

After Twitter flagged several of his tweets for violating company policies, President Trump issued an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship that directed his administration to consider reforms to Sec. 230. He specifically mentioned Twitter, selective censorship, and the goal of eliminating political bias.

Tech companies warned the narrowing the Sec. 230s legal protections would stifle innovation online and could permanently alter the way we use the internet.

If the websites were legally responsible for every word, every image, (and) every video their users posted...they might not allow your content, altogether, said Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity professor at the Naval Academy and author of The Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet. The other possibility...would be that platforms want to incur less liability, so they'll just take a hands off approach and allow everything."

Former Vice President and presumptive democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has also suggested revoking the law because he doesnt think sites like Facebook are doing enough to censor false and hateful content.

Yes. Because of Section 230, a judge ruled the Congressman could not sue Twitter over a parody account, Devin Nunes Cow, which now has more than 750,000 followers.

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws that limit free speech. However, the First Amendment does not pertain to rules created by private businesses.

You can reach out to your member of Congress to voice your opinion. And, your votes in November will help determine the future of Section 230 too.

Jeff Kosseffs book details the origins and impact of Section 230, and the EFF provides Section 230 resources and news on its website.

Sometimes, adults make things more complicated than necessary. NBCLX told this story using children on-camera because its a simple law that needed a simple explanation.

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Why Reforms to Section 230 Could Radically Change How You Use the Internet - NBC Connecticut

Chinese activist uses art to convey a message of freedom – Martha’s Vineyard Times

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Playing both live and virtually at the M.V. Film Center this weekend is the documentary Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly. A 2019 film about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, Yours Truly depicts the connections that develop as the artist creates an extraordinary work of socially engaged art remotely, as he is under house arrest in Beijing. The films director, Cheryl Haines, organized in 2014 a huge exhibit at Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, where the former penitentiary is now a national park.

The scope of the project, with larger-than-life Lego portraits of prisoners of conscience from around the world, was immense, and nearly a million visitors viewed the exhibition. The story behind the vast artistic undertaking is Weiweis weaving his own history into it. His father, a well-known poet, was imprisoned in a remote work camp in the late 1950s. Part of the value of Ai Weiwei is the insights the director gives of his family life as told by his mother, Geo Ying, who describes Weiweis life growing up in exile. A poet, his father was mistreated and detained in the 1950s. Ying describes how Weiwei was told of the 100,000 people put in detention when he was just a child. There are also interviews with his brother and other members of his family.

He and his mother and brother remember the impact a postcard expressing support had on them, and this carries over into Weiweis extensive Yours Truly exhibit, as it also consists of beautifully illustrated postcards with national birds and flowers of the other prisoners countries. Visitors to the exhibit were invited to write messages of hope to the imprisoned or detained activists onto the postcards. Even more inspiring, after the more than 90,000 postcards were sent to prisoners and their families, they began writing back.

The film follows the postcards around the globe, and Haines interviews a number of the activists. Included were Egypts Ahmed Maher, cofounder of the April 6 Youth Movement which marked the beginning of the end of Hosni Mubaraks government. Also interviewed is Ebrahim Sharif al Sayeds family. Al Sayed is the former Secretary General of the Bahraini democratic reformist party.

By the films end, Ai himself is finally free, seeing his own exhibit in public for the first time. He meets with former prisoner Chelsea Manning, and other activists express their wonder at all the connections Ai has made, and the strangers who sent the encouraging messages around the world.

Ultimately, Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly is a call to action, extending the extraordinary reach of the artists exhibit to its viewers.

Information and tickets to Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, either at the Film Center or virtually, are available at mvfilmsociety.com.

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Chinese activist uses art to convey a message of freedom - Martha's Vineyard Times

How does NSA spying effect you? (Infographic) – ProPrivacy.com

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Government surveillance has been a hot-button issue in America for the past few years, and for good reason. Not only does NSA spying affect tech giants, international communities, and world leaders, but it affects almost every single run-of-the-mill citizen as well.

Including, probably, you.

Yes, you.

How, you ask?

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How is the NSA spying on you
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The NSAs metadata collection of domestic phone records, otherwise known as the Patriot Act, is its claim to fame, being one of the first major revelations brought to light by Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian.

The American public was floored by the news that every day, without authorization, the NSA was collecting billions of text messages, device locations, and call information such as the identification of both callers and recipientsprimarily not that of intended targets, but of innocent Americans whose data was swept up in the search.

Many people think that, three years on, the NSA had put an end to its bulk collection of telephone records.

It has not.

While the controversial section 215 of the Patriot Act was retired on June 1, 2015being swapped out for an amended version dubbed the USA Freedom Act on June 2its replacement is riddled with legal loopholes that allow it to workaround the new laws and continue to snoop on Americans en masse, should they wish to do so.

And you know they do.

Shortly after revealing the existence of the Patriot Act, Greenwald introduced the world to XKEYSCORE, an NSA tool that collects the data of almost everything that a user does on the internet.

