In the News

HuffPost: Giving Corporations More Power Is The Wrong Response To Russian Propaganda

By Luke Wachob

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the government isn’t able to shut down dissenting views today. But private companies? That’s a totally different story. Private entities are not bound by the First Amendment, so when they join forces with government, our speech rights become muddled.

For power-hungry politicians, outsourcing censorship is a means to an end. Pressuring an industry into censoring itself, often with the threat of new laws in the background, can achieve in practice what the government is forbidden from doing directly. The result is the enforcement of conventional values to the exclusion of new or dissenting ideas…

Proponents of further regulating internet speech say they seek only increased transparency in online advertising. That doesn’t square with the Senate’s actions. Fierce condemnations of social media companies, fearmongering about “misinformation” and “fake news,” and misleading legislation titled the “Honest Ads Act” speak to much larger ambitions. They suggest an interest in dramatically curtailing freedom of speech online.

Our response to Russian dissemination of propaganda should punish Russia, not Americans. Rewriting the rules for political speech on the internet – or pressuring social media companies to regulate with a heavy hand – will threaten the future of legitimate, homegrown political movements in the United States. 

WJXT News4JAX: Appeals court rejects finance challenge

By News Service of Florida

In a case brought by a Florida couple, a federal appeals court Tuesday rejected a challenge to a campaign-finance law that places limits on contributions in primary and general elections.

Laura Holmes and Paul Jost, a married couple, each backed a congressional candidate in California and Iowa during the 2014 elections.

During that election cycle, contributors were limited to writing $2,600 checks to candidates in primary elections and $2,600 checks in general elections.

In a lawsuit filed against the Federal Election Commission, Holmes and Jost did not challenge the overall $5,200 contribution limit — but said they should have been able to write $5,200 checks to their candidates for the general election instead of splitting the amount between contributions for the primary and general elections.

New from the Institute for Free Speech

Institute for Free Speech Statement on Ruling in Holmes v. FEC

The Institute for Free Speech released the following statement today regarding the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Holmes v. Federal Election Commission:

“We are disappointed by today’s decision. The FEC has never shown that restricting campaign contributions on the basis of the time of year they are given prevents corruption. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals deferred to Congress, and left intact a situation that is illogical and unfair to both candidates and donors. We are currently consulting with our clients to determine what our next steps will be,” said Institute for Free Speech Legal Director Allen Dickerson.

The Institute for Free Speech represents plaintiffs Laura Holmes and Paul Jost in the case. More information is available here.

NYT Op-Ed Grasps at Straws to Justify Online Speech Regulation

By Joe Albanese

Data privacy is an increasingly salient issue. Billions of users have had their personal information leaked over the internet as a result of numerous hacks and data breaches. Many individuals hand over information voluntarily to social media companies, who in turn sell it to third parties for targeted advertising. Writing in The New York Times, a former Facebook employee has accused the company of being an untrustworthy steward of that data. Her solution: regulate online political speech…

Americans don’t need “protection” from opinions and viewpoints the same way that sensitive personal information needs safeguarding from those who seek to invade users’ privacy or finances. Watching an ad – political or otherwise – isn’t the same thing as suffering from identity theft, and a major internet company wouldn’t counter a data breach by disclosing its advertisers. Even if the author is correct about Facebook’s untrustworthiness when it comes to user data, the need for privacy protection of personal data is irrelevant to policing the content you see in the “modern public square.”

The fact that social media holds such a prominent place in our public discourse is what makes online content regulation so tricky. If you regulate content on Facebook, you necessarily restrict the free speech of everyday Americans. Such regulation also imposes compliance costs that make speech more expensive.

Supreme Court

New American: Supreme Court to Decide Whether Cellphone Data Falls Under Fourth Amendment

By Michael Tennant

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in a case with enormous implications for Americans’ rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. Specifically, the court is being asked to decide whether the government may obtain information about individuals’ cellphone usage without first getting a warrant – a vital matter given the intimate details about a person’s life such data could reveal…

Individuals could be monitored for their political activities, and their companions in these activities could be identified and monitored as well. Journalists and their sources would be prime targets for such surveillance. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press pointed out in its brief in support of Carpenter, cellphone location information “can reveal the stories a journalist is working on before they are published, where a journalist went to gather information for those stories, and the identity of a journalist’s sources.”

