Category Archives: Free Speech

Recently the Deseret News printed what to me may be the most terrifying words published in this country since the Intolerable Acts of 1774 ("Government taking a scythe to the Bill of Rights," George Will, May 6). Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and others have introduced a proposed amendment to the Constitution to restrict the rights of political speech to apply only to individuals and to allow Congress to curtail the collective speech rights of any group with which the Congress does not agree.

By itself, this is monstrous, but the implied extended and unintended consequences of this act would mean the extinction of the Bill of Rights as we know it. Yet besides Will's column, I haven't heard one word of criticism of this proposal.

This proposal is outrageous. Yet everyone I talk to says, " It will never happen". But the same was probably said just before President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court and enforced the Indian Removal Act. Or just before Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase National Monument. The fact that this has been proposed by a ranking member of Congress indicates it is possible.

The leadership of both parties should repudiate this immediately. The sponsors should withdraw the proposal and apologize to the nation for having even considered the notion.

Thomas W. Brown

Murray

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Letter: Free speech must be protected for all individuals, groups

Leftists are killing free speech by calling disagreements hate speech and finding ways to intimidate even those who facilitate debate. But one victim recently fought back, showing us some Americans will stand up for a principle giving truth a chance to emerge. Mark Stevens, I think, is someone to emulate.

Stevens is a smart, tough guy from Queens. His father died when he was 17, leaving the family $84, an amount challenging the youth's initiative. All Stevens wanted was a chance. This country provided him with plenty, and today he is head of a hugely successful marketing firm, MSCO Inc. It advertises all over the place, including on the Rush Limbaugh radio show in New York.

It's because of that sponsorship that Stevens encountered the anti-speech "terrorists," a word he used in an interview with me in Colorado Springs. He was there to speak at a gathering of conservative think tanks about events after Limbaugh employed a nasty name to describe a woman involved in a public issue he had been discussing. It was an inexcusable slur, and Stevens hardly approved, but did not expect what would then come his way.

It was indeed an attack of crazies, people threatening Stevens with "surveillance," promising busloads of visits to his residence if he did not drop his advertising, telling even the female employees who answered the phone that they were "women haters."

Stevens pushed back, recognizing from the similarities that this was an organized hit. He went on the Limbaugh show and Fox News shows to denounce these thugs, increased his advertising and found great support in thousands of emails, faithful clients and even people volunteering to protect him.

I guess those trying to scare Stevens into hiding expected a mouse. They got a lion, but in cases of this kind, there are plenty of mice out there, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft Foods, McDonald's and Wendy's. Those are some of the companies that abandoned their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after extreme leftist groups emitted screeches about its support of such measures as stand-your-ground laws that permit self-defense when someone is trying to kill you.

What the council mostly likes as it effectively lobbies state legislatures is free enterprise, economic growth and jobs, but the left wants government control and portrays the organization in vicious terms.

Meanwhile, more tyranny loyalists have been on the march in the case of Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp. and its Fox News in America. In Great Britain, Labour Party members on a parliamentary committee denounced him as unfit to head a multinational news corporation. Hey, says Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, this means the Federal Communications Commission should revoke Fox's broadcast licenses, another anti-freedom absurdity of extreme leftist making.

At least we are not Denmark, where Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, was put on trial for saying in a private exchange that there were a disturbing number of cases of misogyny and family rape in some Muslim areas. In three different court decisions, he was found innocent, then guilty, then in late April finally innocent again of hate speech, for which he could have been imprisoned. Even if he had meant to make his observations public, so what? People cannot talk about such things even if they are true? Somebody's feelings might be hurt? What about stopping rapes?

Free speech evolved slowly and very, very painfully in the West. Even in America, where it has taken its greatest leaps forward, it has had continuous ups and downs, although we seemed to have arrived at some understanding that this is a supreme freedom without which there is vastly reduced hope for the others. Lately, people who like to call themselves progressives have been playing a frighteningly regressive game with this freedom, but there remains a great hope in America: citizens like Mark Stevens.

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Jay Ambrose: The ups and downs of free speech

By Bob Van Voris - Wed May 09 19:22:34 GMT 2012

A New York police officer who claims he was locked in a psychiatric ward after documenting corruption in the department told a judge he wants to amend his $50 million lawsuit against the city to add a claim that his free speech rights were violated.

