Mediaboss Marketing

Members of the House of Keys can now be absent from prayers at the beginning of sittings if they dont wish to take part.

The change came last week when members voted through new recommendations to Daphne Caines motion on chaplaincy and prayers.

Following a debate in Keys in February on whether members should have to pray or not, Mrs Caine moved a report containing five recommendations on behalf of the House of Keys Management and Members Standards Committee that responded to the debate.

These recommendations were passed but with some concern.

Mrs Caine said in the sitting: Those proposals to modernise proceedings in this House by removing prayers were a step too far for some.

Previously, no nominations for chaplain were made, but nominations subsequently were received. The first recommendation sought approval to the appointment of the Reverend Irene Cowell for a term ending six months beyond the next general election in 2027.

The next recommendation enabled the length of appointment to be determined by the committee in future as appropriate to the circumstances of the chaplains appointment, and the third recommendation removed consideration of an honorarium, which has not been paid to the House of Keys chaplain for some years.

The fourth amendment would let the Speaker lead prayers in the chaplains absence and have the power to delegate to another member, which means an atheist could potentially be asked to lead prayers.

In response to members responding that absence from prayers should be permitted, recommendation five clarified that the service shall not be interpreted as including prayers.

Douglas East MHK Joney Faragher said she believed the outcome was a great shame and a missed opportunity to modernise the House.

Tradition is no excuse, she said. Traditions adapt with society. This, as a solution, is exclusionary and divisive.

MHK for Ramsey Lawrie Hooper agreed and added: I am quite nervous about the suggestions being made here.

I am quite happy to support them as they are, because in principle they make sense, but I think the problem is going to be in the implementation.

Mrs Caine said: We have tried to find a compromise to support the majority and to be as inclusive as possible. I would support a fundamental rewrite of Standing Orders, and I think that is something that would be on the cards.

View original post here:
No longer have to take part in prayers | iomtoday.co.im - Isle of Man Today

Do Americans have a right to privacy? Should the government allow individuals to use their own bodies as they wish? While there is no such right granted by the Constitution, it has been traditionally assumed that such a right exists, even if only implicitly. But the upcoming Supreme Court ruling, in the draft released byPoliticoin aleaked opinionby Justice Samuel Alito, would erase the right of privacy. According to Alito himself, if such a right to a private life does indeed exist, it includes the right to consume drugs.

These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define ones concepts of existence prove too much, Justice Alito wrote in the document that aims to kill abortion and privacy rights in the U.S. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.

Perhaps by accident, Justice Alito madean interestingpoint. If a right to privacy exists, it stands to reason to assume it includes the right to consume marijuana. Other drugs, too, but this column concerns itself with marijuana, which is by far the favorite illicit drug of Americans and, despite the fact it is non-addictive and entirely harmless, accounts for more arrests every year thanall violent crime.

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights include a right to privacy. The assumption that such a right exists relies on two elements: Such a right is assumed to be derived from other rights which are explicitly granted in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled in favor of the existence of such a right.

The 14th Amendment guarantees that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The First Amendment gives a right to free assembly, and the Fourth Amendment protects individuals and their property from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Adding these pieces together, some have concluded that a right to privacy ought to exist. Especially since the Ninth Amendment explicitly says that there are rights not mentioned in the document but that exist nonetheless: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

But in truth, the real nature of the American right to privacy emanated from the Supreme Court itself, as it ruled on cases that implied its existence. In 1965, theGriswold v. Connecticutruling made federally legal the use of contraceptives, and it first established that there is a right to privacy in regard to sexual practicesand only sexual practices. This ruling was the basis ofRoe v. Wade(1973), which granted the right to end pregnancies, but alsoLawrence v. Texas(2003), which ended anti-sodomy laws and thus decriminalized homosexuality, as well asObergefell v. Hodges(2015), which gave same-sex couples the right to get married.

