Congress
By Kristina Wong
House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday announced the launch of an investigation into Facebook and Twitter over their suppression before the 2020 presidential election of New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop that contained emails exposing questionable business deals with foreigners that would benefit the Biden family.
“Big Tech, Big Democrat Party, and Big Media all colluded to keep critical information from the American people in the run-up to the most important election we have, the presidential election, so we’re launching an investigation,” said Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-OH) Thursday on Fox Business.
FEC
Axios: Congress gets new spending loophole
By Lachlan Markay
Federal regulators last week allowed a legal loophole that could effectively let former members of Congress spend leftover campaign money on personal expenses.
Campaign finance reform advocates say that opens the door to former public servants to live large off of money intended for political contests. Scores are already retired, and more members are heading for the door this fall ahead of potential Democratic losses and GOP challenges.
The Courts
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Police Officer Gets Critic Prosecuted for “Harassment,” Based on Critical Online Posts
By Eugene Volokh
From Judge Lee Rudofsky’s opinion denying summary judgment, yesterday’s Long v. Smith (E.D. Ark.); seems quite right to me (for more on criminal harassment statutes and the First Amendment, see this article):
Privacy
Vice (Motherboard): Post Office Cops Used Social Media Surveillance Program Illegally
By Aaron Gordon and Joseph Cox
[In April 2021, Yahoo News reported that the United States Postal Inspection Service’s] Internet Covert Operations Program, better and somehow not satirically known as iCOP, was monitoring social media for “inflammatory” postings associated with protest movements on both the Left and the Right. This puzzled First Amendment watchdogs and security experts since the federal government has no shortage of agencies to monitor social media for inflammatory posts, yet for some reason postal cops were doing it. Yahoo News also reported that iCOP included use of Clearview AI, the highly controversial facial recognition system that is built on a database of images scraped from social media.
As a result of that investigation, the House of Representatives asked the USPS Office of Inspector General to investigate this program. The USPSOIG has just published that report which found iCOP used “proactive searches” that “did not include any terms with a postal nexus,” meaning they had nothing to do with the post office.
Books
Election Law Blog: Watch My Conversation with Erwin Chemerinsky for the Commonwealth Club about My Cheap Speech Book
By Rick Hasen
Great conversation that you can watch here:
Online Speech Platforms
WJAC: YouTube removed PA Republican gubernatorial forum citing misinformation policy, group says
The Pennsylvania Family Institute says YouTube took down its recorded live stream of a GOP gubernatorial candidate forum, claiming the video platform is trying to censor the free democratic process…
The group claims that YouTube provided no specific reasoning why the platform removed the stream other than saying it violated the platform’s misinformation policy.
Washington Post (Technology 202): Democrats are calling on LinkedIn to crack down on misinformation, too
By Cristiano Lima
An unexpected tech platform is facing new pressure from Democrats to step up its policies against misinformation: LinkedIn.
The Microsoft-owned networking site is the latest major platform added to the Democratic National Committee’s misinformation scorecard, which for years has graded platforms based on their rules against false or misleading content.
LinkedIn joins Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat as platforms Democrats are pressing to “take responsibility for information quality on their sites,” according to a forthcoming announcement shared exclusively with The Technology 202.
The States
Reason: New Jersey Town Sues Elderly Woman for Filing Too Many Public Records Requests
By C.J. Ciaramella
A New Jersey town is suing an elderly woman for filing too many public records requests and speaking out at city meetings, saying the octogenarian is bullying town officials.
Irvington Township, in a lawsuit filed in New Jersey state court, says 82-year-old Elouise McDaniel has harassed and annoyed town employees by filing frequent “frivolous” ethics complaints and public records requests. Specifically, the township accuses McDaniel of malicious abuse of process, malicious prosecution, defamation, and harassment…
“Here’s a city requesting public records from a citizen, whining that an elderly resident exercised her right to request records, and trying to get a court to order a citizen to stop criticizing her town,” he says. “It’s a shame that New Jersey doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP [Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation] statute. This is the most ill-considered SLAPP I’ve seen since I watched the Oscars.” …
When local New York news outlet NBC4 reported on the story, the township sent the outlet two cease-and-desist letters accusing it of harassment.
