Hong Kong courts groan under weight of protest trials

AFP/File / ISAAC LAWRENCE

Nearly 9,000 people have been arrested since the protests kicked off last June with 1,600 proceeding to trial so far, according to police

Hong Kong's courts are clogged with a backlog of protester trials nearly a year after an explosion of huge pro-democracy rallies, with hundreds of mostly young demonstrators facing the prospect of lengthy jail terms.

Nearly 9,000 people have been arrested since the often violent protests kicked off last June with 1,600 proceeding to trial so far, according to police.

The result is a judicial system struggling under the strain as Hong Kong lurches through a political crisis that shows no sign of ending.

"This caseload is unimaginable," said Jonathan Man, a veteran rights lawyer on a team working pro bono to defend around half of those facing charges.

AFP / Anthony WALLACE

The city's judicial system is struggling under the strain as Hong Kong lurches through a political crisis that shows no sign of ending


"Each case is only rationed a very small amount of resources from the prosecution and judiciary, which results in investigation and trial delays," he told AFP.

A three-month closure of most of the court system during the coronavirus outbreak compounded delays.

A university student who asked to be identified as Windy has been on bail for the last seven months.

She is one of almost 600 people charged with rioting, a colonial-era law that carries up to a decade in jail.

AFP/File / Ye Aung Thu

Last year's rallies died down as the coronavirus spread but they have flared anew as social distancing measures are eased

"I have to change my life plan as I can't get a job in a large company if I get convicted," she told AFP.

Her case illustrates the volume passing through the courts.

She is one of 95 people who were arrested one afternoon in September by police during clashes near the legislature and who are now all on trial together.

- New arrests -

Earlier this month, the defendants appeared in a single courtroom for a mammoth procedural hearing that lasted hours as some 30 lawyers shared microphones to talk to the judge.

AFP/File / Philip FONG

Almost 600 people have been charged with rioting, a colonial-era law that carries up to a decade in jail


Defendants filled the public benches as anxious family members packed the hall outside, some catching naps as the hearings dragged on.

Those denied bail were brought up from the cells below after months in custody.

Shortly after Windy's hearing, a separate court handed down the first sentence for a rioting case -- a 22-year-old lifeguard who pleaded guilty to throwing objects at officers and was jailed for four years.

The Department of Justice said around 200 prosecutors have been assigned to handle cases with additional manpower and outsourced services available if needed.

Yet the caseload is growing with new arrests made each week.

AFP/File / VIVEK PRAKASH

The Department of Justice says some 200 prosecutors have been assigned to handle the extra caseload

The rallies died down in January as the coronavirus spread but they have flared anew as social distancing measures are eased.

Hundreds have been arrested since last week when large crowds marched against China's plan to introduce a security law outlawing treason, sedition and subversion -- a move activists fear will further erode free speech in the territory.

- Judiciary in spotlight -

With judges now starting to issue rulings, protester anger has begun to turn towards the judiciary.

Chris, part of a volunteer group documenting trials, said his team tries to temper criticism of judges that often flares up on their public chat group.

AFP/File / Philip FONG

Organisers claim that some of the protests last year attracted more than one million people


"Many people do not understand that a verdict isn't necessarily about a judge's personal belief," he said, asking not to use his second name.

He likened judges to having to "draw a straight line with a broken ruler" given to them by the city's pro-Beijing leadership and the police.

Rights lawyer Man said the courts should not be expected to solve a political crisis that demands a political solution.

"The government has pushed onto the judiciary a problem the courts can't solve," he said.

Hong Kong's top judge Geoffrey Ma has warned that the city's legal fraternity is being unfairly targeted by the polarised atmosphere.

"Judges look only to the letter of the law and to the spirit of the law and nothing else," he said in January.

AFP/File / Anthony WALLACE

Among those arrested recently was Martin Lee, a prominent barrister and rights activist in his 80s

However, in April, one judge caused anger after he openly sympathised with a pro-government supporter who stabbed three people.

The judge called the attacker "a bloodstained victim" of the protesters as he sentenced him to 45 months in jail.

Ma later criticised that judge and said he would not preside over future protest trials.