IP addresses, emails, browsing histories, browser cookies, online chats, voice calls, pictures, Skype sessions, username and password pairs, social media activity, logged keystrokes all that and more is collected in the far-reaching NSA internet surveillance program, whose 700+ servers worldwide collect 20+ terabytes of data per day.

Like the Patriot Act, XKEYSCORE is intended to track foreign targets. However, when an American communicates with someone in a different country, they are labeled in the database as participating in foreign-to-foreign communication, and can have their personal online data searched sans warrant.

Using the data collected from the aforementioned Patriot Act and XKEYSCORE programs, the NSA can easily put together sophisticated graphs of Americans social circle, including the identification of their associates and colleagues, their travelling companions, their locations, and other highly private details.

In order to build these graphs, the NSA harvests information from things such as bank codes, Facebook profiles, passenger logs, medical insurance information, voter registration rolls, GPS location data, and tax and property records.

They can even build social network profiles simply using queries such as travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs when scouring their databases.

While the focus is, again, on foreign targets, there is no limit to the number of innocent Americans whove ended up in the contact chain of a person or organization of interest.

Phone and internet providers are not the only organizations in cahoots with the NSA. In addition to your phone records and web usage, your bank accounts and credit cards are also easily monitored and accessed without warrant.

A branch of the NSA called Follow the Money (FTM) collects information from the transaction networks of more than 25,000 financial firms, including banks, casinos, and wire transfer agencies. It then stores this information in a NSA databank dubbed Tracfin, which houses millions of records.

Approximately 84% of that data is estimated to be from credit card transactions.

VISA claims that they are not aware of any unauthorized access to [their] network and that they only provide transaction information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal process, but NSA presentations leaked by Snowden strongly suggest otherwise.

In fact, the NSAs hoarding of financial information oversteps so many boundaries that even their British counterpart and frequent collaborator, the GCHQ, is concerned about the act, admitting that much of the rich personal information collected is not about [their] targets.

While it is unconfirmed if the NSA conducts such practices itself (though it seems highly likely), they do have access to the webcam images available in the databases of its partner-in-surveillance, the GCHQ, who are known snoopers of Yahoos computer cameras.

Codenamed Optic Nerve, the program began in 2008 and is reported to have still been active in 2012. While its uncertain if it is still in operation, what they managed to collect in that time period is worrying enough, with over 1.8 billion webcam images of Yahoo customers worldwide collected in one six month period alone.

Optic Nerve was originally intended to be used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor existing targets, and to discover new ones. Instead, they saved one image every five minutes from feedsbetween 3% and 11% of which were sexually explicit images of innocent users.

The kicker? You only had to have a username similar to a known target to become a new target, and there is no UK law that removes domestic citizens or citizens from countries that are part of the Five Eyes alliancewhich includes the USfrom its search queries and databases.

Should it come as any surprise that not even harmless online pastimes like MMORPGs are safe from the prying eyes of the NSA?

The answer is no, it shouldnt.

Believing that terrorist networks could use the online games to communicate in secret, the NSA conducts surveillance and collects the data of millions of users around the world from virtual game servers, including user location, identity and activity such as voice and text chat logs.

So, yes, your time spent playing World of Warcraft, Second Life, Xbox Live, and the like is stored and logged by the NSA. Heck, that cute elf youve been talking to might even be an NSA agent.

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How does NSA spying effect you? (Infographic) - ProPrivacy.com

NSA Spying Federal Jack

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(EFF) The U.S. government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americans phone calls and Internet communications. Those news reports, plus a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of their telephone and other communications records. All of these surveillance activities are in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the U.S. Constitution.

The evidence also shows that the government did not act alone. EFF has obtained whistleblowerevidence[PDF] from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers. As one expert observed, this isnt a wiretap, its a country-tap.

EFF is fighting these illegal activities on multiple fronts. InHepting v. AT&T, EFF filed the first case against a telecom for violating its customers privacy. In addition, EFF is representing victims of the illegal surveillance program inJewel v. NSA, a lawsuit filed in September 2008 against the government seeking to stop the warrantless wiretapping and hold the government officials behind the program accountable.

EFF is not alone in this fight. There are multiple cases challenging various parts of the illegal surveillance against both the telecoms and the government. This page collects information on EFFs cases as well as cases brought by individuals, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and of Illinois, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and others.

http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

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NSA Spying Federal Jack

NSA Spokesman Accidentally Admits that the Government Is …

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NSA Spying: A Matter of Degree

We have long noted that the government is spying on just about everything we do.

The NSA has pretended that it only spies on a small number of potential terrorists. But NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis inadvertently admitted that the NSA could spy on just about all Americans.

Inglis told Congress last week that the agency conducts three-hop analysis.

Three-hop (also known as three degree) analysis means:

The government can look at the phone data of a suspected terrorist, plus the data of all of the contacts, then all of those peoples contacts, and all of those peoples contacts.

