Tag: freedom

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency political challengers

Pro Bono No Bueno

campaign finance reform

The twisty highways and byways of campaign finance regulation bring us to another strange pass.

The Texas Ethics Commission is considering whether to effectively ban pro bono legal work for candidates. The method? Mandate that such work be regarded as an in-​kind contribution subject to campaign finance regulations. 

David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, observes that most candidates “can’t afford to hire counsel and spend probably hundreds of thousands of dollars challenging the constitutionality of a law where the opinion may not come out until after the election.… Basically, the opinion would slam the courthouse door shut to candidates and most political committees.”

Campaign finance regulation has always meant curtailing speech and the activities that enable it and flow from it. This latest regulatory prospect is more of the same. As long as campaign finance regulation exists, there will always be obnoxious new ways to use it to hamper speech and action.

The commissioners, apparently seeing some merit in the pro-pro bono argument and therefore judging the issue at least worth mulling, have deferred their decision. It would have been far better to simply accept Keating’s objections and put an end to the proposed new crackdown then and there.

Meanwhile, Texans — especially potential candidates — must sit on the edge of their seats until the commission decides whether to make it prohibitively expensive to fend off unconstitutional assaults on candidates and campaigns. 

Not unlike the unconstitutional assault exemplified by campaign finance regulation itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability defense & war general freedom social media

Pentagon Personae

social media, PSYOP, spying, CIA, FBI, NSA, China

We think of Facebook and Twitter as platforms for you and me and our fellow citizens to share information and opinions and photos and just plain fun.

But our government agencies are also on those platforms, secretly as well as openly.

And not just for fun and games.

It’s a serious information war out there — with mis- and dis- elements, too — and Facebook and Twitter may be in over their heads.

“The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States,” wrote Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post in mid-​September, “was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny.”

Ms. Nakashima’s report begins with the big news: “Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month,” and we are told of a “sweeping audit” to probe how the Pentagon “conducts clandestine information warfare.”

This is largely in response to Facebook and Twitter identifying and removing “fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.”

Social media companies took down actual U.S. military psy-​op accounts. But it is worth noting that the report does not mention Facebook or Twitter taking down foreign equivalents, though that has happened in the past.

It might be time to reconsider all government activity in social media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Fourth Amendment Dead?

4th Amendment, search, privacy, law

Unconstitutional actions are constitutional.

A federal judge doesn’t say so explicitly, but that’s what his ruling amounts to.

The case, which we discussed previously, involves U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills company that the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided last year. The company has been fined $1.1 million for money laundering because it let dealers anonymously keep cash in its safe deposit boxes.

Judge Gary Klausner concedes that the FBI lied to obtain a warrant, planning to seize the property of all boxholders whether or not there was any evidence of a crime against a given boxholder. And to this day, “specific criminal conduct has not been alleged against customers.” Nevertheless, Klausner ruled that despite the lie, it was constitutional for the FBI to grab the boxes’ contents.

Of course, if the warrant authorizing the FBI to ignore Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures had been honestly solicited, that still would not have transmuted unconstitutional actions into constitutional ones.

“The court does not deny that the government had an improper motive when it applied for its warrant,” observes Rob Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is representing the boxholders.

“But it says that fact is irrelevant unless the improper investigatory motive was the only reason that the Government opened the safety deposit boxes.… If today’s shocking decision stands, it will set a dangerous precedent that will allow the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to bypass the Fourth Amendment.”

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice doesn’t regard the case as closed. It will appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Public-​Private Censorship Partnership

censorship, mind control

When government pays people to help censor critics of its policies and talking points, this makes it even more obvious that it’s acting to repress speech and violate the First Amendment.

Thanks to a recent lawsuit against the Biden administration, we have been seeing emails confirming that government officials routinely ask Big Tech to censor this and that.

Now, Just the News reports that government agencies and liberal groups such as Common Cause and the Democratic National Committee worked with a consortium of private groups — the Election Integrity Partnership — during the 2020 election season to target and censor social media posts.

The EIP “set up a concierge-​like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.”

About 35 percent of the many posts EIP flagged in 2020 were sanctioned in some way by Big Tech.

Millions of tax dollars have been funneled to consortium members to fund these efforts to censor “misinformation,” i.e., speech that government officials disapprove of.

The EIP remains active in 2022.

Of course, politically controversial speech is just the kind of speech that the Founders were concerned to protect. Madison and Mason didn’t expect that the ability to publicly debate whether Bach is better than Beethoven or the best way to shingle a roof would ever be in great jeopardy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Repression Pal

public and private, fascism

No explanation, no warning.

PayPal has closed the account of another innocent customer: UsForThem, a UK organization that has fought to keep schools open during the pandemic.

PayPal also blocked the group’s access to its PayPal balance, thousands of pounds in donations, for 180 days.

According to cofounder Molly Kingsley: “No prior warning or meaningful explanation was given, and despite their saying we could withdraw our remaining balance, we cannot.”

This is, alas, just one of many examples. 

Last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that PayPal shut down the twenty-​year-​old PayPal account of Larry Brandt, which he had been using to support Tor. Tor is a way of encrypting Internet communications to protect the privacy of users, in part from regimes that repress political opponents.

No explanation, no warning — and, again, the same 180-​day lockdown of funds belonging to the account holder.

At least in its stated intentions, PayPal originated as a radical alternative to establishment ways of doing things. But it now conducts itself in a repressive spirit, routinely hobbling customers whose legal speech or other legal activities it dislikes.

Or perhaps that governments dislike.

Email documents made public during a recent lawsuit in the United States confirm that our own federal government is issuing marching orders to Big Tech firms to repress users who say or do things that government officials dislike. 

The firms are loath to acknowledge such pressure openly, let alone refuse on principle to cooperate. 

This is how the Bill of Rights becomes void: made irrelevant in secret public-​private partnerships.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs

A Thousand Times Yes

strength, unity, purpose

“Yes,” President Joe Biden stated unequivocally in answer to an October 2021 CNN townhall question on whether he would “vow to protect Taiwan.” Biden repeated that “yes” three more times in his full reply.

Months earlier, this president spoke of democratic Taiwan as one of our key allies that we have a “sacred commitment” to defend. 

“Yes,” Mr. Biden emphatically informed a reporter back in May of this year who inquired, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”

Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley asked President Biden point-​blank: “Would US forces defend the island?”

Again, the president replied, “Yes.”

“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley followed up.

“Yes,” answered Biden.

Handlers-​R-​Us at The White House have walked back each and every one of these statements by the commander-​in-​chief to maintain the charade of “strategic ambiguity” — the U.S. strategy of not saying quite how we will respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. A thoroughly silly policy.

And — come’on man! — the cat is out of the bag! Mr. Biden’s statements, as Aaron Blake wrote in The Washington Post, amount to “firmly committing to send troops to defend Taiwan if China invades.”

I hope the United States and other countries will stand — militarily — with Taiwan, and thereby prevent the Beijing bullies from snuffing out the freedom of 24 million free Taiwanese. 

Strength and unity and clarity of purpose are our best weapons against war.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL‑E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts