"Freedom House released Freedom of the Press 2008: A Global Survey of Media Independence today in advance of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Release materials -- including country scores, draft reports, the overview essay, and the methodology -- are now available. The survey, released annually since 1980, assess the degree of press freedom in every country in the world. According to this year's survery, press freedom declines outnumbered advances two to one in 2007, with declines seen in authoritarian countries and established democracies."

News release: "Chinese lawyers who take cases seen by the government as politically sensitive or potentially embarrassing face severe abuses ranging from harassment to disbarment and physical assaults, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today...The 142-page report, Walking on Thin Ice: Control, Intimidation and Harassment of Lawyers in China, details consistent patterns of abuses against legal practitioners. These include intimidation, harassment, suspension of professional licenses, disbarment, physical assaults, and even arrest and prosecution when lawyers take politically sensitive cases, seek redress for abuses of power and wrongdoings by party or government agents, or challenge local power-holders."

News release: "An investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency released today found that 889 of nearly 1,600 staff scientists reported that they experienced political interference in their work over the last five years. The study, by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), follows previous UCS investigations of the Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and climate scientists at seven federal agencies, which also found significant administration manipulation of federal science."

The Report

• Report Summary
  
• Full Report (108 pages, PDF)
  
• Executive Summary


EPA Survey

• Survey Summary
  
• Survey Brochure
  
• Methodology and Demographics

Chairman Waxman Requests Testimony on Political Interference at EPA
"In a letter to EPA Administrator Johnson, Chairman Waxman requested that he be prepared to testify regarding the recently released Union of Concerned Scientists Report documenting extensive and widespread political interference with the work of scientists at EPA."

News release: "Many Americans assume that China's internet users are unhappy about their government's control of the internet, but a new survey finds most Chinese say they approve of internet regulation, especially by the government."

"A joint project of the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Progress & Freedom Foundation tracks more than 30 pieces of federal legislation that seek to protect children online, some of which pose serious threats to free speech. The reports released today summarize and categorize child online safety bills introduced in the 110th Congress, analyze free speech implications of key bills, and provide recommendations to Congress on how it can promote child online safety without impinging on First Amendment rights. February 06, 2008."

"This week the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider a number of online safety bills that pose significant risks for free speech and innovation on the Internet. No less than seven bills relating to online safety are in play in Congress this week; CDT today released an analysis of each. CDT supports S. 2344, which promote online safety education, and H.R. 719, which focuses Internet restrictions on sex offenders who might pose risks to children online. CDT strongly opposes all or portions of five other bills now pending in the Senate."

Press release: "The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a new report on China's internet user population. There are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China's internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years. The influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the Chinese population, for China itself and for the larger world. At the very least, the internet will offer ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit. And because the Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues, it could have a unifying effect on the country's widely dispersed citizenry. An expanding internet population might also increase domestic tensions that could spill over into China's relations with the U.S. and other countries while the difference between Chinese and Western approaches to the internet could create additional sore points over human rights and problems with restrictions on non-Chinese companies."

Remarks by Secretary Michael Chertoff to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., Release Date: January 18, 2007.

Barrett v. Rosenthal, California Supreme Court, November 20, 2006: "In the context of defamation, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, codified at 47 U.S.C. section 230, prohibits "distributor" liability for Internet publications. Further, section 230(c)(1) immunizes individual "users" of interactive computer services, and no practical or principled distinction can be drawn between active and passive use."

Follow up to October 20, 2006 posting, National Community Reinvestment Coalition Files FTC Complaint Against Zillow.com, see Anita Ramasastry's article, Do Zillow.com's Web Property Estimates Violate Federal Consumer Laws? Why the Site Is Wise To Add Disclaimers to Its Home Valuations

Press release: "In the 149-page report, "Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship, Human Rights Watch documents how extensive corporate and private sector cooperation – including by some of the world's major Internet companies – enables...China's system of Internet censorship and surveillance."