A lawyer for Adrian Schoolcraft asked U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet today for permission to change his clients complaint to include a claim the city violated his right to go public with reports that officers were told to falsify crime and arrest statistics.

He was speaking out to the public about a matter of public concern, Joshua Fitch, the lawyer, said in a hearing today in Manhattan federal court.

Schoolcraft, who sued the city in August 2010, said police officials illegally tried to intimidate him and retaliate after he revealed an alleged policy requiring officers to boost arrests, falsify reports and suborn perjury to manipulate crime statistics.

Fitch said in an interview outside court that the city violated Schoolcrafts free-speech rights by trying to prevent him from reporting the misconduct internally and blocking him from talking to the press.

William Fraenkel, a lawyer for the city, told Sweet that reporting misconduct is part of a police officers job, and therefore isnt covered by the First Amendment.

Sweet didnt say when he will rule on Schoolcrafts request.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

The case is Schoolcraft v. The City of New York, 10-06005, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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New York Policeman Asks to Add Free-Speech Claim to Suit

Leftists are killing free speech by calling disagreements hate speech and finding ways to intimidate even those who facilitate debate. But one victim recently fought back, showing us some Americans will stand up for a principle giving truth a chance to emerge. Mark Stevens, I think, is someone to emulate.

Stevens is a smart, tough guy from Queens. His father died when he was 17, leaving the family $84, an amount challenging the youth's initiative. All Stevens wanted was a chance. This country provided him with plenty, and today he is head of a hugely successful marketing firm, MSCO Inc. It advertises all over the place, including on the Rush Limbaugh radio show in New York.

It's because of that sponsorship that Stevens encountered the anti-speech "terrorists," a word he used in an interview with me in Colorado Springs. He was there to speak at a gathering of conservative think tanks about events after Limbaugh employed a nasty name to describe a woman involved in a public issue he had been discussing.

It was an inexcusable slur, and Stevens hardly approved, he but did not expect what would then come his way.

It was indeed an attack of crazies, people threatening Stevens with "surveillance," promising busloads of visits to his residence if he did not drop his advertising, telling even the female employees who answered the phone that they were "women haters."

Stevens pushed back, recognizing from the similarities that this was an organized hit. He went on the Limbaugh show and Fox News shows to denounce these thugs, increased his advertising and found great support in thousands of emails, faithful clients and even people volunteering to protect him.

I guess those trying to scare Stevens into hiding expected a mouse. They got a lion, but in cases of this kind, there are plenty of mice out there, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft Foods, McDonald's and Wendy's.

Those are some of the companies that abandoned their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after extreme leftist groups emitted screeches about its support of such measures as stand-your-ground laws that permit self-defense when someone is trying to kill you.

What the council mostly likes as it effectively lobbies state legislatures is free enterprise, economic growth and jobs, but the left wants government control and portrays the organization in vicious terms.

Meanwhile, more tyranny loyalists have been on the march in the case of Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp. and its Fox News in America.

See the original post:
Ambrose: Standing up for free speech

Just as the New York Times can decide All the News Thats Fit to Print, search engines have a free speech right to choose who or what to put in their search rankings.

Thats the conclusion of a prominent First Amendment scholar commissioned by Google to make the case that the government cant tell search engines how to design their results.

A Free Speech Right?

According to the report authored by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh: Google, Microsofts Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen as media enterprises, much as the New York Times Company or CNN are media enterprises and deserve the same protections. It adds that search engines have the same freedom to choose a set of links as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.

Search engine results are a form of opinion, says the report, in which companies offer information they think is most relevant to users.

In practice, this would mean Google has the right to punt sites like Yelp, which has complained that Google is a monopolist, to the search equivalent of Siberia if it decided that was best for users (Yelp now comes up second in a search for restaurant review).

The US has a long history of companies claiming First Amendment protections. One example is a newspaper that was allowed to exclude certain advertisers even though it had a substantial monopoly.

The courts have also made a few exceptions to the free speech rule. One case involved a publisher that was sued for providing inaccurate flight maps. Another involved cable providers which, a court said, did not have a free speech right to exclude certain channels.

Volokhs report says those free speech exceptions dont apply to search engines because, unlike cable providers, its not just a pipe for information. It also echoes Google position that consumers can easily use a competing search engine.

In an interview, Volokh said Googles situation is also similar to a 1980s case in which an author launched a failed suit against the New York Times over the accuracy of the newspapers weekly best-seller list.

