Tag: Muzzle Awards

Apple’s heavy-handed approach to speech

I’m trolling for Boston-area stories about Apple’s heavy-handed approach to allowing and banning apps for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and now, of course, the iPad. If you know of any, please pass them along. I would love nothing more than to give Steve Jobs a Muzzle Award, but I need a local angle.

What prompts my request is this outrageous example involving newly minuted Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore, who was unable to get his app approved because his work “ridicules public figures.”

I’ll be in the market for a new phone in the summer of 2011. It’s looking less and less likely that I’ll be going with Apple, much as I love its technology.

A South African scholar is un-Muzzled

Adam Habib

In October 2006, a South African scholar named Adam Habib, a frequent visitor to the United States, was detained at JFK Airport, questioned about his political beliefs and hustled out of the country.

Habib later learned that the Bush administration had decided, on the basis of no apparent evidence, that he had ties to terrorism. More likely his exclusion was based on his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq.

Habib’s ordeal led me to bestow a 2008 Phoenix Muzzle Award upon then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and then-secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff for exploiting the vast, vague powers they had been granted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in order to silence a prominent critic. Among other things, their actions forced Habib — who received his Ph.D. from City University of New York — to cancel an appearance at an academic conference in Boston on Aug. 1 of that year.

Now Habib is once again free to travel to the United States. In January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an order clearing Habib, a sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, and Tariq Ramadan, a professor of St. Antony’s College, part of Oxford University, in response to a legal action brought by the ACLU and several other organizations.

Habib is currently on a 19-day tour of the U.S. that will bring him to Harvard Law School this Wednesday, an appearance being co-sponsored by the ACLU of Massachusetts. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Habib praises Clinton’s decision, but urges the Obama administration to end his predecessor’s policy of “ideological exclusion.” Chronicle reporter Peter Schmidt writes:

“It is absolutely incumbent on the Obama administration to follow through on these tentative steps” and “withdraw all of the practices of ideological exclusion that emerged during this period,” Mr. Habib said. Noting how President Obama was himself shaped by living abroad as a child, Mr. Habib said, “It would be a failing of his own history, his own awakening, of his own historical roots, for him not to follow through on these tentative steps.”

Unfortunately, as is frequently the case in these situations, Habib’s voice was stifled when we most needed to hear him speak.

University of Johannesburg photo via the Chronicle of Higher Education.

J.D. Salinger’s battle against free expression

J.D. Salinger, who died Wednesday at the age of 91, spent the last year of his life waging a wrong-headed battle against the fair-use exemption to copyright law, which allows for the use of copyrighted materials without permission under certain limited circumstances.

A Swedish humorist who goes by the name of J.D. California wrote a sequel to Salinger’s most famous work, “The Catcher in the Rye,” called “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.” Salinger sued for copyright violation, even though parody is protected by fair use.

Last summer I gave Salinger a Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award for this outrage against free speech. I am, of course, under no illusions that Salinger ever knew or cared. What’s more disturbing is that the courts held up publication of “60 Years Later,” and that the case is still pending.

Let’s hope Salinger’s heirs drop the suit.

The 12th annual Muzzle Awards

The Phoenix Muzzle Awards, my annual round-up of New England violators of free speech and personal liberties, is online now, accompanied by Harvey Silverglate’s sidebar of outrages against freedom of expression in academia.

I’ll be on “NightSide with Dan Rea,” on WBZ Radio (AM 1030), tomorrow at 9 p.m. to talk about the Muzzles and maybe a little politics. Hope you’ll tune in.

Exposing the T’s ludicrous photo ban

Now that the MBTA has fired a trolley driver because a passenger photographed him letting two kids take the wheel, do you suppose the T will reconsider its no-longer-official prohibition on allowing people to take pictures?

Marie Szaniszlo reports in the Boston Herald today that the unidentified Green Line driver was photographed while his young son and nephew were playing with the controls. The photos were taken by Michael Critz, who posted them on Craigslist. “I don’t take any joy in the firing of the driver,” Critz is quoted as saying.

No mention in the Herald story of the photo ban, but it’s well-known to local photographers. In 2006, I gave a Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award to the T for its ridiculous policy, which is supposedly aimed at thwarting terrorists.

“The practice is inconsistently employed, does nothing to address surreptitious or long distance photographs of the same sites, and restricts the rights of law-abiding persons,” wrote John Reinstein, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Jonathan Albano, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, in a letter to the T several years ago. Reinstein and Albano further argued that the ban violates both the federal and state constitutions.

