Tag: free speech

The Court Green-Lights Censorship

In 1919, the Supreme Court used the pretext of crisis to overhaul the First Amendment as it jailed critics of the Great War. Over a century later, the Court has again fallen victim to the Beltway’s prevailing zeitgeist in today’s regrettable decision in Murthy v. Missouri. 

The Court’s opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, rejects the lower court’s injunction against many government agencies to stop leaning on social media companies to curate content, and does so on grounds that the plaintiffs lack standing. 

The opinion rests on omitted facts, skewed perceptions, and absurd conclusory statements. The dissent, issued by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, masterfully recounts the facts of the case and the inconsistency of the majority. 

Justice Barrett’s opinion completely ignored the Court’s decision last week in National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that case, the Court held that New York officials violated the NRA’s First Amendment rights by launching a campaign to coerce private actors to “punish or suppress the NRA’s gun-promotion activities.” 

Justice Sotomayor issued the opinion for a unanimous Court, writing, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” 

In Murthy, the majority did not even attempt to differentiate the case from its clear precedent in Vullo. Justice Alito, however, explained the ominous message the Court sent through the two opinions.

What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by.

Further, the majority opinion is bereft of references to the perpetrators, their “high positions,” or their statements of coercion. Justice Barrett does not mention Rob Flaherty or Andy Slavitt – the two main henchmen behind the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts – a single time in her holding. The dissent, however, devotes pages to recounting the White House’s ongoing censorship campaign.

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Attacks On ‘Cheap Fakes’ Extend Biden Administration’s War On Free Speech

There were two astonishing developments this week in the Biden administration’s continuing attack on free speech. First, just days ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s injunction against the administration’s extensive censorship enterprise, a second White House press secretary strongly encouraged the media to chill political debate. Second, Karine Jean-Pierre was masterful in her delivery of the new Biden attack line on “cheap fakes.”

To set the stage: last year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a federal district court’s finding that the evidence likely established that the Biden Administration, including then spokesperson Jen Psaki, had engaged in a broad attack on free speech in violation of the First Amendment. It issued an injunction prohibiting the White House and other federal agencies from taking “actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce… social-media content containing protected free speech.”

The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which stayed enforcement of the injunction, pending its review. The Court heard oral argument in March. The administration might prevail, despite browbeating social media into blocking core political speech, including criticism of Biden, humor, and discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop. Yes, that same laptop the Justice Department and FBI just admitted were legitimate and tamper-free. A decision is expected within 10 days.

Now, KJP and the administration are doubling down. Attacking a new category of “cheap fake” videos, KJP blasted the media for publishing unaltered video of the president’s frailties. Her objection appears to be that by presenting information about the president out of the context preferred by the administration, this video is, in effect, fake. See here.

While the administration was unclear about the missing context, I infer that it prefers a focus on the presumed majority of the president’s 10 AM to 4 pm, Monday-to-Friday workday during which he is not frozen, wandering aimlessly, mumbling incoherently, or blanking out. I understand that preference, but it is unseemly, and depending on next steps, may be unconstitutional, for a government official, speaking from the White House, to seek to chill free speech.

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Free Speech at Risk: UN Pushes for Global “Hate Speech” Eradication

In a statement issued on the occasion of the “International Day for Countering Hate Speech,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the global eradication of so-called “hate speech,” which he described as inherently toxic and entirely intolerable.

The issue of censoring “hate speech” stirs significant controversy, primarily due to the nebulous and subjective nature of its definition. At the heart of the debate is a profound concern: whoever defines what constitutes hate speech essentially holds the power to determine the limits of free expression.

This power, wielded without stringent checks and balances, leads to excessive censorship and suppression of dissenting voices, which is antithetical to the principles of a democratic society.

Guterres highlighted the historic and ongoing damage caused by hate speech, citing devastating examples such as Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and Bosnia to suggest that speech leads to violence and even crimes against humanity.

“Hate speech is a marker of discrimination, abuse, violence, conflict, and even crimes against humanity. We have time and again seen this play out from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, Bosnia and beyond. There is no acceptable level of hate speech; we must all work to eradicate it completely,” Guterres said.

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House Probes NewsGuard’s ‘Fact-checking’ Operations, Citing Federal Funding

NewsGuard, a “fact-checking” firm that provides “journalist-produced ratings and ‘Nutrition Labels’ for thousands of news and information websites” to advertisers hoping to steer clear of sites that publish “misinformation,” is under congressional scrutiny for its practices.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability, last week launched an investigation into the fact-checking firm, a recipient of federal funding.

The probe will examine “the impact of NewsGuard on protected First Amendment speech and its potential to serve as a non-transparent agent of censorship campaigns,” the committee said.

In a letter to NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, Comer highlighted federal funding NewsGuard received “and possible actions being taken to suppress accurate information.”

