Mediaboss Marketing

[co-author: Adi Kamdar - Summer Associate]

The internet has become so essential to American public discourse that saying so is almost trite now. Members of Congress regularly use social media to engage with constituents. The President has turned Twitter into one of his primary modes of communication. It was only a matter of time before the U.S. Supreme Court got its turn to sing the praises of social media.

In Packingham v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a North Carolina criminal law that made it a felony for registered sex offenders to access social networking and other websites. In doing so, however, the Court took a stepperhaps a bigger step than some intendedtoward guaranteeing a constitutional right under the First Amendment to access the internet.

Packingham involved a 2008 North Carolina statute that made it a felony for a registered sex offender to access a commercial social networking website that is known to allow minors. The law defined a commercial social networking website with four requirements: (1) the operator of the website had to earn revenue through fees or advertisements; (2) the website had to allow for social introductions between people; (3) the website must allow users to create widely available personal profiles or pages; and (4) the site must give users a mechanism of communicating with each other, such as through a chat room or message board. Though the law carved out a few exceptions, it created a broad enough stick that the state of North Carolina had already prosecuted over a thousand people for violating it.

Nearly a decade after Packingham was convicted for a sex crime and registered as a sex offender, he posted on Facebook about how excited he was to have gotten a traffic ticket dismissed. A member of the local law enforcement noticed the post, and the state charged Packingham with violating the North Carolina law without alleging he had contacted a minor or committed any other illicit acts on the internet. The trial court denied Packinghams First Amendment challenge to the statute, and he was ultimately convicted for violating the statute. North Carolinas intermediate Court of Appeals agreed with Packingham and struck down the statute. But the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed, finding the law to be carefully tailored to avoid violating the freedom of speech.

In an 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court on June 19 reversed the North Carolina Supreme Court and struck down the North Carolina law as unconstitutional.

Writing for five justices, Justice Anthony Kennedy kicked off his opinion with an analogy. Within First Amendment law, there is a basic rule that a street or a park is a quintessential forum for the exercise of speech. And what is the equivalent forum of today? The answer is clear, Justice Kennedy put forward: It is cyberspace. . . . and social media in particular.

The majority spent a good portion of its opinion highlighting the centrality of the internet to First Amendment activities and modern life. It noted that websites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter collectively have billions of users, each of whom engages in multiple First Amendment-protected activities: debating religion and politics, sharing photographs, advertising and finding jobs, and reaching out to elected officials. Justice Kennedy went on to describe the Cyber Age as a revolution of historic proportions, acknowledging what lawyers working in this field have taken to heart: courts must be conscious that what they say today might be obsolete tomorrow.

The majority held that the North Carolina statute impermissibly burdened more speech than necessary in order to further its purposethe protection of children against recidivist sexual predators. Even though the Packingham majority acknowledged that North Carolinas goal was extremely important, it also found that the laws prohibitions were unprecedented in scope and thus could not stand. Social media sites allow for the communication of ideas and knowledge; they are the modern public square. Cutting individuals off from these important spaces prevents them from exercising their First Amendment rights. Furthermore, convicted criminals might receive legitimate benefits from these means for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives.

Writing for three members of the Court, Justice Samuel Alito concurred in the conclusion that the North Carolina law was overbroad and thus unconstitutional, but was hesitant to support the majoritys undisciplined . . . musings that seem to equate the entirety of the internet with public streets and parks. After all, Justice Alitos concurrence notes, there are clear distinctions between parks and cyberspace: from differences in the ability for parents to monitor their children, to differences in the amount of anonymity each space offers. And Justice Alito expressed concern that some may read the majoritys broad language as a prohibition on any and all attempts to pass laws addressing child sexual exploitation online or other efforts to regulate access to the internet.

At root, Justice Alitos concurrence took issue with the improper tailoring of the North Carolina law. Its vague language would prevent registered sex offenders from accessing, for example, Amazon, The Washington Post or WebMD. By categorically blocking access to these sites, the North Carolina law goes well beyond its intended means and runs afoul of the First Amendment.

The Courts Packingham decision is one of the first cases to seriously hint at the idea that access to online forums of expression is a protected right. Heavily relying on an amicus brief by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Justice Kennedys opinion highlights the importance of the internet as a marketplace of ideas, and its central role in promoting associational rights of persons in a free society. The Packingham decision casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of state and federal statutes, regulations and interpretations, which may impose broad limitations on access to the internet, particularly where the restriction is based on a persons continuing status or in the absence of an adjudication. Packingham may ultimately prove to be a powerful doctrinal weapon that internet-based companies can wield against laws and regulations that limit access to their services.

