Senate to investigate government privacy violations against American journalists and others in Iraq

Senator Jay Rockefeller, (D) West Virgina--Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
Photo by Dennis Cook, AP

Article by Mike Schottenstein

The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating claims that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on private conversations made by journalists, people in the military and aid workers in Iraq, according to a report by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP).

President Bush initially authorized the program to monitor calls from suspected terrorists without warrants, but two people who worked at the NSA's monitoring facility in Georgia say they were ordered to listen to non-suspects, as well, the RCFP report says. Adrienne Kinne was linguist working for the army from 2001-2003. She says she received a Joint Service Achievement Medal from the National Security Agency (NSA) for her work in monitoring the calls. Kinne told Brian Ross of ABC's Nightline that the award came at a time when she was listening in on calls from "members of the military, journalists, and aid workers."

David Murfee Faulk worked at the NSA facility for four years. He told Ross that people in the program would sometimes listen to calls that contained "pillow talk" or "phone sex" from military officers or aid workers for fun. Both Faulk and Kinne told Ross they questioned the legality of what they were doing to their superiors, but were told to continue the monitoring without changes.

Spokesmen for former NSA director, and current CIA Director, Michael Hayden deny that any privacy laws were broken during the program and Faulk says that some good things did come from the monitoring, Nightline reported. The NSA did sometimes find out where some weapons were located and the military was then able to disarm bombs before they went off.

The Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), says his staff is investigating the situation and that, "Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, it is a very serious matter."

Freedom of Speech in Jeopardy for University of Texas Students

AP Photo by Charlie Neibergall

By Christine Tebcherany


At the University of Texas, two roommates seem to be facing a freedom of speech issue, involving Barack Obama posters placed in their window. According to the Associated Press, Connor Kincaid and his roommate and cousin, Blake Kincaidwere told to remove their poster supporting Obama from their dorm room window. The two roommates refused to do so, and as a result school officials banned them from enrolling for spring classes.

President of the University of Texas Bill Powers, had a committee formed to figure out the school’s policies and propose solutions. Powers stated in a written statement that The University of Texas now “expressly allows the display of signs and posters in students' residence hall room windows”.


Conner Kincaid stated that, “This is an important free speech issue”. Kincaid allegedly had seen a supportive ad for John McCain in a different dorm window, which raises the question if the democratic content had anything to do with the uproar.The University declares that the situation was not about the candidates represented in the poster. Jeff Graves the associate vice president for UT legal affairs told the Associated Press that, “UT has had a policy for more than 10 years forbidding the posting of signs in dorm windows in order to control the look of the campus and avoid the appearance that the university is supporting any candidate”.


In response to the situation, the University’s Democrats and Republicans came together to exercise their rights first amendment rights, by motivating students to place posters in their dorm windows as a form of protest.


“It's never been an issue…obviously this is a hot political issue, and it got pushed this time" stated Graves. The University of Texas trusts their policy to be constitutional, however, according to The First Amendment Center, they believe that it is fair to allow posters to be hung up inside individual dorm rooms.

Palin sued for access to Yahoo emails

(Photo by Al Grillo, the Associated Press)


By Abha Gunjal

Andree McLeod, a former Alaska state worker, filed suit against Gov. Sarah Palin on Oct. 2 to force preservation of any government-specific emails Palin had sent from her private accounts. The correspondence revealed a few personal emails exchanged back and forth with Sen. John McCain after her selection as his running mate.

According to the Associated Press, two of Palin’s Yahoo email accounts were hacked last month and subsequently shut down. The emails that were disclosed stated Palin’s administration’s preference of private accounts to conduct state business as an alternative to “.gov” accounts. According to Alaska’s Open Records Act, the emails, since sent from a private account and not a government one, could possibly be released to the public.

“Palin’s decision to conduct state business in such an unprofessional and secretive manner suggests that her promise to have an ethical, open, honest and transparent administration is pure bogus,” said McLeod in an Oct. 4 statement.

McLeod, as well as the Associated Press, had filed an open records request with the state of Alaska to obtain Palin’s email records, as well as her husband’s. Palin’s spokeswoman said on Oct. 4 that Palin could not comment on the pending proceedings.

Red, White and Blog: the Digital Age’s Effect on Your Love of American Liberties

(Allison Martin sits in a coffee shop with a laptop displaying her blog Tuesday June 28, 2005 in downtown Chicago. Blogs' place in democracy was the center of discussion at a recent Yale University debate. by M. Spencer Green, AP Photo)
by Paige Dearing

The Huffington Post reported on the recent student debate on blogging’s effect on democracy at Yale University. The Yale Political Union agreed, 33 to 22, that blogs are good for democracy.

Arguments ranged from discussing the rise of single-issue campaigning to the deconstruction of complex issues. Leah Anthony Libresco spoke on how a well-informed citizenry is necessary for a free state, with a focus on First Amendment rights, and was one of the four speeches Huffington Post posted to their blog.

