PATRIOT Act renewal bill has passed Senate Judiciary Committee
The PATRIOT Act renewal bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee without key civil liberties reforms attached.
Missed opportunities for reform include: requiring the government to show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy in seeking Americans’ records through National Security Letters (NSLs); letting the “lone wolf” wiretapping authority expire; stopping the government from using [...]
Tweet-Crime?
We’re starting to see more domestic coverage of l’affaire Elliot Madison, the self-described political anarchist who has been charged with using Twitter to apprise protesters of police movements at the recent G20 Summit.
Our own Laura DeNardis weighed in via this Reuters story, highlighting the double standard between Twitter activism in Iran and Pittsburgh.
Is there [...]
Cyberbullying bill on the horizon
A cyberbullying bill introduced after a federal judge nullified the jury verdict in the MySpace suicide case has thankfully not been well received. The bill calls for up to two years in prison for electronic speech meant to “coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to a person”.
One of the bill’s opponents, R-Texas Gohmert, [...]
Is Tweeting a Crime?
Huffington Post is reporting that a WTO protester was arrested and charged with “hindering prosecution” for using Twitter to direct protester movements at a demonstration against the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.
FBI agents subsequently executed a search warrant at the man’s home, where they seized computers, political writings and anarchist literature.
In other news, you [...]
A note on anonymous speech
A First Amendment right to speak about politics anonymously was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1995, when the court held that a lone pamphleteer had the right to distribute political literature without having her identity revealed.
But anonymity online has been subject to concerns about the harm inherent in gossip and reputation demolishing. This has [...]
The other side of access
Our goal as a practicum, as Nabiha mentioned, is to perform a “sunlight” function traditionally served by legacy media. The structure of “new media”, as many have observed, is extremely conducive to open-access policy: you can now store, search, share, and discuss massive amounts of data and documents, both online and off.
There’s another side to [...]