The letter also questions the potential political bias of NewsGuard’s editorial team.

OD) in 2021 awarded a contract to NewsGuard. The contract raises questions about the involvement of federal agencies in potential censorship campaigns, according to Comer’s letter.

The $749,387 contract was directed to NewsGuard’s “Misinformation Fingerprints” database. According to NewsGuard, the database is “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”

The DOD funding led The Federalist, in a November 2023 article, to report that “NewsGuard is selling its government-funded censorship tool to private companies.”

Also in November 2023, Lee Fang, one of the journalists involved with the “Twitter Files” release called NewsGuard a “surrogate the Feds pay to keep watch on the Internet and be a judge of the truth.”

Although not mentioned in Comer’s letter, other federal agencies also provided support to NewsGuard.

For example, an August 2020 NewsGuard press release states the firm won a “Pentagon-State Department contest for detecting COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation.”

The contest, known as the Countering Disinformation Challenge, sought “to offer solutions to hoaxes related to the COVID-19 pandemic” by helping the U.S. Department of State and the DOD “evaluate disinformation narrative themes in near real time” and to flag “hoaxes, narratives, and sources of disinformation as they emerge.”

NewsGuard, which received $25,000 as part of the contest, worked with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center “to scope and develop a test in support of the DoD’s Cyber National Mission Force.’’

According to a March 2023 “Twitter Files” release, Twitter — now known as X — worked with the Global Engagement Center to brand numerous accounts that posted “legitimate and accurate COVID-19 updates” but which “attacked” U.S. and European politicians as “Russia-linked.”

In December 2023, the State of Texas, The Daily Wire, The Federalist and the New Civil Liberties Alliance sued the State Department, alleging it was using and promoting technology intended to “covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press.”

In May, a federal judge rejected the State Department’s efforts to dismiss the case.

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What Happened to the First Amendment, Sandy Hook?

A simple search relating to any news coverage of Sandy Hook would show that the Sandy Hook families who lost their children didn’t sue Professor James Tracy. In addition, it is noteworthy to understand that Professor James Tracy’s legal attempts to have the Supreme Court review his case under the first amendment were rejected, Why? Professor Tracy wasn’t fired because of what he said, but the fact he didn’t disclose his outside activities that apparently violated his contract. – food for thought.

It is true Alex Jones questioned the official narrative the day Sandy Hook mass shooting was being covered live by the National News with the involvement from the FBI, and State Police.

Jones certainly wasn’t incorrect about the FBI agent showing up to a crime scene ill prepared and without the proper equipment, that shocking fact came directly from the FBI agent himself on the stand at the Alex Jones trial. The same FBI agent who is currently profiting off the Sandy Hook crime scene by suing Alex Jones. This agent failed to produce the FBI waiver that is required by FBI ethics and protocols to obtain approval to profit off such crime scenes. This official FBI waiver was clearly missing at the Connecticut trial of Alex Jones. An FBI agent suing relating to a crime scene for profit? This just might be a first.

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The “Antisemitism Awareness Act” Poses A Real Danger To The First Amendment

Totalitarianism rarely shows its true face when it arises. Instead, it often pretends to stand for good and decent values. A new bill claims to fight antisemitism, something all decent people oppose. But antisemitism—that is, bias and discrimination against Jews because of their religion or ethnic identity—is already barred under civil rights law. The real goal of the so-called “Antisemitism Awareness Act” is to suppress free speech.

This dangerous bill was already passed by the House of Representatives and now awaits a Senate vote. It outsources some of our constitutional rights to an outside organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, whose arbitrary definition of antisemitism poses a threat to civil liberties. It could be used to crush legitimate debate about Israel, its policies, and American policies toward it—policies that have given rise to one of the greatest acts of genocide since the Holocaust.

This bill could suppress historical research and ban the mention of facts that have been verified by international organizations. It could initiate lawsuits, funding cuts, and disciplinary action across all American “education programs or activities, and for other purposes.” (Those “other purposes” are not defined.) Student protesters, professors, writers, and even elected officials could face political repression and become legal targets.

It turns the USA’s much-celebrated sense of liberty into a funhouse mirror, a grotesque and distorted reflection of everything this country claims to see in itself. Its passage would make a travesty of everything America’s leaders claim to believe in.

The implications are enormous. The federal government spends more than $100 billion per year on education, including $85.3 billion for kindergarten through high school, $24.6 billion in federal student aid assistance, and $1.3 billion in congressional earmarks for colleges (for projects that range from equipment purchases and airport runways to prison education programs). All these expenditures could be used as leverage to stifle legitimate debate.

Despite its “antisemitic” branding, the bill targets Jews as well as non-Jews. As literature professor Benjamin Balthasar writes, it would effectively ban the teaching of “much Jewish history and culture.” Balthasar observes that Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Ed Asner, and “countless other Jews would now be considered ‘antisemitic’ under the new law.”