The right to use contraceptives, the right for gay people to be married or even the right to exist as a gay person; all of those are unenumerated rights, like the right to privacy, and they all only exist insofar as a right to privacy is assumed to exist. Indeed, Justice Alito mentions all of these cases by name in his leaked opinion, indicating that they all exist on shaky foundations and could, like the right to abortion, be overturned by a simple ruling of the Supreme Court.

Overturning precedent, in itself, is a very slippery slope when it causes the loss of well-established human rights. Once this dam breaks, the damage cannot be undone, as it will prove that whoever owns partisan Supreme Court Justices can do away with any number of unenumerated rights regardless of precedent. A staggering number of rights that Americans enjoy are not spelled out in the Constitution but are assumed to exist under the provisions of the Ninth Amendment.

What matters is that the Supreme Court consistently found that a right to privacy exists, and it protects the private lives of Americans from government interference. That is to say, the court ruled that way consistently until it was packed by three Trump appointees, who have an incontrovertible majority alongside thetwoBush43appointees. No matter what the current partisan court decides, in the words of Justice William Douglas (a Roosevelt appointee) in theGriswold v. Connecticutruling about the government violating the privacy of American bedrooms, the very idea is repulsive.

What is liberty? Liberty as in no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, the very vague right that is granted to Americans by the 14th Amendment. Its never explained, and therefore left to interpretation. It has often been understood as a right to bodily autonomy, the freedom to use your body in any way you wish. This is the unenumerated right that every cannabis activist believes should grant them the right to consume marijuana.

There is no explicit right to bodily autonomy in the United States. Most Americans might assume they do have the right to govern their own bodies, but in truth, only unenumerated rights protect the average person from being forced by the government to utilize their bodies without the individuals consent.

What comes closest to a ruling on bodily autonomy is the 1891Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsfordcase, which granted the right for a plaintiff to refuse a medical examination ahead of a trial. The ruling itself is narrow, but the Justices opinion includes the claim that no right is held more sacred or is more carefully guarded by the common law than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law. This is not in accordance with future rulings, but it provides a strong argument to claim the existence of a right to bodily autonomy that is fundamental despite going unmentioned in the founding documents of the United States. TheBotsfordruling was used as a basis forRoe v. Wade, and that implicit right has been recognized time and time again by the court since.

Supreme Court-backed unenumerated rights tend to be related to sex, procreation and healthcare. The Court has had a tendency to avoid having to speak on cases where they might need to rule that criminalizing drug use is unconstitutional. As such, the right to privacy as codified by the Supreme Court explicitly exists only within the boundaries of sexual and reproductive acts. Therefore, it could be argued this right does not automatically extend to drug use because the court simply didn't talk about it.

One notable drug-related right emanating from the Supreme Court is the 1962Robinson v. Californiaruling, which established that it is legal for an individual to be a drug addict, but it does not protect anyone for the act of possessing drugs if that act is criminalizedwhich it is, at the federal level, under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

So, there is not much help to be found regarding drug usage in precedents. But one more Supreme Court ruling comments on the nature of the unenumerated right to privacy as applied to drug use: the 2022 opinion by Justice Samuel Alito overturningRoe v. Wade.

These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define ones concepts of existence prove too much. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.

The phrase concepts of existence refers toCasey v. Planned Parenthood, a Supreme Court ruling that upheldRoe v. Wadein 1992 and that will also be overturned by the upcoming ruling. InCasey, the court had found that the government should not be empowered to make intimate choices for American citizens: At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, it reads. Justice Alito strongly rebuked this belief, saying instead, While individuals are certainly free to think and to say what they wish about existence, [...], they are not always free to act in accordance with those thoughts. An odd liberty, one that allows thoughts and words but forbids acts.

The phrase a broader right to autonomy refers to the concept of bodily autonomy that has been found by the Supreme Court to exist implicitly. And at a high level of generality is a convoluted way for Alito to say if we take this constitutional right to its logical conclusion.

So, seemingly without meaning to, Justice Alito has brought up the best defense of constitutionally protected drug use from a Supreme Court ruling yet. He doesnt understand what he said, because his point is that a right to autonomy does not exist, but that if it did exist it would include drug consumption. As evidenced by all the previous Supreme Court rulings, Alito is only wrong on one point: The right to bodily autonomy does exist.