Meanwhile, Man says he does not expect his caseload will ease up any time soon.

"The authorities think the movement will stop after the 'trouble makers' are rounded up," he said. "But they are actually just creating more enemies."

US layoffs exceed 40 mn but some are returning to work

AFP/File / Johannes EISELE

More than 40 million US workers have lost their jobs since the pandemic's arrival, but the pace of layoffs is slowing
The number of workers filing for jobless benefits since the coronavirus arrived in the United States passed 40 million on Thursday while manufactured goods sales plunged even as signs emerged that people are returning to work.

Job losses on that scale have not been seen since the Great Depression early in the last century, and came as a new data showed the world's largest economy shrinking by 5.0 percent in the first quarter, a preview of much worse to come amid the COVID-19 recession.

The pace of layoffs passed their peak but continue in massive numbers, with the Labor Department reporting another 2.12 million workers making new claims for unemployment benefits in the week ended May 23.

The scale dwarfs even the worst week of the global financial crisis 12 years ago but is a decrease from the 2.44 million people who filed in the prior week.

And the number of people actually receiving benefits dropped by 3.86 million in the week ended May 16, the first decline since the pandemic's arrival and an indication that some people may be returning to work.

Even so there are more than 21 million people relying on government payments, up from 1.7 million in the same week of 2019.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said on Twitter the decline "suggests a substantial flow from unemployment to employment."

If sustained, it would be a positive development for President Donald Trump, who has cheered on states' efforts to reopen as he faces a November re-election battle in which the health of the economy is set to weigh heavily on voters' minds.

But Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia acknowledged the national unemployment rate could hit 20 percent.

"We do have to, again, acknowledge that this is a challenging time for workers across the country. But we are reopening," Scalia said on Fox Business Network.

- Manufacturing suffers -

Florida is one of the states moving most aggressively to resume business, and posted one of the largest declines in the insured rate.

AFP/File / CHANDAN KHANNA

Florida is one of the states moving most aggressively to reopen, and saw the number of people receiving unemployment benefits decline

California also saw a large decline, but Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said that was a technicality as unemployed workers in the state were not required to file for benefits in the latest week.

But he nonetheless expects weekly claims to drop below one million by the end of June and slow over the coming weeks.

"The dip in initial claims is consistent with Google search and advance state data, which tentatively point to a bigger drop next week," Shepherdson said.

A separate Commerce Department report showed orders of manufactured goods -- a key component of measuring GDP in the services-dominated US economy -- plummeting by 17.2 percent in April, following a 16.6 percent drop in March.

Sales fell to $170 billion in April, the first full month of the lockdowns, compared to $246 billion before the virus struck.

Much of the trouble stemmed from struggling aerospace giant Boeing, which reported no new orders in April, as compared to 31 in March.

Like other companies nationwide, Boeing shuttered its US factories due to the pandemic, but has since resumed production while planning to slash its workforce by 10 percent and slow output.

Sales of motor vehicles and parts collapsed nearly 52.8 percent compared to March.

All told, transportation orders collapsed by more than 47 percent after the 43 percent plunge in March. Excluding transportation, total durable goods sales fell just 7.4 percent.

- The expansion is over -

The Commerce Department also reported that US GDP fell 5.0 percent in the first three months of the year, slightly worse than the 4.8 percent drop originally reported, putting an end to a decade of economic expansion.

The drop was fueled by a collapse in consumer spending and exports, and was all the more dramatic given that the business shutdowns did not start to take effect until the final two weeks of the quarter.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the collapse in the April-June quarter could be as bad as 30 percent, again in line with the Great Depression.

In an analysis, Oxford Economics said the Fed's moves to inject liquidity and Congress's stimulus measures have blunted some of the impact, but said "more will be needed and fear that policy fatigue could hinder the recovery."

WATCH: Maddow goes off on GOP governor for not alerting residents of meat packing plant COVID-19 outbreak
May 27, 202 By Bob Brigham


MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Wednesday harshly criticized Iowa’s Republican governor for not alerting residents to an apparent COVID-19 outbreak at a meatpacking plant.