Libresco reasoned that blogs improve democracy because they “giv[e] ordinary citizens access to the ideas they care most about” and noted that blogs' “real power lies in their ability to provide broad overviews of the issues at stake and quick links for citizen activists," according to the Huffingtonpost.com post.

She recounted a visit to a high school where she asked students to rank the Bill of Rights' amendments in order of importance. She said one group placed the Second Amendment as number one, because they believed that no one cared or listened to what they said.

Blogs empower citizens to share their opinions with friends and politicians, she said. These words or opinions would otherwise be left out of mainstream coverage, but posting them online makes them readily available, and sometimes easily found with the help of search engines.

Read all of Libresco's speech here.

Does this make you cherish your First Amendment rights more because you have an effective and far-reaching medium to communicate your opinons? Or if not cherish them more, at least make free speech/free press rights more relevant to the average American’s life than in the past?

Michigan GOP official sues newspaper for libel

(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

By Sammy Kanter

A newspaper in Michigan, the Michigan Messenger, is being sued for libel by the local GOP for comments the GOP chairmen claims are "fabricated," according to the Editor and Publisher.  Published on September 10, the article makes references to the GOP allegedly having plans to stop citizens from voting in Macomb County, Michigan.  

The article published last month in the Messenger entitled "Lose your house, lose your vote" quoted party chair James Carabelli saying he would "have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses."  The party demanded a retraction, but the Messenger refused, with CEO of the Center for Independent Media David Bennahum(which funds the paper) saying, "We stand by our story.  We stand by our reporter.  We knew that there was the possibility(of the Michigan GOP suing for defamation)."  

According to the Editor and Publisher, Michigan law allows citizens who have foreclosed on their homes two months prior to Election Day the ability to vote in their old precinct.  Sen. Barack Obama's campaign filed a class-action lawsuit a week after publication of this article against state Republicans for "voter caging," a technique the Editor and Publisher describes as an attempt to block voters in Michigan.  

Montana Radio Host Guilty of Slander

(AP Images/Associated Press, David Zalubowski)

By Emma Dovi

John Stokes, a radio host for KGEZ AM radio in Kalispell, Montana has been found guilty of slander, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Davar Garder and his son Todd Gardner took Stokes to court claiming that he spoke falsely about them during his radio talk show. Stokes said during one of his shows that the father and son had lied under oath in previous litigation between Stokes and the Gardners and he also stated that the Gardners had committed bank fraud.

These comments were found to be defamatory and the Gardners were awarded by the Flathead County District Court "$3.8 million in compensatory and punitive damages, an amount that is one of the largest in Montana history, " says the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. This case was the result of another legal dispute that had resulted from fueding between Stokes and the Gardners about land ownership.

Stokes has had issues in the past in his community in Montana. Many local residents are unhappy with his point of view and remarks which have been said to be racist and anti-semitic. Some have even started a website speaking out against Stokes and his radio show: About the Facts: Promoting Democracy, Defending Human Rights. Despite community unpopularity, Stokes claims that this law suit and its results is a scary thing for the media and a direct restriction on freedom of speech.

Bill passed to protect U.S. media from "libel tourism"

by Sandra Plasse

Congressman Steve Cohen is the sponsor of the bill passed by The House of Representatives against foreign libel suits. (AP Photo © 2005 John Russel)

Congress was prompted by an American author, Rachel Ehrenfeld, to propose the bill in order to protect citizens from "libel tourism." If the bill passes through Senate, a foreign libel judgment will only be maintained in the U.S. if it coincides with the same freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The House of Representatives passed the bill last weekend that, in effect,will protect the U.S. media from an overseas court using a U.S.court to enforce any overseas’ judgment, according to The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The bill, H.R. 6146, prohibits the “recognition and enforcement of foreign defamation judgments.” The bill’s sponsor is Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn).

Ehrenfeld wrote a book in 2003 called Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in the U.K. because the book accused him of funding terrorism, according to Publishers Weekly.

Although it wasn’t published in the U.K., citizens purchased copies of the book over the Internet. An English court demanded retractions by Ehrenfeld but when she refused Mahfouz sued her. She decided not to contest the suit in an English court because “under English law, it wasn’t enough that I could prove that I had written what my sources told me, but I would have had to prove the underlying truth of the accusations as well. No one can meet that standard,” she told The New Yorker.

She appealed the case in New York and it eventually went to The New York Court of Appeals. The court said it couldn't rule because the case was out of it's jurisdiction and Mahfouz didn't fall under the “long-arm” clause for New York. In an editorial published by The New York Times, Adam Cohen writes that libel tourism is a threat to robust free speech. "The result is what lawyers call a “chilling effect” — authors and publishers may avoid taking on some subjects, or challenging powerful interests."