What You Say Might Just Get You

Grants Reveal Feds’ Horrific Plans To Censor Americans’ Speech

IMAGE CREDIT U.S. ARMY / FLICKR / CC BY 2.0, CROPPED

The founding fathers should have included extra text in the First Amendment: “Congress shall not make any law, Executive shall not make any rule or order, Judiciary shall make no ruling” abridging freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceable  assembly and right to protest the government for redress of our grievances.There is indisputable evidence that our own government is the driving vehicle to completely obliterate free speech in America. The Congress can rein in the Administration but unfortunately, many in Congress are complicit and even encouraging Biden and staff to intensify the attack.

The current trajectory of this war on the First Amendment will result in criminalizing speech, imposing penalties like fines, court cases and imprisonment. ⁃ TN Editor

Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.

While the “Twitter Files” offer a glimpse into the government’s efforts to censor disfavored viewpoints, what we have seen is nothing compared to what is planned, as the details of hundreds of federal awards lay bare. Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.

Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

AI and ML Technology Will Monitor Everything We Say and Read

The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to “misinformation” or “disinformation” since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet “conversations.”

Originally used as a marketing tool for businesses to track discussions about their brands and products and to track competitors, the DOD and other federal agencies are now paying for-profit public relations and communications firms to convert their technology into tools for the government to monitor speech on the internet.

The areas of the internet the companies monitor differ somewhat, and each business offers its own unique AI and ML proprietary technology, but the underlying approach and goals remain identical: The technology under development will “mine” large portions of the internet and identify conversations deemed indicative of an emerging harmful narrative, to allow the government to track those “threats” and adopt countermeasures before the messages go viral.

With AI and ML identifying in real-time the origins of supposed influence operations and how the messages spread, the government will have the ability to preempt the amplification of the speech, squelching even true reporting before the general populace has an opportunity to learn the news. To appreciate fully the danger this poses to free speech requires Americans to consider the use of that technology with these seven additional details.

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once

First, the AI and ML technology under development will mine every conceivable mode of conversation for the government. Consider, for example, the databases monitored by just a few of the companies the government is paying to develop this AI and ML technology.

PeakMetrics, the recipient of a $1.5 million award, tracks millions of news sites, blogs, global social platforms, podcasts, TV and radio, and email newsletters.

Omelas Inc., which received more than $1 million in taxpayer money, culls data from “the most influential newspapers, TV channels, government offices, militant groups, and more across a dozen social networks and messaging apps, thousands of websites, and thousands of RSS feeds.”

Alethea Group, which received a Phase I award of nearly $50,000 to develop a “machine learning tool for proactive disinformation/misinformation detection, assessment, and mitigation,” boasts it covers data sources including mainstream and “fringe” social media platforms, peer-to-peer messaging platforms, blogs and forums, state-affiliated media sites, “gray” propaganda sites, and the dark web.

Newsguard, awarded $750,000 by the DOD, offers two databases, including its unreliable reliability ratings database of thousands of news and information websites and a second database of purported hoaxes.

Primer, which scored a $3 million award to develop its technology, offers a database that looks to news and media data sources, publicly captured images, the dark web, cyberattacks shared by the general public, and classified—presumably for government clients—and unclassified data sources. Primer also partners with Flashpoint, which adds “Telegram, Reddit, Discord, and “the deep and dark web” to the databases mined.

2. We’re Talking Americans, Not Just Russian Bots

It is also important to recognize that the AI and ML technology under development will not just mine foreign or state-connected actors, but will monitor everyone’s speech. Both the government grants and the web pages of the monitoring companies confirm this reality.

We also know from the “Twitter Files” that the government and its fellow residents in the Censorship-Industrial Complex view the speech of Americans as related to foreign influence operations merely because the viewpoint matches what they claim is an adversary’s perspective. And we know the government pushed for the censorship of ordinary Americans.