“The highest per-capita infection rate in the state of Iowa right now is in one Buena Vista County, population around 20,000,” Maddow explained. “More than 3% of the entire population of the county is now confirmed to be infected.”

“Now, where are all of these infections coming from?” she asked rhetorically. “You know by now, right, without me even having to say it. You know, and I know, even without having to look it up on a map. And local reporters know exactly what drives those kinds of epidemic spike numbers. Everybody knows what’s going on.”

“But boy does the governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, not want to admit what it is,” she said, introducing a clip of the Republican governor.

The Reynolds administration said, in the clip, that they would not identify the source of an outbreak until 10% of the workforce tests positive.

“We’re going to wait to tell you, we’re going to wait to tell the citizens of this county that is now the most infected county in the state and who knows where that is coming from, we will are going to wait until it is really, really, really bad, until we’ve decided to move testing in there, until we’ve decided it is more than 10% of the workplace, we will wait until then before we tell anybody anything about it,” she paraphrased.

“It is an infectious disease,” she reminded.

Watch:

‘They want their civil war’: Far-right ‘boogaloo’ militants have embedded themselves in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis

May 28, 2020 By Jordan Green, Special to Raw Story


Young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests — the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo as a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the #SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organization server. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.


“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters “jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”




Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?”

Trump’s tweets have ‘deteriorated’ because he knows he faces ‘landslide defeat’: Financial Times columnist
Published May 28, 2020 By Brad Reed


President Donald Trump’s tweets have grown even more erratic than usual lately, as he has promoted baseless murder conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and even a video that proclaims “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

Financial Times columnist Edward Luce believes he knows the reason that the president has become more unhinged: He knows that he’s “courting a landslide defeat” in the 2020 election.

“Mr Trump’s worsening odds can be gauged by his rising sense of panic,” Luce writes. “Although it scarcely seemed possible, their content has also deteriorated. Recent nadirs include Mr Trump’s recurring assertion that Joe Scarborough, the co-anchor of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, murdered a staff member in 2001. Even pro-Trump publications felt obliged to dispute that cartoonishly nasty claim.”

Luce also zeroes in on Trump’s preemptive cries about his opponents “stealing” the 2020 election from him by making it easier for more people to vote.

“It is almost as hard to find instances of leaders trying to shrink voter turnout,” he explains. “That is Mr Trump’s goal for November, which betrays his pessimism about the election. There is no evidence that postal voting benefits Democrats — and some to show it has helped Republicans. Yet Mr Trump is doing everything he can to make life harder for absentee voters.”

FT BEHIND PAYWALL

Dutch ban transport of mink after farm workers infected




on May 28, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Dutch authorities on Thursday announced a nationwide ban on the transport of mink after mink farm workers were believed to have contracted coronavirus from the small mammals.

The infections in the south of the Netherlands could be the “first known cases of animal-to-human transmission”, the World Health Organization had said on Tuesday.

The Dutch government had previously made COVID-19 testing mandatory on all mink farms in the country, where the animals are bred for their fur.

“Until the results of this screening are known,” the transport of mink and mink manure will be banned to combat the spread of the new coronavirus, Public Health Minister Hugo de Jonge and Agriculture Minister Carola Schouten said in a letter to parliament.

There have been no mink exports to countries outside of the European Union this year, the ministers added.

However, it is not possible to know whether mink was traded from the Netherlands to other EU member states in 2020 because this trade is not subject to a European certificate, they said.

According to the ministers, health authorities consider the risk of contamination “negligible” outside the four Dutch farms where infected mink have been reported.

The initial infection of a mink farm worker was reported last week on one of two farms near the southern city of Eindhoven, where the disease was discovered in April among mink.

The infection happened before it was known that the mink were carrying the virus, meaning that workers did not wear protective clothing at the time.

The health ministry said on Tuesday that three people on the farm tested positive for the virus, but said that it remained unclear if more than one of the cases had come directly from a mink.

There have been more than 5,900 coronavirus deaths and 45,950 infections in the Netherlands, according to the latest official figures.

The exact source of the virus, which first appeared in China late last year, remains unknown, and there is growing pressure for an international probe to determine its origin.

