First Amendment

This week FEMA, our governmental hero and savior, held a staged press conference in reference to their outstanding performance in dealing with the California fires. FEMA employees asked a series of questions in a posed press conference that was carried live on FoxNews and MSNBC (link).

FEMA set this up as genuine press conference. They only gave fifteen minutes notice to reporters, and would not allow questions via telephone. They intended for it to be aired, and thus suppressed freedom of press by having federal government employees pose as journalists.

This seems to be accepted by many because FEMA is being praised for doing a much better job than it did with Hurricane Katrina. The two incidents have little in common. Katrina was a multi-state disaster that caused millions to lose their homes over a few hours. Also, Katrina happened in a location that is mostly poor, and thus the residents cannot "self help" as easily. California is a wealthy state. Individuals have more money, and the state has more money. The number of people without a home is a fraction from Katrina, and the duration is much sorter: days versus months and years for most involved. So the California job was much easier for FEMA.

The control of the press is not new. Armstrong Williams, a syndicated radio personality, was paid $241,000 via the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act as part of a public relations campaign (link). Control of the press can also be attributed in my previous post, Public Domain.

Public Domain

This is an amazing story. A Phoenix newspaper has been subpoenaed because of four specific articles it published. The truly amazing part of the subpoena, is that the IP addresses of the readers of those articles is requested. The four articles referred to in the subpoena can be found here: (1, 2, 3, 4).

I am not familiar with the ins and outs of the local politics in Phoenix. But what seems to be the larger issue here, on the side of the local government, is that this newspaper published the address of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The address of the sheriff is public record due to his financial disclosure statement when he ran for office. But it is illegal to post the address of a law enforcement officer on the Internet in the state of Arizona and most other states. However, I did a trace route on the IP address of the web site that has the sheriff's Financial Disclosure Statement in PDF, and found it be be recorder.maricopa.gov. So the local government itself has his address posted on the Internet, and this is where the newspaper retrieved the information.

Whether or not these journalists can actually be prosecuted for posting pubic information on the Internet is a matter in itself. When the IP addresses, browser information, and operating systems of individuals accessing the news web site is requested through the court, there is an abuse of power. It is intimidating and threatening to request information on readers of a web site. In countries such as Iran and China, many people justifiably access news web sites using proxy servers so the government cannot censor and/or track what they are reading for fear of legal repercussion.