By its nature, AI and ML technology has unlimited potential to flag problematic speech on any imaginable subject. Here, the past is prologue: Speech need not involve terrorism, acts of war, or even our electoral process for our government to consider it within its purview to fact-check. (It also need not be false; see point 4).

The “Twitter Files” and recent events provide Americans a glimpse into the breadth of the topics the government may deem harmful narratives worthy of censor—from elections, to vaccines, to runs on grocery stores. Underlying the government’s obsession with silencing misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information is the “Great Power Competition” perspective of foreign relations, under which China and Russia represent a constant threat to America’s power, influences, and interests.

With the government viewing foreign relations through the Great Power Competition paradigm, speech on any topic, touching even tangentially on America’s “power, influences, and interests,” will be fair game for censorship efforts.

3. The Great Power Competition Renders Everything Fair Game for Censorship

While to convincingly prove this reality requires a deeper exposé—coming soon—on the Great Power Competition’s connection to the government’s focus on misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, last week Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, showcased the current thinking inspiring our leaders. During a conference call with the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation about the Silicon Valley Bank bailout, Kelly asked whether there was “a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”

Kelly’s question was “couched” “in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this,” Rep. Thomas Massie told Public, but, according to Massie, Kelly “didn’t suggest the censorship should be limited to foreigners or to things that were untrue.”

The move from the censorship of terrorism to the silencing of supposed interference in elections to censoring posts about “bank runs” follows naturally from the shift in foreign relations paradigms from the War on Terror to the Great Powers Competition. The latter views anything affecting American power or influence as fair game. We also saw this shift with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) proposal to consider “financial misinformation” within its purview.

The government’s censorship efforts won’t stop at supposed “financial misinformation,” however, because anything and everything journalists report and citizens discuss affects America’s “power, influence, and interest.” So, the government’s development of technology to monitor the entirety of the internet foretells a much more dangerous threat than apparent on the surface.

4. The Government Brands True Speech Misinformation

The threat to free speech stemming from the government’s monitoring of the internet is further increased by our overlords’ willingness to brand true speech “misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information” and then seek to censor it. The “Twitter Files” also exposed this reality, with our government and its lackeys seeking the censorship of true facts that might lead to “vaccine hesitancy” or reveal runs on grocery stores.

That our government would seek to silence true speech on such matters gives Americans reason to fear further censorship of true information.

5. Faulty Analysis and Biased Censors

The “Twitter Files” also revealed that censorship demands by the government, think tanks, and academic institutions relied on faulty misinformation analyses, including ones that identified innocent Americans as foreign actors. Also, many of those involved in the disinformation industry maintain left-leaning bias and a penchant for targeting conservatives.

In furthering its plans to monitor the internet for supposedly harmful narratives to silence, the government is continuing to work with biased groups, including ones that pushed faulty analyses, adding to the threat to free speech.

6. The Government’s Partners Are Poised to Censor

The government’s push to develop AI and ML technology to mine the internet is even more terrifying knowing that a Censorship Complex has already been built. The “Twitter Files” revealed the breadth and depth of the complex, with every alphabet-soup federal agency working with the social media giants and an array of think tanks and academic institutions, and with the legacy media providing an assist when censorship requests went ignored.

While Elon Musk may have exited Twitter from the group, the Censorship Complex still stands tall and ready to silence the speech of those who dare dissent. This public-private collaboration makes the government’s move to monitor the internet even more threatening to free speech.

7. Those Who Could Warn the Public or Stop the Plot Are All-In

The threat is further heightened because those with the power to warn the public and demand the government stop silencing Americans’ speech are complicit. The corrupt media’s coverage, or lack thereof, of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger’s congressional testimony on the Censorship Complex proves this point. So too does the Democrats’ pathetic performance during the hearings, when they exposed themselves as enemies of free speech.

With Democrats, the legacy media, and many Republicans all in on the government’s efforts to censor misinformation and disinformation, it will be extremely difficult for the public to recognize the risks free speech faces—especially since those trying to sound the alarm have already been falsely branded purveyors of disinformation.