Most scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly in a market that sells exotic animals for meat in the city of Wuhan.

Since the initial jump to humans, there have been no previous reports of animals being the source of infections.

© 2020 AFP

A Quick Take on Trump's May 26 Executive Order on Platforms and CDA 230

Stanford Cyber Policy Center’s Platform Regulation Director says this is a copy of the draft. She has annotated it as well:

To aid in this endeavor, here is my color coded and annotated copy of the Executive Order in CDA 230 and platforms. https://t.co/H3zN22X4me https://t.co/1CosSHTpqd
— Daphne

Color coding:

Red: Atmospherics. Politically and philosophically interesting and important in the long term, as I discuss here, but not legally effective as part of an executive order. Reporting on these parts is about on par with reporting on tweets. 

Orange: Legally dubious, requires agencies to disregard judicial interpretation of federal legislation.

Yellow: Reasonable minds can differ.

Late night caveat: I’m posting this around midnight my time. If (1) the order is revised before official publication or (2) I missed something serious, I’ll update this later to reflect that. 

EXECUTIVE ORDER

----------

PREVENTING ONLINE CENSORSHIP

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (40 U.S.C. 101 and 121(a)), it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. 

Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy.  Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution, underscoring that the freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.

The emergence and growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology.  Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms.  As a result, these platforms function in many ways as a 21st-century equivalent of the public square.

As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the Internet. Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities, our businesses, our newspapers, and our homes.  It is essential to sustaining our democracy.

In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online.  This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic.  When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.    

Online platforms, however, are engaging in selective censorship that is hurting our national discourse.  Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms “flagging” content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.

At the same time social media platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise punish Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China.  Google, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party, which blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance.  Google has also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military.  For their part, Facebook and Twitter have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese Government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities.  Twitter has also amplified China’s propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use its platform to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. 

My commitment to free and open debate on the Internet remains as strong as ever.  Therefore, it remains the policy of the United States that lawful content should be free from censorship in our digital marketplace of ideas.  As a Nation, we must foster and protect diverse viewpoints in today’s digital communications environment where all Americans can and should have a voice.  We must seek transparency and accountability from online platforms, and encourage standards and tools to protect and preserve the integrity and openness of American discourse and freedom of expression.

Sec. 2. Protections Against Arbitrary Restrictions.  (a) It is the policy of the United States to foster clear, nondiscriminatory ground rules promoting free and open debate on the Internet.  Prominent among those rules is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (section 230).  47 U.S.C. 230.  It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified.

Section 230(c) was designed to address court decisions from the early days of the Internet holding that an online platform that engaged in any editing or restriction of content posted by others thereby became itself a “publisher” of the content and could be liable for torts like defamation.  As the title of section 230(c) makes clear, the provision is intended to provide liability “protection” to a provider of an interactive computer service (such as an online platform like Twitter) that engages in “‘Good Samaritan’ blocking” of content when the provider deems the content (in the terms of subsection 230(c)(2)(A)) obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.  Subsection 230(c)(1) broadly states that no provider of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of content provided by another person.  But subsection 230(c)(2) qualifies that principle when the provider edits the content provided by others.  Subparagraph (c)(2) specifically addresses protections from “civil liability” and clarifies that a provider is protected from liability when it acts in “good faith” to restrict access to content that it considers to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable.”  The provision does not extend to deceptive or pretextual actions restricting online content or actions inconsistent with an online platform’s terms of service.   When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct.  By making itself an editor of content outside the protections of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), such a provider forfeits any protection from being deemed a “publisher or speaker” under subsection 230(c)(1), which properly applies only to a provider that merely provides a platform for content supplied by others.  It is the policy of the United States that all departments and agencies should apply section 230(c) according to the interpretation set out in this section.    

