A federal judge says Digital Sin can pressure Internet service providers for names of people illegally downloading “My Little Panties #2.” The company has obtained 176  IPA addresses and now will ask the Internet service providers for the names of those affiliated with the addresses.

The judge is requiring that any names uncovered be sent to the court under seal so those individuals can fight the subpoenas anonymously. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, January 31, 2012, by Adam Klasfeld.

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The District of Columbia appeals court ruled that an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration could not sue the agency for releasing a video showing him shoot himself in the leg while lecturing children on gun safety.

The agent claimed the DEA violated his privacy rights. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, January 27, 2012, by Rose Bouboushian.

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The Federal Trade Commission won a $4 million settlement against marketers of the Acai diet pill who made false claims about the pill’s effectiveness that included reference to fake news stories.

The promoters will only pay $500,000, the value of their tangible assets. -db

From the Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2012, by Matt Stevens.

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Europe is considering a new law that would require Internet companies like Amazon and Facebook to obtain consent from consumers to  use their personal data.

The law would force companies to delete personal data forever at the consumer’s request or face fines for failing to comply. -db

From The New York Times, January 23, 2012, by Somini Sengupta with reporting from Kevin J. O’Brien.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will have his own TV interview show this spring pending the outcome of his court hearing on February 1. He says he plans to interview political thinkers and revolutionaries.

Assange is waiting for the appeal of his extradition to Sweden on sex charges. -db

From Gizmodo, January 24, 2012, by Jamie Cundliffe.

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Formed by 29 media companies, NewRight plans to act as a clearing house for content produced by major journalism ventures including the Associated Press, Hearst Newspapers, The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company.

NewsRight wants to sign up aggregators to see if they are willing to pay for news. -db

From a commentary for the Citizens Media Law Project, January 17, 2012 by Victoria S. Ekstrand.

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The Pentagon inspector general has begun an investigation into who leaked classified information to filmmakers about the Bin Laden raid that resulted in the death of the terrorist leader.

There had been news reports that the filmmakers were given access to the Pentagon and White House. -db

From the Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2012, by Ken Dilanian.

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A federal judge in Boston ordered Boston College to provide prosecutors with interviews with a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

The prosecutor is acting on behalf of the British government who is investigating crimes during the civil strife in Northern Ireland. -db

From The Boston Globe, December 29, 2011, by Travis Andersen.

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A report from the Congressional Research Service shows the justification, history and frequency of Congressional secret sessions. -db

From Secrecy News, December 1, 2011 by Steven Aftergood.

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A MIT Media Lab student is writing software that will highlight false claims in articles in the same way as spell check.  The software is expected to be ready some time next year before the presidential elections.

But the grad student warns that the software only identifies what PolitiFact deems dubious leaving the determination of truth up to the reader. -db

From a commentary for the Nieman Journalism Lab, November 22, 2011, by Andrew Phelps.

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The Defense Science Board (DSB) reported that the U.S. intelligence community needs a new organization charged with assessing the impact of climate change on national security interests. The CIA already has an Center on Climate Change and National Security but does not share its information or collaborate with groups outside the government.

The DSB said the new organization would establish cooperative relationships with universities, NGOs and the private sector who command significant expertise on climate change. -db

From Secrecy News, November 14, 2011, by Steven Aftergood.

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The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a secret petition from four former Blackwater security guards indicted for manslaughter for firing on Iraqi civilians wounding 20 and killing 14.

The court will consider the petition in deciding if a federal district judge erred in dismissing the charges against the guards on the grounds that the prosecution used evidence tainted by exposure to immunized statements. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, November 14, 2011, by Barbara Leonard.

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A toxicologist working for a client sickened by toxic compounds used in the cleanup released a report charging that the operation to set the oil slick on fire during the gulf oil spill was characterized by secrecy.

The report said that the client employed to work on cleanup reported that airplanes flying overhead dropped dispersants with carcinogens on him and other workers. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, November 14, 2011, by Sabina Canfield.

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Chevron is withdrawing its $2 million annual funding of public television’s prime time news report, the PBS NewsHour.

The decision came after PBS ombudsman criticized a Chevron ad spot in which a character said, “every penny and more [of Chevron profits] went into bringing energy into the world.” -db

From the San Francisco Chronicle, November 8, 2011, by Andrew S. Ross.

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Saying they had already exceeded disclosure requirements on budget records, the California Legislature and Assembly said the records of correspondence about the disbursement of taxpayer money were exempt from disclosure.

The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee requested the records to investigate  a legislator’s claim that the Assembly Speaker was cutting his spending allowance because he voted against the state budget. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, November 9, 2011, by William Dotinga.

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Two democratic senators have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. They claim that under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the democratic system has been damaged with the increased influence of big money in political decisions -db

From Truth Out, November 2,  2011, by Zaid Jilani.

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CBS won a battle in court over Singer Janet Jacket’s exposed breast during the halftime show at Super Bowl 2004, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that in levying a $550,000 fine, the Federal Communications Commission was violating its own policy exempting “fleeting” indecency from fines.

Writing for the majority in a 2-1 decision, Judge Marjorie Rendell  said the FCC had consistently ignored fleeting indecency in the past so there was no reason to exact a fine in the Janet Jackson incident. -db

From Reuters, November 2, 2011, reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Jeremy Pelofsky.

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It’s not safe to blow the whistle on government corruption in India. At least 12 whistleblowers have been murdered since January of 2010.

But citizens have a new Right to Information Act which is being used to expose corruption, and business leaders are beginning to point out that corruption hinders economic growth and India’s competitiveness in world markets. -db

From Bloomberg News, October 19, 2011, by Mehul Srivastava and Andrew MacAskill.

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Government world-wide are increasingly asking Google for information, causing the company to suggest that new laws are needed to govern Internet data. In the last six months, the U.S. government has made 5,950 requests for information with Google complying with 93 percent of the requests, and when asked to remove items, it complied 63 percent of the time.

Google says the law governing these requests, the 25-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act,  could not possibly anticipate the electronic media world of 2011 and is in drastic need of modernization. -db

From the National Journal, October 25, 2011, by Josh Smith.

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The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has delayed its decision on whether to release video recordings of the January 2010 Prop. 8 trial on the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriage.

The court is still deciding if the public’s right to know outweighs potential danger to witnesses in favor of Prop. 8, passed by the voters in 2008 banning same-sex marriage in California. -db

From  the San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 2011, by Bob Egelko.

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A manufacturer upset about an online database of safety complaints has asked the court to allow it to remain anonymous in its suit against a government agency. The manufacturer claims that if it were named, it would jeopardize the interests it strives to protect by bringing suit.

As of this week, there is no record of the lawsuit on PACER, the federal courts’ electronic service with case and docket information. -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, October 19, 2011, by Kristen Rasmussen.

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Panelists at the U.S. Institute of Peace addressed the role of social media in recent uprisings in the Arab world with some saying that the use of social media was part of a power shift from nation states to smaller groups.

Others said the information about the social media is still too mixed and scattered to draw any firm conclusions. -db

From NextGov, September 16, 2011, by Joseph Marks.

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The California Fourth District Court of Appeal sent a case back to trial court directing the judge to grant the anti-SLAPP motion against a lawyer suing for sex discrimination on the grounds that her firm was referring cases to less qualified male lawyers. -db

From the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, September 19, 2011, by Kenneth Ofgang.

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The News of the World publisher has revealed that they discovered a huge number of documents that could provide information about the scale of the phone hacking conducted against citizens, celebrities  and the royal family.

The high court judge had ordered News of the World to provide all documents that could show that the newspaper targeted the cell phones of an additional list of public figures. -db

From The Guardian, September 13, 2011, by James Robinson.

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With a proliferation of social media sites, emergency responders are getting more information from the public presenting new challenges. For one, government agencies feel the need to conduct themselves with greater transparency to build trust.

Sifting out fact from fiction is also a problem, and a former Wyoming governor has suggested that the social media might help sift out the information before it goes to emergency responders but that solution carries its own liabilities.  -db

From NextGov, August 31, 2011, by Joseph Marks.

