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First Amendment News

Free speech: Patriot Act prevents civil rights lawyer from helping Kurdish group abandon terrorism

donal brown February 11, 2010

A civil rights lawyer is challenging a provision in the Patriot Act over his First Amendment rights to engage a Kurdish group he wants to advise about ways to resolve issues peacefully. The provision forbids him from engaing the group including offering “expert advice or assistance.” -db The New York Times February 11, 2010 By Adam Liptak WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ralph D. Fertig, a 79-year-old civil rights lawyer, says he would like to help a

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New tools needed to sort the flood of government data

FAC February 11, 2010

The federal government is releasing mountains of electronic data — everything from flight schedules to toxic chemical inventories. But it’s all just noise unless the public has ways to wrestle the information into shape. The tools are coming, slowly but surely. – dr New York Times In a blog post on Wednesday, Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, discussed the “data flood” coming out of Washington and the need for more applications to deal with

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Olympic athletes allowed to twitter

donal brown February 11, 2010

Despite the International Olympic Committee’s confusion about blogs and journalism, it appears that Olympic athletes will be allowed much greater freedom to tweet from the games than previously thought. -db Citizen Media Law Project Commentary February 9, 2010 By Arthur Bright Rejoice, all ye Olympian fans, the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) has said that its athletes can use Twitter! Apparently there’s been some confusion among Olympic athletes as to whether they were allowed to “tweet,” as

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Federal appeals court orders disclosure of names of telecom lobbyists

donal brown February 10, 2010

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government must reveal name of lobbyists who working for retroactive liability protection for telecom companies who participated in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens after 9/11. -db Metropolitan News-Enterprise February 10, 2010 By Sherri M. Okamoto The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday ruled that the government was required to disclose the names of individuals who lobbied in favor of retroactive liability protection for telecommunications carriers

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Obama administration favors TV, YouTube over press

donal brown February 10, 2010

Obama has not held a full-scale press conference since July prompting critics to charge he is avoiding the White House press corps to avoid hard questions and chances of committing an error. -db The Washington Post Commentary February 8, 2010 By Howard Kurtz Six months ago, network executives were complaining that the White House was costing them tens of millions of dollars by pressing them to carry presidential news conferences in prime time. Problem solved:

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