(b) To further advance the policy described in subsection (a) of this section, within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), shall file a petition for rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that the FCC expeditiously propose regulations to clarify:

 (i) the conditions under which an action restricting access to or availability of material is not “taken in good faith” within the meaning of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) of section 230, particularly the conditions under which such actions will be considered to be:

(1) deceptive, pretextual, or inconsistent with a provider’s terms of service; or

(2) the result of inadequate notice, the product of unreasoned explanation, or having been undertaking without a meaningful opportunity to be heard; and

(ii) Any other proposed regulations that the NTIA concludes may be appropriate to advance the policy described in subsection (a) of this section.

Sec 3. Prohibition on Spending Federal Taxpayer Dollars on Advertising with Online Platforms That Violate Free Speech Principles.  (a) The head of each executive department and agency (agency) shall review its agency’s Federal spending on advertising and marketing paid to online platforms.  Such review shall include the amount of money spent, the online platforms supported, the viewpoint-based speech restrictions imposed by each online platform, an assessment of whether the online platform is appropriate for such agency’s speech, and the statutory authorities available to restrict advertising dollars to online platforms not appropriate for such agency’s speech. 

(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency shall report its findings to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sec. 4. Federal Review of Unfair or Deceptive Practices.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States that large social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, as the functional equivalent of a traditional public forum, should not infringe on protected speech.  The Supreme Court has described that social media sites, as the modern public square, “can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.” Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017).  Communication through these channels has become important for meaningful participation in American democracy, including to petition elected leaders.  These sites are providing a public forum to the public for others to engage in free expression and debate.  Cf. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 85-89 (1980).

(b)  In May of 2019, the White House Office of Digital Strategy created a Tech Bias Reporting tool to allow Americans to report incidents of online censorship.  In just weeks, the White House received over 16,000 complaints of online platforms censoring or otherwise taking action against users based on their political viewpoints.  The White House Office of Digital Strategy shall reestablish the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool to collect complaints of online censorship and other potentially unfair or deceptive acts or practices by online platforms and shall submit complaints received to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

(c) The FTC shall consider taking action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, pursuant to 15 U.S.C. 45.  Such unfair or deceptive acts or practice shall include practices by entities regulated by section 230 that restrict speech in ways that do not align with those entities’ public representations about those practices.

(d)  For large internet platforms that are vast arenas for public debate, including the social media platform Twitter, the FTC shall also consider whether complaints allege violations of law that implicate the policies set forth in section 4(a) of this order.  The FTC shall develop a report describing such complaints and make the report publicly available, consistent with applicable law.    

Sec. 5. State Review of Unfair or Deceptive Practices. (a) The Attorney General shall establish a working group regarding the potential enforcement of State statutes that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair and deceptive acts and practices.  The working group shall invite State Attorneys General for discussion and consultation, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.

(b) The White House Office of Digital Strategy shall submit all complaints described in Section 4(b) of this order to the working group, consistent with applicable law. The working group shall also collect publicly available information regarding the following:

(i) monitoring or creating watch-lists of users based on their interactions with content or users (e.g., likes, follows, time spent); and

(ii) monitoring users based on their activity off the platform.

Sec. 6. Definition.  For purposes of this order, the term “online platform” means any website or application that allows users to create and share content or engage in social networking, or any general search engine.

Sec. 7. General Provisions. 

1. Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

1. the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof;
2. the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals; or
3. existing rights or obligations under international agreements.