Alito is not alone in thinking that bodily autonomy necessarily includes drug usage, although his stance that bodily autonomy does not exist is more unique. According to ananalysisby Tim Weber, who represented the State of Indiana in the medical field asDeputy Attorney General, the case allowing the consumption of alcohol and tobacco under the unenumerated right to privacy directly applies to marijuana as well.

Marijuanas history in the United States, and in human history in a broader sense, parallels the history of tobacco and alcohol. For instance, both tobacco and hemp were cash crops in the early United States, and both alcohol and marijuana have been the object of a government prohibition that has given criminal entities revenue through the black-market sale of the substances during the prohibition. These similarities suggest that the law should treat alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana similarly, he wrote. Furthermore, as alcohol and tobaccowhich are proven to be generally more harmful to health and more addictive than marijuana when consumedare legal for individuals to choose to consume, it is reasonable to think that a bodily autonomy right would protect marijuana consumption in the same way. He concludes that, In all likelihood, the current federal prohibition of marijuana would fail both requirements for constitutionality under a strict scrutiny analysis.

One final point in Alitos opinion reinforces the pro-marijuana message of it: He claims that only unenumerated rights deeply rooted in the nation's history in tradition are real, and more modern interpretations are not constitutionally protected. It is a bogus argument in more ways than one, but it becomes particularly ridiculous as it applies to marijuana. The criminalization of marijuana is barely older than 50 years. It is less than three years older thanRoe v. Wade. IfRoeis too young to be rooted in history, so is the criminalization of marijuana.

On the other hand, it is easy to make a case for the fact that marijuana itself is deeply rooted in American history and traditions. Cannabis was a major crop of the early United States, and it was legal tender for a portion of history. Cannabis was perfectly acceptable, even as a psychoactive drug, up until a wave of Mexican immigration in the 1900s led to its criminalization by association with Mexicans.Hear Harry Anslinger, architect of marijuana prohibition, educate the great American public on the reasons why they should support the criminalization of cannabis:

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.

Given that marijuana is deeply rooted in history but its prohibition is not, and given that the criminalization of marijuana goes against the well-established right to bodily autonomy according to Justice Alito himself, one can only conclude that, if a fair Supreme Court examined it, the right to consume drugs would have to be granted. All that we are missing now is a fair Supreme Court.

Read more:
While Overturning Abortion Rights, the Supreme Court Accidentally Recognizes a Right to Use Drugs - Shepherd Express

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) A Connecticut man should not have been arrested years after a non-fatal shooting based on a warrant that only included a general description of the suspect and partial DNA evidence linked to several unknown people, the state's Supreme Court ruled Friday in dismissing the case.

The case called into question so-called John Doe warrants increasingly being used by police to solve cold cases around the country and get around statute-of-limitations issues. Such warrants, which have been ruled valid by many courts, typically include only a DNA profile of an unknown suspect and are used years later to make an arrest after testing links the DNA to a specific person.

The man, Terrance Police, appealed and the Connecticut high court ruled 7-0 that the warrant for his arrest was unconstitutional because the DNA evidence it referenced was not from a single person known to be the suspect, but rather from several people who may or may not have been the perpetrators.

Senior Justice Christine Keller, who authored the decision, said it is believed to be the first such ruling of its kind in the country on John Doe warrants issued based on DNA profiles from multiple unknown people. The decision said Police's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures was violated.

In the present case, the arrest warrant affidavit did not alert the judicial authority to the fact that the DNA profiles did not include the perpetrators unique DNA profile but, rather, were mixed partial profiles generated from the touch DNA of at least four different individuals, three of whom evidently had no involvement in the crimes at issue whatsoever, Keller wrote.

Nor did it apprise the judicial authority of the statistical probability that any person chosen at random from the general population would have those DNA profiles, she wrote.