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Search engines have same speech rights as the New York Times, says Google report

Just as the New York Times can decide All the News Thats Fit to Print, search engines have a free speech right to choose who or what to put in their search rankings.

Thats the conclusion of a prominent First Amendment scholar commissioned by Google to make the case that the government cant tell search engines how to design their results.

A Free Speech Right?

According to the report authored by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh: Google, Microsofts Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen as media enterprises, much as the New York Times Company or CNN are media enterprises and deserve the same protections. It adds that search engines have the same freedom to choose a set of links as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.

Search engine results are a form of opinion, says the report, in which companies offer information they think is most relevant to users.

In practice, this would mean Google has the right to punt sites like Yelp, which has complained that Google is a monopolist, to the search equivalent of Siberia if it decided that was best for users (Yelp now comes up second in a search for restaurant review).

The US has a long history of companies claiming First Amendment protections. One example is a newspaper that was allowed to exclude certain advertisers even though it had a substantial monopoly.

The courts have also made a few exceptions to the free speech rule. One case involved a publisher that was sued for providing inaccurate flight maps. Another involved cable providers which, a court said, did not have a free speech right to exclude certain channels.

Volokhs report says those free speech exceptions dont apply to search engines because, unlike cable providers, its not just a pipe for information. It also echoes Google position that consumers can easily use a competing search engine.

In an interview, Volokh said Googles situation is also similar to a 1980s case in which an author launched a failed suit against the New York Times over the accuracy of the newspapers weekly best-seller list.

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Search engines have same speech rights as New York Times says Google report

As various levels of government both in the U.S. and around the world have stepped up their attempts to track down dissidents through social networks, the pressure has intensified on companies like Twitter and Facebook to comply with these demands even at the expense of their users privacy. Despite that pressure, Twitter at least seems determined to fight these incursions wherever possible. As a case in point, the company has filed a motion in New York state court to quash a court order compelling it to hand over information about a user involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, arguing that the order violates that individuals rights.

The case in question involves a protester by the name of Malcolm Harris, whose Twitter handle was @destructuremal, and who was involved in a protest against Wall Street financial mismanagement in October of 2011 that saw more than 700 people arrested for a variety of charges, including destruction of public property and resisting arrest. Earlier this year, the New York district attorneys office sent Twitter a subpoena for information relating to Harris use of the network during the protest including personal details about him, and also specific messages that he sent.

As my PaidContent colleague Jeff John Roberts reported last month, Harris attempt to have this court order struck down failed for a somewhat unusual reason: namely, the judge hearing the case decided that Harris did not have any legal interest in the tweets he sent, because such rights only apply to things a user actually owns and users do not own their tweets for the purposes of the U.S. Constitution. According to the judge:

While the Fourth Amendment provides protection for our physical homes, we do not have a physical home on the Internet some of our most private information is sent to third parties and held far away on remote network servers.

Now Twitter has stepped in to try and force the court to quash the order, as reported first by the American Civil Liberties Union blog. According to Twitters motion (embedded below) the judges decision that Harris doesnt own his tweets contradicts both Twitters terms of use which specifically state that a users retain [their] rights to any Content [they] submit, post or display on or through the service as well as the federal Stored Communications Act, which the Twitter motion says expressly permits users to challenge demands for their account records.

Twitter seems to be stepping up its opposition to these kinds of cases: in an earlier case related to the Boston version of the Occupy protests, Twitter handed over a users data to Boston police after they submitted a court order alleging that the user in question who went by the names @@pOisAnON and Guido Fawkes was involved in a hacking attempt on the police department. But the company said that it only handed over the minimum amount of information required by the police investigation.

And while the company ultimately gave this user data to the Boston police, it defied a request not to make the police departments court order public, something it has also done in the past in more serious cases, such as the Justice Departments attempts to get details about the Twitter activity of WikiLeaks supporters such as Jacob Appelbaum and Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir. In that case, Twitter fought for the right to tell users that authorities were seeking the information unlike a number of other companies who likely also got similar requests although the company was eventually ordered to provide the data.

As it has evolved from being just a social toy into a real-time information network used by Arab Spring dissidents in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, Twitter has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to free speech by its users both in blog posts about how the tweets must flow despite attempts by governments to stop them, and in comments by CEO Dick Costolo and general counsel Alex Macgillivray that the company is the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.

