CSANFORD 8/22
There are a lot more Americans than there used to be, it seems, who are willing to tear a little piece out of the Constitution whenever doing so might help solve some social problem that deeply concerns them.
Often by large majorities, they favor various measures that infringe on the right to bear arms — invariably described as ''reasonable'' — and a substantial and passionate minority believes the Second Amendment should be repealed entirely if they can't redefine it out of existence. A different group wants to change the First Amendment so no one can burn flags as a form of political protest. And still others think the Fourth Amendment gives entirely too much protection against unreasonable searches and seizures to criminals, who don't deserve it.
In their different ways, all of them are saying, ''If that's what the Bill of Rights leads to, then do away with the Bill of Rights.''
Examples from just last week: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission appealed a U.S. district court decision that the commission may not require Internet newsletters and computer software developers to obtain a license before publishing. There should never have been such a case; commission members ought to have known that a licensing requirement would be unconstitutional. But they didn't, and — since they're appealing — apparently still don't.
In Denver, the school district announced a censorship policy for student videos. It would ban any ''statement or inference that undermines or attacks Denver Public School policies, practices, personnel, students or community members'' or any ''negative portrayal of any gender or race; any ethnic, political, disability or religious group; or any individual's sexual orientation.''
The obvious motivation: to shield Denver from the sort of criticism that has been aimed at Jefferson County school officials because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made a video about a school shooting before they carried out the real thing at Columbine High School.
I would say the real problem is not that the two made such a video, but that no one followed up on it to try to find out what role the two saw themselves playing.
But Denver's approach, unfortunately, is more typical.
First Amendment issues were never discussed, said Bernadette Seick, assistant superintendent for secondary education.
How could that be? In a new book, Don't Shoot the Messenger, First Amendment lawyer Bruce Sanford outlines the erosion of popular and judicial support for the media's First Amendment rights. Growing hatred of the media, he says, ''threatens free speech for all of us.''
I should say I am slightly acquainted with Sanford, because his law firm Baker and Hostetler represents the Society of Professional Journalists, and he regularly made presentations to the society's board. He's also First Amendment counsel to the News.
To take just one example from his very readable book, Sanford traces the legal history of media ride-alongs, where law-enforcement agencies invite members of the media to accompany them, on regular patrols or planned raids.
In a handful of celebrated cases, people have sued for trespass or invasion of privacy. One of them occurred in Colorado, where the media were invited to witness the arrest of Mark Wayne Robinson, who lured teenaged girls to his house and pursuaded them to pose for nude photos. After the media coverage more victims came forward, and Robinson pled guilty to sexual assault and sexual exploitation of children. He also sued everybody in sight, including the newspapers.
Elsewhere, people have won suits like that, and media organizations have become increasingly unwilling to participate in ride-alongs.
''The home becomes off-limits to the media even when the police have probable cause to enter,'' Sanford writes. ''Wait until some police brutality or misconduct occurs within these sacred palaces of privacy. Then we will see how glorious this new body of law is.''
If your home were raided in error, would you want the media there? The media can embarrass you. But the cops can kill you.
''How odd,'' Sanford says, ''to believe that people need protection from the media, but not the police.''
Odd or not, that's just what a lot of people do believe. When the Constitution has been torn to shreds, they'll rue the consequences.
r,w,term2,1203 -PM-COMPUTERPRIVACY -08-20 0357
PM-Computer Privacy,350
Feds seek authority to secretly crack personal computer codes
WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcers would have the authority to secretly crack the security codes of crime suspects' home and office personal computers, under a Clinton administration plan reported today in The Washington Post.
The Justice Department has drafted legislation that, if approved by Congress, would allow federal agents to obtain search warrants from a judge to enter private property, search through computers for passwords and override encryption programs.
According to an Aug. 4 department memo that lays out the proposal, encryption software for scrambling computer files ''is increasingly used as a means to facilitate criminal activity, such as drug trafficking, terrorism, white-collar crime and the distribution of child pornography.''
Under the measure, investigators would obtain sealed search warrants signed by a judge as a prelude to getting further court permission to wiretap, extract information from computers or conduct further searches.
Privacy advocates have objected to the plan, dubbed the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act by the Justice Department.
''They have taken the cyberspace issues and are using it as justification for invading the home,'' James Dempsey, an attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Post.
Peter Swire, the White House's chief counselor for privacy, told the newspaper the administration supports encryption as a way to provide privacy for computer users.
''But it has to be implemented in a way that's consistent with other values, such as law enforcement,'' Swire said. ''In this whole issue we have to strike the right balance.''
The administration has for years been seeking a law to require computer makers to include a so-called Clipper Chip in their products that would give police a ''back door'' into computers despite any encryption software they may contain.
In a backlash, More than 250 members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors to legislation that would prohibit mandating such back-door devices on computers.
AP-WS-08-20-99 0612EDT
r,a,term2,1202 -BC-FAIRPRESS(SH) -08-18 0944
bc-fairpress(sh)
ALL NEWS ALL THE TIME: FREE PRESS VS. FAIR PRESS
Scripps Howard News Service
With photo/graphic: SH99H360FAIRPRESS.JPG, SH99H361FAIRPRESS.JPG
By MARY DEIBEL
Scripps Howard News Service
Deepening public anger toward media excess was demonstrated this week when a Colorado community formed a human chain so that students could have privacy when school started at the site of the worst school killings in U.S. history.
''Enough already,'' Columbine High School alumna Theresa Redinger told reporters.
The episode serves as a reminder that the public's distrust of the press is growing. While even the ancient Greeks killed couriers of bad news, at least it wasn't all news, all the time, a concept that dismays many Americans.
But the free press-vs.-fair press debate promises only to get worse with the proliferation of channels in print, TV, radio and across the Internet.
To Tom Rosenstiel, head of the Center for Excellence in Journalism, all news all the time suffers from the ''big story'' syndrome, of which the O.J. Simpson case was merely the template: The ''continuous news'' coverage it started, in which argument, opinion and film clips replay over and over until something new occurs, offers more entertainment than information.
This type of coverage occurred in the shooting sprees at a Los Angeles day care center and the Atlanta day-trading firms that followed the Littleton, Colo., school massacre and a half-dozen other school shootings over the last two years; during the search for JFK Jr.'s plane; in anniversary coverage of Princess Di's death and with President Clinton's grand jury appearance.
It is cheaper to produce these repeats than the checking and double-checking required of the traditional press, yet it feeds the cynicism of a public that doesn't distinguish between traditional news-gathering and ''talking heads,'' says Rosenstiel.
First Amendment lawyer Bruce Sanford contends the ''canyon of distrust'' that always has existed between press and public is widening as a result: In his new book, ''Don't Shoot the Messenger'' (Simon & Schuster, $25) he points to a new poll in which the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center finds that 53 percent of Americans think the press has too much freedom. That's up from 38 percent only two years ago.
To Sanford, an attorney for Scripps Howard and other major media outlets, growing hatred of the press puts everyone at risk of losing precious free speech rights and protections against the greater danger of government excess.
Where Nelly Bly's ''Ten Days in a Madhouse'' brought about reforms a century ago following her muckraking undercover work in which she misrepresented herself to asylum authorities, Sanford notes that a jury awarded $5.5 million against ABC-TV's ''Prime Time Live'' for using similar techniques.
Sanford worries that news organizations may show themselves increasingly willing to settle to minimize litigation costs to shareholders and the corporate bottom line.
Fellow free speech lawyer Bruce Ennis isn't as glum in assessing the legal landscape confronting the media after scoring victories in the Supreme Court, which struck down government bans on product content labeling and Internet indecency.
Writing for the court in the latter case, Justice John Paul Stevens judged the Internet to be ''as diverse as human thought'' and found its openness ''to all comers'' akin to street corners that have been favorite free-speech venues for pamphleteers since America's founding.
Ennis acknowledges juries and trial judges ''aren't always sympathetic to the traditional press.'' However, he notes, the Supreme Court ''has grown quite protective of commercial speech and the Internet and continues to hew to the ground rules when it squarely addresses libel and other traditional press questions.''
First enunciated in New York Times vs. Sullivan, a 1964 case that rejected an attempt by Alabama police to stop reporting about rough treatment they gave civil rights protesters, the Supreme Court test for libel requires a showing of ''actual malice'' or ''reckless disregard of the truth'' for public figures to win a judgment.
Most recently, a unanimous court upheld those rules in 1988, rejecting Rev. Jerry Falwell's creative attempt to sue pornographer Larry Flynt for intentional infliction of emotional distress as a back-door libel claim.
James Goodale was a member of the New York Times legal team that won the 1971 Supreme Court case that let the Pentagon Papers' justification for Vietnam be published without prior restraint.
Today, as host of a PBS series on ''The Telecommunications and Information Revolution,'' Goodale expects the Supreme Court and lower courts to stand by their traditional tests for libel, invasion of privacy and the like for newspapers, TV and other ''institutional middlemen.''
When it comes to the Internet, however, Goodale is less sure how the First Amendment protections play out for posted gossip or rumors or defamation.
''Is Matt Drudge a reporter or not?'' Goodale asks. ''What if America Online or other service says it's checked out what a user posts on a bulletin board or repeats in a chat room? If it hasn't, can it be held liable in court by a person or company who is falsely attacked?
''The only thing the Supreme Court has settled is that the Internet is entitled to free-speech protection as a general matter, a threshold question. When it gets down to the constitutional short strokes, the jury's still out.''
(Mary Deibel is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service.)
AP-NY-08-18-99 1249EDT