2. This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
3. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

FOOTNOTES

1 This is an important issue. But there are First Amendment arguments on all sides. For example, Trump appointee J. Kavanaugh as a judge proclaimed himself solidly on the side of private Internet companies’ First Amendment rights to establish and enforce editorial policy. 2 The truth about disparate impact from platforms’ content takedown operations is hotly debated. People across the political spectrum believe they are victims of biased takedowns. Without better transparency, we can’t know whose anecdotal accounts hold water, or what factual claims should be the basis for policy-making. 3 If this really means that *all* First Amendment-permitted speech must be given equal footing on major platforms, this is a radical proposition. It would change the Internet as we know it, and undermine calls to remove widely reviled material like the Christchurch massacre video. 4 This is a major leap. Section 230 has a “good faith” limitation on (c)(2) immunity (the immunity for “wrongful takedown” claims) but not (c)(1) immunity (the immunity for failing to take down unlawful content). The (c)(2) immunity is relatively inconsequential, since platforms keep winning those cases on other grounds -- it’s not clear they even need 230(c)(2) for this. The (c)(1) immunity, however, is hugely consequential, and makes intermediary business models feasible. Several academics and politicians have advanced the “good faith is a (c)(1) requirement” argument in recent years, but to my knowledge no court has accepted it. As a matter of statutory interpretation, I find it hard to justify. 5 To the extent this is all just about the (c)(2) immunity, it’s not too wild to say these could be aspects of the “good faith” inquiry. Why NTIA and the FCC (rather than courts) should be involved in this question is another matter. And smart Communications law experts on Twitter are suggesting the FCC simply lacks authority here. (I suspect they are right, especially Harold Feld, but I’m not expert enough to call this one.) 6 (1) Does this effectively lead only to a report, or to actual changes in the advertising spending of federal agencies? Despite the section title, there is no mandate here, but agencies might change their practices anyway. (2) If the latter, is there a constitutional problem with conditioning federal spending on the ad venue’s editorial policy? There must be precedent on (2). 7 Packingham is about the government restricting access to social media -- which can violate the First Amendment. It is not about private companies restricting such access. 8 PruneYard is not about the First Amendment or federal policy. It is about whether the Supreme Court will prevent claims under the California Constitution 9 This could be considered posturing, since it only mandates that the FTC “shall consider” such interpretation of the law. I have a lot of questions about it. But I’ve heard honest participants in the debate suggest this might be permissible, so I’ll leave it as yellow for now. 10 Can the executive order the FTC to make a report? I assume yes. (Update: one expert told me he thinks the answer is no.) Can it require that the report reflect the statutorily and constitutionally suspect positioning in 4(a)? Maybe, but it is hard to see that as anything but political theater. 11 Convening a working group: presumably within the federal AG’s authority. Doing so to circumvent Congressionally-created limits on federal authority: pretty sketchy. 12 This is a really broad definition. To the extent any of this reaches smaller platforms (your cousin’s knitting blog, a local political organizer’s site, the NYT’s comments section) or infrastructure providers (Amazon Web Services, DNS providers, Cloudflare) there are a lot of big questions to ask, including questions about competition and net neutrality.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JnK80wk4Smcu3lt4TCwajQNTk0_v1sNR-FGhnoMZyWM/preview?pru=AAABcoCTPQg*GyI9Eo8oty3R8CsMxJ9jCQ#

Trump executive order against social media giants denounced as unlawful ploy to ‘eviscerate public oversight of his lies
May 28, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“Undoubtedly the first step down an increasingly dark path of Trump using the power of his office to intimidate media companies, journalists, activists, and anyone else who criticizes him into silence.”

Advocacy groups and legal experts say an executive order President Donald Trump is expected to sign Thursday—a document the White House claims is an effort to curtail the power of social media—is nothing more than an unconstitutional attempt by the president to “bully” into submission platforms that fact-check or criticize him.

“Trump’s threat to use the executive branch’s power to punish internet companies for Twitter’s mild fact check of his statements is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Constitution and our First Amendment were written to prevent.”
—Gaurav Laroia, Free Press

The New York Times reported late Wednesday that a draft of the executive order “would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples.” The changes, if upheld in court, could expose social media companies to more lawsuits.

“Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online companies have broad immunity from liability for content created by their users,” the Times reported. “But the draft of the executive order, which refers to what it calls ‘selective censoring,’ would allow the Commerce Department to try to refocus how broadly Section 230 is applied, and to let the Federal Trade Commission bulk up a tool for reporting online bias.”

David Kaye, United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, called Trump’s order “a ploy for him to dominate and eviscerate public oversight of his lies.”

Craig Aaron, president and co-CEO of advocacy group Free Press, echoed Kaye:
This order is about covering up lies and playing the refs so Trump can peddle dangerous disinformation. It’s not a legitimate debate over internet policy.
— Craig Aaron (@notaaroncraig) May 28, 2020

The executive order comes days after Twitter on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of adding a fact-check label to two tweets in which Trump erroneously attacked mail-in voting. “We believe those Tweets could confuse voters about what they need to do to receive a ballot and participate in the election process,” Twitter said in an explanation of its decision.