"CDT today urged lawmakers to reject legislation that would force Internet speakers to place government-sanctioned warning labels on a broad range of online content. "Mandatory labeling of legal online content under threat of criminal sanction is ineffective, unwise, and unconstitutional," CDT wrote in a pair of letters sent to the leaders of the Senate Commerce and Appropriations Committees. The language has been attached to a major telecommunications bill and more recently to an appropriations package. As written, the provision would apply to a broad range of Internet content, and could force online publishers to tag legal, and often socially valuable, material with a "digital scarlet letter." CDT supports voluntary labeling efforts and has long endorsed the use of voluntary parental control tools such as filters."

Press release: "The lawsuit was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by the national ACLU and its affiliates in Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania and Washington. The lawsuit charges that the Defense Department is refusing to comply with national Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking records on the ACLU, the American Friends Service Committee, Greenpeace, Veterans for Peace and United for Peace and Justice, as well as 26 local groups and activists."

Press release: "The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Georgia today released new evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using counterterrorism resources to spy on peaceful faith- and conscience-based advocacy groups. School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) and its multinational faith-based network is the latest organization uncovered by the ACLU to have been subject to Federal Bureau of Investigation counterterrorism surveillance."

Following up on several related postings on bloggers and campaign speech, today the FEC issued a 96 page document (PDF) promulgating its final rules that impact the publication of campaign related information. Declan McCullagh has more details and commentary.

Following up on previous postings concerning the FBI's use of National Security Letters to obtain library patron records, the New York Times reports today, Librarian Is Still John Doe, Despite Patriot Act Revision

Op-Ed in Roll Call by CDT Officials Supports Protecting Bloggers without Opening Soft Money Loopholes in the Campaign Finance Laws: "H.R. 4900 protects bloggers and small speakers far better than does H.R 1606, and by design, it does not create other loopholes in the campaign finance laws. Those who truly want to protect bloggers and ordinary citizens should support H.R. 4900. Those whose real goal is to undermine campaign finance laws should support H.R. 1606, which provides only limited protection to online speakers."

H.R. 4900: Internet Free Speech Protection Act of 2006 - To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to exclude certain communications made over the Internet from certain requirements of such Act, and for other purposes.

House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, February 15, 2006 Hearing, The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?

Links to statements and testimony below are in PDF:

Follow-up to February 2, 2006 posting, Hearing Focuses on Internet Censorship in China, this WSJ free feature today: Internet Censorship - Web Firms Face Grilling on China.

Related news:

Congressional Human Rights Caucus Members' Briefing: Human Rights and the Internet - The People's Republic of China, Wednesday, February 1, 2006: "China has one of the most sophisticated content-filtering Internet regimes in the world. The Chinese government employs sophisticated methods to limit content online, including a combination of legal regulation, surveillance, and punishment to promote self-censorship, as well as technical controls. Informational websites, including that of the BBC, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and the public encyclopedia, Wikipedia, have been partially or completely blocked in China."

Related references:

Follow-up to January 29, 2006 posting, Gov't Climate Change Expert Contends Censorship of Data - today Sen. Barbara Boxer issued a press release that included the text of her letters to ranking members of two Senate committees stating, "It has come to my attention that the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr. James E. Hansen, has had his public papers and statements on critical scientific matters severely restricted by Bush Administration officials. Considering the gravity of these allegations, I strongly urge you to hold a hearing to investigate these charges."

New York Times editorial, January 29, 2006, Spies, Lies and Wiretaps: "A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies."

Related news:

American Libraries Online, January 13, 2006: "The American Library Association's Executive Board intends to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine if the FBI has been collecting information on the Association and its leaders as a result of their opposition to certain provisions of the USA Patriot Act. ALA OIF Deputy Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone said the FOIA request builds on the American Civil Liberties Union's discovery of information that leads it to believe that the FBI has been scrutinizing organizations that advocate changes to the Patriot Act. The request would focus on activities relating solely to the Association's advocacy concerning the Patriot Act."

Spirit of America sponsors The Anoniblogging Wiki: "This wiki contains our five initial guides on how to blog more safely [targeted to citizens in Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Malaysia and Zimbabwe]. Across the globe, countries that discourage free speech have followed their citizens into the blogosphere. According to one count, in the last two years at least 30 bloggers (and there are no doubt more) have been interrogated, arrested, tortured and sentenced to long prison terms for the "crime" of speaking critically about their governments. Regardless of your culture, your country, your politics or religion, we believe you deserve to speak your mind without falling afoul of state power. Unfortunately, what you deserve and what you get are not always the same thing. So, for those of you who wish to speak out on your blogs, but who do not wish to risk imprisonment or worse for doing so, we have prepared guides that will help you to blog more safely by blogging more anonymously."