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Attorney General Garland Targets “Conspiracy Theories” After Launching “Election Threats Task Force” with FBI, Sparking Censorship Concerns

Some might see US Attorney General Merrick Garland getting quite involved in campaigning ahead of the November election – albeit indirectly so, as a public servant whose primary concern is supposedly how to keep Department of Justice (DoJ) staff “safe.”

And, in the process, he brings up “conspiracy theorists” branding them as undermining the judicial process in the US – because they dare question the validity of a particular judicial process that aimed at former President Trump.

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post, Garland used one instance that saw a man convicted for threatening a local FBI office to draw blanket and dramatic conclusions that DoJ staff have never operated in a more dangerous environment, where “threats of violence have become routine.”

It all circles back to the election, and Garland makes little effort to present himself as neutral. Other than “conspiracy theories,” his definition of a threat are calls to defund the department that was responsible for going after the former president.

Ironically, while the tone of his op-ed and the topics and examples he chooses to demonstrate his own bias, Garland goes after those who claim that DoJ is politicized with the goal of influencing the election.

The attorney general goes on to quote “media reports” – he doesn’t say which, but one can assume those following the same political line – which are essentially (not his words) hyping up their audiences to expect more “threats.”

“Media reports indicate there is an ongoing effort to ramp up these attacks against the Justice Department, its work and its employees,” is how Garland put it.

And he pledged that, “we will not be intimidated” by these by-and-large nebulous “threats,” with the rhetoric at that point in the article ramped up to refer to this as, “attacks.”

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Seventh Grader and Sisters Expelled from School Following Principal’s Controversial Decision to Limit Free Speech Over Use of the Word ‘Patriotism’

A California seventh-grade student, Jimmy Heyward, who recently went viral after his principal censored his patriotic speech, has now been banned from attending the school next year.

The Gateway Pundit reported last month that Heyward was a student at Saint Bonaventure Catholic School, where Principal Mary Flock reportedly told him to edit his campaign speech for the role of Commissioner of School Spirit and Patriotism, instructing him to remove “all parts about patriotism.”

The incident was first shared by LibsofTiktok, who wrote, “This is Jimmy. A middle schooler in California… His principal allegedly made him change his speech and remove all mention of patriotism. When he refused, she reportedly didn’t allow him to give the speech and he was forced to sit there humiliated, and watch the other contenders give their speeches…”

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E.U. Censorship Laws Mostly Suppress Legal Speech

Among those who think the United States is an unseemly cesspool of unrestrained opinions voiced by those people, Europe is often touted as an alternative for speech regulation. European Union law, following in the footsteps of national legislation, imposes enforceable duties on private platforms to purge “hate speech” and “disinformation”—or else. But free speech advocates warn that these laws are clumsy and dangerous tools that threaten to muzzle expression far beyond the bounds of their nominal targets. They’re right, and they now have receipts.

In a new report, Preventing “Torrents of Hate” or Stifling Free Expression Online?, The Future of Free Speech, a think tank based at Vanderbilt University, points out that online regulation changed in 2017 with Germany’s adoption of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), “which aimed to combat illegal online content such as defamation, incitement, and religious insults.” That law inspired lawmakers around the world, as well as similar E.U.-wide legislation in 2022 in the Digital Services Act (DSA). “The underlying assumptions surrounding the passage of the DSA included fears that the Internet and social media platforms would become overrun with hate and illegal content,” notes the report.

But “hate” and other forms of unacceptable content are often in the eyes of the beholder. And the power to punish platforms for allowing forbidden speech encourages suppressing content.

The DSA “gives way too much power to government agencies to flag and remove potentially illegal content and to uncover data about anonymous speakers,” cautioned the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2022.

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Google Introduces App Store Censorship Rules, Bans AI Generating Various Types of “Restricted Content,” Including “Hate Speech”

Developers of apps for Android will have to adhere to a new set of rules if they wish to publish on the Google Play Store.

The “guidance” is seen by critics as yet another wave of sweeping censorship tied to AI, as Google continues to crack down on what it considers to be hate speech, profanity, bullying, harassment, and other content listed as “restricted.”

One of the types of content developers are now banned from generating refers to sensitive events – and Google’s description is another example of what is likely a deliberately vague definition, so it can be left open to arbitrary interpretation.

Namely, this is content about sensitive events that include things that “capitalize on or are insensitive toward a sensitive event with significant social, cultural, or political impact.”

In its support pages, Google is telling developers that the intent behind the new policies is to make sure AI-generated content is “safe for all users.” And, the giant wants to make sure developers allow users to flag what they see as offensive, and incorporate that “feedback” for the sake of “responsible innovation.”

According to the rules, developers are instructed to utilize user reports “to inform content filtering and moderation in their apps.”

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