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Embattled News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has routinely used his media holdings to promote his business interests, writes Joe Flint in a commentary in the Los Angeles Times. Flint says that notwithstanding his conservative stance, Murdoch has not hesitated to ally with liberal politicians including Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

Flint also describes how Murdoch used political leverage with then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to put the fledgling Fox News on Times Warner Cable in New York. Giuliani recently said Murdoch is ” a very honorable, honest man” and that Murdoch couldn’t have had anything to do with the phone-hacking scandal. -db

From a commentary in the Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2011, by Joe Flint.

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In filing for bankruptcy, West Communications said its revenues declined 25 percent since 2007 mostly from a drop in ad revenue. The company owns eight small newspapers in California and Oregon including The Union Democrat in Sonora.

Westcom said it failed in a bid to renegotiate the terms of its debt to Bank of America but plans to reorganize, repay the loan, and keep its newspapers open. -db

From The Daily Triplicate, August 24, 2011, by Sheila G. Miller.

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Writing for the First Amendment Center, Ken Paulson objects to the censorship of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five by the Republic, Missouri school board, recalling first reading it as a freshman in high school, “As a 15-year-old, I found the book to be very challenging; it explored difficult concepts such as free will and fate in an unconventional narrative. Forty-two years later, I still remember it as a thought-provoking and powerful novel.”

Paulson says school boards should respect students and defer to professional educators when it comes to book selection,  “Legal issues aside, a school board that bans a widely respected book from high schools because of concerns about coarse language sends some unfortunate signals. It’s in effect saying it doesn’t trust the principal, teachers or librarians to make sound decisions concerning the school’s curriculum. And it doesn’t see its students as the young adults they are, with inherent rights and the ability to grasp important ideas and challenging concepts, despite the presence of profanity.”

From a commentary for the First Amendment Center, August 17, 2011, by Ken Paulson.

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In response to claims of strong-arm tactics, the FBI is looking into whether Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp engaged in a concerted campaign of computer hacking.

Time magazine says the FBI is looking at whether the company used illegal strong-arm tactics on rivals. News Corp said that an incidence of computer hacking traced to one of its subsidiaries was an isolated incident. -db

From the Guardian, August 4, 2011, by Ed Pilkington.

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Former presidential candidate and Senator John Kerry says the media does have to provide equal coverage to those in the public arena who expouse ‘absurd’ ideas. He is presumably referring to the Tea Party and/or Sarah Palin, says Glynnis MacNicol in the Business Insider.

MacNicol says she doesn’t ordinarily agree with ‘blame the media’ statements, but agrees with Kerry’s statement, “The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.” -db

From a commentary in the Business Insider, August 5, 2011, by Glynnis MacNicol.

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An open government  blogger, Micah Sifry, is optimistic that new information sharing websites will allow citizens affected by government projects and subsequent waste, fraud and inattention to share their complaints and initiate action.

In his book WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency, Sifry cites the website Seeclickfix.com adopted by around 500 cities which allows citizens to post complaints compiled by local governments. Sifry says if just a few citizens step up to report problems, it will make a huge difference in the way governments operate. -db

From NextGov, July 29, 2011, by Joseph Marks.

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A man who had photographed a police officer in public was denied a restraining order against the police but could proceed with his lawsuit. Demanding that he destroy the photos, a police officer chased him after she saw him take pictures of a construction scene and inadvertently include the officer.

A federal judge said the man had suffered no harm from police since the original incident so no restraining order was necessary, but  that the man could challenge the law forbidding photographing police officers without their consent. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, July 27, 2011, by Jack Bouboushian.

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A U.S. magistrate judge ruled that a ex-Baptist deacon accused of sexually abusing one of his female parishioners could not go by a psuedonym during his trial.

The judge said the deacon’s desire to avoid embarrassing revelations did not outweigh the public’s right to know, “”Allegations of sexual assault of a minor is [sic] of public interest,” the judge wrote. Moreover, “Bowen’s [the deacon's] former employment and leadership role in a religious organization paired with his current involvement in the tourism industry makes him of public interest.” -db

From the Courthouse News Service, July 27, 2011, by Jack Bouboushian.

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Considering Rupert Murdoch’s vast holdings and the relatively unprofitable and troublesome nature of his newspapers, Murdoch may want to consider selling them off, say media analysts. News Corp. shares declined 17.4% since the phone-hacking scandal erupted two weeks ago, with losses of market value estimated in the $8 billion range.