This means that a lot of people could be caught up in the dragnet:

If the average person calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Given that there are now approximately 875,000 people in the governments database of suspected terrorists including many thousands of Americans every single American living on U.S. soil could easily be caught up in the dragnet.

For example, 350 million Americans divided by 2.5 million Americans caught up in dragnet for each suspected terrorist, means that a mere 140 potential terrorists could lead to spying on all Americans. There are tens of thousands of Americans listed as suspected terrorists including just about anyone who protests anything that the government or big banks do.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:

According to an unusually blunt Senate investigation of so-called fusion centers released last month, the TIDE [i.e. suspected terrorist] database is also full of information of innocent people that have nothing to do with terrorism. The report gave examples of: a TIDE profile of a person whom the FBI had already cleared of any connection to terrorism, a TIDE profile of a two-year old-boy, and even a TIDE profile of Ford Motor Company.

ARS Technica reports:

When the first revelations about the National Security Agencys (NSA) widespread collection of phone call metadata and Internet traffic began to surface, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham noted that for those not talking to terrorists on the phone, We dont have anything to worry about. Im glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to.

Turns out the data collection is not so limited. In testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that the NSAs probing of data in search of terrorist activity extended two to three hops away from suspected terrorists. Previously, NSA leaders had said surveillance was limited to only two hops from a suspect.

If youve ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or used LinkedIn to try to reach someone professionally, you know how small the world of interconnected contacts can be. When you use big data tools to mine for relationships, the world gets even smaller. That third hop in connections greatly expands the probability of innocent people worldwide being scooped up into the NSAs surveillance machine to include a good-sized share of American citizenscitizens who Senator Graham said dont have anything to worry about.

***

By reading this article, youre one hop from meand three hops from [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai.

***

The NSAs systems sort through the data using algorithms to find connections. These can be detected in near real time from Internet data or discovered in the periodic dumps of phone metadata from carriers, building upon the systems knowledge of previous connections. The system narrows the field of potential surveillance targets through a process thats similar to playing the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacononly, in this case, its more like Three Degrees of Osama Bin Laden.***

To determine how many hops you are from Osama, for example, the NSAs data analysis engine software constantly plows through information and builds a model of all the relationships between every phone number on record and every IP address. Other software robots query the graph to discover which nodesphone numbers, IP addresses and email accountsfall within three degrees of separation from an established suspect.

If you have a direct relationship with a suspected terrorist or target (youve called them, youve emailed them, youve visited their website) thats a one hop relationship; theres a solid line connecting you to that person in the NSAs relationship graph. If you talk with, e-mail, or visit the Facebook page or website of someone whos got a one-hop relationship, youre two hops away. Add one more person in between in the graph, and youre three hops away.

If youre within three hops, you may get flagged for analysis, and then you could get extra special attention, such as a secret FISA warrant request to use PRISM for access to your data on cloud providers servers.

Under the NSAs FISA requests, Google, Microsoft, and other Internet services companies can be compelled to hand over relevant data from their servers on any account that falls within the three-hop range and is flagged as belonging to a person of interest. If youve won this lottery, the NSA will get access to your e-mails on Gmail or Outlook.com as well as your chats and Web-stored contacts, your documents, your synced data from computers and mobile devices, your backups, and anything else that can be handed overat least, so the documents Snowden leaked imply.

Your raw Internet traffic will get more attention as well. Your IP address will be watched more carefully by deep packet inspection hardware at the NSAs Net taps, and what you do online will get extra scrutiny.

If your behavior is anomalous enough, and if youre a US resident, the NSA will pass the surveillance over to the FBI. Otherwise, your data will be collected and analyzed until its determined that you have nothing to do with the alleged terrorist; how long that process takes (and how long the data is retained after analysis) is unknown.

Unfortunately, it doesnt take much to hit the three-hop jackpot; without knowing it, a large percentage of the worlds population (and the US population) could easily be classified as being in a third degree of separation from a suspected terrorist.

A great deal of research has been done into the interconnectedness of people in the Internet age. Social scientists, mathematicians, and computer scientists have explored the small world phenomenon with studies and experiments for over 50 years, and their findings show that the small world keeps getting smaller as technology advances. In 1979, chair and founder of MITs political science department Ithiel de Sola Pool and the University of Michigans Manfred Kochen published a paper titled Contacts and Influence, which draws on a decade of research into social networks. De Sola Pool and Kochen posited that in a country the size of the United States, if acquaintanceship were random and the mean acquaintance volume were 1,000, the mean length of minimum chain between pairs of persons would be well under two intermediaries.

In other words, if the average person in the US has contact with and is acquainted with 1,000 others (through brief interactions, such as an e-mail or a phone call, or through stronger associations), then were at most two hops from anyone else in the US. Ergo, if any one person in the US is one hop from a terrorist, chances are good that you are three hops away.