Police, of Waterbury, was charged in May 2018 with assault and robbery in connection with an October 2012 shooting outside a Norwalk supermarket that injured a woman. His arrest came about seven months after the five-year statute of limitations expired, but was based on the John Doe arrest warrant signed by a judge a year earlier.

A month before his arrest, the mother of his child told authorities that Police confessed to her that he shot the woman. New testing was ordered comparing Police's DNA to samples found at the crime scene, and it linked Police to the shooting, officials said.

Police pleaded no contest to the charges in 2019 on the condition that he could appeal, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

His public defender, Mark Rademacher, said he expects Police to be released from prison within the next week because of the Supreme Court ruling. He called the case a cautionary tale of over-reliance by law enforcement on complex DNA evidence that leads them to not undertake other investigation techniques.

Assistant State's Attorney Timothy Sugrue said prosecutors are reviewing the ruling and will determine whether an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is warranted.

See original here:
Court tosses shooting conviction based on 'John Doe' warrant - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

As I noted back in March, when Project Veritas discovered what was clear from the start that SDNY had relied on material obtained from emails involving James OKeefe and two other Project Veritas associates to get warrants to obtain their phones they tried to claw back not just the emails but also the phones.

[B]efore obtaining warrants to seize James OKeefes phones, DOJ had first obtained emails that provided the evidenceto get the warrants for his phones.

The Government disclosed many of its covert investigative steps in theex partecontext of the Affidavit, including each email search warrant it had obtained pursuant to the SCA in this investigation.

This is preciselywhat SDNY did with Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, and its what Magistrate Judge Sarah Cavewas talking aboutwhen she referred to the considerable detail in the affidavit.

Third, the Court has reviewed the Materials in camera and observes that they contain considerable detail about individuals who may have already provided information to the Governmentvoluntarily or involuntarilysuch that unsealing of the Materials could subject [them] to witness tampering, harassment, or retaliation.

PV revealed that in amotionasking Judge Analisa Torres to claw back this information.

In March, DOJ told PV to wait until they were indicted to complain (heres my thread on that response).

Days later, on March 30, PV tried again, petitioning Judge Torres to force the government to return all their phones and their emails.

Tick tock, tick tock.

On April 11, Judge Torres set a briefing schedule: the government had to file a response by May 6, and PV should file their reply by May 20.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Right on schedule, the government filed its response last night. The response is 28-pages long, much of which is dedicated to explaining to PV how the Fourth Amendment works and asserting that SDNY is quite confident the magistrates rulings findings there was probable cause that these accounts and devices would contain evidence of enumerated crimes will hold up. The discussion includes a particular focus on how SDNY already has precedents approving investigations that first obtain emails covertly and then seize phones overtly, as they did with Rudy Giuliani and (while they dont rely on the precedent) did with Michael Cohen before that.

To the extent that the Movants are attempting to raise arguments with respect to execution of the warrants for email account data, there is no legal basis for such challenges at this stage of an ongoing grand jury investigation. Last year, Judge Oetken denied a similar challenge where the circumstances were materially the same: in the course of a multi-year, covert investigation, the Government obtained electronic data pursuant to judicially-authorized search warrants issued under 18 U.S.C. 2703, the Government had reviewed that electronic data prior to the overt execution of search warrants for electronic devices, and a Special Master was appointed to oversee the review of the contents of the electronic devices (but not the electronic data obtained previously). Specifically, Judge Oetken ruled:

Giuliani and Toensing also seek pre-indictment discovery of the Governments privilege and responsiveness designations in connection with the 2019 warrants [obtained covertly, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2703]. They cite no legal authority for this request, and the Court is aware of none. If there is a criminal proceeding, any defendants will be entitled to discovery under Rule 16. There is no basis for compelling the Government to produce this information now, during an ongoing grand jury investigation.

Finally, the Court sees no legal basis for Toensings request for detailed information about the filter team review process, at least at the pre-charge phase of this matter.