Corporate responsibility: Reporters Without Borders urges Internet users and bloggers to support its recommendations on freedom of expression.

"Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public's interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world." [press release]

Follow-up to my September 29, 2005 posting, Broad Coalition Pushes to Lift Gag Order Against Librarian, AP reports that yesterday the ACLU filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, the text of which is censored, to release an anonymous Connecticut librarian from a gag order concerning an FBI investigation into his/her organization's patron records.

From Reporters Without Borders, a new resource: Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents (46 pages, PDF):

The Washington Post reported today (reg. req'd) on a new e-government initiative that is worth noting. Through the efforts of seven Democratic Senators (Barbara A. Mikulski, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Mary L. Landrieu, Debbie Stabenow, Maria Cantwell, and Hillary Clinton), this website, Ask John Roberts, provides a voice to citizens to communicate their questions about Judge Roberts to the Judicary Committee.

"EPIC joined eight civil liberties organizations to submit a "friend of the court" brief (38 pages, PDF) in Forensic Advisors v. Matrixx Initiatives, a case before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in which a pharmaceutical company is attempting to force a newsletter publisher to disclose his subscriber list. The company wants to use the list in connection with a law suit it filed against numerous unidentified people who posted derogatory comments about the company on Internet discussion boards. The brief argues in favor of protecting the list under a Maryland law that protects journalists' sources. It also argues that the list is protected under the First Amendment, since disclosure of the list would deter readership and violate constitutionally established privacy rights."

From the National Journal, this article is worth savouring for those who appreciated what are referred to as "Ratherisms". Example:

This CBS News article examines the role of blogs and bloggers in the recent political campaigns. Specifically, it spotlights the use of blogs in support of Republican John Thune's race for the South Dakota Senate seat. The bloggers in question did not provide disclaimers on their respecitve sites indicating they had received payment totaling $35,000 as Thune's "paid advisors."

Related References

The text of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (S. 25), is here in pdf (298 pages).

The Internet and the right to communicate: "This paper examines the development of a right to communicate and how it can be defined and implemented."

Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age - Promoting Diversity with First Amendment Principles and Market Structure Analysis (313 pages, pdf).

An EFF advisory addresses a legal challenge (initiated by two Swarthmore students, an ISP and a privacy group) in response to cease and desist orders issued by an electronic voting machine manufacturer. These orders were in response to the publication on the web of some 13,000 pages of internal corporate documents which included extensive discussion of equipment flaws. The manufacturer, Diebold Systems, Inc. is one of the country's largest suppliers of touch screening voting technology, with 33,000 of their machines in use in 37 states.

Related resources from EFF:

Related articles include:

"On November 3, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and free speech groups representing librarians, publishers, writers and others filed a brief [in support of the ACLU's complaint filed July 30] that strongly supports a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the provision of the USA Patriot Act that gives the FBI virtually unlimited access to personal, organization and business records, including bookstore and library records. The U.S. Justice Department has filed a motion to dismiss the case." [Link]

Bret McDanel, a former employee of Tornado Development, Inc., served a 16 month sentence for violating the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. After leaving Tornado, a provider of Unified Messaging (UM) solutions, he sent an email to thousands of the company's customers detailing a corporate email security flaw. End of story? Apparently not, as today AP reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald L. Cheng (LA) requested that the court reverse Mr. McDanel's conviction, stating that an "error" had been made, as McDanel did "not intentionally impair the [email] system by reporting its security flaws."

From Boston.internet.com: "In a blow for chipmaker Intel, the California Supreme Court Monday found that senders of spam e-mails cannot be sued under state law forbidding property trespass. The 4 to 3 ruling reversed a lower court injunction preventing former Intel engineer Ken Hamidi from sending e-mails critical of Intel to thousands of its employees." See my previous posting, California Supreme Court Reviews E-Mail Case, which links to numerous resources on this case.

