Tag Archives | Students

A UNC Student’s Summer Experience at NPR

By on September 13, 2013 in Journalism

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I have always admired NPR’s style of broadcast journalism. Through their use of compelling voice-overs, descriptive writing styles, and natural sound, the organization’s reporters have a way of bringing life to stories that lack pictures. Naturally, as one of UNC’s law and journalism dual-degree students, I jumped at the opportunity to spend my summer working in NPR’s Office of the General Counsel.

At NPR, I received exposure to all aspects of media law. On a typical day, I could do anything from answering fair use questions to investigating international broadcasting issues to assisting with FOIA requests. By working at NPR, my knowledge of First Amendment, intellectual property, and administrative law increased immeasurably.

The staff at the OGC also encouraged me to attend legal events outside NPR. I heard Gary Pruitt, Chairman and CEO of the Associated Press, speak at the National Press Club about the Department of Justice’s decision to subpoena, without notice, phone records from the AP’s reporters. I also interacted with prominent members of the media law community at events held at The Washington Post and other venues around D.C. My days were rarely, if ever, filled with a dull moment.

I had the added benefit of working in NPR’s brand-new building located at 1111 North Capitol Street, NE. From my office desk, I had this amazing view of the Capitol Building.

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Being located at NPR’s new headquarters also enabled me to interact with members of the newsroom and watch broadcasts of Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation.

Through these activities, I left the classroom setting and observed how media law issues impact real journalists.

I would recommend NPR’s internship program to anyone interested in media law. The organization has many intelligent and talented people who are eager to help interns learn. I am honored to have been an intern in the OGC and am proud to have represented Carolina at NPR!

Kevin Delaney is a 2L at the University of North Carolina School of Law and a second-year master’s student at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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A UNC Student’s Summer Experience at the FCC

By on September 8, 2013 in FCC

FCC-LogoAs I mentioned back in March, the Center provides summer grants to UNC law and graduate students who have unpaid or low-paying public interest jobs in the field of media law or media policy. (I hope some of you will apply for a grant next year!)  If you have been reading Natasha Duarte’s posts this summer, you have a sense of the amazing experience she had at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Well, Natasha wasn’t the only UNC student who had a great summer experience. Below you will find a summary of Minisha Patel’s internship at the Federal Communications Commission.  Minisha is a 3L at the UNC School of Law.

The summer of my second year of law school, I worked as an intern for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While at the Commission, I worked in the Wireline Competition Bureau, the Commission’s largest and most important bureau. I worked on the Lifeline program, which is a FCC program created in order to aid low-income individuals by providing them with the opportunity to have discounted phone service. The sole purpose of the Lifeline subsidy is to enable low-income individuals to have the same access to telecommunications as the rest of the population. The Lifeline program’s goal is to connect low-income individuals and aims to enable them to access jobs, health care services, schools, and emergency contacts. The program was created by the Reagan administration but is more popularly known as the Obamaphones.

This summer was a very critical time for the Lifeline program as the telephone carriers and subscribers receiving discounts from the program were defrauding the program. This summer, I worked alongside the FCC attorneys to help create a database and stop the carrier’s that are most liable for frauding the system. In addition, I Engaged in legal research and writing in conjunction with several major rulemakings and adjudicatory proceedings, drafted public notices, small business compliance guides, and comment summaries. I also analyzed specific areas of telecommunications law and administrative law and produced memoranda to assist FCC attorneys. Throughout the course of the internship, I worked directly with attorneys on assigned subject matter and attended meetings on a bi-weekly basis.

This internship helped me gain knowledge about interpreting regulations and taught me about the inner workings of the Federal Communications Commission. The internship further enabled me to understand how the government operates with respect to media and telecommunications law.