In re Search Warrants Executed on Apr. 28, 2021, 2021 WL 2188150, at *2. The circumstances confronted by Judge Oetken are indistinguishable from those presented here. The Movants offer no authority contrary to Judge Oetkens ruling, and the Government is aware of none. To the extent the Movants may potentially be entitled at some point to the disclosures that they seek, any such entitlement would only be triggered, if at all, by the filing of an indictment charging them in connection with the investigation, and not before.12

12 Or, potentially, by the filing of a civil claim, should one exist, that survives a motion to dismiss and proceeds to discovery.

Just for good measure, though, SDNY makes it clear they had reviewed all the emails before obtaining the overt warrants on OKeefe and his flunkies, which makes it a good bet they relied on the email content to show probable cause to get the phone warrants.

With respect to the subscriber, non-content, and content information for email accounts referenced by the Movants, which were obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena and orders and warrants issued by federal magistrate judges pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (the SCA), 18 U.S.C. 2703, the Governments review of those materials was completed months ago, before the Movants initiated this Part I matter in November 2021.

Ive stated repeatedly this was what happened here, only to have a PV lawyer claim I was wrong.

I was not wrong.

As I said, the bulk of this filing is just a primer in how the Fourth Amendment works, as applied. It is thorough, but it mostly feels like T-crossing.

More specific to the facts at hand, however, SDNY accuses PV of attempting to bypass the Special Master process they themselves demanded and Judge Torres approved last year.

Consisting of equal parts rhetoric, speculation, and inaccurate factual assertions, the motion is little more than a misguided attempt to end-run the Special Master process that this Court put in place and prematurely litigate the merits of the Governments prior investigative steps.

[snip]

With respect to the devices that are subject to the Special Masters review, the Movants attempt to put these arguments before the Court while the same arguments are pending before the Special Master appears to be an improper end-run around the Special Master. As explained above, these very arguments were fully briefed as of April 20, 2022, and are in the process of being decided by the Special Master. The Movants should not be permitted to short-circuit the process that this Court put in place, at their request, and which will adequately safeguard any potentially privileged materials that were contained on the devices.11

11 In the event the Court finds any of these issues material to the resolution of the motion, the Court should defer consideration until after the Special Master has issued a ruling on the same.

Even if Torres is sympathetic to poor James OKeefes plight (and she accorded him better treatment than Rudy Giuliani got in the same court), shes likely to be pissed about this aspect of things, that she went to the trouble of approving a Special Master and splitting the costs to pay for Barbara Jones services, only to have PV demand more.

And heres why that matters: as SDNY noted, Jones isas we speak making final decisions about what SDNY gets.

The Special Masters responsiveness review has largely been completed, with the contents of only one device currently under review. The parties have submitted briefs outlining their positions regarding the law and principles that should be applied to the Movants objections to the release of the items that the Special Master has deemed responsive to the search warrants to the investigative team. 2

2 The Movants submitted their briefs to the Special Master on April 1, 2022, the Government submitted its response on April 13, 2022, and the Movants submitted a reply on April 20, 2022.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Project Veritas was, almost certainly, already preparing their briefing for Jones when they demanded this end-run around the Special Master process. They had, almost certainly, reviewed what was about to be turned over to SDNY and how, having read the affidavits that PV is still trying to get, Jones interpreted the scope of the investigation. So not only does this timing seem to substantiate SDNYs claim theyre trying to back out of their demands for a Special Master, but it makes it likely that by the time they file their own reply two weeks from now tick tock, tick tock Jones will already have submitted her recommendations regarding what materials SDNY gets.

And until then, SDNY explained in their law school primer to PV about how the Fourth Amendment works in practice, SDNY gets to keep all the evidence implicating a criminal investigation until they decide whether or not to charge anyone.

To the contrary, the electronic devices retained by the Government were obtained pursuant to search warrants issued by a Magistrate Judge after a finding of probable cause, and are currently in the final stages of the Special Masters review process. Similarly, the contents of email accounts were also obtained pursuant to search warrants issued by Magistrate Judges after findings of probable cause, and the Governments review of materials obtained pursuant to those warrants was completed months ago. There can be no dispute that the Governments investigation is ongoing, that these materials include evidence relevant to that investigation, and that, if a prosecution results from the investigation, these materials will have evidentiary value.