In a 6 to 3 decision (56 pages, pdf) released today in United States v. American Library Association (02-361), the Supreme Court ruled that the Children's Internet Protection Act does not violate the First Amendment, and Congress can thereby require the use of Internet filters by public libraries receiving federal funds.

See also:

DVD-CCA v. Bunner, on appeal before the California Supreme Court, involves the posting of free software for the DeCSS code (to decrypt DVDs) by Andrew Bunner on his website. Prior to the beginning of this case in 2000, the DeCSS code had been published widely on sites around the world. According to SFGate.com, "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer joined the movie industry in contending that the DeCSS code was simply a burglary tool designed for breaking, entering and stealing a trade secret -- the industry-owned code designed to prevent unauthorized playback of movies recorded on digital versatile discs, or DVDs." See also this posting on the case from Freedom to Tinker.

From Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog, this informative posting on Internet software filtering company N2H2's current 10Q filing which includes the following language: "Free speech and privacy concerns could adversely affect the demand for our Internet filtering solutions."

On a related issue, see my April 10 posting: U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns (MA) dismissed a lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of Harvard law student and cyber-activist Ben Edelman who argued a first amendment right to create software to decrypt an Internet blocking program by N2H2.

A new 28 page ACLU report (pdf), Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America, documents instances of "censorship, surveillance, detention, denial of due process and excessive force" on the part of the government. See the press release here.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Healthgrades.com v. Northwest Healthcare Alliance Inc.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider this Friday the case of Healthgrades.com v. Northwest Healthcare Alliance Inc. for their fall docket (No. 02-1250). This case is of considerable interest in light of the recent Internet jurisdiction decision from Australia, Dow Jones and Company v. Gutnick, which was back in the news last week.

For a well documented discussion of the 9th Circuit decision, Northwest Healthcare Alliance Inc. v. Healthgrades.Com, Inc., (C.A. 9 (Wash.), 2002 WL 31246123 (unpublished), please see 9th Circuit Adopts "Effects Test" in Online Jurisdiction Case.

On April 2, the California Supreme Court heard oral argument in the appeal of Intel v Hamidi. Hamidi is a former Intel employee who after his termination, on six separate occasions, used the company's internal e-mail address listing to send messages to 30,000 employees.

See also these related articles: Intel e-mail issue divides court and Trespassing or Free Speech?

Maryland House Bill 661, Internet Child Pornography - Removal, is opposed by the advocacy group Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). CDT staff counsel John B. Morris testified before the Judiciary Committee Maryland House of Delegates on March 4 that the bill has "...due process problems under the Fourteenth Amendment, free speech problems under the First Amendment, technical problems that create a risk of instability for the Internet, and effectiveness problems..."

The CDT contends that the Maryland bill is substantively similar to a Pennsylvania law, and would result in the indiscriminate blocking of potentially hundreds of sites.

From Writ, this article, Can Europe Block Racist Websites from its Borders? refers to the Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems, ETS No.: 189. This treaty is now open for signature by the States which have signed the Treaty ETS 185, the Convention on Cybercrime.

The Department of Homeland Security quickly issued, without benefit of public comment, new final interim regulations limiting public access to secret and sensitive agency information under the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Procedures.

From the High Court of Australia, to the Fourth Circuit, and now the Fifth Circuit, jurisdiction issues as they apply to Internet libel cases are in the spotlight. The Fifth Circuit, in Oliver "Buck" Revell v. Lidov and Columbia University, affirmed the United States District Court For the Northern District of Texas decision that Revell, former Associate Deputy Director of the FBI under Reagan, and a resident of Texas, could not sue the author of an article critical of his role in the Pan Am Flight 103 tragedy over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, that was posted on a Columbia University owned website.

Penn State Prof. of Journalsim R. Thomas Berner's commentary on the December 10 Australian Internet libel case highlights concerns voiced elsewhere that ramifications of the case may include blocking access to sites in other countries to avoid more such litigation.