That commitment was questioned by some when the company announced late last year that it had developed the capacity to selectively censor content from the network within specific countries, but Twitter stressed that it would only do this if required by law, and that it would publicize these requests at the Chilling Effects website. The latest moves in the Harris case suggest that Twitter plans to continue fighting for the rights of its users, and also that it intends to make these battles as public as possible. And Harris, who now tweets under the name @BigMeanInternet, seems pretty thankful.

http://www.scribd.com/embeds/92886294/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list

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Twitter: We’re still the free-speech wing of the free-speech party

06-05-2012 13:57 Morpheus interviews Josh from http from about a shooting that occurred in Tempe in March 2012. Now according to Josh the Police have created a Black List of "Dangerous Artists". Venue owners who have "dangerous Artists" playing are required to have additional police "protection". Venue owners who do not let them selves be extorted by the Tempe police department for additional "protection" This is seen by Josh and by Morpheus as an Direct Attack on Freedom of Speech. The group is planning a music demonstration in Tempe contact Send this message to everyone you know especially anyone who is an artist!

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Tempe attacks Free Speech Hip Hop - Video

Controversies can be wonderfully clarified when people follow the logic of illogical premises to perverse conclusions.

For example, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), joined by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, 26 other Democrats and one Republican, proposes a constitutional amendment to radically contract First Amendment protections.

His purpose is to vastly expand governments power i.e., the power of incumbent legislators to write laws regulating, rationing or even proscribing speech in elections for the Legislature and the rest of the government. McGoverns proposal vindicates those who say most campaign-finance reforms are incompatible with the First Amendment.

Ron Sachs - CNP

Jim McGovern

His Peoples Rights Amendment declares that the Constitution protects only the rights of natural persons, not such persons organized in corporations, and that Congress can impose on corporations whatever restrictions Congress deems reasonable. His amendment says it shall not be construed to limit the peoples rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and all such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable. But the amendment is designed to deny such rights to natural persons who, exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of association, come together in corporate entities to speak in concert.

McGovern stresses that his amendment decrees that all corporate entities for-profit and nonprofit alike have no constitutional rights. So Congress and state legislatures and local governments could regulate to the point of proscription political speech, or any other speech, by the Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association, NARAL Pro-Choice America, or any of the other tens of thousands of nonprofit advocacy groups, including political parties and campaign committees.

Newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, online journalism and most religious institutions are corporate entities. McGoverns amendment would strip them of all constitutional rights. By doing so, the amendment would empower the government to do much more than proscribe speech.

Ilya Somin, of George Mason University Law School, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog, notes that government, unleashed by McGoverns amendment, could regulate religious practices at most houses of worship, conduct whatever searches it wants, reasonable or not, of corporate entities, and seize corporate property for whatever it deems public uses without paying compensation. Yes, McGoverns scythe would mow down the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as the First.

The proposed amendment is intended to reverse the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, which affirmed the right of persons to associate in corporate entities for the purpose of unrestricted collective speech independent of candidates campaigns. The decision was foreshadowed when, in oral argument, the governments lawyer insisted the government could ban a 500-page book that contained one sentence that said vote for a particular candidate.

Originally posted here:
An absurd attack on free speech

BEIRUT: Former Prime Minister Najib Mikati vowed Sunday to protect free speech on the occasion of Lebanon's Martyrs Press Day and saluted journalists who died in the line of duty.

I, stemming from my belief in free speech, promise the Lebanese press and the rest of media outlets to preserve press freedom, Mikati said in a statement.

He also expressed his readiness to cooperate with the press and media institutions to develop laws that regulate their affairs and preserve free speech.

The press has embodied and still embodies the pillar of free speech in Lebanon and the essence of democracy that characterizes it, Mikati said.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea also saluted the efforts of slain journalists.

In a statement, he also vowed to continue the struggle toward a civilized and free society.

I raise my right hand to greet them and pray for them and vow in their name to always fight for the sake of a civilized life and the principles of the free, Geagea said.

The most recent victim of violence that targeted a journalist in the country was the killing of Ali Shaaban, the Al-Jadeed cameraman who was shot at the Lebanon-Syria border in April.

Shaaban, 30, was killed when the car he was traveling in was hit by a volley of machine gunfire in the northern area of Wadi Khaled near the border with Syria.

Al-Jadeed blamed the Syrian Army for Shaabans killing.

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Mikati vows to protect free speech