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Legal Egal writes:

ACLU* national legal director David Cole warns that this new piece of legislation is a serious problem to free speech. He says that just discussing the boycott of Israel could land you in prison for 20 years and fined $1 million.

The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, legislation introduced in the Senate by Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and in the House by Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.), would make it a crime to support or even furnish information about a boycott directed at Israel or its businesses called by the United Nations, the European Union or any other "international governmental organization." Violations would be punishable by civil and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, where we both work, takes no position for or against campaigns to boycott Israel or any other foreign country. But since our organization's founding in 1920, the ACLU has defended the right to collective action. This bill threatens that right.

As a European myself I find it very strange that such a law can ever be officially proposed. And in the US of all countries where the freedom of speech in codified in the constitution.

What do you make of it?

*American Civil Liberties Union

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Amid relentless scrutiny over possible ties between his presidential campaign and Russia, an extraordinary suggestion has emerged - that Donald Trump could pardon himself or his family.

Source: BBC News

US President Donald Trump has insisted he has the "complete power" to pardon people, amid reports he is considering presidential pardons for family members, aides and even himself.

A Democratic Party spokesman has called the reports "extremely disturbing".

The US authorities are probing possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia. Intelligence agencies think Russia tried to help Mr Trump to power.

Russia denies this, and the president says there was no collusion.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Mr Trump and his team were looking at ways to pardon people close to him.

Source: BBC News

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takyon writes:

The ACLU of Tennessee has criticized a judge's sentence reduction deal for inmates. Judge Sam Benningfield signed an order permitting a 30-day sentence reduction for male inmates who agree to have vasectomy and female inmates who agree to get the birth control implant Nexplanon, which prevents pregnancy for four years.

The program is voluntary. However, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee has condemned the program, calling it "unconstitutional." [...] But Benningfield, who declined to speak to NBC News, told News Channel 5 that he is trying to encourage "personal responsibility" among inmates, who will not "be burdened with children" when they are released. "This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves," Benningfield told the station.

Since the program began, 32 women have received the birth control implant and 38 men have agreed to have a vasectomy, News Channel 5 reported. It was not immediately clear how many men have undergone the surgery.

Inmates can get two days knocked off their sentences for attending a course about the risks of babies born addicted to opioids:

America's opioid crisis is expanding to a new class of victims—unborn children. Infants are being born with symptoms of withdrawal, also known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, or NAS. In the last decade, states like Tennessee have seen a ten-fold rise in the number of babies born with NAS.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

During a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Tuesday, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher managed to baffle and amaze when he asked about life on Mars.

[...] "You have indicated that Mars had a, was totally different thousands of years ago," the California congressman said, addressing a panel of space science experts.

"Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?".

[...] Kenneth Farley — NASA Mars 2020 rover project scientist — had to start off his answer by correcting Rohrabacher's question.

"So, the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago," Farley said.

[...] "Would you rule that out? That — see, there are some people — well, anyway," Rohrabacher said.

Farley answered: "I would say that is extremely unlikely."

Source: Mashable

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CoolHand writes:

A recent law promoting whaling allows Japan to take a key step towards resuming commercial hunting of the giant mammals that are "a great source of food," officials said on Thursday.

Japan defies international protests to carry out what it calls scientific research whaling, having repeatedly said its ultimate goal is to whale commercially again. In the 2016-2017 season, its fleet took 333 minke whales in the Antarctic.

The new law, passed in June, will help enshrine as a "national responsibility" an activity that was previously just a tacit policy, said Shigeki Takaya, director of the Whaling Affairs Office at Japan's Fisheries Agency.

"While the government has given its support to the implementation of scientific research into whales, it is heartening to see that the law clarifies its position even further," Takaya told a news conference.

In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan should halt Antarctic whaling.

Per the Huff, Japan's government thumbs its nose at international law at the behest of their commercial fishing industries, and gives permission to "deal with" protesters.

In a 2012 poll conducted for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), 88.8% of the Japanese public said they had not bought any whale meat in the past 12 months. While 26.6% said they supported Japan's scientific whaling, 18.5% opposed the hunts and the rest of the population were undecided, hardly a ringing endorsement of Japan's bloody whaling policy.

Much of the whale meat brought in from the scientific whaling scheme is being held in warehouses, frozen because it does not sell well on the Japan market. Sales of dolphin meat have also plummeted. Because sales of whale meat are so poor, the Japan government has subsidized the scientific whaling scheme at 5 billion yen ($44.7 million US) annually.

Furthermore, the new legislation allows Japan to send vessels to Antarctica with the fleet specifically to deal with harassment from such organizations as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which seeks to interfere with whaling activities they contend violate international law. [...] The legislation also gives new authority to Japan immigration enforcement to deal with people who may be "likely" to sabotage or harass whaling vessels in Japan. This is an obvious effort to legalize the blocking of people, such as members of Sea Shepherd, who come to Japan to legally and peacefully protest the dolphin hunts in Taiji.

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Scrutinizer writes:

A Baltimore cop, identified as Richard Pinheiro, was recorded on video planting drugs then "finding" them moments later - in front of two other unnamed cops. The video was made possible due to Pinheiro's body camera being designed to keep the 30 seconds of video prior to it being "switched on".