[snip]

Third, the Governments retention of the items and materials at issue is reasonable because its investigation remains ongoing and the return of the property sought would impair the Governments investigation. The electronic devices at issue either have been determined by the Special Master to contain responsive items, are currently under review by the Special Master, or have not yet been reviewed by the Special Master due to technical impediments. Similarly, the email account content has been reviewed by the Government and has been determined to contain material responsive to the search warrants. See, e.g., In re Search Warrants Executed on Apr. 28, 2021, 2021 WL 2188150, at *2 (denying pre-indictment motion to return to movants the results from earlier search warrants of [movants] iCloud and email accounts because, among other reasons, the review of the [earlier] warrant returns is now largely complete). These items and materials are anticipated to have evidentiary value if a prosecution arises from the Governments ongoing grand jury investigation. In light of the character of these items and materials and the status of the Governments investigation, retention of the items and materials is reasonable at least until the Governments investigation is completed or, in the event a prosecution arises from the investigation, until such time that the criminal case reaches its conclusion.

SDNY is not sayingthata prosecution will arise from the materials seized from PV. But they are saying theyve found evidence that would be relevant if they chose to do so.

And, SDNY repeats again in their primer on how the Fourth Amendment works, its only after SDNY makes that decision that James OKeefe will have standing to challenge these searches.

See the rest here:
Tick Tock: SDNY Tells Project Veritas, Again, To Wait Until James O'Keefe Is Indicted to Complain - emptywheel - Emptywheel

On Wednesday, Congress was treated to the unfamiliar spectacle of highly intelligent people, talking with nuance, about platform regulation. The occasion was a hearing, titled Platform Transparency: Understanding the Impact of Social Media, and it served as a chance for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider the necessity of legislation that would require big tech platforms to make themselves available for study by qualified researchers and members of the public.

One such piece of legislation, the Platform Transparency and Accountability Act, was introduced in December by (an ever-so-slightly) bipartisan group of senators. One of those senators, Chris Coons of Delaware, led the Wednesday hearing; another, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, was present as well. Over a delightfully brisk hour and forty minutes, Coons and his assembled experts explored the necessity of requiring platforms to disclose data and the challenges of requiring them to do so in a constitutional way.

To the first point why is this necessary? the Senate called Brandon Silverman, co-founder of the transparency tool CrowdTangle. (I interviewed him here in March.) CrowdTangle is a tool that allows researchers, journalists and others to view the popularity of links and posts on Facebook in real time, and understand how they are spreading. Researchers studying the effects of social networks on democracy say we would benefit enormously from having similar insight into the spread of content on YouTube, TikTok, and other huge platforms.

Silverman was eloquent in describing how Facebooks experience of acquiring CrowdTangle only to find that it could be used to embarrass the company made other platforms less likely to undertake similar voluntary measures to improve public understanding.

Above all else, the single biggest challenge is that in the industry right now, you can simply get away without doing any transparency at all, said Silverman, who left the company now known as Meta in October. YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, and Snapchat represent some of the largest and most influential platforms in the United States, and they provide almost no functional transparency into their systems. And as a result, they avoid nearly all of the scrutiny and criticism that comes with it.

He continued: That reality has industry-wide implications, and it frequently led to conversations inside Facebook about whether or not it was better to simply do nothing, since you could easily get away with it.

When we do hear about what happens inside a tech company, its often because a Frances Haugen-type employee decides to leak it. The overall effect of that is to paint a highly selective, irregular picture of whats happening inside the biggest platforms, said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who also testified today.

We shouldnt have to wait for whistleblowers to whistle, Persily said. This type of transparency legislation is about empowering outsiders to get a better idea of whats happening inside these firms.

