Last week, the Guardian lauded users on Twitter and other user-generated content sites for the role they played in breaking through an extraordinary gag order imposed on the Guardian by a British court. The editor of the Guardian and the Twitterati claimed a remarkable victory for free speech and the free press.

At issue were documents obtained by the Guardian associated with a major class-action settlement involving a multinational corporation and the 400 tons of petrochemical waste its contractor dumped in the Ivory Coast, sickening thousands. Last month, a British court enjoined the Guardian not only from releasing the document, but also, in a Kafkaesque twist, from reporting that it had been gagged at all. Things came to a head when a member of Parliament asked a question about the documents, bringing into play a longstanding tradition that whatever is said in Parliament is fair game for public reporting. The Guardian tauntingly alluded to the Member’s question and the press gag, setting off a firestorm of activity on Twitter, blogs, SideWiki, Wikileaks, and Wikipedia that uncovered the documents and the gag order in under an hour.

This story from across the pond is just the latest in a growing number of examples of how web 2.0 platforms can enable the exercise of rights vital to a healthy democracy and a free society: This summer we saw how protesters and journalists in Iran and Xinjiang used Twitter and other web 2.0 platforms to get their message out to the rest of the world. And earlier this month, Leslie Harris wrote about the use of Twitter during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh—an unmistakable exercise of the right to speak, assemble, and petition—and the trampling of the First Amendment and core civil liberties that followed.

It is undeniable that free speech and human rights advocates have found one more tool to help their cause. To echo Leslie’s warning about the G20 protester’s arrest, however, the west must be vigilant in ensuring these tools continue to expand free expression within our borders, or else risk losing our moral footing when the next “Twitter revolution� comes.

Did Yahoo! turn over user data from 200,000 Yahoo! Iran email accounts to Iranian authorities in exchange for the unblocking of Yahoo.com? Not likely.

Last week, Richard Koman over at ZDNet reported this exact allegation; ZDNet quickly retracted the post in full within the day, given the unreliability of the source and the alarming disregard of basic journalistic best practices. A quick inquiry with Yahoo! (or even a simple search of Yahoo!’s website) would have revealed critical factual errors in the underlying report, which should have raised red flags as to its reliability. (To start, Yahoo! has no Iranian website or base of operations in Malaysia.) And these steps should have been taken before such a serious accusation was lobbed into the public sphere, to be reposted and prejudged.

Commentary on the state of online journalism aside, such wildly false accusations distract from the many real challenges to Internet freedom emerging all over the world: censorship and intimidation are on the rise and Internet freedom advocates are fighting off filtering mandates left and right. Questions of ethical corporate behavior in the ICT space can be thorny and complex. Exhortations directed at tech companies to “do the right thing� are only as effective as our collective understanding of the human rights challenges they actually face. At risk of stating the obvious, we must take care to understand the exact nature of government demands and how companies are responding in order to develop appropriate and effective strategies to address both.
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The Judiciary Committee of the Maine State Legislature held a hearing today to discuss the future of Public Laws 2009, Chapter 230, the Act to Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors. Enacted earlier this year, this law intended to target deceptive online marketing by prescription drug companies to minors under the age of 18.

The law as drafted, however, was substantially overbroad. It prohibits the collection of personal and health-related information from minors without verifiable parental consent, and prohibits the transfer, online or offline, of any information about Maine minors, even with parental consent. Six weeks ago, CDT was actively preparing to pursue a constitutional challenge against the Act and consulting closely with the Maine Civil Liberties Union to explore potential collaboration. However, several groups, including the Maine Independent Colleges Association and the Maine Press Association, then challenged the law in federal court on constitutional grounds, and we temporarily set aside our efforts to watch the outcome of that case. Following the pledge of Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills not to enforce the problematic law, the court dismissed the case, and the legislature must now decide whether to repeal or amend the Act.
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New York resident Elliot Madison took a page from the Iranian protester playbook by using Twitter to help direct participants in the recent protests of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh away from police lines. The use of Twitter by the Iranian people was a stunning success, highlighted by the global media and even encouraged by the U.S. State Department when that agency contacted Twitter officials and asked them to delay scheduled maintenance that would have taken the social networking site offline at the height of the Iranian protest.

