A sly assault on the freedom of the press in Britain

Some in the House of Lords want to muzzle reporters

It seems like aeons ago now, but at the beginning of this year there was a battle over press freedom in the UK. The government carried out a public consultation over whether or not to implement Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry and Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act – which would have effectively coerced publications into signing up for state-backed regulation. The conclusions were never revealed, but when the Conservative Party won the election (sort of) with a manifesto which pledged to drop Section 40 and Leveson 2, it seemed like the battle had been won.

However, those determined to undermine the free press will not be deterred. And this week a particularly sly attempt was made by peers in the House of Lords to limit the liberty of the press and impose state regulation.

An updated version of the Data Protection Bill is currently passing through parliament. It aims to give individuals more control over their personal data and penalise companies that misuse it – not unreasonable in this internet age we live in. But some peers have hijacked the bill and tabled amendments that would restrict journalists’ ability to investigate wrongdoing.

Historically, there have always been exceptions for journalists when it comes to laws concerning data protection. This basically meant journalists could gather and use personal information, so long as they did so in the public interest, to the end of a worthwhile investigation. The peers’ proposed amendments would undermine this by elevating privacy over public interest, making it easier for individuals to have investigations shut down before the results of them can be published.

Even worse, other amendments to the bill would mean publications would be protected by the public-interest exception only if they were signed up to the state-backed press regulator, Impress. Impress, which is backed by the tabloid-hating Max Mosley, is the only regulator approved by Royal Charter. Most publications adhere to the independent IPSO.

If approved, these amendments would have very serious consequences. As the National Media Association (NMA) said, it is the existing exemptions to data protection which ‘enable investigative journalism and protection of sources’. The NMA says: ‘The amendments would give powerful claimants with something to hide fresh ammunition to pursue legal claims and shut down legitimate public-interest investigation into their activities.

All UK news media operations – broadcast, print or online – would find themselves under incessant legal challenge. This would endanger all reporting of news, features and other editorial material and even the keeping of archives.’

The fact is that journalists cannot do their jobs unless they are free to dig and discover.

SOURCE




12 November, 2017

Congress’s end run around a pillar of online free speech

FREE-SPEECH ADVOCATES—including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology—are afraid that a bill currently making its way through Congress could significantly weaken existing protections for online speech.

In the United States, one of the most critical planks supporting free expression online is a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, often referred to as the “safe harbor” clause. The EFF describes it as “the most important law protecting internet speech.”

Section 230 states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In a nutshell, this clause gives any online service provider immunity from legal liability for the content that its members or users post (unless it involves either criminal activity or intellectual property).

This means that platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Amazon can’t be sued if one of their users publishes something that is libellous or offensive. But it also protects much smaller platforms and online communities from similar kinds of liability, and digital news companies and online publishers from being taken to court for the comments that readers post on articles.

The risk is that if those protections are weakened, publishers will decide it’s not worth it to host any user-generated content at all, which could significantly reduce the amount of reader interaction in the form of crowdsourced and collaborative journalism.

The bill that the EFF and others are so concerned about is called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act or SESTA, which would amend Section 230. The bill was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee this week.

According to its main sponsor, Republican Senator Bob Portman from Ohio, the legislation will make it easier to crack down on sex trafficking, which is facilitated in some cases through online services like Backpage, a provider of adult classified-ad listings that is currently facing a potential grand jury indictment.

Most people would agree that bringing an end to sex trafficking is a noble goal—although there are those who disagree about whether SESTA will be able to do so (some experts believe it could actually expose sex trafficking victims to more harm, and make it more difficult to stop the practice by driving it underground). But in the process of reaching that goal, the proposed law could blast a large hole right through the free-speech protections of Section 230.

SOURCE