“The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.” [New York Times] Currently, NSA analysts in possession of information about Americans gathered “incidentally” during foreign intelligence gathering apply rules to remove or mask information relating to innocent Americans’ activities. Under the revised rules, downstream agencies would instead be responsible for screening out information they are not supposed to use. Notwithstanding earlier assurances, the step makes it more likely that data from global telecom surveillance will wind up in the hands of the FBI and other domestic agencies for purposes of domestic law enforcement policing having nothing to do with terrorism. [Radley Balko]
Archive for March, 2016
Rhode Island attorney general pushes broad ban on hostile social media posts
Someone needs better advice about the First Amendment, and quickly: “Social media posts, sexually explicit or otherwise, that cause someone’s online embarrassment or insult, would become crimes under a set of bills being advanced by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin.” One of the bills “would target a wide range of social media activity that makes people ‘feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.'” so long as it had been “made with the intent to cause emotional distress and be expected to cause distress in a ‘reasonable person.'” While previous “cyber-bullying” legislation required a pattern of conduct, “someone could be prosecuted under the new Kilmartin bill for a single post if at least two others pile on with ‘separate non-continuous acts of unconsented contact” with the victim.'” — meaning that the trigger for jail time over speech could be the actions of other persons. [Providence Journal] Two years ago the New York high court struck down an overbroad ban on so-called cyber-bullying.
“When you say our product is better than yours, that is false and misleading.”
LARP foam arrow charges keep flying [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]
An eight-Justice Supreme Court
It isn’t especially onerous for the Supreme Court to operate with eight Justices, as we know from earlier vacancies and recusals, note Josh Blackman and Ilya Shapiro [Wall Street Journal] History of election-year SCOTUS nominations and confirmations doesn’t prove what some liberals imagine it does [Roger Pilon; Jonathan Adler and follow-up]
Plus: Wouldn’t it be nice if every Supreme Court nominee were asked to name something he or she thinks is a good idea yet unconstitutional, or, conversely a bad idea that is constitutional? [Trevor Burrus]
Gate Guard v. Perez: the sequel
Last month we told the story of a Texas business that managed to clobber the U.S. Department of Labor in court over its challenge to the company’s use of independent contractors. The Fifth Circuit granted the company a substantial award in legal fees to punish the department for its bad faith in litigation.
Now, Coyote relates a personal encounter in which he runs into a man at a Houston steakhouse who turned out to be the owner of that company, Gate Guard:
I refused to believe him until he showed me a picture of him with the check. He had had it blown up into one of those huge golf tournament checks. I told him he was my hero and tried to buy him drinks the rest of the night, but when I got up to leave, I found he had actually paid my tab. I drank that evening on the Department of Labor’s dime, I guess.
Breaking alert: CPSC does something sensible
The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has been seized by a passing fit of sense on a question of regulatory stringency, and the result could be to save makers of harmless apparel and footwear as much as $250 million a year [Nancy Nord]
“I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
As recently as two weeks ago we covered Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s pattern of suing his critics. But the report by Paul Farhi in yesterday’s Washington Post, recounting Trump’s long courtroom assault on reporter Tim O’Brien, contains a remarkable new passage:
Both courts [in ruling that Trump’s suit should be dismissed] cited a lack of “clear and convincing” evidence to satisfy the basic legal test for libeling someone as well known as Trump: willful disregard for the truth. The appeals court noted O’Brien’s diligent and extensive efforts to research Trump’s wealth.
Trump said in an interview that he knew he couldn’t win the suit but brought it anyway to make a point. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
Paul Alan Levy, at Public Citizen, calls Trump’s explanation of his actions and motives “astonishing” and says the front-runner’s “admission of malicious reasons for suing a reporter reminds us why we need anti-SLAPP statutes.” For voters, it might also raise questions of what to expect should a candidate with this instrumental view of legal action gain control of the machinery of law enforcement in the United States.
Bonus: “Litigation and legal threats related to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign” [Ballotpedia catalogue]
Free speech roundup
- Sequel to Driehaus case on penalizing inaccurate campaign speech: “A Final Goodbye to Ohio’s Ministry of Truth” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato; earlier here, here]
- FCC commissioner Ajit Pai: U.S. tradition of free expression slipping away [Washington Examiner]
- Québécois comedian Mike Ward is already out $100,000 in legal fees after discovering how CHRC can stand for Crushes Humor, Ruins Comedy [Gavin McInnes, The Federalist]
- 10th Circuit free speech win: Colorado can’t shackle small-group speech against ballot measure [Coalition for Secular Government v. Williams, earlier]
- New York Times goes after publisher of “War Is Beautiful” book: are picture thumbnails fair use? [Virginia Postrel, earlier]
- Constitutional? Not quite: Illinois bill would ban posting “video of a crime being committed” “with the intent to promote or condone that activity” [Eugene Volokh]
Investment-adviser fiduciary rule could trip up broadcast personalities
Brokers who advise retirement investors are bracing for more intense regulation under the Labor Department’s new “fiduciary” rule, and some are already planning to reduce the business they do. The rule is also expected to accelerate a shift toward fee-based investment advice, and is welcomed by some fee-based advisors. [Michael Wursthorn, WSJ] Perhaps less expectedly, the rule could trip up large numbers of persons who less obviously fit the role of financial advisor. John Berlau, Forbes:
Experts both for and against the rule I have talked to agree its broad reach could extend to financial media personalities who offer tips to individual audience members, a group that includes not just Ramsey but TV hosts like Suze Orman and Jim Cramer, as well as many other broadcasters who opine on business and investment matters. They would be ensnared by the rule’s broad redefinition of a vast swath of financial professionals as “fiduciaries” and its mandate that these “fiduciaries” only serve the “best interest” of IRA and 401(k) holders.
One insurance agent, Michael Markey, has written that such media personalities need to “be regulated and to be held accountable” by the government for the opinions he dish out, and “hailed the Labor Department rule as ushering a new era in which “entertainers …can no longer evade the pursuit of regulatory oversight.” Prof. Bainbridge wonders whether there might be a First Amendment issue lurking here, as well as an impulse to support regulation that works to handicap one’s competitors.
“Civil asset forfeiture is wrong”
Caleb Brown interviews former New Mexico attorney general Hal Stratton on New Mexico’s move to abolish civil asset forfeiture.