Although the Iranian people were lauded for their innovation and courage, all Madison got was an arrest record and some time cooling his heels in a Pittsburgh jail cell, and all for having the temerity to use Twitter as a tool of free expression. The free expression aspect was apparently lost on the cops. They raided Madison’s hotel room, cuffed him and took him to jail; later the FBI raided his house in Queens.

Madison is a self-avowed anarchist, he even had pictures of Lenin and Marx on the walls of his home (which the FBI, for some absurd reason, choose to confiscate during their raid), and now he suddenly finds himself the poster boy for free speech in the Web 2.0 world.

CDT’s Leslie Harris writes about the irony of Madison’s arrest and the circumstances behind it in her latest Huffington Post article. Not only is the case a violation of Madison’s First Amendment rights, Harris writes, it also provides political cover to the darker angels of the world stage:

“The next time protestors take to the streets of Tehran or Beijing, armed with cell phones and twitter accounts, we should not be surprised when countries crack down hard on those tweeting the revolution and point to Pittsburgh as a precedent. And America will be relegated to the sidelines, rendered mute by our own foolish actions.”

Mark Lloyd has devoted his long and distinguished public interest life to fighting for media diversity and free speech for all of us. In recognition of his career and expertise, he has been appointed Associate General Counsel at the FCC. Congratulations Mark! From all of us who served with you on the board of the Center for Democracy & Technology and all of those who have worked with you over the years.

Now Lloyd has been paid another honor: an attack from none other than Glenn Beck, one of our leading media voices of rage and distortion who spends his time 24/7 working to smear anyone associated with progressive policies.

Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge has written a careful deconstruction of Beck’s distorted attack on Lloyd’s character and public record to set the record straight and it is worth a read at for anyone interested in the facts and truth. Unfortunately, we don’t think Beck or his followers are interested… but many will be.

The irony of this episode however does deserve mention. Lloyd helped to frame the legal and policy positions that has made cable programming more diverse and the Internet a true zone of free speech, unburdened from the regulatory regime that burdens traditional broadcasting. Lloyd has helped to give broad freedom of speech to everyone, including the Glen Becks of this world. And this is the reward he gets!
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Last week, China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology announced that pre-installation of the Green Dam/Youth Escort filtering software on computers sold in China would no longer be mandatory. Officials had previously only delayed implementation of the program. You can find a translation of the press statement here.

However, the software will still be installed in schools, Internet cafes, and other public venues. And, of course, Chinese authorities still maintain extensive filtering mechanisms and other strategies to block access to information online.

Green Dam is only the latest skirmish in the ongoing struggle over control of information in an increasingly networked China. We can make several observations and draw several lessons here to inform the efforts of stakeholders and advocates working to expand the space for expression online.

First, this incident highlights China’s increasing adoption of child safety rhetoric as a pretext (at least in part) for politically motivated censorship. Second, Green Dam draws attention to the growing market for third-party filtering software among governments in countries looking to implement pervasive systems of censorship. A variety of types of transactions with such governments raise dicey ethical issues for ICT companies. Companies must grapple with these issues in an affirmative way or risk complicity with human rights violations.
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CDT and the ACLU have joined a “friend of the courtâ€? brief filed in the Supreme Court by the DKT Liberty Project in what is a very ugly case. As the adage goes, “bad cases make bad law,â€? and this is especially true in First Amendment cases involving unseemly (or worse) speech. There is a great risk that this case – U.S. v. Stevens — will yield some very bad law.

Stevens was convicted and sentenced to prison for distributing over the Internet videos depicting cruelty to animals. The videos including depictions, for example, of dog fights in Japan (where, as it happens, such activities are legal). Dog fights and other acts of cruelty to animals are (and should be) illegal in all fifty states, but this case raises the question of whether depictions of such dogfights should be wholly unprotected by the First Amendment.

