donal brown

A federal district judge ruled that the FBI could not maintain its covert domestic social media spying. The judge was unimpressed by the argument that the FBI had to protect the information to keep criminals from knowing the capabilities and techniques used by law enforcement. (Courthouse News Service, November 18, 2019, by Nicholas Iovino) When the FBI refused to confirm or deny the existence of records on social media spying, the American Civil Liberties Union

HuffPost editor Lydia Polgreen warns of the dire consequences with the proliferation of fake news that threatens the “information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends.” Says Polgreen, “The collapse of the information ecosystem has already wreaked havoc on our political systems. It has undermined democratic elections. It has shaken basic trust in institutions. It has left us with a world in which anyone is free to choose their own facts. It threatens to fundamentally destabilize

Confronted with substantial financial losses, the McClatchy newspaper chain is considering its options including selling out. A hedge fund, McClatchy’s biggest lender and stockholder, is among the possible buyers. (Poynter, November 13, 2019, by Rick Edmonds) Chicago’s Tribune Publishing announced this week that it will close Hoy, its Spanish-language weekly newspaper and website in December. A third of Chicago’s population is Hispanic, but there has been no increase in Hoy’s circulation since 2016. (NiemanLab, November

While Twitter maintains its policies do not prevent revealing the name of the whistleblower in the Trump Ukrainian debacle, Facebook said its harm policy prevents “outing of witness, informant, or activist.” (First Amendment Watch, November 12, 2019) Social media users, though, are reporting they have been suspended from Twitter from mentioning the supposed name of the whistleblower in posts. (The Blaze, November 7, 2019, by Sarah Taylor) YouTube is also removing the whistleblower’s name. Most

A federal district court judge dealt a blow to the Trump administration for its policy allowing online access to blueprints for making plastic guns on 3-D printers. The judge held that the administration gave no explanation for reversing its stance that export laws against the foreign distribution of firearms blocked the publication of the blueprints. (The New York Times, November 12, 2019, by Mihir Zaveri) The judge also noted that the administration should have notified