Charges against the civilian suspect have been dropped; no word yet on any criminal charges against any of the three cops.

Also at Ars Technica, The Baltimore Sun, USA Today and vox.com.

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John Miller writes:

Fox News covers President Trump's visit to Paris and his latest plan for the border wall.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. needs "anywhere from 700 to 900 miles" of see-through wall along the Mexican border.

Trump told reporters during his flight to Paris that the U.S. won't need a wall all along the roughly 2,000 mile border because of "natural barriers," including mountains and rivers. The winding Rio Grande defines the border in most of Texas while the Colorado River marks the boundary along 24 miles in Arizona. Trump describes the rivers as "violent and vicious" though in parts of Texas the river is little more than a trickle of water.

There's already about 650 miles of fences and barriers at the border that Trump says need to be replaced or fixed.

He also says the fence needs to be see-through, in part to help avoid injuries from sacks of drugs being tossed over the barrier.

The White House had originally said Trump's comments were off the record, but reversed course Thursday.

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takyon writes:

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died in custody on Thursday. Now comes the censorship:

After Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident and 2010 Nobel Peace laureate, died in custody on Thursday evening, his Chinese admirers went online to voice their sympathy and grief — and countless government censors buckled down for a long night's work.

The Chinese government's drive to silence discussion of Liu — who died of liver cancer at age 61 — predates even 2009, when he was handed an 11-year sentence for helping draft Charter 08, a document calling for multiparty democracy and freedom of speech. On Chinese social networks, searches for "Liu Xiaobo" return nothing, and most Chinese citizens barely know his name.

Yet on Friday, China's social media sites were filled with expressions of solidarity and grief, suggesting that Liu's case — and his ideals — may be more influential in China than many outsiders believe. These expressions were often cryptic and muted — snatches of poetry, allegorical quotes — but still, the censors responded in force.

On Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, they deleted photos of Liu and his wife, Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since Liu's arrest, though she has never been charged with a crime. They blocked flickering candle emojis, the letters RIP and LXB, and the dates "1955-2017," the years of Liu's birth and death. They removed poems by Liu and Liu Xia; photos of the South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993; and even the phrase: "someone died today."

"I think this kind of pokes a hole in the narrative that he's not well known in China," said William Nee, a Hong Kong-based researcher at Amnesty International. "I don't know if I'd characterize this as a paradigm shift. But it might be that some of the seeds he'd started to plant — or, the ideas in Charter 08 — have started to bear fruit among the rights defense community, and they're becoming more well known and are spreading among parts of the general public."

[...] Yet Friday's outpouring of support also exposed some of the censorship apparatus' weaknesses. On Friday, "LXB" was censored, but "XB" was not. The Chinese word for candle — 蜡烛 — was censored, but adding a space between the characters — 蜡 烛 — brought up several results, many related to Liu's death.

This editorial will set you straight.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute has filed a lawsuit against President Trump for blocking seven users on Twitter, claiming that the action violates the users' First Amendment right to participate in a public political forum:

The institute filed suit today on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by the president, which prevents them from seeing or replying to his tweets. It threatened legal action in a letter to Trump in June, and now "asks the court to declare that the viewpoint-based blocking of people from the @realDonaldTrump account is unconstitutional."

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, elaborates on the Knight Institute's earlier letter. It contends that Trump's Twitter account is a public political forum where citizens have a First Amendment right to speak. Under this theory, blocking users impedes their right to participate in a political conversation and stops them from viewing official government communication. Therefore, if Trump blocks people for criticizing his political viewpoints, he'd be doing the equivalent of kicking them out of a digital town hall.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

From CNN's writeup on how they managed to "dox" an individual who posted a GIF of President Trump wrestling a CNN logo:

CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

For those that have not seen the GIF or video, it rose to prominence after this tweet by Trump. This story is being predictably split down partisan lines, but this raises major questions about freedoms in the internet age. This is a company which is part of one of world's largest and most powerful media conglomerates threatening to engage in an action knowing it would likely result in harm to an individual because they found a silly video clip about them distasteful.

To put this into perspective, imagine if an organization such as Fox News or Breitbart chose to track down and "dox" any of the countless individuals posting numerous anti-Trump memes. And they then threatened to publish this information unless said individual apologized and promised to stop posting memes. This may already be illegal under coercion laws in the US, but is time for the rights (or lack thereof) of anonymity and privacy in the digital world to be clearly codified?

takyon: A reporter for BuzzFeed, CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski's former employer, compared the HanAssholeSolo GIF to the video tweeted by the President and found some differences, suggesting that it was altered by someone else before reaching the President or his aides (including the addition of a sound track). In other words, someone out there actually responsible for catching the President's attention may have gone unidentified, and the Reddit user likely uploaded only the initial version of the infamous GIF. The editing is acknowledged in the second paragraph of CNN's story.

Kaczynski has denied threatening anyone and says that the Reddit user called him and agreed that he had not been threatened by Kaczynski or CNN. He says that the "reserves the right to publish his identity" line from the CNN story has been misinterpreted, and that "It was intended only to mean we made no agreement w/the man about his identity". Kaczynski has also denied the widespread notion that the Reddit user was 15 years old, saying that "HanAssholeSolo is an adult and not 15 which people have spread".

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