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EFF Weeks 8-9: How the NSA’s mass data collection violates the First Amendment

By on July 25, 2013 in First Amendment, Internet, Privacy

EFF filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against the National Security Agency for its mass collection of Verizon customers’ phone records. First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. National Security Agency was filed on behalf of a diverse group of 19 organizations and focuses on an important First Amendment right: the right of association. Protecting associational freedom is increasingly important in the context of the government’s collection of metadata — pieces of information, such as the numbers a person calls, which, when put together, reveal information about that person’s associations, including organizations he or she belongs to.

Background: The First Amendment Freedom of Association

The First Amendment right of association is based on the freedom to assemble without government interference. In a landmark 1958 case, NAACP v. Alabama, the Supreme Court recognized that government access to people’s associations creates a “chilling effect” — it makes people less likely to associate with certain organizations. In NAACP v. Alabama, the Court held that it would violate NAACP members’ First Amendment rights for the state to force the organization to turn over its membership lists. The right to organize and assemble without government interference is so fundamental because these associations are forums for political expression and the advancement of ideas — the type of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect.

While discussions about data privacy tend to focus on the Fourth Amendment, First Amendment rights are equally implicated in electronic surveillance. The ability to keep one’s associations private is critical to preserving the right to freely associate.

The case against the NSA

EFF’s case argues that when the NSA collects data about the numbers a person calls and how often, that data can reveal a person’s protected associations, and the surveillance constitutes an interference with the right of association. To illustrate that point, EFF joined with 19 different organizations from across the political spectrum that focus on a range of issues, many of which conflict with one another. These organizations include churches, marijuana legalization advocates, and gun owners’ groups, to name a few. Many members of these organizations hold controversial views and depend on the ability to express those views as a group, but fear individual exposure.

What do the plaintiffs have to hide?

The potential chilling effects and the need for privacy are perhaps best expressed by Gene Hoffman, Chairman of Calguns Foundation, a gun ownership rights group. The group runs a hotline for gun owners who have questions about California gun laws. “California is a difficult place to live if you’re a gun owner,” Hoffman said in a press conference on EFF’s new case. “People are turning to our hotline specifically because they didn’t want to have a record created.” He mentioned that the people who have the most at stake might be those who belong to multiple organizations with potentially conflicting views: “If you are a supporter of marijuana legalization…and you were known to have phoned both [our hotline] and NORML [a marijuana legalization advocacy group], it could cause people to ask questions you didn’t want to have asked.”

New developments: Congress rejects legislation to curtail NSA surveillance

In a close vote yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted against an amendment that would have cut funding for the NSA’s mass surveillance of call records. By striking funding for bulk data collection, the bipartisan amendment would have required Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders to pertain to a person already under investigation. The current legal authority doesn’t require the FISA court to make a showing of suspicion that a person has engaged in terrorism or any illegal activity before it collects data. This lack of standards has allowed the NSA to engage in the mass collection of all Americans’ phone call records. The amendment failed in an extremely close vote of 205 to 217 and garnered both Democratic and Republican support.

Off-topic: Cute pictures of ducks

It’s not uncommon to have three dogs in the office on any given day, but last week one of EFF’s technologists brought these ducklings to work.

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EFF weeks 6-7: States attempt to censor adult advertising online

By on July 9, 2013 in First Amendment, Internet

Ever since “adult” advertising moved from the back page of The Village Voice to the Internet, some government officials have been trying to censor it. A recent attempt by the New Jersey legislature was blocked by a federal judge on June 28.  Chief Judge Dennis Cavanaugh of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey signed a temporary restraining order preventing New Jersey from enforcing a law that would have taken effect July 1. The New Jersey law addressed a serious problem — human trafficking and the exploitation of minors — but it did so in a way that unnecessarily and impermissibly burdened a large amount of lawful speech.

The statute would impose severe criminal penalties on any party that “directly or indirectly” caused to be disseminated sex ads containing images of minors. The Act’s broad language would make Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Backpage.com, Craigslist, and the Internet Archive criminally liable for such ads posted by third parties, even if the ISPs didn’t know the person pictured in the ad was a minor.

In 2010, Craigslist removed its “adult services” category after it was pressured to do so by a group of state attorneys general. Those ads moved to Backpage.com, which has since resisted similar pressure to remove adult ads. EFF is representing another plaintiff, the Internet Archive, which acts as a library for the Internet by archiving and displaying as much content as possible from other websites.

Laws that chill a significant amount of speech, even if they address important problems, are unconstitutional under the First Amendment if they are not narrowly tailored. To be narrowly tailored, a law must burden as little lawful speech as possible while still achieving its goals. The New Jersey statute is not narrowly tailored to combat child sex trafficking. On one hand, it punishes people who “knowingly” purchase or author sex ads depicting minors. This part of the law goes after the bad actor, and backpage.com has said that it supports such measures. However, another part of the law punishes parties who “indirectly” cause such ads to be disseminated, which would include any website on which third parties can post ads. It is not a defense under this law that the ISP did not know that the ad depicted a minor.

The law also conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law which shields ISPs from liability for content posted by third parties. Under Section 230, for example, Youtube is not liable for videos posted by users that infringe copyrights or otherwise break the law.

To comply with the New Jersey statute, an ISP would have to manually inspect every item posted on its website and obtain identification for every person pictured who could potentially be a minor. This is an impossible task for websites like Craigslist and Backpage.com, where millions of users post content daily, and for the Internet Archive, which attempts to house every webpage that ever existed. It would likely force advertising services to ban adult or sexual ads altogether, which is probably what the legislature was aiming for.

Now that New Jersey is temporarily restrained from enforcing its statute, I’m writing a brief explaining why the judge should issue a permanent injunction.

San Francisco’s Rally to Restore the Fourth Amendment

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Last week I marched in the Fourth of July Rally to Restore the Fourth. Hundreds of people walked down Market Street from U.N. Plaza to the Ferry Building protesting warrantless, secret surveillance by the National Security Administration.

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EFF Weeks 4-5: Craigslist v. 3Taps and CFAA Reform

By on June 24, 2013 in Internet

EFF filed an amicus brief last week in Craigslist v. 3Taps, a case in which Craigslist sued 3Taps for copying its publicly available data and making it available to its customers to use on their websites. One of 3Taps’s customers is Padmapper, a website that publishes Craigslist apartment postings over a map, allowing users to search for apartments geographically. Craigslist claims that, by copying its data, 3Taps violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a criminal statute that was intended to deter malicious hacking and computer trespassing but that is now used to criminalize all sorts of behavior. EFF’s brief argues that the CFAA should not be applied to accessing a publicly available website.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that 3Taps violated the CFAA not because it violated Craigslist’s terms of use, but because Craigslist sent 3Taps a cease and desist letter and attempted to block its IP address. The court held that 3Taps was therefore unauthorized to access Craigslist’s website under the CFAA. The court found that the “expansive” language of the CFAA allowed Craigslist to use it to protect information on a publicly accessible website. However, the court recognized that this premise was troubling, and agreed to accept additional briefing on whether the statute should be interpreted so broadly.

The CFAA has been widely used to stifle innovation, most famously in the prosecution of the late Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder who faced severe penalties for downloading millions of journal articles from the JSTOR database. Last week, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced Aaron’s Law, a bill reforming the CFAA by deleting and clarifying some of the law’s vague, sweeping language. The amendments would mean that violating a website’s terms of service would not be a criminal offense. The bill also lowers penalties under the CFAA in an attempt to curb overly aggressive prosecution.

Chicken, waffles, and cyberlaw

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                EFF held its annual cyberlaw pub trivia/chicken and waffles night on June 11. Attorneys from Bay Area law firms, Google, Wikimedia, Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, and other organizations came to compete. This year, the EFF interns took fifth place, beating more than half of the teams. We named our team after the NSA’s secret spying center in Utah.

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