In August, New Jersey became the twelfth state to pass a law prohibiting employers from asking employees for their social media usernames and passwords. Read more about the New Jersey law here.
Some states, including California, Michigan, and Illinois, also prohibit schools from requiring students to disclose their social media passwords. Illinois’s Right to Privacy in the School Setting Act takes effect January 1, 2014.
Natasha Duarte contributed to this post.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet with lawmakers today to discuss the federal reporter shield bill proposed by Senator Schumer (D-NY) in May of this year. Tune in to a live webcast of the meeting beginning at 10:00am.
The Free Flow of Information Act, S.987, includes some protection for reporters who are ordered to divulge confidential sources as part of a federal investigation. The public push for a federal shield law has gained traction over recent months as the public reacted to governmental invasions into journalist organizations like the Associated Press.
Although the bill seems to be a positive step towards granting journalists protection, critics have noted one troublesome section of the bill that limits the definition of who constitutes a “journalist” or a “covered person.” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has proposed an amendment to S.987 that would limit the classification of a journalist to a salaried agent of an organization that “disseminates news or information.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation outlined Feinstein’s proposed amendments to the definition of ”covered person”:
Senator Feinstein cites a need to limit the bill’s protection from including those “who aren’t really reporters at all, who have no professional qualifications” and says she believes the bill should be applied to “real reporters.”
Critics of the proposed amendments have argued that a narrow definition of what it means to be a journalist doesn’t fit the ever-evolving model of reporting. Technological developments over the last two decades have resulted in a shift away from the traditional definition of what it means to be a “journalist.” Reporting is increasingly being done by citizen journalists, bloggers, and independent reporters who are not employed by traditional media outlets.
This model will no doubt continue to evolve along with new technology. Critics of the bill suggest that reporting is an act rather than a status and that those engaged in reporting should be protected from having to reveal their confidential sources regardless of medium, employer, or salary.
The Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press filed an amicus brief in ACLU v. Clapper arguing that government collection of call records violates the First Amendment freedom of the press by impeding reporters’ ability to maintain confidential sources.
The brief supports the ACLU’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the NSA from collecting logs of the time and duration of phone calls made within the United States. The ACLU’s complaint includes a First Amendment claim based on the freedom of association — the right to organize and express political ideas as a group — but RCFP’s brief focuses on the right of the press to gather news.
The brief argues that mass surveillance makes sources more wary of contacting journalists and emphasizes that confidential sources are critical to accurate reporting on important issues.
As part of a new weekly feature on our blog, I’ll post the highlights from the Center’s and my Twitter feeds.
Here is what had my attention on Twitter this week:
A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released yesterday shed more light on how the National Security Agency collects Americans’ email data, highlighting the disconnect between the NSA’s collection practices and the Obama Administration’s characterization of email surveillance under the PRISM program.
The FISA Court opinion held that methods used by the NSA from 2007 to 2011 of collecting email data — including the content of email subject lines, senders, and times of transmission — violated the Fourth Amendment and Federal statutes. While the NSA can collect emails involving foreign senders and recipients under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it cannot collect purely domestic emails.
Until 2011, the NSA’s collection of emails involved collecting “bundles” of emails from individuals’ inboxes, failing to separate the purely domestic emails bundled with the “targeted” emails involving non-U.S. persons. Basically, the NSA was collecting screenshots of individuals’ inboxes when only one of many emails in the screenshot was the subject of the investigation.
Since details of the PRISM email surveillance program were leaked in June, President Obama has repeatedly told Americans not to worry because “the NSA cannot target your emails.” While the President has never clarified what “targeting” means, this opinion makes it clear that, at least before 2011, the fact that Americans’ emails were not “targeted” doesn’t mean they were not collected.
Several proposed amendments to key sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including a bill that failed in a close House vote last month, would prohibit the “bulk” collection of data. These amendments would require the NSA to show that someone is the subject of an investigation before it collects that person’s data.
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.