A chance remains, though, that enough ordinary Americans will hear the message before it is too late and demand Congress close the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

Read full story here…

from:    https://www.technocracy.news/grants-reveal-feds-horrific-plans-to-censor-americans-speech/

Who Is Censoring You?

al Collusion Between Government and Big Tech Exposed

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked
government and big tech collusion

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret and illegal censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines
  • The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022
  • Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed
  • Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory
  • Discovery documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, engaged in illegal censorship activities. Emails from the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold also reveals outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to violate Americans’ Constitutional free speech rights

In a September 1, 2022, article,1 the Post Millennial reveals how federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines.

The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit2 brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022.

During the discovery process, the plaintiffs sought to identify “all meetings with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation,” which is how we now know that such illegal meetings did, in fact, take place.

Illegal Collusion to Suppress Free Speech

Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed.

Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.3 According to the New Civil Liberties Alliance:4

“… scores of federal officials … have secretly communicated with social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech federal officials disfavor. This unlawful enterprise has been wildly successful.

Under the First Amendment, the federal government may not police private speech nor pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is precisely what the government has done — and is still doing — on a massive scale not previously divulged.

Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media companies — pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed …

Communications show these federal officials are fully aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the need to overcome social-media companies’ ‘hesitation’ to work with the government …

This unlawful government interference violates the fundamental right of free speech for all Americans, whether or not they are on social media. More discovery is needed to uncover the full extent of this regime — i.e., the identities of other White House and agency officials involved and the nature and content of their communications with social-media companies.”

Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance added:5

“If there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased. The shocking extent of the government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social-media companies, has now been revealed …”

Federal Agencies Involved in Free Speech Suppression

Documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, who participated in these censorship meetings or otherwise engaged in illegal censorship activities.6 This includes officials from:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team
Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis
The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce
The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)
Health and Human Services (HHS)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
The Office of the Surgeon General
The Census Bureau
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
The State Department
The U.S. Treasury Department
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Emails from a strategic communications and marketing firm called Reingold7 also reveals that outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to censor Americans. For example, Reingold set up a “partner support portal” for the CDC so that CDC officials could link emails to the portal for easier flagging of content it wanted censored by social media companies linked to the portal.

Big Tech Companies Involved in Government Censorship

On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings include:

Google Facebook
Twitter YouTube
Reddit Microsoft
Verizon Media Pinterest
LinkedIn Wikimedia Foundation

While some social media companies may have “hesitated” to censor on the government’s behalf at times, Facebook was certainly an eager beaver from the get-go. As early as February 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in contact with the State Department, offering its services to help “control information and misinformation related to coronavirus.”8

Biden Administration’s ‘Executive Privilege’ Denied

As you might expect, the White House has not cooperated with discovery and have fought to keep communications secret — especially with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s correspondence — claiming all White House communications as “privileged.”

However, executive privilege does NOT apply to external communications, so the plaintiffs called on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to “overrule the government defendants’ objections and order them to supply this highly relevant, responsive and probative information immediately.”

September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty did just that. The Biden administration’s claim of executive privilege was rejected and Doughty ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.9 That includes correspondence to and from Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and many others. According to the judge’s order, they have three weeks to comply.

Examples of Illegal Government Censorship

On Twitter,10 Missouri AG Schmitt has shared a long list of examples of government censorship, including one document in which Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19 response digital director at the White House, asked Facebook to take down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” a parody account dedicated to making fun of Fauci.11 Facebook complied.

Schmitt also shared emails12,13 between a senior Facebook official and the surgeon general, stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email came on the heels of the surgeon general’s July 2021 “misinformation health advisory.”

The CDC also coordinated with Facebook, providing them with talking points to debunk various claims, including the claim that spike protein in the COVID shots is dangerous and cytotoxic. In a July 28, 2021, email, a CDC official provided Facebook with the following counter-narrative, taken straight from the “How mRNA Vaccines Work” section on the CDC website:14

“Messenger mRNA [sic] vaccines work by teaching our cells to create a harmless spike protein …” (Emphasis in the original.)

Fast-forward to mid-June 2022, and the CDC was suddenly less sure about the harmlessness of the spike protein.

Up until then, the words “harmless spike protein” had always been bolded, but in this June revision, they removed the bolding, along with an entire section in which they’d previously claimed that mRNA was rapidly broken down and spike protein did not last more than a few weeks in the body.15 Clearly, the truth was catching up to them and certain lies were getting too risky to hold on to.

CISA also reached out to Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft and Twitter for help, shortly after the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board was announced.16 Fortunately, public outcry put an end to this Orwellian Ministry of Truth before it got started.

When Censorship Becomes Election Interference

According to The Washington Times:17

“Details about the Biden administration’s conduct raised the hackles of Republican lawmakers. ‘Confirming that this is the most dangerously anti-free speech administration in American history AND that Facebook … is nothing but an appendage of the deep state,’ Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Twitter as he shared news of the court filing.”

Other lawmakers are also getting involved. In an August 29, 2022, letter18,19 to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin requested records of the government’s contacts with social media companies to ascertain whether the FBI and/or DOJ did, in fact, instruct them to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by falsely referring to it as “Russian disinformation.”20

Zuckerberg has also been asked21 to provide any correspondence involving the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, especially as it pertains to the FBI’s instructions to censor this political hot potato — something he openly admitted in a recent Joe Rogan interview (see video above).22

Lawmakers Pursue Legislation to Penalize Gov’t Censorship

Three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees — Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington — have also introduced the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act23 (HR.8752), aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.

The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.

While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool, as people might tend to think twice when they know there’s a real and personal price to pay.

from:    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/09/15/government-and-big-tech-collusion.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20220915_HL2&cid=DM1261937&bid=1604984985

On Free Speech

The Union of the Unwanted — 30 Alternative Media Podcasters Discuss The Social Media Censorship

By Macroagressions with Charlie Robinson

The Union of the Unwanted mega group podcast is now available! Sam Tripoli (Tin Foil Hat), Ricky Varandas (The Ripple Effect), Midnight Mike (OBDM), and Charlie Robinson (Macroaggressions) had a crazy idea of getting a large group together to discuss the censorship of the alternative media. Last night it happened.

Please share this video. This discussion needs to happen now before it is too late.

Special guests include:

James Corbett, Ben Swann, Greg Carlwood, Those Conspiracy Guys, The Conspiracy Farm, Monica Perez, Luke Rudkowski, Josh Sigurdson, Tim Picciott, Ernest Hancock, Red Pill 78, Jay Dyer, OBDM, Issac Weishaupt, Jason Bermas, XG, Tommy G, Kate Awakening, Scott DeGroat, Fame, Jamie Dlux, and more.

from:    https://www.activistpost.com/2020/06/the-union-of-the-unwanted-30-alternative-media-podcasters-discuss-the-social-media-censorship.html

How Free is Speech Now?

As always, do your research:

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have performed “perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history” as they now have committed to an about-face to the American value of free speech.

That is the assessment of Breitbart New‘s Allum Bokhari who exclusively presented a leaked Google internal briefing titled “The Good Censor” to the public on October 9th, exposing the world once again to major tech companies’ attitude towards the bedrock of traditional American attitude.

“The Good Censor” is an 85-page briefing that openly admits that Google and other tech platforms are undertaking a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world. Unsurprisingly – especially after leaked video showed google employees in an emotional meltdown after the election victory of Donald J. Trump – The Good Censor cites the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the rise of the populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany as unwelcomed events.

While admitting the shift away from free speech it is also simultaneously admitted that those select few giants “control the majority of online conversations.”

The briefing goes into how Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are stuck in a position of going along with the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” (free speech and free markets) vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” (censorship). These two directions are also described as the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility” and the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The internal pages claim that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.

Perhaps the most significant part of the brief, as Breitbart’s Bokhari reports, is when it associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.”

This is significant, given that Google, YouTube, and other tech giants publicly claim they are not publishers but rather neutral platforms — a categorization that grants them special legal immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Elsewhere in the document, Google admits that Section 230 was designed to ensure they can remain neutral platforms for free expression.

Bokhari wrote on Wednesday:

What ordinary Americans long suspected, The Good Censor has proven beyond doubt. According to Google’s own analysis, tech companies have performed perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history, promising their users free speech while they were taking over the market, only to go back on their word once they came to “control the majority of online conversations.”

What better example to prove this bait-and-switch than the statement given by Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa who told British politicians at the end of last year that it’s “no longer possible to stand up for all speech.”

Just 5 years prior, Twitter’s first executive in the UK, Tony Wang, described the company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

The once acceptance and defense of free speech by these big tech players is discussed in The Good Censor, as the document reads: “This free speech ideal was instilled in the DNA of the Silicon Valley startups that now control the majority of our online conversations.”

And while Google hubrisly boasts that its free speech bait-and-switch has placed them and a few other giants as controllers of “the majority of online conversations” (aka the majority of all conversation happening on earth) the company has come out and finally admitted directly that it has a censored Chinese search engine project in the works. What better guarantor of “civility”, “publisher, “editor” could the masses of internet users wish to oversee the majority of online conversation?

See more at PlanetFreeWill.com.

For more on this from Mke Adams, see text from:   https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-10-17-tech-giants-pull-off-epic-bait-and-switch-in-turning-against-free-speech.html

US Border Guards Checking/Copying Laptop Files

U.S. border guards may check, copy laptop files

Jan. 1, 2014 at 12:30 AM   |   1 comments
NEW YORK,    Jan. 1 (UPI) — U.S. border guards have a right to inspect and copy files from travelers’ laptops and other devices without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, a judge ruled.

Such searches are rare, with “about a 10 in a million chance” of happening, so “there is not a substantial risk” someone’s laptop, cellphone or other device will be searched and seized at the nation’s borders, including at airports and on trains, U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman wrote.

But for people whose devices do get searched, the government doesn’t need reasonable suspicion to examine or confiscate them, he wrote, citing case law that holds “searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless ‘reasonable.'”

In making his ruling, Korman, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, dismissed a lawsuit by graduate student Pascal Abidor, an Islamic studies scholar and a dual French-U.S. citizen, who had his laptop inspected and taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in May 2010 while he was on an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York.

The officers also handcuffed him, placed him in a cell and questioned him for several hours, the New York Times said.

The law enforcement agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, returned the laptop 11 days later.

Abidor could prove no legal injury from the laptop’s confiscation, the Washington Post said.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association joined Abidor in the case, arguing their members travel with confidential information that should be protected from government scrutiny.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, they all alleged the policy violated their rights to privacy and free speech.

“While it is true that laptops may make overseas work more convenient, the precautions plaintiffs may choose to take to ‘mitigate’ the alleged harm associated with the remote possibility of a border search are simply among the many inconveniences associated with international travel,” wrote Korman, who is also a visiting judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California.

That court ruled in March extensive “forensic” searches required reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, but simple checks of photos and other files did not. Korman was not one of the judges in that case.

The ACLU said it was considering an appeal.

Catherine Crump, the ACLU attorney who argued the case in July 2011, said in a statement the searches Korman’s ruling addressed were “part of a broader pattern of aggressive government surveillance that collects information on too many innocent people, under lax standards and without adequate oversight.”

Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard said, “These checks are essential to enforcing the law, and protecting national security and public safety, always with the shared goals of protecting the American people while respecting civil rights and civil liberties.”

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/01/01/US-border-guards-may-check-copy-laptop-files/UPI-57721388554200/#ixzz2pBIvIANL