***

Live in a major metropolitan center in the US and youre bound to be two degrees of separation away from someone in a country thats of interest to the NSA. For example: I have been a regular customer of restaurants owned by Baltimores Karzai family, which is headed by a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzaitwo hops. Im also, according to LinkedIn, two degrees of separation away from President Obama. Am I a good guy or a bad guy?

The Internet has blown the level of interconnectedness though the proverbial roofwe now have e-mail, social media, and instant message interactions with people well never meet in real life and in places well never go. A 2007 study by Carnegie Mellon University machine learning researcher Jure Leskovec and Microsoft Researchs Eric Horvitz found that the average number of hops between any two arbitrary Microsoft Messenger users, based on interaction, was 6.6. And a study of Twitter feeds published in 2011 found the average degree of separation between random Twitter users to be only 3.43.

So even if the NSA limited its surveillance activitiesand by surveillance I mean active probing of the content of communications of an individualto people within two hops of suspected terrorists, thats a sizable population. Three ratchets it up to hundreds of millions or potentially billions of people, especially when the definition of a hop is based on relationships so casual we could create them by accidentally clicking on a link in a spam e-mail. So far, we know that there have been about20,000 requests for FISA warrants to surveil domestic targets since 2001, but if those warrants covered three hops from the suspects at the center of the requestsdepending on how tightly or loosely the NSA defines a relationshipthree hops could encompass as much as 50 percent of the Internet-using population of the world.

Whats the likelihood that youve managed to fall into that 50 percent? Well, if you live outside the US or ever talk to anyone outside the US, your odds go up. If you have contacts in parts of the world that the US government has interest in as sources of terrorism, it goes up much more. That places people like me (journalists), social activists, academics, and a large chunk of the business world in a zone of high risk for NSA surveillance.

***

Youd be a fool not to at least consider the possibility that the NSA is already reading your e-mail.

The New York Times writes:

Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase six degrees of separation into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported on Monday that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74.

If the distance between any two people in the world is 4.74, the distance between any two Americans is probably less than 3 .

Legendary NSA cryptographer and mathematician William Binney who worked at the agency for 32 years, and who was the head of the NSAs global digital data efforts created a much better two hop system before 9/11.

Called ThinThread, the system created by Binney (with the help of Thomas Drake,Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis) automatically encrypted all Americans communications to protect our Constitutional rights. Information was gathered on people within two hops of suspected terrorists, and information could only be decrypted by a court order. In other words, Binneys system created a structure in which innocent Americans couldnt be spied on unless there was a court order showing probable cause.

Binneys system was actually cheaper and more efficient than the NSAs current Constitution-violating system.

Binney told us:

The zone of suspects was for us limited to two degrees (hops). Beyond that increases the problem exponentially. So, three hops is going much too far.

By going much too far, Binney means that the NSA is unnecessarily trashing Americans Constitutional rights.

But he also means that the more data the NSA gathers on more innocent Americans, the harder it will be to catch bad guys. Because contrary to the NSAs claims looking in bigger and bigger haystacks doesnt help find the needle.

Technical Postscript: We asked Binney about the formula for determining how many Americans would be caught up in a three hop dragnet. He explained that simple formulas cant give an accurate answer, as it depends on such factors as whether government and business organizations are eliminated from the hop analysis:

If you dont eliminate commercial companies and government agencies from the calculations, then by inclusion they reduce the number of degrees of separation.

Binney also explained that failure to eliminate duplicate contacts, the number of people caught up in the dragnet could be over-estimated.

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NSA Spokesman Accidentally Admits that the Government Is ...

How The First Amendment Can Fight BLM Messages – ValueWalk

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How The First Amendment Can Fight BLM Messages, Rosewood City Removes Street Art After Receiving Demand

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 22, 2020) - Many cities have permitted supporters of Black Lives Matter [BLM] and related causes to post messages supporting their views, but those who think there should be some balance may have a new weapon.

Although Rosewood City in California had permitted a group to paint the words "BLACK LIVES MATTER" on a city street, they ordered the words removed just after receiving a request from an attorney to be able to paint the words "MAGA 2020" on the same stretch of street, or nearby.

Although the City provided another explanation for suddenly agreeing to remove the BLM message, and pledged that "no further art installation will be authorized on the City's streets," it's more likely that the City realized that it cannot constitutionally permit one group to post a message, and deny that same privilege to another group with another message, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, whose similar complaint forced radio and TV stations to balance cigarette commercials with antismoking messages, and led to the ban on cigarette commercials.

The City claimed that it ordered the removal of the BLM words because"staff is concerned about public safety issues that may arise from painting murals on its public streets, which could result in driver confusion and traffic accidents," but the timing makes it more likely that the removal was prompted by a fear of a law suit for violating the First Amendment, says Banzhaf.