An important question that Packingham leaves unanswered, however, is what level of constitutional scrutiny applies to content-neutral regulations affecting access to the modern internet. All eight justices agreed that the North Carolina statute, given its overbreadth, would fail under any level of scrutiny under First Amendment jurisprudence. But the majoritys opinion gives little guidance for lawmakers that want to take steps to deter online predation on what type of statute would withstand a First Amendment challenge.

Read the original:
Supreme Court Declares First Amendment Interest in Access to Social Networks - JD Supra (press release)

Peek at this

Social networking is here to stay. There seems to be a constant competition between Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for the top spot in the socializing game. However, these are not the only social networking sites.

In fact, many of the smaller platforms are gaining in popularity due to the lack of ads, more minimalistic design, and user preference for something new and different. One of the newest kids on the social networking block, is Peek.

Peek is a little bit like Periscope. Its a new iOS app that live-streaming with friends and family. Peek allows you to go live from where you are, and stalk places.

Its like a hyperlocal version of Periscope, but a bit more private. You can only go live from exactly where you are. Unlike Instagram, you cannot tag yourself at a specific location to increase your visibility and reach.

You have no followers, no friend requests, and no likes.

All people will see is the content of your live stream, with the location underneath. Its a stripped-down, bare-bones, minimalistic, version of Periscope and people are raving about the simplicity and the content.

Content without pressure for likes, followers, and fans.

Peek gives you the ability to peek at different locations, places, cultures, and venues, from your home.

There really isnt a catch. Peek is completely free but it does come with a few rules. Peek reserves the right to block racists, homophobics, xenophobics, sexists, and extremist views, but they are cool with nudity.

You may get flagged for it by other users, but they dont strictly prohibit nudity.

After downloading the app, you will be asked to login with your Facebook credentials and turn on location settings (so the app knows you are where you say you are, geographically). Once youre logged in with Facebook, youll be able to see everyone who has gone live recently and youll have the ability to go live as well.

If you click on your profile, at the top right of the screen, youll be able to see how many people have stalked you (watched your video).

This is helpful for checking out places like airports, concert venues, and other popular locations like restaurants you may not be familiar with, before you check them out for yourself.

This also gives techies and business people the ability to check out venues, get virtual walk-throughs on setups (depending on the content of other Peek users) and live stream content from conference centers and meetings for themselves.

Peek gives you the ability to see a variety of live-streaming locations and people, without the pressure of collecting followers.

Also, Peek allows you to delete a video youve posted in case you change your mind about your video (although if anyone was watching the live-feed they will have seen every minute of your content, so please keep that in mind).

As buzzworthy as Peek is right now, will it last, or will it go the way of Peach, Ello, and Blab? Maybe Peek will have staying power given their no rules, no-cost platform.

Peach was founded by Dom Hofmann, one of the co-founders of Vine (which was later acquired by Twitter), so it was no novice to the social media game, and yet it couldnt manage to make a big splash.

The same can be said of Ello.

Ello was intended to be an ad-free version, reminiscent of Facebook, but it still wasnt able to garner enough followers to make it a big name in social networking. Blab, on the other hand, had a very Periscope-y like feel to it.

But again couldnt make the leap into the big time.

Peek certainly has gained a great deal of excitement and attention from the tech community, and has the possibility to become a fan-favorite platform. What do you think, will Peek be the next big thing, or will it fizzle out like the previous live video social networking platforms?

Read more from the original source:
A Peek into the next live video social networking platform - The American Genius

The Trump administration asked a federal judge on Friday to uphold the constitutionality of the controversial state immigration crackdown passed by the Republican-dominated Texas legislature.

The U.S. government isnt a party in the lawsuit challenging Texas Senate Bill 4, which bans so-called sanctuary policies that limit local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. But the Texas law has become a prominent test of whether courts will approve strong-arm tactics endorsed by President Donald Trumpto pressure local jurisdictions into complying with federal deportation efforts.

President Trump has made a commitment to keep America safe and to ensure cooperation with federal immigration laws, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Friday. The Department of Justice fully supports Texass effort and is participating in this lawsuit because of the strong federal interest in facilitating the state and local cooperation that is critical in enforcing our nations immigration laws.

SB 4 bars local jurisdictions in Texas from denying requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold suspected undocumented immigrants on the federal governments behalf. Adopting a policy of refusing such requests, known as detainers, can land public officials in jail for up to a year under the new law. SB 4 also allows local police officers to ask the immigration status of anyone they stop, drawing comparisons to an Arizona law derided by critics as the show me your papers law.

