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Obama’s ‘Internet in a Suitcase’ sneaks free speech across borders

FAC June 16, 2011

The Obama administration has invested $70 million to develop a “stealth internet” and cell phone system that will help dissidents in autocratic countries get around censorship and undermine dictatorships, the New York Times first learned from classified diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks. Among these high-tech “secret” weapons is the Internet in a Suitcase: “Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow

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Judge rules Redding’s ban on pamphleteering “likely unconstitutional”

FAC June 16, 2011

When Tea Party activists wanted to hand out mini Constitutions at the Redding library, the city council quickly passed new rules banning the activity.  The Tea Party and ACLU took equally swift action to sue. This week a Superior Court judge extended a lower court’s earlier suspension of the city council’s policy. At the center of the controversy is whether the Redding Public Library–the management of which the City of Redding has outsourced to a

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Florida MDs charge ‘Gun Gag’ law violates 1st Amendment

FAC June 16, 2011

Florida’s primary care physicians are taking aim at the new state law prohibiting physicians from talking about firearms dangers with their patients on the grounds that the law violates first amendment rights. The bill authored by the Florida representative of the National Rifle Association originally included penalties for offending physicians of up to five years in prison and a $5 million fine.  The final bill requires the physician to go before a review board and

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Whistleblower gets plea deal, dodges espionage conviction

donal brown June 11, 2011

A former employee of the National Security Agency, Thomas A. Drake, charged with espionage for leaking classified information, struck a deal with the Justice Department admitting to a misdemeanor of using NSA’s computers to to provide information to a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. It is expected that Drake will not have to serve any jail time. Drake claimed he leaked information to the reporter out of concern that the agency was wasting taxpayer money

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FCC report finds media failing watchdog duties

FAC June 10, 2011

Downsized newsrooms, fewer reporters and less reporting can be harmful to democracy, according to a just released FCC report on the “Information Needs of Communities.” (Read the full report below.) “A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little,” the report stated. FCC chairman JuliusGenachowski echoed the report’s findings, saying,

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