Professor Banzhaf explained that streets, sidewalks, and parks have traditionally been classified as "public forums" (or "open forums") where, under the First Amendment, speech (including signs) cannot be restricted based upon their content or meaning.

So, while the government can impose content-neutral - commonly known as "time, place, and manner" - restrictions on free speech activities in public forums, it cannot constitutionally permit "Black Lives Matter" and prohibit "MAGA 2020," anymore than it could permit the words "Pro Life" and refuse "Pro Choice," or OK "Yes Israel" but nix "OK Palestine" or "No Israel," says Banzhaf. who has testified as a First Amendment expert before a congressional committee.

Thus those who oppose the message or viewpoint convened by "BLM" or simply think there should be some balance to the messages displayed on city property, can fight back by demanding the right, under the First Amendment, to pose a contrasting message, suggests Banzhaf.

In many cases the result may be, as in Redwood City, that the BLM message will be removed or, in some cases, messages expressing a different viewpoint will be posted by other groups or individuals, suggests Banzhaf.

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How The First Amendment Can Fight BLM Messages - ValueWalk

Access to Public Health Information in the Age of COVID-19 – Columbia University

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This is part of aColumbia Newsseries, titled Lessons Learned, which invites the Columbia community to reflect on the pandemic and the insights they have gained from their COVID-19 experience. These essays speak to the innovation, creativity and resourcefulness we have witnessed during this period of unprecedented challenge, as well as some of the silver linings in the actions we have had to take by necessity.

As the nation continues to grapple with the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about the publics access to the data and information it needs to evaluate critical health and policy decisions have become increasingly urgent.

The stakes couldnt be higherthe staggering demand for treatments and vaccines, the hundreds of billions of dollars on the line, and the rush to a cure, all mean that we need access to that data more than ever. Data can help show us whether regulators are doing their jobs too. This is critically important, especially because President Trump has been promoting unproved cures, and because of the reports of retaliation against officials inside the administration who have insisted on high standards and refused to accommodate politically motivated interference with funding and study design.

The first thing we need is solidly designed studies for candidate treatments and vaccinesthat itself isnt assured, and companies are doing really crazy things, like throwing a whole handful of drugs at patients with study designs that make it impossible to sort out the true effects of the drugs. The public needs to know that we need to wait for randomized controlled trial results before we know what works. And we need national and international coordination to ensure that the most important candidates are being tested in some coordinated fashion, and that the design of the tests can give us answers.

We should be concerned about reports that employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention need to get approval before speaking publicly about COVID-19 because it hinders the flow of accurate information to the public. This administrationand particularly Trump himselfhave repeatedly lied or misled the public about everything from how serious this infection is, to how many tests we have. Inside of these federal agencies there are many good scientists, people whose job it is to collate and publish information and data that the public desperately needs. We cannot shape our response without good data and information, and in a pandemic that means listening to scientists, and not politicians, about questions of science.

Amy Kapczynski is a seniorvisiting research scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

This piece has been adapted from an interview with the Knight First Amendment Institute'sKaty Glenn Bass.

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LMPD Blues: Civil disobedience and abuse of authority – Louisville Eccentric Observer

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Civil disobedience constitutes a bargain between protesters and government. Since civil disobedience involves breaking the law, protesters who engage in it accept the reality that the government may respond to their civil disobedience with arrests and prosecutions. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in his famous essay Civil Disobedience, Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. It is thus in the grand tradition of the civil rights movement that protesters subject themselves to arrest, and, in the process, call attention to the injustice and create the impetus for change.

While arrest and prosecution is thus woven into the very fabric of civil disobedience, there are still limits to how the government may legitimately respond to law-breaking protesters. Recent events in Louisville demonstrate how easily these limits can be exceeded.

On July 14, protesters seeking to spur action by Attorney General Daniel Cameron on his investigation of the Breonna Taylor case staged a demonstration on the front lawn of Camerons home. After police ordered them to disperse, and they refused, they were arrested. As you might imagine, they were charged with trespass, which is either a misdemeanor or a violation under Kentucky law, depending on the degree.

So far, so good. Trespassing charges make all the sense in the world. There cant really be much question that they were trespassing they were ordered to disperse, and they refused to comply. But the police didnt stop there. The 87 protesters were also charged with intimidating a participant in the legal process, which under KRS 524.040 is a felony punishable by one to five years in prison. These charges were a blatant and obscene violation of the protesters constitutional rights and no legitimate or acceptable part of governance in a time of civil disobedience.

Section 524.040 requires the prosecution to show that the defendant used physical force or a threat directed to a person he believes to be a participant in the legal process. There is no indication that any of the protesters used physical force or threatened the attorney general. The only real threat was a demand for action. Think about two parents whose kids rooms look like a tornado hit them. The first parent says, Clean up that pigsty of a room! That is a demand for action. The second parent says, Clean up that pigsty of a room, or you will be grounded until you are ready to leave for college. That is a threat. The protesters were the first parent, demanding that Daniel Cameron clean up his mess. They made no threat, and they used no physical force.