“A defeat for Carpenter would be a defeat for privacy rights, but it would also mean a dramatic curtailment of First Amendment freedoms,” Columbia University’s Jameel Jaffer and Alexander Abdo wrote in the Guardian.

Washington Post: If cops can get phone data without a warrant, it could be a nightmare for journalists – and sources

By Margaret Sullivan

That cellphone in your pocket?

Nathan Freed Wessler sees it as a dangerous time machine as well as a communication device.

After all, says the ACLU attorney, the location data your phone gathers all day, every day, makes it possible for an interested party – the police, let’s say – to look back at a period of time and reconstruct precisely where you were. And from that to deduce who you were talking to and why…

“It can really imperil the ability of journalists to do confidential reporting,” said Wessler, who will be in the Supreme Court on Wednesday to argue against the government in one of the most important privacy cases in many years: Carpenter v. United States…

Here’s why it matters to journalism: Reporters need confidentiality to do their work, and they need to be able to promise it to sources. At a time when President Trump has expressed the desire to crack down on sources and journalists, it’s not hard to imagine the implications.

Internet Speech Regulation

Electronic Frontier Foundation: To Protect our Democracy, We Need to Protect Anonymous Low-Cost Online Political Speech

By Jamie Williams

As Congress and the Federal Elections Commission explore ways to counter foreign influence in U.S. elections through greater campaign finance disclosures, EFF has filed comments reminding policy makers of the danger of going too far. While the FEC’s goals are understandable, it must take care not to undermine the right of ordinary Americans to speak anonymously about political issues…

Anonymous speech is a critical component of our online political debate. Not only do we need to protect it, we need to be doing more as a society to bolster the power of those who lack access to resources to make their voices heard…

In our comments, EFF urged the FEC to ensure that any new rules are sensitive to the unique nature of the Internet, and not to simply cut-and-paste existing disclaimer rules for older and different communications mediums. That includes ensuring that any new rules preserve Americans’ ability to anonymously post small ads to promote their views on candidates, elections, and public issues-considering the vital role that anonymous online political speech, including low-cost paid speech, plays in our democracy.

The Courts

Albuquerque Journal: Pearce wins court order on campaign cash

By Dan Boyd And Dan Mckay

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce’s hopes of winning the Governor’s Office got a boost Tuesday, when he won a federal court order allowing him to transfer about $942,000 in his federal election account over to his 2018 state gubernatorial campaign.

The ruling could set a precedent in New Mexico election law…

At issue is whether Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and other state officials can apply New Mexico’s campaign contribution limits to money transferred from Pearce’s federal account. The state currently limits donations to no more than $5,500 for the primary and general election cycles.

In issuing an injunction that bars the secretary of state from enforcing those limits, U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera ruled that Pearce has constitutional rights to use the funds as “campaign speech” to boost his bid for the GOP nomination.

“Because the funds at issue are necessary for Representative Pearce to increase the quantity of his campaign speech for the 2018 gubernatorial race, the public interest in protecting the First Amendment is served by a preliminary injunction,” Herrera wrote in her 33-page ruling.

CT Post: Ganim fights for public financing in gov’s bid

By Ken Dixon

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim claims that a 2013 law barring felons from the state’s public-financing program violates his constitutional rights and creates a competitive disadvantage in his nascent gubernatorial campaign…

But Assistant Attorneys General Michael K. Skold and Maura Murphy Osborne, representing the State Elections Enforcement Commission, said in court documents that the funding prohibition does not affect Ganim’s freedom of speech. “The statute also does not limit how much individuals can contribute to Plaintiff’s campaign, or how much Plaintiff can spend on his campaign,” they wrote.

“This restriction impedes Mr. Ganim’s right to free speech, will artificially enhance Mr. Ganim’s opponent’s speech, actually hurts the goals of the Citizens’ Election Program and fails to serve a compelling government interest,” Ganim’s attorneys countered…

“It takes no imagination to realize that if Mr. Ganim runs for Governor without CEP funding against a candidate who is CEP-funded, part of his opponent’s message will be that CEP funding assures first loyalty to the voters, not high dollar contributors, a message that will only be available because of the State’s action in denying Mr. Ganim funding,” the mayor’s attorneys contend.