Others say that notwithstanding his dramatic shutdown of the News of the World, the newspapers brought Murdoch fame and political clout, and he might be loathe to part with them despite pressure from investors. -db

From The Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2011, by Joe Flint.

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Rupert Murdoch’s associates worked hard to contain the phone-hacking scandal with strategies that included  hiding evidence, paying people not to sue, bribing reporters and editors to keep quiet and destroying computer equipment and e-mails. They ignored internal advice to accept full responsibility for the scandal and to deflect criticism tried to develop evidence of phone-hacking by rival news media.

Murdoch was quoted last week saying that News Corp. handled the crisis very well except for a few minor mistakes. -db

From The New York Times, July 18, 2011. by Jo Becker and Ravi Somaiya with additional reporting by Don Van Natta Jr.

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Claiming he had done no wrong in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, the head of Scotland Yard resigned just as former chief executive of News International, publisher of News of the World, Rebekah Brooks was arrested on charges of illegal phone tapping and bribing police. The police official said he had not been involved in the phone-hacking investigation and did not know that Neil Wallis, a former News of the World editor and then a media consultant for the police was himself suspected of hacking.

Anthony Faiola of The Washington Post wrote on the  political fallout, “The pace of the scandal’s spread raised immediate questions about how high the fallout could go, with Prime Minister David Cameron and Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, also in the line of fire for, at the very least, possible lapses in judgment.” -db

From The Washington Post, July 18, 2011, by Anthony Faiola with contributions from Eliza Mackintosh.

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The FBI is investigating News Corp.’s phone-hacking activities, and, according to one unnamed source, the investigation will determine whether News Corp. tried to hack into the phones of 9/11 victims.

Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch has formed an independent committee to investigate the phone-hacking allegations, and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks resigned her post as chief executive office of News International published of News Corp.’s British newspapers. -db

From Bloomberg News, July 15, 2011, by Andrew Harris, Justin Blum and Bob Van Voris.

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Scotland Yard’s investigation of The News of the World phone-hacking accusations was inattentive at best, raising questions about their chummy relations with News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. Records show that the police commissioner met with executives and editors 18 times from November 2005 to November 2010 including 8 meetings with the deputy editor of The News of the World.

In 2009 the assistant police commissioner decided not to reopen the hacking investigation raising questions about his social ties to staff members of News International. The media consultant for Scotland Yard was a former editor for The News of the World. He is alleged to have reported back to his former colleagues at News International about the phone hacking case. -db

From  The New York Times, July 16, 2011, by Don Van Natta Jr. with additional reporting from Jo Becker.

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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch dropped a bid to buy control of British Sky Broadcasting, the largest pay television company in Britain. The move is thought to be strategic, allowing the wrath directed at News Corporation over the phone-hacking scandal to die down before renewing efforts to acquire the company.

There is much speculation that News Corp.  may have to spin off its newspaper holdings to insulate itself from the unethical journalism of its reporters. Said Tim Westcott a television analyst, “I think they might have to [spin off its newspaper interests], because they’re facing some major political problems. News Corporation’s political influence has always been a protection over its business interests. And obviously a lot of that has gone.” -db

From The New York Times, July 13, 2011, by Jeremy W. Peters and John F. Burns with additional reporting by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Brian Stelter, Floyd Norris and Ravi Somaiya.

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In his column in The New York Times, David Carr says that Rupert Murdoch’s phone-hacking scandal in Great Britain was exposed by “honest rivals”, namely The Guardian, The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and may reduce Murdoch’s strangle hold on political discourse in Britain. It has delayed his attempt to gain full control of British Sky Broadcasting, the largest pay television company in the country.

Says Carr, “In truth, a kind of British Spring is under way, now that the News Corporation’s tidy system of punishment and reward has crumbled. Members of Parliament, no longer fearful of retribution in Mr. Murdoch’s tabloids, are speaking their minds and giving voice to the anger of their constituents. Meanwhile, social media has roamed wild and free across the story, punching a hole in the tiny clubhouse that had been running the country. Democracy, aided by sunlight, has broken out in Britain.” -db

From a commentary in The New York Times, July 10, 2011, by David Carr.

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