【リレー時評】「戦死手当」まで検討〓 経済的徴兵だ=中村 梧郎(JCJ代表委員)<br />

2 weeks 3 days ago
 北富士演習場で、手榴弾訓練中の陸自隊員が5月末に被弾死した。岐阜の日野射撃場では昨年、3人を殺傷する兵が出た。演習は〝戦争ごっこ〟ではない、敵を殺す能力を新兵に叩き込む場であり、危険と紙一重である。自衛隊のポスターはカッコ良さを演出し、若者らのあこがれを煽る。でも戦場は甘くはない。敵と遭遇したら殺すか殺されるかの世界である。 銃弾も爆弾も大量殺害の手段である。だから軍はそれを扱う殺人のプロを育てる。戦艦も戦車も殺人装置。その最上位にある戦闘攻撃機の輸出を岸田内閣は決めた。明..
JCJ

34 Years Supporting the Wild and Weird World Online

2 weeks 3 days ago

Oh the stories I could tell you about EFF's adventures anchoring the digital rights movement. Clandestine whistleblowers. Secret rooms. Encryption cracking. Airships over mass spying facilities. Even appearances from a badger, a purple dinosaur, and an adorable toddler dancing to Prince. EFF emerged as a proud friend to creators and users alike in this wild and weird world online—and we’re still at it.

Thank you for supporting EFF in our mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world.

Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation commemorates its 34th anniversary of battling for your digital freedom. It’s important to glean wisdom from where we have been, but at EFF we're also strong believers that this storied past helps us build a positive future. Central to our work is supporting the unbounded creativity on the internet and the people who are, even today, imagining what a better world looks like.

That’s why EFF’s lawyers, activists, policy analysts, and technologists have been on your side since 1990. I’ve seen magical things happen when you—not the companies or governments around you—can determine how you engage with technology. When those stars align, social movements can thrive, communities can flourish, and the internet’s creativity blossoms.

The web plays a crucial role in lifting up the causes you believe in, whatever they may be. These transformative moments are only possible when there is ample space for your privacy, your creativity, and your ability to express yourself freely. No matter where threats may arise, know that EFF is by your side armed with unparalleled expertise and the will to defend the public interest.

I am deeply thankful for people like you who support internet freedom and who value EFF’s role in the movement. It’s a team effort.

One More Day for Summer Treats

Leading up to EFF’s anniversary today, we’ve been having some fun with campfire tales from The Encryptids. We reimagined folktales about cryptids, like Bigfoot and the jackalope, from the perspective of creatures who just want what we all want: a privacy-protective, creative web that lifts users up with technology that respects critical rights and freedoms!

As EFF’s 34th birthday gift to you, I invite you to join EFF for just $20 today and you’ll get two limited-time gifts featuring The Encryptids. On top of that, Craig Newmark Philanthropies will match up to $30,000 for your first year as a monthly or annual Sustaining Donor! Many thanks to Craig—founder of Craigslist and a persistent supporter of digital freedom—for making this possible.

Join EFF

For the Future of Privacy, Security, & Free Expression

We at EFF take our anniversary as an opportunity to applaud our partners, celebrate supporters like you, and appreciate our many successes for privacy and free expression. But we never lose sight of the critical job ahead. Thank you for supporting EFF in our mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world.

Cindy Cohn

To Sixth Circuit: Government Officials Should Not Have Free Rein to Block Critics on Their Social Media Accounts When Used For Governmental Purposes

2 weeks 3 days ago

Legal intern Danya Hajjaji was the lead author of this post.

The Sixth Circuit must carefully apply a new “state action” test from the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that public officials who use social media to speak for the government do not have free rein to infringe critics’ First Amendment rights, EFF and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said in an amicus brief.

The Sixth Circuit is set to re-decide Lindke v. Freed, a case that was recently remanded from the Supreme Court. The lawsuit arose after Port Huron, Michigan resident Kevin Lindke left critical comments on City Manager James Freed's Facebook page. Freed retaliated by blocking Lindke from being able to view, much less continue to leave critical comments on, Freed’s public profile. The dispute turned on the nature of Freed’s Facebook account, where updates on his government engagements were interwoven with personal posts.