Free Speech

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Atmosphere of fear, culture of ignorance on our campuses

By David French

In more than 20 years of free-speech advocacy on college campuses, I’ve seen virtually every form of ideological argument – particularly conservative ideological arguments – labeled “hate speech.” Yet I’ve never seen a single, coherent definition of the term.

I’ve also seen the pernicious effect of hate-speech arguments on young minds. If you label a thought or an idea as hate speech, you don’t have to engage with it. The result isn’t liberty or safety or even civility. It’s an atmosphere of fear and a culture of ignorance. We’re raising citizens who know what they believe but don’t understand why they believe it. They can label their cultural enemies but often have no idea why they are wrong.

In reality, free speech is the best weapon against hate…

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass called free speech “the great moral renovator of society and government” and rightly declared that “slavery cannot tolerate free speech” and that “five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South.”

The founders knew their new nation was imperfect and imprinted in its DNA the means of improvement. Free speech is the liberty that guards all others.

FCC

Bloomberg: Twitter Slapped as FCC Chief Takes a Swipe at Silicon Valley

By Todd Shields and Selina Wang

“When it comes to an open internet, Twitter is part of the problem” because it discriminates against some messages or messengers, Pai said in his speech in Washington on Tuesday defending his proposal to gut Obama-era net neutrality rules…

Web companies that were riding high, with employees shuttling in and out of the federal government during the years of the Barack Obama presidency are now fending off angry lawmakers and critical regulators.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and other web companies have fought what they called an assault on internet freedom contained in a bill aimed at thwarting sex trafficking of children. And Facebook, Google and Twitter were grilled by angry senators after they acknowledged extensive efforts by Russians to spread disinformation during the 2016 elections.

Pai went on to indict what he calls “edge providers” — a term the FCC has used to encompass Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn — as “a much bigger actual threat to an open internet than broadband providers, especially when it comes to discrimination on the basis of viewpoint.”

The Media

Politico: CNN hits back at Trump after criticism of foreign reporting

By Jason Schwartz

The feud between Donald Trump and CNN reached new heights on Monday, as the network came back swinging against the president’s latest attacks, including that CNN International misrepresents the U.S. to its global audience.

According to sources at the network, Trump’s tweet over the weekend criticizing CNN International produced extra frustration and exasperation because of the inherent risks of overseas reporting and the feeling that his message imperiled journalists working in countries hostile to a free press…

To be sure, since Trump began his war on the press, CNN has often delighted in playing the foil, devoting big chunks of airtime to its conflicts with the White House. Its much-ballyhooed current marketing campaign – “Facts First” – is a not-so-subtle direct response to Trump. And just as surely as the president has bashed CNN, the network’s ratings have gone up.

But according to Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Trump’s tweet about CNN International does present very real problems for reporters in dangerous situations.

“I think this reinforces a point that he’s made over and over, which is that he doesn’t really care about press freedom or the rights of journalists,” Simon said.

The States

Idaho Mountain Express: Bill would revise campaign-finance regulations

By Peter Jensen

Idaho lawmakers are slated to reconvene in Boise in January, and they’ll hear a proposal to increase the state’s disclosure requirements for political candidates.

A working group of five senators and five representatives devoted to campaign finance reform delivered its proposed legislation Monday morning…

The legislation would expand the requirements put in place by the Idaho Sunshine Law, which voters enacted by initiative in 1974. That put campaign-finance reporting requirements in place for state elected offices…

The legislation would apply that reporting requirement to all candidates who raise more than $500 for elected offices. It also applies to recalls and countywide ballot measures.

The proposed legislation includes internet and social-media websites in the definition of electioneering communication, similar to direct mailers, radio, television and print advertisements, or billboards.

Political donations in support of campaigns for lawmakers, judges, city offices and county offices are capped at $1,000 for a primary election, and $1,000 for a general election. For statewide offices, that cap is raised to $5,000.