US Censorship News

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given a thumbs down to censorship of an ad called Faces of Global Terrorism .

The years-long lawsuit is over an ad based on an image created by the State Department that previously was run on county buses in the Seattle area.

The ad was submitted to King County Metro Transit (KCMT) by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and their organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

It first was rejected on a long list of grounds, including that some of its statements were inaccurate.The statements were corrected, but KCMT still rejected it on the grounds that it disparaged some people and might disrupt the system.

The court found that found that KCMT's arguments were lofty ideals, but were unconstitutional in this case. The court said:

We conclude that Metro's disparagement standard discriminates, on its face, on the basis of viewpoint, the panel explained. The ruling said Metro requires the refusal of ads that disparage people, but giving offense is a viewpoint, so Metro's disparagement clause discriminates.

As for the disruption?

The transit system previously had run the largely similar ad presented by the State Department, with no ill effects

A federal court considering a challenge to the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, or FOSTA , dismissed the case on Monday.

EFF and partner law firms filed a lawsuit in June against the Justice Department on behalf of two human rights organizations, a digital library, an activist for sex workers, and a certified massage therapist to block enforcement of FOSTA.

Unfortunately, a federal court sided with the government and dismissed Woodhull Freedom Foundation et al. v. United States. The court did not reach the merits of any of the constitutional issues, but instead found that none of the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the law's legality.

We're disappointed and believe the decision is wrong. For example, the court failed to apply the standing principles that are usually applied in First Amendment cases in which the plaintiffs' speech is chilled. The plaintiffs are considering their options for their next steps.

FOSTA was passed by Congress for the worthy purpose of fighting sex trafficking, but the poorly-written bill contains language that criminalizes the protected speech of those who advocate for and provide resources to adult, consensual sex workers. Worse yet, the bill actually hinders efforts to prosecute sex traffickers and aid victims.

The lawsuit argues that FOSTA forces community forums and speakers offline for fear of criminal charges and heavy civil liability, in violation of their constitutional rights. We asked the federal court to strike down the law, though the government argued that the plaintiffs were not likely to be subject to criminal or civil liability under the law.

Facebook's Partnership with US state-funded think tanks

Last Wednesday Facebook announced it would work with two US government-funded think tanks in order bolster the social media giant's election integrity efforts around the globe.

The new partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been described by Reuters as an initiative to slow the global spread of misinformation that could influence elections, acknowledging that fake news sites were still read by millions.

But both the IRI and NDI are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) , which has since its late Cold War era founding defined itself as a soft power wing of the US government abroad focused on democracy promotion.

Journalist Max Blumenthal recently described the NDI as a taxpayer funded organization that has interfered in elections, mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist Washington's agenda.

...Read the full article from mintpressnews.com

President Donald Trump took to Twitter to complain that social media companies are discriminating against prominent conservatives, saying we won't let that happen. He tweeted:

Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won't let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.

.....Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police. If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don't watch at all.

The president later added:

....Too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!

Trump in July said his administration will look into the practice of shadow banning on Twitter, or reducing the visibility of certain people or groups on the platform, which he alleged was happening to prominent conservative voices.

The US Federal Government is quietly meeting with top tech company representatives to develop a proposal to protect web users' privacy amid the ongoing fallout globally of scandals that have rocked Facebook and other companies.

Over the past month, the Commerce Department has met with representatives from Facebook and Google, along with Internet providers like AT&T and Comcast, and consumer advocates, sources told the Washington Post.

The goal of these meetings is to come up with a data privacy proposal at the federal level that could serve as a blueprint for Congress to pass sweeping legislation in the mode of the European Union GDPR. There are currently no laws that govern how tech companies harness and monetize US users' data.

A total of 22 meetings with more than 80 companies have been held on this topic over the last month.

One official at the White House told the Post this week that recent developments have been seismic in the privacy policy world, prompting the government to discuss what a modern U.S. approach to privacy protection might look like.

On Thursday, July 19, at 4 pm, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a federal judge to put enforcement of FOSTA on hold during the pendency of its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal law. The hold is needed, in part, to allow plaintiff Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a sex worker advocacy group, to organize and publicize its annual conference, held August 2-5.

FOSTA , or the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, was passed by Congress in March. But despite its name, FOSTA attacks online speakers who speak favorably about sex work by imposing harsh penalties for any website that might be seen as facilitating prostitution or contribute to sex trafficking. In Woodhull Freedom Foundation v. U.S. , filed on behalf of two human rights organizations, a digital library, an activist for sex workers, and a certified massage therapist, EFF maintains the law is unconstitutional because it muzzles constitutionally protected speech that protects and advocates for sex workers and forces speakers and platforms to censor themselves.

Enforcement of the law should be suspended because the plaintiffs are likely to win the case and because it has caused, and will continue to cause, irreparable harm to the plaintiffs, EFF co-counsel Bob Corn-Revere of Davis Wright Tremaine will tell the court at a hearing this week on the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction. Because of the risk of criminal penalties, the plaintiffs have had their ads removed from Craigslist and censored information on their websites. Plaintiff Woodhull Freedom Foundation has censored publication of information that could assist sex workers negatively impacted by the law. FOSTA threatens Woodhull's ability to engage in protected online speech, including livestreaming and live tweeting its August meeting, unless FOSTA is put on hold.

Update: A little reserved

20th July 2018. See article from avn.com

Judge Richard Leon of United States District Court in Washington D.C. heard Woodhull's request for a preliminary injunction that would stop the law from remaining in effect until the group's lawsuit, but did not issue a judgement. Nor did he announce a date when he would issue a ruling.

According to one account from inside the courtroon, Leon sounded skeptical that the law had actually caused harm to the plaintiffs in the case.

An art gallery in Portland, Oregon was receiving a bit of a backlash for a cartoon image displayed in its window and posted to its Facebook page. It depicts President Donald Trump, head pulled back, with a bloody knife to his throat, and the caption: 'Fuck Trump'

The image posted by One Grand Gallery appeared to part of an installation launched last week titled Fuck You Mr. President , which featured nearly three dozen artists, according to the gallery's Facebook page, and was accompanied by similar language.

A picture of the image began circulating online with many Trump supporters calling it a threat on the president's life and asking for Secret Service to investigate.

The post was soon removed from the gallery's Facebook page and KATU-TV reports the image has also been removed from the gallery's window.