Although the videos in the case were distributed online, there aren’t really Internet-specific issues in the case. CDT joined this brief not because of any Internet angle, but because of two broader, and extremely troublesome, arguments that the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice has made to the Supreme Court. CDT’s brief specifically focuses on the two arguments:
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Check out the guest blog post written by CDT’s Leslie Harris and John Morris for IndexonCensorship.org discussing the recent Nokia boycott in Iran and telecommunications companies doing business with oppressive international regimes:

Some Nokia customers in Iran are attempting to organise a boycott of the wake of charges that the company assisted the government in tapping cell phones and interfering with text messages during the recent political protests.

While a boycott may encourage Nokia to rethink how it does business in difficult markets, switching cell phone providers is unlikely to provide Iranians with more protection against government snooping. Indeed, wiretapping capability is not unique to Nokia Siemens Network, the independent joint venture providing equipment and service in Iran. Those capabilities date back to a governmental mandate imposed by none other than the US Government itself. Fifteen years ago, the US Congress — at the request of the FBI — mandated that telephone networks, and the equipment manufacturers that build their equipment, MUST build flexible wiretapping capability into the equipment. That law, the “Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act� (CALEA), led to similar mandates around the world. A few years ago, the FBI came back and successfully demanded the CALEA wiretapping mandates be extended to some Internet services.

To read post in it’s entirety, click here.

You can also let Leslie know what you think about the post by sending her a message on her brand new Twitter feed by following @Leslie_Harris.

The social and political impact of the Internet is growing at a rapid pace.  After all of the successes credited to President Obama’s social media campaign network in last fall’s election, we still find ourselves at the earliest stages of development of the social layer of the Net.  Still, some are quick to dismiss the activist power of the Internet and still are not convinced that this medium will continue to change the way the world organizes around issues.

Take a piece in today’s Washington Post by Monica Hesse, which commented on the “trendiness� of online activism and discounted these “click to join� groups as nothing more than numbers on a Facebook page.  This completely misses the impact that social networks have had on increasing the awareness of many issues and building communities around these issues.  As we gear up for our nation’s 233rd birthday, we are reminded of how colonists planted seeds of activism and organized against oppressors from abroad.  Instead of Facebook fan pages, they had militiamen; instead of asking others to click a link, they asked them to help gather supplies; instead of Twitter feeds, they used horses to get messages across.  From top to bottom, they created organization that allowed supporters to thrive in any role or level they chose.  The mother who allowed soldiers to sleep in her cabin, was as vital to their success as the soldiers themselves.  It didn’t matter what a supporter of the revolution was doing, their support alone was enough.

Today there are groups on Facebook aimed at gathering supporters for just about any cause.  Just like any other advocacy effort, supporters join for a variety of different reasons.  That’s where the Hesse piece really misses the mark.  The assumption is made that to participate in any activism online, one must be willing to fight hard and organize physical results to be “worthy� of being a supporter.  This claim ignores the power of community building and the very essence of grassroots advocacy.  My support of a specific issue is not measured by how much I donate or how many rallies I attend.   To discount followers of causes on social networks engaging in conduct that is a “trendy and easy virtue� ignores the impact that supporters have on social networks at every level of involvement.  The person simply receiving message updates on the issue is just as vital to the success of the cause as the top-level organizer who sends tasks and ideas to the group’s followers.
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News stories are reporting that the federal judge in the Lori Drew “MySpace suicide” case has thrown out Ms. Drew’s conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  Although what Ms. Drew did was horrible, we have long thought that her federal indictment was a gross distortion of the law.

The judge will issue a written order soon, and then we will know exactly why the case was tossed out.  But based on comments the judge made a few weeks ago, we are hopeful that the court will broadly reject the government’s effort to criminalize violations of “terms of service.”  We will report back once the opinion comes out.