RSVP to
@knightcolumbia
's "Regardless of Frontiers: The First Amendment and the Exchange of Ideas Across Borders," a 10/18 symposium exploring the international border as a venue, justification, or pretext for
#censorship
or
#surveillance
.
BREAKING: Second Circuit affirms, President Trump's practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violates the First Amendment, in Knight Institute v. Trump.
“Excluding people from an otherwise public forum such as this by blocking those who express views critical of a public official is, we concluded, unconstitutional," wrote Judge Barrington D. Parker.
It’s troubling that today's indictment of Julian Assange sweeps in activities that are not just lawful but essential to press freedom—activities like cultivating sources, protecting sources’ identities, and communicating with sources securely.
BREAKING: A federal court has dismissed the DNC's lawsuit against WikiLeaks, holding that WikiLeaks's publication of stolen DNC documents is protected by the First Amendment.
Here is the opinion:
As the
#COVID19
spreads, the WH has reportedly restricted what
#CDC
employees can say about it. If you work for the CDC and feel like you’ve been silenced, or if you’re a reporter who can’t get CDC sources to speak candidly about the pandemic, we want to hear from you.🧵👇1/x
BREAKING: White House just asked the full Second Circuit to rehear
@knightcolumbia
v
@realDonaldTrump
, which held that Trump’s blocking critics on Twitter violates First Amendment. The case was correctly decided. The Court should reject the petition.
Last week, a court ruled that Wikileaks founder
#Assange
could be extradited to US to face charges under Espionage Act. Read our statement of concern about the press-freedom implications of this prosecution & hear more from
@JameelJaffer
on
@MSNBC
:
On behalf of 15
@_elfaro_
journalists, we just sued
#NSOGroup
over its Pegasus spyware. It’s the first time journalists are asking a U.S. court to hold the company accountable for the use of its malicious software to surveil and intimidate the press.
Knight Institute Calls for Urgent “Course Correction” on Response to Student Protests at Columbia University. Letter to President Shafik raises concerns about university decisions and policies relating to
#freespeech
on campus. Read it here:
NEW: Knight Institute files amicus brief on behalf of 13 prominent First Amendment scholars explaining that Arizona’s anti–BDS boycott law is unconstitutional.
After defeat in court, the White House has unblocked the plaintiffs in
@knightcolumbia
v.
@realDonaldTrump
— but many others are still blocked. If you’re one of them, we’d like to hear from you at info
@knightcolumbia
.org.
Earlier this week, we joined an
@ACLU
amicus brief arguing that the
gov’t’s imposition of revenue-generating fees on public access
to the PACER system— a digital index to hundreds of
millions of fed court filings—likely violates the First
Amendment.
Breaking:
@knightcolumbia
and just filed a lawsuit on behalf of 9 people who've been blocked from
@KenPaxtonTX
after they criticized him or his policies in their own tweets.
We filed an amicus brief today with
@ACLU
and
@TeamUpturn
in Van Buren v. US, a
#SCOTUS
case that could have broad implications for digital research and journalism on the social media platforms.
Here's the brief:
Knight Institute Comments on Arrests of Pro-Palestinian Student Protesters at Columbia University. Read
@knightcolumbia
full statement from
@JameelJaffer
below & here:
Join us on April 28-29 for "Optimizing for What? Algorithmic Amplification and Society" – an event curated w/
@random_walker
exploring how online amplification works, what can be done to mitigate the harms and take advantage of the benefits. RSVP:
However, we continue to receive reports that individuals beyond those we identified remain blocked from the
@realDonaldTrump
account. If these individuals were blocked on the basis of their viewpoints, it’s incumbent on the White House to unblock them immediately. (3/X)
In case it got lost in the mail, below's a link to the letter
@knightcolumbia
sent yesterday.
@mmasnick
is correct, blocking people from your official Twitter account,
@RepThomasMassie
, because you don't like what they have to say violates the 1st Amend.
We’re pleased to see the White House take steps to comply with the district court’s ruling that the First Amendment prohibits the president from blocking Twitter users simply because they have criticized him. (1/X)
Knight Institute Comments on Supreme Court Decision in Van Buren v. United States: Says decision will help protect public-interest research and journalism, but more is needed
Letter to Columbia University President Shafik.
@knightcolumbia
responds to
@Columbia
's decision to suspend student groups. Read the full letter here:
Launching today, an essay series we'll be publishing over the next few weeks. These thoughtful and ambitious essays were written in connection with our symposium on "The Tech Giants, Monopoly Power, and Public Discourse 1/
BREAKING: Today,
@knightcolumbia
sued the
#CDC
for records relating to policies restricting CDC employees from speaking to members of the press and the public. 1/x
We'll be in federal court today for argument in
@FreedomofPress
v. DOJ, a FOIA lawsuit seeking records concerning the U.S. govt’s surveillance of journalists. 2:30 pm ET. Dial-in information at the link.
"It’s disturbing that the president misunderstands the First Amendment so fundamentally. There is absolutely no First Amendment issue with Twitter adding a label to the president’s tweets,"
@JameelJaffer
.
More at the link.
JUST FILED: Lawsuit against President Trump and his staff for continuing to block critics on the
@realDonaldTrump
Twitter account. Suit filed on behalf of those blocked before he took office or unsure of which tweet prompted their block. More Here:
@realDonaldTrump
We’ll continue to work with the DOJ to ensure the White House restores access to the
@realDonaldTrump
account to all individuals who were blocked on the basis of their viewpoints. We also look forward to defending the district court’s ruling in the appeals court. (FIN)
“There have been a number of cases since 9/11 in which the gov't has used the Espionage Act against … gov't insiders who share information with the press, but it has never before used the Espionage Act against a publisher,”
@JameelJaffer
on
@NBCNewsNow
.