Or, to put it another way, they engaged in speech speech that petitioned an elected government official for action. In other words, activity at the heart of the First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.

And it wont do to respond that they could not have been exercising their First Amendment rights because they were trespassing. The trespass is already addressed through you guessed it the trespass statute. The intimidation element requires a lot more than trespass, and the protesters either didnt do that something more, or it is unconstitutional to apply the law to the protected (i.e., nonthreatening) expression in which they did engage.

If there was any question that it would be blatantly unconstitutional to apply the intimidation provision to the protesters activities, look no further than the Supreme Courts 2003 decision in Virginia v. Black. There, the Court held that a state may criminalize cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate, but that such speech fell outside the First Amendment only when it constitutes a true threat i.e., statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. It should go without saying that the trespassing protesters on AG Camerons lawn made nothing like such a true threat, and thus that their speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Nor, despite the statement issued by the Louisville Metro Police Department, did the protesters chant that if we dont get it [it referring to justice for Breonna Taylor], burn it down constitute a true threat. The chant had not even begun at Camerons house. Instead, it occurred at Ballard High School, before the protesters marched to his house. The only reasonable interpretation is that they were talking about burning down or rethinking the justice system. As the Supreme Court said in Black, for the state to punish threats, they must be clear and targeted at someone in particular. It cant be ambiguous; punishing an ambiguous statement as a threat violates the First Amendment.

All this, I believe, is why on July 17, the Jefferson County Attorney decided to drop the felony charges, saying in a statement that he was doing so in the interest of justice and the promotion of the free exchange of ideas. While this was good news for the protesters and the First Amendment alike, it is not an alls well that ends well situation, either. Sadly, the LMPDs decision to file these charges in the first place did considerable damage despite the County Attorneys decision. These 87 peaceful protesters will have felony charges on their records. Expungement of even dismissed charges can be expensive and time-consuming. Even though the County Attorney took the commendable step of saying his office would assist the protesters in expunging the felony charges from their records in this instance, the specter of the typical obstacles that make expungement difficult would linger over protesters going forward. And of course, future protesters will know that the LMPD is willing to use and abuse every tool at its disposal to chill their expression.

Here is the irony of the situation. If we ask whose conduct better fits the statutory definition of intimidation under 524.040 the protesters or the LMPDs the clear answer is the police. Nothing the protesters did constituted a threat directed to a person he believes to be a participant in the legal process. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the LMPD officers. It is no great stretch to see their actions in bringing thoroughly unjustified felony charges as a threat to the protesters to stay in line, and since they were already being arrested on the trespassing charges, the protesters were participants in the legal process. If I had to choose only one of the two groups as having violated 524.040, I would have little difficulty choosing the LMPD. And it ought to be a deeply troubling state of affairs when it can plausibly be argued that the police are using their authority to intimidate peaceful protesters.

Put simply, KRS 524.040 is blatantly unconstitutional if applied as broadly as the LMPD attempted to use it in these cases. While prosecutorial overcharging has a long tradition in the criminal justice system (plea bargaining leverage doesnt grow on trees, you know), charging protesters under a statute that doesnt apply to their conduct, and especially when they were engaged in constitutionally protected expression, is not just routine overcharging. Sadly, it is routine in another sense: These arrests are simply the latest example of a routine pattern of the LMPD trampling civil rights. We are long past the point where enough is enough.

Sam Marcosson is a professor at the UofL Brandeis School of Law. The views expressed herein are his alone and do not speak for UofL or the School of Law.

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LMPD Blues: Civil disobedience and abuse of authority - Louisville Eccentric Observer

Goodbye Compromise – The Organization for World Peace

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The U.S.A. is splitting down the middle. On political, social and economic matters, people are flocking away from the centre away from compromise and diplomacy and towards the extremities of the political spectrum. In their wake, the political landscape has become a hotbed for tension and violence, and a vacuum for progress.

Americas political landscape has long been polarised, with Republicans and Democrats in a constant scrap for possession of the White House. Since 1852, they are the only two political parties to have won the popular vote. Yet despite their duopolisation of the Senate, neither party has held on to power for an extensive period of time, so the Presidency has switched hands in 17 of the last 41 elections.

This demonstrates that historically, American people have been open to changing their political allegiance, based on the evolving promises of the two parties. Such open-mindedness allowed the Republican Bush to take office in 2000, with a needed commitment to National Security, and for Democratic Obama to take it back in 2008 on the grounds that Bushs security campaigns were not working and needed reform. Such open-mindedness allowed progress.

However, such open-mindedness is under threat. Political allegiance is becoming less dependent on what people believe is best for the country at a certain time, and increasingly rooted in self-identification with the ideals of one of two diverging parties. Political preferences risk becoming core to individuals identities, and thus dangerously unmalleable.