Not only did the T not overturn its censorious policy [sort of; see below], but it continues to enforce it. Only yesterday, Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub linked to some T photos taken by Carolyn Serrano, who writes on her Flickr page:

I actually got in trouble taking this photo! I was leaning against the pole to brace myself as I took this shot (imagine, no flash in a dim setting…that’s a couple secs that I needed to stay absolutely still which is super hard for me!) and on the speakers they were making announcements about how photos were not allowed. I disregarded it, thinking no way were they talking about me. But they kept on re-iterating it and stopped only when I put my camera away!

The MBTA is our property, paid for with our tax dollars and fare money. Despite no-photo policy, there are 7,391 photos on Flickr tagged with “mbta” right now. So not only is the policy a violation of the First Amendment, but it’s not working. It’s time for T general manager Dan Grabauskas repeal this misguided assault on our free-speech rights.

Update: Adam Gaffin tells Media Nation that the T actually softened its policy (PDF) more than a year ago, but that employees still haven’t gotten the message. “Naturally, nobody at the top seems to have communicated this with employees, who continue to harass people,” Gaffin says.

Photo (cc) by Brian Talbot and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

MIT gag order has been lifted

Media Nation reader J.H. passes along word from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the MIT gag order has been lifted. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole reportedly found that the MBTA is unlikely to prevail in its lawsuit against three MIT students and the university itself.

Background on the case here and here.

Although this is clearly better than not lifting the gag order, it’s also not much of a victory for the First Amendment. The fact is that the MIT students had every right to make their presentation on flaws in the MBTA’s electronic fare system, and they were not allowed to do so.

It makes a mockery of the principle that prior restraint is to be reserved only for serious issues of national security, obscenity and incitement to violence.

Here you go, Your Honor

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole yesterday continued the restraining order against three MIT students who had been prevented from telling what they know about security problems with the MBTA’s automated fare system.

Among other things, O’Toole demanded that the students hand over a paper they wrote for class by today at 4 p.m.

Well, I don’t know if this will expedite matters, but here’s the slideshow (PDF) they were planning to use during their presentation in Las Vegas last weekend. Does that help?

Ridiculous. And good for The Tech for putting it online.

Sorry, Charlie — no free speech for you

Charles Evans Hughes forgot something when he wrote the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Near v. Minnesota decision in 1931.

The chief justice listed national security, obscenity and the imminent threat of violence as essentially the only three reasons that the courts could ever step in and order someone not to exercise his right to free speech. What he left out: information that could result in the MBTA’s losing some fare money. What a bonehead, eh?

Boston Globe reporter John Guilfoil (a former student of mine, by the way) wrote yesterday that U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock had granted the T’s request for an injunction preventing three MIT students from presenting their findings on security defects in the Charlie Card, the T’s electronic ticketing system. They had been scheduled to speak at the DEFCON 16 conference in Las Vegas.

For good measure, the T is suing MIT, too, for the grave offense of not teaching its students how to be good, Charlie Card-paying citizens.

In today’s Boston Herald, O’Ryan Johnson reports that one of the students is saying the trio offered to show MBTA officials their findings so they could fix their flawed system. Instead, the T decided to sue them.

For those of you with long memories, you may recall that Judge Woodlock is a piece of work. During the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Woodlock ruled that a cage set up by officials for the use of protesters was “an offense to the spirit of the First Amendment” — but then declined to do anything about it. He’s not big on newspaper boxes, either.

In 2005, Woodlock was the proud winner of a Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award for his outrages against free speech. It looks like he’s well on his way to a second statuette.

This story had gone nationwide — heck, worldwide — even before the Globe and the Herald got hold of it, as Universal Hub showed on Saturday. This will not end well for Woodlock. In the meantime, though, he’s created an unnecessary hassle for everyone concerned, and emboldened the T, which — wouldn’t you know — won a Muzzle in 2006.

Photo (cc) by David Bruce and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Stephen Baird on Menino’s crackdown

Musician Stephen Baird, the founder of Street Arts and Buskers Advocates, offers more details on Mayor Tom Menino’s crackdown at Faneuil Hall. In an e-mail to Media Nation, Baird notes that the steel fence erected by city and federal officials blocks the Freedom Trail, something the irony-deprived mayor no doubt fails to appreciate.