Public officials who use social media as an extension of their office engage in “state action,” which refers to acting on the government’s behalf. They are bound by the First Amendment and generally cannot engage in censorship, especially viewpoint discrimination, by deleting comments or blocking citizens who criticize them. While social media platforms are private corporate entities, government officials who operate interactive online forums to engage in public discussions and share information are bound by the First Amendment.

The Sixth Circuit initially ruled in Freed’s favor, holding that no state action exists due to the prevalence of personal posts on his Facebook page and the lack of government resources, such as staff members or taxpayer dollars, used to operate it.  

The case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where EFF and the Knight Institute filed a brief urging the Court to establish a functional test that finds state action when a government official uses a social media account in furtherance of their public duties, even if the account is also sometimes used for personal purposes.

The U.S. Supreme Court crafted a new two-pronged state action test: a government official’s social media activity is state action if 1) the official “possessed actual authority to speak” on the government’s behalf and 2) “purported to exercise that authority” when speaking on social media. As we wrote when the decision came out, this state action test does not go far enough in protecting internet users who intereact with public officials online. Nevertheless, the Court has finally provided further guidance on this issue as a result.

Now that the case is back in the Sixth Circuit, EFF and the Knight Institute filed a second brief endorsing a broad construction of the Supreme Court’s state action test.

The brief argues that the test’s “authority” prong requires no more than a showing, either through written law or unwritten custom, that the official had the authority to speak on behalf of the government generally, irrespective of the medium of communication—whether an in-person press conference or social media. It need not be the authority to post on social media in particular.

For high-ranking elected officials (such as presidents, governors, mayors, and legislators) courts should not have a problem finding that they have clear and broad authority to speak on government policies and activities. The same is true for heads of government agencies who are also generally empowered to speak on matters broadly relevant to those agencies. For lower-ranking officials, courts should consider the areas of their expertise and whether their social media posts in question were related to subjects within, as the Supreme Court said, their “bailiwick.”

The brief also argues that the test’s “exercise” prong requires courts to engage in, in the words of the Supreme Court, a “fact-specific undertaking” to determine whether the official was speaking on social media in furtherance of their government duties.

This element is easily met where the social media account is owned, created, or operated by the office or agency itself, rather than the official—for example, the Federal Trade Commission’s @FTC account on X (formerly Twitter).

But when an account is owned by the person and is sometimes used for non-governmental purposes, courts must look to the content of the posts. These include those posts from which the plaintiff’s comments were deleted, or any posts the plaintiff would have wished to see or comment on had the official not blocked them entirely. Former President Donald Trump is a salient example, having routinely used his legacy @realDonaldTrump X account, rather than the government-created and operated account @POTUS, to speak in furtherance of his official duties while president.

However, it is often not easy to differentiate between personal and official speech by looking solely at the posts themselves. For example, a social media post could be either private speech reflecting personal political passions, or it could be speech in furtherance of an official’s duties, or both. If this is the case, courts must consider additional factors when assessing posts made to a mixed-use account. These factors can be an account’s appearance, such as whether government logos were used; whether government resources such as staff or taxpayer funds were used to operate the social media account; and the presence of any clear disclaimers as to the purpose of the account.

EFF and the Knight Institute also encouraged the Sixth Circuit to consider the crucial role social media plays in facilitating public participation in the political process and accountability of government officials and institutions. If the Supreme Court’s test is construed too narrowly, public officials will further circumvent their constitutional obligations by blocking critics or removing any trace of disagreement from any social media accounts that are used to support and perform their official duties.

Social media has given rise to active democratic engagement, while government officials at every level have leveraged this to reach their communities, discuss policy issues, and make important government announcements. Excessively restricting any member of the public’s viewpoints threatens public discourse in spaces government officials have themselves opened as public political forums.

Sophia Cope