donal brown

Anonymous Twitter users won a round in federal court when a judge ruled that their criticism of a music company and its CEO were protected under the First Amendment. The Twitter users had posted tweets saying that the company’s products were designed to break prematurely, the company encourages domestic violence and that the CEO engages in prostitution. The company, Music Group Macao Commercial Offshore Ltd., received permission from the Seattle Federal Court to find the

A federal appeals court ordered the removal of a gag order in the criminal trial of a former coal mining company executive indicted after a 2010 mine explosion that killed 29 men. The court commended the trial judge for her efforts to insure a fair trial but said that there was not sufficient showing that withholding trial documents would damage the executive’s rights or prevent the impaneling of an impartial jury. (Courthouse News Service, March

A move to ban the U.S. and other flags from the UC Irvine Campus was thwarted by the university’s executive cabinet. The student body government voted in the ban on the grounds that the America flag represented “colonialism and imperialism.” (Front Page Mag, March 8, 2015, by Daniel Greenfield) The student body vote to ban the American flag was limited to the lobby of the student government offices. The author of the resolution argued that

Neighbors and public elected officers are calling for a Sacramento homeowner to remove displays of swastikas on his house. The state senator representing the area expressed support for the First Amendment but said the display was repugnant, invoking memories of the atrocities of the Holocaust. (Sacramento Bee, February 27, 2015, by Bill Lindelof) Bruce Maiman, the Sacramento Bee, March 3, 2015, wrote that it is important to respect the homeowner’s First Amendment rights to display

The American Civil Liberties Union reports that federal agencies are not releasing documents sought under the Freedom of Information Act about the use of zero-day exploits. As the ACLU explains, “Zero-day exploits are special software programs that take advantage of security vulnerabilities in software that are unknown to the software’s manufacturer. These exploits are frequently used by intelligence agencies and the military as well as, we suspect, by federal law enforcement agencies. But they can