First Amendment News

In 2014 former U.S. intelligence agents started working for the United Arab Emirates to spy on those critical of the monarchy. They used modern espionage equipment to surveil human rights workers, journalists and political opponents including ISIS. But the former agents soon found themselves serving UAE intelligence services by spying on U.S. citizens, a practice that caused many of them to resign. (Reuters, January 30, 2019, by Christopher Bing and Joel Schectman) The FBI is

A University of Michigan researcher says fears of fake news influencing the 2016 presidential election were overblown. Professor Brendan Nyhan and his colleagues found that only a small number of people read fake news relating to the election and that fake news sites were just two percent or less of an average person’s online news consumption. Public policy researcher Kathleen Hall Jamieson published a book last year concluding that Russian fake news likely influenced the

California open government roundup: Resistance to new police transparency law The Berkeley City Council reversed itself after first refusing to release pre-2019 police personnel records under the recently passed SB1421, the state’s new police transparency law. It’s not known how the Berkeley police union will respond, but other unions are arguing SB1421 is not applicable to pre-2019 records. (San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 2019, by Lauren Hernández and Sarah Ravani) San Diego’s KPBS filed a

February 5, 2019 by donal brown Those wanting answers about the funding of President Donald Trump’s inauguration were heartened by reports that New York’s Southern District prosecutors subpoenaed documents on the donors and possible benefits the donors received in return. Investigators are especially interested in the contributions of foreign guests at the inauguration. (ABC News, February 4, 2019, by John Santucci, Josh Margolin and Matthew Mosk) The New York Times reported last month that with the $107

A legal challenge is underway to gain better access to federal court records, calling fees charged by PACER, the federal courts’ electronic docket system, excessive. Former Senator Joe Lieberman argued that PACER fees made it difficult for all members of the public to obtain records. And news outlets said they could not afford the fees in times of declining revenues for the news industry. A group of former federal judges argued that there should be