#Assange
#PressFreedom
Knight Institute Comments on Decision to Reject U.S. Request for Extradition of Julian Assange:
Says indictment under the Espionage Act will continue to cast a shadow over investigative journalism.
Statement at the link 👇
Ahead of the expected release of a highly anticipated report from U.S. intelligence on
#Khashoggi
’s death, experts call for accountability and warn of ongoing digital security threat to civil society. More on the blog.
NEW: In our suit on behalf of Brian Davison, an appeals court just held that the First Amendment bars public officials from censoring their critics on social media.
NEW
@knightcolumbia
REPORT:
@JoelSimonSays
documents the targeting of journalists by police at protests & chilling effects on
#PressFreedom
. Based on dozens of interviews, the report explores this complex issue through a historical lens & personal stories.
@ljkbennett
The courts are clear on this:
@realDonaldTrump
's practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violates the First Amendment.
If you've been blocked by the president (or another public official) contact
@knightcolumbia
: info
@knightcolumbia
.org.
NEW "Optimizing for What?" ESSAY: A new experiment from researchers
@Cornell_Tech
and
@UCBerkeley
finds that ranking content based on users’ stated preferences—not the engagement-based algorithm—can reduce polarizing and divisive content on social media.
Built in collaboration with
@BrownInstitute
,
@Columbia
students Samia Menon & Sahil Patel found ingenious ways to work around the limitations of Twitter’s API to reconstruct information cascades of popular tweets. Follow link to experience visualization:
100+ digital researchers (and counting…) have signed a Knight Institute letter calling on Facebook to lift restrictions on public-interest research and journalism on its platform. 1/
Read our latest newsletter on the White House's petition asking the Supreme Court to hear Knight Institute v. Trump. Spoiler alert: More is at stake here than access to the president’s Twitter account.
On Thursday,
@knightcolumbia
will argue in federal court that
@realDonaldTrump
’s blocking of critics on Twitter violates the First Amendment.
Officials who block dissenters are facing legal challenges around the country, including: 1/
The letter is in the mail (so to speak):
U.S. Army and Navy Must Stop Banning Speech About War Crimes from Their Twitch Channels, Knight Institute Says in Demand Letter
Read it at the link.
Jordan Uhl (
@JordanUhl
) was banned from Army and Navy Twitch channels after he posted about war crimes. Here’s
@knightcolumbia
’s demand letter, sent just now, explaining why the ban violates the First Amendment. We’ve asked for a response by August 5.
"The president’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end."
@JameelJaffer
@knightcolumbia
's statement:
The NSA's warrantless surveillance of our internet use raises serious constitutional concerns, but the gov't has shut down challenges to that surveillance by invoking "state secrets."
More from
@AlexanderAbdo
and the
@ACLU
's
@PatrickCToomey
in
@guardian
.
Next up, another appeals court will soon hear argument in our lawsuit challenging
@realDonaldTrump
's blocking of his critics on Twitter.
Read more here:
Last month, we identified to the DOJ 41 Twitter users who were blocked by the president on the basis of their viewpoints, and we’ve received reports that many of these individuals have subsequently been unblocked. (2/X)
Late yesterday,
#Facebook
abruptly shut down the accounts of NYU researchers
@LauraEdelson2
and Damon McCoy, blocking their research into political ads and the spread of misinformation on the platform. Our statement condemning the move at the link:
In purported defense of the First Amend, the White House wants people to report censorship on social media. We suggest submitting this fed court ruling, holding that the President is violating the First Amend by blocking critics from
@realDonaldTrump
.
Responding to decision to lift stay on TX social media law,
@scottwilkens
says, “Texas’s law violates the First Amendment because it compels social media companies to publish speech they don’t want to publish.” More from
@thedextriarchy
in
@verge
.
Here’s the latest brief, filed last night, in
@knightcolumbia
’s and
@ACLU
’s legal challenge to the government’s far-reaching national-security censorship regime known as “prepublication review.”
PORTLAND: If you’ve been to a
#portlandprotest
& seen officers without badges/insignia in the last few weeks, we want to know. Please post photos using the hashtag
#nobadgesportland
(with timestamps & location) or send them to info
@knightcolumbia
.org.
Knight Institute Condemns Effort by Congressional Panel to Intimidate Researchers Studying Online Speech. Read our statements in response from
@JameelJaffer
&
@AlexanderAbdo
:
Rep. Jim Jordan is demanding emails and meetings with leading disinformation researchers, part of a flurry of records requests, subpoenas and lawsuits that academics say have become tools of harassment.
We're thrilled to welcome
@cristianafarias
to
@knightcolumbia
and look forward to working with him on this much-needed investigation into freedom of expression and the U.S. border.
The White House unblocked seven critics from the President's Twitter account after a court issued a landmark ruling in
@knightcolumbia
v.
@realDonaldTrump
. Now we're asking the White House to unblock the rest.
BREAKING:
@knightcolumbia
&
@pressfreedom
ask a federal court to order U.S. intelligence agencies to release docs on whether they fulfilled their “duty to warn” Jamal Khashoggi he was in danger before he was lured to his death in the Saudi consulate. 1/3
In this
@NewYorker
essay, Knight Institute's
@JameelJaffer
discusses the government's alarming and now-routine use of the Espionage Act to target journalists' sources.