There is evidence of a slow but steady groundswell of citizen concern about, and local government response to, increased online surveillance as a result of the Patriot Act. Wired highlighted the work of a new grassroots organization called the Bill of Rights Defence Committee that is assisting municipalities in the passage of resolutions opposing the Patriot Act and related executive orders. According to the organization, "21 cities, towns, and counties...have already passed resolutions."

Across the Atlantic, there is also growing concern over similar surveillance and data collection efforts focused on UK citizens. See this BBC article for details.

The High Court of Australia issued a ruling on December 10 in the Internet defamation case Dow Jones and Company v. Gutnick. The case may have global implications for the increasingly wired publishing world. It stipulates that Web publishers of any description (be they huge corporate entities or individual weblogers) can be sued anywhere in the world in which an individual contends the publication is available and has harmed/defamed him/her.

Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School have published a new report on Web censorship: Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China.

From the abstract: "The authors are collecting data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks. Tests from May 2002 through November 2002 indicate at least four distinct and independently operable methods of Internet filtering, with a documentable leap in filtering sophistication beginning in September 2002."

Amnesty International has published a well researched report on the impact of state controls on Internet access to one of world's fasted growing population of users. The report provides a timeline that documents the imposition of various controls and regulations on Web access since its introduction to the public in 1995, and their impact on individuals and the society as a whole.

If you are interested in this issue, I refer you to related work on this topic referenced under my other postings here.

The controversial Child Online Protection Act which specifies the "requirement to restrict access by minors to materials commercially distributed by means of the World Wide Web that are harmful to minors," is currently under review again by U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. In May 2002, the Supreme Court remanded the case, Ashcroft v. ACLU, back to this court to once again consider the constitutionality of creating barriers to Internet access. The 3rd Circuit had granted a preliminary injunction in the case, ACLU v. Reno, in June 2002.

EPIC maintains a resource center with links to court and legislative documents from these cases.

The Free Expression Project, founded in 2000, is sustained by grants from a diverse group of backers that include the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. The organization advocates in court, through the publication of reports and surveys, and by the sponsorship of conferences, for an end to restrictions of expression on publicaly funded organizations such as libraries, museum, and universities.

The University of California at San Diego has taken alot of flack for their attempt to force a student site to remove web links to revolutionary groups on university owned servers. See my previous posting on this topic.

The University has now decided to recind their demand on basis of the students right to free speech, but maintains that the students should remove link to terrorist organizations from another site they operate.

The Student Press Law Center is a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of the legal rights of student journalists. The site boasts excellent graphics and useful content that includes news releases, a legal resource center with links to materials on Press Freedom & Censorship, Access to Records, Meetings & Places, Cyberlaw: Internet & Online Media, Libel & Privacy Invasion, Protecting Sources & Information, Copyright Law and Advertising, and a State Open Records Law Request Letter Generator.

cyberSLAPP.org maintains a library of briefs for researchers to track cases in which users of e-mail or web sites were sued for their speech and ISP's were sued for access to personal data on such individuals.

There is a growing concern in the U.S. about state sponsored Internet censorship in countries throughout the world. Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman at Harvard are skillfully documenting this activity. Now Congress is responding to Web filtering with a bi-partisan legislative initiative, H.R. 5524. This bill seeks to "develop and deploy technologies to defeat Internet jamming and censorship."

Declan McCullagh's coverage of the RIAA v. Verizon cases notes that at issue are copyright, privacy and free speech arguments. The two companies are battling over access to the identity of a subscriber accused of file trading. Declan links to an amicus brief filed on behalf of Verizon by high profile advocacy groups that include EPIC and the EFF, which also happens to maintain an archive of links to legal documents on this case.

For those that are interested, the RIAA v. Verizon Complaint is here, and Verizon's reply is here.

Cyber-critics, free speech and online anonymous web postings have become a combustable combination. The result is cyberSLAPP law suits, which seek to force ISPs to reveal the names of those who have posted anonymous statements critical of high profile individuals.

An example of just such a case involves a Pennsylvania judge and a now defunct web site, which I discussed in my posting, Judge v. Anonymous Web Critic.

To monitor cases and information on this issue, I recommend cyberSLAPP.org, founded in July 2002, and "sponsored by a coalition of civil liberties and privacy groups." Here you will find links to full-text of cyberSLAPP briefs and opinions.