In response, Trump baselessly claimed Wednesday that social media platforms “totally silence conservatives’ voices” and threatened to “strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

“This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!” Trump tweeted Thursday, apparently referring to his executive order

“There are important reasons to restructure the law to make the web more open and free, but this executive order is a distraction.”
—Sarah Miller, American Economic Liberties Project

Gaurav Laroia, senior policy counsel at advocacy group Free Press, condemned the order as “a naked attempt by the president to bully into silence Twitter, other social-media sites and anyone who attempts to correct or criticize Trump.”

“Trump’s threat to use the executive branch’s power to punish internet companies for Twitter’s mild fact check of his statements is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Constitution and our First Amendment were written to prevent,” Laroia said in a statement. “It’s undoubtedly the first step down an increasingly dark path of Trump using the power of his office to intimidate media companies, journalists, activists and anyone else who criticizes him into silence.”

Laroia said that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was “written to protect free speech on the open internet.”

“Changing Section 230 is Congress’ prerogative, not the president’s by fiat,” said Laroia. “His poorly written executive order is an embarrassment and would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.”

Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, tweeted that “whatever else this executive order may be, it is not a good faith effort to protect free speech online.”

Whatever else this Executive Order may be, it is not a good faith effort to protect free speech online. https://t.co/fZYKAVE0fL pic.twitter.com/DsEyCxbI5r
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 28, 2020

Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement that while there are important discussions to be had about the outsize power of social media companies and the implications for free expression, Trump’s executive order “is a silly distraction from a serious debate.”

“There are important reasons to restructure the law to make the web more open and free,” said Miller, “but this executive order is a distraction and we should all have learned to ignore distractions like this from Trump by now.

Trump’s new anti-Twitter order could blow up in conservatives’ faces: Top right-wing media personality

May 28, 2020 By Brad Reed


President Donald Trump’s new executive order that’s aimed at opening social media companies up to more lawsuits could seriously backfire on conservative critics of the platforms, writes one top right-wing media personality.

In analyzing the reported contents of Trump’s new order, conservative Ben Shapiro warns that stripping websites’ immunity for the content posted on their pages by third parties could seriously damage conservative media in the future.

“Here’s the inevitable effect of destroying [Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act]: all comments sections will be taken down,” writes Shapiro. “No website has the resources to actively edit all comments in order to shield themselves from liability, and no website is willing to leave comments entirely standards-free.”



Shapiro also questioned why conservatives believe that giving the government broader regulatory powers over websites wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

“The invitation to redefine ‘unfair business practices’ to include comment-policing-based lawsuits will likely not end well for conservatives,” he argues. “I see the appeal, but I’m wondering just why conservatives are suddenly so unconcerned about political bias among regulators.”

The invitation to redefine "unfair business practices" to include comment-policing-based lawsuits will likely not end well for conservatives. I see the appeal, but I'm wondering just why conservatives are suddenly so unconcerned about political bias among regulators.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 28, 2020

Bill Barr and the White House plan to collect information on social media users when Trump signs Executive Order: reports

May 28, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement


A draft of President Donald Trump’s social media executive order shows it would create disturbing structures that could allow the President of the United States to personally target social media companies he feels are taking action against his supporters, enable his supporters to report that action directly to the White House, and empower the Attorney General of the United States to collect publicly available “watch-lists” of social media users that monitor not only their online activities but their offline activities as well.

The draft is not final, but both the speed with which it will be signed and reports show it likely has not gone through interagency review, as CNN’s Brian Fung, who calls it “hastily conceived,” notes.

NEW: The White House did not consult the FCC on a forthcoming executive order pertaining to social media companies, according to a person briefed on the matter.
This suggests the draft order has not gone through the normal interagency review process.
— Brian Fung (@b_fung) May 27, 2020

Reuters has confirmed a draft of the executive order, which President Trump has promised he will sign today. They report it “requires the Attorney General to establish a working group including state attorneys general that will examine the enforcement of state laws that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair and deceptive acts.”