The Pew Research Institute has been tracking this issue since 1994. They regularly pose a set of 10 questions to samples of American people; the questions span political and economic issues, so responses capture the state of public opinion. Recently, the results have been bleak. The average partisan gap has increased from 15 percentage points to 36 points., their latest report reads.

It is easier to understand the implications of this by focusing on one question: respondents were asked whether they agree that Immigrants strengthen the country with their hard work and talents. In 1994, partisans of both political parties said yes just as often; now, double the proportion of democrats agree (84%) as do republicans (42%). Likewise, the partisan gap in acceptance of homosexuality, concerning the role of government and concerning racial equality have all grown over the last quarter-century. And where there is division, political headwinds blow stronger.

A different study by the Pew Research Institute highlights how this new adoption of politics taints day-to-day relationships. Political preference is now a serious consideration for single Americans seeking a partner. 71% of Democrats claim that they probably or definitely would not consider dating a Trump voter, whilst 47% of Republicans say the same about Clinton voters.

Amidst this diaspora from the political centre, extremism in politics remains marginal. But the signs suggest it is growing. Consider the two Ds: disinvitation and deplatforming, both of which have gained notoriety on U.S. college campuses. Both involve revoking the right of a speaker to address an audience on-campus because of disagreements with their views. Disinvitation means un-inviting the speaker, because their presence would create harmful backlash, and deplatforming involves drowning out the speaker during their talk (e.g. by chanting or storming the stage).

In 2019, there were 39 attempts at deplatforming or disinvitation across U.S. campuses, which is 33% more than the same time a decade ago. Most targeted speakers are from the political right. One example was in Boston University, where students attempted to deplatform ex-journalist Ben Shapiro who was there to deliver a speech on slavery. They invoked his stances on gay marriage and abortion, as well as his comment in 2002 that One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian, as their motivations. A selection of students also launched a petition for the University to deny his entrance, saying that Shapiro is a racist, far-right zealot whose aim is to incite hatred and bigotry on our campus and in the larger society., and on the evening of his talk, a small number heckled him.

Left-wing speakers are not exempt from deplatforming. Last year, students at Southern Georgia University surrounded the accommodation of Cuban activist Jennine Cap Crucet, after she criticised white privilege. A video then circulated of university students burning her book.

You can argue for or against the two Ds. You can claim that certain speakers, whose views are harmful, do not deserve a platform. You can also claim that everyone should be allowed to speak, and suppressing this quells the first amendment. Either way, hate speech and speech-stifling promote the same thing: a fear of being called out or silenced. 53% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans say that discussing politics with someone they disagree with is stressful or frustrating (an overall rise since 2016). In turn, this denies people the chance to challenge or develop their views, propagating polarity.

It is also concerning because political leaders have adopted this attitude. For example, in 2018 a cohort of Democrats refused to applaud Trump during his state of the union address. Trump fired back by calling them un-American and treasonous; he undermined the oppositions concerns rather than thinking to address them.

Despite the disagreement, there is one thing that Republicans and Democrats consistently agree on: political debate is deteriorating. Partisans of both parties are equally likely to say that political debates have become more negative (86% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats agree). A similar percentage also believe that debates have become less fact-based (76% of Republicans, 79% of Democrats) and that debates have become less focused on issues (60% of Republicans, 62% of Democrats). In other words, both parties are equally concerned about splitting from each other. Thats fortunate. To stitch Americas middle back together, hands on both sides will be needed.

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Goodbye Compromise - The Organization for World Peace

How QAnon Will Fight Back Against Twitters Ban And What Happens Next – Observer

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On Tuesday Night, Twitter announced an extensive crackdown on the QAnon movement, in line with its policy to take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.

The QAnon movement has grown radically over the last four years. It began in obscurity in 2017, when someone known only as Q posted a series of conspiracy theories about Trump on the internet forum 4chan, positing that a deep state satanic cabal of global elites was involved in pedophilia, sex trafficking and supposedly responsible for all the evil in the world; it has since grown into a global movement that has recently seeped into mainstream popular culture and shown up in person at events, harassed people online and off, and spread conspiracies at a rapid pace, aided by celebrities and the President of the United States.

Twitter further stated that it will be suspending accounts found to be tweeting about topics related to QAnon that are engaged in violations of Twitters multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension. In reality, this mostly means that the platform is simply enforcing existing policies on QAnon after seeing an increase in violations of policies by QAnon in recent weeks.

NBC News subsequently reported that approximately 7,000 QAnon accounts have been taken down; Twitter added that the platform will be limiting 150,000 additional accounts by no longer recommending content and accounts associated with QAnon in its trends and recommendations, ensuring that those activities arent served up in user searches, and blocking URLs linking to QAnon-associated websites. Twitter stated that these will be rolled out comprehensively this week, though QAnon already started blocking QAnon accounts that have the popular Qmap website linked to their profile, as it was a Twitter policy violation.