Several jurisdictions including Austin, San Antonio and El Paso filed lawsuits to overturn SB 4 shortly after Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law last month.

The legal challenges accuse Republican lawmakers of trampling multiple constitutional principles.

Several federal judges have ruled in recent years that holding someone on an ICE detainer in a local jail if they would otherwise be allowed to go free violates the Fourth Amendments guarantees against illegal search and seizure. And because the federal government alone is charged with crafting immigration policy, the state of Texas cant create its own, or dole out criminal penalties for refusing to follow a state policy, critics argue.

The flurry of lawsuits were consolidated into a single case that will have its first hearing on Monday, when U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia will consider whether to block the law from taking effect on Sept. 1 while the legal challenges move forward.

The Justice Department will try to convince the judge to give the law a chance.

Cooperation with federal officials is plainly permitted under the [Immigration and Nationality Act] and the Constitution, the statement of interest filed by DOJ reads. Parties may disagree with the state legislatures policy determinations in enacting SB 4, but nothing in federal immigration law precludes a state from directing law enforcement officers in the state to cooperate with the federal government, rather than merely permitting them to do so on an ad hoc basis.

The filing hinges on the argument that ICE detainers have changed in the months since Trump took office. The Department of Homeland Security started issuing administrative arrest warrants in April, along with detainer requests, in an apparent effort to make ICE holds less vulnerable to legal challenges.

That argument may not convince Garcia. He ruled earlier this month that the Bexar County Sheriffs Office in Texas violated the Fourth Amendment by refusing to release an undocumented immigrant for more than two months on the basis of an ICE detainer. The ruling appeared to strike a major blow against SB 4, which aims to force local jurisdictions to honor all such requests from ICE.

The Justice Departments filing took note of that ruling, but countered that the case began last year, before Trump took office. The Trump administrations new policy of including administrative warrants with ICE detainers solves the problem and is fully consistent with the Fourth Amendment, the filing says.

But avoiding the constitutional pitfalls presented by ICE detainers requires a warrant in a criminal case, not an administrative warrant for a violation of civil immigration law, according to Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The Fourth Amendment in this context requires probable cause that the individual has committed a crime in order to deprive that person of liberty, Perales, one of several lawyers representing SB 4s opponents, told HuffPost. DOJ cannot hang its hat on the new detainer form when it comes to the stringent requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

Read the Justice Departments statement of interest below.

View post:
Trump Administration Backs Texas In Immigration Crackdown Challenge - HuffPost

Next time you set out to commit armed robbery, leave your cellphone at home. Timothy Carpenter was convicted of robbing a string of T-Mobile and Radio Shack stores, stealing smartphones. But he wasnt too smart himself. He used his cellphone to call 15 getaway drivers. The calls were his undoing. The FBI used the records from his wireless carrier to confirm his proximity to every robbed store when it was hit.

Now Carpenter and the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the conviction, and the Supreme Court just agreed to hear the case. Activists determined to guarantee total privacy to criminal suspects, no matter what the cost to society, are thrilled. Theyre predicting Carpenter v. United States could be a landmark victory for privacy. How foolish. A victory for Carpenter would tip the scales of justice in favor of criminals and against law enforcements ability to keep us safe.

The ACLU claims using wireless companies records to pinpoint suspects locations violates the Fourth Amendments privacy protections. Dont fall for it.

The Supreme Court already has already ruled the actual content of cellphones cannot be searched without a court-issued warrant, because the Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches by government. But in Carpenter, the ACLU is stretching the notion of privacy, trying to block police from identifying a cellphones location. Not its content, just its location.

Carpenter v. United States is part of the ACLUs campaign to hobble police and shield wrongdoers both terrorists and common criminals from the latest technologies available to law enforcement.

In the Carpenter case, the ACLU insists the FBI overreached by looking at many months of Carpenters phone records, revealing where he prayed, slept and shopped. But how else could agents find out whether he was near the robbed stores? Carpenters spree went on for months.

Lawyers defending the FBI say phone records are vital for promptly apprehending criminals and exonerating innocent suspects as early as possible.

They also argue Carpenter had no reason to expect his phone records would be private. Anyone who signs up for a cellphone knows the phone company a third party will have call records. Theyre not private.

Not so fast, said Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a previous case. Sotomayor suggested that it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that there is no privacy right once someone gives information to a third party like the phone company. If other justices agree with Sotomayor, the Court could ultimately bar the use of cellphone records without a warrant.

Privacy purists across the political spectrum including the libertarian Cato Institute are lining up against law enforcement. They argue that the Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans must be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches. Thats a precious right.