The order directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to turn back on the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool, which the Trump administration created in 2019. It is currently dormant. The tool would be used to collect complaints of what social media users feel is online censorship by tech companies. Those complaints would be submitted by the White House to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

The White House Office of Digital Strategy was not designed for that purpose. It was created for the sole purpose of crafting and promoting the President’s agenda online, not for acting as a conduit to enable spying. The Office of Digital Strategy is headed by a former Heritage Foundation employee.

Reuters also reports Barr is to create “working group” that “will also monitor or create watch-lists of users based on their interactions with content or other users.” That reporting appears to be inaccurate, based on NCRM’s reading, and reporting by other outlets.

NBC News technology correspondent Jacob Ward reports the draft “directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to collect publicly available information regarding ‘watch-lists’ of users based on their interaction with content or users’ and ‘monitoring users based on their activity off the platform.'”

An ABC News report appears to confirm that reading.

But Barr would be directed to create the group, which would include hand-picked state attorneys general.

The mere existence of any such lists, whether or not they are created by Barr or identified by the DOJ, can easily be politicized.

Stanford Cyber Policy Center’s Platform Regulation Director says this is a copy of the draft. She has annotated it as well:

To aid in this endeavor, here is my color coded and annotated copy of the Executive Order in CDA 230 and platforms. https://t.co/H3zN22X4me https://t.co/1CosSHTpqd
— Daphne


Trump to target social media with executive order

AFP/File / Olivier DOULIERY

US President Donald Trump said Republicans feel the social media networks are trying to silence conservative voices

US President Donald Trump was set Thursday to target social media giants like Twitter, which he accuses of bias against him, with an executive order opening them to new regulation.

"This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!" Trump said on Twitter.

The wording of the executive order remained under wraps. A White House spokeswoman on Wednesday said only that it would be "pertaining to social media."

But Trump is on the warpath against Twitter after the platform for the first time labelled two of his tweets, on the increasingly contentious topic of mail-in voting, with fact-check notices.

Although he is the dominant US political presence on Twitter and Facebook, a fight with social media also plays into Trump's narrative ahead of his difficult November reelection battle that liberal forces are trying to censor Republicans.

Leaked versions of the executive order in US media suggest that Trump will seek to remove liability protections that the social media giants enjoy over content they publish, thereby opening them to legal action and more government oversight.

One consequence of this could be to punish the companies over their decisions on what to allow and what to restrict on their platforms.

A draft of the order reported by CNN accuses platforms of not showing the "good faith" required under their current self-regulating status.

It attacks online platforms for damaging free expression by being able to "hand-pick the speech that Americans may access."

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden accused Trump of "bullying" social media companies into airing his "misinformation campaigns" and playing "host to his lies."

In any case, resetting the boundaries of how the mammoth companies operate would likely hit immediate legal and political roadblocks.

The constitution "clearly prohibits the president from taking any action to stop Twitter from pointing out his blatant lies about voting by mail," Kate Ruane, at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.

- Fact check fury -

A wider debate has long been underway on the power that social media companies wield and what responsibility they bear for posts that are misleading or hurtful.

Internet services like Twitter and Facebook have been struggling to root out misinformation, while at the same time keeping their platforms open to users.

The massive amount of unverified content in circulation has prompted a rise in fact-checking operations, including a vast Facebook effort in which AFP plays a role.

After long resisting calls to censure Trump over his frequently unfactual posts, Twitter on Tuesday flagged the president for the first time for making false claims.

Trump had tweeted -- without any evidence -- that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a "Rigged Election" this November.

Twitter's slap on the wrist was enough to drive Trump into a tirade -- on Twitter -- in which he claimed that the political right in the United States was being shut out.

Thursday's order, according to unnamed White House officials quoted by The New York Times, will make it easier for federal regulators to argue that the companies are "suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts."

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg waded into the row, telling Fox News that his social network -- still the biggest in the world -- steers clear of fact-checking political speech.

"I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey fired back on Wednesday night, saying that his platform's effort to point out misinformation did not make it an "arbiter of truth."

"Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves," he tweeted.

He doubled down on the new policy, writing: "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me.... We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally."