NPR and AP Limit Use of “Obamacare” Language

By on October 4, 2013 in Internet, Journalism

obamacare-logo_fullAs the government shutdown continues, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Associated Press (AP) have decided to cut back on their usage of the term “Obamacare.”

NPR’s managing editor, Stuart Seidel, issued the editing order last Tuesday, asking that NPR staff members vary their wording when discussing the new health care system, saying that the politically divisive term was no longer neutral.

Meanwhile, the AP is also limiting its use of the term “Obamacare” as well as declining to refer to the health care law as the “Affordable Care Act.” The AP’s deputy managing editor and standards editor, Tom Kent, says the phrase is inherently promotional by its use of the word “affordable.” Alternatively, the AP plans to refer to the act as the “health care overhaul,” “the nation’s new health insurance system,” or simply “the new health care law.”

Such a shift in wording by two of the nation’s largest news outlets may aid Americans who remain unclear about the lack of distinction between Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, as exhibited on a recent Jimmy Kimmel Live! show segment.

Samantha Scheller is a 2L at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

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Government Shutdown Affects FOIA Requests

By on October 2, 2013 in Internet, Journalism, Privacy, Transparency

nsaThe government shutdown is having an impact on every “nonessential” federal service, including Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act (PA) requests under the NSA.

According to the NSA’s website, all FOIA and PA requests or inquiries submitted to the FOIA/PA office “will not be addressed until the office reopens.” The NSA’s homepage also cites the government shutdown as responsible for its inability to update the NSA website.

Many of the NSA’s other programs will continue to operate during the government shutdown. In a memo released last Friday from the Department of Defense,  the Deputy Secretary said that while a “large number of [] civilian employees [will] be temporarily furloughed[,]” the shutdown will not affect military personnel who will “continue in a normal duty status.”

Samantha Scheller is a 2L at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

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FTC investigates patent trolls

By on September 30, 2013 in Journalism

The Federal Trade Commission will investigate what it calls Patent Assertion Entities, commonly referred to as “patent trolls,” companies whose primary business model is buying patents and suing people for infringement.

The FTC has proposed a series of questions that it will ask the 25 most controversial PAEs to gather information on how the companies conduct their businesses and litigation.

The practice of patent trolling has grown alongside technology. Some PAEs purchase software patents from cash strapped companies and send infringement letters to small developers, who often agree to settle or pay a licensing fee to avoid the cost of litigation.

The executive branch has recently taken up the issue of patent trolling. This summer, the White House published several blog posts, tweets and graphics to raise awareness of the problem.

Earlier this year, a company called Personal Audio LLC claimed to have a patent on podcasting and filed lawsuits against several podcasts, including the Adam Corolla Show and HowStuffWorks.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched “Trolling Effects,” a resource for those who have been targeted by patent trolls.

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

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Judge: Google may have illegally wiretapped its users’ email

By on September 27, 2013 in Internet, Privacy, Transparency

Google may have violated the federal Wiretap Act when it routinely scanned the content of emails for purposes of providing targeted advertising and creating user profiles, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

The Northern District of California denied Google’s motion to dismiss the Wiretap Act claims against it, allowing the case to go forward. The court found that Google’s practices were not “instrumental” to providing email services through Gmail and that email users may not have consented to having their emails read for advertising and user profile purposes.

The outcome of this case could have ramifications for all email services that intercept and “read” or “scan” users’ emails for key words which are used to attach targeted ads to emails.

The Wiretap Act and the “ordinary course of business” exception

The federal Wiretap Act prohibits the interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications. The Act contains an exception for communications intercepted by a provider of electronic communication service in the “ordinary course of its business.” The court held that Google’s interception of emails to and from Gmail users for advertising and user profile building purposes did not fall under this exception.

The court narrowly defined the “ordinary course of business” exception as applying to email providers only when the interception “facilitates or is incidental to” providing email services. Since Google’s interception of email for advertising and profile building purposes is separate from its spam filtering, antivirus protections, spell checking, and other scanning functions, the Court held that the interception was not “instrumental” to providing email services.

Did Gmail users consent to Google reading their emails?

Google argued that Gmail users, by agreeing to Google’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policies, consented to any interception of emails by Google. But after reviewing the policies, the court could not “conclude that any party…consented to Google’s reading of email for purposes of creating user profiles or providing targeted advertising.”

The judge found that no version of Google’s Terms of Service or Privacy Policies explicitly said that Google would intercept and read the content of users’ emails.

Google’s Terms of Service from April 2007 to March 2012 stated that “Google reserves the right…to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service.” A separate section stated that “advertisements may be targeted to the content of information stored on the Services, queries made through the Services or other information.” Google’s Privacy Policies from August 2008 to March 2012 stated that Google may collect “information you provide, cookies, log information, user communications to Google, affiliated sites, links, and other sites.”

The district judge found that none of these terms specifically mentioned the content of users’ emails to each other or gave users notice that their emails were intercepted to create user profiles. Moreover, the assertion that Google “could” target advertisements based on content stored in Gmail did not provide notice that it “would,” and intercepting information in transit — the specific prohibition of the Wiretap Act — is not the same as collecting “stored” content, the Judge wrote.

What’s next?

Google can ask the district court judge to grant it permission to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit. In the mean time, it remains uncertain whether email services can legally scan the content of users’ emails to provide targeted advertising and what constitutes consent for doing so.

In 2012, Google introduced a new privacy policy across all of its services, including Gmail. Although it lists multiple types of information that Google may collect and use, it still does not explicitly list email content. No court has ruled on whether agreeing to this policy constitutes consent or notice for Google to intercept users’ emails for purposes of providing targeted advertising and building user profiles.

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

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This First Amendment Day, fight for the free flow of information

By on September 23, 2013 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment, Journalism, Transparency

UNC will hold its fifth annual First Amendment Day Sept. 24, a celebration of our rights to speak, publish, worship, assemble and protest without government intervention. It’s easy to celebrate free expression. It’s sometimes harder to notice when that freedom is being eroded by the government.

In the year since First Amendment Day 2012, we’ve learned that our First Amendment rights — particularly the freedom of the press — have been compromised in the name of security. In May, the Associated Press and Fox News revealed that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records and searched emails between reporters and sources in an effort to investigate leaks. In July, New York Times reporter James Risen lost an appeal in federal court challenging a Justice Department subpoena ordering him to testify and reveal his confidential sources in a criminal prosecution. In the July trial of Private First Class Bradley Manning, the government argued that publishing leaks to the general public could constitute “aiding and abetting the enemy” under the Espionage Act. And some reporters say that their ability to promise their sources confidentiality has been jeopardized by the mass surveillance of Americans’ phone call and email data.

This year, First Amendment Day is more than a celebration. It’s a reminder that we have to constantly fight for the free flow of information — in the courts, in newsrooms, in Congress, in our state and at our school.

This year’s keynote address by Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, will explore the Obama Administration’s relationship with the media. “If there was ever any doubt that a war on leaks could not be conducted without a war on the press and the public’s interest in the free flow of information, the government seems to have answered that question for us,” Brown said in a statement in May, following revelations that the Justice Department had executed a search warrant for a Fox News reporter’s emails.

A panel discussion at the UNC School of Law will focus on one possible protection for press freedom: a federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources in a federal investigation or trial. Panelists will discuss the “Free Flow of Information Act” introduced in Congress this year, the definition of a “journalist,” and whether a federal shield law should cover bloggers, citizen journalists, and student reporters.

These are just two of many events addressing the need for education and action around First Amendment rights. For more information, check out the full schedule of events. All events are free and open to the public.

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

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