So what would the legislation now under consideration actually do? The Stanford Policy Center had a nice recap of its core features:

*Allows researchers to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation. If the NSF supports a proposal, social-media platforms would be required to furnish the needed data, subject to privacy protections that could include anonymizing it or white rooms in which researchers could review sensitive material.

*Gives the Federal Trade Commission the authority to require regular disclosure of specific information by platforms, such as data about ad targeting.

*Commission could require platforms create basic research tools to study what content succeeds, similar to the basic design of the Meta-owned CrowdTangle.

*Bars social-media platforms from blocking independent research initiatives; both researchers and platforms would be given a legal safe harbor related to privacy concerns.

To date, much of the focus on regulating tech platforms has found members of Congress attempting to regulate speech, at both the individual and corporate level. Persily argued that starting instead with this kind of forced sunlight might be more effective.

Once platforms know theyre being watched, it will change their behavior, he said. They will not be able to do certain things in secret that theyve been able to up till now. He added that platforms would likely change their products in response to heightened scrutiny as well.

OK, fine, but what are the tradeoffs? Daphne Keller, director of the program on Platform regulation at Stanford, testified that Congress should consider carefully what sorts of data it requires platforms to disclose. Among other things, any new requirements could be exploited by law enforcement to get around existing limits.

Nothing about these transparency laws should change Americans protections under the Fourth Amendment or laws like the Stored Communications Act, and I dont think thats anyones intention here, she said. But clear drafting is essential to ensure that government cant effectively bypass Fourth Amendment limits by harnessing the unprecedented surveillance power of private platforms.

There are also First Amendment concerns around these sort of platform regulations, she noted, pointing to the failure in court of two recent state laws designed to force platforms to carry speech that violates their policies.

I want transparency mandates to be constitutional, but there are serious challenges, Keller said. And I hope that you will put really good lawyers on that.

Unfortunately, into every Senate hearing, a little Ted Cruz must fall. The Texas senator was the only participant on Wednesday to exhaust his allotted speaking time without asking a single question of the experts present. Cruz expressed great confusion about why he got relatively few new Twitter followers in the days before Elon Musk said he was going to buy it, but then got many more after the acquisition was announced.

It is obvious someone flipped the switch, the Texas Republican said. The governors they had on that said silence conservatives were flipped off. That is the only rational explanation. (I know the word governors is used somewhat unconventionally here, but I listened to the tape five times and thats what I heard.)

The actual explanation is that Musk has lots of conservative fans, they flocked back to the platform when they heard he was buying it, and from there Twitters recommendation algorithms kicked into gear.

But here even I must sympathize with Cruz, for all the reasons that todays hearing was called in the first place. Absent legislation that requires platforms to explain how they work in greater detail, some people are always going to believe in the dumbest explanations possible. (Especially when those explanations serve a political purpose.) Cruz is what you get in a world with only voluntary transparency on the part of the platforms.

That said, we should still keep our expectations in check there are limits on what platform disclosures can do for our discourse. It seems quite possible that you could explain exactly how Twitter works to Ted Cruz, and he would either fail to comprehend or willfully misunderstand you for political reasons. And even people who seek to understand recommender systems in good faith may fail to understand explanations on a technical level. Transparency isnt a cure-all.

But its a start? And seems much less fraught than lots of other proposed tech regulations, many of which find Congress attempting to regulate speech in ways that seem unlikely to survive First Amendment scrutiny.

Of course, where other countries hold hearings as a prelude to passing legislation, in the United States we typically hold hearings instead of passing legislation. And despite some Republican support for the measure even Cruz said this one sounded fine to him theres no evidence that its gathering any particular momentum.

As usual, though, Europe is much further ahead of us. The Digital Services Act, which regulators reached an agreement on in April, includes provisions that would require big platforms to share data with qualified researchers. The law is expected to go into effect by next year. And so even if Congress dithers after today, transparency is coming to platforms one way or another. Heres hoping it can begin to answer some very important questions.

Originally posted here:
Meta, TikTok, and YouTube may finally have to start sharing data with researchers - The Verge