Many observers of the QAnon movement greeted the decision by Twitter with excitement and relief. It was essential, they believe, to eliminate the recommendation algorithm that continuously spread QAnon-driven disinformation and acted as an indoctrination pipeline.

Undoubtedly, this will help curb access to this toxicity on Twitter. QAnon is not simply a few influencers who are spreading disinformation or hate speech. Based on my social media analysis of QAnon activity on Twitter, over the past 30 days there have been approximately 150,000 unique authors posting about QAnon daily. Therefore, the actions that Twitter will take will likely impact almost all of the daily active QAnon community.

At the same time, these are not all faceless drones or bots tweeting QAnon content. As Alex Kaplan from Media Matters has reported, there are currently 66 congressional candidates that have supported or given credence to QAnon, 15 of whom will be on the ballot in November. According to Oliver Darcy at CNN, a Twitter spokesperson told him that currently (QAnon) candidates and elected officials will not be automatically included in many of these actions broadly.

However, if they are campaigning on QAnon-related topics or had a QAnon consistency, limiting the reach of QAnon content, hashtags and URLs may have an impact on the electoral process. There will be a delicate balance that Twitter will need to uphold; how that will be done and what the impacts will remain to be seen.

Twitter further stated that they are taking action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. What is unclear at this time is how Twitter will judge what may or may not lead to offline harm. Though there have been QAnon adherents who have been charged with or have allegedly perpetrated murder, arson, uttering terroristic threats, kidnapping and vandalism, there are others who have consumed the same content and not taken any violent action. Paradoxically, if we take a look at Twitter actions from the perspective of a QAnon believer this will confirm their ideological framework, as has been expressed by some QAnon influencers following last nights news.

QAnon believes they are fighting an information war against the deep state and that Twitter is where the war is happening. If they are being beaten in the information war, is that something they will continue to fight? Will they redouble their efforts on other platforms? Or will they find another outlet? Initial reactions from the community highlight some of the challenges of combatting a movement like QAnon, whose members believe that this is simply a tactic used by their enemies in the war they are already fighting.

Some users have already started pronouncing digital martyr narratives for the social media accounts that have fallen in the digital war, while at the same time stating that this is what QAnon adherents have been trained for and it is mission forward. Others simply turned to prayer, asking the Good Lord to help and protect QAnon soldiers from being de-platformed in this information war. And then there are threats of class-action lawsuits from Q members who have no interest in leaving Twitter.

Deplatforming will not change the ideological beliefs nor the human behavior of QAnon adherents, rather it will likely reinforce them. If you take the digital soldiers off their digital battleground, most may choose to fight from another platform, but potentially for a small minority of disenfranchised QAnon believers, offline action may appear to be their only solution.

It is a good approach from the platforms perspective, and many may see this as a positive thing (and it may well be in the short term). Thinking of the long-term impact is where it gets tricky, especially from a societal perspective. Deplatforming can work on an individual level, as was the case with Milo Yiannopoulos who lost his source of income and his toxic platform. However, QAnon is not an individual, not only is it membership global and decentralized, it is a movement that has found a voice in the halls of power. It is a movement that Trump has amplified over 185 times, Michael Flynn (Trumps first national security adviser) participating in the QAnon TakeTheOath trend. Additionally, some in QAnon formalized religious practices and formed a church.

Twitter is also not the only platform in the game.

If QAnon influencer and content creators are banned, the movement will simply move to another platform. If Facebook does not follow in the footsteps of Twitter, they are a likely home for QAnon along with the new conservative-focused network Parler. There is also a small number of QAnon accounts sharing their profiles on Wego.Social, congressional candidate Darlene Swaffar being one of them.

Though many QAnon influencers and adherents have expressed they will be moving to Parler, the platform functions differently than Twitter; there is no trending topics to react to and the timeline is quite restrictive with regard to exploring new content compared to Twitter. Parler is very much echo chamber based and it will lack the community feel that many QAnon adherents need, it will also lack the opposition QAnon found on Twitter, which is essential to feeding the movement. In the long term, there is a chance Parler could not sustain QAnon.

Another option for QAnon would be a large migration to Telegram, where there is no content moderation, and there is an existing and thriving transnational QAnon community that already tops 100,000 members. Telegram chats can provide the interaction the community needs. Furthermore, Influencers can have their own channels which may sustain a large following like on Twitter.

Telegram is also a haven for more extreme groups such as anti-government, neo-Nazi, and white power movements. With so many birds of a feather flocking together, the chance of some QAnon followers cross-pollinating with hardened extremists is a concern.

With such a diverse and active community the only option for QAnon will be migration. Where they end up in the digital ecosystem will determine what the possible societal impact may be and how the community will change and evolve.

At this point, I still think it is important to be cautious about the potential outcomes of Twitters crackdown and some serious thought and analysis still needs to be put into the potential fallout (both good and bad) this decision will have.

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How QAnon Will Fight Back Against Twitters Ban And What Happens Next - Observer


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