I reproduce Baird’s e-mail (which I have lightly edited) with his permission:

The City of Boston and National Park Service put a fence around one of the premier symbols of freedom in America — Faneuil Hall. The fence actually blocks the Freedom Trail. This was done to disenfranchise the civil rights of street artists and the general public who freely choose to peaceably assemble and support them. The fence is a blight not only on the city, but the country. The fence, similar to the old Berlin Wall, is a symbol of Mayor Thomas Menino’s and other government officials’ failure to develop intelligent and equitable public policies and regulations.

There was no warning or public process before this crackdown. Portrait artists, living statues and street performers were suddenly told they could no longer exercise their First Amendment artistic expression in this public park by the police. There are no written guidelines or laws, just the arbitrary whim of the police officers and government officials of where people can perform and audiences can gather.

These actions are all being done in direct defiance of stipulation by Boston city attorneys in the federal court case Community Arts Advocates Inc. v. City of Boston et al. (December 2004), where they stated artists would not be stopped from exercising their First Amendment expression in Sam Adams Park.

Background:

I sued the City of Boston 2004-2006 over arrests and threats of arrest in Boston Common, Downtown Crossing, Copley Square and Sam Adams Park.

The city repealed old Police Rule 75 (from 1850s) and a new law (403) that was just as bad on December 23, 2004, in front of Federal Judge Nancy Gertner. I was threatened with arrest in Sam Adams Park while conducting an interview with Boston Phoenix about this court case. See photograph and details.

I argued that the city could not allow Faneuil Hall audition artists to use Sam Adams Park and not allow other artists. And I won.

I proposed an ordinance similar to the Cambridge ordinance, but the city stated it would use other laws, including the noise ordinance, to control performances. The police have since failed to monitor sound levels with decibel meters. (Sound is also supposed to be inaudible at 100 feet, which could control bucket drummers). The city cannot control performance location issues with out doing drastic, heavy handed and unconstitutional ad hoc use of other laws. See the front page Boston Globe story by Donovan Slack on Aug. 1, 2008.

The City of Boston put chairs and tables in the primary performance area in Sam Adams Park, which pushed artists next to the restaurant that caused the current complaints.

The closing of Filene’s and construction of Downtown Crossing has pushed many artists to Sam Adams Park. There are many conflicts of space, sound and other issues between artists. Artists — Balloon, Living Statues, Portrait Sketch, Bucket Drums — started to set up on north side of Faneuil Hall facing Quincy Market, which has curtailed and caused major tensions with Quincy Market artists.

As long as the city fails to set up performance location guidelines, a lottery system to share the performance locations/time and enforce the noise ordinance consistently/fairly (the police and firemen union picket demonstration were 10 times louder then any performers at Sam Adams Park), then the situation will flare up with arrogant abuse of power that is both mean-spirited and unconstitutional.

I suspect the only way I will be able to bring any measure of equity to this situation is through the federal court.

Stephen H. Baird
Street Arts and Buskers Advocates
Community Arts Advocates Inc.
P.O. Box 300112
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
E-mail: info {at} BuskersAdvocates {dot} org
Web: www.BuskersAdvocates.org

Cultivating ongoing fundamental relationships between artists and communities by celebrating self-expression as a basic human right essential for the healthy growth of youth, individuals and communities.

Menino’s last tangle with Baird resulted in His Honor’s receiving a 2005 Phoenix Muzzle Award. It looks like he’s well on his way to winning another one.

Photo courtesy of Stephen Baird.

Bill O’Reilly and “shut up”

In a letter to the Phoenix, Rich Goggin of Peabody says I was wrong to claim, as I did in the recent Muzzle Awards, that Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly “loves nothing more than to tell his guests to ‘shut up.'” Goggin instructs me thusly: “Except O’Reilly only did that once, seven years ago.”

Really. Now, I’m going to make an assumption, but I’m pretty sure the source of Goggin’s misinformation is O’Reilly himself. O’Reilly’s claim was included in Robert Greenwald’s documentary “OutFoxed.” It is followed by a hilarious stream of O’Reilly telling both guests and non-guests alike, over and over, to “shut up.” Here is the clip:

As Ronald Reagan once said, facts are stupid things. And if that’s not enough for you, Mr. Goggin, Jack Shafer of Slate wrote way back in 2003, “Bill O’Reilly says ‘shut up’ the way other people say ‘um.'” He follows that with one, two, three … OK, make that 30 examples.

I posted a comment to Goggin’s letter, but it doesn’t seem to have taken yet. I don’t know if he’s a Media Nation reader, but perhaps someone will send him this way. Meanwhile, my advice for him is to shut up.