But as the store owners robbed by Carpenter will tell you, theres also a need to be secure from criminals.

Not to mention terrorists.

The Carpenter case involves records of calls made in the past. What about a new technology police departments are using to track cellphone locations in real time? It can track fugitives, find abducted children, even foil terrorist attacks.

Its a suitcase-size device called a Stingray, and it mimics cell towers. When its moved to an area, cellphones send signals to it, mistaking it for a tower. Stingrays fool cellphones into becoming tracking devices. It was developed by the military, and some object to its use to catch common criminals.

The ACLU is urging dozens of cities, including New York, to clamp down on use of Stingrays and is going to court in some cities to stop it. Thats very misguided, says New York City Deputy Police Commissioner Larry Byrne.

Whos helped when wrongdoers have better technology than cops? Thats one of the questions the Justices will weigh in Carpenter and in future cases as new technologies test the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and a former lieutenant governor of New York State. Contact her at betsy@betsymccaughey.com.

Read more from the original source:
BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Privacy purists help criminals - Examiner Enterprise

NEW YORKThe economics of cybersecurity are skewed in favor of attackers, who invest once and can launch thousands of attacks with a piece of malware or exploit kit. Thats why Neal Ziring, technical director for the NSAs Capabilities Directorate, wants to flip the financial equation on bad guys.

We need to conduct defenses in a way that kills an adversarys ROI, Ziring said. I want to get it down to the point where a threat actor says, I better choose carefully where I throw this malware first, because Im not going to get a third or fourth try. Today they dont have that concern.

In order to decimate a cybercriminals ROI on developing tools and attack playbooks, Ziring is calling on public agencies, companies and the security community to radically change the way they respond to cyberattacks.

In a keynote address Thursday at the Borderless Cyber conference, he said the cybersecurity community needs to work cooperatively to collectively respond to attacks in the same spirit they share threat intelligence. He argues, doing so will deprive cyber threat actors of the ability to use tools and tradecraft multiple times and starve criminals financially.

The future of cyber defense is having a shared response or coordinated response, Ziring said. We need to break out of todays enterprise mentality of every person for themselves.

The type of framework Ziring describes doesnt exist today, but two standards come close. Those are STIX (Structured Threat Information Expression) and TAXII (Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator Information) which both deal with sharing data ahead of an attack. Neither address a key component that Ziring is calling for which is a public-private framework that creates a type of autoimmune system. If one node on the network is attacked, all other connected nodes are warned within seconds to defend against a similar attack.

There is no technological reason why this couldnt work. There are only practical obstacles like the need for interoperable standards that will enable us to do this in todays heterogeneous environments. And thats the bit we are solving right now with STIX and OpenC2, he said.

Still early in development, OpenC2 is a language that would enable the coordination and execution of command and control of defense components between domains and within a domain.

Universal support for that type of framework will take a major shift in industry mindsets. As one conference attendee noted, today breach data is a carefully guarded secret for many companies. Ninety-five percent of the dozens of breaches the attendee said he helped mitigate over the past year were kept private for fear it might hurt share prices and the companies reputation.

Ziring said the industry does not need new regulations to mandate breach transparency. The upside to information sharing is the carrot that he hopes will lure companies, sectors and communities to be part of the sharing framework. He notes there are already several critical infrastructure sectors that are required to report breaches to the DHS.

It would be better if we didnt have to create more regulation. Well have to take a wait and see approach for now, he said.

Currently, the type of framework Ziring describes is extremely rare. Within the financial services sector breach data is shared between members of a FS-ISAC (Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center). When one member is attacked all other members are alerted and can fend off similar attacks before they happen.

Meanwhile, attack surfaces are growing with the rapid expansion of cloud, IoT and third-party services. Ziring said current defenses are not as scaleable as they need to be and cant match the automated nature of cyberattacks.

Using FS-ISAC as a model, Ziring envisions a future where industry-focused communities share visibility into threats. When an attack occurred, top-level community members would analyze the threat and send out counter measures to community members inoculating them within seconds or minutes from similar attacks. Its unreasonable to ask small business to be ready fight off a nation state attack themselves, he said.

To many in attendance, that top-level community member is the government. To that end, Ziring told attendees that NSA and DHS are committed to be a trusted partner in the framework through the development of standards such as OpenC2.

The government has a unique authority in this area. We are doing a lot today within the DHS and FBI. I believe government has a responsibility to share. Culturally, its going to be tough. But we need to do it, he said.

Read more:
NSA Advocates Data Sharing Framework - Threatpost