Civic Engagement

A District of Columbia judge ruled that a Web host provider must provide the government with digital data from a website widely used to help organize protests against President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The ruling by District of Columbia Superior Court Chief Judge Robert E. Morin marked a win for the government, although Judge Morin said he would supervise the government’s use of the data it collects from Web host DreamHost. Chris Ghazarian, general counsel for DreamHost, said the company needed to review the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

In a 90-minute hearing Aug 24, Judge Morin ruled from the bench that DreamHost must provide the government with all other data from disruptj20.org that it sought under the search warrant. But Judge Morin put restrictions on what they could do with the material. He ruled that the government must disclose how they plan to review the data, identify those involved in the process, and explain how they will avoid collecting protected information about "innocent visitors" to the website. Judge Morin also limited the scope of the search from when the website domain was created in October 2016 to Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. He also said Justice cannot distribute or publicize the data it collects, including to any other government agency.

The pace of filings at in the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality comment docket, dubbed "Restoring Internet Freedom," by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, is showing no signs of slowing down, with still plenty of people (or bulk e-mail generators, some argue) still weighing in. The FCC extended the comment deadline to Aug. 30 from Aug. 16. Since that Aug. 16 date, 1.5 million additional filings have been logged as of Aug. 24, making the current total 21,850,771, up from the 20,350,000 in the docket as of Aug. 16. The FCC does not keep track of such records, but nobody is disputing that this volume is a record for the number of comments in any FCC docket.

After controversy over a broad search warrant that could have identified visitors to an anti-Trump website, the Justice Department says it’s scaling back a demand for information from hosting service DreamHost. Recently, DreamHost disclosed that it was involved in a legal dispute with the department over access to records on the website “disruptj20.org,” which organized protests tied to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

In a legal filing Aug 22, the Justice Department argues that the warrant was proper, but also says DreamHost has since brought up information that was previously “unknown.” In light of that, it has offered to carve out information demanded in the warrant, specifically pledging to not request information like HTTP logs tied to IP addresses. The DOJ says it is only looking for information related to criminal activity on the site, and says that “the government is focused on the use of the Website to organize, to plan, and to effect a criminal act — that is, a riot.” Peaceful protestors, the government argues, are not the targets of the warrant.

[Commentary] The rise of what we might call “cheap speech” has fundamentally altered both how we communicate and the nature of our politics, endangering the health of our democracy.

The path back to a more normal political scene will not be easy. In the old days, just a handful of TV networks controlled the airwaves, and newspapers served as gatekeepers for news and opinion content. A big debate back in the 1980s and earlier was how to enable free expression for those who did not own or work for a media company and wanted to get a message out. It seems cheap speech, despite its undeniable benefits, has come with a steep price for our democracy.

[Richard L. Hasen is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine]

The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation. This contradiction is foundational to what these internet companies are. ]

These platforms draw arbitrary boundaries constantly and with much less controversy — against spammers, concerning profanity or in response to government demands. These fringe groups saw an opportunity in the gap between the platforms’ strained public dedication to discourse stewardship and their actual existence as profit-driven entities, free to do as they please. Despite their participatory rhetoric, social platforms are closer to authoritarian spaces than democratic ones. It makes some sense that people with authoritarian tendencies would have an intuitive understanding of how they work and how to take advantage of them.

Tens of thousands of counterprotesters crammed Boston Common and marched through city streets Aug 19 in efforts to drown out the planned “free speech” rally that many feared would be attended by white-supremacist groups. By 1 pm, the handful of rally attendees had left the Boston Common pavillion, concluding their event without planned speeches. A victorious cheer went up among the counterprotesters, as many began to leave. Hundreds of others danced in circles and sang, “Hey hey, ho ho. White supremacy has got to go.”

City officials said that at least 40,000 people participated in the counter protest, 20,000 of whom participated in a march across town. Tensions flared as police escorted some rally attendees out of the Common, prompting several physical altercations between police and counterprotesters. Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said there were 27 arrests, primarily for disorderly conduct. He said no officers or protesters were injured and there was no property damage. Evans said there were three groups of people in attendance: attendees of the “free speech” rally, counter protesters, and a small group of people who showed up to cause trouble.

[Commentary] Standing up to racism and intolerance is a moral imperative, and those who do, like Heather Heyer, the young woman who died as she challenged the thugs in Charlottesville Aug 12, are champions of American principles. In an era when so many bedrock values are under attack, it’s important to think strategically and prioritize the ones worth fighting for. An exemplar of such strategic thinking, Martin Luther King Jr., fought on multiple fronts but prioritized one in particular: voting rights.

Today, as in the 1960s, that same fight makes sense. For in this new civil rights era, voting rights for broad swaths of Americans — minorities, the young and the old — are again imperiled and under attack. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had sued the city of Charlottesville (VA) to allow the Unite the Right rally to happen downtown. And now, it had happened, and blood had been spilled. The backlash has already spurred other ACLU chapters to declare that they don’t believe free-speech protections apply to events like the one in Charlottesville, and led the ACLU’s national director, Anthony Romero, to declare the group will no longer defend the right to protest when the protesters want to carry guns.

The Charlottesville rally called attention to an important fault line between the ACLU’s traditional vision of justice and the way the progressive grassroots movement sees justice in 2017: a fight over whether the best way to protect the powerless is to stand against the principles that could be used to crush them, or simply to stand on the side of people seeking social equality by whatever means are necessary.

Shortly after Ajit Pai was named chair of the Federal Communications Commission in February, he said he wanted the agency to be “as open and accessible as possible to the American people." Six months on, the agency is falling short of Pai’s lofty goal in some key areas.

Critics are especially concerned about the FCC’s handling of complaints from the public about internet providers and the causes of a May 7 outage of the public-comments section of the agency’s website. "Chairman Pai promised to make the FCC more transparent, but the early returns aren't looking good," said Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). "The FCC seems more concerned with helping Big Cable than living up to his promise." Many complaints about a lack of transparency at the FCC relate to the commission’s plan to reverse some of its net-neutrality rules, which prohibit internet providers from favoring some forms of traffic over others. The FCC’s proceeding failed to mention that the agency has received more than 47,000 informal complaints about alleged net-neutrality violations since the rules took effect in 2015.

AnonOps, a group affiliated with the online activist group known as Anonymous, posted what it says are the private cell phone numbers and email addresses for 22 Republican members of Congress in a bid to push for President Trump's impeachment, reigniting the use of hacked information in US political battles.

Rob Pfeiffer, chief editor of online publication The Anon Journal, said that the move was spurred by Trump's contentious reaction to violent clashes in Charlottesville. He did not know how the information was obtained, whether it was a leak or an online hack. He said some of the cell phone numbers, for example, had been verified as real. Among the politicians on the list were Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Charles Grassley of Iowa. The goal, said Pfeiffer, is for people to contact these members of Congress to more forcefully condemn the president and call for Trump's impeachment. Pfeiffer said more GOP lawmakers could see their personal contact information released soon.