New Survey Reveals Most Americans Value the First Amendment But are Divided on Key Issues
A new survey released by the Freedom Forum entitled, “The First Amendment: Where America Stands,” reveals that while 94% of Americans value the First Amendment as vital, they are nonetheless divided on certain key issues. Many Americans appear reluctant to engage in speech that may be seen as controversial. According to the survey of 3,000 Americans in July and August 2020, more than four in 10 people say that, at least once, they haven’t expressed an opinion out of fear of being punished.
Buzzfeed Reporter Wins Appeal to Unseal Judicial Records Authorizing Government Surveillance
"The records at issue here are not nailed into a nondescript crate, stored deep in a sprawling, uncataloged warehouse. Production may be time-consuming, but time-consuming is not the same thing as impossible,” the D.C. appeals court wrote.
2020 World Press Freedom Index Warns of the Impact of Coronavirus on Free Expression
“The public health crisis provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious ‘shock doctrine’ – to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
The suit, filed on behalf of two documentary film organizations, argues that the registration requirement violates the First Amendment, is too broad in scope, and has not been proven to be necessary to national security interests.
Department of Justice Sues Edward Snowden for Proceeds of New Memoir
According to the lawsuit, the DoJ is entitled to all monetary proceeds derived from the publication of his book because of contractual agreements Snowden signed while working as a government contractor.
Gene Policinski Commentary: A Growing List: 2019 Threats To First Amendment Freedoms
The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Gene Policinski, originally published this commentary on January 11, 2019, on the Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. First […]
First Amendment Coalition Sues DOJ Over Seizure Of Reporter’s Records
The First Amendment Coalition filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court in San Francisco alleging that the DOJ violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to provide the documents related to the secret collection of a journalist's phone and email records.
Privacy and Press Freedom Argued in Carpenter v. United States
Across the ideological spectrum, Supreme Court Justices appeared to find common ground in that “mass searches of our digital effects would be as invasive and unreasonable as the hated general […]